By that time Crandall had stepped in between us. He covered Doggie coolly with his tiny nickel-plated automatic. Doggie had buried his hardware to perform his act with the gasoline cans.
“Not now, you fool. We have two other rooms to saturate. Remember?”
“I don’t care, I tell you. This bastard’s askin’ for it—”
“So he is,” agreed Crandall with mild emphasis. “And I assure you he’ll get exactly that.”
That seemed to cool Doggie off but he gave me a look that made me feel like a piece of raw steak.
Crandall led him to the door. They both turned to look at me. I nodded resignedly, hoping I looked resigned. I felt resigned.
Crandall’s voice showed how much he was enjoying himself.
“You figured out everything rather well, Mr. Noon. Pity I can’t take time to fill in the blank spots for you.”
“Crandall,” I said.
He paused. “Yes?”
“You said two other rooms.”
“So I did.”
“April and me got company?”
“You certainly have, Mr. Noon.” There was laughter all through him. As if he wanted to tell me before but hadn’t been sure he should. As if my asking him had taken the matter squarely out of his hands. Kind of screwy, isn’t it? I was roast turkey pretty soon the way matters stood at the moment.
“Well,” I said. “It’s always nice to know who your roommates are. Anybody I know?”
He ignored the question. “We’ll leave you the lamp, Mr. Noon. You might like to see what’s in store for you.” Doggie appreciated the joke. He guffawed.
I kept after Crandall.
“Anybody I know?” I repeated.
He stared at me, his lips working. His mustache twitched. I was killing him with my jokes.
His laugh rose on a high pitch.
“Do you know June Wexler, Mr. Noon?”
He giggled. The door closed while he was giggling.
NINETEEN
I stared at the match head lying on the floor. The light from the hurricane lamp made it seem as big as a black marble. My lips pulled back from my teeth. A hard laugh squeezed out of my chest. I was getting panicky. For a few crazy seconds I had toyed with the idea of igniting the match head with the heel of my shoe and burning my bonds off quick in a hurry. But considering how fast burning gasoline can travel, I decided it wasn’t such a hot idea. Or maybe too hot.
Now that Crandall had left me with some light, I took a good look around.
My final resting place was no bed of roses. Heaps of decayed garbage and junk littered the sides of the room. A long bin with several shelves missing ran along the opposite wall looking like one good sneeze was all that was needed to send it crashing down. Rust and old age had settled in over everything. This applied in particular to a high pile of metal cans with their labels peeling off like banana skins.
I looked for a window. There was just one. But it was so tiny and so high off the floor and stuck so far in one corner that a fly would have had trouble going through it. I had a tough time not losing my grip right then and there.
It was as if I’d finally had it. Right here in one grimy little storeroom in some nameless factory in the Bronx. I felt great. Simply great.
I tried the ropes on my hands. Nothing there either. And the gasoline smell was beginning to go to my head. My tongue felt sticky in my mouth. Like I’d given too many licks to a bar of licorice.
Time crawled. I worked my head forward trying to get at my ankle bracelets with my teeth. All I got for that was a stiff neck. I could almost taste the gasoline now.
Not a sound from outside. Crandall must have been pouring it on. Gasoline and sweet victory. Or would a guy like him call it “petrol”? Nuts. He must have shown Monks a phony will and Mike fell for it. He was probably Old Man Wexler’s remaining heir. Old Man Wexler traipsing all over the globe, letting his wife die in childbirth, leaving the upbringing of two wild kids to other people. And now they were dying neglected—
Dying neglected. Et tu, Noonus.
When you’re alone with yourself, you’re lousy company. I never could take too much of talking to myself. I cut it out.
I had no place to go but I had to do something. I took a whack at shinnying along the cold floor. It was tough sledding. A snail could have traveled faster.
I gave up after a foot of progress, racked and sore. The cord on my hands and legs had drawn even tighter.
I got my breath. I looked at the match head again.
