Then something slammed against my rear end, smacked the back of my skull. It was crazy the way my head cleared. No fog. No burned-out lights. Just realization that I’d fallen against the wall. That and the faint echo in my ears of the now-identified yell. Immediately I knew what had happened; what was happening; what would happen next; what would happen next week; I was in control of the situation again.
And then of course I remembered the ridiculous performance little Ernie Biggers had put on. None of that idiot-boy stuff for me. I wasn’t going to stagger around....
Shouldn’t even be standing up, I realized.
No, not with a flaming slug in my head, way in there if I was any judge. So, to think is to act: I dropped like a stone. Then I wiggled just a little, to get into a more comfortable position, because I’d flopped down and got my leg twisted under my butt somehow and it was killing me.
Then I lay still, staring blankly from eyes I hoped looked glazed. I could dimly see Hot Sauce on my right, Sam Jelly looming over me. They stared down at my body, no joy on their faces. And suddenly I wanted to blink.
Correction. I didn’t want to, I had to.
Well, nuts, I thought, a guy can’t think of everything. Too late to close ‘em now, just have to stick it out somehow. Immediately my eyeballs felt sprained. Didn’t take any time at all. And it got worse, it became an intensely localized pain of exquisite dimensions, then started creeping into my sinus cavities.
“He was a tough one, warn’t he?” Hot Sauce remarked casually, like a man saying, “He used to live in Newark, didn’t he?”
“Not so tough,” Jelly said. “Now why’d the sonofabitch do that? I didn’t want to shoot him. Keerist, the boss is gonna have my hide for this. You tell him what happened, see?” Silence for a second, then, “He won’t believe just me. He may not believe even both of us.”
“Hell, he was meant to be chilled anyways. Just saves doing it some other time, don’t it?”
“You’re a comfort, Hot Sauce. But the boss ain’t gonna like it. He don’t like us taking independent action on our own hook.” He paused.
I could still see him, up there on my left, but maybe not for much longer. That gooey gunk splattered over my forehead was about to trickle into my left eye.
Jelly said, “It perplexes me, it completely perplexes the hell out of me. Before I got the heat up and plugged him I thought he was comin’ over the desk and chew me to death. He must’ve at least had it in mind to bite hell outa me. But then was the happening I won’t know why about if I live a thousand years. I’d swear—maybe I could of imagined it—but I’d swear he got paralyzed. Got stuck right there at that very instance. Just plain damn stopped, froze. Like he hit a indivisible wall.”
“You must of imagined anything like that, Sam.”
“Didn’t you see it?”
“I was lookin’ for my ears. Jesus, he bopped—”
“No, I didn’t imagine it. I’m looking back at it now—something grabbed onto him. There he was, bitin’, but not movin’ anywheres else. Like he was asking for it. You ever hear of anything like that, Hot Sauce?”
“It beats all, Sam.”
The phone rang. I jerked a little. Couldn’t help it. It was only a little jerk, hardly noticeable. Hardly.
As Jelly turned and stepped toward the phone, Hot Sauce said wonderingly, “Sam.”
Jelly picked up the phone. “Hello.”
“Sam.”
“Yeah, boss. Right. Well, we had a little trouble.”
“Oh, Sam.”
“No, everything’s under control now. No sweat. It was pretty hairy for a few minutes. What’s that?”
“Sam. This stiff here. He give a little jiggle. Could he be stiffening up like dead guys do? Already? I always just shoot ‘em and leave ‘em. Never stood around and watched any to see how they took it. Sam?”
Hot Sauce squatted on his haunches next to me, gazed at me fondly. “Maybe it’ll do it again,” he said.
Jelly was saying, “Yeah, we was expecting you at 4 p.m. for the meeting. Sure, with all the heat and all, you done the smart thing, sending Martinique in place of you. Boss, this I got to tell you. Scott jumps onto her car at the same instance she’s about to drive inside here—you already know, huh?”
He listened for a few seconds. Then, “Well, I’m refreshed to hear you say that boss. Since ... well how it is, I already done it. No, it was a accident. It was the damndest—he made me do it. Yeah, jumped me. Plain asked for it. Yeah, blood’s leakin’ out from his brains right now. I really feel bad about it, boss, but what could I do? Sure, soon’s it’s dark.”
