Run to Death

by Patrick Quentin

  “Peter, it’s Mr. Johnson—the bridegroom from Yucatan.”

  As I guided her nearer through the dancers I saw she was right. We reached him, and Mrs. Snood grabbed his arm.

  “Hi, there. What’s the idea? Doing the town without your bride? You should be ashamed.”

  Mr. Johnson looked up at us, and the sudden disarmingly boyish smile came. Then it faded, and the worried look in his blue eyes took over his whole face.

  “Lupe’s in the hospital,” he said. “The damnedest thing. The pains hit her just after we got to the hotel. I rushed her out, and they operated right away. Appendicitis.”

  Mrs. Snood’s face dropped with good-natured concern. “The poor child! How is she?”

  “She’ll be okay. But she’s frightened, poor kid, and in pain. I’ve been sitting with her all day, but they turned me out at ten.” His big heavy hand circled his glass. He looked wistful and lost, like a St. Bernard that couldn’t find the right person to save. “Hell of a thing on a honeymoon.”

  “Dreadful!” Mrs. Snood sighed. “Expensive, too, I bet. How much is the doctor going to stick you?”

  “Plenty, I guess.” A shadow of the sweet smile came back to his face. “I’m getting quietly tight to celebrate.”

  “What you need’s champagne.” Mrs. Snood looped her arm through his. “We’ve got it at our table.”

  He looked from her to me doubtfully. “You don’t want to bother with…”

  But Mrs. Snood was leading him firmly through the dancers.

  Anything connected with anyone who had been in Yucatan could be significant. But as Mrs. Snood guided Mr. Johnson over and absorbed him into the group I couldn’t trace anything suspect in this apparently chance meeting.

  Mrs. Snood’s announcement of the bride’s operation bogged the gaiety down for a while. But soon she became tired of the new mood she herself had introduced and, trying to whoop things up, said:

  “At least she’s out of danger, Mr. Johnson. You should be grateful it wasn’t worse. At least she didn’t fall into a cenote, like Miss Brand.”

  “Miss Brand?” The query came surprisingly from Vera. “Who is this Miss Brand who fall in a cenote?”

  “Why, didn’t Peter tell you?” Mrs. Snood’s birdy gaze pecked at me, and then turned back to Vera. “And she was such a friend of his. It was terrible. We all felt terrible.”

  She was just high enough to welcome the chance of feeling terrible again. While she told the story, I watched Halliday. If he had any guilty knowledge, this was a moment when he might give himself away. But the only expression he showed was one of alcoholic boredom. Once he let his hand drop, as if by accident, against Vera’s smooth, bare shoulder. She edged away. That was all that happened.

  Mrs. Snood concluded: “My, it was terrible. And just before she died the poor kid gave Peter a detective story. He lent it to me. All the time I read about murders and things I thought of that poor girl down there in the cenote. Gruesome? That’s what it was.”

  She had managed to depress herself again, but almost immediately her natural spirits revived, and with a “Come on, Mr. Johnson, let’s snap out of this and dance,” she dragged the bridegroom on to the floor.

  The fun and games went on grimly until two o’clock. Then, after a minute itemized examination of the check, Mrs. Snood paid it, left a huge tip for the waiter and liberated us.

  We all moved out to the hotel lobby. The bridegroom was the first to escape. Then Halliday started to leave. He kissed Mrs. Snood, bowed with ponderous formality to Vera and pumped my hand again.

  “Well, Peter, old boy, old boy, don’t do nothing I wouldn’t do.”

  He was weaving from the champagne. I felt a bleak sensation of everything slipping through my fingers. Was I making a colossal mistake? Was the connection between Deborah’s death and what happened to me in Mexico City just something in my mind, after all? Or, if it was real, did the true menace lie in some completely different direction? I tried to associate murder, mayhem and conspiracy with this genial hick tourist in front of me. I thought how ludicrous it would seem if I accused him of it right there.

  His hand dropped limply out of mine. He glanced over his shoulder to leer with middle-aged appreciation at Vera’s naked back. Leaning towards me, he whispered:

  “That’sh some girl, Peter, me boy. Attractive girl. Don’t do anything I would do.”

  That was a terrific joke. He broke into a gale of laughter and pinched my arm boyishly. He turned away then and lumbered down the steps which led to the street.

