Once inside, Jenny swung to face him. "Just what do you think you're doing in my room?" she demanded. "I don't care who you are, you've no right to break in here like this and frighten my daughter and threaten my… my friends! Now you just put that silly gun away and-"
Larry grimaced impatiently. "Shut up, lady."
"Well, I must say-"
"Don't."
Jenny opened her mouth angrily and closed it again. She was putting on a pretty good show, but I thought her attitude of high indignation just a little overdone. This was obviously the angle she and the kid had decided to play. What else they'd decided on, in their thirty-second council of war, remained to be seen. I was more interested in Larry at the moment. There had been shaky overtones in his voice when he first spoke, but he was gaining confidence. He risked a brief glance my way.
"I was hoping you'd come, Clevenger," he said, surprisingly. He seemed to have forgotten that we hadn't parted friends. He went on: "That's one reason I let the girl go.
Oh, yes, I saw you sneaking out, honey, but I figured you were just going to get your mother, and maybe our detective here, and that's what I wanted. Now we're all here together, one big happy family… You can give me a hand with this handsome joker, Clevenger."
He was talking briskly enough now, but his eyes were kind of pleading. They were saying, as near as I could tell, that he'd apologize for hitting me, he'd do anything I wanted, once we were out of here, but there was no time for any of that personal stuff now. Right now we were allies in a room full of enemies, and he was counting on me to help.
I said, "You name it, amigo."
"First get his gun, there. Cover him for me while I get some information from the women… Careful, don't get between us. He's a real wise guy."
I refrained from pointing out that I'd been picking up wise guys' guns when he was still picking up rattles and putting them in his mouth and making happy gurgling noises, undoubtedly enchanting his proud young mother. Well, almost that long ago. I walked over cautiously and looked at Ruyter from a safe distance. Hans didn't move aside to let me reach the weapon by his shoe.
I said, "When I give the word, you'll move thirty-six inches to your left, or I'll kick you right between the legs. And if you move thirty-seven inches, I'll kick you twice and pistol-whip you with your own gun. Ready? Shift"
I was aware of Jenny glaring at me, one protective arm about the kid in pajamas. To hell with her; she was only a minor worry now. While I was talking tough, with my back to Larry, I winked at Hans. He was my biggest concern. I had to get the message through to him, at least. Otherwise, thinking me an adversary, he might foul me up when the action started. They all might, but Ruyter was presumably the most experienced and dangerous. I saw his eyes widen very slightly. He hesitated. I made a threatening movement forward. He shrugged and stepped aside.
I picked up the silenced automatic, checked the loads, and in a sense there was really no further problem here. I had a reasonably quiet weapon in my hand. All I had to do was turn and fire. It was the only safe and certain way to handle a nervous man who also had a gun.
I knew it, and I knew that the coldblooded, treacherous move would take Larry completely by surprise, and I knew that Mac would approve it, or at least condone it. Anticipating some such situation, he'd as much as given me absolution in advance. The only thing I didn't know was the gun. It's only in the movies that you pick up a strange weapon belonging to someone else and shoot the pips from the ace of clubs at fifty paces. On the other hand, Ruyter was a pro, and his gun wasn't likely to be off enough to make much difference on a man-sized target at pointblank range.
I was stalling and I knew it. The ridiculous thing was, the stupid little dope trusted me. He'd punched me in the jaw, he'd kicked me in the ribs, and still he trusted me to forget personalities and behave like an All-American boy in this moment of crisis. It was crazy, it was infuriating, and still I couldn't quite bring myself to put a bullet into him like I should, either to disable or kill, as long as there was a reasonable possibility of accomplishing the same result by less drastic means.
After all, I told myself, it wasn't as if I had an old hand like Johnston to deal with. If I could just get close enough, I should be able to handle a shaky boy without damage. I let the weapon snap closed, and aimed it at Ruyter.
"Okay," I said to Larry without turning my head. "I've got this one covered, partner. I'll blow him in two if he gives me a dirty look."
