The McBain Brief (7 page)

S
he leaned back against the cushions of the bed, and there was that lazy, contented smile on her face as she took a drag on her cigarette. The smoke spiralled around her face, and she closed her eyes sleepily. I remembered how I had once liked that sleepy look of hers. I did not like it now.

“It's good when you're home, Ben,” she said.

“Uh-huh,” I murmured. I took a cigarette from the box on the night table, lighted it, and blew out a stream of smoke.

“Yes, yes, it's really good.” She drew on her cigarette, and I watched the heave of her breasts, somehow no longer terribly interested.

“I hate your job,” she said suddenly.

“Do you?”

“Yes,” she said, pouting. “It's like a . . . a wall between us. When you're gone, I sit here and just curse your job and pray that you'll be home again soon. I hate it, Ben. I really do.”

“Well,” I said drily, “we have to eat, you know.”

“Couldn't you get another job?” she asked. It was only about the hundredth time she'd asked that same question.

“I suppose,” I said wearily.

“Then why don't you?” She sat up suddenly. “Why don't you, Ben?”

“I like traveling,” I said. I was so tired of this, so damned tired of the same thing every time I was here. All I could think of now was what I had to do. I wanted to do it and get it over with.

She grinned coyly. “Do you miss me when you're on the road?”

“Sure,” I said.

She cupped her hands behind my neck and trailed her lips across my jaw line. I felt nothing.

“Very much?”

She kissed my ear, shivered a little, and came closer to me.

“Yes, I miss you very much,” I said.

She drew away from me suddenly. “Do you like the house, Ben? I did just what you said. I moved out of the apartment as soon as I got your letter. You should have told me sooner, Ben. I had no idea you didn't like the city.”

“The neighbors were too snoopy,” I said. “This is better. Out in the country like this.”

“But it's so lonely. I've been here a week already, and I don't know a soul yet.” She giggled. “There's hardly a soul
to
know.”

“Good,” I said.

“Good?” Her face grew puzzled. “What do you mean, Ben?”

“Adele,” I told her, “you talk too much.”

I pulled her face to mine and clamped my mouth onto hers, just to shut her up. She brought her arms up around my neck immediately, tightening them there, bringing her body close to mine. I tried to move her away from me gently, but my arms were full of her, and her lips were moist and eager. Her eyes closed tightly, and I sighed inwardly and listened to the lonely chirp of the crickets outside the window.

“Do you love me?” she asked later.

“Yes.”

“Really, Ben? Really and truly?”

“Really and truly.”

“How much do you love me?”

“A whole lot, Adele.”

“But do you . . . where are you going, Ben?”

“Something I want to get from my jacket.”

“Oh, all right.” She stopped talking, thinking for a moment. “Ben, if you had to do it all over again, would you marry me? Would you still choose me as your wife?”

“Of course.” I walked to the closet and opened the door. I knew just where I'd left it. In the righthand jacket pocket.

“What is it you're getting, Ben? A present?” She sat up against the pillows again. “Is it a present for me?”

“In a way,” I said. I closed my fist around it and turned abruptly. Her eyes opened wide.

“Ben! A gun. What . . . what are you doing with a gun?”

I didn't answer. I grinned, and she saw something in my eyes, and her mouth went slack.

“Ben, no!” she said.

“Yes, Adele.”

“Ben, I'm your wife. Ben, you're joking. Tell me you're joking.”

“No, Adele, I'm quite serious.”

She swung her legs over the side of the bed, the covers snatching at the thin material of her gown, pulling it over her thighs.

“Ben, why? Why are you . . . Ben, please. Please!”

She was cringing against the wall now, her eyes saucered with fear.

I raised the gun.

“Ben!”

I fired twice, and both bullets caught her over her heart.
I watched the blood appear on the front of her gown, like red mud slung at a clean, white wall. She toppled forward suddenly, her eyes blank. I put the gun away, dressed, and packed my suitcase.

It took me
two days to get there. I opened the screen door and walked into the kitchen. There was the smell of meat and potatoes frying, a smell I had come to dislike intensely. The radio was blaring, the way it always was when I arrived. I grimaced.

“Anybody home?” I called.

“Ben?” Her voice was surprised, anxious. “Is that you, Ben?”

“Hello, Betty,” I said tonelessly. She rushed to the front door and threw herself into my arms. Her hair was in curlers, and she smelled of frying fat.

“Ben, Ben darling, you're back. Oh Ben, how I missed you.”

“Did you?”

“Ben, let me look at you.” She held me away from her and then lifted her face and took my mouth hungrily. I could still smell the frying fat aroma.

I pushed her away from me gently. “Hey,” I said, “cut it out. Way you're behaving, people would never guess we've been married for three years already.”

She sighed deeply. “You know, Ben,” she said, “I hate your job.”

