by P. N. Elrod
It was a more than sufficient distraction. Paco gaped at me, frozen in sheer disbelief. His big hand came up slowly to wipe it away. I found a perverse enjoyment in the situation and let it show.
“Leave it there,” I suggested. “On you it looks good.”
He went beet red, then hit me hard enough to knock me from the grip of my two supports. Stiff-legged, he bulled after me with his fists ready, and I made a big show of cowering and backing away. Paco struck again and again. I was only distantly aware of the blows, feeling impact rather than pain. He’d wear his hands out before he could do me any real harm now. I put on a good act, though, crying out, throwing my arms up, trying to protect my face and groin and each second moving farther and farther away from the basement door.
I heard it a split second before anyone else and, down already, I just covered my head and lay prone.
The blast roared up the stairs, knocking the bottom door to splinters and shattering every window in the house. The whole structure shook; plaster and framed pictures alike jumped from the walls to the bucking floor. The men in the hall were bounced away by the concussion, and the machine gun went off and tore holes in the ceiling.
Paco, Doc, and Harry were knocked flat, Paco actually somersaulting over me. People were yelling alarms in other parts of the house and beneath it all, like the purr of a tiger, I heard the fire. It was time to go.
I got my feet under me and stood in time to greet the reinforcements rushing in from the dining room. Spotted as the outsider, two of them grabbed me while a third aided Paco. He threw off the helping hands and came straight for me. He halted inches away, glaring.
“Take this bastard to my office. Somebody call the fire department.”
They dragged me to the office on the other side of the house. Behind us Paco was talking to Doc.
“Get up, you goddamned lush. We got work to do.”
I faked weakness, hoping they might get careless and take their eyes off me for a moment so I could disappear, but there was no such luck, not with the boss right behind them. They kept their guns locked on my head until Paco came in, dragging Doc with him.
Doc was the worse for wear and dropped onto a couch, holding his head. Paco went to the massive desk, unlocked it, and began cramming papers into a briefcase.
“What’s Slick going to say about this?” Doc wondered out loud.
“I already know,” said Paco. “And if you got any brains in that skull that ain’t been pickled yet, you’ll figure it out, too.”
“What will we do?”
“A quick trip outta town with a few of my best boys until this blows over.”
“An apt phrase.”
“And this mug’s coming, too. Slick and me screwed up with his brother, but I won’t be taking any chances with this one. If I come up with his list and hand it over, Slick will cancel all my IOUs.”
“Assuming you get this kid to talk.”
“He’ll talk. He don’t have his brother’s guts.”
Oh, yeah?
“What about me?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll find a safe spot for you until we can set things up again.” He snapped the case shut. “Come on.”
They opened the door to a smoke-filled hallway. Paco’s men were losing out to the fire. He slammed the door, coughing. “We’ll take the back way,” he said, and started for another door across the room.
Just as he touched the knob, the lights went out. Not knowing how long it would last, I took advantage of the situation. In seconds I knocked Doc and the other two men out cold. The sounds alerted Paco. He swung around, a gun in his hand.
“What’s going on?” he demanded. “Doc? Sam? Answer me!”
I grabbed his wrist, pushing the gun away and squeezing. He grunted in pain, dropping the gun from suddenly nerveless fingers. He was trying not to scream. I eased off, but only a little.
“Fleming, it’s you, ain’t it? We can still talk. I can still give you your brother—” Now he did scream, my grip on his wrist tightened involuntarily and the bones snapped. He dropped the briefcase and sank to the floor when I released him.
“No deals, Paco,” I whispered from the shadows.
“What d’ya want? Just tell me. . . .”
What I wanted he didn’t want to know. The hate inside me was growing like a separate living thing, and I wanted to turn it loose on this man and let it tear him to bloody ribbons. I picked him up by the clothes and shoved him against the wall. He made a small movement with his left hand. I should have paid attention, but was too crazy to notice. He drew a slightly deeper breath and briefly held it, which was a warning, but then it was too late. The hard snout of a nickel-plated derringer was pressed up under my rib cage and he triggered both shots.
Two red-hot comets tore through me, leaving behind the harsh, ringing aftershock of pain. My body spasmed once for each bullet. I must have cried aloud in reflex, because it hurt like hell. Paco let his breath out in relief and waited for me to fall away.
Instead I slapped the gun from his fingers and laughed. It sounded ugly to me, and I could only imagine what it was doing to him. My lungs ran out of air and I was still laughing, shaking with it, drunk from the look of fear on his face. He fought to get away, but I hoisted him right off his feet and pinned him to the wall. There was just enough thin light coming from the windows for him to see my face. His pop eyes bulged even more, his head shook, and he looked ready to scream, but it was reduced to a whimper that seeped out of his mouth like dribble.
“What’s on the list?” I said, giving him a shake to punctuate the question. His heels knocked loosely against the wall.
“N-n-numbers.”
“What numbers?”
“C-code—don’t know—”
“What do you want it for?”
He was struggling again. “You’re dead, I shot you—”
“You’re damn right I’m dead, you son of a bitch. You tell me why.”
