Everybody Had A Gun (7 page)

He kept the little smile on. "What can I do for you, Mr. Scott?" I almost grinned. He acted as if I were a customer instead of a man with a gun on him. I said, "Just everybody keep still for now."

I was tired of trying to watch all three men at once. I jerked my head at the tall thin character up against the wall. "You," I said. "With your left hand, very slowly, take out that gun you're carrying. Thumb and first finger

—and your left hand."

He didn't move right away. He glanced at Marty Sader and I could see Sader nod his head slightly. Damn it! I was supposed to be in charge.

But the thin guy eased his hand up slowly, got two fingers on the gun, and pulled.

"On the floor," I said. "Drop it."

He dropped the gun.

"Now you," I said to the other one. "Same deal. And no tricks if you're left-handed."

He hadn't moved since I busted in. Maybe he hadn't even breathed. I didn't expect any tricks from him and I didn't get any. He dropped the gun on the floor.

"O.K.," I said. "Kick 'em over toward me, then shove your coats back off your shoulders. Both of you. Leave your arms in the sleeves, but drop the coats down to your elbows."

The thin guy started to say something, but stopped. He shrugged and they did as I'd said. That was the best I could do for the moment, but they'd have a hard time pulling anything or pumping me with their arms cramped in their coats.

I looked at Sader. "Your turn."

He kept smiling. "Interesting, Mr. Scott. Neat enough. But I never carry a gun."

He grabbed the lapels of his black suit gingerly and pulled them apart. No shoulder holster.

"Shove back from the desk," I told him. He moved back. "Now stand up and try it again."

He got up and held the coat out from his body.

"Turn around."

"All right," he said easily.

There wasn't a gun in sight anywhere, but I said, "Now the coat pockets, Sader. Inside out."

He shook his black head. "I'll say one thing for you, Mr. Scott. You're thorough." His white, pleasant smile came back. "Maybe that's why you're still alive."

While I tried to figure out if there were anything between those lines, he started to dip his right hand into his right coat pocket.

"Uh-uh," I said. "Left hand."

"Awkward," he grumbled, but he reached across his body, first with the left hand, then with the right, and turned the pockets inside out. If he had a gun on him I'd eat it.

"All right, Mr. Scott? That enough? This isn't very neat—and there's a lady present."

I wonder what it took to get him rattled. I nodded at him and walked over to Iris. She whispered to me, but there was no point in whispering. It was so loud and ragged you could hear it bouncing off the walls.

"Thank God you came! They'll kill us. They'd have killed me, Shell. Get me out of here." She was coming apart at her beautiful seams. I listened, but somehow she didn't have to repeat that bit about Marty's wanting to kill us; even if it didn't make good sense yet, that idea had never been out of my mind. Well, I'd wanted in here, and I was here, and now that I was, I was dying to get far away.

Iris' hands were taped together, and I reached behind her and felt for the end of the tape and yanked. She let out a little gasp, but in a few seconds she had her hands free and was rubbing them together.

Then she stood up and pressed against me, clinging to my left arm. This was one hell of a time for her to start pressing against me, but I didn't shove her away. I'm weak. I could feel her heart beating fast like a rabbit's.

She whispered, "I'm sorry. I'm so damned sorry."

Sader spoke up. "It won't work, Scott."

"What won't work?"

"You won't get out. Even if you should, you couldn't get far. It will take you exactly sixty seconds to go up in the elevator." He stopped speaking and frowned. "How did you—" He clamped his teeth together and ridges of muscle bulged at the sides of his square jaw. He glanced up toward the ceiling above the wall in front of him—the wall separating this office from the rest of the club. I followed his gaze and saw a small unlighted light bulb above the close door leading into the club. He looked back at me and said, "But of course you didn't use the elevator. Stupid of me. I deserve this."

Then he glared at Iris. It had suddenly hit him how I'd come in—and how Iris had got away from him earlier. He said to her, "Then I did lock you in, didn't I? I'm glad to know I wasn't that careless." He shrugged and added more to himself than to any of us, "I've been careless enough."

Iris whispered, "Let's go. Let's get out of here."

