The Long Wait Read online

  There was that much warning and it was enough. I turned under the swing, yanked the bastard off balance and kicked his buddy in the guts before he could get the gun out of his pocket. The puke spewed out of his mouth, but I was in back of him by then and didn’t worry about it. In fact, I wasn’t worried about anything. I had his gun in my fist and hoping like hell somebody would try something.

  Lenny was funny. He couldn’t believe it had happened. His face was slack with surprise and he turned around to look at Pimples who still had the automatic in his hand. Pimples wasn’t so tough after all. The rod made a “thunk” on the carpet and little beads of sweat formed on his head and ran in crooked rivulets down through the maze of pimples.

  Only the big guy on the floor tried something. He was so damn mad he was all set to take me, gun or no gun. His mouth was pulled back showing more gums than teeth and he crouched in front of me like a tackle ready to charge. Maybe he didn’t appreciate it, but I saved his life. I kicked him right in the neck and he went out like a light.

  Pig eyes said, “Cripes! Lenny, you said...”

  Lenny’s butt dropped on the carpet and the stink of singed wool filled the room. He was watching me with the surprise all gone, the skin over his cheekbones a little tighter than usual, but that was all. I had the gun pointing smack at his belly, but he wasn’t a bit scared.

  Curious was the word.

  “You needed enough help, Lenny,” I sneered.

  He didn’t answer me.

  “How many times are you going to try before you get smart? You better start reading the papers. There’s a lot of dead men lying around lately.”

  The muscle in his cheek twitched. “It’s pretty hard to teach you a lesson, isn’t it?”

  “Damn hard, pal.” I let the gun come up until it was pointing at his head. “I asked you a question the last time. Where is she?”

  The color seemed to drain out of his face. He was absolutely white, a crazy mixture of impotent rage and bewilderment that held him tight as a bowstring. “Damn you, McBride,” he grated, “I’m going to get the both of you if it’s the last thing I do!”

  I let him get it out of his system then wiped the muzzle of the rod across his jaw with a crack that knocked him on his knees. He squatted there, moaning softly, covering his face with his hands.

  Fat boy behind the desk couldn’t keep his lips wet. His tongue was a pink streak licking out of his mouth while his hands were white blobs gripping the edge of his desk.

  I said, “You don’t want to try a stunt like this again, do you?”

  His jowls flapped as his head jerked from one side to another.

  I looked over at Pimples and grinned at him. It must have been a hell of a grin. He fainted.

  The two boys on the floor were making signs of getting up. I opened the gun, kicked the shells out and threw it beside the one I took it from. Lenny’s head came up out of his hands and he stared at me with all the hate he could muster up.

  “You’ll die for that,” he said.

  I felt like kicking him in the teeth. I should have instead of telling him, “That’ll be the day, Lenny.”

  When I got back to the room Venus was still at the table, but the crowd was gone. She only had a little pile of bills left and the stickman had stopped sweating. I poked her in the ribs with my thumb and she jumped to attention. “From rags to riches and back again, huh?”

  “Damn it, where’d you go? If you had stayed around I could have left with a fortune.”

  “Sorry. What I had to do wouldn’t wait.”

  “Oh.” She raked in what she had left and stuck the bills in her pocketbook. “Ready to go?”

  “Any time.”

  I steered her to the door and we had a nightcap in the bar downstairs. One of the off-duty cops spotted me and wrinkled his face as if he were puzzled. I wasn’t for sticking around long enough for something else to happen, so we took a quick tour of the dance floor just for luck. But if Eddie Packman was around he wasn’t where we could see him and they didn’t have rooms for rent in that joint.

  Venus looked as disappointed as I felt. “Lousy try, huh?”

  “Stinking,” I agreed.

  “Want to try anyplace else?”

  “Where?”

  “Ah, there are a lot of places he might be. I think you’d do better to try the hotels. Unless he’s with a woman who’s giving him a hard time, he won’t be wasting the night floating around the clubs.”