S
he was cleaning fish by the kitchen sink when I climbed through the window, my .45 in my hand. She wore a low-cut apron, shadowed near the frilly top. When she saw me, her eyes went wide, and her lips parted, moist and full. I walked to the sink, and I picked up the fish by the tail, and I batted her over the eye with it.

“Darling,” she murmured.

I gave her another shot with the fish, this time right over her nose. She came into my arms, and there was ecstasy in her eyes, and her breath rushed against my throat. I shoved her away, and I swatted her full on the mouth. She shivered and came to me again. I held her close, and there was the odor of fish and seaweed about her. I inhaled deeply, savoring the taste. My father had been a sea captain.

“They're outside,” I said, “all of them. And they're all after me. The whole stinking, dirty, rotten, crawling, filthy, obscene, disgusting mess of them. Me. Dudley Sledge. They've all got guns in their maggoty fists, and murder in their grimy eyes.”

“They're rats,” she said.

“And all because of you. They want me because I'm helping you.”

“There's the money, too,” she reminded me.

“Money?” I asked. “You think money means anything to them? You think they came all the way from Washington Heights for a lousy ten million bucks? Don't make me laugh.” I laughed.

“What are we going to do, Dudley?”

“Do? Do? I'm going to go out there and cut them down like the unholy rats they are. When I get done, there'll be twenty-six less rats in the world, and the streets will be a cleaner place for our kids to play in.”

“Oh, Dudley,” she said.

“But first . . .”

The pulse in her throat began beating wildly. There was a hungry animal look in her eyes. She sucked in a deep breath and ran her hands over her hips, smoothing the apron. I went to her, and I cupped her chin in the palm of my left hand.

“Baby,” I said.

Then I drew back my right fist and hit her on the mouth. She fell back against the sink, and I followed with a quick chop to the gut, and a fast uppercut to the jaw. She went down on the floor and she rolled around in the fish scales, and I thought of my sea captain father, and my mother who was a nice little lass from New England. And then I didn't think of anything but the blonde in my arms, and the .45 in my fist, and the twenty-six men outside, and the four shares of Consolidated I'd bought that afternoon, and the bet I'd made on the fight with One-Lamp Louie, and the defective brake lining on my Olds, and the bottle of rye in the bottom drawer of my file cabinet back at Dudley Sledge, Investigations.

I enjoyed it.

She had come
to me less than a week ago.

Giselle, my pretty red-headed secretary, had swivelled into the office and said, “Dud, there's a woman to see you.”

“Another one?” I asked.

“She looks distraught.”

“Show her in.”

She walked into the office then, and my whole life changed. I took one look at the blonde hair piled high on her head. My eyes dropped to the clean sweep of her throat, to the figure filling out the green silk dress. When she lifted her green eyes to meet mine, I almost drowned in their fathomless depths. I gripped the desk top and asked, “Yes?”

“Mr. Sledge?”

“Yes.”

“My name is Melinda Jones,” she said.

“Yes, Miss Jones.”

“Oh, please call me Agnes.”

“Agnes?”

“Yes. All my friends call me Agnes. I . . . I was hoping we could be friends.”

“What's your problem, Agnes?” I asked.

“My husband.”

“He's giving you trouble?”

“Well, yes, in a way.”

“Stepping out on you?”

“Well, no.”

“What then?”

“Well, he's dead.”

I sighed in relief. “Good,” I said. “What's the problem?”

“He left me ten million dollars. Some of his friends think the
money belongs to them. It's not fair, really. Just because they were in on the bank job Percy . . .”

“Percy?”

“My husband. Percy
did
kill the bank guards, and it was he who crashed through the road block, injuring twelve policemen. The money
was
rightfully his.”

“Of course,” I said. “No doubt about it. And these scum want it?”

“Yes. Oh, Mr. Sledge, I need help so desperately. Please say you'll help me. Please, please. I beg you. I'll do anything, anything.”

“Anything?”

Her eyes narrowed, and she wet her lips with a sharp, pink tongue. Her voice dropped to a husky whisper. “Anything,” she said.

I belted her over the left eye.

That was the
beginning, and now they were all outside, all twenty-six of them, waiting to close in, waiting to drop down like the venomous vultures they were. But they hadn't counted on the .45 in my fist, and they hadn't counted on the slow anger that had been building up inside me, boiling over like a black brew, filling my mind, filling my body, poisoning my liver and my bile, quickening my heart, putting a throb in my appendix, tightening the pectoral muscles on my chest, girding my loins. They hadn't counted on the kill lust that raged through my veins. They hadn't counted on the hammer that kept pounding one word over and over again in my skull: kill, kill,
kill!

They were all outside waiting, and I had to get them. We were inside, and they knew it, so I did the only thing any sensible person would have done under the circumstances.