I winked again. Hans responded with a microscopic nod, acknowledging my signal at last. I didn't kid myself we'd got ourselves much of a mutual-assistance pact, but at least he'd probably wait to see what help I could give, since I was offering it free. Facing him over the gun, I couldn't help remembering a dead girl in a motel bed, fifteen hundred miles back along the road, but that was personal and irrelevant. He must not be harmed, Mac had said.
"All right, Mrs. Drilling," Larry said behind me. "I want you in that chair over there."
I shifted position so I could watch and still keep Ruyter covered. It was a logical move, and it gained me a couple of feet, almost a yard, toward Larry. I saw Jenny move toward the indicated chair, hesitate, and sit down. Penny started over to join her.
"Not you, girlie," Larry said. "You come right over here, honey. Turn around. Turn your back to me. Now put your hands behind you."
He looked at us over her head: an odd, challenging, defiant look. Then, abruptly, he grabbed Penny's wrist and twisted it up between her shoulder blades. The kid cried out and went to her knees. Jenny gasped and started up from her chair, and sank back slowly, as Larry put his gun to Penny's head.
I made a sound of protest, and managed another step in the right direction. "Look, fella, you can't just-"
"You keep out of this! Just watch the man like you were told. Don't interfere!" Larry's voice was sharp. "Now, Mrs. Drilling, there is something you have that we want, and we're tired of waiting for it. We're not going to let you get out of the country with it. You're going to pick it up somewhere-somewhere here in eastern Canada-and you're going to tell me where, or you're going to hear what a dislocated shoulder sounds like happening to your own kid. We're tired of being led around by the nose, Mrs. Drilling!" Jenny licked her lips. Her face was pale under the freckles.
"We?" she breathed. "Where is your associate? Does he know what you're doing?"
Something changed in Larry's eyes. "Never mind Mister Johnston!" he said quickly. "Mister Johnston is off having an important phone conference with Washington. I'm handling this my way."
Well, it wasn't the first time a young operative had taken a wild, independent gamble in the hope of looking good in his senior's absence. I gained another couple of inches his way, but it got me a quick, suspicious look that wasn't promising.
"Come on, Mrs. Drilling!" I didn't like the sound of his voice at all. He was right on the ragged edge; he was unpredictable and dangerous; he knew he had to pull this off all the way or be crucified when Johnston got back. He said shrilly, "Tell her what it feels like, honey! Tell your mom how it hurts!" He forced the kid's arm up farther.
Penny moaned. "Mummy, it hurts!" she gasped. "Mummy, tell him! Please tell… ahhh!"
I was looking for a clear, safe shot now. I'd made a mistake passing up the chance, earlier. Larry must have sensed some kind of a threat, because he threw another glance my way, and somehow he lost his grip on the kid's wrist while he was doing it, and she twisted around and threw her arms around his knees, and that, as they say, was when the egg hit the fan.
It all happened at once, they were all in motion very fast, and it all seemed very slow and inevitable. Hans reached for something in his pocket, and Larry looked that way while desperately trying to struggle free of Penny, who clung to him tightly. And Jenny was coming out of her chair and making a dive, not for Larry but for me-she hadn't got word that I was on the right side, or she hadn't believed it. Well, I'd been expecting something of the sort; it didn't catch me wholly by surprise.
/> Hans had whipped out a little package of cigarettes, but he didn't handle it like cigarettes. He pointed it like a gun at Larry, who'd used a knee on the kid to free himself. She was laid out on the rug, and he was taking aim at Hans with the.38, and I'd lost a fraction of a second sidestepping Jenny's flying tackle.
I'd still have made it, however, if I'd had my own gun, but Hans' clumsy, sightless rig shot as high as Benjamin Franklin's kite. I felt the recoil, and heard the more-or-less silenced cough, and saw plaster fly from the wall on a line well above Larry's head. I pulled far down and fired again, hastily, but the.38 went off before the Spanish job kicked back at me a second time. How Hans was making out with his camouflaged weapon, whatever it was, I didn't know and didn't care as long as he stayed alive, the way I was supposed to keep him by any means necessary-but when I looked at him, after making sure of Larry, he was sitting on the floor with a funny, surprised look on his face.