  “Ah, the hell with it. Tomorrow’s another day. I’ll find him.”

  “But I wanted to see it happen,” she pouted.

  “You’re a bloodthirsty devil.”

  “Aren’t I though?”

  She laughed up at me, her teeth flashing in the night. I bent over and let my mouth lean against hers. She didn’t kiss me. Her fingers grabbed my arms and she bit my lip then took the sting out of the bite with her tongue.

  All so damn fast it was like being struck by a snake whose venom was a vicious, poisonous pleasure that left you rigid and trembling in your shoes.

  Her breath came so fast the words tumbled out. “Don’t ... ever do that again. Not you ... not when there’s people around!”

  I knew just how she felt. I slid my hand under her arm and made her walk to the car, feeling her leg touching mine, deliberately keeping pace with me, knowing her eyes were crawling over me. Venus knew how to make it rough on a guy.

  When I got behind the wheel the boy came out of his little cabaña, waved me out for another four bits and I turned back toward town.

  This time he earned his four bits. For a curious second he flashed his torch on the car that came roaring up behind me with the headlights off and I caught the reflection in the rear-view mirror. I didn’t have the chance to jump the Ford into high when the big job slammed into the back bumper then darted past on the right with the roaring slam of a heavy gun spitting holes in my windshield.

  I did the only thing I could; tried to duck and wrench the wheel over as hard as possible, then jarred forward into the wheel when the tires hit the sand on the shoulder of the road. The rear wheels went up into the air as the nose tipped forward, then smashed back and bounced the car around in a quarter-arc before coming to a shuddering standstill.

  Venus was jammed against me covered with splintered glass, the marks of it traced in blood on her cheeks. I couldn’t get my voice to say anything except “Damn, damn!”

  The blood was there on her chest too, a dark trickle moving into the V of her jacket. I grabbed the lapels and tore them apart. The button held, then ripped loose and she was shamefully naked from the waist up and I was screaming mad because such beauty had to be wasted. My hand went out to stop the bleeding ... do anything to keep her alive. My fingers probed for an ugly hole that should be swelling and didn’t find any so I wiped the blood away with the flat of my palm to look for it.

  And it wiped away clean. There wasn’t any hole. I said, “Damn!”

  Then her eyes opened and she whispered, “You can say that again.”

  So I said it again, only this time with a grin.

  “But you can keep looking if you want to,” she added softly.

  I did that, too, looking and thinking how nice and round she was where it seemed so necessary, and so damn glad she was very much alive. Just why, I couldn’t figure. I could still hear the hum of those bullets passing in front of my nose.

  She didn’t want to, but I made her close the jacket again.

  Chapter Nine

  “You all right?”

  “I ... think so.” Her hand passed over her face and brushed a fragment of glass away. “Who ... was it, Johnny?”

  “Somebody who’s so damn anxious to see me dead he doesn’t give a hoot who else dies in the process. It’s not very healthy to be around me any more, baby.”

  “No. That’s a fact, isn’t it?” She looked around at the holes, her face blank with astonishment as she visualized how close she’d come to getting booted out of this land of the liv
ing. She fumbled for a cigarette, lit two and stuck one in my mouth. When she had a deep drag settled in her lungs she asked. “How did he miss? I don’t understand.”

  “I do,” I told her. “The jerk misjudged his distance. If he hadn’t plowed into us I probably would have kept going straight ahead and been a lovely target. At least I know one thing; he was alone, that’s why he stayed on the right, so he could shoot through the driver’s side instead of firing across the seat. With all his plans he muffed it anyway. Well, we can’t just sit here. Climb out a minute.”

  When we were both outside I dug the jack handle from under the seat and knocked out the rest of the glass in the frames. Venus found a whisk broom in the glove compartment and cleared off the cushions and we were ready to get moving. Luckily, the rear wheels were still on the pavement, so it wasn’t any trouble hauling the front free. Just about the time I got the heap rolling the headlights of the first car turned out of the parking area back down the road. When he saw we were moving the car stopped, turned around and went back to the parking lot.

