Terror comes creeping (8 page)

"You always take off the armor first, Danny!" she

said.

Her right hand gripped my shoulder, pushing me onto my back, and then she fell on top of me, her lips pressing hard against mine. I put my hands on her shoulders for a moment, pulling her even closer, then let them slide gently down her back to the waistband of the panties. She shivered violently and the tip of her tongue began a questing search between my lips. I let my hands continue on their way, sliding the soft silk down over her hips.

From somewhere out in the night, a bird called suddenly in a harsh note of triumph.

Deven

I CHECKED MY WATCH WHICH SAID IT WAS FIVE AFTER

two. The moonlight still flooded the landscape, the air was just a little crisper. Sylvia stood beside the station wagon, the gold lame glowing softly along with her. She wasn't shivering any more.

"Danny, lover," she said. *T don't want to go back inside that house—not now I know about that pigpen and—"

"You have to go back, honey-chile," I said patiently. "For the girls' sake anyway. If you don't come back, Tolvar and the others will get worried—they might panic and do something to the girls. You have to show up there."

"What are you going to do about the body?" she said. "You can't just leave it there!"

"I called the gendarmes once and they figure it as a 62

lousy practical joke," I said. "If I try to tell them a second time there's a body in that pen, they'll most likely have me committed!"

"You have to do something!"

"Check," I said. "I'm working on it. You just try and act as if nothing's happened. I'll come back through the day and maybe have a concrete idea of how to handle it. Just don't worry, honey-chile."

"O.K., Danny," she smiled up at me. "Whatever you say. I don't mind being kissed by a knight with his armor on!"

I kissed her goodbye over a brief five-minute period, then walked across the road and got into my car. I lit a cigarette and waited until the station wagon moved off along the road and turned in along the tracks to the farmhouse.

Another half-hour and I'd be back at the hotel comfortably in bed, I figured, and it was a welcome prospect —I reached out to turn on the ignition and at the same moment the cold rim of a gun muzzle bored into the back of my neck.

"You got a right to relax, you been a busy Boyd!" a clipped voice said close to my ear. "Just don't move, huh? I got a nervous finger."

"I've got a nervous body," I said. "You should worry about a finger!"

"It's you got to worry about the finger," Tolvar said amiably. His free hand lifted the Magnum out of the harness in a routine which was getting to be monotonous.

"Cheez!" he said. "How many guns you got?"

"Not enough—if I keep losing them to you the way I am lately," I said. "How long have you been in the back of the car?"

"Thirty minutes, maybe more," he said. "I was getting kind of cramped on the floor back there. You must have made a score with nursie, huh, you were away so long?"

"She's just a nice kid," I said easily.

"Hot-blooded underneath the cool freeze she gives 63

you," he said enthusiastically. "I go for a dame like that —more kicks that way. Maybe I'll give her a run after you're out of circulation."

That was a conjecture, like they say in television courtrooms, and I let it ride—either way there was nothing in it for me.

"You're the kind of guy who don't learn, Boyd," he said after a few seconds' silence. "Last time we met, I told you to lay off the Hazelton family, but you didn't take the hint. Now it's got so you're embarrassing people."

"Look," I said wearily, "like it's late, like I'm tired, like I know you're a real tough Joe—so save the tough dialogue for impressing the clients, huh? What happens now—you slug me again?"

"You're going out of circulation, Boyd," he said easily —and I thought that maybe his worst character trait was that you couldn't annoy him—not with words anyway.

"You're back on that old hat dialogue again," I said. "I'm going out of circulation—what the hell does that mean? You figure I'm a newspaper—or a pint of blood?"

"Like when you got to go, you got to," he said amiably. "It's the end of the line—you wind up in the obituary notices that nobody even reads."

"You didn't call it the big sleep, anyway," I said. "1 guess that's something."

"Be my guest," he said. "You can start the motor now, Boyd—we'll get it finished with, huh?"

"That private eye's license you've got," I said, "it maybe allows you to get away with killing somebody in self-defense if you got a minimum of six eye-witnesses to swear it was self-defense; but nobody gets away with murder."

"Start the motor!" He jabbed the gun muzzle hard into my neck as a persuader. "You want me to bust out crying?"

