by P. N. Elrod
“I know, but I need the practice. I’m not so steady as I used to be.” He spread his fingers flat and exaggerated a tremor.
Then they looked at me for a reaction and found much to amuse them. Doc tied some gauze around my hand, finishing up just as Newton came back.
“I couldn’t find where he got in,” he said. “Everything’s shut and locked. He musta come in the window there.” He pointed across the room.
From the floor, Mac groggily disagreed. “Then the alarm woulda gone off.”
“The alarm did go off.”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t going when I got hit, and the only one who coulda hit me was this guy.” He jerked a thumb at me.
“Maybe the other guy socked you and you don’t remember. Why the hell’d you let him out?”
“He said he hadda use the can.”
“Oh, great.”
“You’da believed him, too. Besides, he could hardly walk.”
“Yeah, he was saving it up to run.”
“If you’d seen that fall he took down the stairs … ah, forget it. What I’m tryin’ to say is that he was in front of me the whole time and I got hit from behind. It was this one, all right. So how’d you get in the house, kid?”
“Through a window,” I answered truthfully. “Maybe the alarm’s busted in one of ’em, huh?”
“Oughta bust you myself, smart-ass.”
“Lay off,” said Newton. “I mighta missed something. You and Lester go check it again. And check on Angela, too. Make sure Vic’s behaving himself.”
“Where’s Opal?” I asked.
“Why you want to know? She your girlfriend?”
“Just wondered if she was okay, is all.”
“She’s just peachy. Come on, you mugs. Get the show on the road.”
Lester got Mac to his feet and helped him wobble out.
I appealed to Doc. “She all right?”
“Don’t worry about her, kid. She’s being looked after. She likes this place a sight better than where we found her.”
Angela barged in just then, her brows drawn together and her little mouth tight with a frown. “Newton, bring him along to the office.” She pointed at me and whipped out again, skirt swirling.
Newton got me off the table, but my legs were not cooperating too well. The shift from horizontal to vertical didn’t help my head. The ceiling swooped down, or seemed to, and I ducked in reaction.
“Hey, this ain’t a marathon dance, dummy,” he complained. “Walk.”
I did my best, but God, I was weak, like a battery out of juice. My cure, I desperately hoped, was simple enough. I needed blood, but was I too far gone to get it? And where to get it?
Newton grunted as he hauled me along. His heartbeat was steady and strong.
No. I stumbled away from that one.
“Doc, f’cryin’ out loud, gimme a hand with this wet noodle.”
Doc came up to take my other arm. “Sure he’s not malingering?”
“Huh?”
“Faking it.”
“Wish I were,” I gasped.
“What’s wrong with you, kid?”
“Angela dropped a grenade on me, what d’you expect?”
“Got a point there,” he admitted.
We reached the office and they hurried across the last few yards to dump me onto a sofa. It was crowded. Next to me and unmoved by the ruckus was Vic. He looked like I felt.
“Jeez, he’s heavy,” said Newton, puffing. Doc grunted agreement and headed for the liquor on the other side of the room. He poured out some whiskey and brought it over to me. I turned my head away from it, lips sealed tight with revulsion.
“Do you good, kid,” he advised.
My throat constricted. “Later. I … I couldn’t keep it down now.”
“I can believe that.” Doc decided not to let it go to waste and finished it off for me.
“What’s the matter with him?” demanded Angela, who was at the desk.
“Bad stomach,” I mumbled. “I’ll be all right.”
“Probably a case of the shakes,” said Doc. “Just a little reaction to what he’s been through.”
That’s for damn sure. I closed my eyes so things wouldn’t slip around so badly. If only the inside of my head would stop lurching as well.
“What’s going on?” he asked her.
She sank into the big chair under her father’s portrait. “I got a call from that English guy who says he’s Fleming’s friend.”
“The guy that just broke out? He’s got some nerve. Where is he?”
“He’d hardly let that slip, would he?”
“You never know. What’s he want?”
“He said he’s got information that’s going to affect my deal with Kyler. He’ll trade it for Fleming. I stalled him and told him to call back later.”
Doc put the glass back next to the bottle. “Must be a lie or else he’d have been using it to bargain for himself when we had him.”
“That’s what I’m going to find out. So what is it he knows, Fleming?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“Uh-huh. You’d better come up with something. I’m setting up a deal in a few hours that’s going to go right or else nobody’s walking back from it.”
Doc added, “That includes your friend Opal, kid.”
Angela picked up on his cue. “Newton, bring her down.”
He lumbered out. No one said anything while he was gone. Vic seemed to be asleep or passed out. Doc poured another drink and found a chair. Angela drummed her nails on the desk. When I shifted to a somewhat more comfortable position, she opened a drawer and drew out a gun. I behaved myself, being incapable of much else for the moment. Some of the nausea passed off, but I was still light-headed.
“This stinks,” came a familiar flat voice from the hall.
Newton pushed Opal into the room, still in her coat and galoshes, and shut the door, leaning against it. Opal glared at him, at all of them in turn, then, with some surprise, at me.
“You again?”
“It’s your lucky day, honey.”
