“Fat guy at the bar. Name of Emmy. I wanna talk to him.”
Emmy couldn’t refuse a call. He didn’t. “Yeah?”
“You lookin’ for a joker name of Dunc?”
“As a matter of fact, yeah, I, uh... wanna talk to him.”
“Talk! You think I’m crazy, boy? Talk’s fer Church. Meet me at the 76 station on Franklin and Pine in ten minutes. Bring plenny green an’ be ready to travel. He’s got his mitts on heavy money, he’s checkin’ out tonight. Ten minutes, dickhead.”
Emmy waddled up to the Lincoln panting, sweat gleaming on his forehead. Dunc, remembering the labor union goon in L.A., hit him in the kidney with the hardest right hook he’d ever thrown. Emmy shrieked and hurled himself backward against the Olds next to his car, his back arched like a bow.
But when Dunc went in swinging to finish him off, a fat hand flicked a deadly steel finger at him. Dunc’s left hand locked around Emmy’s wrist, his right hand broke Emmy’s left thumb as it tried to gouge his eye. Emmy yelled again, but for thirty seconds they hung there between the two cars, veins cording their necks and sweat burning their eyes. Holding that right wrist was like trying to hold the greased pig at the fair.
His right hand covered Emmy’s face, slammed the back of the head against the car window. It starred. Again. Shattered glass spattered them. Dunc snarled through his teeth.
He used a knee between Emmy’s fat thighs. Emmy’s foot growled on the gravel, he tried to fold down on himself. Dunc slammed the head against the door of the Olds. Emmy’s head left dark vertical smears on the metal. He was making wheezing noises.
The switchblade hit the gravel, Emmy sat down suddenly, like a fat man at a picnic, fell over sideways and stayed there. From the entrance of the lot came a whiskey-burred male voice.
“Yeah, this is the one.”
Dunc groped for the switchblade, found it. He felt sick.
“This goddamn fog!” exclaimed a woman’s loose voice. “Which goddamn car is it?”
“Down at the end. By the Lincoln”
He made himself grope in Emmy’s pockets, find a tabbed hotel key with a room number stamped into it. He found his own keys, too. As long shadows came jerkily up the gravel, he edged around the back of the Lincoln away from the Oldsmobile.
Sloppy kissing noises. The woman’s drunken giggle. They would find Emmy, call for help... A sudden scream.
“What the hell’s the matter with...” The male voice trailed off. “Jesus Christ! Let’s get to hell outta here!”
Doors slammed, a motor grumbled to life, wipers snicked at the haze, tires scrunched gravel as they backed out. Dunc was already three cars away, his adrenaline rush gone, throwing up against the side of someone’s new Ford.
He felt groggy, punch-drunk; he’d come this far, he’d do it alone. No Drinker Cope. No ambulance call, either. If Earl learned his partner was down and out, he’d be wary, on guard. Dunc wanted to be waiting, lamp in hand like in his dream, when Earl entered their hotel room, all unsuspecting.
He did his quick check through Shanghai Lil’s beaded curtain. No Earl. Used the men’s room to wash out his mouth, splash his face, then used the house phone to dial their room. No answer. He rode the elevator up to seven, went down the fire stairs to six, found the room, knocked on the door.
“Room service.”
Nothing. He eased the key into the lock, palmed the knob, drifted the door open. Ambient city light through lace curtains showed him an empty bathroom, empty closet alcove except for a suitcase on the floor, dimly seen, a spare suit on a hanger.
The brass lamp on the dresser would make a passable club. The adrenaline was pumping again, his throat was almost closed off as he waited against the wall beside the door, holding the lamp at his side. Where was Earl now? Did he know about Emmy?
Clang of elevator doors, muffled chirrup of operator.
“Good night, sir.”
He could smell his own fear. Would Earl? He could taste it, too, as if he held a brass cartridge case between his teeth.
A key in the lock. Then nothing. A minute, nothing.
The room was flooded with light. Dunc whirled. Earl stood just inside the open connecting door to the next room, grinning, a Colt .22 Woodsman target pistol dangling from his right hand.
Stick the key in the lock to keep Dunc focused on the door, slip around to his adjoining room. This had been Emmy’s room — a single suitcase in the closet. Stupid, stupid, stupid!
Earl waggled the automatic. “Drop the lamp.” Dunc dropped it. “I always figured Kiely stashed my money in a safe-deposit box, gave you the key to hold last night. I checked your room — no key. So, turn around — hands on the wall.”
Dunc didn’t move.
“I catch a prowler in my room, I shoot him dead. Turn around so I can search you.”
“And then shoot me in the back.”
Earl stared at him for a long moment, then gave a slight shrug. “You want it in the face or the back of the head?”
Dunc threw himself bodily at him, as if tackling a fullback coming through the line. A gun roared, Earl leaped to meet him, they fell to the rug in a bloody tangle.
“The back of the head,” said Drinker Cope conversationally.
He stood inside the door Earl had used, in his right fist a huge old Army Colt .45 faintly wisping black-powder smoke.
Dunc rolled free. The blood was Earl’s, most of his face was gone. Little chips of skull bone stuck to Dunc’s face. He would have vomited again except he had nothing left to throw up.
“When did you... how did you...”
“I’ve been behind you all night. You okay?” Dunc reached for the cloth doily off the dressertop to wipe his face. Drinker said, “Don’t touch that. You’re gonna be gone before the cops get here, you weren’t here tonight. Just me and...” He gestured with his gun barrel. “The boyfriend here.”
“But why...” Dunc began, then broke off. “Emmy! He’s—”
“— dead in the parking lot. Somebody ran over his head. G’wan, get to hell out of here, quick.”
“But why are you—”
“It’s simpler this way. I was tailing Kiely for the agency, these two killed him, wanted to kill me, too.”
“For the agency? But we don’t have a client to—”
“Sure we do. The chief of detectives in Kansas City asked me to look for Kiely. Hell, I used to be a cop in this burg, the police and the hotel’ll want this buried on the obituary page.”
Dunc said belatedly, still dazed, “You saved my life.”
Drinker straightened from leaning over the corpse. He gave an ironic snort.
“The safety was on. He wouldn’t have shot you before he got that safe-deposit key. He wanted that fucking eighty grand just too much. I got your marker on this one, kid- Now get to hell outta here before the cops arrive.”
Dunc was going down the fire stairs as the police were going up in the elevator. He sloshed water on his face in the men’s room off the lobby, asked the deskman what had happened upstairs, got a noncommittal grunt, and walked free and clear out into the San Francisco fog.
Six
A Death Before Dying
Chapter Thirty-four
Pinned to the large woman’s robe was a carnation set in a spray of greenery. She beamed with warm crinkly eyes but a rather dreadful smile on the two people standing in front of her.
“By the authority vested in me by the State of California, I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride.”
The groom did, voraciously, as if devouring raw oysters.