The sheath of my knife was a comforting touch between my shoulder blades.
“I’ve been wanting to meet you,” I said.
“We’ve shared the desire,” Kincaid said behind me. He had a low, crisp voice. Each word was well enunciated. I wondered if he’d ever conned his way into reasonably cultured circles. “Our inquiries regarding you, Rivers, have been thorough, if discreet. For one thing,” he laughed softly, “we heard a rumor about a knife, a flat piece of steel honed to razor sharpness.”
His hand jerked the collar of my jacket. My shoulders reacted, snapping the collar tight on his fingers. My right hand dropped from the crown of my head, clamped on his wrist. At the same time, the rest of my body was in motion. I collapsed against Kincaid as the gun in Smith’s hand coughed. The lighting was bad, and he was afraid of hitting his partner. The slug whined off the brick wall behind us.
With Kincaid off balance, I used my legs like steel springs. He gasped as the top of my head slammed up against his chin.
I spun Kincaid as Smith sprang to one side to get in another shot. Without breaking motion, I pile-drivered the reeling Kincaid at Smith. The three of us collided. Kincaid went to his knees. Tripping over him, I grabbed for Smith’s gun. Smith was tearing himself free of the melee, trying to keep his footing.
Smith’s backward moving bulk and my grip on his wrist threw my weight against Kincaid. He went prone, threshing and grabbing at me. Kicking at Kincaid, I kept the direction of motion constant against Smith.
Smith tripped, tottered backwards. His face was a slick, white smear in the night. His gun wrist was slippery as he threw his bulk behind the effort to bring the gun to bear.
Sprawling toward Smith, I tried to get a steady footing. His free hand was a fist, slugging at my face. I turtled my head between my shoulders. His knuckles cracked on my forehead. The alley tilted for a second.
I butted Smith in the belly. I sensed his heels catching in the loose shell paving. He clubbed at me with his fists as we reeled on insecure footing. The blows struck my shoulders and back. I stayed with him like a babe clinging to its mother.
Then Kincaid’s weight hit me from behind. The three of us went down in a tangle of stabbing arms and legs. I heard the breath grunt out of Smith. His grip on the gun weakened.
Kincaid grabbed my hair and tried to jerk me loose from Smith. I took the eye-watering punishment, my knee in Smith’s groin. A sharp hiss of pain came from him.
I was gambling on them being unwilling to risk an un-silenced shot in the alley. I was right about that. I almost had the silenced gun ripped from Smith’s fingers, the authority to command.
Then Kincaid collected his senses, cooled his head. He ceased his ineffectual attack on my back. I felt his weight leave me. My skull split open. He’d taken aim and done a perfect place kick.
The night was an empty sinkhole, draining my strength. I felt Smith writhing from under me, but there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.
The two of them stood over me a few moments, getting their wind back, the toe of Kincaid’s shoe touching me now and then in grim speculation.
“Well,” Kincaid said, pulling breath into his lungs, “we heard he was a tough old grizzly.”
“Yeah,” Smith said in a thick voice.
“The way you’re supposed to be tough,” Kincaid said.
“I didn’t expect …”
“I know,” Kincaid said, “but he saw it as his last chance, and what did he have to lose?”
“I’ll fix him for it,” Smith said. “I’ll fix him good. I’ll make him wish he’d never got greedy with Bucks Jordan.”
“You’ll do what I tell you to do,” Kincaid said. “And next time you shoot off a gun with me that close around, I’m going to make you eat it.”
“Now, Kincaid, you know I …”
“I know you get rattled. You should have kept your head, slugged him with the gun. It would have spared us much.”
Dimly, I heard the slapping of his hands as Kincaid brushed himself off. “I should charge you for this suit.”
“We’ll get plenty of suits when we finish dredging Rivers,” Smith said.
“Ha, ha,” Kincaid said sarcastically.
“I thought it was pretty good,” Smith’s tone echoed rebuff.
“At least we’ve got him now,” Kincaid said. “And I’ll be sore in every muscle and joint for a week because of it. Put him in the car and let’s get out of here before some wandering joker puts an end to our run of luck.”
