Everybody Had A Gun (19 page)

I didn't tell it, though.

I had to do something stupid. I guess it wouldn't have been me if I hadn't, and though I could see all the boys in the room in case they moved or started jumping up and down clicking their heels, I'd shoved Flick into the back of my mind and buried him there.

It wasn't smart. I should have known that in my excitement and hurry when I'd slugged him, I hadn't made sure of a good job, but there was no point in remembering now.

He didn't burst in and start blazing away at me, though. I didn't even see him. But as I lifted the receiver to my ear and glanced toward the door, I saw the little light bulb burning brightly above it. The elevator was already going up and I slammed the phone on the desk, jumped to the office door, and looked out. No Flick. He was on his way. I ran back to the squawking phone, grabbed it, and yelled to the man at the complaint board, "Gang killing at the Pit on Seventh. Dead guys all over," and even as I jammed the receiver back on the hook, the light over the door blinked out.

I jumped toward the door in the corner of the office, the one Marty had gone out of for the last time. It was locked, with no knob in sight, but I could see the keyhole where Marty had inserted his key. I didn't have time to start looking for his key ring; I knew damn well that Flick would head straight for Breed and spill the lowdown on me, and I knew what that would mean for Iris. I had to catch Flick or get out there before he did.

I jerked the gun from my pocket, aimed at where the lock should be, and fired two shots into the door. The wood splintered. I kicked the door and it gave; one more kick and it was open. I found the ladder Sader had mentioned, and went up it and into the alley. I could hear the police sirens now.

The black Cadillac was gone. As I ran toward the second car, the Plymouth, I started to jerk the clip from the butt of the automatic and check the full loads. I started to, but there was no need to do it. The slide stop had caught the slide and was holding it open, which meant the magazine was empty. What slugs I hadn't thrown around down below, I'd blasted through the lock on the door. I flipped the slide release, the slide snapped forward, and I dropped the empty gun in my pocket, then yanked open the Plymouth's door as the sad and eerie wail of the sirens grew louder in my ears.

Chapter Seventeen

THE KEYS were in the ignition.

I switched them on, ground the motor alive, and gunned ahead straight through to the end of the alley, then skidded around to my left in a screaming turn that slued the car from one side of Sixth Street to the other. I straightened the car out and jammed the accelerator to the floor boards.

As I barreled across Olive Street the sirens were shrieking close, and from the corner of my right eye I caught the red glare of the police spotlight on a car speeding hell for leather this way on a "Code 3." I kept my eyes straight ahead till I reached Figueroa, then ripped right toward the Freeway and the hell with one-way streets and stop signs. In two minutes I was roaring at eighty miles an hour down the six-lane highway. Up ahead I could see the bobbing red spot of a taillight I couldn't be sure that was Flick, but whoever it was, he was in one hell of a hurry. I was gaining on him, though, and that surprised me, because Flick was in the faster car. But, then, he wouldn't know I was back here.

Then I was almost certain it was Flick. The car ahead was black, and though it might well have been a Cad I couldn't be positive from this distance. But the outline was the same. And then it started pulling away from me—just what Flick would do when he realized somebody was coming like a bat out of hell behind him. I was sure that was Flick ahead of me now, and he was headed straight for Riverside Drive.

I flicked my eyes to the dash long enough to see the needle swinging between the eighty- and ninety-mile-an-hour marks. That was faster than I cared to go, ever, and I wished to Christ I had my Cad. It's old, but it's fast, and I know everything it can and can't do. But I sucked in a breath and shoved the throttle down as far as it would go.

Not much happened. Flick kept pulling away from me on this straightaway, then went out of sight around a curve, but the needle on the speedometer of the Plymouth crept slowly up to ninety-five and hung there quivering. I quivered right along with it. We were damn near there; it wasn't going to take any twenty minutes at this speed, and in a mile or less we'd hit the sharp and narrow left turn up ahead leading into Riverside Drive. I caught a glimpse of a taillight up ahead, flaring brighter, then it went out of sight again.

I was through the four tunnels and on the turn almost before I knew it, but I was already riding the brake. I gave it all I could without sluing into a skid, and the car's speed had dropped as I angled to the left and hit the inside of the curve.

