by Jack Lynch
“Stay frozen or the next round goes through your skull,” I yelled. I got out from beneath the truck and trotted down to him. He was in pain. There was blood soaking one trouser leg just above his knee.
“You got a bone,” he told me. “Leg’s paralyzed. I can’t move.”
“Save your breath,” I told him. “I’m going to move you.” I put away the automatic and took him under the arms and dragged him back toward the truck. When I got him there I put his hands behind his back and wired them together. He winced in pain but didn’t say anything.
I left him propped against a wheel of the truck and ran down to the shed. I prayed I had time before the other man decided to go out the back window. It would have been the smart thing for him to do right then, but he’d be abandoning the hostage I expected was back there with him.
In the shed I grabbed one of the pieces of scrap plywood, some sixteen-penny nails and a hammer. I pounded a nail part of the way into each of the corners, then lugged the plywood down to the cabin. I sneaked a peek around a back corner. The pane of glass was intact. I scuttled over in a crouch and slid the board up over the window and pounded in the two bottom nails. I heard a noise from inside when I stood along one side of the board and pounded in one of the top nails, ducked down under the window and hammered in the other.
“Hey! What the hell’s going on out there?” yelled a muffled voice. Then he made a mistake. He tried to shoot through the plywood. He did make a nick in it, but he also shattered the pane of glass inside. He made a yelp.
I had once told Allison that if she ever got into trouble, she could know that I’d be coming after her. And once she knew I was in the vicinity, she was to tuck herself into as small a ball as she could in a corner and just sit tight. I hoped that was what she was doing just then, and that the flying glass hadn’t cut her. There are chances that have to be taken in the sort of work that I do.
I hammered in more nails, sealing off the only exit the man inside had right then.
“I’ve got the girl,” he shouted when I’d finished hammering. “You goddamn fool! Don’t you know I have the girl?”
I didn’t say a word. I just took the hammer and the rest of the nails back to the shed. I used my penlight to look around for other things. I found just the ticket, a couple of sturdy eyehooks. I took a nail and the hammer and a screwdriver back inside the cabin. I used the hammer and nail to start a hole into a bottom corner of the door and the door frame opposite. Then I used the screwdriver as a lever through the loops of the eyehooks to screw them in where I’d started the holes. I figured that somewhere down the line the man in back would think to take apart the doorknob inside in an attempt to loosen what was holding him in there. It didn’t matter, once I’d used another length of wire to connect the two eyehooks.
These fellows in their cammies offering their guns for hire would know about things like T-ambushes, wind drift and long-range rifle fire, and maybe a boobie trap or two.
I knew about close-in fire, street work and fear. They also would know about fear, from artillery and air assault. But I knew about fear of another sort. I went back over to the man beside the truck. He wasn’t exactly alert, but he was conscious. I squatted down beside him.
“Whether you live or die this night—whether or not you will ever be able to walk on that leg again—is all going to depend on the next five minutes,” I told him. “You are holding a blonde woman hostage in the rear of the cabin, correct?”
“Yes, sir. But we haven’t hurt her none. She’s a good hostage.”
He had an edgy twang. He might have lived in Tennessee at one time.
“How is she restrained?”
“Tied with rope.”
“Does she have a blindfold?”
“Yes, sir. As much for her own protection as ours.”
In more ways than one, I thought. The blindfold would have helped protect her eyes when the other man tried to shoot through the plywood and sent glass flying.
“You and your partner killed a young man over in Monterey last night or early this morning, then hoisted him up a flagpole.”
“I’ve never killed anybody in the States. I don’t contract for that. But yes, I did help Dancer arrange the body after. It was a little eccentricity the man who’s payin’ us asked for.”
“Earlier yesterday one of you killed a girl down in Big Sur.”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“One of you lobbed a grenade into the patio of a home up in Carmel Highlands last night, at the same house where you picked up the cartons of cassettes tonight.”
