Darling, It's Death

by Richard S. Prather

  She stayed like that for a few moments, and of all times for her to see me on the fringe of the spotlight, that was the time she picked. She saw me, wagged her head a little, which looked very strange indeed, and then she winked at me.

  I grinned at her and she started back the way she'd come as Gloria said, "What was that?"

  "What was what?" I could feel the bourbon.

  "You know what was what."

  "She winked at somebody, looked like."

  "Looked like you. You know her?"

  "Just to say hello to."

  "She doesn't say hello like that, does she?"

  I let the answer ride. I didn't know the answer, but I was curious. Anyway, this was no time for conversation. María was moving around faster now, and there was a little jazzy music from the orchestra as she whirled around and sprang about and sat on the floor and did any number of peculiar things. She sat down and put one leg behind her head, then she put the other leg behind her head, and if she'd had a third leg, I do believe she'd have put that behind her head. It looked as if soon there'd be nothing left of María except what was behind her head.

  This was fascinating me; I had seen women in some strange positions at one time or another, but I was learning some new twists. María got all twisted around down there on the floor, and pretty soon she was standing on her head, and her back, and her bottom, and walking all over herself. She got into some positions that there is no point in describing because they are impossible and she simply couldn't have done them. She wandered all over the stage, accompanied occasionally by bursts of applause, and for a while she cavorted at the edge of the stage right in front of me and I had a very delightful time.

  She was about two feet from me, maybe less for part of it, and she winked at me again.

  "Ah ha!" Gloria hissed. "It was you!"

  And then María Carmen went gyrating back to the center of the stage, where she had a controlled fit, after which she sprang to her feet and bowed a couple of times while everybody clapped like mad, particularly those at ringside. She blew everybody a kiss, then pranced off the stage, and the MC came back to announce bilingually that now María Carmen would appear with those two clever fellows, Hernández and Rodríguez.

  Then the three of them pranced onto the floor and they all jumped up and down and ran around frantically, the men dressed in ankle-length black tights and Byronic flowing white shirts, and María Carmen still in the same outfit, which hadn't split yet.

  Then one of the guys yelled, "Allez . . . oop!" or its Spanish equivalent and María ran and leaped at him and I'll be damned if he didn't grab her foot in both hands and throw her away. She went clear up in the air and came down on the shoulders of the other guy, and then there was some more "Allez . . . oop!" and she jumped down and then flew up again and went zipping through the air like a cartwheel.

  I closed my eyes, then the suspense made me open them. Everything was all right. They were still tearing around like crazy. She was such a lovely little gal, though, that I hated to think of one of those guys missing her. She'd simply go sailing through space with no walls anywhere to stop her. Oh, this was horrible. There they went again. I closed my eyes; this was it now, I knew she was gone. When I looked again there would be the two men leaning over the rail, screaming. But when I opened my eyes all three of them were standing together holding hands in friendly fashion and there was a fanfare and much applause.

  They bowed, and then one of the men, Hernández, I think, walked to the edge of the floor a few feet from me to speak to some guy I didn't know, and to the Joker. I wondered, idly, what he wanted to talk to that flat-headed hippopotamus for. Or why the Joker would want to talk to Hernández. Or—I heard Gloria clearing her throat.

  I turned to her. "How'd you like it, honey? Having lots of fun?"

  "I imagine you enjoyed it more," she said icily. "I wish they had floor shows for women."

  "There's a thought. Maybe some bright boy will make millions putting on shows for women. But, then, don't women like to look at women?"

  "Not like men do. What an exhibition that little—little exhibitionist put-on! I suppose you think she's sexy?"

  I grinned at her and finished my drink. Then I shook suddenly, put my glass slowly on the top of the table, and turned to look again at the conference going on a few feet from me. While the show was in progress, I had become quite wrapped up in it. I had forgotten all the goons around me, even the Joker, whom I should never have forgotten. I had not even paid much attention when he started talking to Hernández. What the hell was going on over there?

  They were close enough so that I could hear a little of the conversation, but it was all in Spanish, so they might just as well have been talking bird language for all the good it did me. But the guy with the Joker was rattling stuff at Hernández and I caught a "con permiso" and a "magnifico" and a "cómico," and then Hernández was bobbing his head and saying, "Si, si," followed by much gibberish.

  Then that card, the Joker, climbed onto the dance floor and grabbed the mike while Hernández chattered away at María and Rodríguez.

  "Guys and dolls," said the Joker.

  All his chums broke into applause and whistles and feet stamping in a most uncouth fashion. The Joker beamed and grinned, having himself a time. He waved his hand for silence and said, "It is all arranged." The crowd hung on his every word, dying to know what cute thing he'd dreamed up. "By special permission of the management and kind cooperation of them"—he jerked a thumb over his shoulder—"we have got us a added attrackshun. A famous comic dancer who is with us tonight will do some acrobats for us with them." He jerked his thumb again.

  He passed. "An' now," he said happily, "I give um to you, as he has gladly consented to dance for you. That famous comical foreign dancer, Shell Scott."

  10

  JUDAS H. PRIEST. HOODS or no hoods. I was going to make a run for it.

