Kill Me Tomorrow (24 page)

I started talking again and told Tony that, as far as Lucrezia's whereabouts and what had happened to her were concerned, the Highway Patrol could have the paint on Tony's front fender analyzed and come up with the make and model of the other car and damn near figure out how much gas was in its tank, that they'd be working on it, and so would I—and short of hell and high water, earthquake and eruption, I'd find her.

Then I said, “We'll keep hoping this has nothing to do with that probably tapped phone of yours, but just in case it does there might be trouble heading your way. So let me talk to Sergeant Striker. I'll hang on while you go back to your place and get him. There are some things he should know, especially about Lieutenant—”

“He had to leave.”

“He
left?
When?

“About … seven, seven-fifteen. It was just a little while before the Highway Patrol called me—”

“Is he coming back? Why did he leave?”

“I don't know if he'll be back. Lieutenant Weeton phoned him here, and he had to go on some kind of special duty. He said the lieutenant is in charge of everything when the captain goes home at night, so he had to leave.”

It shouldn't have affected me as much as it did, I suppose, but my face got cold and I could feel the sudden wetness on it.

“Tony, you've got a gun in your house, haven't you?”

“Shotgun and rifle. But—”

“Go home. Load the shotgun. Keep the blinds drawn, stay in the house, and keep that boomer handy.”

“What? My God, do you think—”

“Don't worry about what I think. I've got to go.”

“But, load the gun? And stay in—”

“Just
do
it, will you? I've got to get going. Good-bye.”

I had actually started to hang up the phone when it happened. I knew what it was. I knew immediately. Behind me there was a sort of calamitous-and-catastrophic-sounding
CRASH
and a somewhat lesser sound of splintering-booming-thundering. It was very much as though a bolt of lightning had landed three feet from my ear. But I knew it wasn't that. It was merely hell and high water, earthquake and eruption.

My back was to the door. Even without looking I knew, I just
knew
, that someone—or something—had crashed through that door like those villains you see tearing through houses in animated cartoons.

I dropped the phone and swung around ducking and bending aside before I even started turning, and I saw him—need I say who?—coming at me like a great oak uprooted and flung at me on the winds of a typhoon. The cuffs still encircled each of his wrists, but they were separated, no longer joined in the middle.

But that wasn't all.

Beyond Bludgett, who had one humanoid arm cranked back and was already uncranking it and the ridiculous fist at its end, were a regiment of other guys. They were jumping in over the door that Bludgett had hit and knocked absolutely flat on the carpet, their intention clearly to do the same thing to me.

If I hadn't swerved and ducked even before starting to turn, Bludgett's enormous fist would have caught me squarely in the head. As it was, the thing whistled by two inches from my skull, and I just kept on leaning to my left, got leverage for one foot and half hopped and half shoved myself aside.

Bludgett couldn't stop, kept going. I heard him hit the wall. I hoped he'd keep on going through the wall, but knew it was a forlorn hope. Actually it didn't matter much. What had looked like a regiment of hoods streaming in the door turned out to be only three others, but three—with Bludgett—was enough. Three without Bludgett was enough. Two of them I recognized: hard-muscled and slim-hipped Ace; the square milk-white face and short burly body of Lucky Ryan. The third man was dark-skinned, lean, with hard black eyes, thin black moustache.

Even as I recognized the two men, I wondered what Ryan was doing here with Ace and the third guy—probably Fleepo—his appointed executioners. But I would have to ponder that question another time, if ever.

There wasn't time to get out my Colt or even think of getting it out. There were no other guns in sight. I guess they didn't want the sound of gunshots to bring possible help—help for me, like bellmen and maids—on the run. Nearest to me was the guy called Ace. Despite his muscular build, he clearly wasn't much of a man for the rough-and-tumble. He wasn't planted, getting set. He was actually jumping at me, one foot clear the hell off the floor and both his hands reaching.

