Authors: Donald Hamilton
He nodded. “Suppose I find me a sheltered spot and just hose the living shit out of that doorway with this toy firearm? Hell, I have sixty rounds to play with. They’ll figure it’s you softening the place up for a banzai charge across the street and inside. Even after I quit firing, they’ll hold their breaths for a while waiting for you to make your death-defying dash.”
I said, “Sounds good. It should give our three-man explosives squad a chance to do its stuff at the rear, and me a chance to crack the side door that shows on the sketch and slip inside to try for the hostages. But you’d better take a couple more magazines for that .32 squirter; I probably won’t be doing so much shooting inside. One spare will do me. Here.”
He took the clips I handed him. “When I’m through,
I’ll try to work my way around to that side of the building and cover your getaway.”
“If you can do it easily,” I said. “But remember, if everything works, there’ll be a girl coming out, kind of tall, dark hair. Red pants and sweater if they haven’t put something else on her. Dana Delgado, code Dolores. And a short stocky dark guy I’ve never seen, clothes unknown. Could be a bit battered. Paul Encinias, code Modesto. And no matter who comes out or doesn’t, including me, be sure you’re well clear by eight. The Leonard boy’s boom-booms could be more vigorous than he thinks; and that’s no steel-and-concrete bunker. It could come down like a house of cards.”
“You’re the one who’d better worry about getting clear; you’ll be inside.”
I grinned in the dark. “Just one thing before we start the clock ticking. Any hole you pick, make sure it’s solid. In West Palm they had a hell of a big gun, I figured fifty caliber. It was a single-shot, slow and clumsy, it took them five seconds or more to recover from the recoil and slap in a fresh round; but it sure made a sieve of an armored Mercedes, so watch yourself. I don’t know that they’ve smuggled it into Puerto Rico, but they’d know how, and when you make up a special cannon like that, you yearn to use it.”
“I’ll keep it in mind. See you in church.” But as I was turning away, Willard said, “Matt, have you fired one of these baby MGs before?”
I paused and looked back. “It’s the first time I’ve seen one in the flesh.”
“Use the folding stock,” he said. “Shoot from the shoulder. The little motherfucker ejects straight up. If you try to do a Rambo, holding it down at the hip, you’ll get a faceful of hot brass.”
“Thanks.”
It gave me a pleasant feeling as I moved away. A lot of
junior characters won’t venture to give advice and risk being slapped down by senior characters who’re too'proud to take it. The fact that Willard had taken a chance on pointing out to me a characteristic of an unfamiliar weapon that might have caused me embarrassment showed that he was a pretty nice guy and that, having worked with me before, he’d decided I was. Okay, but it was time to foiget about nice. I was going to have to get into the lousy building somehow; and I wasn’t entering it to be nice.
I made my way cautiously through the narrow streets and lanes and alleys that were becoming reasonably familiar to me. The area still had that tense, silent, waiting feeling. There were lights at many windows, but I saw no silhouetted heads; anyone curious enough to look out had the sense to first darken the room behind him. I wondered how many of these people wanted a free Puerto Rico. Well, their political affiliation was their business as long as they kept it their business and didn’t blow up members of my family; after that it became my business. I’d never been close to my son, and I hadn’t wept for him yet; but there was a strange dark hole inside me where he’d been, like an open grave. I couldn’t begin to fill it until I’d dealt with his murderers.
Dana Delgado was also in my mind, of course. I was trying not to think of her, or speculate on the degree of fear and discomfort she was enduring as a captive of a bunch of political maniacs. . . .
There was a guard at the side door of the restaurant building. He was standing under a small hanging sign that presumably read
ernesto’s
although I couldn’t read it
in
the dark. Or maybe the place had had a special boozing room and the sign read
lounge,
or
bar,
or
cerveza.
The narrow alley was cluttered with beat-up garbage cans and loose trash. I took cover behind one of the cans and waited with the little rapid-fire .32 slung from my shoulder and the silenced .22 in my hand—I didn’t want to make a lot 321
r of noise going in, although I expected to make plenty coming out. If I came out. I checked my watch: four minutes to go. Three. Two. One . . .