  “Good night,” he called. “Goo’ ni’, all. Goo’ ni’, goo’ people. Goo’ ni’.”

  He reached the door. Cautiously he pulled it open and departed into the night.

  Soon afterwards Vera and I said “thank-you” speeches to Mrs. Snood and left. Vera lived, she said, only a couple of blocks away. She hadn’t brought the station wagon coupe. She asked me to walk her home. As we strolled through the stately, moon-washed streets, she clung warmly to my arm.

  “Such people,” she said. “Such bore. Such jabber, jabber. Gods!”

  After a couple of blocks we reached a large Frenchified mansion on a corner with an iron carriage gate in its centre. She paused, saying:

  “Is here where I live. Huge, no? Hideous. It is for Mrs. Snood. To say: Look how much it costs. You come in for a drink?”

  I still felt confused and frustrated. Earlier in the evening, when I was suspicious of her, I might have suspected a trap, with Halliday or Junior perhaps waiting for me behind that dark iron gateway. Now all I expected, if I accepted the invitation, was another rather torrid man-woman scene. I didn’t feel in the mood.

  “Thanks,” I said, “but I guess I’d better be calling it a day.”

  She pulled her hand pettishly out of my arm. “So, it is still that way. Still you think of me as the great fat bore.”

  “Now, Vera…”

  But her Russian temper had once again got out of control. Bordering on the theatrical, she cried: “Go, then. Get hit again and get naked again of all your clothes and see whether I say a damn. Oh, you make me mad! It is my morale. You hurt me in the morale. Quick. Go quick.”

  She tugged an old-fashioned bell-pull on one of the pillars of the gateway. With her back turned to me, she stood in ominous silence, tapping her foot until the doors clanked open, revealing an ancient velador wrapped in a serape. She spoke to him in rapid Spanish, and he withdrew.

  For a moment she stood with her back still to me, ignoring me. Then suddenly she turned. In the moonlight I could see her big, friendly smile. The temper had gone again.

  “I am still mad,” she said—”very mad. But I pretend I am not. I have great control. I know. I hate you, but you take care, no? You don’t let them come after you again with parrot-cages. Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  She glanced down the street. It was deserted except for a light blue sedan which was parked half a block away under a street lamp. “Is a taxi, I think. The streets are dark and empty. You take the taxi, for safeness.”

  I looked down the tree-lined side-walk to the car. Taxis are just like ordinary automobiles in Mexico, except that they have a little paste-board sign under the windshield wiper saying: “Libre.” I saw the sign. It was a taxi all right.

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll take the taxi.”

  She leaned towards me and kissed me impulsively on the mouth. “Perhaps to-morrow I am not mad. I do not know. We will see. But, oh, to-night—I burn. Good night, hateful.”

  “Good night, Vera.”

  She slipped through the iron gates into the shadowy patio beyond. In a moment I saw the old velador shuffle forward. He closed the gates and clanked a chain shut inside.

  Alone on the bleak night street, I felt dissatisfied and solitary. I wished I had accepted her invitation. Although danger now seemed very far away, I missed her warmth. I stood for a moment in the shadow, and then started towards the light-blue sedan. The driver saw me coming and turned o
n the lights. I reached him and, without bending to the window, asked the fare to Londres. He said: “Two pesos.”

  That was all right. I opened the rear door and started to climb in.

  As I did so, the driving-mirror came into my range of vision. Reflected in it, two dark, passive eyes were watching me. My glance dropped to the driver himself. In the dim radiance of the street light I saw a prettily curved cheek and long, girlish lashes.

  For a moment I thought: I’m going nuts. I’m seeing things. Then I stepped back out of the car. Instantly the driver swung round from the wheel to face me.

  I wasn’t seeing things, of course. The taxi wasn’t a taxi. It was an ordinary car disguised by the simple device of a pasteboard sign on the wind-shield.

  Sitting at the wheel, pointing a revolver at my stomach, was Junior.

  I felt a panicky sense of unreality. “What’s the idea?” I cracked, stalling. “Need another suit?”

  He jerked open the front door next to the curb.

  “Subase,” he said.

