“So you have to get the money back.”
“Right,” he said. “She isn’t working a deal. She’s blackmailing us. She’s got us over a barrel but she’s over a barrel herself. Three times now she’s tried to make the connection with us. We get on the scene and she changes her mind, runs like a rabbit. We can’t roll our own stuff until we get hers back.”
“There’s already a thousand in circulation.”
“Peanuts,” Baron said. “It’s good schlock. Half of it won’t ever turn up. And without her holding it, nobody can connect it with us. So we’re clear.”
I had a pretty good idea what they were going to do to Cindy. She wasn’t going to stay alive, not for long. I was starting to feel sorry for her. Hell, she’d pulled some pretty switches on me. But I could see her point. She was desperate and I was handy. What else could she do?
That wasn’t all. She’d been good to me. She could have powdered, could have been less fun in bed — there were plenty of ways I could have wound up on the short end of the stick. She wasn’t being honest with me but that was her privilege. I didn’t want Baron working her over, killing her.
They were going to kill her, that was certain. And, I realized, they were probably going to do as much for me. That’s why it wouldn’t hurt to tell me all this.
My knees felt very weak.
“This the hotel?”
I nodded. The greaseball pulled the big car over to the curb and we got out of it. I walked first, with Reed right behind me. I wondered what chances I had of making a break for it. There was no gun showing but I knew there was one held on me. And they wouldn’t mind shooting.
“Don’t try it,” Reed said, reading my mind. “Walk straight into the lobby and into the elevator. Then go right into her room. Or you’re dead.”
I’m stupid, but only up to a certain point. I didn’t want a bullet in the back, not just then. I walked into the lobby and over to the elevator, trying to look suspicious. For once I wanted all the cops in the world to notice me. If the cops came, Reed wouldn’t shoot. He would be caught, and I would be caught, and being caught was greatly to be preferred to being dead.
But, of course, no cops came.
The elevator took us to our floor. We walked to the room and I stood in front of the door waiting for something nice to happen to me. Nothing nice happened.
“Knock,” Reed suggested.
I knocked, hoping that she wouldn’t answer the door. Maybe she would sleep nice and soundly, and not answer the door, and we could go away and let her live.
She didn’t answer the door. I turned to Reed, shrugged mightily, and he wasn’t amused. “You got a key,” he snapped. “Use it.”
I had a key and used it. I half hoped the key wouldn’t work, but the key did work, and I opened the door, and Cinderella Sims was nowhere to be seen.
“Not here,” Baron said. It was, for Baron, a pretty brilliant observation.
“Probably out shopping,” I suggested. “She goes shopping a lot.”
“Spending our money?”
“Generally.”
“We’ll wait,” Reed said. He made himself comfortable on top of the bed. I remember thinking that he was not the first person to be comfortable on that particular bed. Two others had been so — Ted Lindsay and Cinderella Sims. That made me very sad, thinking about what was going to happen to Cindy. And, for that matter, to me. There had to be something I could do, but whatever it was, I wasn’t aware of it.
Then I thought of something else. Reed was sitting approximately eighteen inches above the fifty grand he was so hot to get his pretty little hands on. That gave me something to think about. All he had to do was look under the bed and he didn’t need me around anymore. Reed or Baron would put me out of the way. Then they could wait for Cindy and kill her. We lost either way, but the longer I kept him from finding the money, the longer I stayed alive. And who was to say what could happen in the meanwhile? Maybe the police would break the door down. Maybe the Marines would land. Maybe Reed and Baron and Lori and Greaseball would tumble over with heart attacks. Maybe—
“Lindsay?”
I looked at him.
“The money,” he said. “The schlock: The little black bag. Get it now. Then we can all wait for the girl.”
“I don’t know where she put it.”
“Get it Lindsay.”
“I’m telling you, I don’t—”
Baron hit me and the rest of my sentence was forever lost. I came up mad and went at him. He clubbed me again and this time I stayed on the floor for quite a while.
“The money, Lindsay.”
I got up shakily, then pointed under the bed. “That’s where she keeps it. You want it so bad you can get it yourselves.”
Which is what they decided to do. Baron and Greaseball each took an end of the bed while Reed stood up and kept a gun trained on me. They picked up the bed, carried it out of the way, set it down again. I didn’t even watch. I was waiting for them to go into orbit when they saw the money.
They went into orbit, all right. They went into orbit when they didn’t see the money.
So did I.
My little Sunflower had taken it on the lam. Dough and all, sweet little Cindy Sims had run out on me. I didn’t feel too good all of a sudden.
“I’ll beat it out of him,” Baron was saying. “He’ll talk. He’ll talk through broken teeth, but he’ll talk.”
Baron wasn’t kidding. But he was wrong. He would beat me, and I would not talk at all. I wouldn’t have a thing in the world to talk about.
Which wouldn’t bother Baron. He’d just keep knocking the crap out of me, and he would keep on going until I was dead, then they’d go out hunting for Cindy, chasing the golden fleece of the fifty grand in queer that could put them away for the rest of their lives.
I watched Baron come in and got ready for another punch. Then something snapped inside me. I wasn’t going to take another beating no matter what happened. A bullet couldn’t hurt a hell of a lot worse than one of Baron’s punches. At least I would die trying. Either way I would be dead, but this would be faster and easier and a lot more exciting.
“Don’t hit me, Baron.”
“You ready to talk?”
“There’s nothing to say.”
He had a gun in one hand, Reed’s gun, and this time he decided to give me the gun in the teeth. I suppose he figured I would stand there and wait for it.
He figured wrong.
He swung and I ducked and came up under the arm, fastening my hand on it and pivoting. Baron went across the room and into the wall, landing head first. The gun remained with me, which was the general object of the whole thing.
Lori was close to me, which was her mistake. I grabbed her just in time, held her in front of me and kept my gun pointed at Greaseball. He had the only other gun in the room and he couldn’t shoot without hitting Lori. I held onto her and her fright was a live thing in the room. She was scared stiff, shaking and quaking.
I found out why.
Greaseball wasn’t the sentimental type. Lori was between me and his gun, so he did the obvious thing under that set of circumstances.
He shot her.
She let out a very sick moan, and then I was holding a heap of dead flesh instead of a live and lovely woman. It was something sick to think about but I didn’t waste time thinking. There were more important things to do.
I shot Greaseball in the throat and watched him die.
“Don’t do it, Reed.”
He was halfway to Greaseball’s gun when my voice stopped him. He hesitated for a minute, then straightened up. I had him cold.
“Don’t move,” I said. “Stay right there. It’s nice and cozy there. You can relax and enjoy yourselves.”