I’ve never believed in Hell, a place where people go and roast on the coals for eternity. The prospect of burning to death in the here and now is believable enough and it hasn’t ever exactly appealed to me. I much prefer dying in bed. And not alone either. In bed, I mean.
The ropes on my ankles. That was the ticket. I couldn’t do a thing until I had locomotion.
I looked at the match head again.
It was just a short stub of wood with the shiny red head gleaming in the steady glare of the lamp.
I made up my mind quick. If I thought about it for so much as a second I was done. Finished. This way at least I was making the grand try, the final effort. The big attempt. There’s a lot to be said for a guy that dies still trying, no matter how you look at it.
I worked my heels around to the proper position and raised them with an effort that cramped my insides. Like a guy in the gym doing leg push-ups from the flat-on-his-back position.
Only one thing was dominant in my thinking. The heels of my shoes were neolite, not rubber. Thick, sharp neolite.
Everything depended on a speck of sulphur no more than an eighth of an inch in diameter. Salvation can be as small as that sometimes.
I bit my lips, the strain telling on me. Then I brought my tied-together heels down hard. Right on top of the little match head.
There was a scrape and a click like a firecracker going off in the narrow confines of the room. Then the floor whooshed underneath me and red-hot flame licked at my ankles and flashed up my legs.
TWENTY
It was a screwy thing to do. A fast way of getting clear out of this world. But the chips were down. And when they are, you try to pick them up as long as there’s a chance left.
Fire, like bad news, travels fast. Red tongues licked up my trouser legs, trickled eagerly around the few dry spots on my clothes and then moved forward again. I rolled over, desperately banking on the dampness of the floor and Doggie’s carelessness to retard things enough for me to do what I had to do.
The warmth was coming through my suit. But my brain was functioning like a maniac’s. On one thing. I strained my legs apart, forcing twice as much on my ankles, forgetting the sudden, burning bite of the fire. I tugged like crazy trying to do the split while doubled up on the cold floor. I wrenched mightily, burying my chin on my chest to keep my face out of danger. I could see the red flames running toward me, eating up the material of my clothes. I rolled like a mad dog on the damp floor.
The ropes gave. My legs flew out like a bird spreading its wings. I galvanized. I tottered to my feet, the bad circulation of my blood needling me with a thousand agonizing stitches. Setting my teeth against the pain, I hurled myself toward the nearest pile of dead, useless junk and took the floor with a wide barrel roll.
Things happened. I touched off all the gasoline in my wake. I rolled, scrambled, heaved, reveling like a dog at play on the floor. I was acting crazy. But I was smothering the fire of my clothes.
Tiny spots of gas-soaked objects burst into brilliance behind me. They connected like links in a chain and soon the rear of my cell was a solid little trouble spot.
I backed against the wooden bin with its rotting shelving. The old boards were dancing with new life now. The fire was eating away with a million-year appetite.
My clothes were smoldering like dead leaves. I rammed the hands that were bound behind me into a scorching blaze that was spreading through the rickety bin. Sweat popped out in tiny beads on my aching fa
ce as I fumbled around.
It wasn’t easy to do. But first-degree burns are a hell of a lot easier to take than a personal barbecue.
Ten seconds was all it took but it seemed like two centuries of waiting. My hands came free, the sisal cord still burning away, the gas still working. I shucked my coat, skinning it off as fast as I could but the leaden weight of my arms made it a much longer job than it normally takes. I forgot about the ringing tingle of my hands, the burns. The storeroom was going up like a tinderbox and I was the biggest match in the place.
Lowering my head, I charged the door. The rickety bin gave up the ghost and came down with a bursting crash of fireworks. I hit the door with a tremendous thud, expecting it to be closed. It was.
Out of the frying pan into the—what? I wasn’t much better off.
I started screaming. Good and loud and just hard enough to convince anyone outside or nearby that their little house-warming party had gone off before schedule. It ought to mean something.
I kept right on yelling because it was getting hot enough to keep my voice pretty enthusiastic.
I got results.
