There was one other thing, too. The second guy had his right hand in a bandage and there was a trace of crimson seeping through the gauze. I had them locked in tight now and there was no doubt about it. These three were part of a kill team and the one with the bad mitt could be the guy I nailed in the corridor of the hotel.
One thing I
was
sure of. None of them was Vidor Churis and none had what could be described as having a round mouth. Two more were someplace else and I wanted them too.
With a thick-tongued accent one said, “Burned out. I’ll get the lamp, Alexis.”
I came around the door the same instant the light switched on and the one in the velour hat screamed out, “Nyet!” and I knew the odds had changed. The guy had been around too much and had probably pulled the same stunt before and he was in a dive going for a gun as I lined up on him.
The other two needed only that one hoarse shout to move and they were down and furniture was in the way and all I could do was pitch off to one side and go for the floor. The first shots from Minner’s gun blasted into the woodwork where I had been and smashed back into the kitchen.
Something flew through the air, hit the lamp and knocked it over in a shower of glass and a flash of yellow and the room was blacker than before because my eyes were not accommodated to the darkness.
The only advantage I had was that it had happened to them too and with three of them scattered around they couldn’t risk random shots without risking their own necks. The blast of the gun still reverberated in everyone’s ears and before it could fade and let the small noises back I skittered ten feet closer to the wall where the one was with the bandaged hand and I could hear him breathing only a little distance away from me.
I eased off my shoes, threw one across the room and it hit and bounced against a chair. Nobody fell for it. I couldn’t wait. I couldn’t give them time to let their eyes and ears get adjusted to the darkness. Any move I made had to be quick while they were on edge and not thinking. They couldn’t be sure I was alone, but it wouldn’t take long for them to realize how the situation stood.
The only thing that annoyed me was that I couldn’t see their faces without exposing my position and I didn’t want to take a chance of getting myself knocked off when the odds were in their favor. But one had a funny velour hat on with a feather in the band and if I saw that again I’d recognize it.
My hands felt the legs of the table and a heavy chair to the side. I tried to remember how the furniture was placed, recalled the details and began to edge around the chair. It couldn’t have taken longer than a minute, but time seemed to drag on and on as I inched along.
The first thing I saw was a small luminous glow and knew it was the watch on the guy’s left wrist. The job was going to take both hands, so I shoved the .45 in my waistband where I could get at it quickly and got ready. I took my time about how I was going to do it, located the approximate position of his head and neck, gathered myself and made the final jump of three feet. I landed on his back with my fingers tearing through the skin at his throat and felt his windpipe crack and burst as I forced his head back.
Even then, seconds before he died, he was able to drum his feet against the floor, just once, but it was enough. That reflex action of dying agony spelled it out for the others and I knew what was coming. I rolled fast, pulling the guy on top of me when the shots blazed out from across the room. Four of the slugs thudded sickeningly into the guy and made him jerk against my stomach. One came right through him and slammed into my hip like a fist but I knew it was spent and never penetrated.
Then the noise was over and only the smell of cordite and blood was left. I felt for the .45. My hands never found it. Sometime during the struggle it had come out of my belt and was on the floor.
I used the body as a shield and pushed forward behind the sofa, feeling to see if there was a gun someplace. Either the guy hadn’t felt up to carrying one because of his hand or he didn’t have one on him. So the odds stayed down.
One shot winked out of the corner and there was the sound of hands and feet scrambling along the floor to duck a return bullet. I had maybe ten seconds before they knew what I was doing, so I rolled on my back, doubled up my knees with my feet against the body of the dead man and gave the body a shove that sent it rolling into the furniture.
I was running after the first roll of the guns. I could hear the bullets slapping into dead meat and the guy I hit never knew he was dying until he was dead. I snapped his neck, then his back while Alexis Minner was still throwing bullets into a corpse across the room and had his gun in my hand and the target in my sights.
The slob ran out of ammo with a laugh thinking he had nailed me and said, “Gorge ...”