Weak as a half-drowned dog, I lay and took it as Smith put his knee in the small of my back and jerked my hands behind me.
“Lend me your necktie, Kincaid.”
He used the tie to lash my hands. Then he slid his own soiled handkerchief to make a gag. With the dirty linen tearing my jaws, I really began to hate Smith.
He grunted as he clutched my shoulders and dragged me toward my own car. He stuffed me in the back seat, got under the wheel, and Kincaid slid in beside him.
Every movement of the car jolted through the lump on my temple, where Kincaid’s shoe had left its imprint. The night was miserably hot. Flares of light came and went as we passed street lights, filling stations, drive-ins.
I judged we were on Nebraska, headed away from town. The intervals between the light flares lengthened. Smith turned on a side street. When he turned again, the car jounced slightly. Wild palms and thickets crowded in. Smith slowed. The car weaved in the ruts of a sandy street.
Smith stopped the car and Kincaid said, “Get him out.”
Smith did so, by taking hold of my collar and dragging me out. When he released me, my cheek fell against sand still hot from the sun. I drew my legs up, got my knees under me. Smith and Kincaid stood back and waited until I struggled to my feet.
I was standing in heavy shadows of palmetto and scrub pine. The harrumping of frogs came from not far away. I guessed we were in a swampy area not too far from Tina La Flor’s cottage. The location might as well have been the moon.
“Now, Rivers,” Kincaid said in the manner of a confident high school coach, “let’s get with this thing. First, we’re going to take the gag off and have a little talk. Okay? From there, it depends on you.”
At a nod from Kincaid, Smith moved behind me and untied his handkerchief. He took it from my mouth and I spit. He used the handkerchief to wipe sweat off that pleasant, dumb face.
With a few of the cobwebs in my brains, I had the silly urge to tell him the truth: Look, mister, I don’t know who you are or what you’re after. Or what caused the most beautiful three-foot doll in the world to shinny over my transom. All I know is that I was minding my own business when a boat appeared one day and a chain reaction started. The circumstances surrounding the death of Bucks Jordan prohibit me from the police; so why don’t you spend your time where it would do you more good?
I didn’t say it, of course. As my head cleared, I faced up to the situation. The truth was a death warrant, now that they’d tipped their identity and connection with the unknown factors behind Bucks Jordan’s murder. I’d live so long as they believed my living was worth something to them.
“Why don’t you,” Kincaid asked conversationally, “just tell us all about it?”
“Sure,” Smith said, “we don’t mean no real harm.”
“With guns in your groceries?”
“It was you that started the fracas in the alley. The gun was just to be sure we talked to you.”
“Kincaid,” I said, “this guy’s going to get you in serious trouble one of these days. He’s even dumber than you think.” “All right,” Kincaid’s tone cooled, “so we weren’t balky at the thought of roughing you up, if necessary. On the other hand, we wanted to avoid it if we could. There’s plenty to go around.”
“Not the way Bucks told it,” I said.
They exchanged a glance. Kincaid said, “Maybe he was holding out on you.” He took a package of cigarettes from his jacket side pocket. He didn’t light the cigarette but stoo
d rolling it gently in his fingers until half the tobacco had dribbled out. “Or maybe you’re thinking of holding out on us.”
“Listen,” Smith said, “we don’t have to do business with this guy. Give me the blade you took off him and I’ll save us some money.”
The idea appealed to Kincaid. He stood thinking about it, and I did too—with the dismal frogs singing a dirge for me, a pale moon, remote and desolate, the single witness for me.
Sweat seeped down my arms and seemed to shrink the necktie binding my wrists.
“What do you want to know first?” I asked.
Kincaid nodded. “I’m glad to see that you recognize the odds are ten thousand to zero, in our favor, Rivers. Where is the little woman?”
“Tina?”
“Is there another?” he said impatiently.
“I don’t know.”
“Gimme the blade,” Smith said.
“No, I think he’s telling the truth. It’s possible that he wouldn’t know right at this moment. Are you to meet her later?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
I licked my lips. “In a week.”
