Have Gat—Will Travel (22 page)

She pulled away from me, suddenly remembering where she was, suddenly remembering the danger around us.

"Hammond is here. That is all." She spoke in short phrases, her breathing as unsteady as my own. "Rath was . . . just getting ready to . . ." She shuddered. "I thought he was going to kill you with the knife. We heard something outside. I did not know what or who it was. When I saw you, I thought he would kill you."

I got off the bed, moved away from her, the gun in my hand again. "What about the others?"

"Hammond only is here. Downstairs. I do not know where." She paused. "Shell, what are you going to do?"

I grinned at her, the blood pounding through my veins, thundering in my head. "I'm going to kill him."

She licked her lips and stared at me, leaned back on the bed with her arms behind her, conical breasts thrusting forward, stomach sucked in sharply, the long smooth sweep of thigh and leg extending to the floor. She didn't speak.

I left her there and found stairs leading into darkness below me and I walked down them, almost floating, alive in every pore and atom of my being. Then there was a hallway, light seeping under a door. I opened the door, stepped quietly inside.

Arthur Hammond stood at a bookcase on my right, his back to me. On his left a few feet away was a polished desk. There was a snub-nosed revolver on its top, out of place and ugly against the gleaming wood. Hammond's coat was off and I could see the strap of a shoulder harness he was still wearing. He must have taken the gun from its holster and put it on the desk top once he was safe in his home. He hadn't yet heard me.

I pointed my gun at his back, thumbed the hammer on full cock, let my finger tighten ever so lightly on the trigger.

"Hammond," I said softly.

He turned, placing his finger between the pages of a book he held in his hands. "What?" He blinked at me. For an eternity he stared at me, uncomprehending, then his features slackened as if the muscles that held his face to the skull were dissolving beneath the skin. His jaw sagged, his pouchy cheeks drooped, and he began to tremble.

"No, no," he said, his voice quavering. "Wait. Please wait." I could hardly hear him; his voice was a whisper floating in the room.

"This is it, Hammond," I said. "For killing Pete Ramirez. For a lot of things that you've done."

"I didn't kill him. I didn't." He said the same thing five or six times, unable to take his eyes from the bore of the gun I pointed at him. My finger almost trembled on the trigger. The gun had a soft pull and I knew just a breath more pressure and the hammer would fall, the pin would strike, the slug would rip into Hammond's fat, quivering body. He knew it too. He kept talking, repeating the same words over many times, but he never stopped, as if he knew that once he stopped speaking, a bullet would slam into him, rip into his heart or his brain.

"I didn't kill him. It was a drug. In the gum. It couldn't kill him. Please. It was Rath, he gave it to him, put it in his pocket after he hit him. The kid wasn't supposed to get killed, just lose the race. I had to make him lose."

"But it killed him, Hammond, as surely as if you'd shot him. He might have died even if he hadn't fallen."

T
hat was the first time I'd spoken for quite a while, and it seemed to break the almost hypnotic spell that had gripped him. He put his hands out in front of him and moved sideways a little — toward the desk.

He reached to his cheek and pinched it hard, unconscious of the movement. "Let me go, Scott," he said.

"No."

"I haven't done anything. You were right about the races, but I didn't mean to kill Ramirez. I had to win. I'd already wired the name of the winner, Ladkin, to the men in Los Angeles. He had to win. They'd have killed me." He kept moving slowly toward his desk. His body hid the gun from my sight now, but his hands were still in front of him.

"What men in Los Angeles, Hammond?"

He gave me some names, rapidly. They didn't mean anything to me — but they would to Cookie Martini. Then he said, "I'll make you rich if you let me go, Scott. We pick the winner here and bet on the other horses to make the odds right. There's books in the States, and some here, that take Mexico bets. There's millions in it. I'll make you rich." His right hand rested on the edge of the desk behind him.

"How do you pick the winner, Hammond?" Just a little more time, I thought. He was going to try it soon. He kept edging closer to the gun.

"We know from friends, when a horse is ready for a good race. About the jockeys, we . . . bought a couple. One other was married, stepping out with a chippie, and we held that over him. Ramirez was just . . . a mistake, Scott, a bad break." He was getting some of his nerve back now. "Listen, Scott," he said. "Be sensible. You can take me in to the cops, but they won't keep me. You know Valdez? He won't let a rap stick. He'll cover for me, fix any charges. There's no proof anyway. You can't win, Scott. And I'll give you a hundred thousand dollars."

"That's not enough." His hand was out of sight behind him now; I knew he had his hand on the gun, was just working his nerve, pushing himself to the point where he could make his try. And I knew Hammond was telling the truth. I couldn't make a charge against him stick. Not here. And Valdez would get him out of any mess I got him into.

"I'll give you more, anything, anything you want."

"It's not enough."

He bit his lips. "You're a fool, Scott. Every man has a price. You've got a price, too, I know it." His voice got higher and louder as he kept on. "You're stupid, stupid. I can pay you; you're —"

It was a fool thing to do, but he did it. He dropped suddenly to the floor, his face as frightened as any face I've seen, but he swept the gun out in front of him, firing before the gun was pointed within a yard of me. He would have kept on firing, too, but I put that extra breath of pressure on the .38's trigger and it roared and flame spat toward Hammond's belly. He jerked as the slug struck and then I fired again, saw the small hole appear over his heart.

He slumped back against the desk and his head fell forward. He still had the gun in his hand, though, and I couldn't take any chances. I shot him in the head. Yeah, that was sure a damn-fool thing for Hammond to do. But I had to pull the trigger. I had to defend myself. Hell, he was going to shoot me.

He didn't move any more. He wouldn't. I couldn't help thinking that Hammond had been right: like everybody else I had my price; he'd just paid it. And I also thought that Valdez or Rath would have a hell of a time getting Hammond out of this mess.

There were still a few tag ends, including Kelly and the other strong-arm boy, but they could wait. I left Hammond on the floor and went out, back up the stairs. Most of all, I wanted to get the hell out of there before any of the boys showed up. Taking care of them was one thing. Meeting them in their own back yard was another. I ran up the stairs quickly.

When I opened the door, Elena was still on the bed but her hands were pressed tightly against her eyes. I shut the door behind me. Slowly she took her hands from her eyes and looked at me. She looked at me for a long time as the fright left her face. When she spoke her voice was tight.

"I'm going to pieces, Shell. I was going crazy. I heard shots. I . . . thought it might be you. And I wanted you to come back to me." She bit her lips, moved slightly on the bed, light gleaming dully on her nakedness.

"Get a coat on," I said. "Fast. We've got to get the hell out of here."

I was still feeling high, the blood still rushing through my veins and setting up a terrible din in my head. She grabbed a coat from the closet, a man's raincoat, shivered into it, and took one last look at Rath, dead and bloody on the floor.

"Let's go," she said, turning away. "Let's get the hell out of here, Shell. . . . "

She still was wearing the raincoat much later, but it wasn't covering a hell of a lot of her. It was open at the throat, spread in a wide V that gashed down to the tightly belted waist. Her legs were tucked under her sofa, in her apartment, and I was sitting next to her and marveling about the wonderful raincoats they were turning out these days.

The drug had worn off now, but who the hell needed it any more? I leaned toward her, pulling her close to me. She ran a hand over the tape on my chest.

Her face was an inch from mine when she said softly, her eyes heavy-lidded and her mouth slack with passion, "You are hurt. But I will be careful with you, my Shell. You will see."

I pulled her tight against me, kissed the corner of her mouth, her cheek, then with my lips against her ear I whispered, "Elena, honey, be as careless as you like."

THE END