Don't Lie to Me

by Donald E. Westlake

  The same was not true of Fred Carver. Once I was on my feet, he came over and stood in front of me and said, “So you’re tough, are you? You like to make trouble, do you?” He swung his right arm to hit me backhanded across the face. It was a clumsy slap, but I too was clumsy and couldn’t entirely get away from it; he caught me partly, on the portion of my face that already ached, making my eyes burn and water even more. I staggered back against the wall, and leaned there, blinking, trying to see, keeping my arms up to protect myself.

  But he didn’t come after me. Knox had distracted his attention, saying, “Okay, we got him. Now what?”

  “Now we teach him a lesson,” Carver said angrily.

  “Yeah, but how’d he get in here, that’s what I want to know.”

  “Who cares? We’ve got him, that’s all.”

  “People are expecting me back,” I said, mumbling through thick lips.

  “You shut up,” Carver told me.

  “That’s what I meant,” Knox said. “How do we know there won’t be more show up?”

  “Because he’s alone.”

  “He is now. And where the hell is Mort?”

  It was all too much for Carver to think about at once. He gave me an enraged look, gave Knox one almost as angry, and turned to glare at the swing door to the hallway. “Keep an eye on him,” he said, and lunged away out the swing door.

  I looked at Knox. Was there anything I could do? He’d put the broom handle down now, and had my nightstick in his right hand, the thong around his wrist. Even if I were in the best of condition, I wouldn’t have been able to fight him and beat him, nor would I have been able to get out of this room without being brought down by that stick. In my current state, there was no hope at all, nothing to do but stand there and wait.

  The kitchen door was still swinging, little quick arcs, when Carver yelled from up by the front door, “Goddammit, look at this! Jerry, bring that son of a bitch out here!”

  I started moving even before Knox gestured at me with the nightstick. He didn’t bother to say anything, and I preceded him through the swing door. For one brief second I tried to visualize myself slamming that door behind me into Knox, then rushing on Carver and bowling him over and getting through the front door and clear, but it wasn’t going to happen and I knew it.

  Carver was standing over Mort Livingston, who was lying on his back just where I’d left him. He glared at me and yelled, “Look what you did! He’s bleeding!”

  I didn’t say anything. I stopped in the hallway, and Knox jammed me in the back with the nightstick to make me move on.

  As I came opposite the living-room doorway, Willie Vigevano came boiling suddenly out of it, yelling at me and swinging both fists. There was a small line of blood down one side of his face.

  I fell away from his first rush, backing against the wall by the stairs, but then I saw an opening and hit him in the face as hard as I could with my left fist. It stopped him for a second, but before I could do anything else Knox had clubbed me on the shoulder and Carver was yelling for everybody to cut it out.

  I couldn’t really fight now, only defend myself a little bit if directly attacked. So I stood there like a drayhorse, and Carver and Knox between them convinced the outraged Vigevano to wait awhile, not to waste his time attacking me until more pressing problems had been solved. Vigevano kept saying he wanted to get at me to kill me, but Carver and Knox—mostly Knox—kept telling him the important thing first was to take care of Livingston and get everybody out of this house, just in case I had anybody who might be coming around looking for me.

  Vigevano was finally calmed down, and they went back to look at Livingston again. That is, Carver and Vigevano did; Knox stood guard over me, slapping the nightstick into his left palm and giving me alert looks as though he might enjoy testing his skill on me if I would give him the chance.

  They sat Livingston up, leaning his back against the wall not far from the door, and spent some time calling him and slapping his face; but to no effect. I could see that a bit of blood had trickled from his nose, and knew he had a concussion; from the look of him, he was going to be out for quite a while.

  Knox was gradually getting impatient with their efforts, and finally he said, “Willie, come over here and watch this bird. I’ll get Mort awake.”

  “With pleasure,” Vigevano said. He came over, grinning angrily, and Knox gave him the nightstick. Vigevano didn’t bother about the thong on his wrist, but shook the nightstick close to my face and said, “Try something, smart boy. Try something.”

