I wanted to tell him my name was mud, but I couldn't get anything out but muffled mmmmphs. I mmmmphed as loud as I could, hoping this stupid drunk would catch on, but Lloyd caught on instead and yanked hard on the rope and I could feel my face getting red.
And right then in about five seconds a whole mess of things happened, bang, bang, bang, like that. A middle-aged woman in a blue dress said, "Oh, you're hurting him," and I mentally agreed with her, and the fat character went off into hysterics again right beside me, and the little delinquent cretin sprayed his water pistol at us, and I had an idea.
I had an idea how I could let Colleen know, and right at that moment she turned her back on me and started to go back into the casino, and I said it's now or never and lunged toward the fat Laughing Boy and felt that goddamn noose tightening on my throat as I butted him and butted him again with my head.
He stopped laughing and sputtered and gasped, but the big floppy Stetson toppled off that stupid, blond-white, stand-up hair of mine and fell to the floor, and Lloyd said, "Son of a—" and stopped, and the little delinquent looked up at me and his stupid little mouth dropped open.
Colleen was walking away and I thought, For Christ's sake, stop, woman, but she took another step as Lloyd yanked again and Big Ears jerked from behind, and then the little water-pistol kid, still gaping at me, shut his mouth, opened it, and staring at my whitish hair he screamed, "Mommy, they're killing Hoppy! They're gonna hang him!" and I thought, You should have your mouth washed out with soap, but then I loved him.
Because that high-pitched yelp made a couple of dozen people swing their heads around at us and one of them was Colleen. She looked back over her shoulder and at first there was nothing in her face except mild curiosity, and then she saw me in a tug of war with two guys, and I wiggled my eyebrows at her, and my scalp and nose and navel, and she saw Lloyd grab the Stetson and shove it down on my head again, but not before she knew.
I could hardly see her now because the rope was twisting me and damn near cutting off my wind, but I knew this was a break, better than no break at all, and I was going to kiss that lovable little child if I lived; I was going to slobber all over him disgustingly and I'd buy him Hoppy's own gun, and Hoppy's own horse—hell, I'd buy him Hoppy.
Our procession had been stalled for no more than half a minute and now we were under way again. I bulged the muscles in my neck as tight as I could because I was getting black spots in front of my eyes, and as we moved and started out the door, the Hopalong fan's mother said, "That's not Hoppy, darling; that's just a nice man. They're playing a game." And Colleen ran right up to us and past us and away somewhere. I couldn't turn around to watch her go, but I knew it was Colleen.
We went through the main entrance, then turned left under the redwood-roofed portico before which the cars drive up and unload. We were a twelve-foot procession with Lloyd up front and the third man running interference beside him, then rope and me, then rope and Big Ears. Cars were parked out front and over at the left, where we were heading, and probably there was a car up ahead waiting for me. I was walking along with the boys, my eyesight fairly good now, but still having trouble breathing.
It was dusk that would soon be dark. Probably Lloyd and the others had planned it that way, but there was still barely enough light left so that people out front could see us and point and get their kicks. It was going out of me now—all the temporary exhilaration I'd felt when Colleen had recognized me after I'd made that last attempt to cross these guys. I'd shot my bolt, and there wasn't anything else I could try. But I knew if I had my hands on Lloyd's throat now, I wouldn't stop choking him till his face was blue and he was dead.
We reached the edge of the building and started to step into the asphalt drive when three more people came around the building's edge and went through the same old tired routine. They pointed and laughed and came up close to us, and one of them, a woman, was screaming, "Horse thief, horse thief," and laughing a tight, shrill, almost hysterical laugh, and it was Colleen.
She laughed in Lloyd's face and the face of the other man by him and came right up to me choking and laughing and sobbing, and then I felt her hand behind me as she slashed with a knife and cut me with the keen blade, ripped the knife into my skin and tore the flesh to the bone as she sliced at the ropes, but the ropes came free. I grabbed the knife and held it for a fraction of a second while the warm blood streamed down over it and I felt the pain, and I knew I had them now, knew it even as the man behind me felt the rope go slack in his hands and let out a startled yell. I knew it as surely as I ever knew anything in my life, and I didn't even feel as if I had to hurry.