“Fine. Now let’s see if I have it straight. We never would have connected you with the little woman and Jordan, if she hadn’t gone directly to you. We’ve learned in Ybor City that you’ve known her a considerable time. Did she ring you in early—or after she decided Jordan was too great a risk?”
“You’re doing the summing up,” I said. “Find out how bright you are.”
“It doesn’t matter when you entered the picture. Jordan’s death meant a double-cross—and you’re the only possible answer.”
“You make me sound pretty rough,” I said.
“You are pretty rough. And don’t hand me a lot of malarkey about that private operator’s license you carry. Even official cops take a chance, when the odds look right and stakes are high enough.”
“Now we want the stakes,” Smith said. “Pronto. No more gassing, understand? Kincaid, I’m tired of gassing.”
“So am I. You heard the man, Rivers.”
“I haven’t got …” I broke off. Got what? What were the stakes?
“The little doll’s got it?” Kincaid asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Look, friend,” Smith said, “I’m going to carve you up unless …"
Kincaid cut him off with a gesture. Edging closer to me, Kincaid said, “You seem to have a dearth of knowledge to be in the middle of the thing, Rivers.”
“It’s the truth. But I’m not the only one in the middle. You keep me alive and kicking and I’ll try to make a deal with Tina.”
“Think you can?”
“Why not?”
“You don’t seem to have done too well for yourself.”
“I came in late,” I said.
“After Bucks took Tina out to the Sprite?”
“Sure,” I said, “after she met the Lessards.”
Grope in the dark, you fall in the ditch. I felt myself go in right then. I saw a sudden realization come to life in Kincaid’s eyes. His face quickly went acid with anger.
“Why you …” he said in a choked tone. “You’ve let us think…. You’re nothing but a strong-arm the little doll hired. You don’t know where the stuff is!”
I didn’t bother to ask how I’d slipped. I had an idea. Somehow, and for some reason, Bucks had taken Tina to the Sprite without anyone knowing it, until later. Until Kincaid and Smith had come ashore and started searching.
They didn’t need me now.
Chapter Nine
As they closed in, I broke away momentarily, kicking at Smith and spinning from Kincaid’s reaching hands. I plunged straight into the thicket, head down, not worrying about minor things such as brambles tearing at my eyeballs.
Tough, green, fibrous vegetation slashed my scalp. Muck sucked at my feet. Added to the sounds of quick motion behind me was Kincaid’s voice, softly, “Okay, let’s see how tough you are.”
With my hands tied behind me, Smith was eager and happy, expressing his feelings with a short laugh. I broke out of the thicket, reaching a small wilderness of ankle deep water and lashing sawgrass. With civilization a few blocks away.
I glanced over my shoulder and saw them coming from different angles, making me the point in the triangle.
I dodged Smith’s charge, water showering from my feet to make a brief lace of diamonds in the moonlight. Then Kincaid’s weight hit me.
I stumbled, trying to shake him loose. Smith rammed his bulk against us. I went down, flat on my face, no hands to break my fall. Breath was crushed out of me. Swamp water shot into my nose to strangle me. My forehead came in contact with the black sand beneath the shallow water, and the sand was like a brick wall.
A period of time followed in which nothing was clear. My instincts were enraged at the indignity and desperately set against dying. A dream-like Smith hit me on the chin in a weird slow motion. I had the vague knowledge that I’d struggled to my knees and that I’d keep getting up, again and again, until I’d worn the dirty son out.
Then I was floating along, with a numbness like a poisonous sleep stealing over me, as they carried me out of the muck.
Then sensation faded.
The sounds of a rasping effort to get breath were the next thing I heard. Sounds like a stricken heart patient makes when nothing is important except one more grain of oxygen. There was no heart patient—only me.
I was lathered in smothering sweat. Blood pounded through my temples. The gag was back in my mouth, but it was not the gag that made the effort to breath such a hard job. I was stuffed, cramped, in a very small space. I discovered this when I tried to move.
