Too Many Crooks (11 page)

I wondered what she wanted, and if it were any different from what she'd wanted the last time. It could be that she'd been approached again by one of Norris's hoodlums.

I asked Baron, "She seemed anxious, huh?"

"Yes. Told me it was important. I think you should see her."

"Well, I'll go out and find out what's eating her. Maybe later—" I stopped. We were still standing inside the front entrance, and I heard shoe leather scrape behind me. I turned around to see Chief Thurmond a few feet away, walking toward the desk sergeant. He'd been close enough to hear me, but he didn't seem to be paying any attention to us. I took Baron's arm and we went outside onto the sidewalk. His car was parked at the curb, in a no-parking strip, and he got inside it.

I leaned on the window and said, "You had any more trouble with the Seaco boys?"

He shook his head. "No. But frankly, I'm not going to stick my neck out much longer. I'd sell everything I own, even the clothes on my back, before I'd take the chance of winding up like Emmett."

"Well, all hell's going to break loose in this town before long. Your honest chief, as well as Carver and Blake and maybe more, are just as crooked as Norris."

His mouth dropped open and he looked at me as if I had turned blue. "You must be out of your mind."

"The hell I am." I told him what had happened last night when I chased the hoods from Dane's, told him about the crash car.

He was still frowning. "But that doesn't mean they're in league with Norris."

"It does to me. Maybe it isn't proof, but the proof is somewhere, and I'll find it if I can." If I live, I was thinking. "You think about it. I'll check with Lilith now. Thanks for helping me out."

"I owed you at least that much for your help, Mr. Scott. Although things aren't really much better, are they?"

He gave me a bleak look and told me to get in touch with him after I saw Lilith, and I walked the few steps to my Cad.

I started the car and pulled away from the curb, keeping a sharp eye peeled for company. A mile from the city limits my rearview mirror showed the road empty behind me, so at least I hadn't been followed. In a moment I spotted the white blob of the Manning home on my right. Turning off Vincent Street into the driveway, I saw Lilith on the porch. She stood up as I parked alongside the house.

This was the first time I'd seen her with any clothes on—that is, in anything but a swimsuit—and, though she still looked delicious, it almost seemed a shame that she ever dressed. I walked up onto the porch and she held both hands toward me, took mine, and said, "Hello, Shell. I've been trying to locate you."

"Hi. I saw Baron and he told me you wanted to see me. What's the matter?"

"I don't know. A dozen things, I guess." She pulled me toward her, slid her arms around my neck, and kissed me, squeezing me tight with her arms. Then she stepped away from me.

"Hey," I said with little gallantry. "I hope that's not the only reason you wanted to see me."

She smiled slightly. "Oh? Then I don't look as kissable as I did last night? You didn't mind then." She sat down on the couch again.

It was impossible, of course, for her to look as delightful now as she had last night, but there was nothing wrong with her appearance at the moment. She wore a light green nylon blouse with a dark green skirt, both of which she filled to perfection.

"You look wonderful, Lilith. But I'll be brutally frank. I don't care how wonderful you look. There's too much happening today, or about to happen, for me to sit here admiring you, pleasant as that might be. If that's all, then I've got to leave. I thought—"

"But it isn't all," she said. "I made up my mind after I read today's
Star
. About Emmett Dane. I don't think he killed himself."

"He didn't." I had to go through it all again, as I had for Baron. When I'd brought her up to date, she nodded.

"It doesn't really surprise me, not any of it, Shell. But it doesn't make any difference to me. I'm leaving."

I couldn't blame her a bit; in her place, I'd probably have taken off long ago. "I'm sorry," I said. "No more Seacliff, huh?"

"Never again, Shell. Will you miss me a little?"

"Sure. Where you going?"

"I don't know. Maybe Hawaii, maybe Europe again. I've got lots of money, more than I'll ever need. I can go anyplace I want, do anything I want to do. I'm single. Unattached. And I like company."

"Guess everybody likes company."

"Shell, why don't you go with me? We could have lots of fun." She smiled. "I might rent a house with a pool."