I said, “Don’t reload, pal. You’re in the sights and I have you lined up.”
For one horrible instant he stopped breathing and I knew how he was feeling. His guts were inside out and his brain going a mile a minute to fathom the situation. There was a lamp on the table beside me and I reached up and snapped it on.
Alexis Minner was face down on the floor, one hand in a pocket going after another clip for his gun and his head was turned toward me with eyes showing white all around the irises and nostrils flared to the fullest with the wildest kind of fear imaginable.
Before I could talk he said hoarsely, “I am a diplomat. I have immunity. This is my house.”
“But I have the gun.”
For some reason, he started to smile. His nerves were geared tight and the fear came out in a smile. “This will mean... trouble for you.”
“Sure.”
“There will be police.”
Two dead men, one to either side of me. They weren’t killed by my bullets. They died under my hands, one with his own bullets in him, but they were dead and we both were pros and now he was trying to snake out from under.
“I’ll give the cops maybe five minutes, Alexis.”
This time he pulled his hand out of his pocket deliberately, wanting me to see that it was empty.
“It will be too late,” I said.
Now his eyes were half-closed, his tongue flicking in and out, trying to hide what he felt inside.
“Who’s on the inside, buddy?”
“What is that?”
“Don’t stall, you bastard. You haven’t got that much time left. Who’s on the inside?”
“I ... do not know what you mean.”
“Die silent then.”
He tried the old dodge, the indignant bit. He half raised himself to look at me squarely. “I come here as a diplomat attached to the Embassy. You have ... invaded my privacy.” He glanced toward the pair of bodies. “You have done this... you. The police will see that you...”
“Know who I am?” I asked him. I walked over and stood there with his friend’s Tokarev in my fist.
“I am a diplomat and...”
“Know who I am?” I repeated. “I killed some of your friends. You have me on your ‘A’ list and if you keep a copy of your BTO-5’s around you know my category.”
“Mr. Mann...”
Now he knew my name well enough. He was scared and could try to play it out. But all the while he was thinking and when old-time pros start thinking you start to watch out.
I said, “You paid out some of those new grand notes you have hidden in the machine in the kitchen to somebody else who hired a contract killer. Who, Alexis?”
His eyes made an appealing gesture and I knew he was playing it for time. Somebody would have heard the shots and the report was in by now. In half a minute a squad car would come screaming around the corner. But Alexis was well brain-washed. Well trained. He could be scared, but he wasn’t going to talk, and that type you don’t waste time on.
I grinned at him, let him see all the choppers in a fat smile, leveled the gun and when he tried to make the one last move toward his pants leg, shot him squarely between the horns. The whole back of his head came off and splashed up against the wall.
There was one thing I had to be sure of. I took the two Tokarev 7.65’s, ran to the bathroom and fired a shot from each into the five gallons of water in the toilet reservoir. Each bullet spun out dead before it reached the bottom... I got them out and dropped them in my pocket, then went back to the living room.
I found my .45 where it had fallen and for the first time felt lucky. I could make this deal stick all the way with a little fast talk and ballistics would prove me out if there were any cooperation at all.
I wiped the guns first, then got them back in the hands of the ones who had owned them, making sure prints were all over them, then took two minutes to go around the room and wipe out any prints I had left when I touched the furniture. Not everything will hold a print and I don’t make stupid mistakes in handling things that did without gloves, so I wasn’t worried about the rest of the place.
Somewhere outside a siren was whining and I knew it was time to go. Another joined it, so I ran to the kitchen, opened the window, closed it after I was on the fire escape and got down to the courtyard below. From there it was easy to hop the fence, go out through the areaway between the buildings and start walking toward the band of street lights and then north six blocks where I flagged a cab down and told him to drive me to Charlie Corbinet’s house. After I settled back I checked my watch and the whole damn business couldn’t have taken more than a few minutes. Three dead men in a few minutes.
Good score, Tiger. Your playing is up
to
par.