  Either the wind wasn’t right or the people in this section weren’t very curious when other people started popping away with a rod. Hell, maybe they thought it was a gag. Yeah.

  The breeze whipped in through the blank space in the windshield, kicking the dust around our faces. Venus waited until we had reached the main highway before she finally broke down and let herself cry. When the spasm passed I said, “Feel better now?”

  “Much, only I need some coffee. Stop someplace, all right?”

  “Sure.”

  I pulled in at the first all-night joint I came to. It was a regular Hollywood affair, a fancy dog palace sprawled along the highway with tables inside and out, car-hop service and a small bar if you wanted one for the road. The place was packed with couples heading home after a big time in Lyncastle and there were more drunks around trying to sober up than anything else.

  Venus wanted to go inside so I found a table, signaled a waitress over and ordered two coffees and a foursome of hot dogs. My eyes were hungrier than my stomach. You don’t get almost shot up then try to get your insides to take things calmly. The dogs wrinkled up on the plates, but the hot coffee held me together somewhat.

  Or almost did anyway. Just before I finished the cup I saw something happen to Venus’s eyes and looked where she was looking. There was a table in the far comer completely dominated by a red-headed bundle of curves who would have gone six feet in her stocking feet. She almost completely obscured the guy who was leering across the table at her.

  Venus’s mouth made silent words that said, “Eddie Packman,” and something went crawling up my back. The little bastard’s hair shone over a face that should have been peering out of a cage. There were muscles built into the hundred-buck suit he wore and I could see the flash of the diamond on his hand all the way across the room.

  The redhead must have loved him because she was holding his hand while her finger kept fiddling with the brilliant hunk-of ice enviously. I could have sat there and watched for one minute or thirty. Time didn’t make a bit of difference any more. All I knew was that when he paid his bill and walked out I was right behind him.

  What I wanted most of all was to see the kind of car he was driving. In my mind I could still see the black hulk of the sedan with the winking red eye sticking out the front window. I wanted to see if they were the same before I tore his arms and legs off.

  The car was big and it was a sedan. It wasn’t black, but the color was close enough. In the dark there isn’t any difference in colors to talk about anyway. I said, “Hello, Eddie,” good and slow and watched him turn around. He almost said hello, but it never came out. His narrow eyes looked propped open momentarily then came down to meet the sneer that was twisting his mouth out of shape.

  And you know what the little bastard did? He came for me! He didn’t wait. Hell no. He shoved the redhead away, took a jerky little step forward and winged his right at me without even bothering to make a fist of his hand. The lousy little punk tried to slap me across the jaw and damn near did it, too.

  Not quite.

  I grabbed that open palm, twisted him right off his feet, watched him come up off the ground screaming until my fist smashed the yell right back down his throat again. He lay there face down in his own blood and I was just going to give him another taste of it when I felt my skull get parted down the middle. It didn’t even hurt. It was just a big blanket of noise that rolled in like thunder. The animal reflexes a man is born with kept me standing and seeing long enough to catch the shine of polished brass buttons and see the barrel of a gun come down again and make another sharp crack across the top of my head.

  Things weren’t all white this time. There was a funny smell in the air, but it wasn’t antiseptic. No mummy, either. Everything was painted an ugly efficient green and the light that streaked in the windows seemed to be slatted. After five minutes of looking at it I realized why. There were horizontal steel bars built right into the frames.

  The cop said, “Awake, eh?”

  I grunted and touched my head. It would have been better if I hadn’t. The top of my skull was soft and squashy, held together by strips of tape that went down to my ears. My body seemed to throb all over, trying to explode.

  “Want something to eat?”

  My stomach started to heave at the word. I said no, but he brought in a tray anyhow so I managed to get some of the coffee down. It helped things enough so I could swallow some limp toast.

  Then a doctor came in and probed around, checking what he found against a pair of X-ray pictures. I said, “Look good?”