Colleen was gone as soon as I grabbed the knife, and as Big Ears yelled behind me Lloyd knew something was wrong and jerked sharply on the rope around my neck. I went right along with it as the man on Lloyd's left swung around to face me, and felt as if I were floating toward them even though I knew my legs were driving me.
It had taken no more than half a second from the time the rope slipped free and Lloyd heard the shout, but he was swinging around as I reached him, his gun coming up, and I squeezed the knife tight in my right hand and whipped my hand up fast from my side, slashing up at him, and I hit his belly with the knife and jammed it up to the hilt inside him. His gasp mingled with the curse of the other man raising his gun and chopping it around at me, and I threw up my left hand and caught the swinging gun barrel against the flesh of my arm. With my left arm up to catch the blow, I crossed my right arm in front of my stomach, my hand stretched out stiff and quivering, and whipped it up fast, aiming for the spot right underneath his nose. Because I wasn't fooling with this bastard, not now I wasn't, and I swung my hand up as hard and fast as I could, with all the power I could get behind it, and I felt the edge of my palm smash under his nose and knew that splinters of bone were flying into the darkness of his brain, and that he was dead before he fell.
I swung around, hoping the other guy wasn't behind me, right on top of me, but he was gone. Big Ears had liked it while things were going his way, but now I could hear feet slapping as somebody ran. The whole mess here hadn't taken more than a few seconds after I'd got the knife, and that was probably Big Ears just now getting under way as I heard the dead man's head smack against the pavement when he fell behind my back.
Lloyd was hunched over on his knees, groaning and cursing, so he was still alive. I don't know what I'd have done then if some people from the front of the hotel hadn't come over slowly, attracted by the scuffle. I jerked the rope from around my neck and dropped it. I didn't want strangers talking to me now, and I didn't care to see Lieutenant Hawkins, so I ran. I ran around to the back of the Desert Inn. I knew that nobody except Colleen knew who the funny "hoss thief" had been, so out of sight of anybody from the hotel I took off the chaps and neckerchief and jacket, pulled off the mask that had covered my face, and took the gag out of my mouth. I found a faucet outside one of the cottages and quickly washed the blood off my hands.
I went into the Desert Inn the back way, past the figure-eight swimming pool, stopping long enough in the light from the doorway to make sure my shirt and trousers didn't show any telltale spots of red. There was a small streak across the front of my shirt, but otherwise I seemed presentable enough. Most of what blood there was had been on the Western clothes I'd left in back.
I stuck my hands into my pockets and went in. I went in fast and crossed to the stairs in a hurry, because I wanted to get up to my room and my gun before any commotion broke loose in the hotel, because the two goons had undoubtedly been found by now. I wanted to get to my room and out of it again before anybody else came calling; I wanted to get something on my still bleeding hands; and I wanted to find Colleen and be sure she was all right.
Chapter Fourteen
NOBODY looked at me as I crossed the lobby. Word hadn't seeped inside this soon, and everybody seemed to be having too much fun to pay a lot of attention if it had. I went up the stairs and down the hall to my room. The door was unloc
ked and pulled shut as we'd left it, and by all the rules nobody should be in there. I wasn't convinced, though, and I made as little noise as I could when I put my hand on the knob and twisted it slowly, then threw the door open so hard that it swung around and banged against the wall.
From the doorway I looked around the room fast, ready to run if I had to, but this time I wouldn't have to run. The room was empty. I went inside, straight to the bed, and looked under the pillow. My .38 was still there, and I grabbed it before I did anything else. Then I got a towel, took it back to the door, and wiped my blood from the outside knob before I shut it again and locked it.
My right hand was practically untouched except for a small gash on my wrist where the ropes had been; most of the blood had come from my left hand and wrist, still bleeding. My wrist was the worst, where Colleen had slashed deeply through to the bone, but in her haste she'd sliced a piece out of my thumb and the knife had continued down to cut across the inside of all four fingers, which had been outside, away from my back. I held the towel around my left hand while I phoned Colleen's room. She didn't answer.