Even though it was well around the comer from where I hid, Willard’s Skorpian seemed to make a shocking racket when it opened up. You’d have thought it was a real grownup machine gun instead of a glorified pocket pistol. The dim figure I was watching stirred and stepped out into the middle of the alley to look in the direction of the uproar. Something gleamed in one hand, but I couldn’t make out the nature of the weapon. The man was nicely silhouetted against the lighted street beyond. Using my battered trash can as a rest, I aimed the Ruger at his head, having a hard time making out the sights. I pressed the trigger carefully. The noise of the machine pistol in the street, firing neat little three-shot bursts, covered the small sound made by the silenced .22; I only knew when it went olf by the slight jump of the recoil. The man fell.
I ran forward. He lay facedown with his hands clasped to the back of his head, rolling back and forth in agony. I reminded myself that Matthew was dead, and that I had no connection whatever with the Salvation Army. The white neck made a good target. After finishing him off, I looked around for his weapon—it’s poor technique to leave live men or loaded firearms behind you—but I couldn’t spot it in the dark and I couldn’t waste time on a search.
I hurried to the door the dead man had been guarding. It was unlocked. Inside, I found myself in a small vestibule. A swinging-type door straight ahead was labeled
bar
in faded letters. I could hear loud alcoholic voices beyond. Apparently, even though the place was out of business, they were employing it for its designed purpose, and to hell with the lousy imperialist pigs. If they’d heard the shooting at all, in there, they’d apparently decided it was just their friends upstairs taking care of the dumb govern
ment agent for whom such an elaborate trap had been set; let’s have another to celebrate.
A stairway led up to the right. I could still hear Willard, outside, ripping off his tidy little bursts,
brrrp, brrrp, brrrp,
but in here the sound seemed to come from a considerable distance. I started up the stairs; then I turned quickly, as the bar voices became suddenly louder. The door had opened and a woman stood there: a large, bleached lady in baggy jeans with a big, soiled khaki shirt hanging loose outside them. There was an automatic pistol in her hand, one of the fifteen-shot jobs, a 9mm Beretta or imitation. Chivalry is dead, but it can still kill you; it took me a moment to decide that it had to be done.
If she hadn’t been drunk, she’d have had me as I hesitated. If her piece had been cocked, she’d have had me. As it was, she had to wait for the automatic to stop waving around erratically; and then she had to struggle with the stiff double-action pull that cocks the action for the first shot. Subsequent shots come more easily, as the recoil does the hard work; but she never got that far. She never even got off the first one, not quite. I put three .22s into her face, not trusting the little bullets to do an instant job on the bulky body. She fell on top of her pistol, her straw-colored hair straggling, dark at the roots.
I waited a second or two to see if anyone would come after her. Nobody did. Somebody’d told a joke in there that had them all laughing. As I ran up the stairs I reminded myself that there were five rounds gone out of the ten-round Ruger magazine. I clapped in the spare to play safe. No problem distinguishing it by feel, slim and straight, from the one spare Skorpian clip I carried, fat and curved. Outside, Willard had also switched magazines and now was working on his second. I was glad I’d given him a couple of extras; at the rate he was putting out the lead, he was going to need them. The upstairs hall was empty, with a splintery wooden floor that had once been painted brown, distempered green walls, and a single, hanging, twenty-five-watt bulb for illumination.
There were doors on both sides of the corridor, all closed except the second on the right, the street side. I started that way cautiously. There was still one floor above me, and I could hear voices up there; but apparently everybody in the place had been warned that there was going to be some shooting, don’t panic, don’t start milling around asking dumb questions and interfering with the executioners. Nevertheless, 1 hated to leave the stairs. At any moment somebody could come down them, or up them, and discover what a lovely target I made, trapped in the narrow, hail way with no place to go.