Hot Sauce was talking to me. Not really, of course, but that’s how it struck me. He knew Jelly wasn’t listening to him, so he was just talking to himself, but he was looking at me while he did so.
“Just ain’t my day,” he was saying, barely moving his lips. “Caught pneumonia or some kind of crud. Biggie ruint my balls, which is precious to me. This stiff cracks me on my good ear, my good ear. Just ain’t my day. Hope nothin’ else happens. You don’t suppose nothin’ else could, could....”
He stopped, because the stuff I’d feared might ooze into my left eye did it right then and I had to blink. I’d got it so set in my mind that, come what may, I would not blink that I half succeeded. There was no way I could control the reflex of that left eyelid, and it closed. But I was able to keep the right lid stretched open, right eyeball still bugging.
“Sam.”
I had been breathing very slowly. But I had been breathing. When you look at a stiff, it is not natural to check his rate of respiration. But once one becomes suspicious—and there was one becoming suspicious right next to me now—that’s among the very first things you think of.
Hot Sauce reached out with his index finger extended and gave me a poke in the gut, as if he was trying to ring my belly button and find out if anyone was home.
So this, too, was over.
I’d squeezed all the mileage out of this gambit that I could have hoped for, and it had to be damned close to 4 p.m. by now, so I got mentally set for action. Only mentally—because Hot Sauce was still puzzling over the phenomenon of this stiff which stiffened in strangely disturbing ways—but only seconds from physical movement and action and come what the hell may.
I’d been breathing so shallowly I was virtually out of oxygen and I was soon going to need every bit I could get, so I sucked in all the air I could pull into my lungs—slowly, of course, knowing the movement and unmistakable expansion of my chest could not possibly be missed by Hot Sauce Charlie, but not caring much. Any second now I planned to kick him in his nearby chin—well, he’d asked me if anything else could happen to him, hadn’t he?—and that maneuver could best be accomplished while Jelly was still on the phone.
So as my lungs filled with air I tensed my muscles to yank my legs up and Hot Sauce said, “Sam, I wish you’d c’mere a minute. I swear, this guy’s bled to death but if I ain’t mistook he ain’t got no hole in his head to bleed out of,” and right then Jelly said, “Right, see you later, boss,” and hung up the phone.
Chunnnck.
It was a dull, sudden, flat sound—my leather heels thudding into Charlie’s chin—and backward he went off his haunches, arms and legs flying. But his arms and legs weren’t moving any faster than mine were as I flipped over, pushed with hands and shoved with feet, and came up off the floor turning toward Sam Jelly who was still standing at the desk with right hand on the phone and glove-encased left hand dangling at his side, eyes wide in his big red face as he stared at me.
I moved as fast as I could, jumped past the desk, knowing if Jelly shot me even once with my Colt now I’d had it, or if he clubbed me with that dandy left of his it could be lethal, or if he got a hand on me the strength in those monstrous muscles alone might be enough, and I landed with my feet spread and legs bent and my left hand already cocked, body turned to the left. Then I uncoiled, uncocked, let it go with everything I had and then some, and though I have hit men hard before
I never hit one harder.
It felt as if I’d busted my hand, elbow, and shoulder, and sprained my neck, but it was enough. Even for big Sam Jelly, it was enough. And it was only after I hit him, after he toppled backward like a falling Alp, thudded to and lay unmoving on the floor, that I realized the only thing he’d moved while I jumped toward him and wound up and socked him was his head.
When I hit him his right hand was on the phone, left still heavily dangling. Only his head and the shiny red face had turned toward me, as though pulled by an irresistible magnet, and I got the strange impression that in his eyes was a look of calm acceptance as I thundered my fists into his chops.
Maybe that—the look of calm acceptance—was merely my imagination at work. Maybe; but I was not imagining that it was Sam Jelly’s expression now.
I hadn’t realized I’d kicked Hot Sauce Charlie hard enough to render him totally unconscious. But I must have. He lay as still and peaceful as did Sam Jelly.