That was fine. That was great. What were you supposed to do, dissolve? I couldn't see both of us squeezing into that dumb-waiter. Not that it wouldn't have been fun; there just wasn't room. And, besides, our three chums couldn't be expected to twiddle their thumbs while we played footsie in the dumb-waiter. Or, for that matter, while we were crawling twenty feet in an elevator.

Sader said to me, "Complicated, isn't it, Mr. Scott?"

They were just idle words. I could have sent Iris up the lift while I stayed here like Galahad, but I was damned if I was letting her out of my sight again till she'd cleared up all the loose ends that were dangling around me. But there had to be another way out besides the dumb-waiter and the slow-moving elevator.

"Sader, how about that front exit? There must be more ways out of here than the elevator. Where are they?"

He looked at me and shook his head slowly.

"I'd hate to rough you up, Sader. But we're leaving."

He didn't say anything.

I was temporarily stumped. I could shoot them all, but obviously if I entertained ideas like that I was getting as near the padded cells and strait jackets as Mrs. Sader had appeared to be. Or I could simply bat them all on the head—during which process I'd probably get well batted myself.

I said, "Look, Sader. You haven't got a prayer. I can work on you guys one at a time or all at once, but you'll spill."

He started to speak, but though his mouth stayed open, he didn't say anything. He was looking over my head toward the door again. I turned sideways and glanced up where he was staring. The light I'd noticed him look at before was burning brightly now.

"What does that mean?" I asked him.

He frowned. "It means we're having company. That light goes on whenever the elevator starts down. It's—ah—a precautionary measure."

And then I remembered the Plymouth that had whizzed by me when I'd been standing in front of Clark's Cafeteria. I tried it for size.

I said, "That reminds me. Before I dropped in here I noticed one of Breed's boys up in the alley. Seemed like he was waiting for something."

"Breed!" For the first time he lost some of his noise. But not for long; I don't imagine he ever lost it for long. He said rapidly, "Perhaps I've acted hastily, Mr. Scott. There is another exit in this very room. In the corner." He jerked his head toward the corner of the room at his right. "You can see it if you look closely enough. Even from where you are. Here." He ignored the gun I had on him and fished in his pants pocket. He pulled out a key ring, separated one key, and placed the ring on the desk. "That unlocks it. There are steps up to the alley at street level. You may leave."

What the hell? I stood stupidly in the middle of the room with Iris pressed warm and close against me while the seconds ticked away.

Sader added, "I told you it takes one minute for the elevator to reach the floor. That light"—he nodded toward it—"goes off when the elevator stops. We have about twenty or thirty seconds left."

Seconds left for what? Why was this guy so anxious to get rid of me now, when a minute ago he wouldn't budge? My brain was vibrating like jiggled jello and I was getting nothing but a headache. I didn't trust Sader from one atom to another, but I couldn't figure this. It could be Breed or some of his men on their way down, and it could also be some of Sader's chums. Or, for all I knew, it could be a real gorilla. Whatever it was, I didn't like Sader's abrupt about-face.

He said quickly, "Are you leaving, Mr. Scott?"

The guy was too anxious, rushing me too fast. I said, "I'm curious about this, Sader."

He licked his lips, and I thought he got a little paler under his tan. He reached out slowly and picked up the keys. He said, "Then I'm leaving. You'll have to let me leave, Scott." His voice was tight, and he licked his lips again, but he walked stiffly away from the desk and stopped at the corner of the room, and I heard the scrape of the key in a lock.

I stared at him. I was pretty sure he didn't know me well enough from our very brief association to be sure that I wouldn't shoot, and as far as he was concerned he was taking a chance on a slug in the back. While I looked at Sader, just swinging the door open, I thought of that elevator and wondered if some of Breed's men were coming to this party—and right then a picture flashed through my mind of Breed somewhere, snarling and saying, "If that ass, Scott, sticks his nose in my business just once more, he'll be the late Shell Scott."

Sader started out into the darkness beyond the door, and if I'd felt like it I could have shot him in the back of the head. I almost felt like it. The two other guys against the wall suddenly scrambled after him and out of the door, their coats still down off their shoulders.

