The Never War (6 page)

Gunny took the cart and wheeled it toward the door. “Oh, one more thing. Before work, we'll stop by the barbershop in the lobby. We can't have you two working here looking like ladies.”

I hated to admit it, but Gunny was right. My hair was getting long and shaggy. Spader's black hair was almost to his shoulders. These were definitely
not
1937 cuts.

“What's a barbershop?” Spader asked.

“G'night, gentlemen,” Gunny said. “Sleep tight.” He opened the door, then turned back to us and said, “How's this?” He rapped twice on the door, then once, then three times.

“The perfect secret knock,” I said.

“I always wanted to be a G-man,” Gunny said with a smile. He closed the door and we were alone.

“What's a G-man?” Spader asked again.

“It's not important,” I answered.

“Then tell me about this World War Two. Is it really the natty-do you're saying?”

“Worse,” I answered solemnly. “I don't know the words to describe how bad it was. If there's a chance we could stop it, it would be beyond incredible.”

Spader stood up and smiled. “Right then! I have a sudden urge to pee. Not that I'm nervous mind you. I'm just…scared to death.” He went for the bathroom, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

The ideas we were throwing around were too huge to comprehend. Was it possible that we might find the trigger here in New York that would start a chain reaction to prevent World War Two? A horror like that war was right up Saint Dane's alley. Of course, that meant Saint Dane would be doing his best to make sure we wouldn't find that trigger. That would be the challenge. Same old, same old.

Then three knocks came at the door.

I got up to let Gunny back in, figuring he had forgotten to tell us something. I hoped it was about breakfast. I was stuffed, but the thought of bacon and eggs was a sweet one.

“I can't believe you forgot the secret knock already,” I called out as I headed for the door. “You'd make a lousy G-man.”

I opened the door and instantly got shoved back into the room. I fell down on my butt, hard. At first I didn't get why Gunny would have done that. When I got my wits back and looked up, I had my answer.

It wasn't Gunny.

Standing over me were the two gangsters from the subway station. The nasty one had a black revolver pointed right at my nose.

“Ain't no G-man around to help you now,” he snarled.

I
was on my butt, looking up at two guys who only a few hours before had tried to kill me. They didn't even bother covering their faces with handkerchiefs this time. They were a couple of gnarly-looking dudes too. The nasty one was, well, nasty looking. He had a pudgy face and dark, wild eyes. He was one of those guys who had to shave every hour or he'd have a Fred Flintstone thing going on.

The other guy, the tense one, looked a little less tense than before. I'm sure that was because he didn't have an audience now. He had thin features and a sharp, beaklike nose. He still didn't look all too happy about what was going on though. I glanced into his eyes and thought I caught a hint of sympathy. But not enough to call off his bulldog partner. The nasty guy held his pistol on me. It was an old-style revolver with a long barrel. It wasn't high-tech, but I'm sure it could get the job done.

“How did you find us?” I asked while crawling backward.

“We got eyes everywhere,” said the nasty one, with a touch of cockiness. “You can run, but you can't hide.”

“Why are you after us?” I asked.

“I got nothing against you,” Nasty said. “But my associate is another story.”

His associate. Who was that? Saint Dane? I wanted to keep these guys talking. Maybe I could use my Traveler hypnosis on him. But that would be tough, seeing as I was too scared to think straight, let alone concentrate enough to use mind powers I wasn't even sure I knew how to use in the first place.

“You have the wrong guy,” I said with desperation, though I knew he probably had the exact right guy.

The gangster bent down and stuck the muzzle of the gun in my face. “Winn Farrow don't make mistakes like that.”

Winn Farrow. Who was Winn Farrow?

More important, why did he want us killed? It was then that I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. It was Spader. He was behind the gangsters. I tried not to look at him because that would give him away.

“I…I don't know any Winn Farrow,” I said.

Spader cautiously moved behind one of the sofas that was standing on end.

“I'm not here to argue with you, sonny boy, I'm here to tell you how it's gonna be. Don't go sticking your nose where it don't belong,” he said. “If somebody gets in Winn Farrow's way, he won't be there for long, if you catch my drift.”

The sofa behind the gangsters started to move. Spader was going to topple it over on them. I had to use every ounce of willpower to keep the gangsters' eyes on me.

“Okay, I hear you. Can I ask you a question though?”

“What?”

“Can I have my ring back?”

The question caught the gangsters off guard. They both looked at me as if I were nuts. Here they were putting on
this big strong-arm intimidation show, and all I cared about was my ring. It confused them. Good. It was the perfect time for Spader to make his move. But it didn't exactly work out that way.

