I took the suitcase out of the trunk and started walking toward the car that was supposed to be a green or a blue Chevrolet. The snow came well over my ankles and I wondered whether the car up ahead had chains or snow tires.
I had switched the flashlight on and its beam picked up the car. It was about fifteen feet ahead. When I reached it I put the suitcase down on my right so that I could open the trunk. The trunk was locked. I remember saying, “Shit,” and then there was a sudden movement on my right. It was only a blur, but I ducked and something cold and hard slammed into my neck just below my right ear. If I hadn’t ducked, it would have slammed into my temple.
I remember that I sat down in the snow. I sat down in it because I could no longer stand up. I watched an ungloved hand pick up the suitcase. I tried to see who the hand belonged to, but I couldn’t make him out because he had already turned. The engine of the car started and I watched the back door open. The suitcase disappeared inside the car and the back door slammed shut. I decided it was time to get up and say something, perhaps something such as, “You can’t do that,” or “What the hell’s going on here?”
Somebody else said something instead. A voice said, “Hold it right there, police!” The figure by the car hesitated, but just for a moment. Then he had the front door open and he was getting in, or starting to, and then there was the shot. The first shot must have caught him in the back because he arced backward and then stumbled forward toward the car. Its door was still open and he was still determined to get into it. He might have made it except that the car started moving away. He tried to throw himself into the moving car, but there was a second shot that caught him and spun him around until he was facing me and I wondered how I could see him so clearly in all that snow and dark until I noticed that I was still holding the flashlight. He went down on his knees first, not three feet away from me, and stayed that way for a moment. His mouth worked a couple of times, as if he were talking to himself, perhaps about his rotten luck. Then he pitched forward into the snow and lay still.
I sat there and stared at him for a moment. Then I noticed that his face was buried in the snow. I bent forward and tugged at him until I got his head turned around so that he could breathe. I needn’t have bothered.
A voice to my right and behind me said, “You all right?”
“Oh hell, yes,” I said. “I just like to sit in the snow.”
It was Fastnaught. He knelt down near my feet and touched his fingers to the man’s neck. He held them there for what seemed to be a long time.
“I guess he’s dead,” Fastnaught said.
“You guess?”
“He’s dead.”
I decided to move my head. I turned it to the left and it felt all right. Then I turned it to the right. That was a mistake. A sharp pain tore through it and made me gasp. I touched my neck just below my right ear. There was a pronounced swelling but nothing seemed broken or cracked. I found that if I held my head just so, bent slightly to the right, the pain wasn’t so bad. It also must have made me look a little odd because Fastnaught said, “What’s the matter with you? I thought you said you were okay.”
“It’s nothing,” I said. “Just a broken neck.”
“You know him?”
“Who?”
“Him. There.”
“Oh, you mean the guy you shot. The one there at my feet in the snow. That one. No, I don’t think we’ve met. Since you shot him, I thought you probably must know him.”
“You’re babbling,” Fastnaught said. “You better get up out of that snow.”
I got up, or started to, and then sat back down. Things had started to grow dim. I picked up a handful of snow and smeared it over my face. The shock of the cold made me start to shake.
“You got the trembles,” Fastnaught said.
“Is that what they’re called?”
“You better let me help you up.”
He helped me up. I stood there for a moment and continued to shake with cold or shock or both. Fastnaught said, “Give me that,” and took the flashlight. He shined it in my face. “You sure nothing’s busted?”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“How come you’re holding your head like that?”
“It’s what’s called a faintly quizzical angle,” I said. “People in books do it a lot.”
“It looks silly.”
“Maybe that’s because I’ve got a lot of silly questions for you.”
“Later,” Fastnaught said. He knelt down and started going through the dead man’s pockets using the flashlight to examine what he found. Some of the light splashed over the man’s face. It was a fairly young face, which now would never reach middle age. The grey eyes were still open and snow had fallen into them and melted, which made them appear to be full of tears. But tears didn’t go with that face. Even dead it had a smart, clever look to it with a thin, tight mouth and a sharp nose and a tough, biggish chin. It was a hard face, I decided, and the last time that those grey eyes had been wet with tears must have been thirty years ago when the dead man was six or possibly seven.
Fastnaught grunted and stood up. He held a thin black wallet under the flashlight. “Well, guess who we got here?” he said.
“My first guess,” I said, “is going to be Jack Marsh, late of Los Angeles.”
“Huh,” he said. “You figured it out. My theory about Marsh was pretty good, wasn’t it?”
“It was wonderful,” I said. “Even brilliant. And now I’m sure you’re going to tell me, just before I freeze to death, who drove off in that car with a quarter of a million dollars.”
“They got the money?” he said. “Shit. I didn’t see that. I saw you go down and that’s when I shot at him. But I didn’t see him get the money.”
“He threw it into the back seat,” I said. “I was to give them the money and get the book, but it didn’t work out like that. He threw the money into the back seat and then you shot him and then the car drove off with all that money without bothering to leave the book unless it’s somewhere over there in the snow.”
“Wait a minute,” Fastnaught said. He moved over to where the car had been parked and shined the flashlight around. He bent over and picked up something and came back to where I stood. “No book,” he said.
“Somehow I didn’t think there would be.”
“But I found this,” he said and held it out for me to look at. It was an automatic pistol. I thought that it looked like a Colt .38, but I wasn’t sure. I decided that it really didn’t matter.
“That’s a great help.”
“It is to me,” he said.
“It gets you off, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah. They don’t like us just to go around shooting just anybody. They like ’em to be either armed or dangerous or both. And that’s what he was, wasn’t he, St. Ives? Armed and dangerous.”
“I didn’t see any gun,” I said.
“You felt it. That’s just as good.”
“I’m freezing,” I said.
“Let’s go get in my car. I got a bottle in there. You can suck on it while I call this thing in.”
Fastnaught’s car was parked twenty or thirty feet behind mine. When we were inside he started the engine and switched the heater on full blast. Then, he used his radio to talk over, but I didn’t listen to him. I was busy drinking his whiskey.
When he was through with the radio he reached for the bottle. “You gave me quite a little ride tonight,” he said. “I nearly froze my ass off. Backing up and going the wrong way on R Street. That was cute.”
“I thought so.”