My Colt .38 rested atop the desk, where Jelly had placed it when he answered the phone. I picked the Special up, enjoying the feel of it, looking at the blued steel, the knurled hammer, the stubby two-inch barrel with something like real affection. That gun had gotten me out of more tight spots than I like to think of, a hunk of metal, no more, but a friend that had certainly been a lot of help to me in its time, and mine. But never more help than just now when it hadn’t even been in my hand.
And as I looked at my Colt I realized, except for Ernie Biggers, I hadn’t shot a soul. I hadn’t killed anyone, hadn’t even pulled the trigger in anger. I was glad of it. Things like that may pass so quickly as to be barely noticed, but they leave their special kind of mark in their special place. And, in time, that inner bruise grows, fills more of that place where it rests. Yeah, I was glad I hadn’t killed anybody—yet.
Then the door opened and I flipped the Special up as someone stepped inside, and my finger tightened on the trigger, and I came very close to shooting, and killing, that first man.
Sergeant Oren Delcey.
He had a long-barreled police revolver in his fist, but he lowered it slowly, saying, “You can relax now, Scott, so watch what you’re doing with that little—good God Almighty, what happened to you?”
“Well, it may take a little time to ... oh, this?” I wiped some of the “blood” off on one finger. “Nothing, really,” I said. “Got plugged in the noggin, but I’m tough. I can handle it. Do dread the operation, though—”
“Why, you miserable clown—that’s from one of those fake things, right? How come you...”
He looked down at Hot Sauce, then on to what he could see of Jelly’s head and shoulders behind the desk, and finally to me again.
“Sergeant,” I said, “before I commence, and continue for some time, or possibly time-and-a-half, are all those gorillas in cages? May I assume that nobody’s going to bust in here and blast away—”
“All rounded up. All who were in the Garage, except these two.” He indicated the two lying down in here. “We’ll take them in, have to release some. But we can keep four who were carrying guns illegally.”
“A few shot some guns illegally, too. And you can hold these boys on my charges and testimony. Well, I’m glad to see you. What time is it? I’ve been afraid to look.”
“It’s about three minutes past four.”
“Three minutes past?” I said. “My, how time flies.”
21
The rest of it, from there on in, is a series of separate scenes, or vignettes, bits of color and talk and movement, as I look back on it from here and now.
For example, the denouement of the Ernie Biggers bit.
Delcey had seen the blanket down there at the foot of the stairs, as had I. But he and his men had been understandably too busy to get all excited over a blanket on the floor.
So after some talk, info for me from Delcey, and a few high points of my afternoon for him, I told him of the Little Biggie operation, and that even now I was not sure if the operation had been a success.
So together we walked along the hall, and down the stairs, and stood for a few seconds looking at the blanket. It wasn’t moving. There was no sign of inbreathing or outbreathing, for I did check the blanket’s rate of respiration, which was zero.
I looked at Delcey. “Wouldn’t it be funny if it’s just a blanket—”
“Will you—”
I reached for the end of the blanket, at what might have been Biggie’s head, or might have been his feet, there was really no way to tell yet, and pulled it back and down.
What first came into view was Biggie’s thin head. Which seemed to have lost some weight. His face was waxy and pale. Eyes staring. Bugging. He looked dead to me.
But there were only two red stains on his chest. Didn’t seem to be anything wrong with him.
“Hey,” I said to him. “If you’re alive, you can shake a leg now, Biggie. Nobody’s watching but me and the sergeant here.”
Nothing.
Unless, maybe, the huge eyes wobbled a little.
“Ah,” I said. “Sure. You’ve been under a little strain, right? Hell, pretty much the same thing happened to me, pal. Nothing to it. I know how you feel though, you can bet I do. But you’re safe now.”
Yeah, he wasn’t dead. How I know, he let out his breath suddenly in a long pploopppffpphh, then opened his mouth and let his tongue hang out, then breathed in again and moved his head a little and stared at me like the grayed stone face, and said, “Jesus, my eyes is ruint,” then the orbs rolled up, and up, and he got very loose, and fainted dead away.
