The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Six (6 page)

“Yeah,” it was Montesori, “they just came in. Tell Rubio. I’ll stall ’em.”

Sixte finished pouring the drinks, added ice and soda. He walked back and held the drink out to Phyllis. She stood back, very carefully. “Put it down on the table,” she said, “I’ll pick it up.”

This was not going to work. Whatever happened, he had to get out of here…fast.

A
T
5:47, a call came in from a radio car. They had tailed Rubio and the other two men to a frame house, old place off Mission Road. They had all gone in, then had come rushing out and piled into the car.

After they had gone, followed by other cars, a check of the house revealed some cut clothesline in the cellar, an unopened bottle of Madeira, and clothes for a girl and a man. There was some blood on the cellar floor, and a few spots on the living room carpet.

Mike Frost got up and put on his coat. It looked like a double-cross. The babe had taken Sixte and lit out, for where?

The source of information at the Shadow Club would not talk…closed up like a clam. In itself, that meant something.

Frost motioned to Noonan and they walked out to the car. “The Shadow Club,” he told Noonan. He sat back in the seat, closing his eyes. After a while all this waiting could get to a guy. It was time to squeeze someone and squeeze them hard. Patience got you only so far.

T
HE GIRL WAS
too cautious, Sixte could see that. He was on edge now. It had been a long time since he had played rough. Not since the Army days. But the events of the past hours had sharpened him up. He was bruised and stiff, but he was mad; he was both mad and desperate.

“It’s a double-cross,” he said, looking at Phyllis. “That guy out there, that Vince Montesori. He called Rubio.”

Her eyes were level and cold. He could see how this girl could kill, and quickly. He explained what he had heard. “It’s your neck, too,” he said, “you were making a deal on your own, but our deal stands if we get out of here.”

“We’ll get out. Open the door.”

It was locked. No answer came from the other side. Phyllis was frightened now. Sixte turned swiftly and picked up a stool that stood beside the little bar. He had heard voices through the wall, low voices, so—he swung the stool.

The crash of smashing wood filled the room and Sixte looked quickly through the hole in the cheap dividing wall. The room beyond was empty. He smashed again with the stool, then went through the hole, and opened the door. Phyllis came out, looking at him quickly—he had not tried to trap her.

The door to the alley was locked tight. The door to the club was locked.

The alley door was metal and tightly fitted, solid as the wall itself. The door to the club was not so tight, and breaking it down might attract help from the club itself. From the patrons…he heard footsteps coming along the hall.

“Behind the door,” he told her, “get them under the gun when they come in.”

Her eyes were small and tight. There was an inner streak of viciousness in this girl. He was accepted as her ally at least momentarily. She looked at him and said, “Don’t worry about Kurt. He’s yellow.”

A key sounded in the lock and Sixte dropped his right hand to the back of a chair. It was a heavy oak chair and he tilted it, ever so slightly.

Montesori stepped inside, behind him were Kurt and two other men. Startled, Montesori looked at him, then beyond him at the smashed panels of the wall. His face went white around the mouth.

“You busted my wall!”

Kurt stepped in, looking at Sixte like he had never seen him before. Rubio followed. “Where’s she? Where’s the girl?”

“Get over by the wall, Vince. You, too, Kurt. All of you.” Phyllis stepped out with the gun.

Only the man in the gray suit remained in the door. Sixte gambled. He had the chair balanced and he shoved down hard on the corner of the back. The chair legs slid, shooting out from under his hand on the slick floor. The man tried to jump, but the heavy chair smashed him across the knees and he fell over it, into the room.

Tom Sixte went over him in a long dive and hit the floor sliding. Somebody yelled behind him and there was a shot, then another. Fists started pounding on the alley door, and Sixte scrambled to his feet only to be tackled from behind. Turning, with a chance to fight back for the first time, Sixte hooked a short, wicked left that caught Rubio as he scrambled to get up.

The blow smashed his nose and showered him with blood. He staggered, his eyes wide, his mouth flapping like a frightened chicken, and then Sixte was on him. Rubio tried to fight back, but Sixte was swinging with both hands. Rubio scuttled backwards into the chair and the gray-suited man who sat very still on the floor, clutching his shin, his face utterly calm.