No matter what else happened in the next few seconds I knew I was going to get him. I did, and I got him good. Those reaching hands were before his face, so I didn't even try to bang through them, just bent my knees a little more and then shoved as hard as I could, letting right hand and arm slice up toward his middle as my legs uncoiled, and when my projecting knuckles smacked against his gut he jerked astonishingly in the air, and the breath flew from his mouth like gas from a geyser, and I saw him spin off to one side atilt, falling, but I didn't see him land.

I did see the leather-covered sap swinging and jerked my head aside. Almost in time. It barely clipped me, but it made my head ring like a lead gong and slowed me down a little. Enough. The sap was in Lucky's hand. Almost on top of me was the black-moustached man. I was already bent to my left, but still balanced. I yanked my right leg up, snapped it out and felt the heel of my shoe ram into the guy's groin. A knee came up and hit my chest hard, knocking me off balance. I spun around, trying to get my feet planted.

Turning, everything blurred, almost out of focus, I got a glimpse of Ace doubled up on the floor and saw the moustached boy six feet away on his back, so the guy yanking on me had to be Lucky—but that which was now before my eyes made all else pale into insignificance.

It mattered not that I was still on my feet, or that of the four strong lusty men who had attacked me two were now temporarily out of commission, or that with only a few more moments of grace it was at least possible I could have sent Lucky to join his friends on the carpet.

It mattered not. That was the stuff of which dreams were made.

What mattered was Bludgett.

Bludgett, all set, ready and eager and homicidal, feet spread, arm cocked again, cocked and then triggered.

I saw that huge fist coming at me and tried to move my head, but knew my head wasn't moving fast enough, certainly not as fast as it would soon be moving, and in that elastic moment I remembered the many—too many—times I'd thought,
Man, I hope I
never
get clobbered by Bludgett
. The too many times, because I already
knew
if you hold the dumb goddamn thought long enough you are going to get it, and now, sure enough, I was going to get it.

In what remained of that sickening instant there was time only for very quick little thoughts, so I thought,
“No
!” And then
“No
!” But each time a dirty little voice from somewhere, somewhere smarter than where I was, whispered,
“Oh, yes
.”

With that fist merely a blur half an inch from my head, my
very
last thought was, That Which He Feared Has Come Upon Him, and even though it wasn't original it was true as true could be. Because, right then, it sure did come upon me.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The flood fell in sheets of thunder and the mud was filled with lightning. Wetness whipped me with a heavy lash. Freezing blackness oozed over me like cold napalm. For a while there was no pain, and then the pain began.

With the pain, memory. Very little at first. Memory of men and blows … of something blurred, too deep in mind to reach … And awareness of now. Now: I was lying flat, face down, in mud. Rain fell steadily on my back. I could hear thunder, swelling and fading. When I rolled over and sat up, my right arm almost buckled, pain darting in the muscles, and my head throbbed, throbbed, throbbed, a dull knife slicing through it with every beat of my heart.

Minutes passed while I sat there, and slowly memory returned. Not all of it, some of it. I remembered Mountain Shadows. Lucrezia Brizante, the lovely Lucrezia. Everything from meeting her in the cocktail lounge up until … the convention room, and Bludgett. Yeah, Bludgett, and the laser, and getting socked or pushed or flung off the stage.

And then—too suddenly—Bludgett again, his fist swinging at me, the other men with him.…

I couldn't have been with Bludgett, getting smacked across the back, and then immediately afterward in my own rooms with Bludgett—and three other lobs—getting smacked in the head, smacked by Bludgett
again
.

But that's the way it was. The space between, or rather the segment of time between, had been plucked out and thrown away. Or smacked out and thrown away. A minute, an hour, or hours—I had no idea how long, nor did I have any idea what had filled the minutes or hours.

Wouldn't you know? I thought. Wouldn't you know the one blank bit would be the bit between Bludgett and Bludgett?

The one blank bit, that is, except for the one just ended. The blankness which had begun when that huge fist connected with my forehead. There was, naturally, no memory of anything from then until now, since when unconscious one is not conscious. And I had sure been unconscious.

So how had I gotten here?

There was something … That thing “too deep in mind.”