  I sprang up out of my chair and wheeled around in a graceful pirouette as the band blew a fanfare and a spotlight fell on me. On me, spinning. I froze and swung my head around. Everybody went "Hurray" and screamed and whistled. Oh, boy, this was terrific. You can depend on the old Joker.

  I was still going to run for it, but a thin guy at a near table caught my eye and moved his napkin away from the gun that was under it, then covered it with the napkin again. That wasn't the only gun around, because I felt the hard muzzle of one grind into my side and turned to look into George Madison's stupid, grinning face.

  "Be a good sport, now, Scott," he said. "Dance for us pretty."

  He jabbed the gun hard into my side, so hard it hurt, and then the Joker was alongside, both of them edging me out of the spotlight, so the Joker could neatly slip the .38 from under my coat and tap me lightly on the head with it, which he did. He heard George's remark and he echoed it. "Dance pretty."

  My heart hurt. I said, "What you think you're going to do? Shoot at my feet? I get you on the end of a gun, Joker, and I won't shoot your feet. You think about it and you'll know where I'll shoot you."

  They shoved me around to the side of the floor, out of the spotlight where it was nearly dark, and I felt the Joker slam my own gun against the back of my head again. Harder this time. He didn't want to knock me out, just calm me down, but that was the wrong way to calm me down. I was mad enough to charge all the hoods in the universe, but the Joker gave me a violent shove that sent me careening across the dance floor, all stooped over and having a hell of a time staying on my feet, slipping and sliding on the polished floor.

  The crowd went into hysterics. All the killers and stranglers and dope pushers and blackmailers were yakking loud enough to split their throats. I caught my balance just past the center of the stage and stood there a moment with my fists clenching and unclenching and feeling ready to explode. I turned my head and saw María clapping her hands and laughing, and her two partners guffawing. They thought this was on the level!

  The spotlight was in my eyes and I couldn't see through it to find Mad
ison or the Joker. If I could have seen either one I'd have jumped at them, but there was nothing out there; there were no faces except those at the ringside, including Gloria's. There came a huge wave of sound louder than the sea crashing beneath me; waves of laughter and hoots and whistles.

  I wanted a machine gun. I wanted a bomb. I wanted to bury them all up to the neck and then ride horses over them. I wanted . . .

  I stopped wanting anything but out. I had just heard that stupid cry of acrobats, "Allez . . . oop!" and I swung around, horrified. María was way up in the air, coming down, and the two men caught her neatly, one on each side grabbing an arm and a leg, and they swung her toward me, then back behind them, and started to swing her forward again. Oh, no, dear God.

  They were going to throw her at me!

  I backed away from them, waving at them with my hands as the yaks and bellows and screaming got even louder because this was so hilarious. María came swooping down between the two men, almost brushing the floor, and I backed away yelling, "Don't! Please don't. If you value your—" And then they threw that woman at me.

  María Carmen came flying through the air, turned slightly sideways in a sitting position with one leg drawn up daintily and one arm high over her head, and a big happy smile on her face.

  I let out a panicked yelp, but I did my best; I did what little I could. She came slamming at me and into me. I grabbed her by one leg and then we were both going in the same direction—the direction she had been going—only we were on the floor, with me on my back on the bottom and María Carmen half around my neck, and this was neither the time nor the place for that sort of thing.

  When I went down, my head tried to go through the floor, but the floor was almost as solid as my head. There was total pandemonium, and I heard three or four bumps out in the audience, which bumps I presumed were spectators falling out of their chairs and rolling around screaming.

  Oh, I was a hit, all right. I was a star. The Joker would die happy now; he had achieved the ultimate. He'd die happy, maybe, but by God, he was going to die.

  And there he was, right alongside me, an expression of fiendish glee on his ugly face and tears rolling down his cheeks. María Carmen wasn't around my neck any more, but I was still flat on my back, a bit stunned from the bang on my head. I tried to look to my right, out toward the happy people, but I had slid so far that half of me was out of sight behind the orchestra stand. This was great for what the Joker had in mind, because he said, "Let me help you, dancer." Then he picked up my head and threw it at the floor, and he hit it. He hit it with my head.

  I think I went clear out for a little while, although it was the same night when the blackness went away because I could still hear the mirthmakers out front. But I was only about half conscious because quite obviously what was now happening was a figment of my imagination.

  There were a couple of people hanging onto me, one on each side, each of them grabbing an arm and a leg the way the boys had held María a while back, and the characters hanging onto me looked like the Joker and Madison. I must still be out; this was all a dream.

  And in my dream the Joker and Sudden Death Madison were with me on the stage, swinging me back and forth between them; the audience was behind me, and there wasn't anything ahead of me except the far edge of the dance floor and the high railing at its edge, and beyond that nothing except space and stars and the ocean beneath us.

  I was rising up at one end of a swing now, and from up that high I could see the water out there. If I hadn't known it was silly, I'd have thought they were going to throw me into the ocean. And then the boys gave me a heave and let go, and I saw the edge of the railing coming at me, and then it went under me, and then there was nothing under me except ocean.