"I'll put it another way," I said patiently. "No hard, 64

two-syllable words that you won't understand. We both make the same kind of living out of the same racket. I never had a client yet who could pay the kind of money I'd want to commit murder—and neither have you. So why all the build-up? You want to scare me—O.K., I'm scared. Now what?"

"You start the motor and drive—or I slug you and drive myself," he said. "Which way will you have it?''

I started the motor and drove the car out onto the road again, heading back toward Providence.

"That's better," Tolvar said. "Just keep on driving and we'll get along fine."

"I'd like that," I said earnestly. "Us beatniks wan; nothing better than to communicate—a free exchange of souls. Man! That's when id digs id and ego digs ego!"

"I figure I will slug you and drive myself," Tolvar said seriously. "Listening to that kind of jive sours my stomach!"

"Just trying to find a common meeting-ground," I said. "If I light a cigarette will it make you nervous?"

"Nothing makes me nervous," he said. "It's only that finger of mine gets a nervous twitch now and then. If you're real careful with the smoke, I guess the finger won't worry."

I got the pack out of my coat pocket slowly, and slid a cigarette into my mouth, and lit it from the lighter on the dash.

"Where are we going?" I asked. "Or is that a secret between you and the wheels?"

"We'U keep it for a surprise," he said. He pulled a sudden switch in the conversation. "Where were you and nursie all that time out back of the farmhouse?"

"In the barn," I said.

"Pete checked the barn," he grunted. "Try again."

"He checked the bam all right," I said. "But not the hayloft."

"Yeah?" he chuckled throatily. "I bet you had yourself a time up there—you sure didn't hurry."

"Us beats were just communicating," I said. "You got a new word for it—I got to remember that!" he said. " 'Doll, why don't we communicate?' Sounds kind of refined, don't it? Even the broads go for refinement. How did you come to latch onto the West dame tonight?"

"Lucky break," I said, "or I figured it was until you popped up from the back seat. I registered at the hotel, walked down into the lobby looking for a drink—and there she was, looking for a drink. It kind of developed from there."

"You need to do better," he said dryly. "Try again." "It's a fact," I said. "You think she'd have walked back into the house tonight if she had any idea what's going on? Or maybe she does, huh? She's in it with the rest of you and she was put up as bait for me tonight?" We came into an outer speed zone and I eased my foot off the gas pedal.

"What now?" I asked him. "This is Providence." "Yeah," he sounded surprised. "So it is—O.K., turn round and head back." "You're serious?"

"Sure—I like to drive at night—I got insomnia!" I slowed the car, made a U-turn and headed back the way we'd come. Tolvar's gun was still firm against the back of my neck. I drove for maybe ten minutes in silence, trying to figure the point of the ride, and giving up. "How much do you know about this caper?" I asked him when we were maybe three minutes away from the farm.

"More than you, pal," he said.

"You know somebody's been killed already?" I said. "You know what you're mixed up in—the body's buried in one of the pigpens right now!"

"Wrong, pal," he said easily. "Not now—it used to be, but while we've been riding, that cadaver's been shifted."

"I hope they're paying you enough to compensate for fifteen to twenty years in Sing Sing," I said.

"They're paying enough," his voice got enthusiastic. "This is the one big caper I've been looking for the last ten years, Boyd, and there's no chance of it going wrong."

"A lot of guys have said that."

"Ten lousy years," he said. "A private eye with a rathole for an office and clients who were right at home the moment they walked in the door! A good week I pick up maybe a couple of hundred bucks, a bad week I don't make the rent. More bad weeks than good, and a guy's getting older all the time. Then—out of nowhere—Blooey! The big caper—bingo, and it's all over. I quit with enough money to live the way I always wanted. That's the deal, Boyd, and you tell me there's six more cadavers I don't know about and it makes no difference."

"You sure had a hard life," I said. "It's a shame you lived so long already!"

"Turn in through the gates," he said coldly. "Halfway down the tracks, cut the motor and let her roll until I tell you stop—and cut the headlights at the same time."

I did as I was told. Halfway down the tracks, I cut the motor and the lights. The car rolled for another fifty yards before Tolvar said to stop.