Vince Montesori jumped through the door, scrambling over the chair, and tried to break past Sixte, but Tom Sixte was in the middle of the hall and he caught the running man coming in with a right that jolted him clear to the spine when it landed. Vince went back and down, and Sixte turned to run but suddenly the room was filled with officers in uniform.

Tom Sixte crouched over, his breath coming in gasps. Looking through the open hall door he could see Kurt lying on the floor inside. His throat had been torn by a bullet and there was a bigger hole behind his ear where it had come out.

Phyllis was handing her gun to an officer, and a big man in plainclothes walked up to Sixte. The man had rusty hair and a freckled face. He looked very tired. “You Sixte?”

“Yeah?”

Frost smiled wryly. “I’m Mike Frost. Glad to see you…. Heck, I’m glad to see you alive.”

Time of Terror

W
hen I looked up from the menu, I was staring into the eyes of a man who had been dead for three years.

Only he was not dead now. He was alive, sitting on the other side of the horseshoe coffee counter, just half a room away, and he was staring at me.

Three years ago I had identified a charred body found in a wrecked car as this man. The car had been his. The remains of the suit he wore were a suit I recognized. The charred driver’s license in his wallet was that of Richard Marmer. The size, the weight, the facial contours, the structure of the burned body, all were those of the man I knew. I was called upon to identify the body because I had been his insurance agent, and I had also known him socially.

On the basis of my identification, the company had paid the supposed widow one million two hundred twenty thousand dollars. Yet the man across the room was Richard Marmer, and he was not dead.

Who else could know of my mistake? His wife? Was
she
still alive? Was I the only person alive who could testify that the man across the room was a murderer? For he must be responsible for the man whose body was found. The logic of that was inevitable.

He was getting up from his place, picking up his check. He was coming around the counter. He sat down beside me. My flesh crawled.

“Hello, Dryden. Recognized me, didn’t you?”

My mouth was dry and I could not find words. What could one say at such a time? I must be careful…careful.

He went on. “It’s been a long time, but I had to come back. Now that you’ve seen me I guess I’ll have to tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

“That you’re in it, too. Right up to your neck.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Have some more coffee, we have a lot to talk about. I took care of all this years ago…just in case.” He ordered coffee for both of us and when the waitress had gone, he said quietly, “After the insurance was paid to my wife, one hundred thousand dollars was deposited to an account under your name at a bank in Reno.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“It’s true. You took your vacation at June Lake that year, and you fished a little at Tahoe.” Marmer was pleased with his shrewdness…and he had been shrewd. “I knew you went there to fish, and I knew when your vacation was so I timed it all very carefully. The bank officials in Reno will be prepared to swear you deposited that money. I forged your signature very carefully. After all”—he smiled—“I practiced it for almost a year.”

They would believe I had been bribed, that I had been in on it.

He could have done it, there was no doubt of that. He had imitated me over the phone more than once; he had fooled friends of mine. It had seemed merely a peculiar quirk of humor until now!

“It wouldn’t stand up,” I objected, but without hope, “not to a careful investigation.”

“Possibly. Only it must first be questioned, and so far there is no reason to believe that it will ever be doubted.”

There
was
a reason; I was determined to get in touch with the police, as soon as I could get out of here, and take my chances.

“You see,” he continued, “you would be implicated at once. And of course, you would be implicated in the murder, too.”

The skin on my neck was cold. My fingers felt stiff. When I tried to swallow my throat was dry.

“If murder is ever suspected, they will suspect you, too. I even”—he smiled—“left a letter in which I said that you were involved…and that letter will get to the district attorney. I have been very thorough, Dryden! Very thorough!”

“Where’s your wife?” I asked him.

He chuckled and it had a greasy, throaty, awful sound. “She made trouble.” He turned a bit and something metallic bumped against the counter. I looked down. The butt of a flat automatic protruded from the edge of his coat. When I looked back up, he smiled.

“It’s all true, Dryden. Come out to the car, I’ll prove it to you.”