After a while Delcey told me that, if the very last moments of the Biggie operation went off smoothly, my small friend would be kept totally out of sight for a while, during which time he would have to give a great deal of private testimony and sworn statements, but it was not yet certain if he would or would not be later required to testify in court. It did appear there was a good chance he might not have to, though.
So a bit later, after Biggie came to and I’d talked to him for a while, and all had been arranged by Delcey I stood with the sergeant down below in the street level area of the Garage, near that oil slick, about fifteen feet from the gentlemen opposite us and facing us.
The gentlemen facing us were Sam Jelly, Hot Sauce Charlie, Crazy Mike, Powpow West, and half a dozen other dispirited-looking fellows. They knew they were all going to jail, at least for a while, and some of them for more than that, and there were among them some mutterings in the nature of, “What’re we waitin’ for?”
Then what they were waiting for, though they knew it not, appeared coming down the ramp. It was a stretcher, on which lay the rigid—and staring—corpse of Ernie Biggers. White-uniformed ambulance attendants, one at each end of the stretcher, carried the departed toward us, moving left to skirt the oil slick, which by design brought them close to Delcey and me but farther from Biggers’ erstwhile companions, and by and on they went, with a slow and measured tread, until they popped Biggie into the back of a white ambulance like chefs baking a cookie.
So, gone was Biggie, gone and to be seen no more—not, at least, by his erstwhile companions.
Delcey and I sat in the small room on the top floor of “Silvano Enterprises, Inc.” in which for a while Biggers had plied part of his trade. It was crammed with modern, expensive equipment—recorders, speakers, electronic gear, the monster safe, or more accurately the vault, that filled one narrow end of the room. And the heart of the Hugh Grimson eavesdropping enterprise, occupying the full eighteen-foot length of one of the two longer walls: twenty spaces, fourteen of them filled—thus, room for six more complete units in time—and at each of them the lead-in from one of the wiretaps, at each a small tape recorder, equipped with a sound-operated electronic switch that turned the recorder on automatically, to pick up and record on magnetic tape the dial pulses from rotary-type dials, or touch-tone sounds of the newer push-button phones, even before a word was spoken.
Delcey had never seen th
e setup before either, of course, but he knew more about the equipment than I did. Some of it was so new that he’d had a police department communications expert in briefly, for a few minutes of his expertise. Now, however, we were alone.
I had found in the suitcase Jelly had lugged from the back of Martinique’s car to his office, and that we’d brought here with us, the reel of magnetic tape I wanted, had it in place on a recorder and ready to roll. I poked the “Play” button and sat down next to Delcey again, saying, “You’ll recognize Grimson’s voice, but it can be positively identified by a Voiceprint—as you know. You’ll hear Mr. G. ordering my murder, which makes this for me a moment of peculiar fascination. Maybe for you, too.”
“We’ll see,” he said.
Tic-tic-tic sound of dialing. The clicks were fast, but I jotted down an approximation of the dialed numbers. I wrote it on one side of a piece of paper folded in the middle, on the other side of which I had written the number of Sam Jelly’s phone, the one in the room where I’d been with him and Hot Sauce.
Then, without peeking at the other side, I handed the paper to Delcey. He unfolded it. “Second number is an eight, not a six,” he said. “And the last number should be five instead of four. But ... not too bad.”
“Wait’ll you dig Mayor Hugh Grimson getting severe with the cops.”
Then from the speaker:
“Hello?”
“Who is this?”
“Powpow. That you, boss?”
“Officer West, is it? Has Samuels returned to the police station?”
“Po-lice station. What the—Samuels? We don’t got no Samuels, except maybe ... Boss, you in some kind of screw-up? Where you can’t talk normal?”
“Of course. Sargent. Sargent Samuels.”
“Ss ... ah, sure. Sargent. You mean Sam, boss? Sam Jelly?”
“Yes.”
“Damn near forgot he was named Sargent, ain’t even heard it for a month. Lucky I figgered it out, ain’t it, boss—”
“This is the mayor.”
“Huh? Huh? I suppose Sam’ll know what that means?”
The Sweet Ride (The Shell Scott Mysteries) Page 21