She crossed her arms in disgust, her face set and hostile. “No, it’s not.”
I’d forgotten how literal she was.
Angela played with the gun, looking thoughtful. “Since she’s an accountant, she doesn’t need to walk much, does she?”
Opal’s attention shifted. Her eyes went wide.
“Now how about you tell me a few things before I blow off one of her kneecaps?”
She was her father’s daughter, all right. “Okay, you’ve made your point,” I said. “You can put that away.”
“When I’m ready. What is it your friend’s talking about?”
“I figure it has to do with Kyler.”
“So could any grade schooler. What is it?”
“Look, I don’t care anything about your deal with him. I just want to get away from this place and be left alone. I’ll trade what I know for a fast route out of here.”
“That depends on what you know.” Her tone was cautious, but she was interested.
“It’ll help you all right. None of this is really my show now, but I’d like to see Opal back where she belongs—”
“Then talk.”
My lids suddenly shut down. Instant day. I wasn’t there for her to yell at anymore.
(Talk, Fleming. I swam in my own sweat, sick from fear and the stink of Morelli’s damned cigar and Frank Paco breaking my ribs and laughing about it….)
My head twitched, as though I’d been lightly slapped.
Liquid fire seared my tongue. A few drops got down my throat before I suddenly choked and coughed explosively.
“Shit,” complained Doc, who had been in the way. “What a waste of good booze.”
“What’s wrong with him?” Angela irritably demanded.
“Damned if I know, girl.”
Like the room, time had shifted, tossing me back to last summer for a hellish second. There’s nothing in the human experience that can
be fairly compared to the memory of one’s own death. I’d remembered mine just then because I was facing it again.
Doc looked me over, his expression growing long and serious as he peeled back my eyelids. He tried to get my pulse again, but I yanked my arm away. He settled for putting the back of his hand on my damp brow. That’s when he must have caught the deathsmell scent coining from me. It a smell could have a color, this one was yellow. Nothing to do with personal courage, that’s just how it seemed to me.
Maybe to both of us; he straightened and turned to Angela and didn’t say anything. She got the message. She came around the desk to see better. It confirmed what she’d read from Doc, and her manner changed somewhat.
Her voice softened, no longer resembling her father’s buzz-saw snarl, which had helped push my memory down its unpleasant path in the first place. “Come on, Fleming. You tell me what you know and I’ll send you back home, safe and sound.” A softer voice and her eyes … Lord, I could get very seriously lost in those big brown pools.
Then it seemed as though my deafness returned for a few moments. I torgot about all the others around us. I could hear only Angela’s heart, sense only her light breath whispering in the air between us. She caught and held it and leaned closer to me. Her eyes went dull, gaze locked solidly upon mine.
This was as different from my normal hunger as a bonfire is to a candle. She was entirely desirable, but not as a woman, as food. I recognized the feeling well enough, but was too far gone to worry about the immorality of it. A starving man doesn’t care much about such details; he just knows his need, and the hell with everyone else. My instinct to survive had simply taken over, trying to reach her, to bring her to me.
“Angela?”
And so Doc inadvertently cut the link I’d almost established with her. Half hypnosis, half sexual desire for beautiful Angela, all desperate, screaming appetite for me. I’d grown that hungry.
She, of course, had been unaware of any of it. “What?”
“You gonna talk with him or kiss him?”
“Don’t be an ass.” She automatically dismissed his suggestion rather than make a conscious admission that something out of the ordinary may have touched her. Just as well.
He gave a small shrug to indicate it was her business, not his. The damage had been done, though. The effort, slight as it was, had tired me further. Now I had just the one card left, the one Escott had managed to slip in through Angela.
She smoothly picked up where she’d left off. “How about it, Fleming? You’re right, I really don’t need you to pull this off, but if you can give me an edge over Kyler …” Then she began to shovel the snow on thick and deep and went to some trouble to pack it down solid.
“Deal,” I croaked, before her generous promises to preserve and reward me for my help got too embarrassingly out of hand.
Angela smiled, sunshine with dark eyes. And for me now, in this weakened state, sunshine was a guarantee of irreversible death.
I turned from the thought, concentrating on the real business. “Okay. Just a couple of questions: have you talked to Kyler already?”
“Yeah. We used Vic to get things rolling. Kyler’s thinking things over.”
“And you called him just a little while ago, right?”
She nodded.
“But did you actually talk with him?”
Her face darkened. “What are you getting at?”
I glanced at Opal, but couldn’t think of a way to make it easier for her. “Kyler’s dead. He’s been dead since before I came here.”
Opal made an indignant squeak of disbelief. Angela and Doc shifted with more subdued reactions.
“How do you know?”
“Because I was there when Chaven shot him.”
“Chaven?”
Then they crowded in to demand more details, first as total skeptics, then as half believers. I gave them the version I’d told Shoe Coldfield. There were a lot more questions and interruptions from them, but I had no trouble keeping my facts straight. I would not be forgetting what had happened for a very long time—if I had any left to me.
Angela may have known she wasn’t getting the whole story, but looked almost ready to accept what she had. “Can you prove this?”