My thoughts fluttered wildly at the bars of the cage he was building around me. And yet, I doubted that it was really a cage at all. He had killed an innocent man, now it seemed he had killed his wife, what was there to keep him from killing me, too? He had nothing to lose, nothing at all. What he had told me of the involved plot to implicate me was probably a lie. Somehow I couldn’t imagine a man who would kill someone in order to cash in on his life insurance, and then kill his wife, giving up one hundred thousand dollars on the off chance that it would keep me quiet. Marmer just wanted to get me out to the car. He wanted to get me out to the car so he could kill me.

What was left for me? What was the way out? There had been an officer in the army who told us there was always a way out, that there was always an answer…one had only to think.

Fear.

That was my salvation, my weapon, the one thing with which I could fight! Suddenly, I knew. My only weapon lay before me, the weapon of my mind. I must think slowly, carefully, clearly. And I must be an actor.

Here beside me was a man who had killed, a man with a gun who certainly wanted to kill me. My only weapon was my own mind and the fear that lay ingrained deep in the convolutions of his brain. Though he was behaving calmly he must be a frightened, worried man. I would frighten him more. What was the old saying about the guilty fleeing when no man pursued? I must talk to him…I must lie, cheat, anything to keep myself alive.

His fear was my weapon, so I must spin around this man a web of illusion and fear, a web so strong that he would have no escape…

“All of you fellows are the same”—I picked up my coffee, smiling a little—“you plan so carefully and then overlook the obvious. I always liked you, Marmer,” that was a lie, for I never had, “and I’m glad to see you now.”

“Glad?” He stared at me.

“What I mean,” I made my voice dry and a little tired, “should be obvious. I’ll admit I was startled when I saw you here, but I was not worried because this could be an opportunity for both of us. You can save your life and I can regain my reputation with the company.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” He stared at me. He was skeptical, but he was not sure. That was my weapon…he could not be sure.

For what mind is free of doubt? In what mind lies no fear? How great then must be the fear of a man who has murdered twice over? The world is his enemy, all eyes are watching him. All ears are listening, all whispers are about him.

When could he be sure that somebody else, some clerk, some filling station attendant, somebody who had known him…when could he be sure he was not seen?

A criminal always believes things will turn out right for him and he believes he is smarter, shrewder…or at least he believes that on the surface…beneath lies a morass of doubt, a deep sink of insecurity and fear.

“Marmer,” I spoke carefully and in a not unfriendly tone, “you’ve been living in a fool’s paradise. Not one instant since you committed your crime have you been free. Your wife got your insurance money so you believed your crime had been successful.”

Behind the counter was a box of tea bags, it was partly behind a plastic tray of spoons but I could see
CONSTANT COM
…written on the box.

“You forgot,” I continued, “about Constant.”

“What?”

“Bob Constant was an FBI man, one of their crack operators. He quit the government and accepted a better paying job as head of the investigation setup in our insurance company.

“He’d been in the business a long time and such men develop a feeling for
wrongness,
for something out of place. So he had a hunch about your supposed death.”

Oh, I had his attention now! He was staring at me, his eyes dilated. And then as I talked I actually remembered something that had bothered me. I seemed to see again a bunch of keys lying on a policeman’s desk…his keys. Something about those keys had worried me, but at the time I could find nothing wrong. How blind I had been! Now, at last, I could see them again and I knew what had been wrong!

“He checked all your things, and when he came to your keys, he checked each one. Your house key was not among them.”

He drew a quick, shocked breath. Then he said, “So what?” But he did not look at me, and his fingers fidgeted at his napkin.

“Why should a man’s house key not be in his pocket? He was puzzled about that. It was not logical, he said. I objected that your wife could let you in, but he would not accept that. You should still have a key.

“Suppose, he asked me, that the dead man is not the insured man? Suppose the dead man was murdered and substituted, and then at the last minute the murderer remembered the key…perhaps his wife was away from home…then he would take that key from the ring, never suspecting it would be noticed.

“So he began to investigate, the money had been paid, but that was not the end. Your wife had left town, several months, at least. But probably you didn’t trust her with all that money. She had said she was going to live with her sister…only she didn’t. He knew that within a few hours. Then where had she gone?