Feet pounded in the outside corridor. Right above the sound, Doggie was cursing. The bolt rode noisily out of its iron bed on the other side of the door. Somebody whipped back the barrier and rushed in.
I thrust my leg out, hooked it around one that was just coming in, and yanked hard. Doggie shot by me, sprawling, the gun in his fingers spitting bullets and noise. His hands flew out letting go of the gun as he took the floor, with the air pushing out of his chest.
He came up in the center of the room, little tongues of flame licking at his clothes. I could see he was in for it. The flames were having themselves a ball in the narrow storeroom and Doggie’s hands glistened with gasoline. He hadn’t bothered to wash them off after his routine with the cans and it was going to cost him.
I scooped up the P 38 he had dropped. I wasn’t sticking around. I fell into the corridor, gasping for fresh air, the gas smell clogging my nostrils.
Behind me, Doggie screamed hoarsely. He rushed from the room blindly, his hands blazing like Roman candles. His eyes were wild and unreasoning with uncomprehension. Like the dog he so much resembled.
I waited for him as weak and as cramped as I was. He bulled right at me, slapping his flaming mitts against his sides like some crazy species of bird.
“Down, boy, down,” I snarled through split lips.
I brought the barrel of the P 38 up with all the steam I had left. I raked it across his oncoming gut up toward his pointed canine jaw with one sweeping motion. He might just as well have run into a wall the way it stopped him cold and bounced him back into the storeroom. He trailed to the floor like a meteor, his hands still blazing away.
I staggered down the dark corridor, giving just one more thought to Doggie melting away back there in what had been intended for my funeral pyre. That sobered me up and took care of all the love for my fellow man that I had left in me at the moment.
I could feel the heat even as I ran from it. The corridor was long and dim and no wider than a bowling alley.
Light suddenly streamed out from a door and Randall Crandall popped into view. He saw me and his face got heartbroken in a hurry. But the little nickel-plated special in his fist came up and said hello all by itself.
I flattened to one side, the slug whining on by. The dim light made it a bad day for targeting in. And Crandall must have realized he might make a swell bull’s-eye standing in the light from the room he had come out of, because he suddenly squealed like a schoolgirl hearing a dirty joke and scuttled back inside. A door slammed with an echo.
That gave me ideas. I edged up the corridor, found the door, felt for the knob, and stepped quickly to the opposite side. Down the hall, the fire was merrily chewing wood on its way out of the storeroom. It wasn’t taking its time either.
“Crandall!” I yelled. “Can you hear me?”
Two slugs tore through the wooden frame of the door and spanged off the wall. I had a bad second worrying about ricochets. But Crandall had heard me fine. That was for sure.
“The fire went off ahead of schedule, Crandall. Doggie’s not with us any more. That’s what you get when you hire goons like Doggie. Another amateur play, Randy. Next time you want rough helpers on a deal, get some real pros. Not hopheads. Bull’s gone, Doggie’s gone. That leaves just you. And me. And the ladies—”
“What’s your bargain, Noon?” His voice was so unrecognizably hoarse coming through the wood that I had my answer. He would have to come through that door if he wanted to get out of the building alive. He’d heard Doggie’s gun go off. I was here. Doggie wasn’t. So logically I had Doggie’s gun. After all, he was a smart lawyer. Smart enough to know I had him penned up like a pig in an alley.
“No time for gentleman’s agreements, Randy. The joint will go up in smoke in about ten minutes. Where’s April and June?”
“You’ll let us out—” I hated the whimpering sound in his voice. But the “us” I liked.
“Yeah, sure. The girls, Randy.”
“The other end of this hallway.” His voice cracked with frenzy. “Rooms facing each other. Noon! Let us come out. We can—”
“Right where you are, you bastard. Till I come back. And remember—I can pick you off from down the hall just as easily as I can from here.”
I got down the hall in a large-sized hurry.
The rooms he’d been talking about were smaller than mine. I hit the one nearest me. The door gave in without a murmur.
April screamed when she saw me. Almost as if she wasn’t glad to see me.