I let them go. All I wanted right now was to get Iris and me to a reasonably safe place—if there was one for me in L.A. any more—but I was afraid if we followed Sader out the door we might be stepping into some kind of trap. Even as I watched it, the door slammed shut and decided that angle for me. The door had probably locked, but even if I didn't have to shoot off the lock, I didn't like the idea of stepping into that darkness.

I snapped at Iris, "Baby, I've been confused long enough. What the hell is this all about?"

"Sader will kill us," she said. "He wants to kill us."

This gal was stuck on that line. I told her, "You said that before—and I was already convinced. Now, why?"

"He shot that man in the paper-that Lobo."

I opened my mouth to ask her what that had to do with us, and then I noticed the light over the door on my left blink out.

Chapter Seven

"COME ON!" I grabbed Iris by the arm and ran with her back out the door I'd first come in. I shut it quietly behind us and we were in darkness. I left her for a moment, stepped to the dumb-waiter, and threw the doors wide open. At least Iris could get out of the way.

Sure. Next week, maybe. My groping hand found a mess of space and a rope. Cookie or the boss had retrieved their property.

It had been five or ten seconds since the light winked out. I stepped back to Iris and grabbed her arm with my left hand. This whole party was making a little more sense now, and whoever the visitors were, I was pretty sure they weren't going to kiss us. If I remembered the setup of the club, we were now almost at the opposite side from the elevator, with the main room straight ahead through some draperies.

"Iris," I whispered, "where's the entrance from here into the club?"

She didn't answer, but pulled me by my left hand through the darkness. I hoped she knew what she was doing; I'd have hated kicking a gong around right now.

She stopped, and when I put my hand out I could feel the drapes I remembered. I pulled at them and looked through the opening in the middle.

Over at the right of the darkened club, the electrically operated door of the elevator was about half open, light spilling out of it from its one dim bulb, shining part way across the main room of the Pit. We couldn't stay where we were. I grabbed Iris by the hand and slipped through the curtains and into the room as guys started coming out of the elevator.

I didn't have to tell Iris to be quiet; we could both see the men on our right in the light from the elevator, even though they couldn't see us—yet Four guys came out, and four guns were in their respective fists.

What I wanted to do—the only thing I could think of doing now—was to get to the far side of the club and around to the far side of the elevator while the four guys were going to our right. I put my mouth up to Iris' ear and said, so softly she must have had to strain to hear me, "Get to the far wall of the club. Can you lead the way without banging anything?"

She squeezed my hand, moved out in front, and started pulling me after her. The faint light from the elevator didn't reach this far across the room, and I could have banged into a table or chair before I ever saw it. I hoped Iris knew her way around well enough to get us across. There was carpeting under our feet, so we moved soundlessly enough as long as we didn't bang anything, and we might be O.K. if nobody found a big light switch.

I figured if we could get around the club and to the elevator before the four guys finished—Damn! There were five guys.

The fifth one came out of the elevator and stepped around to his left and stopped right on the fringe of the light that had outlined him. I didn't see a gun in his hand, but it wasn't tough to imagine one.

Iris slowed up and pressed my hand and I yanked my head around from where I'd been staring to my right and looked at her almost indistinguishable outline ahead of me. Then she moved slowly to her left and I followed. I put out my hand and it brushed against a cloth-covered table. Then she started moving faster, making time till we reached the far side of the club.

I got my mouth up against her ear again and said, "Take a right now, honey. Keep it going. Those boys won't be in Sader's office long."

Apparently there wasn't anything in front of us now, and in five seconds we were across the room and about fifteen feet from the elevator. The guy who'd remained behind was on the opposite side of the elevator from us, leaning up against the wall. I could barely see him, close as he was to the light, and I knew he couldn't see us. Not yet. But I'd have to get closer if we wanted out. I started ahead and shoved Iris back as she tried to follow me. Then I bent over and moved forward.

I was ten feet from the guy when he moved. I sank down to my knees, with my revolver centered on his middle just in case. But nothing happened. I dug in my pants pocket with my left hand, found a coin, and pulled it out. I could make out the form of the guy a few feet from me, his right profile toward me, but I couldn't tell who he was. I drew back my left hand, then tossed the coin by him and twenty feet beyond as I got my feet under me, ready to jump forward.