I didn't answer for a moment. Then I said, "It's a very attractive suggestion, Lilith. But there are a lot of reasons why it's no good. In the first place, I can't leave Seacliff. Not for a while."

"Why? Shell, we could just leave. Right now, this minute. Jump in the car and go—anywhere."

I shook my head. "I've got too many— well, too many debts to pay."

"Forget that, Shell. What good will it do in the long run? We can have fun. We will."

"No soap, honey."

Her attitude changed then. Her face flushed slightly and she said with her lips curling, "The hell with you. You should have driven up on a white horse, armor clanking. What do you think you are, a crusader?" She kept it going for a while, then stopped abruptly. "I'm sorry."

"So am I."

"I didn't mean all that. Woman scorned, I guess. It's not much fun." She was silent for several seconds, then patted the cushioned couch at her side. "Sit down. And kiss me." She smiled. "That's the least you can do."

I sat down. I kissed her. As a matter of fact, I even did a bit more than the least. Finally, I looked around.

"Nobody can see us," she said huskily.

Lilith's arms were around my neck and she was pulling me to her, moist lips parted and curved slightly in a smile that spoke volumes, and the volumes were the kind people ban, but I pulled away from her. This wasn't doing me any good. That is, it was doing me a great deal of good, but no matter how I improved my position with Lilith, I wasn't improving my position in Seacliff. Both positions were quite desperate at the moment, and I knew if I stayed here, both positions would gradually get worse. I stood up.

"What's the matter with you?" she asked. Then she smiled. "That rib still bothering you?"

"That's not what's bothering me. I've got to go."

"I will not
let
you go," she said. Two of the buttons on her blouse were unbuttoned, and she was breathing slowly but rhythmically, and she had lots of rhythm.

I said inanely, "I will see you in Honolulu. I will keep in touch, and drop up, and give you the shirt off my back, but right now I've got to go. I absolutely have got to go."

I turned and started off the porch, but she grabbed my arm. "What's the matter with you?" she asked. "Be sensible."

"I'm not going to be sensible. It just wouldn't be . . . sensible. Here the town is swarming with hoods and crooked cops, most of them out for my blood, and I'm not doing a thing to solidify my position . . . ah, protect myself, you know, finish the job I started."

"I'm beginning to think you never finish anything you start."

"Yes, I do, I always— Look, this is silly."

While I talked, I had moved away from her till I stood on the graveled driveway beneath the porch. She stood above me with her hands on her hips, looking unhappy.

"Good-by," I said.

"The hell with you."

I blew her a kiss, got into the Cad, and started the motor before I weakened. I drove in low to the edge of the driveway at Vincent Street. There I eased on the brakes, looking left and right, started to pull into the road, and then slammed the brakes on hard when I saw a black car two blocks away coming like a bat out of hell, at least seventy miles an hour.

It was coming from the direction of town, and speeding so fast that I took no chance of tangling with it even though it was still a good block from me. I left the car in gear, the clutch in and motor idling. It seemed that the driver must have thought I was pulling into the street, because I heard the tires shriek as he slammed on the brakes and the car swerved in the road and then straightened out. But instead of speeding up again, the car kept slowing, and when it was ten yards from me its speed must have dropped to near thirty.

There was barely time for alarm to jump through my nerves. Then I saw the man staring at me through the open window on the passenger's side, saw sunlight glance off the gun his hand held toward me. I jumped, letting everything go, hands leaving the wheel and foot slipping off the clutch pedal as I dived sideways toward the right-hand door, and as my fingers slipped over the door handle I heard the gun crack, and then crack again. At the same moment, the car jumped forward as the gears engaged, and that plus my sudden movement probably saved me. I heard the slugs crash into the rear of the car, and then I shoved the door open and sprawled through it.

My Cad had leaped forward into the street before it stalled. I got a flashing glimpse of the other car swerving to the far side of the road, probably forced there by the sudden lunge of my Cad. I rolled over and felt my knees crack against the street as I got them under me, my right hand closing over the butt of my .38.