I forced myself to move towards the open doorway on the right; then I stopped because there was a closed door to my left that seemed oddly familiar. It was a small door, perhaps a closet door, with the customary knob, old-fashioned porcelain; but it was also equipped, higher up, with a hasp and eye, and a padlock. I’d had a door like that described to me, although I’d been told it was located in another building. Maybe my tricky girl informant had had this one in mind, and had simply moved it over to where she needed it for fictional purposes. It was a coincidence I couldn’t pass up.
I knocked softly. “Modesto,” I said. “Friend here; don’t get violent when I open.”
There might have been a sound from inside, but Willard chose that moment to let off one of his well-controlled triple blasts, so I couldn’t be sure. I put away the .22 and hauled out the crowbar, feeling very clever and foresighted to have brought it. Then I saw that the padlock hadn’t been snapped, and why should it be? Even unlocked, it kept anyone inside from getting out; and this way they didn’t have to produce a key every time they wanted to get in. I took a fresh grip on the little crowbar, now holding it by the straight cold-chisel end meant for prying—the hooked end is designed for pulling nails—just in case something hostile should jump out at me. I lifted out the padlock lefthanded and opened the door.
It was a closet, all right. It was quite empty except for a man on hands and knees just inside the door. He was naked to the waist, bloody and dirty; and the face he lifted to me was so badly beaten that even if I’d known him before I wouldn’t have recognized him now. But he was trying to get to his feet. I helped him, and steadied him.
“Modesto?” I said.
He had to make two tries before the right sounds came out of his battered mouth, but then his speech, although slurred, was quite intelligible and even a little formal.
“Yes, I am Paul Encinias, called Modesto. What remains of him.”
“Can you walk?”
“If it is away from here, I can do it, if I must crawl like a snake.” Then he shook his head quickly. “No. Dana.”
“Where?”
“The devil-girl took her. Angelita. The little angel. What a name for such a monster!” He shook his head minutely. “They call her
El Martillo
now. That is the wrong gender, but a much more appropriate name.”
So the girl had been elected to the Hammer spot left vacant by the death of Dominic Morelos. Mac would be interested, but I had other concerns.
“What about Dana? Is she all right?”
“Yes. All right. More or less all right. But we must find her, save her. ...”
I sensed a movement behind me and spun to face the rush of a large man with a long knife, the narrow, tapering, Arkansas-toothpick kind of dagger that, unlike a Bowie, isn’t worth a damn for chopping but is great for stabbing, which was exactly the employment he’d intended for it. I swung the crowbar at him backhanded. He leaped back and laughed, tossing the knife from hand to hand as he dodged and feinted, daring me to expose myself by making another effort to bash in his skull. The playful type. The cocky type, too sure of himself to alert the house to the intruder within the gates. He was going to nail my hide to the wall all by himself before calling in his friends to see his bloody trophy.
I made another tentative swing and, when he danced away, hurled the bar at him, using the smooth, knife-thrower’s release. The hooked steel made a full one-eighty in the air and, chisel-end first, buried itself in his chest. He dropped his knife and reeled against the wall and sat dowrr heavily, staring down at himself, seeming very puzzled by the metal sticking out of his dirty shirt like a curved umbrella handle.
“I’ll find Dana,” I said to Modesto. “Get down the hall and down the stairs and out. Here.” I gave him the Ruger. “Shoot anything but a young fellow in jeans, a black jersey, and a baseball cap, named Willard. The piece is silenced so you won’t bother anybody. You have eleven shots, ten in the clip and one in the chamber. Okay, on your way before we have more company.”
He started off, but paused to look down at the pistol in his hand. “Silenced, you say?” Then he raised the weapon and put a careful bullet through the head of the seated man with the crowbar in his chest. He looked my way apologetically. “Just a promise I made when he was beating me. I told him I would kill him. I like to keep my word.”
Well, we were all paying off old grudges here. He’d had a hard day and he had a little vengeance coming; but it gave me a new slant on chunky middle-aged men who sell ladies’ dresses. I waited to make sure he was making it down the hall all right, even if a bit unsteadily. Outside, Willard had stopped shooting at last. I turned and ap
proached the open door across the hall, cautiously. 1 heard a girl’s voice speaking.