I set fire to the house.

I piled rags and empty crates and furniture and fish in the basement, and then I soaked them with gasoline. I touched a match, and the flames leaped up, lapping at the wooden crossbeams, eating away at the undersides of the first-floor boards.

Melinda was close to me. I cupped her chin in one hand, and then tapped her lightly with the .45, just bruising her. We listened to the flames crackling in the basement, and I whispered, “That fish smells good.”

And then all hell broke loose, just the way I had planned it. They stormed the house, twenty-six strong. I threw open the front door and I stood there with the .45 in my mitt, and I shouted, “Come on, you rats. Come and get it!”

Three men appeared on the walk and I fired low, and I fired fast. The first man took two in the stomach, and he bent over and died. The second man took two in the stomach, and he bent over and died, too. I hit the third man in the chest, and I swore as he died peacefully.

“Agnes,” I yelled, “there's a submachine gun in the closet. Get it! And bring the hand grenades and the mortar shells.”

“Yes, Dud,” she murmured.

I kept firing. Three down, four down, five down. I reloaded, and they kept coming up the walk and I kept cutting them down. And then Melinda came back with the ammunition. I gathered up a batch of hand grenades, stuck four of them in my mouth and pulled the pins. I grabbed two in each hand and lobbed them out on the walk and six more of the rats were blown to their reward.

I watched the bodies come down to the pavement, and I took a quick count of arms and legs. It had been seven of the rats.

“Seven and five is thirteen,” I told Melinda. “That leaves eleven more.”

Melinda did some quick arithmetic. “Twelve more,” she said.

I cut loose with the sub-machine gun. Kill,
kill,
my brain screamed. I swung it back and forth over the lawn, and they dropped like flies. Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. Nine more to go. Seventeen, eighteen, and they kept dying, and the blood ran red on the grass, and the flames licked at my back. They all ran for cover, and there was nothing to cut down, so I concentrated on a clump of weeds near the barn, shooting fast bursts into it. Pretty soon there was no more weeds, and the barn was a skeleton against the deepening dusk. I grabbed a mortar and tossed it into the yard, just for kicks. Pretty soon, there was no more barn.

Behind me, I heard Melinda scream. I whirled. Her clothes were aflame, and I seized her roughly and threw her to the floor. I almost lost my mind, and I almost forgot all about the nine guys still out there. I tore myself away from her, and I ran into the yard with two mortar shells in my mouth, the sub-machine gun in my right hand, and the .45 in my left. I shook my head, and the mortar shells flew, and three more of the rats were dead and gone. I fired a burst with the machine gun, and another two dropped. There were four or five left now, and I picked them off one by one with the .45. The yard ran red with blood, and the bodies lay like twisted sticks. I sighed heavily and walked back to the house—because the worst part still lay ahead of me.

I found her in the bedroom.

She had taken a quick sponge bath, and her body gleamed like dull ivory in the gathering darkness.

“All right, Agnes,” I said. “It's all over.”

“What do you mean, Dud?”

“The whole mess, Agnes. Everything, from start to finish. A big hoax. A big plot to sucker Dudley Sledge. Well, no one suckers Sledge. No one.”

“I don't know what you mean, Dud.”

“You don't know, huh? You don't know what I mean? I mean the phony story about the bank job, and the ten million dollars your husband left you.”

“He did leave it to me, Dudley.”

“No, Agnes. That was all a lie. Every bit of it. I'm only sorry I had to kill twenty-six bird-watchers before I realized the truth.”

“You're wrong, Dudley,” she said. “Dead wrong.”

“No, baby. I'm right, and that's the pity of it because I love you, and I know what I have to do now.”

“Dudley . . .” she started.

“No, Agnes. Don't try to sway me. I know you stole that ten million from the Washington Heights Bird Watchers Society. You invented that other story because you wanted someone with a gun, someone who would keep them away from you. Well, twenty-six people have paid . . . and now one more has to pay.”

She clipped two earrings to her delicate ears, snapped a bracelet onto her wrist, dabbed some lipstick onto her wide mouth. She was fully dressed now, dressed the way she'd been the first time in my office, the first time I'd slugged her, the time I knew I was hopelessly in love with her.

She took a step toward me, and I raised the .45.

“Kiss me, Dudley,” she said.

I kissed her, all right. I shot her right in the stomach.

She fell to the floor, a look of incredible ecstasy in her eyes, and when I turned around I realized she wasn't reaching for the mortar shell on the table behind me. Nor was she reaching for the
submachine gun that rested in the corner near the table. She was reaching for the ten million bucks.

There were tears in my eyes. “I guess that's the least I can do for you, Agnes,” I said. “It was what you wanted, even in death.”

So I took the ten million bucks, and I bought a case of Irish whiskey.