Chapter 13
If Ernie Bentley had more at home than he could take care of, he was showing it pretty well. He was still in the lab playing with miniature explosive charges when I walked in, and though the entry looked casual and easy, I knew I had been checked out on a closed-circuit TV downstairs and if I hadn’t been right, I would have been dead.
I said, “Hi, lover.”
Ernie never bothered to look up. “Now what.”
“You have microphotos of the bullets from Toomey?”
“What’s this, amateur night?”
“So?”
“Certainly. You want to see the slides?”
I tossed the two slugs down beside him. “Make a comparison test.”
“Now?”
“Right now.”
He snapped a light off, threw a couple of switches and picked up the slugs. While he was busy running the photos I walked to the window and looked down at New York in the shadows below.
It wasn’t like being uptown. Here it was quiet and mean and dark, with all the latent streaks of hatred and animosity that go to build a city. Down there people were thinking and planning, and according to statistics, somebody would die violently within four blocks of this place tonight.
Hell, I could tell them where three of them were already if the police hadn’t found them yet.
Ernie processed the slides as quickly as he could, set them in the machine and projected them on a screen. The left one killed Toomey. Its nose was blunted and there was a twist to the conical shape, but each land and leed had left an indelible groove on the metal.
The first one didn’t measure up, but the second one did. It came from Alexis Minner’s gun and now, even in death, he didn’t have to worry about diplomatic immunity. He was on a meathook nobody could get off and there he had to hang. Those fat-faced Russian slobs wouldn’t even dare try a push after what we had and what I had set up. Before the Washington agencies or I.A.T.S. could get on it New York’s Finest would have it photographed, fingerprinted and processed and no matter how hard the District pushed for jurisdiction, the locals wouldn’t let it out of their laps. It had better be good or it was no go no matter what.
This time it was pretty good.
So Minner killed Toomey... his other gun hands were on record, and in a fit of remorse, or a fight over the money they had to find, three guys had gone down. Maybe some bright boy would tie up the angles and figure me into it, but here, at least, I.A.T.S. kept quiet and Martin Grady’s loot paid off excuses. Hell, maybe patriotism would even come into the picture.
But it wasn’t the end yet. The noose wasn’t tight enough.
Ernie said, “Use the goof balls yet?”
“Saving them for an emergency.”
“Look, I found something out. They’re good for about forty-eight hours. For some reason the instability becomes acute after that and you don’t need heat or impact to set them off. The shells are too thin and there is an evaporation factor involved. Give yourself about twelve hours to be on the safe side and drop them down a toilet somewhere.”
“What happens then?”
“They dissolve. No trouble.”
“How long did you have them before you handed them over?”
“I’m getting old,” Ernie said, “or maybe I just hate you field men. Limit it down. I just cut six hours off their expiration date. If I were you I’d make sure they were either used or destroyed before .. :” he looked at his watch... ”two A.M. Monday morning. Of course, if you want to be part of a grand experiment .... ”
“Drop dead,” I said.
He went back to his microscope and peered down the lenses. “I have a radio tuned to police frequencies,” he mentioned.
“Good for you.”
“They got to the house.”
“How about that.”
“Think you ought to write a report before you leave? You may not have another chance.”
“Faith. Nothing like it.”
Ernie shrugged his shoulders elaborately and looked up from his microscope. “Tiger... I’m an inside type. You field men scare hell out of me. I know what you do and help do it, but you wouldn’t catch me dead with a gun in my hand or any of the tools I dream up. Sometimes I sit here and wonder what goes on outside there and when I think about it long enough I get the cold shakes because I know I’m a part of it. I’m in this for money and nobody has enough to pay me for what I do or what I think except Martin Grady. But when those times come when my conscience starts working on my mind I try to figure out just where I stand. I look at you field men with your goddamn bullet scars and that wild, cold look in your eyes and know you can kill without a thought and man, I get scared. Am I a man or a bug?”