Nothing to Lose But My Life Page 11

  It was enough. I was really boxed in. I should have been less sanguine after finding Hoop’s body. The frame was plain enough, God knew. I should have bought a spare outfit and put myself in a position to get away. But I hadn’t. I’d played it cute instead, and now I could do nothing. Except let Nikke help me. That was the last thing I wanted.

  I said, “Have they connected me with Tanya officially yet?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  I said slowly, “And so I’m to let you get my money and slip it to me. What else do you do for me, Nikke?”

  Nikke sounded almost eager. “I’ll get the money and whatever else you need, Lowry. And I’ll get you on a plane—”

  “Us on a plane,” I corrected him.

  “Both of you on a plane,” he said as if it hurt. “I’ll get you out.”

  “Sure,” I agreed, “and that leaves you still in the saddle and safe here, doesn’t it?”

  “Lowry, damn it—” He broke off and swore and stopped. “Listen, you fool. You’ve been running around this town, a prime target, since you came. If I’d wanted to get rid of you, I could have done it easily enough. Believe it or not, but the only reason you’re running loose right now is because I’ve worked to keep you that way.”

  “You touch me,” I murmured.

  “You still want your pound of flesh, don’t you, Lowry? You can’t do any more to Hoop but there’s still me.”

  “That’s right,” I admitted.

  “All right,” Nikke said. I thought I heard a gasp but it wasn’t from me and it wasn’t from Nikke. “Come ahead, Lowry. If it makes you feel any better. Let me get your stuff for you and arrange for a plane. Then come ahead. I only want one thing.”

  “A gun in the belly?” It was a stupid remark, but I wasn’t feeling particularly sharp. I had too much on my mind at the moment.

  “Ten minutes of your time,” Nikke said. “Ten minutes with you keeping your mouth shut and your mind open.”

  “You’re a good talker, Nikke,” I said. “But you aren’t that good.”

  “If I’m not, then why won’t you listen to me?”

  He had me there. “I’ll listen,” I said. “Where are you?”

  “At my place. The old one. I’m always here.”

  “Okay,” I said. “And thanks for the tip. I’ll be along after I get my money. I’ll do that much for myself.” I hung up.

  The phone rang almost at once. I let it ring. It jangled until I thought my head would come apart but finally it stopped. Let Nikke run in circles for a while, sweating about me getting caught, about that leading to Tanya. I had sweated once because of Nikke; let him sweat now because of me.

  A cute pair they made, Nikke and Tanya.

  I went into the kitchen and got myself something to eat. I wished I had asked him where Enid was. I wanted to get her and warn her so she wouldn’t fall into this mess. I suspected that she was at the club on the highway, but it wasn’t anyplace I could go to find out.

  I waited a while before I ate what I’d prepared. My stomach was in a knot. I didn’t want to stuff it in that condition and add indigestion to my other troubles. I let myself simmer down and then I ate. I spent the time thinking.

  I had wakened fully aware of what I must do. The answer was simple—find out who killed Hoop for my own protection. The method was the hardest part. I had seen the one way—start with his friends. That meant with the Conklins. Only now it wasn’t going to be a matter of walking in on them and asking a few leading questions. I doubted if their hospitality would extend to keeping their mouths shut even if, in a sense, I would be their guest. Especially now after Hoop’s body had been found and I was chief suspect. Especially since I believed that Sofia was behind the anonymous tip.

  I also had a few necessary things to do. One of them was to get rid of Hoop’s clothes still in the Lincoln. The meal finished, I shoved the dishes in the sink, got my hat and coat, and went to the garage.

  It was a dark night. Inside the garage it was even darker. The light switch did nothing but click futilely. I was busily thinking of what to do with the clothes and so all that crossed my mind was to curse light bulbs that burned out at the wrong time.

  I should have been more alert, knowing what I did. I walked right into it.