I bit down on the handkerchief against the pain lancing through my chest. The smell of my prison was compounded of fresh rubber and paint. Like the trunk of a car. And then I knew that’s where I was, when I turned my head and felt the tread of a spare tire against my cheek.
Thoughts filtered through. New car. My car. Stuffed in the trunk of my car. Waterproof trunk … air proof.
I was blacking out again, dragging dead air through the handkerchief, air that had a another few seconds of life in it.
I felt the confines of the car trunk closing on me, the total darkness filling with a vibration like the beating of tiny wings.
I tried to scream. A crack on the skull brought a little sanity. I slumped, laboring for another breath. The beating wings retreated a few inches in the darkness.
I couldn’t fight the panic any further back than the edges of my consciousness, but I managed to keep it there. I began working my wrists against the necktie bond. The tie was sodden, strong. My ears were ringing with the need for air.
The tie stretched a little, slipped on my sweat-slick wrist. I curled my thumb under and kept tugging. The tie hung on my knuckles. Then I barked my elbow on metal as my hand slid free.
My fingers were numb as they fumbled with the knot of the handkerchief. Big, dead sausages that were useless while angry needles bit deeper in my chest and invisible buzz saws worked on the joints of my twisted body.
The handkerchief knot gave. The rag fell away. I sucked in mouthfuls of the darkness, but pinpoints of light began to flare in my brain. My senses were slipping, my chest caving under an enormous weight as the process of suffocation neared its end.
I called feebly for help, or imagined that I did. My fingers groped in empty air. I was losing coordination, all sense of orientation.
My head rolled on my shoulders, coming to rest against the spare tire tread.
I thought of millions of tires on millions of cars, all rolling around through open country air, or the sweet smog of cities.
Tires filled with air …
My groping fingers found direction. A valve cap. It turned.
Teeth set against the pain of the contortions, I worked my face close to the valve cap of the spare tire. My fingernail slipped off the slight protrusion of the valve stem. Then I had the stem centered. I p
ressed. Air hissed—and for a second I was too choked up to take full advantage of it.
I used the air in short bursts until the sizzling cooled in my lungs and the ringing eased in my ears. I developed a terrific headache, but I accepted it as a gratifying symptom. Dead heads don’t hurt.
With death a tire’s worth of air away, my fingers searched the steel prison. Besides me and the spare, the trunk held a bumper jack and lug wrench. Laboriously, between gulps of air, I worked the jack handle from its position behind the spare. It was flattened at one end.
I located the trunk catch with my fingers and inserted the flat end of the jack handle. The trunk creaked as I pried. I kept at it, resting, getting a squirt of air, levering at the latch.
The latch weakened. When it snapped, it surrendered almost effortlessly.
The handle slipped from my fingers. I crawled over the rim of the trunk and fell on the ground.
I was too weak to get up. I rolled to my back and took a fresh look at open sky while I dragged breath deep in my lungs. The moon was gone. A deep, pre-dawn hush lay over the earth. A few tendrils of mist writhed off the swampy water beyond the unused, sandy back street.
I reached for the bumper, pulled myself up, finally got my feet under me. I hung on against the blinding pain in my head and the tired, hard beating of my heart.
The TV cowboys can take a dozen punches to the chin and wreck a saloon without mussing their hair. Not me.
For the time being, I’d had it.
I woke in early afternoon, the sweat-soaked daybed in my apartment as comfortable as a pot of lumpy, hot paste. My eyes were swollen from hard, exhausted sleep. Stiff and sore, I bit back a groan as I swung to a sitting position on the edge of the bed.
I pushed myself upright, padded to the bathroom, and started cold water in the tub. I toweled off some of the sweat from my face, neck, brown mat of chest, draped the towel across my naked shoulder and headed for the kitchenette.
While I waited for coffee to perk, I sat down at the kitchenette table, opened a cold pint of beer and tried to get my thoughts in order.
Memory of the drive home was vague. I’d used the spare key wired under the hood to put the car in service. I’d crawled up to the apartment, swallowed three headache pills, stripped to my shorts, and fallen on the bed.
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