“. . . dead, shot you—”
“What is the list for? Why do you want it?”
“Slick!” The name was screamed out. It could have been an answer or a call for help.
“What does Slick have to do with it?”
“He wants . . . Him—you get him. Lemme go, oh God, lemme go!”
“Who killed Fleming?”
“I dunno.”
“Did you?”
“No!” The denial was too fast and forceful. “It was Slick! He said to do it. Him!”
“Why?”
“Shut him up. Please, lemme—”
“Where?”
“Yacht.”
“The Elvira?”
“Yes.”
“Who else was there?”
“Fred, he tried to tell me. Oh God, tried—”
“What? Tell you what?”
“You’re dead. Go away, go away.” Tears streamed down the man’s cheek from his wide-open eyes.
The hot, living hate was banging around inside me, fighting to get free, clouding my brain like the smoke that was just starting to ooze into the room. He couldn’t turn away from me, and then it was too late. He stiffened under my grip like a corpse. His mouth dropped wide and a gagging noise came out. The noise shaped itself, rose in volume, and lengthened into a full-fledged shriek that had no humanity in it. I let go and stepped away. Something else inside me released him as well, and the screaming died away. Paco dropped facedown on the floor and didn’t move.
I stared, afraid and wondering what I’d done to him. I was cold all over and shaking, feeling drained and weak. Out in the hall someone ran up, shouting for Paco. The door opened, and smoke billowed into the room along with two blinded, coughing men.
Paco was still alive, but he didn’t respond when I turned him over and there was a heart-sinking blankness in his eyes. As surely as I’d broken his wrist, I had shattered his mind. Considering what he had done to me and who knows how many other poor slobs who couldn’t hit back, I felt no pity for him. I picked up his briefcase a
nd retreated a few steps through the door we were to use before the lights went out. By then, the newcomers were tripping over unconscious bodies.
“What the hell? They’re all out. . . . Mr. Paco? Mr. Paco?”
But Paco was still oblivious.
“We gotta get ’em outta here.”
“The back way?”
“Too slow—open the window.”
I quietly left while the men were busy lowering bodies into the flower beds outside. No one really noticed as I crossed the open grounds this time. All eyes were on the house. Some of them had been late-staying guests still in evening dress, others were servants, the rest looked like the thugs they were, and all huddled in little groups and stared at the smoke rising from the windows to the sky. Shouts from the other end of the house brought help to the men who were getting Paco out, saving me the trouble. I may have hated his guts, but I wouldn’t have let him burn to death.
Turning away, I walked unchallenged out the front gates and down the road. In the distance I could hear the first fire trucks approaching.
Escott was standing on the fender of the Nash, craning to get a better view of things.
“You were successful?” he asked when he could see me.
“Yeah, it was a real riot.”
“Anything wrong?” He dropped down.
“No.” I got in the car and tried to pull myself together. I felt the same as when I’d hit Sanderson and turned his face inside out, only this time it had been Paco’s mind. I wasn’t sorry about it, but I was frightened that I had such an ability and of what it might do to someone who didn’t deserve it.
Escott started the car and got us well on our way back to the city. He was looking at me, wanting to know what was the matter, but forcing himself to be patient. I shrugged and shook myself as though I’d solved a problem. It wasn’t solved by a long shot, but I could at least push it aside for the moment.
He took my movements as an opening to conversation. “What is in your case?”
I’d forgotten it. “Some of Paco’s papers. He seemed to think they were important enough to carry from a burning house, so I took them away instead.”
“Dear me, yes, they should prove to be most interesting, indeed. But did he not see you?”
“Yeah, he saw me, but I passed myself off as my younger brother Gerald, who I invented just then, and he swallowed it.”
“Then will he not be in pursuit of Gerald?”
“The explosion and fire were some big shock to him. I don’t think he’ll be looking for me at all. He was talking about finding a deep hole and pulling it in after him. If his boys are smart they’ll be doing the same thing.”
“If they’re smart. What else happened?”
“I think I met the alchemist; they called him Doc. He was drunk, but still had more brains than the others, he nearly spoiled the boom. I last saw him being hauled out a window, guess he got too much smoke. He was worried about what Slick would say once the news was out, which was why Paco was leaving town. Morelli holds all his markers.”
“He may have a difficult time collecting now.”
“I . . . I started to remember things, Paco’s voice—I nearly had another seizure, but snapped out of it. I found out for certain I was killed aboard the Elvira for some kind of coded list. Paco and Morelli were both after it, so it wasn’t just the loan and money tying them together.”
“At one point it was you and what you knew.”
“When I didn’t talk . . . I know they beat the hell out of me before Paco . . .”
(He raised the gun to my chest and fired. The flash filled my eyes, I fell . . .)
My head bumped hard against the dashboard. My shoes were stained with grass and damp. Escott said my name in a worried tone and brought the car to a stop. He pushed me upright against the seat, and I shook my head like a dazed prizefighter, my eyes blinking as I tried to regain the present.
“Fleming?”