  I didn’t move.

  Knox went over and crouched in front of Livingston and rolled his eyelid back. “Hey, Mort,” he said. There was no response to that, nor to his slapping Livingston on the cheek.

  “We did all that,” Carver said.

  Knox straightened and stood looking down at Livingston. “What he needs is some whiskey,” he said. “I got some in the car.” He opened the door, took one step outside, was shot in the forehead, and crashed backward into the hall.

  20

  I WAS AS STUNNED as anybody else, but I was more desperate. Before either of them had recovered, I shoved Vigevano backward into the living room, and was running for the kitchen.

  But running isn’t exactly the word. I had taken a great deal of punishment in the last several minutes, and much more punishment just yesterday; my body didn’t want to move any more, didn’t want to have to make any fast responses. I didn’t run for the kitchen, I lumbered toward it, I shambled toward it.

  Still, I made it through the swing door, and across the brightly lighted kitchen, and out the rear door, where I fell down the back stoop onto the lawn and went on all fours toward the nearest pile of bricks for my wall.

  My wall. It was now six feet tall, running all the way around the yard, with no entrances or breaks anywhere on its three sides. In normal physical condition, I could have climbed that wall and gotten to the other side without too much difficulty, but not now. My arms trembled at every exertion, and my legs could barely support my weight; they hadn’t been able to carry me down the steps from the back porch. I had spent two years building this wall, and now it had trapped me.

  I lay panting behind the bricks, hoping to build up strength in however much time I had before Carver and Vigevano came after me. But that time would be counted in seconds, and what I needed now was days—days to rebuild my strength and let my battered body heal itself.

  Still, I did have this little breather, this moment of comparative freedom, that shot from out of the night had done that much. And it had reduced my opposition by one more, also, so that what had originally been four men lined up against me was now down to two.

  And it had done a third thing. It had told me who had killed the John Doe.

  It’s strange how the mind works, sometimes going on about its own business regardless of what is happening in the real world all around it. The instant the shot had been fired, I had known who had fired it and why, and from that I had known who had killed the John Doe and Dan Tynebourne and the girl—I supposed she was a Jane Doe now, at least for the moment—and why those killings had been done. The knowledge was absolutely useless to me in my present condition, but I did know it.

  The shot had combined with two other things, both of them statements made to me by Dan Tynebourne. Two things I had heard him say, which told me the who and the why, not only of the killings, but of the forgeries.

  Now I would be willing to talk to Hargerson. Now I would be happy to tell him the complete story of the woman seen leaving the museum, and my call to Marty Kengelberg, and the names and motives of those who had blinded Grinella. I would be pleased to tell him all that, because I would also be able to tell him who had done the killings, and the two things were not at all related, and the discovery of the murderer would obliterate public interest in the inadvertent little sideshow that Linda and I had almost been forced to put on.

  But there was only one thing wrong with my current willingness t
o talk to Hargerson: the back door of the house had just opened and closed, and Willie Vigevano was coming looking for me with a knife.

  I was crouched down behind the bricks, and I felt around the general area for something, anything, with which to defend myself. My hand hit something metal, and a wooden handle, and I grabbed for it—a trowel. Not much against a knife, particularly in my current condition, but it was something. A trowel in my right hand, and a brick in my left. I shifted position, got my feet under me, and waited there crouched, aching and burning in every part of my body, fully expecting to be killed at some point in the next few minutes; perhaps few seconds.

  Vigevano had come out alone. Light-spill from the kitchen windows outlined him for me, and helped him pick his way through the minor construction site that I had made of my back yard. He came forward very cautiously, more cautiously than I would have thought necessary with me for his only opponent, and he moved with his head and upper torso thrust forward, the knife stretched out ahead of himself as though it were a mine detector. The knife moved left and right and left, back and forth like the head of a snake, and Vigevano moved slowly out across the yard.