  It meant “Get in.” I knew that. Junior had a way of not taking no for an answer. I knew that, too. I abandoned the idea of trying to duck back to the cover of Vera’s porch. It was too risky. It was pretty hopeless trying to attract the attention of her night watchman, too.

  The gun gleamed. “Subase,” he said again.

  I didn’t like the quietness of his voice. I didn’t like danger coming pointlessly this way in the form of a pretty little boy with unknown rancour and a gun. I still hesitated, trying to find a solution although I knew there wasn’t one.

  “Subase,” he said for the third time, and his dreamy eyes, fixed on me with their secret, impersonal hostility, were steady as the gun.

  “Okay,” I said. “Anything to oblige.”

  I took a step towards the open car door. The eyes blinked. I could tell he was thinking: “Is he going to try to jump me?” I wouldn’t have had a chance, of course, with the open door, the gear lever and the steering-wheel between us.

  I took another step, then a hand dropped on my shoulder from behind and pulled me back. A familiar, blurred American voice said:

  “Hey, Peter, ol’ boy. What’s the idea taking a taxi? Getting lazy? After that champagne, you need exercise. That’s wha’ you need. L’il exercise.”

  I let myself be twisted round. Standing behind me, beaming heartily, was Bill Halliday.

  He waved at the taxi to go away. Sliding his hand to my arm, he started walking me off down the sidewalk.

  “Taxis,” he said reproachfully. “Guy your age taking taxis. Old woman, that’s what you are.”

  I didn’t know where he had come from or how he had come. I didn’t care. Ahead a pale street lamp marked the end of the block. As we moved towards it, I waited, excruciatingly, for Junior to shoot.

  But nothing happened. We reached the corner and turned it. The taxi had not even moved.

  Halliday was walking in a sort of zigzag. He lurched heavily against me.

  “A ni-cap,” he muttered. “Live around here. Just round the block. You come up for a ni’-cap, old boy. Nothing like ni’-cap. Wa’ Gertrude Stein say? A ni’-cap’s a ni’-cap’s a ni’-cap…”

  And a man who saved you from a gun-boy was a man who saved you from a gun-boy was a man who saved you from a gun-boy.

  XI

  We were half-way down the side-street block. Ahead loomed the safe spaciousness of the Avenida Insurgentes. The car wasn’t going to follow. I was sure of that then. Some of the tension in me eased. But my mind was tangled with questions that had no answers. Why had Junior let Halliday walk me right out from under his gun? Because he operated on orders, and there was no order to cover the sudden appearance of another American? Or because Halliday was his boss? But if Halliday had sent Junior to get me, why had Halliday bothered to rescue me? And had he rescued me deliberately? Or had this been just another of those fifty-seven varieties of coincidence?

  As Halliday, rambling at my side, kept up his tipsily cheerful monologue, I found it almost impossible to imagine him capable of anything more subtle or sinister than putting on a paper hat and blowing a tin whistle.

  I thought of Vera a few minutes ago, sulking, impulsively kissing me, pointing down the street. “Be sure you take the taxi.” A shiver of doubt slid through me. Vera pointing out the taxi, where Junior was waiting with the gun. Vera driving me to Los Remedios, where Junior was waiting with the gun.

  Could it be Vera, and not Halliday? Vera working with someone else through Junior?

  We reached the draughty corner of Insurgentes. The neon lights of a few night-clubs and elegant cantinas still twinkled in the darkness. A couple of cars were racing out to the suburbs. I wondered where I would be headed now if I had stepped into the light-blue sedan. Not to Vera. Not to Halliday. That was certain. To an obscure death in a ditch out in the rough, desolate countryside beyond Xochimilco? Or to meet my real antagonist?

  But who was my real antagonist? Mr. Johnson, morose over his bride’s appendectomy? Mrs. Snood tucked up in her hotel bed with a detective story?

  There were so few solutions to chose from, and none of them was worth a damn. I had expected the evening to rescue me from confusion.

  It had confusion worse confounded.

  We had crossed Insurgentes and moved into a dark, tree shaded side-street. Dinamarca, I thought. Halliday, who seemed even more drunk than he had been at the Reforma, came to a clumsy stop outside a modernistic apartment house door.

  “Li’l apartment,” he said. “Not much to look at, nothin’ to see. B’longs fr’nd of mine. Len’ it me. Ni’-cap, me boy, old boy.”