  “Looks lucky.”

  “That’s what the last doctor said.”

  “If either one of those blows had landed a half-inch on either side you’d be dead.”

  “That’s nice. I saw brass buttons behind the gun that nailed me.”

  The cop in the corner lowered his paper. “You was disturbing the peace. You committed assault with intent to kill.”

  “You should live to be a hundred, but right away,” I said. “I want a lawyer.”

  “The court’ll assign one.”

  “The hell it will. I’ll pick my own. Who’s in charge of this rattrap?”

  The doctor shook out some pills on the table-top beside the bed. “I don’t think you’re in condition to be excited at this moment. You’re going to have to stay quiet a few days.”

  “Nuts. I’ll pick my own doctor too if I want to and you know damn well I can. I want out of this trap.”

  I saw the doctor look at the cop and shrug. “It’s up to him,” he said. The cop put down the paper and walked to the door. Five minutes later he came back and he wasn’t alone. Lindsey was with him. The guy looked happy again. Real happy. I called him a son of a bitch and tried to kick him in the stomach. He leered at me and stayed out of range. All I did was make my head hurt worse.

  “You know why you’re here, don’t you?” Lindsey grinned.

  The cop muttered. “He knows. I told him. He thinks he’s pretty wise.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Lindsey agreed. He pulled a pad out of his pocket, leaned back against a chair and waited for me to say something.

  He’d still be waiting if the press didn’t walk in as nice as you please. The cop at the door looked at Lindsey kind of puzzled-like waiting to see if Logan would get tossed out or not.

  My boy handed an envelope to Lindsey and said tonelessly, “It’s a writ. Very legal and all that. McBride’s free on bail so you can put your pad away, copper.”

  Remember how I told you Lindsey looked the first day I saw him at the hotel desk? How his eyes went all the way up and the red came into his face? He looked like that again. Maybe a little worse.

  But you’d never know how mad he was by the way he spoke. His voice was calm as still-frozen water and just as cold. He said, “I heard you were mixed up with him, Logan. I didn’t want to think so because you used to be a nice guy.”

  “So did yo
u, Lindsey.” Logan had ice of his own.

  The chief’s head made a slow turn until his face was pointed at me. “Now you got friends, Johnny. Now you got friends who can pull writs out of a hat early in the morning because a judge is afraid of getting in wrong with the press. Somebody even went to the trouble of putting up ten-grand bail, so you have some very powerful friends all of a sudden.” His eyes shifted to Logan a moment before coming back to me. “You’re going to need them, feller, but they’ll never be able to help you enough.”

  The doctor and the other cop edged out the room and closed the door. I went to sit up, managed it after the second try and perched on the edge of the bed. Lindsey took a step closer to Logan, the hate oozing out of every pore. “Don’t ever come near me, Logan. Never again, understand?” Then he swung on his heel and reached for the doorknob.

  Logan said, “Lindsey ...”

  The cop barely looked back.

  “We used to be friends,” Logan said.

  “No more.”

  “You used to be a good cop, too.”

  “No more,” I put in, and Lindsey looked all the way back, his hand still on the door.

  “When you finally realize that it’s possible for even a brain like you to be wrong, maybe we can be friends again. You’re not much smarter than me in police business and I say McBride never killed Minnow. Think about it sometime.”

  He thought about it. For at least three seconds. Then he opened the door and slammed it behind him so hard it almost came off the hinges.

  Logan shrugged sadly and turned back to my remains. “Feeling well enough to clear this place?”

  “I certainly don’t feel bad enough to stay. Give me a lift, will you?”

  He came over and hooked his hand under my arm, half dragging me upright. When he was sure I wasn’t going to topple over he got my clothes out of the closet and helped me into them. The whole operation took awhile, but I was fairly presentable except for the patch over my skull. The boys at the desk downstairs handed me a Manila envelope with my personal effects and that was the end of that. Logan had his Chevvy outside and got me into the seat next to him, then lit up a brace of smokes and handed me one.