“You see, Marmer? Bob Constant (I was beginning to admire my invention) was suspicious, so he started the wheels moving. All over the United States a description went out, a description of you and of your wife. New people in a community were quietly looked over, your relatives were checked. Your sister-in-law had been getting letters from your wife, and then they stopped. Your sister-in-law was worried.

“More wheels started turning,” I said quietly, “they are looking for you now in a thousand cities. For over a year, we have known you were alive. For over two years evidence has been accumulating. They don’t tell me much about it. I’m only a small cog in a big wheel.”

“You’re lying!” His voice was louder, there was an underlying strain there.

“We dug up the body,” I continued quietly, “…doctors keep records of fractures, you know, and we wanted to check this body for a broken bone that had healed.

“Did you ever watch a big police system work? It doesn’t look like much, and no particular individual seems to do very much, yet when all their efforts mesh on one case the results are prodigious. And you…you are on the wrong end of it.

“No information is safe. Baggage men, hotel people, telephone operators, all are anxious to help the police if only to be known as cooperative in case they want to fix a parking ticket.”

I was talking for my life, talking because I knew this man was willing to kill me, and that he could do it now and there would be small chance that I could protect myself in any way. Suppose I grabbed him suddenly, and throttled him? Suppose I killed him? I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t do it because I didn’t know if I could and because of the fear that he hadn’t been lying, that he had, in fact, set me up.

Never had life been so beautiful as then! All the books I wanted to read, the food I wanted to taste, the hours I wanted to spend at many things, all of them seemed vastly greater and more beautiful than ever before.

Fear…it was my only weapon…if I was lucky he might let me go or, more realistically, if I got away he might choose to go into hiding rather than pursue me. I also realized I might have another weapon…hope.

“They can’t miss, Marmer, you’re not safe and you never have been. Did you ever see a man die in a gas chamber? I have. You hear that it is very quick and very easy. You can believe that if you like. And what is quick? The word is relative.

“Did you ever think how that could be, Marmer? To live, even for an instant, without hope? But in those months on death row, waiting, there is no hope.”

“Shut up.”

He said it flatly, yet there was a ring of underlying terror in it, too. Who was to say what responsive chords I might have touched? “Have it your own way,” I said, then I moved to close the deal. “You can beat the rap if you’re smart.”

“What?” He stared at me, his interest captured in spite of himself. “What do you mean?”

“Look.” I was dry, patient. “Do you think that I want to see you dead? Come on, man, we’ve been friends! The insurance company could be your ally in this. Suppose you went to them now…Suppose you went up there and confessed, and then offered to return what money you have left? You needn’t even return it all.” I was only thinking of winning my safety now. I was in there, trying. “But some is better than none. They would help you make a deal…extenuating circumstances. Who knows what a good lawyer could do? We’ve only been collecting evidence on you, that you weren’t dead. We’ve nothing on the dead man in the car; we’ve nothing on your wife. They would be glad to get some of their money back and would cut a deal to help you out. You could beat the death penalty.”

He sat very still and said nothing. He was crumpling the paper napkin in his fingers. I dared not speak. The wrong move or the wrong word…at least, he was worried, he was thinking.

“No!” He spoke so sharply that people looked up. He noticed it and lowered his voice. “Come on! We’re getting out of here! Make one wrong move or say one word and I’ll let you have it!”

He said no more about showing me the deposit from Reno. Had I thrown away my chance at life by pushing him too hard? Had I forced him to kill me? We got up.

Maybe I could have done something. Perhaps I could have reached for him, but there were a dozen innocent people in that café within gun range. I wanted no one else injured or killed even though I wanted to save myself.

We paid our checks and stepped out into the cool night air…a little mist was drifting in over the building. It would be damp and foggy along the coast roads.

We walked to his car, and he was a bare step behind me. “Get behind the wheel,” he said, “and drive carefully. Don’t get us stopped. If you do, I’ll kill you.”

When we were moving, I spoke to him quietly. “What are you going to do, Rich? I always liked you. Even when you pulled this job, I still couldn’t feel you were all wrong. Somewhere along the line you didn’t get a decent break, something went wrong somewhere.

“That’s why I’ve tried to help you tonight, because I was thinking of you.”

“And not because you were afraid to die?” he sneered.