“That was Dancer, sir. He got me down here right after that. He decided he wanted some help.”
“Did Dancer smother a man at the same house Friday night?”
“No, sir. At least Dancer told me the man paying us did that himself. He hired Dancer after that. Dancer said he told the man—Whiteman—that if he wanted some killing done, that Dancer would have to be sure the man hiring him would back him a hundred percent. I guess by telling Dancer he’d already killed a man himself, he felt Dancer would trust him like that.”
Either Dancer or Whiteman was lying. Each said the other had killed Sommers. I didn’t think this man was lying. He was frightened and hurting. But I wasn’t going to get sidetracked by who might be lying. Let others sort it out. I wanted Allison.
“Which pocket are the truck keys in?”
“The left.”
I reached in and got them, then grabbed him under the arms again and dragged him off a little ways from the truck. Now was going to be the tricky part. Terrorize the man in the cabin without giving Allison a heart attack along with him.
I climbed up into the truck cab, turned over the motor and let her run for a minute, then drove around behind the cabin. I pointed the front of the truck toward the rear of the meadow. The steel-rimmed truck bed faced the back of the cabin. I put the truck in reverse, gunned the motor and backed into the rear of the cabin with a stunning jolt.
The man in the cabin began shouting. I drove forward a ways, put the truck in reverse and backed into the rear cabin wall again. I changed gears and drove around to the right side of the cabin. I aimed the truck bed at a portion of the wall that was more toward the front of the cabin, rather than near the back room where the man and Allison were. I really let them have it this time. The blows on the rear wall had been love taps compared with what I gave the side wall. It doubled me over the steering wheel when I bounced off the rear seat, and the motor stalled. I started her up again, drove forward, changed gears and slammed back into the cabin again. I heard something beginning to splinter.
I drove around to the other side of the cabin and took a couple of runs at the wall over there. I drove around back and made a couple more runs against the rear bedroom wall. Hard knocks, they were. Dancer was yelling again. He was beginning to sound hoarse. I drove around to the side without a window, lined up the truck bed once more, but then just sat there with the motor idling. I waited three minutes by my watch, letting Dancer wonder about what was going to happen next, then I put the truck in gear and gave the side wall another whack. It killed the motor again. Before I could start it again I heard a rapping noise from in back. I started the truck and drove off a little distance from the cabin. I left the motor idling and went around back to see what the noise was. Dancer had found something to try to loosen the plywood board over the window. He was getting one of the lower corners worked loose. When it started to give a little more he abandoned his tool and began to slam it with the heel of his hand. It was loosened enough so I could hear him a little better. He was making something between a honk and a grunt while he worked.
I walked over to the edge of the meadow and set myself up partly behind a tree. I was about thirty feet from the cabin. Dancer didn’t bother removing all of the plywood. When he got both lower corners loose he worked on the sides until he could swing the board out from the bottom. Part of his head appeared below the plywood. He turned it, as if l
istening to the sound of the truck motor I’d left running, then he boosted himself headfirst out the window, letting the plywood hang loose behind him. He was still on the ground when I yelled at him.
“Freeze, Dancer! Make yourself spread-eagle!”
Fear clouded his judgment. He rolled, brought up a gun and fired wildly into the trees around me. I waited until he started to scramble to his feet, then shot at the thickest part of the target his body presented. It was no time for trick shooting. It was time for workmanship. I shot three times. He bucked and rolled, then just lay there with his knees tucked up toward his stomach. I moved out and came up on him from behind. A 9-millimeter automatic was on the ground nearby. I scooped it up, then knelt beside him, patting his body for concealed weapons. He had a knife strapped to his left shin. I unstrapped it and tossed it aside. He wasn’t conscious any longer. Blood was making a big, damp patch at his waist. He probably had some big problems inside him. But they wouldn’t be any bigger than the ones he’d dealt Alex Kilduff and Nikki Scarborough.