  Chapter X

  IT WAS A SAP, nicely loaded but not skilfully wielded. The attacker was too eager. I heard the hiss and had enough sense to duck and try to run. But I wasn’t fast enough and in that darkness I could see nothing. I had turned out the house lights and even though the kitchen door was open, it gave me no help. All I did was duck into the doorway and frame myself against the lighter background there. The first time the sap caught my right shoulder, numbing it. The second time it got me behind the ear.

  I felt the concrete of the garage floor come up and hit me on the side of the face. It stank of grease and oil. I was hurt but I wasn’t out. I rolled. I rolled right into a leg. I grabbed and jerked. Someone swore. The leg was pulled away. A foot came at me, catching me as I was still frantically rolling, and it got me on the same shoulder as the sap had. My whole right side, arm and all, went completely numb.

  I got to my feet. I could hear my own breathing and then, as it stilled, I could hear other breathing. I sorted it out, thinking with the back of my mind that men breathed as differently as they talked. There was someone on my right. There was someone else on my left. He was waiting too.

  I slid into the darkness. “All right, you’ve softened me up. Now come and get me.”

  It was pure bravado. I was scared so that the food I had eaten was churning double time in my stomach. They were armed; I was not. They were two to one. I was half out, and my right side was useless. I didn’t know who they were and they did know who I was. They knew how I might react. I knew nothing of them. Except one thing—they weren’t cops. Cops didn’t do it this way. They didn’t have to.

  “Let me gut him,” a voice said. And now I did know one thing. I was listening to Emmett. Emmett the lover of photography magazines and snap-blade knives and God knew what else. Emmett who was probably hopped to the ears and craving to carve on me.

  Knowing that didn’t make me feel any better. A voice from some distance back said in a way that was almost unintelligible, “Save him for me.” And I knew why the voice was so indistinct. That was Perly and he sounded as if he had his jaw wired.

  I began to sweat. Perly and Emmett, my little playmates. And neither the cops nor Nikke would really give a damn if they dropped my remains in the middle of the public street It would be a satisfactory solution to a lot of problems.

  I swallowed. Perly’s voice had not come from where I could hear one of the men breathing. So there were really three of them. I glanced longingly toward the kitchen door. The faintest bit of light came in there through the window. I knew the location of this place thoroughly; I had lived at one end of the row long enough. If I could get into that kitchen, I had a chance. It would be slim, but better than dying here on the floor.

  I wondered why they didn’t move in on me. If there were three of them against one, what would make them hesitate? There was only one logical answer—a gun. They couldn’t know in that darkness whether or not I had a gun. I didn’t.

  A foot scraped to my left. Someone was moving in. I took a step backward, feeling for the wall of the garage, wanting something solid to bolster me. I said, “One more step and I’ll blow a hole in you, friend. A forty-five doesn’t play games.”

  The foot stopped. The breathing from that direction was a little heavier. I said, “The cops want me for one killing. A few more won’t hurt my conscience.”

  “Let me gut him,” Emmett whined.

  I put a foot in the direction of his voice and scraped my sole over the concrete. I could hear him stumbling backward. Hopped up or not, he was still a patsy. I said, “What do you guys want?”

  From my right a reasonable voice said, “You.” It was Jake.

  “And where do we go—to Nikke or in th
e harbor?” I made, it friendly, as if we were chatting over a beer.

  “Nikke will do,” Jake said. He chuckled.

  Nikke was making sure, I thought bitterly, that I didn’t make a fool of myself and let the cops get me. If I didn’t come one way—alive—he would be satisfied to have me another.

  I looked again at the kitchen doorway. I decided to try for it. If I missed, I was no worse off. I knew Perly and I knew Emmett. I didn’t think that Jake would be able to handle them if he wanted to. Let them really get their hands on me and Nikke would get me the other way—good and dead. I took a deep breath. I had one bluff and only one coming to me.

  I knew I’d better make it a good one.

  Perly said in his garbled voice, “Maybe he ain’t got a gun. He didn’t have one before.”

  “I have one,” I said. “Thanks to you.”