  Where was Carver? I kept peering up over the pile of bricks toward the house, expecting Carver to come out, but as time went by and he still hadn’t showed, I realized he wasn’t going to be coming out at all. Either he was still toward the front of the house, believing himself pinned down by the sniper from outside—whom I expected to be long gone by now—or he had run away, leaving only Vigevano still determined to take vengeance on me.

  So we were one and one, after all, Vigevano and I; what he had offered me over the phone last night. Except that it was hardly an even match, given my condition and his weaponry.

  He was getting closer. His face was in silhouette, but I could imagine the strained tense smile it was wearing, the squinting around his eyes as he tried to find me in the litter of the back yard. The light from the kitchen threw long black shadows amid the mounds of bricks and lumber, in one of which I was hiding, and all of which would prove difficult for him to see into.

  He was nearly to me. My knees ached from crouching, my eyes were watering, my grip on both my weapons was shaky and uncertain. I waited.

  He was parallel with me, still staring out deeper into the yard. I looked up at him, perhaps six feet away from me, and waited for him to see me; when he did, I would move.

  And he kept going. His head turned in my direction twice, and both times he failed to see me. He took another cautious step, and another, and was completely past me; I was looking now at his back.

  Despite myself I relaxed a little, my forearms lowering till my knuckles touched the ground, my head sagging forward. Vigevano took another step away from me.

  Could I escape while his back was turned? I thought of it, even turned my head to look toward the house, but I knew I’d never make it. Even if Carver weren’t still in the house, it would be impossible. I wouldn’t be able to get there from here without making some noise that would attract Vigevano, and I was in no condition now to outrun him.

  I turned my head again, to look once more at Vigevano. There was only one thing to do.

  I straightened, very slowly, having to lean on the pile of bricks for support. My knees didn’t want to unbend. I was really in hopeless shape for what I had to do, but there just wasn’t any choice.

  I headed toward Vigevano. I was trying to move quickly and silently, but I did neither.

  Vigevano heard me while I was still too far away. He spun around, the knifeblade sparkling in the light from the kitchen, and now I could see the strain and hatred in his face.

  We lunged at one another simultaneously, his movements smoother and faster than mine. But I also threw the brick in my left hand, awkwardly, throwing it underhanded, not to wound but merely to distract and confuse. He was now facing the light, so I must have been no more than a bulky silhouette to him, and he probably didn’t know at first what the black thing was that came flying up at him. He ducked away from it, losing the momentum of his charge, and I swung the edge of the trowel with all my might at the wrist of his knife-hand.

  He yelled. The knife dropped to the ground, but the impact with his wrist had pulled the trowel out of my own uncertain grip. Now, for the moment, neither of us had a weapon.

  When he had called me at the museum last night, I had thought of Vigevano as trying to pull me back into the fight situations of childhood; now we were there with a vengeance. What I did next was an automatic schoolyard reaction; I closed with him and wrapped my arms around his waist.

  We used to call this the bear hug. My right arm was around his waist and clutching the inner crook of my left elbow. My left forearm was lifted like the lever of a slot machine, and all I had to do was bend the forearm back toward my shoulder to increase the pressure. My face was tucked in against his neck for protection, and I was applying as much pressure as I possibly could.

  Vigevano had been in schoolyards, too. He knew that a bear hug will finally drive all the breath out of your body and leave you limp and defenseless and barely half-conscious, and he knew all the schoolyard defenses. He kicked my shins, he tried to knee me, he punched me in the ribs and the kidneys, he tried to get a grip in my hair to bend my head back so he could get at my face, he rabbit-punched me in the back of the neck, he even bit my shoulder. But I knew this was my last chance for survival out here, and nothing was going to make me give up the grip.

  It seemed to take forever for him to weaken. For a while I was afraid my own strength would give out before his, and I tried to squeeze even harder, though already my left arm was bent back on itself so far that no blood was getting into the fingers of my right hand. And still he clawed and fought and pummeled me, twisting his body from side to side, trying to get away.