Larry's only shot had been very good, or very bad, depending on the viewpoint. There was a lot of blood on Hans' shirt, and he was obviously dying, and that was that.
XVII
I STOOD by the door for a full minute, listening. That was first on the priority list. If there had been anybody awake within range of the earsplitting crack of the.38, not to mention the double cough of the silenced automatic, we didn't have to worry about anything but cops. They'd take care of all our other worries.
On the other hand, if there was nobody around but sleeping hotel guests, we might just get away with it. A man wakened from a sound sleep by a single, confused stutter of sound can't always be sure just what woke him-not sure enough to do something about it in a strange hotel in a strange city, perhaps a strange country. There aren't too many tourists public-spirited enough to call the desk, or the police, to report some gunshots they aren't even sure they heard, knowing the red tape that's bound to follow.
Nothing moved in the hail. I gave it another couple of minutes by the watch, and the silence outside remained unbroken. Well, it was time I had a little luck on this job, for whatever good it could do me now. I drew a long breath and turned from the door, to meet Jenny's eyes. She was crouching on the rug in numb silence, exactly where she'd landed after trying to throw me for a loss. She was staring at me helplessly, perhaps because in that room I was the only other creature showing life.
It was kind of a shambles. Larry was dead almost at my feet, and a little distance away the kid lay sprawled in her pajamas, still out cold. I hoped it was no more than that. Across the room, Hans Ruyter sat against the wall with open eyes and a red shirtfront. I walked over to him. He'd finished dying while I checked the hall; he was as dead as he'd ever be. As far as I was concerned, it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. I wasn't a bit sorry for him, only for myself.
I stood looking at him grimly, knowing that I'd made the one mistake that's inexcusable in my line of business: I'd let a mistaken humanitarian impulse louse up an assignment. I'd had strict orders to see that Ruyter got through at any cost. I'd known just how to do it, and I'd had the weapon to do it with, but I'd hesitated over paying the full price in blood. I'd tried to do a bargain job instead of the one I'd been assigned.
So two men were dead instead of one, and the job was shot to hell, and sooner or later I'd be back in Washington facing a couple of departmental psychiatrists who'd try to determine the full extent of the softening of the brain and whether or not the disease was curable-but that was kind of beside the point, at the moment. I squatted to examine the thing that looked like a cigarette package-a British brand called Players, if it matters-and saw the little hole out of which something lethal was supposed to come if you squeezed the right place the right way. It occurred to me that this, or something like it, could be the real answer to what had killed Greg, not the hypo left in Elaine's room.
I didn't monkey with the thing. I didn't know if it had been fired or not, and I didn't know how to fire it. It might even be booby-trapped in some way, and I'd made enough of a fool of myself for one night without winding up with a cyanide dart in the eye. But they certainly were a tricky bunch, with their acids and their silencers and their disguised blowguns.
I walked over to Larry. He had a hole in the head. In a sense, I reflected, he'd always had a hole in the head. It had just taken him a while to die from it. I felt nothing particular about his death, now, except regret that it hadn't happened on my first shot instead of my second. I looked at the crazy automatic I was still holding, and I looked at Jenny, still crouching there as if she was afraid to move. Maybe she was.
I said, "What the hell kind of loused-up weapons did your boyfriend carry, Irish? If his gun had shot straight, he'd be alive now. But this crummy thing shoots two feet high at four yards. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it."
She was still staring at me, wide-eyed. Crouching there on the rug, she was no longer the self-possessed woman to whom I'd recently almost made love: she was a scared girl. Well, death by violence isn't pleasant to see, particularly if you've never seen it before. I sensed that she hadn't.
She licked her lips. "But you… you shot a U.S. agent!" she breathed. "I thought… I don't understand She stopped, looked at me with vague suspicion, maybe hope, and said stiffly, "Another trick, Mr. Clevenger? Tell your friend to get up and wipe the catsup off his face."
"You tell him," I said.