  And that was my mistake. Perly said, “I told you he didn’t have one. The cops got my forty-five. They found it in his room.”

  I jumped and ran. I was still rubbery in the legs. My head hurt from the sap. My right side from the shoulder to waist was like a block of wood, the arm flapping uselessly.

  “Get him!” That was Jake.

  The patch of dimness that was the doorway beckoned to me like a soft-singing siren. I got into it and jumped sideways. Emmett’s knife whispered through the door, through the space where my back had so recently been. The heavy pounding of three pairs of feet came at me.

  The back door would take too long. That left only the window that looked out over the slope of the hill and the vacant lot. There was a kitchen cart in front of it, one of those little jobs of porcelain over metal on wheels. I grabbed it with my left hand and shot it at the doorway. I heard a clatter and a grunt. I couldn’t wait to see if I’d done any damage. I went through the window feet first.

  The crash of the glass and the frame going made a terrific racket. But over it I heard Jake’s deep-voiced shout and Emmett’s squealing. I felt like I was cut by shards of glass but I was too busy to care at the moment. I lit on the slope at the foot of the window, pitched forward, tangled my feet in a spiky yucca bush, and caught my balance.

  And now I was outside, neatly outlined as a target. I had counted on their not wanting to use guns, figuring that if they had, they would have used them in the garage. But they’d changed their minds. A roar came from the window and a bullet snicked at yucca pods off to my right. I went down on my face and lay still. I could hear them working at the back door. They were coming after me.

  It was some distance down and some distance up. This house was separated from the next one in the row by thirty feet of open ground with nothing but scrub manzanita and an occasional yucca. If I started downslope for the garage, they couldn’t miss me. If I started up, I would run right into them. Besides, no one but a fool would run up a hill when he was in a hurry, not when he could run down.

  I gave them credit for that much reasoning. I started wriggling upward. I made a half dozen feet and stopped. At first I could hear only my own breathing. Then I picked up their sounds. They were coming down, quietly now. Jake was saying in a low voice, “You damned fool, Perly. That shot will bring the cops.”

  “He won’t be much good to them when they come,” Perly said. The gun blasted again. But it was way wide. He had just thought he saw me.

  “It’s too late now,” Jake said in a resigned voice. I had him located, twenty feet to my left and upslope. Starlight glinted on his gun as he brought it out.

  Now they were in earnest about this thing. I felt around and got my fingers on a small rock. Rolling onto my back, I threw awkwardly with my left arm. The rock sailed away, downslope and toward the house. It made only a small noise when it landed, brushing against a manzanita, sounding like someone rattling the dry branches by brushing accidentally against it.

  Not two but three guns opened up on the sound. I took the momentary advantage, rolled over, got to my feet and, crouched low, sprinted upward. A dozen, fifteen feet, and I flattened out and lay still.

  The guns were silent. Next door a light had come on. I heard an inquiring voice. Some distance below, a car ground its gears as it shifted into second to pull the last stretch of hill. I wondered if headlights on the road above would sweep this way and pin me.

  They did. As the car came around a curve toward the house, the powerful lights momentarily flooded the vacant lot. I was lying as flat as I could but I was afraid it wasn’t flat enough. All three of them were looking in my direction. They were standing and the lights caught them squarely. I had a glimpse of Jake in his monkey suit, of Emmett slightly bent forward, his expression eager, of Perly with a contraption on his face, holding his jaw together. It didn’t improve his appearance.

  “There!” It was Emmett. I had never heard such an exultant cry.

  The lights were gone. I was up, trying to run, zigzagging. But that was hard work under any circumstances; going up that steep slope it was almost impossible. A gun let loose, another. I felt the heel of my shoe go, I felt the whisper of death close to my head. It wouldn’t be long before one of them got a bead.

  I scarcely heard the car up above stop. I was too busy. I went down again and jumped up as a bullet went right over me. How I did it, I don’t know. But the top of the slope was not ten feet away and I was still in one piece. Up there was paved roadway, solid footing, a chance to get into the shadow of another house, somewhere out of the open, someplace where I would be less of a prime target.