  And abruptly he stopped. His breath gasped in my ear, and his hands were resting on my shoulders. We were like a parody of lovers. In a voice so hoarse and breathless it seemed to be coming from a machine rather than a man, he said, “You’re killing me.” And his left hand beat feebly against my right shoulder.

  Now I knew I had him. Until this instant, I had been defeatist, I had fully expected to die out here, I had been struggling only because one struggles, one does not go quietly. But now I knew I would win, and the knowledge made me stronger, and I bent him backward, squeezing, and he made hoarse cries like some starving buzzard, and we both toppled over, me getting my arms out just in time so that he landed heavily on his back and I landed on top of him.

  He was still conscious, but he couldn’t fight me any more. I crawled up to a kneeling position astride his chest—the schoolyard again—and hit him with my fists until I was sure he was out. And then I just sat there for a minute, worn out, my body collapsing after the struggle.

  But I couldn’t do that; Carver might still be around, Livingston might have regained consciousness, Vigevano himself would be coming back to life pretty soon. There was still a lot I had to do.

  Beginning with Vigevano. I wanted to immobilize him, and I thought at first of tying his wrists and ankles, but I doubted my hands were capable right now of tying knots. I felt the pulse in the side of his neck, and it was beating rapidly; it wouldn’t be very long before he was conscious again.

  I couldn’t very well stand over him with a brick and knock him out every time he came to. I grimaced down at him with a deep sense of irritation, and finally gave it all up for the moment and decided to concentrate elsewhere.

  The house. Carver, Livingston, Knox.

  I climbed off Vigevano and struggled to my feet. I was tottering like a drunk. I looked around vaguely for the knife Vigevano had dropped, failed to find it, and gave it up. Instead, I moved toward the house, stumbling along, my arms hanging at my sides.

  Carver was gone. The front door was ajar, and Knox and Livingston were both lying in the front hallway. I shut the door and looked at them both and Knox was as dead as I’d known he was. Livingston was still unconscious, and his bre
athing had an unhealthy bubbling sound to it; I had given him a bad concussion.

  What a mess. I went back to the kitchen, opened the junk drawer, and got out the length of picture wire I’d remembered as being in there. I carried this back out to the yard, found Vigevano still out, and rolled him heavily over onto his face. I wound picture wire around his wrists and ankles until I was satisfied he wouldn’t be able to get away from it, and then went back into the house again.

  God, I wanted to stop moving! I reached for the phone.

  21

  THE SIRENS STARTED WHILE I was still walking, just over a block away from the house. I hunched my shoulders a bit and trudged on. The siren went past a block to my right, and I heard it descend and die as they came to a stop in front of my house.

  I had only made the one phone call before leaving, contacting the local precinct. Knox was going to stay dead forever and didn’t matter, but Livingston needed to be hospitalized as quickly as possible and I didn’t want Vigevano given time to get away, so I’d phoned the precinct and given them the address of my house and said there was some trouble there. I hadn’t given my name, and immediately after the call I’d left the house. It was a continuing effort to move, but I had to finish this thing now, tonight. Tomorrow I could sleep. Tomorrow I would sleep for days.

  Our neighborhood tavern was ahead, its dim red neon sign extending out over the sidewalk. It was the nearest place I knew of with both a pay phone and a place to sit down. I headed for it, trudging along, placing one foot doggedly in front of the other, and finally reached the door and pushed it open and went in.

  I have never been one to spend my evenings in the local bar, so I wasn’t known by the bartender and his four customers; I was simply one of those occasional strangers who drop in, have a drink or two, and are never seen again. They all glanced at me curiously as I walked in, but when they saw I wasn’t a friend they all turned their attention back to the television set at the far end of the room. What looked like the eleven o’clock news was on, which was the first I had any indication what time it was.