I caressed that steering wheel as if it were a woman's thigh, eased the wheel over holding my breath and jamming my teeth together as the car reached the center of the short curve's arc, then slipped my foot off the brake and rammed it down on the accelerator, squeezing toward the outer edge of the road and the curb before the pavement and the low cement wall there. The motor roared and I heard the wheels skidding, spinning a little as the car slipped sideways, but I kept my foot on the throttle. If I let up now, I'd go right over the wall. She skidded some more, jerked slightly as the right wheels brushed the curb, and the cement wall on my right ripped backward past me like a white ribbon spinning past the car.

The road started to straighten out as the tires squealed, then I was gripping the wheel and the car was racing parallel to the curb, an inch or two from it, and still bearing to the left. But I wasn't skidding any more, and now the road was straight ahead of me. I went right through the stop sign beyond the end of the curve.

I wanted to stop the car. I'd made it up to here, but I wanted to get out of the Plymouth and lie down on the street and roll around. But I'd lost more ground; the red taillight was farther away, two or three hundred yards from me.

Then the light flared brightly as he braked and stopped, the rear end swaying as he skidded. Breed's. Breed's Finance Company, and Flick was there. But I was eating up the distance, and I was close enough to see a man leap from the right door of the car and turn up the walk as I started braking.

He was out of sight as I skidded a little, let up on the brake, then shoved it down again thirty feet from the Cadillac. The Plymouth slammed into the back of the Cad and shuddered to a halt as I jumped for the right door of the car and outside with the sound of shots crashing against my ears. I landed, sprawling, then got my feet under me and sprinted for the open door ahead, digging for the automatic in my pocket. An empty gun, but better than nothing.

There was no sound now except the slap of my feet on the pavement as I raced through the open door of the building and caught the flash of light spilling from the room in back. Except for the noise I made, the place was silent as death. And I had the tight, heart-laboring feeling that I'd find death inside that farther door standing ajar.

If I went in I had to go in fast, no matter what was in there and I kept my legs driving and hit the door with my extended left hand, the useless gun in my right. Pain leaped in my arm and chest as the door burst wide open and I leaped inside the room. I took two steps and stumbled over something on the floor, and fell to my knees, my left hand slipping through a slime of blood.

My head snapped down toward the floor as I fell and a spinning flash of white features and blood leaped up at me before I pulled my head up again and caught a blurred glimpse of Iris hanging forward in a wooden chair, her head drooping forward on her limp neck. And then I saw Collier Breed above me, a gun in his right hand slashing downward toward my head.

On my knees, I jerked to my right and the gun jarred against my left shoulder, pain knifing through my arm and chest. But Breed's fat paunch was right in front of my eves and I jammed the automatic in my right hand hard against it and damn near buried the gun in his flabby flesh.

Breed let out a panicky cry. "No, no! Don't—gun's empty! Don't shoot! Please, God, don't shoot!"

Hell, I wasn't about to shoot.

He dropped the empty gun to the floor and raised his hands high over his head. "Don't," he said again.

With his jelly paunch jutting out and his arms high over his head, Breed looked like a flesh copy of Hotei, the Chinese happiness god, only he wasn't happy. He was so nervous his lips were shaking and the loose jowls of his face were trembling.

"Turn around, Breed," I told him.

"Scott. Don't shoot me, Scott."

"Turn around, you bastard."

He turned around and I glance down again at the dead body of Flick on the floor. He was blood all over, and he'd been pumped full of holes. It was easy to figure now: Breed must have emptied his gun into the guy.

I glanced at the back of Breed's head. I wasn't going to shoot him, but I was going to try caving in his skull. It was getting to be a habit. It seemed as though I were making a career of batting guys on the head. This one, though, was going to be a pleasure.

I switched the empty gun around with the barrel in my hand and I asked Breed's back, "What's your name, boy?"

He said, "What?"

I said pleasantly, "That's the wrong answer," nodded happily at a spot over his head, hauled back my arm, and let him have it good.

He went plop on the floor and I looked down at him and I asked him, "How is it, boy?" Then I walked over to Iris.