“Not directly. If you send someone up on the main road to town they’ll find one of Kyler’s Cadillacs parked on the left-hand side. I hotwired it to get clear of them.”
“Anyone can grab a car,” Newton pointed out from his post by the door.
“Sure,” I agreed. “Nothing direct, like I said. You tell me, Miss Paco, who did you talk to on the phone?”
“With Chaven,” she cautiously admitted.
“As valuable as Opal is to Kyler’s organization, do you think he’d trust something as important as getting her back to one of his lieutenants?”
Her eyes got a lot brighter. “No. That’s the last thing he’d do.”
“I’d say that this is what Escott meant about it having a direct effect on things, wouldn’t you? Who you’re dealing with is just as important as what the deal’s all about. And if you’re still using Vic as a go-between, I’d watch him a little more closely than before.”
She glanced sharply at Vic, who had woken up at the news.
“He’s gotta be lying,” he mumbled out. “Chaven wouldn’t dare kill the boss.”
“Maybe not,” I said. “But he’s running things now and he needs Opal back.”
Opal sputtered, then found some words. “I don’t want to work for him!”
“Pipe down, cutie,” Newton told her.
“No. I worked only for Vaughn. I’m not working for Chaven.”
“You can hash things out with him yourself,” Angela snapped. “I’m getting my father back. You’re my best chance at it.”
Before Opal could open her mouth and possibly make trouble for herself, I interrupted. “I saw him tonight, Miss Paco.”
That grabbed her attention far better than the announcement of Kyler’s death.
“They had him off by himself in one of the rooms at Kyler’s road-house. He seemed okay.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’ve got no reason to. He’s a little thinner and thinks he’s still running all this.” I waved vaguely. “He called you mia Angelina.”
That tore it. Angela erupted from her spot, the energy all but sparking from her. She rapidly paced the office end to end; Doc and the others backed off to give her room to move. She stopped just as abruptly in front of me, her jaw working.
“Okay,” was all she said, talking more to herself than to the rest of us. She hated the fact that I’d seen him and she hadn’t. She hated it, but it was the proof that she needed. I was telling the truth, or as much of it as was good for me. I got the feeling that if her deal to get her father back didn’t work, she’d either keep me alive to drag out more details about him or use me as a target for another round of grenade tossing.
My distinction wasn’t enough to put off Opal, though. “Miss Paco?”
She turned a hostile face toward the girl, who was quite oblivious to her irritation.
“I said I don’t want to work for Chaven.”
“That’s your problem.”
“I thought I could work for you, instead.”
Angela’s jaw dropped. So did a lot of others, including my own. Angela wasn’t the only one who could toss a grenade. “You …”
Opal anticipated the first questions, her ready answers coming out in a monotone rush. “You can trade me, but I could come back. I’m good at numbers. I’m the best, that’s why Vaughn hired me.”
Doc came out with a noise that could be mistaken for laughter. “I’m sure that was very generous of him, little lady, but we’ve already got—”
“But I’m the best. You ask me anything about numbers and I know it.”
Doc nearly spoke again, but Angela waved him off. “Kyler wouldn’t waste his time on …” She struggled to come up with another way to finish her sentence.
/> Opal calmly finished for her. “An idiot. I know what you think. A lot of people think that way. All except Vaughn. He knew different. He was different. He could scare people for no reason. I’m different, but if it scares people, they hide it. That’s why they’ve always made fun of me, to show they’re not scared.
“He tell you that?” asked Angela.
“I figured it out. But I don’t want to scare people. I just want work where I can do numbers.”
“Damnedest job interview I ever heard of,” Doc muttered. “I’m sure you’re real good at those numbers, hon, but there’s more to it than that.”
Opal’s eyes narrowed with disgust. “Don’t call me ‘hon’.”
He sketched a mock salute. “Yes, ma’am.”
The sarcasm was lost on Opal. She turned her attention back to Angela. “What about it?”
“Doc’s right. In this kind of business you can’t just change sides without making a lot of trouble for yourself.” She looked significantly at Vic, whose jaw was still dusting the floor. “You can make a lot more trouble for me, because Chaven’s not going to be happy when he learns what you’ve got in mind.”
Literal as ever, she said, “I don’t care how he feels. I don’t want to work for him.”
“You’ve got my sympathy, but there’s nothing I can do to help you. No offense, but you’re just not worth the trouble you’ll cause.”
The idea that clicked on in Opal’s head was almost audible and certainly visible to all. She lobbed in her second grenade. “I can fix that. I could bring all the organization’s books out with me. That would make me worth the trouble, wouldn’t it?”
10
“DOUBLE-CROSSING bitch,” said Vic in the middle of an awful lot of silence.
“You should talk,” snapped Newton.
“ ’S not my fault. I did what I had to do. I didn’t want to work for Kyler.”
But Angela waved them both down, all of her attention focused on Opal. “You’re serious?”
Opal nodded. “I worked for Vaughn because he didn’t make fun of me. Chaven does. I don’t like him and I don’t want to work for him. I can take the books and bring them to you and you can run things, instead.” I think we all knew that she was telling the truth. Opal’s absolute literalness could be trusted.