"O.K.," he said once we stopped. "Lie down on the seat!"

"What the hell—"

"You want to do it the hard way again?"

So I lay down on the front seat. Maybe a minute later, I heard the trunk being opened, then there were a couple of thuds and the clunk as the lid was snapped shut again. None of the car doors had been opened so Tolvar was still inside the car—and someone else had opened the trunk.

"You can straighten up now," Tolvar said. "Turn the car around facing the gates, but no lights." The gun

pressed against the back of my neck again. "Move it, Boyd, I'm losing sleep!"

I did as I was told—started the motor and swung the car in a tight U-turn, then stopped facing the gates. The rear door slammed and a split-second later, Tolvar stood beside the driving window, the gun pomted at my face.

"Thanks for the ride, pal," he said. "It sure cured my insomnia."

"So what do I do now—sing you a lullaby?" I asked.

"You do whatever you want, pal," he said genially. "Drive to New York—California for all I give a damn."

"I just drive away," I repeated. "All that jazz about when you got to go?"

"Strictly for laughs," he said. "Like that gag of yours about a body being buried here. You got a great imagination, Boyd, you should've been a pimp!"

"Thanks," I said.

"Well—beat it!" he said impatiently. "You figure I want to stay here all night?"

"I'm going," I said. "I just want to light a cigarette first."

"Can't you drive one-handed any more?"

"Five seconds," I said patiently.

I took the pack out of my pocket slowly, the cigarette out of the pack even more slowly. Tolvar was irritating me if he figured I was so dumb I couldn't see what was coming.

They'd waited until Sylvia had got inside the house and Tolvar had taken me joy-riding. Then they dug the body out of the pigpen, and when we came back, one of them put it into the trunk of the car. So now as I drove away, Tolvar would shoot carefully and kill me. He'd rather let me drive away first because there was less to go wrong. Then they'd call the cops and say they heard a prowler, came out and saw me driving away—shot and accidently killed me.

It would all be there for the cops—^the freshly dug pigpen, the body in the trunk. I'd be the guy who came

back to get rid of the evidence. Tolvar letting me drive away was guaranteeing his bet. If he killed me first, then put me in the car, there might be just one little thing about it the cops figured didn't look right—this way he couldn't miss.

I struck a match to the tip of the cigarette and inhaled deeply.

"Get going before I change my mmd and take off some more of that pretty face of yours!" Tolvar said savagely.

I tossed the dead match out the window and started the motor.

"So long, slob!" Tolvar said contemptuously.

I selected reverse and stamped on the gas pedal, and as the car shot backward suddenly flicked the headlights onto full beam. The car rocketed back about fifty feet before I braked and put it into drive.

Tolvar was spotlighted in the glare of the headlights. I'd gotten him flatfooted and he was just recovering, swinging around to face the car. I trod on the gas pedal again and the car leaped forward, cutting down the distance between us fast. He threw one arm up to shield his eyes from the glare, while the gun in his other hand swung upward in a quick arc.

I kept my foot hard on the gas pedal, knowing I wasn't gomg to make it before he got in one shot, at least. For an eternity spread over one full second, I was wondering if I'd see the windshield glass shatter before the slug smacked into my face.

He never did fire that shot—I wondered afterward if he figured me for such a slob, he thought I was only worried about getting past him along the tracks to the road.

The moment before impact I heard a thin scream, then there was the sUght thump and a dark shape hurtled sideways and up into the air. I stamped on the brakes, freed them and swung the car in a tight circle, then braked again so the car came to a squealing halt, facing

the farmhouse. I left the motor running in neutral and the headUghts on.

There was a still, shapeless heap on the ground about forty feet away, and I thought I saw something move quickly just outside the effective range of the headlights. I jumped out of the car and ran toward him.

Tolvar, close-up, looked like a rag doll ready for the trashcan. His neck had snapped in a messy kind of way, among a lot of other damage; but I didn't have time to detail it. All I wanted from him was my gun. His own gun could be anywhere on the farm depending on its velocity when it left his hand at the moment of impact. I dragged open his coat and ran my hands frantically over his torso without finding the gun. You can't tuck a Magnum down your sock—he just didn't have it on him.