Running, shouts, sharp sounds—shots, probably. Gunshots. But it was all thick and blurred, not real, confused, like one picture on a single film exposed a dozen times. I knew I'd been with the four hoods, had been knocked out. I remembered
that
vivid moment in my room. But how I'd gotten there—or here—I didn't know. I didn't even know where “here” was.

I stood up. At least I was able to stand. Everything worked. There were no bullet holes in me. Lights shone in the darkness not very far away. I walked toward them.

It was a gas station. Two pumps, a guy reading a paperback book. I rubbed mud from the face of my watch. It was still running, and the time was nine-sixteen, so I guessed I'd come to about nine o'clock. From the attendant I learned the station was on the road between Scottsdale and Sunrise Villas, about five miles from Mountain Shadows. I had change in my pockets, wallet inside my coat. Everything—except my gun.

I dropped a dime into the pay phone on the wall, dialed Mountain Shadows. I wasn't able to reach Paul Anson, but I managed to get Artie Katz brought to the phone. He'd been parking cars at the hotel entrance, but when I told him who I was and where and asked if he could pick me up in a hurry, he said, “Right away, Mr. Scott. I'll bet you're surprised how quick.”

I hung up, smiling—probably for the first time in hours—and went into the rest room, and stopped smiling. Over the washbasin was a large mirror in which I caught sight of myself from the waist up. I seemed to be entirely mud. But by looking very closely I could see, under the wet earth, a huge lump on my forehead, plus a cut over my right eye.

I washed my face and hands but didn't even try to do anything about my clothes—my lovely, brand-new, custom-tailored, shimmering, color-of-a-dragon's-eye suit. What I needed was a complete overhaul; a dab here and there wasn't going to make much difference. So I spent only a minute or so in the john, then walked outside and was trying to light a wet cigarette—it can't be done—when I heard a sound.

It was a zooming sound, a muffled roar, and for a moment I thought it was a fan-jet flying low through rain and storm over the Valley of the Sun. But then I saw on my right, where five miles distant Scottsdale lay, a pair of headlights rushing toward me with astounding speed.

It was Artie Katz. It had to be. The tires shrieked, skidded on the wet pavement, he slid to a stop fifty yards past the station, backed up heedless of death, whipped his frail-looking buggy around, screeched the tires again, and with a grinding jerk made the heap spring forward to stop inches from my quaking knees.

“How was that?” he asked, grinning his toothy grin.

I didn't say anything. I eyed his automobile dubiously, then opened the door and climbed in.

“I figured you'd think I got here pretty quick,” he said, presumably disappointed by my silence. “I did it in just over three minutes.”

“I don't believe you're here yet, that's all,” I said. “Or, rather, I simply lost a little extra time somewhere—I'm good at that. Three minutes? Ha, I defy you to prove—”

Vrooom
. My head snapped back. I'd barely got it forward again when the tires were screeching and we were swerving a little, a little too much, on the highway. “Are we there?” I asked.

“Not yet. I didn't want them to hear me slowing down too near the hotel.”

I opened my eyes. We were
almost
there. And very shortly Artie had pulled up in the curving drive before the softly lighted entrance near the pretty rockwork with water trickling down its face, near the plants and all the pretty things—all of which hinted that my appearance was not quite up to Mountain Shadows usual standard. Artie seemed to notice it at the same time.

“What
happened
to you?” he asked me.

“The same old thing,” I told him noncommittally. “Many thanks for taking two years off my life, Artie. I'll see you later. You wouldn't want any wet money, would you?”

“I don't care if it's drowned.”

This boy was going to go far. “I'll see you later,” I said, then strolled through the swinging glass doors into the brightly lighted lobby. If anybody asked me dumb questions I would merely tell them I was doing my thing. That covers anything these days.

I'd started tramping over the pretty orange carpet when I saw the girl Paul had been with at the bar last night. She was walking from my left, toward the cocktail lounge and dining room. She saw me and came to a full stop, then, like the nice girl she undoubtedly was, tried to pretend she'd seen nothing unusual, and walked right by me.