I flipped the gun toward the other car as its wheels hit the dirt off the paving. It swerved as a gun cracked again and I heard the slug hit near me and ricochet away. I snapped a shot at the car, aimed at the man visible in its window. His gun fired again, then I squeezed my trigger, pulled the Colt's barrel back, and squeezed.

The other car swerved and stopped in loose dirt off the road and I whirled around, sprinted toward my Cad as another gun boomed. I wasn't hit, but I heard the tinkle of glass breaking somewhere nearby. Hidden behind the Cadillac, I bent over and moved to the hood, fumbling in my coat pocket for the cartridges I'd dropped into it last night. I found them, pulled out a handful, and rested my right arm on the Cad's hood as I peered over its top.

Standing at the side of the other car, only thirty or forty feet away now, was the bulky figure of a man, a gun in his hand. For a brief moment, he wasn't looking at me, but at the house behind me. Then he jerked his head toward me, flipping up his gun and firing. I slammed the last shots in my .38 at him and missed as he dropped to the ground, then I ducked down out of sight. It took only a few seconds to reload my gun, but when I looked over the hood again I saw the bulky, vaguely familiar form of the man sprinting, hunched over, away from his car toward the protection of the trees nearby.

I snapped a shot at him as he reached the trees' cover, but I must have missed, because I could hear him still running. With the gun ready in front of me, I sprinted the few yards to the car, heart pounding in my chest and my throat dry. There were no more shots. I reached the car but couldn't see anybody inside. I grabbed the door handle and twisted, jerked the door open.

I almost fired as I saw movement, but I held my finger off the trigger as a man's body moved toward me. He had been slumped against the door and now he swayed slowly, then fell through the open door to the dirt, turning onto his back with one arm flopping across his chest as if he were still alive.

Much of his chin was missing and there was a jagged red hole in his throat from which blood still oozed onto his white shirt. But even with part of his lean face gone I recognized Blake. Now I knew why that other bulky form had been familiar; it had been his buddy, Carver.

So I hadn't fooled them; there in the chief's office they'd merely let me think I had. That was why they'd let me go—so I could be killed out here far from town. And Thurmond
had
heard me and Baron.

I was still keyed up and shocked, not thinking clearly enough. As I stared inside the car and saw the blood on the seat, I also saw the radiophone off its hook and dangling at the end of its cord. At first I didn't get it, couldn't understand why two murderous cops would put out a call when they'd actually been trying to kill me.

And then I understood for I heard sirens. The shrill, high whine was faint still, but cars were on their way. I was the only man who knew Blake and Carver had fired first, were attempting to kill me in cold blood. My word alone would never prove I'd fired in self-defense. The important thing was that I was now fair game for any police officer, for any policeman in the world, for any man with a gun.

I had killed a cop.

Chapter Eleven

Even with the whine of approaching sirens in my ears, that was the only thing I could think of for seconds: I was that lowest of criminals, a cop-killer. And there wasn't the slightest question now about what I had to do. I had to run.

I turned and sprinted to the Cad. When I got the car straightened on the highway I stepped on the gas. I don't know why I looked toward the big white house; I'd completely forgotten about Lilith. Suddenly I realized that
she
was what Carver must have been staring at in that moment when I'd first seen him beside the car. Lilith was still standing on the porch, both hands at her throat. For a moment, I kept going, then I slammed on the brakes, backed up, and ripped into the curving drive and skidded to a stop before her. I couldn't leave her here. She'd seen what had happened; she was the only person in the world who could testify that I'd killed in self-defense. And I knew if any of the crooks lined up against me got to her, she wouldn't live five seconds. She was in it as deeply now as I was. There wasn't a chance that Carver hadn't seen her.

Gravel from the driveway spun from under the wheels and hit her legs as I stopped, but she didn't move. An expression of shock and horror was on her blood-drained face. Behind her and a few yards to her right, one of the windows was broken, undoubtedly smashed by a slug fired at me—or perhaps it had even been fired at Lilith herself.

"Get in," I yelled. "We've got to get out of here."

She seemed to snap out of it suddenly. "But the sirens—the police. They'll be here in a minute."

"For God's sake, those guys shooting at me were policemen. Get in."