I got up, walked over to the cabin wall and lifted the plywood. I worked it the rest of the way free and tossed it aside.
“Hi ho, Bragg here,” I said through the opening.
I got out the penlight and flashed it around inside the room. I’d been right. Dancer had slid back the bolt on the door and had tried to dismantle the doorknob. Allison was in the corner opposite the door, and it looked as if she’d remembered my advice. She was sitting on the floor with her back against the wall and her knees tucked up in front of her. Her hands were tied behind her back, but she’d worked loose a corner of the blindfold. They also had put a gag across her mouth. She was trying to say something through it.
“You look cute, even like that,” I told her.
Her reply was muffled, but it sounded like a swearword. Which was unusual for Allison.
“I’ll be there in a minute,” I told her.
I went around into the cabin and snipped through all the wiring I’d done. I shoved the table out of the way and opened the door. The doorknob came off in my hand. I went on in and cut through the rope around Allison’s wrists. She started to massage them while I took off the gag and blindfold.
“Hi, babe,” I told her.
“Hi,” she said, then took a deep breath and leaned her head back against the wall. “Well,” she said after another moment. “I certainly did learn what I wanted.”
“What’s that?”
“Whether I can live with the sort of violence you encounter. Not only encounter, but dish out, even. I didn’t know if you wanted to kill him or me.”
“I was hoping you’d remember what I told you to do if something like this ever happened to you.”
“I remembered. When they first took me—I’d gone to sketch the Stilwell home…”
“I know.”
“Anyway, I wasn’t so much frightened as I was just plain mad. They put a cloth over my face with some evil-smelling chemical that was supposed to knock me out, I guess. But it never did. They tied me and put a blindfold on and tossed me on the floor of a car and threw a blanket over me, then just drove around like I was a sack of potatoes or something. Then we went somewhere and I was put into a room by myself. About an hour later they trotted me out again and drove me somewhere to where I could speak to you on a phone, then they drove me down here. And by the time we got down here, it had all just sort of welled up inside of me. I began to call them every form of asshole under the sun. I mean, it was crazy. Me, Allison France, using that sort of language? But I heard myself doing it. Felt good. They had one very angry lady on their hands. That’s when they gagged me. After that I just sat back here until I heard a different car or something drive up.”
“Truck. I was following it.”
“I guess. And then a little later I heard the front door bang open and you yell, ‘Freeze!’ like a G-man or something, and then all hell broke loose, but you know about that. By then I’d managed to use my shoulder to nudge up one side of the blindfold so I could watch some of the action. The man who came in here spent a lot of time looking out the window, trying to figure out what was happening. When he heard shooting he tried to go back out the door here. You must have done something to block it.”
“I did.”
“He was trying to figure out what to do about that when you put something up over the window and began to hammer it into place. I think he began to go to pieces about then. He tried to shoot out the window, but it didn’t seem to work the way he thought it would. Some glass must have hit him in the face. I heard him cursing. I just tried to make myself small and hoped he’d forget about me. He had a flashlight he took out then and he started working on the doorknob, then you began ramming the place with—what was that, a tank?”
“Just the truck.”
“Well, just the truck was more than enough to make the man in here practically disintegrate before my eyes. He began using the flashlight finally to smash away at a corner of whatever you had over the window. But I guess you saw all that.”
“Most of it.”
“Then I heard more shooting. I guess you won, since you’re here and he isn’t.”
“You got it.”
“Where is he?”
“Outside. Bleeding to death, probably. I couldn’t take any chances.”
“Well,” said Allison, with a little sigh. “I guess Mrs. France’s daughter has really turned a corner.”
“How’s that?”
“There was a time the thought of a man maybe bleeding to death nearby would have completely unstrung me.”
“Not now?”
“Nope. Not after this. In fact, he made me so mad I’m sorely tempted to ask for the loan of a gun so I can go plug him a couple of times myself.”