I let the phone ring for a while, then hung up and fixed my hands. I made a fast job of it with gauze and tape, hurried into a clean shirt and gray gabardine suit from my bag, strapped on my gun, and went out.
I was worried about Colleen, but I wasn't going to stick in my room phoning her. That room wasn't much good to me any more; not with my name on the hotel register and Dante's gunmen getting bold enough to walk right inside and grab me. I walked down to the hallway on the main floor and up it to Colleen's room. I knocked, and when there wasn't any answer I tried the door, but it was locked.
I wanted to hang around a while and see if Colleen showed up, but I didn't want to have my bare face sticking right out in the open. And, too, I wanted to sit in someplace quiet for a while and gather my thoughts, try to make sense of this mess. I was not in very good mental shape right at this moment, and physically I was a six-foot-two ache. The cuts weren't so bad, though they burned, but I could feel a lot of bruises on me and the worst of all was my head. If I'd had the chance, I'd have given the thing away. Every time my heart beat, the inside of my head throbbed as if it were beating instead of my heart. It was like migraine without the dizziness.
I walked back to the end of the hall again and looked out into the lobby. Everything seemed to be going on normally. Just beyond the desk, before you go into the casino, there's a flight of stairs that leads up into the Sky Room Cocktail Lounge, clear up at the top of the Desert Inn. There was a spot where I could wait in about as much safety as seemed left to me in this town, and where I could also have a drink. Having a drink seemed like the best idea I'd had for the last two or three days. Having several drinks seemed like an even better idea. That's what I'd do about those aches and pains: I'd anesthetize myself.
I walked past the desk and headed for the stairs, and out in the open again I felt like a naked man captured by the Society for the Suppression of Vice and Everything, but nothing happened and I made it up the stairs, in past the stools in front of the black piano inside the lounge's entrance, and around to the far side of the oval bar. I sat with my back to the huge mirror that covers the whole wall, where I could watch the entrance, and ordered a double bourbon and water. The bartender glanced at my taped fingers but didn't say anything. He brought the drink. It was gone in no time. I had another. Nothing happened while I drank the second one; no bombs went off, nobody shot at me, nobody lassoed me, no lightning struck me. I had another.
Before I finished that one I knew what my next move would be. I hadn't yet done what I'd started out to do at the very beginning of this case: talk to Lorraine Mandel. I wasn't about to bust in on Victor Dante again, not just to ask questions, but I did want to make conversation with Lorraine, because she might be able to give me some of the missing pieces. She definitely seemed like the best place for me to pick up more information if she were willing to talk and knew anything that would help me, but the problem was how to get to her. I finished my third double and ordered another drink.
"Single this time," I told the bartender. "Single little drink." He brought the highball.
I was feeling better and worse at the same time. Maybe I did have migraine. My head wasn't hurting so much, but I was getting some dizziness. And here I was in Las Vegas' Helldorado, and damn near everybody seemed to be having fun but me. I started feeling sorry for myself. No fair, no fair at all. Everybody having fun. All I was doing was trying to keep from getting killed. I considered that as the bourbon oozed into my blood stream.
"Bartender, little single. One little drinkie."
I got the drink. It had been night outside for quite a while now and I could look across the bar and out the wide windows and down the Strip to the lights of the night clubs, and cars moving up and down the highway. Joe E. Lewis was packing them in at El Rancho Vegas; Arthur Lee Simpkins was knocking them dead at the Flamingo; Carl Ravazza was here in the Painted Desert Room of the Desert Inn. And in the Sky Room: me. All alone.
I phoned Colleen's room several times with no luck, then mapped my campaign for seeing Lorraine Mandel. I know I couldn't run laughing into the Inferno and ask for her, and she was undoubtedly slaying them in the floor shows there, anyway. But I had a vague, possibly bourbon-inspired plan of what I could do. That little hanging party that went awry earlier had given me an idea.
I ordered one last drink while I examined the idea, then grabbed a cab and had myself driven downtown to Fremont Street. People were whooping it up and having their kicks as I pushed through them and went into a store where all sorts of costumes were rented and sold and a lot of knick-knacks and gadgets were on display. I went inside exhaling fumes of bourbon. I looked around for a few minutes, then got the clerk, a young gal about nineteen, and pointed to a set of brightly colored clothes.