Instead, the nasty gangster got this evil gleam in his eye and said, “The hell with orders. I'm gonna end this right here.”

Uh-oh. He pulled the hammer back on his revolver. I willed Spader to hurry.

He did.

With a giant shove, the sofa came toppling over. The big couch first nailed the nervous guy, then continued down to take out Mr. Nasty. The gangsters didn't know what hit them. I had barely enough time to roll out of the way before the two thugs hit the floor in a pile of gangster and sofa. I sprang to my feet and dove over the pile toward Spader.

“What took you so long?” I shouted at him.

“It was heavy!”

“C'mon!” I bolted out of the room with Spader right behind me. Those gangsters were going to be back on their feet in seconds, and I didn't want to be anywhere close when that happened. We ran down the hall, turned right, and blasted for the elevators. I hit the button and looked to see that the needle pointed to “1.” Bad news. I looked over the second elevator. That needle pointed to “30.” Worse news. We were on 6. Not even close.

“C'mon, c'mon!” I coaxed the elevators while furiously hitting the button…not that it would do any good.

“Who's Winn Farrow?” Spader asked. “Is it Saint Dane?”

“I don't know. Maybe,” I answered breathlessly. “But those guys were only supposed to give us a warning and they decided to kill us.”

“You can't trust anybody,” said Spader.

“Hey!”

We both looked to our right and saw the gangsters rounding the far corner, headed our way. We had to keep running. Spader and I jammed it down the corridor. Our only hope was to find a stairwell, or at least another corridor. Luckily it was a long hall and we were too far away from the gangsters for them to take a shot at us.

When we got to the end of the corridor, we found a door that probably led to a stairway, but it was blocked by furniture and painting supplies. If we tried to dig through that mess, the gangsters would have us.

“This way,” ordered Spader.

We turned right and sprinted down the next corridor. This hallway ran parallel with the corridor where our room was, on the far side of the hotel. It was pretty long too, so we could stay out of bullet range. But we couldn't keep running in circles. We had to find an escape route.

Halfway down the corridor, I saw it. An exit sign. Without stopping to think, I took a right into that door. I was hoping to find a stairway, but no luck. It was a service corridor. We were now running parallel to the hallway with the elevators.

“Maybe we can loop around back to the elevators,” I said. “If we're lucky we'll catch one closer this time.”

“Hobey-ho,” Spader said.

We ran to the far end of the service corridor and stopped. I slowly opened the door to peek out. No bad guys anywhere. So far so good. We quickly ran out, turned right, and sprinted back along the corridor toward our room. We had come full circle.

But this was scary. For all we knew, one of the gangsters could have doubled back and would soon be rounding the
corner in front of us. We passed our room and had only a few yards to go before hitting the elevator corridor again, when we heard footsteps coming toward us. Oops. At least one of the gangsters decided to circle back. He would be on us in seconds!

We were done. I froze in panic.

Spader didn't. He grabbed my shirt and pulled me into the last room of the corridor before the turn. There wasn't a second to spare. I caught a glimpse of the gangster coming around the corner.

The two of us dove to the inside of the door. All we could do was hope the gangster wouldn't peek in. A few seconds later we heard footsteps run by. I looked to Spader. He winked at me. We waited a few more seconds, then slowly took a peek outside to see the gangster running full throttle down the corridor, away from us. Excellent.

Now we had to move fast. We booked out of the room and back toward the elevators. We made the right turn again and saw an empty corridor. We also saw one of the elevator doors opening up! We took off on a dead run.

“Going down?” a voice called from inside the elevator.

We were too far away for him to see us. We kept on running, and I saw the elevator door starting to close. At this point it didn't matter if the gangster heard us or not, so I shouted out, “Dewey!”

Too late. The elevator door slid shut. We missed it. A second later the nasty gangster appeared at the far end of the corridor. I guess it
did
matter if he heard us. We were now staring right down the pike at worst case scenario.

That's when the elevator door opened up again! Dewey heard me after all.

“What are you guys doing?” he asked.

We both dove into the open car before the door was all the way open. “Close it! Close the door!” I shouted.

Dewey was totally confused. Both Spader and I started pushing the door closed ourselves. “Hey! That's
my
job!” Dewey whined.

We ignored him and almost had the door shut when the nasty gangster arrived. He got his fingers in the door and tried to pry it open.

“Down, Dewey!” I shouted. “Not that way.” I looked up. “
That
way.” I looked down.

“But there's another passenger out there!” Dewey complained. That's when the nasty gangster showed his revolver. Dewey got the message. He leaped at the door and helped us close it.

“Get us out of here!” I yelled.

