«Okay, Jerry. I can hold them.»
Saint’s head and shoulders and his submachine gun went away from the frame of the window, leaving blue sky and the thin, distant branches of a tall tree.
There was a thud, as if feet dropped off a ladder to a wooden porch. In the room we were five statues, two fallen.
Somebody had to move. The situation called for two more killings. From Saint’s angle I couldn’t see it any other way. There had to be a cleanup.
The gag hadn’t worked when it wasn’t a gag. I tried it again when it was. I looked past the woman’s shoulder, kicked a hard grin on to my face, said hoarsely:
«Hello, Mike. Just in time.»
It didn’t fool her, of course, but it made her mad. She stiffened her body and snapped a shot at me from the right-hand gun.- It was a big gun for a woman and it jumped. The other gun jumped with it. I didn’t see where the shot went. I went in under the guns.
My shoulder hit her thigh and she tipped back and hit her head against the jamb of the door. I wasn’t too nice about knocking the guns out of her hands. I kicked the door shut, reached up and yanked the key around, then scrambled back from a high-heeled shoe that was doing its best to smash my nose for me.
Duncan said: Keeno,» and dived for his gun on the floor.
«Watch that little window, if you want to live,» I snarled at him.
Then I was behind the desk, dragging the phone away from Dr. Sundstrand’s dead body, dragging it as far from the line of the door as the cord would let me. I lay down on the floor with it and started to dial, on my stomach.
Diana’s eyes came alive on the phone. She screeched: «They’ve got me, Jerry! They’ve got me!»
The machine gun began to tear the door apart as I bawled into the ear of a bored desk sergeant,
Pieces of plaster and wood flew like fists at an Irish wedding. Slugs jerked the body of Dr. Sundstrand as though a chill was shaking him back to life. I threw the phone away from me and grabbed Diana’s guns and started in on the door for our side. Through a wide crack I could see cloth. I shot at that.
I couldn’t see what Duncan was doing. Then I knew. A shot that couldn’t have come through the door smacked Diana Saint square on the end of her chin. She went down again, stayed down.
Another shot that didn’t come through the door lifted my hat. I rolled and yelled at Duncan. His gun moved in a stiff arc, following me. His mouth was an animal snarl. I yelled again.
Four round patches of red appeared in a diagonal line across the nurse uniform, chest high. They spread even in the short time it took Duncan to fall.
There was a siren somewhere. It was my siren, coming my way, getting louder.
The tommy gun stopped and a foot kicked at the door. It shivered, but held at the lock. I put four more slugs into it, well away from the lock.
The siren got louder. Saint had to go. I heard his step running away down the hall. A door slammed. A car started out back in an alley. The sound of its going got less as the approaching siren screeched into a crescendo.
I crawled over to the woman and looked at blood on her face and hair and soft soggy places on the front of her coat. I touched her face. She opened her eyes slowly, as if the lids were very heavy.
«Jerry —» she whispered.
«Dead,» I lied grimly. «Where’s Isobel Snare, Diana?»
The eyes closed. Tears glistened, the tears of the dying.
«Where’s Isobel, Diana?» I pleaded. «Be regular and tell me. I’m no cop. I’m her friend. Tell me, Diana.»
I put tenderness and wistfulness into it, everything I had.
The eyes half opened. The whisper came again:. «Jerry —» then it trailed off and the eyes shut. Then the lips moved once more, breathed a word that sounded like «Monty.»
That was all. She died.
I stood up slowly and listened to the sirens.
NINE
It was getting late and lights were going on here and there in a tall office building across the street. I had been in Fulwider’s office all the afternoon. I had told my story twenty times. It was all true — what I told.
Cops had been in and out, ballistics and print men, record men, reporters, half a dozen city officials, even an A.P. correspondent. The correspondent didn’t like his handout and said so.
The fat chief was sweaty and suspicious. His coat was off and his armpits were black and his short red hair curled as if it had been singed. Not knowing how much or little I knew he didn’t dare lead me. All he could do was yell at me and whine at me by turns, and try to get me drunk in between.
I was getting drunk and liking it.
«Didn’t nobody say anything at all!» he wailed at me for the hundredth time.
I took another drink, flopped my hand around, looked silly. «Not a word, Chief,» I said owlishly. «I’m the boy that would tell you. They died too sudden.»
He took hold of his jaw and cranked it. «Damn funny,» he sneered. «Four dead ones on the floor and you not even nicked.»
«I was the only one,» I said, «that lay down on the floor while still healthy.»
He took hold of his right ear and worried that. «You been here three days,» he howled. «In them three days we got more crime than in three years before you come. It ain’t human. I must be having a nightmare.»
«You can’t blame me, Chief,» I grumbled. «I came down here to look for a girl. I’m still looking for her. I didn’t tell Saint and his sister to hide out in your town. When I spotted him I tipped you off, though your own cops didn’t. I didn’t shoot Doc Sundstrand before anything could be got out of him. I still haven’t any idea why the phony nurse was planted there.»
«Nor me,» Fulwider yelled. «But it’s my job that’s shot full of holes. For all the chance I got to get out of this I might as well go fishin’ right now.»
I took another drink, hiccupped cheerfully. «Don’t say that, Chief,» I pleaded. «You cleaned the town up once and you can do it again. This one was just a hot grounder that took a bad bounce.»
He took a turn around the office and tried to punch a hole in the end wall, then slammed himself back in his chair. He eyed me savagely, grabbed for the whisky bottle, then didn’t touch it — as though it might do him more good in my stomach.
«I’ll make a deal with you,» he growled. «You run on back to San Angelo and I’ll forget it was your gun croaked Sundstrand.»
«That’s not a nice thing to say to a man that’s trying to earn his living, Chief. You know how it happened to be my gun.»
His face looked gray again, for a moment. He measured me for a coffin. Then the mood passed and he smacked his desk, said heartily:
«You’re right, Carmady. I couldn’t do that, could I? You still got to find that girl, ain’t you? Okay, you run on back to the hotel and get some rest. I’ll work on it tonight and see you in the A.M.»
I took another short drink, which was all there was left in the bottle. I felt fine. I shook hands with him twice and staggered out of his office. Flash bulbs exploded all over the corridor.
I went down the City Hall steps and around the side of the building to the police garage. My blue Chrysler was home again. I dropped the drunk act and went on down the side streets to the ocean front, walked along the wide cement walk towards the two amusement piers and the Grand Hotel.
It was getting dusk now. Lights on the piers came out. Masthead lights were lit on the small yachts riding at anchor behind the yacht harbor breakwater. In a white barbecue stand a man tickled wienies with a long fork and droned: «Get hungry, folks. Nice hot doggies here. Get hungry, folks.»
I lit a cigarette and stood there looking out to sea. Very suddenly, far out, lights shone from a big ship. I watched them, but they didn’t move. I went over to the hot dog man.