  Odd. Even these crazy hoods wouldn't throw me into the ocean. And then I was in the ocean.

  11

  AS SOON as I went over the rail and saw all that blackness down below me, every bit of fun went out of this escapade. It was a hundred feet down at high tide. When the water was out . . . well, the water was just out.

  And here I was, zooming through space like an unguided missile. How did I get here? I went plummeting down, kicking and screeching and trying to get my feet pointed down so I wouldn't break my back when I hit, if I hit water, and I slammed into the water feet first.

  I went in straight enough, but my feet came back up toward my middle and I felt as if sledgehammers had hit me from the bottom and from each side. But it was water, and I was alive and kicking. And I mean kicking. I was kicking and splashing and swimming and stroking and making a lot of progress, only the wrong way. I was still going down. Finally I slowed down and thought I was starting up again, but I wasn't even sure I wasn't going sideways and I knew I had been underwater a good hour, and my lungs were trying to come out under my arms.

  I managed to get out of my coat, but that was all I could get rid of before I started fighting upward again. Then my head broke water and I started snorting and tried to suck in all the air in Acapulco. I got a lot of it, and a lot of water with it, and my head slowly stopped spinning. The sea was restless underneath me, surging and swelling. My clothes and shoes kept trying to drag me down and I had to keep fighting just to stay on the surface. I gulped more air, then stroked with what strength I had left until my fingers hit rock and I dragged myself out of the water.

  I lay there, wondering if I'd ever be able to move again, and that sharp-edged rock felt as good as a Simmons Beautyrest mattress, and the thought occurred to me that this was no way to look for secret documents. Finally I raised my head and looked up at the sky that I'd come screaming down out of, and I saw the lights. They were flashlights coming down the steps from El Peñasco. Coming, probably, for the remains.

  And I could very well have been dead. Might be the hoods would think I'd drowned. They'd be half right; I was half drowned. But there was no point in my letting them know I was alive. I didn't want them ever in their lives to know I was alive. It was dark down here, but I managed to pick my way along the base of the cliff, hanging to rocks that tore my skin, and I got far enough away from the descending flashlights so that nobody would see me.

  I rested where I was, in comparative and momentary safety, while I tried to figure out what had set off that fiasco. One thing I was sure of: Vincente Torelli hadn't had a hand in it, and wasn't going to like it a bit. Men like Torelli simply don't operate that way. If he'd wanted to get rid of me, he'd have done it quickly and efficiently. And I didn't believe even the Joker and Madison had intended, originally, for everything that had occurred to happen. They must have got carried away with the fun of what they were doing. I had an idea they were going to be on the boss's list. That made two lists they were on.

  And it was even likely that none of the hoodlums present except the Joker and Madison had been in on the deal. The rest probably had merely gathered to watch the fun, whatever it might be. I wondered for a minute about Gloria. I wondered if she might have been in on it. I hated to think so, but it was a possibility.

  I also wondered what I was going to do now. I couldn't very well go back to my Las Américas room. George and the Joker might drown me in the shower. I thought it was likely that they hadn't meant to knock me off, but it seemed important to my future plans that I find out for sure. I wanted to know a lot of things, such as what happened after I disappeared, what the hoods had done, what Gloria had done—and what was happening to her now. I had to grin, thinking that I had got out of the gangster-filled El Peñasco just as I had suggested to Gloria that we manage it: I had floated out.

  And it was time I floated somewhere else and got out of sight for a while. I couldn't see walking all the way into the town. Particularly not if I was supposed to be dead. I pondered the problem for several minutes, then decided it was worth the chance to try picking up my rented Buick. The parking lot was quite a distance from the club, and should be deserted enough at this hour, so I shouldn't have too much trouble if I were careful. If I had the car I could
head for any place I wanted. California, for example. The way I was starting to feel, if things kept going the way they were, the hoods could have the United States. They could have the world. But I was near a little strip of beach, and I could walk along it for a hundred feet, then climb up the cliff and circle around to the parking lot. I headed back up.

  In ten minutes I was standing on the edge of the lot, in near darkness. I could see my Buick fifty feet away, and while I hesitated, wondering whether to stroll casually over to it or maybe crawl on my belly, I noticed the red glow as somebody dragged on a cigarette a few feet beyond the car. I couldn't see who was there, but two figures were leaning against the side of another auto nearby. Could be somebody taking the air, or it could be goons looking for me in case I was still breathing. Armed goons; and the Joker had my .38. I looked around, trying to spot any other figures standing at strategic spots, and I saw a yellow car I recognized: María Carmen's Cadillac.

  I thought about it for five seconds, then I hunched over so I was out of sight and scooted between rows of cars and over to the Cad. It wasn't locked, and I climbed into the back seat of the sedan and squatted on the floor.

  Long minutes passed and my muscles were getting cramped when I heard the tap-tap of high heels on the asphalt. I hunched down out of sight behind the back seat. The door on the driver's side opened and María Carmen slipped in and slammed the door. She was humming something, happy as could be, and I reared up behind her, leaned forward, and grabbed her shoulder with one hand while I put my other hand over her mouth. She almost went through the roof.