  I made one last sprint, clawing at the dirt with my good hand, digging with legs that felt like cement pillars, fighting those last feet upward.

  A sledgehammer hit me. I got a mouthful of dirt and felt myself rolling back down the way I had come. Someone shouted, cursing, and I thought I was back in the war, taking part in an offensive. Then I stopped thinking. I came up against a rock and blacked out.

  • • •

  This is what Tanya told the police when they came: She was driving home when she saw some men standing in the vacant lot. They were shooting guns. She thought there were three, but she couldn’t be sure. They apparently became frightened when her headlights hit them because they ran over to the south, lifted another man from the ground and ran away with him. They went to a car parked below, got in, and drove off. She had no idea what kind of a car it was. The distance was too great and it was dark.

  They talked to her for an hour because she was Hoop’s fiancée. They asked her about me. She’d met me twice, she said, once when with Hoop and once at Sofia Conklin’s. Could I have been one of the men doing the shooting? She didn’t know, but she had the impression I was the man who had been carried away. It was just an impression, she assured them. It had all happened very quickly.

  They found the broken window. They found Enid’s things in the flat. They found other interesting items too—my hat and coat, and the Lincoln in the garage with Hoop’s clothing in the trunk. And they went off after Enid.

  Tanya told me about it. I had spent some time in the back of her closet where I ruined a few pair of shoes by bleeding on them. I wasn’t aware of the closet or of the shoes. I wasn’t aware until I woke up and found myself in her bed, and for the second time in as many days, she was nursing me. Only this time I really needed a nurse.

  I was clear-headed enough when she finally brought me around. My right arm and shoulder hurt like the devil because the numbness from the sap had worn off. My left side felt like someone had lain hot iron across it. There was a groove right across the ribs.

  “You’re lucky, Lowry! God, how lucky you are!”

  She had been crying. Her hair was down, not even in braids. She wore one of her sheathe evening gowns, this one black, and it was stained with dirt, spotted with blood. Her make-up was about gone. She still looked terrific to me. I wished she hadn’t. I was perfectly clear in the head and I remembered that I hated her.

  “What bed of roses did I fall into this time?”

  “You’ve lost some blood,” she said,
“a shirt and coat, and that’s about all. Three of them shooting at you like that and you get a crease in the ribs.”

  “I’d rather they’d missed,” I said.

  “Your leg is cut too,” she said. “It looks like glass.”

  “I jumped through the window. Nikke’s little playmates wanted me badly and they didn’t care how they got me.”

  “Nikke didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “He didn’t send for me?” I made it sarcastic.

  “You know Nikke better than that, Lowry!”

  “Sure,” I agreed, “he’s my guardian angel. My friend, Nikke. All I have to do is let him get his hands on my fifty thousand and everything else I own and he’ll protect me by shipping me off to Mexico. He’ll even give you up to me. That shows how much he loves us both.”

  She was crying again, silently, her shoulders jerking every now and then, the tears cutting a groove in the dirt plastered on her face. It hurt me to watch her. I closed my eyes. After a while she stopped crying and told me about the cops.

  “And,” I said when she’d finished, “how did you explain the way you look?”

  “I told them after the men left I ran down to see if there was anyone else there and I fell. I kept my coat on so they saw only my face.” I had my eyes open and she was looking at me. “I didn’t have a chance to change, Lowry. They were here almost before I had you in the closet. I barely got the blood spots you left cleaned up.”

  “Lucky,” I said. “Or maybe not.” I was thinking that the cops might be playing it smart, letting Tanya hang herself. I went on, “What will they do to Enid?”

  “What can they do?” Tanya demanded. “Nothing unless they can prove she was harboring you.”

  “She’s just idiot enough to say she was.”

  “The Proctor name still carries weight,” Tanya said. “They’ll be careful with her.” She saw that I was going to try to get up and held me down. She was strong. “Relax, Lowry. I’ve already called Nikke about it.”