"Miss. Like to rent that and put it on here."
"Sure. In back. You want the Mexican outfit?"
"That's the one." It was the one. Starting from the top, there was a big, floppy, black sombrero with a brim that would hide part of my face. Then there was a scarlet jacket covered with intricate needlework and silver spangles, and a pair of flaring trousers of black cloth with silver stitching up the outsides of the pants legs. The girl got the stuff and I changed into it in back, then bought a brightly colored serape to go over my shoulders.
I took a look at myself in a mirror, and I looked like a rainbow, but there was still my face staring out at me from under the floppy brim of the hat. This wouldn't do—not if I were going to barge right into the Inferno. Then on a table I saw some gadgets that gave me another idea. Like two or three of the stores on Fremont Street, this one had quite a collection of jokes and novelties: imitation ink blots, leaking or "dribble" glasses, marked cards. Cute things like that. But there were two disgusting little items side by side among all the rest that might solve my problem. One of them was called "Goofy Teeth" and the other had no name because there was probably no name gruesome enough to describe it. It was a pair of eyes. Bulbous, white, red-veined eyes with brilliant blue half-inch circles painted around the pupils, and the pupils were quarter-inch holes through which your own eyes could look out. There was a curved metal band to fit over the wearer's nose, and attached were ghastly bulging eyes.
If you have ever seen a man wearing a pair of those eyes over his own, and a set of fanglike, twisted Goofy Teeth jutting from under his upper lip, then you know that there is absolutely nothing more hideous that can ever happen to that man's face. It happened to mine.
I bought the teeth and eyes, slipped them on in front of the mirror, and yanked them off before they scared me while the little clerk laughed and laughed.
"Thanks," I told her. "Pretty awful, huh?"
"Pretty awful. You going to a party?"
"Yeah. You got a black eyebrow pencil somewhere?"
She squinted at me curiously, but she came up with the pencil. I blacked my eyebrows with it after she told me
to go ahead and ruin the pencil if I wanted to, then I tried the eyes and teeth again. It was even worse than before.
But I paid the girl and left with her laughter still bubbling behind me. I left my own clothes in the store, saying I'd pick them up later. I had my gun strapped across my chest under the scarlet jacket, and my teeth and eyes in the jacket's pocket. The floppy sombrero rested on my head, the serape was draped over my shoulders, and I was one God-awful mess. I'd gone into the shop as a fairly respectable Sheldon Scott, Los Angeles private detective; now I was Señor Scott, the private ojo.
I had another quick drink to keep my courage up, then caught a cab and got out in front of the Inferno. People still streamed in and out of the Devil's mouth, and I pulled the floppy sombrero down over my face, slipped in my teeth, popped on my eyes, and went in.
Chapter Fifteen
BOURBON bubbled pleasantly inside me and I was feeling a mite dizzy. It occurred to me that, just possibly, Señor Scott, the private ojo, was more than a bit plastered. But I had to find my Sweet Lorraine, and after all the trouble I was going to, she'd better be ready to talk. I went into the Devil's Room wishing I had some of the instruments of torture depicted on its walls. Say a whip or a club or a thumb screw. Then if she wouldn't talk I could whip it out of her or beat it out of her or use the thumb screw on her. I hunched over and headed for the dining room.
Music was blaring from the room; the last floor show was on. What the hell did I do now? I slipped inside the door and waited among the tables at the back of the room. Nobody noticed me because everybody was watching the show, and because the big room was in darkness except for the stage. As long as the club lights were out I was O.K., but if they suddenly came on there was a chance I'd feel foolish. With the stage on my left, I walked straight ahead to the far wall, stopped, and turned around. A tall brunette finished singing, bowed to the applause, then went backstage through a curtained archway at the side of the orchestra stand. Backstage was where I wanted, but I couldn't use the same route getting there that she'd used. There had to be another way to get there without climbing up on the stage in front of all these people. I kept peering through my quarter-inch holes till I saw, dimly, another door in the wall at the right of the stage. That probably led back where I wanted to go, and I was getting ready to wander over when the MC announced, "The star of our show: Lorraine," and she came on.
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