“I’m all right.” I was a little surprised; the guy was really concerned about me.
“You don’t look it,” he said.
My ears were ringing from the memory of the shot and I felt weak; my vision was fuzzy around the edges. The shock of memories coming back I couldn’t help, but I could handle the cause of these new symptoms.
“I just—just drop me at the Stockyards. I’ll walk home from there, if you don’t mind.”
He didn’t.
Maybe I’d talk with him later, for right now things in my stirred-up brain could wait. We were both tired. For something to do I opened the briefcase and rummaged through the papers. There was a lot of junk I didn’t feel like wading through just then. No doubt Escott would enjoy every bit of it later. Then I found an interesting item at the bottom of the case which I could immediately understand. If the printing on the homemade wrappers could be believed, I was holding five neat bundles of one hundred twenties—ten thousand dollars all in one lump sum sitting in the palm of my hand. After spending so many years living close to the edge, all that cash felt pretty damn good.
“Who says there’s no justice?” I mumbled.
“What?”
“You want some?”
Escott spared a glance at the money and managed not to run us off the road. “Well, well.”
“You think it’s marked?”
“Knowing Paco, I think not, but it won’t hurt to make a thorough check.”
“You mean we keep it?”
“Why not? You once asked me if I were rich. I said sometimes. This is one of those times. A little extra cash is always handy.”
“I thought you might be above this sort of thing.”
He looked pained. “A Private Agent is entitled to whatever rewards his conscience will permit. If this is Paco’s money, my conscience can become quite elastic. It is? Then I think we should consider this to be sufficient recompense for our work tonight. I shall put my share to good use, such as interior improvements to my home.”
If he meant his two-room office, he could use a lot of help there. I looked down at the shredded cloth on my stomach. “I think I’ll get some new clothes.”
Escott looked at the holes. “I thought I smelled cordite. What happened?”
“I annoyed Paco.”
He wisely decided to leave it at that.
After feeding and a good day’s rest I felt a lot better, and the next night I made an effort to find a men’s store that closed early, so I sifted through the ads in the papers, squinted at my map, and located a place nearby that might fill my needs. Then I went downstairs, got a handful of change at the desk, and folded myself into a phone booth. The operator put me through to Cincinnati.
“Hi, Mom. What’s going on?”
After last night I needed a dose of reality, and happily used up my change talking to her and Dad about mundane things. We argued about money a little.
“Don’t think we don’t appreciate this, Jack,” said Mom, “but you can’t afford to be sending us twenty-five dollars all the time. You have to save a little for yourself.”
I thought about the five thousand dollars Escott would be bringing by tonight. My current expenses were running about fifteen dollars a week, including rent and tips. My food, of course, was free. At that rate I could easily spare my folks twenty-five bucks a week for the next two years or more. Maybe by that time Roosevelt would have the economy back on keel.
“I’m saving a little.... How are my siblings?”
“What?”
“How’s the family? Any new nephews or nieces?”
“Yes, Sarah Jane wrote just the other day. . . .” And she went down the line chattering about my three brothers and three sisters and the growing brood of grandchildren, then had to hand the phone over to Dad.
“Where are you staying so we can write you?”
“I’m just at a small hotel for now, and I may be moving on if I find a better place,” I hedged. I didn’t want them knowing I was staying under an assumed name. I asked him about the store and about
his drinking buddies and what he thought about Hitler, safely distracting him away from questioning me. I’m a lousy liar at the best of times and my parents were always able to tell when I was trying to give them the business. The best thing was to keep my distance until I could figure out what was safe for me to tell them about my condition, or if I could tell them anything at all.
“What happened to all that reporting?” he demanded. “What’s all this about an ad agency? I thought all those places were in New York.”
“They have a few out here, and they pay good money to bright boys like me.”
“Like—what—oh, your mom asks when you coming back for a visit?”
“When I get a vacation.”
“When’s that?”
“I don’t know, I just started. Give me some time to get settled into things.”
“You know you got work here if you need it.”
“I know, and thanks.”
“Well, this is costing you a fortune. Write next time.”
“I will, don’t worry.”
He gave the phone over to Mom, who said pretty much the same stuff, then repeated it all over again to make sure I understood.
“And remember what I said about saving some for yourself.”
“Yes, Mom.”
“And be careful about what you eat. No drugstore hot dogs.”
“No, Mom, I promise.”
She said good-bye, gave the phone over to Dad again, and he told me to stay out of trouble, and we said good-bye.
I stayed in the booth for a while, my head down and a cold hard ache inside. I hadn’t been really homesick since I first left for the Army as a kid. At least back then I knew I could return again, that home and things would be the same as ever, but that was a kid’s thinking. Their lives had changed and I had changed and grown up. I didn’t necessarily like the situation, but there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot anybody could do about it.
I backed quickly out of the confining space of the booth and went outside, trying to put distance between myself and the loneliness. The depression followed, but its hold lessened with the distractions the long streets offered. Thirty minutes of roundabout walking put me in front of a men’s shop that had advertised in the papers.