TWENTY-ONE
The sorting out took a little bit of doing. The cabin had a first-aid kit, and I patched up the two wounded men as best I could. Dancer was still breathing, but that was the most you could say for him. I propped him into a corner of the truck cab where he could benefit from the heater, but that was my only concession. I was having Allison drive the Cadillac back out, and there was no way I was going to put one of her captors in there with her. I put the other wounded man into the bed of the truck, and after replacing the handkerchiefs binding Whiteman’s hands with wire, I tossed him back there too.
We got down out of the hills. At the first roadside pay phone we stopped and I got hold of Collins and Reinhardt at the motel in Monterey. As I’d suspected, Collins had been worried about me when he’d tried to phone me at the Sommers home. He’d apparently been traveling between the two places when I tried to phone him from near Whiteman’s home. Another agency man had finally arrived to relieve Reinhardt in Salinas. I told them what had happened and we discussed what we should do next. They promised to put things into action.
By the time we got to the shopping center off Rio Road on the outskirts of Carmel, they had a couple of ambulances and some men from the sheriff’s department waiting. The story I gave the law focused for the most part right then on Allison’s kidnapping and my releasing her after a gunfight with the wounded men. Dancer and the other man were taken off to the hospital with a sheriff’s deputy escort. I told the other investigators what Dancer had said about Whiteman’s being the one who smothered Woody Sommers, and they said they’d get a search warrant and go through his closets looking for the clothing I remembered seeing him in earlier that night at the Hunt Club. Then their lab people would see what they could come up with.
I told them I’d be by to tell them more about it later, then Allison and I got a ride back to the motel in Monterey. I phoned Ceejay and let her talk with Allison, then we got cleaned up and slept for most of the rest of the day.
By the time we were up and feeling human again, Collins and Reinhardt had checked out and returned to San Francisco. They’d picked up my car at the airport in Watsonville and left it parked outside. I’d given them the key to the Sommers home, and they’d gone by a
nd gotten the other tapes that were in the chest in the Sommer’s study. Then they called Jo and told her it was okay to go home again. I’d told them to pitch the tapes into the ocean somewhere on their way home.
Allison and I drove over to Carmel, ravenous. For me, there’s always been a simple answer when I am ravenous. Allison agreed, so we went to London’s and had a couple of their fancy cheeseburgers. Before we left there I made a couple of phone calls and arranged for a little meeting. The people I called were reluctant, but willing.
When Allison and I drove back out the Carmel Valley and climbed the road to Gus Wakefield’s home, Jo Sommers was waiting in her own car at the bottom of the Wakefield driveway. I had told Jo on the phone about the ordeal Allison had been through, and Jo expressed the proper amount of dismay and sympathy.
Allison shrugged. “Except for the inconvenience,” she told Jo, “it was a piece of cake.”
Jo blinked at her, then turned toward me as we started up the driveway. “I really don’t know about this, Peter. I’ll feel terribly uncomfortable.”
“How do you think General Wakefield felt when he heard his brother’s voice on that tape? Come on, Jo, you owe him.”
She made a little shudder, but continued on. Gus Wakefield answered the door himself and invited us into the big living room looking out over the Valley. If anybody else was home, they were keeping out of sight and hearing.
After he’d poured drinks for us all, I brought Gus up-to-date on what had been happening; and as best I could, I tried to explain Jo’s foolish role in what all along had really been a scheme cooked up by Alex sometime after his father told him about the SOS from the Indianapolis. I didn’t know if I believed her all that strongly myself, but the important thing was, these people all had to live with one another for the foreseeable future, and I wanted the people around there who’d been affected by it in one way or another to realize the thing was ended.
At first I hadn’t planned to reveal Whiteman’s role in the Indianapolis affair, but it occurred to me that Whiteman had money and that meant he’d have a pretty good lawyer, and who could say what punishment might be dealt out in a courtroom before it was all over with.