I was glad to see her though. Her trim little figure was lashed to an old army cot with straps that buckled her across the middle like a sack of wheat.
“Ed—” She stammered, her violet blue eyes wet with tears. “I’ve been going out of my mind. That woman—”
“What woman?” I rasped, fighting the rusty metal buckles with my burned fingers.
“That woman—the one with Crandall. She—”
“April, there’s no time. The joint’s in the process of burning down to the ground. Here, get up.”
She got up, strained and taut. Her eyes stared at me for a wild moment. She was literally pop-eyed with fright. The smell of gasoline was all over her too.
“Then you haven’t seen her?” She didn’t wait for an answer. Her head fell back and her beautiful black hair waterfalled past her shoulders. She started to laugh. I slapped her. Once. Hard. The laugh turned to a short choked cry.
“Save it, April. We haven’t got time.”
I dragged her with me. I could see she had some nutty idea about hanging around. Something had shocked her. Shocked her bad. But like I said, it was no time to find out what it was.
I got her out of there into the corridor. We were facing the door on the other side. Down the long hall, the fire from the storeroom was creeping steadily forward. It wasn’t quiet any more. Wood was crackling and snapping like Rice Krispies. It had almost reached the door where Randall Crandall was penned in.
I kicked June Wexler’s door in. The room was as small as April’s. June was still aping her twin sister. The bed and belt gag had been repeated. But I had an easier time with her straps. And they hadn’t gotten to her yet with the gasoline treatment. Even though the place reeked of it.
I helped her to her feet and her face, as scared as she had been and maybe still was, got merry for me.
“The cavalry and marines. That’s you, lover. That’s why I love you.”
“Save it. And get a move on or we’ll be food for the worms.”
“Where are we going?” Under the circumstances, I thought it was a very stupid question.
“Look, June, later I’ll draw diagrams. I might even sing songs. But right now, hold on to April and follow me. And stay away from sparks.”
“Anything you say, lover. April—”
April held out her hand, a confused little girl. June took it grimly. T
hey formed a column of twos behind me.
“Stay here and wait,” I said. I went back down the hall toward the approaching fire. I could hear Randall Crandall yelling now. Yelling my name. I grinned tightly. The cornered rat was squealing. Not knowing whether it preferred death by fire or death by gunfire. Either way, the rat doesn’t care for trial by ordeal.
The flames threw weird shadows along the hallway. I looked around at the rickety boarding of the old factory. This was one fire that the hook-and-ladder boys were never going to put out in time.
“Come on out, Randy,” I called. I stepped to one side of the door. “Only let’s see that gun first.”
He didn’t take too long making up his mind. The door creaked open and firelight twinkled off the gleam of his nickel-plated .32 as it thudded against the floor. It angled off to the right out of view from the interior of the room. I scooped it up with a flourish. I tucked the heavy P 38 into my waistband, deciding to use Crandall’s hardware.
It was a peanut of a gun. It felt like a feather in my hand. But my burned fingers were starting to stiffen and it would be a lot easier than the heftier P 38.
“All right, boys and girls. March out like little ladies and gentlemen.”
I waited.
Crandall appeared. He was trembling, his arms shaking like leaves in the wind, held high by his fear. He saw the fire up close, eating the floor and walls, coming toward us like it had a mind of its own. He screeched and ducked behind me.
I wasn’t having any of that. I nudged him off with a prod from his own gun. He fell back against the wall, sucking in air like a landed fish. His eyes rolled in his handsome face.
“You—idiot—we’ll all be killed! Let’s go while we still have time—”
“Not so fast, Randy. Your partner. We’re not budging till the little lady joins us.” I raised my voice. “Come on out, sister. Everything’s gone up in smoke. The deal’s off. Finished.”
“Noon, you’re mad!” Crandall cringed as he said it. “There’s no one in there—I lied. I thought you’d leave me in there to burn. I knew you wouldn’t if there was a woman with me—” He jerked as a section of flooring snapped in brittle death as fire ate its way across it.
The Spitting Image Page 12