Dewey grabbed the control lever and surprisingly enough, we started down. Dewey was better under pressure than I would have guessed. But he looked wild-eyed and scared.

“Who was that?” he screamed. “He had a pistol!”

“Where's Gunny?” Spader demanded, ignoring Dewey's question.

“I just saw him in the lobby, headed outside. What's going on?”

“Nothing Gunny can't handle,” I said. “Forget about what you saw.”

“But I gotta tell my father about this,” Dewey complained.

“Don't do that!” I shouted. I think I scared the little guy because he backed up against the side of the elevator. I got my head back together and said calmly, “It was just a joke. Like a prank, you know?”

“But, but that guy had a gun,” Dewey whimpered.

“Gun?” I faked a laugh. “That wasn't a real gun. That
was…that was…a costume. For the costume party. You know the clothes we had on before? Those were costumes too. You thought it was a real gun?”

I faked another laugh, looking sideways at Spader. Spader got the idea and he faked a laugh too.

“Yeah,” Spader said. “It was a toy.”

Dewey wasn't sure we were telling the truth, but I think it was easier for him to accept it than to think there were guys running around his father's hotel flashing guns. That was good. If Dewey called the police, they'd have to question us, and I'm not so sure they'd like the answers we had to give. No, it was better this way. But we had to find Gunny and let him know what was going on. Finally we got to the lobby, and Dewey opened the door.

“Thanks, Dewey. We'll let you know when the next costume party is, okay?” I said.

“Great, thanks!”

Dewey was a simple kind of dude.

We ran from the elevator and went looking for Gunny. We hurried to the front doors of the hotel and booked outside. Night had fallen and the garden was lit up like Christmas, with lights hidden among the greenery.

“There!” shouted Spader, pointing to the sidewalk in front.

Gunny was there talking to a man. We ran down the front stairs of the hotel, through the garden and out onto the street. Gunny saw us. He shook the hand of the man and the guy walked off just as we ran up to him. We were both out of breath and excited.

“What's wrong?” he said, sounding a little angry. “I told you boys to stay put.”

“We had visitors,” I said.

“The guys from the flume,” Spader panted. “They came looking for us.”

I didn't like the look on Gunny's face. It was a cross between shock and fear. Bad combination.

“Who is Winn Farrow?” I asked.

For a second I thought Gunny was going to faint. He actually looked unsteady on his feet. Whoever Winn Farrow was, his name made a strong guy like Gunny very scared. This was getting worse by the second.

“I can't believe he sent people here,” Gunny said. “That's crossing a very dangerous line.”

“Why? Who is he?” I asked.

Gunny looked down at us and was about to answer when we heard a scream.

It was a horrifying, tortured scream that came from far away. Actually, it didn't come from far away, it came from far
up.
The three of us spun quickly to look up at the hotel. What we saw made my knees go weak.

Somebody had jumped out of a window!

The whole building was lit up by floodlights, so the dark figure was easy to see, though I wished I couldn't. The fall took only a few seconds, but those few seconds will stay with me forever. It was horrible. The figure screamed all the way down. Luckily for us, the tall trees in front of the hotel blocked us from seeing the final second. We stood there frozen, then Gunny broke and ran for the building. Spader and I followed right behind him. I didn't want to see what had happened, but I was sure I needed to. Chances were this had something to do with the gangsters and this Winn Farrow dude.

The victim had fallen onto the roof of a car and pretty much caved in the whole thing. There was no way anybody
could survive that. I couldn't bring myself to look closer. Neither could Spader. We stood several feet away, while Gunny did the tough thing and walked over to investigate.

While we waited for him, Spader saw something and nudged me. I looked and saw someone standing on the steps of the hotel. It was one of the gangsters. The nervous one. He looked at us like he wanted to say something, but decided not to and ran off. The question was, where was the other guy?

Gunny walked back to us and said softly, “It's him. The ugly one from the subway. He's dead.”

That answered my question. Spader and I shared disbelieving looks.

“I guess that means he won't be trying to kill us anymore,” Spader said, sounding numb.

This was unbelievable. When I first saw the falling body, I thought somebody had made a suicide jump. Now that I knew it was Mr. Nasty Gangster, nothing made sense anymore. Why would he jump? He had other things on his mind, like hunting for us so he could gun us down.

I stared up at Gunny. He looked sick.

“You gotta tell us what you're thinking, Gunny,” I said.

Gunny glanced back at the body. People were starting to gather and stare.

“I'm afraid we're going to have our own war pretty soon,” Gunny said. “Right here in our backyard. It may not be as big as the one brewing over in Europe, but it's going to be ugly just the same.”

I heard a police siren scream in the distance. It was a far-off, sorrowful wail that was headed our way.