She looked at Larry, obviously dead, and the hope-if it had been that-faded. I looked at the gun in my hand and saw some stuff hanging out of the silencer. Part of the sound-absorbent packing had been blasted loose by the two shots I'd fired. I examined the weapon more carefully, and saw that the whole silencer was cockeyed. Hans had either crossed the threads, screwing it on in the dark, or he'd bent it, dropping the gun at Larry's command. Not lining up properly, the silencer had thrown my shots way off. Maybe I owed Hans an apology. You could make a case for its not being his fault.
I took out my handkerchief, wiped the gun clean, and Went over and put it into his hand, closing the dead fingers around it.
"What are you doing?" Jenny asked, behind me.
"They shot each other," I said. "They shot it out at point-blank range and both died. Very neat. Maybe the cops will buy it."
"But it isn't true," she said dully. "You shot him. The government man. I saw you." She frowned up at me, as if her thinking processes were slow and difficult. "Why?"
I'd had time to think it over after a fashion, and I said, "That's a goddamn silly question, Irish."
She licked her lips again. "What do you mean?"
I said, "All right, all right. So you didn't get me into bed and crawl all over me. So you didn't say you wanted a friend in your corner when the showdown came. Okay. Nobody's quoting you, are they? Who's throwing your words in your teeth? Not me."
She said, shocked, "You can't mean-"
"Cut it out," I said. "You're not responsible. Nobody's saying you are, are they? I killed him. Say I killed him because I didn't like the way he shaved his head. Say I killed him because he was twisting the kid's arm. Relax, Irish. I'm a big boy and I don't ask anybody to share the blame for what I do. I'm not asking you. But don't pretend you don't know why I did it, or I'll…" I stopped, and grimaced. "Ah, hell. It's a mess, anyway. It always is, when they break out the guns. That's why I leave mine home when I can. You'd better see about Penny. I'll get some water."
But her maternal instincts weren't operating yet. She was still staring at me in a horrified way. "But I never meant… I never asked you to kill..
I said, "Sure, Irish. Sure. Don't brood about it. I'll figure a way out. Just give me a little time to think."
"But you can't have shot him just because I said-"
"I told you," I said. "I shot him because he was hurting the kid, and I'm a sucker for kids."
"When we first met, you said you hated the little creeps." She got up slowly, never taking her eyes from me. When I didn't speak, she went on breathlessly: "But it's mad! It's absolutely crazy! You can't thin
k I ever meant for you to-"
I said, "Look, Irish, the guy is dead. See? Dead, like in corpse. Let's not waste any more time on who meant what. If I misinterpreted your desires, ma'am, I most humbly apologize. To you and to him. There really wasn't time for a consultation, if you'll recall. I just did my poor best, ma'am, and the next time you get in bed with a man, ma'am, and tell him you're doing it because you need his help, you'd better spell it out a little better or pick a guy who can read minds."
It wasn't a very nice line to take, I guess. Basically, it was the same cheap love-at-first-sight approach that Greg had probably tried, earlier. However, unlike Greg, I now had a dead body to lay at my feet to prove my sincere affection. The fact that she didn't seem to want it-either the body or the affection-didn't really matter.
She whispered, "I'm sorry. Really, I'm sorry. I had no idea anything like this would happen or I'd never…" She stopped, frowned at me, and said: "He was a government agent and you shot him! Does that mean that you're not… I mean, that you weren't working with him; that all the time you were really-"
"A poor damn private dick from Denver, named Clevenger," I said. "Just like I always said, ma'am. And right now I'm a poor damn private dick named Clevenger on his way to the electric chair, if we don't get the hell out of here quick. She's your daughter, not mine. We'll just leave her lying there if you say so."
"Oh!"
She seemed to come awake at last, and she looked guiltily over at Penny, who was beginning to stir. Jenny hurried over, suddenly full of remorse and concern. I went to the bathroom for water. I couldn't help thinking bitterly that I'd finally made it. Now that it was too late, I'd made it: at last I had the woman fully believing in Dave Clevenger, the susceptible private eye with the ready trigger finger.
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