This, I thought, is the only chance I'll ever get. I've got to take the chance that Max won't shoot in a situation like this.
But Max was there ahead of me. “Just a minute,” he said. Then, with an expert hand, he snapped my .38 from my waistband and slipped it into his left-hand coat pocket, that .45 of his never moving from its position just below my heart. “Now walk,” he said.
I walked, feeling the sweat popping out of my face, feeling my knees go to mush, feeling the blossom of fear grow as cold as ice in my stomach. Calvart had the back door open when we got to the Buick. Max shoved me inside.
And no one noticed a thing. Out of all those dozens of people milling around the bus station, not a single one of them noticed that a man was being set up for murder right under their noses! Calvart turned around and smiled as Max shoved me over to the far side of the car and then got in beside me. His .45 was out now, in his hand, and it looked ugly and black and as big as a cannon.
“All set, Mr. Calvart. Turn left on Mallart Avenue. Follow it all the way out of town, out by the brick yards. Anywhere out there will do.”
“Whatever you say, Max,” Calvart said, smiling at me. Then he eased the car into gear, slipping into the stream of southbound traffic.
Jump him, I thought, it's the only chance you have. Somehow you've got to get that .45 away from him while Calvart is busy at the wheel!
I couldn't do it. My guts had gone to buttermilk. I tensed my shoulders, readied for the lunge, but when the time came I simply couldn't force myself to act. I couldn't throw myself into the muzzle of that automatic.
Now or later! I told myself savagely. What's the difference? Calvart's got it planned, he's going to kill you. The least you can do is make a fight of it while you can!
But panic had me in a grip of iron, held me immobilized, helpless, and all I could do was sit there and sweat.
About three blocks from the bus station Calvart turned left on what I guessed was Mallart Avenue. It's a one-way road for me, I thought emptily. I underestimated Calvart... I made the fatal mistake of underestimating an enemy and for that bit of stupidity I'm going to die. They'll find me tomorrow, or the next day, in some gutter, and the cops will fingerprint the body and identify it as Roy Surratt, and the investigation would stop right there.
That dagger of fear that stabbed in my stomach there began to stir an anger. A great, unreasoning, savage anger, not at Calvart, and certainly not at Max who was just a hired hand brought in for an hour or so to do a job of work. The anger was at myself. You deserve everything you're going to get! I thought savagely. Roy Surratt, criminal philosopher, realistic genius, perfectionist. Well, you slipped, Surratt, and perfectionists don't slip, and because of that little piece of idiocy you're going to get exactly what you deserve; you're going to get a well placed .45 slug in the back of the head; you're going to get your brains spattered all over some lousy brick yard just because you failed, this one time, to scrupulously practice what you preach!
The anger helped some, but not much. I was sick with fear, paralyzed with it, and I began to wish that the mild, cool-eyed killer sitting across from me would go ahead with it and pull the trigger. The waiting was the thing that got me. I was afraid I'd go all to pieces if it lasted much longer. Already my hands were shaking. A small muscle in my threat started to quiver, a nervous ripple flowed over my shoulders and down my back, and a great, yawning emptiness opened in my belly. Great God, I thought helplessly, I don't want to die! I don't want to die!
And Max, the hired hand, smiled blandly and held his automatic close to my heart. Calvart slipped the big, quiet car through the streets and the brightness and garishness of the city passed behind us.
At last the pavement ended and the city was just a glare against the lowhanging clouds. There were no buildings at all out here, and very few houses, and the land was also empty, nothing but ragged and torn hills of red clay, brick clay, standing gaunt and almost black in the moonlight. When we came onto the end of the road Calvart braked the Buick and eased onto a deep-rutted, sparsely graveled road, and Max said:
“Anywhere along here will do.”
“We'll go on over the next rise,” Calvart said.
Max shrugged slightly. A job was a job and he didn't bother himself with the details.
I tried desperately to stop the sickish quivering in my stomach. I tried to pull myself together enough to jump into the muzzle of that .45... but I couldn't do it. I simply couldn't force myself to move.
The road was rough and Calvart was taking it easy, crawling along in second gear. Finally we topped a small rise and I could see the squat black forms of the brickyards in the distance.
“Right here,” Max said.
“Just a little farther,” Calvart said. “There's no use taking chances.”
Just a little farther! I knew just how it would happen... Calvart wouldn't want his car bloodied up if he could help it; they would stop and shove me out, and they would let me run a step or two and Max would apply the careful, gentle trigger squeeze and the door would slam. That would be the end.
The end. I had the horrible feeling that I was going to cry.
That was when Calvart hit the rock.
It was just over the rise and the headlight beams must have shot over it, and I guess that's the reason Calvart didn't see it until it was too late. It was a good sized rock, maybe a foot thick, and maybe it had fallen off a truck or maybe it had just washed loose from the clay embankment and had rolled down onto the road; but where it came from isn't important. It was there and that is the important thing.
Calvart hit it with his right front wheel and the Buick lurched suddenly. Max had to make a grab for the back of the front seat to keep from falling to the floorboards, and Calvart himself was cursing and trying to get the car straightened out on the road. Just what I did at that instant is not clear in my mind, but I acted on instinct, I'm sure of that, pure animal instinct, there was nothing planned about it.
The instant the Buick lurched to the left, the instant Max made his grab for the front seat I forgot about my sickness and my fear. I was on Max like a tiger. Grabbing at his gunhand, I drove my knee in his crotch and heard the wind go out of him. I slashed the edge of my hand across Max's wrist and the bone snapped, but a small thing like a broken wrist meant nothing to Max at that moment because he didn't live long enough to suffer from the pain.
I caught the automatic before it hit the floorboards. I jammed the muzzle into Max's throat, into the soft part between the breast bone and the adams apple and pulled the trigger.
He never knew what hit him. The slug tore right through his spinal column, almost taking his head off his shoulders.
In the meantime Calvart had to let go of the wheel and had let the Buick go into a ditch and we were stalled, Calvart himself was trying to get over the back of the driver's seat, trying to grab the gun away from me. He never had a chance. I shoved him back against the steering wheel, then got on my knees and shot him three times right in the middle of his fat stomach. He jerked and quivered like some enormous jellyfish, and his mouth flew open, working soundlessly. That was the way he died.
I heard a voice saying, “You sonofabitch! You lousy sonofabitch!” I knew it was my voice, but it didn't seem to be coming from my throat, it seemed to be coming from everywhere, and it was high-pitched and taut and almost screaming. At last I jerked the front door open and gave Calvart a shove, and he hit the ground with the mushy sound of an overripe melon.
I was breathing very hard and couldn't seem to get enough air into my lungs. I concentrated for several minutes on pulling myself together and watching the blood soak into the thick floor mat around Max's severed head. Then I got out of the car and began to feel better. Calvart was dead. Max was dead. But I was alive!