  Change clattered in his pocket as he fumbled round for his keys. He brought them out and guided one unsteadily into the lock.

  “Clear the head, a ni’-cap.”

  He pushed the heavy glass-and-iron door inwards and waited with alcoholic chivalry for me to pass ahead of him into the house. It could be a trap. I realized that. But if it was a trap, I was being lured into it with an elaborateness almost beyond the realms of possibility. The streets had proved themselves dangerous enough for me. There was nothing to prevent Junior from driving round the corner the moment I was alone again. Of two chances, going in with Halliday was by far the less risky.

  Besides, my main purpose earlier that evening had been to get alone with Halliday. Even if my suspicions had shifted elsewhere, this was as good a chance as any to tackle him.

  I walked into a hallway, which looked like an exhibit for “Home Decorating of the Future”. Halliday came after me. He swung the door to with a heavy clang.

  On the second floor he stopped before an apartment marked 3, danced his key-dance again and opened the door. He went ahead and fumbled on a light-switch. A small, unexpectedly elegant living-room came into view with zebra-striped drapes and deep yellow chairs. A large bouquet of pink carnations stood in a vase on a coffee-table. The room was rich with their perfume.

  It was also encouragingly empty.

  “Si’ down, old boy.”

  Halliday flopped a hand on to my shoulder and guided me to one of the yellow chairs. He peeled off his top-coat, letting it drop to the floor and moved towards an inner door.

  “Kitschun. See wha’ I can rustle up.”

  He disappeared and started to clatter behind the door. The moment was good from my point of view. If Halliday was innocent, then his drunkenness wasn’t a sham. By to-morrow whatever I said to him would have become blurred in the fumes of alcohol. If he wasn’t innocent, if he had murdered Deborah Brand and had designs on me, he was just playing drunk. But that didn’t matter either. If he was guilty there was nothing I could tell him that he didn’t know already. Provided he had no gun, I was okay.

  I got up quietly and searched as much of the room as I could before I heard him coming out of the kitchen. I had ducked back into my chair when he emerged, carrying two cuba libres with exaggerated care.

  “Rum, old boy,” he intoned. “Yo ho ho and a bo’l
of tum.”

  He handed me a glass, weaved past the pink carnations and dropped on to the yellow couch.

  He raised his drink with a flourish. “Here’s skol in your eye.”

  I raised my drink to him. “Thanks,” I said, deciding on the approach direct. “And thanks for saving me just now.”

  “Don’ menshun it. Only too glad save a pal. Always was. Tha’s me. Bill Halliday.” He screwed up his eyes and watched me, his head cocked suspiciously on one side. “Thank me for saving you? From wha’?”

  “That taxi. You knew it wasn’t a taxi, didn’t you? You knew the driver was holding me up with a gun.”

  “Holdin’ you up with a— You kiddin’?”

  “I’m not kidding.”

  He leaned forward on the couch, blinking. “Holdin’ you up with a gun? Why?”

  “For the same reason he followed me all morning and finally caught up with me and slugged me at the Shrine out at Los Remedios. The same reason that some one burgled my apartment.”

  He seemed to be making a supreme effort to understand. Then he gave up—his eyes dulled. “Burgling, slugging,” he murmured. “Don’ get it. Wha’ you talking about?”

  “I thought you might be able to tell me.”

  “Me?” The word came out belligerently. “Why me? Wha’sh this about? Who’s apar’ment burgled? Mine washn’t burgled. ’Syours?”

  I said: “Know a little boy, pretty little Mexican boy? About nineteen?”

  “Wha’s his name?” asked Halliday vaguely.

  “You ought to know if he’s on your pay-roll.”

  He tried to get there, but couldn’t. “Pay-roll?” he repeated.

  I blazed a new trail. “You took my bag instead of yours at the airport, didn’t you?”

  He remembered that. “Sure. Sure. Your bag. Both gadarbine, garadine, gar…. Both same. Porter. Mishtake. Shtupid.”

  “And you inquired after me at the desk in the Hotel Yucatan before you knew me.”

  “Did I?” He looked puzzled, and then a smile came, a broad, sharing-the-joke smile. “Hey, there, Peter, old boy, old kidder.”