She was still lashed to the chair where I'd last seen her, her head hanging forward. I didn't need to feel for her pulse; her breasts rose and fell with her slow breathing and color was in her face. I left her for a moment while I hunted up the lavatory. There was a washbasin there, and I ripped off a piece of my shirt and soaked it in water. She was still out when I got back. Before I touched her, I turned her chair around so she faced the wall, away from the bloody thing on the floor. Then I picked loose the ropes binding her wrists and held her while I pressed the cold, water-soaked rag against her forehead and the back of her neck. Finally her smooth lips twitched a little and her eyes fluttered.

It was plain enough what had happened here, but I wanted to get it from Iris, too. She probably wouldn't enjoy it; I imagine she was as shot as I was.

Her eyes opened and she blinked, her eyes not quite focusing. Then she gasped, opened her mouth wide, and screamed right in my face. I slapped her once, hard, and the scream stopped abruptly.

"It's all right, Iris," I said. "It's O.K. Relax."

She blinked at me, then sighed deeply, put her head down, and shuddered. When she looked at me again I said, "Hello, honey," and she sobbed, "Oh, Shell," and put her head forward on my chest and sobbed some more. She wasn't crying, just gasping and sobbing, saying, "Oh," over and over.

Finally she smiled a little. "I'm all right now."

"Can you tell me about it?" She nodded. Then she sat quietly for a few moments. I said, "Hang on a second, honey," took the ropes I'd untied from Iris, and went back to Breed. He was lying forward on his face, and I put his arms behind his back and cramped his legs up next to them and hog-tied him, which seemed appropriate for Breed. When I let him go he looked as if he'd rock back and forth if you pushed him, like one of those curved desk blotters.

As I looked at him lying on his stomach I noticed that, while his fat buttocks bulged up into the air under the sloppy triangle made by his bound arms and legs, the left half bulged better. And right then it occurred to me that either he was deformed or else he'd suddenly become my client and I was going to get a fee out of this mess.

He wasn't deformed. I slipped my hand into his pants pocket and pulled out a wallet that was as much overweight as Breed was. I looked inside the wallet and eyed a flock of green bills and deliberated at length for maybe half a second, thinking that I'd been shot at, roughed up, and sapped while Breed gazed happily at me, and that all because of him I'd been recently surrounded by so much blood that I'd felt like a red corpuscle—and surely, in view of all the unrest he'd caused me, he wouldn't begrudge me a small fee.

I pulled out eight C notes and four fifty-dollar bills and transferred them to my wallet. On one of my business cards I wrote the date and scribbled, "Received from Collier Breed $1,000 for services endured," signed it "Shell Scott," and put the card in his wallet and the wallet back in his pants. There was enough left in the wallet so that he still looked deformed.

Feeling jollier than I had for hours, I went back to Iris, kneeled down by her, and asked her to fill me in from the start.

She began, "He—Breed—kept getting more and more nervous after all of you left. He asked me if I knew Flick was working for Sader. I kept it the way you'd started it, told him I thought so, that I'd seen them together."

She took a deep breath, then went on. "When it was time for that man, that Lonely, to phone him, he started walking back and forth, back and forth. Finally he dialed the phone himself. I think he called the Pit. He talked to somebody there, then hung up and just sat for a long time. He looked worried and frightened." She put a hand to her head and shook it. "Still a little dizzy," she said.

"I'll get you some water. But, Iris—don't turn around."

She flinched. "I won't."

I found a glass in the washroom and filled it with water for her. I could see what had happened to Breed: when Lonely hadn't phoned him, Breed must have called the Pit while the police were there and found out enough to scare the pants off him. Then he knew damn well I'd been giving him a snow job, and he must have figured Flick was right in it with me. And Flick was the boy I'd said was supposed to murder Breed. No wonder he'd been nervous.

I took the water back to Iris, and she went on after she drank it. "Breed got out the gun he had, mumbling to himself about you and about Flick. I couldn't understand it. He didn't say anything to me. After a while I heard a car drive up outside and someone running up the walk. Breed jumped to his feet and pointed the gun at the door and—and Flick came running in. Breed shot him. He shot him and kept on shooting. I'm afraid I fainted."