“Aw, can’t you take a joke? Come on, buddy, don’t lose your sense of humor.”
“You’re a goddam pain in the ass, Ed, you’ve always been a goddam pain in the ass and you always will be a goddam pain in the ass.”
Ed lost his own sense of humor. “Just watch it what you say there, pal,” he said. “Don’t lose your cool.”
“Then don’t play around any more.”
“That’s all right by me. I won’t play around, and you won’t shoot off at the mouth.”
“Yeah,” Tommy said, sullen but not wanting to push it. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”
They moved on, finally getting out of sight, and after a little silence Ed started his chipper conversation going again. Tommy was sulking, and answered in monosyllables, but Ed carried the conversation for both of them.
Parker waited till the voices told him they were two or three turnings away, and then he climbed down out of the jury box and moved after them. The route was carpeted, he could move without sound.
Up ahead, Ed was still talking away, and Tommy was beginning to get over his mad. Parker hurried, and as he strode along he took his two knives from his hip pockets, holding them in his hands down by his sides.
When he saw them, Ed had stopped to investigate a medieval poisoning scene full of women with low-cut gowns. Tommy was standing on the carpet, looking nervously around, but no longer asking Ed to hurry.
Ed was the one to take care of first. Parker stood just around the bend, just out of sight, and listened till the conversation told him Ed was finished studying the female wax figures. He looked around the bend and saw Ed climbing over the velvet rope again, his back to Parker. Parker stepped out in view. They both had their backs turned. He set himself, his right hand holding one of the knives up behind his ear, and then threw.
This was a closer target than the other one, and more stationary. Parker finished the throwing movement and stepped quickly back out of sight again, switching the other knife to his right hand.
He heard it hit, and heard Ed grunt, and heard Ed fall. If he had Tommy figured right, he would just stand there now, unable to think for a few seconds, too paralyzed by fear to do anything sensible. A few seconds was all Parker would need.
He stepped out again, and Ed was facedown on the carpet, his left leg stuck up in the air behind him, left ankle hooked over the velvet rope he’d been stepping over when the knife hit him. And Tommy was staring down at him in disbelief, just the way Parker had thought.
But before he could get set again, Tommy moved. He didn’t look around, he didn’t fire any shots, he didn’t yell. All he did was run. He turned and ran like hell in the opposite direction.
Parker threw anyway, even though it was no good. The knife missed, and went on, and hit a masked executioner holding an ax, in the middle of his chest. He tottered, and fell over backward.
Then Tommy yelled. He veered away from the display where the executioner had fallen over, almost running into the rope on the other side, but veered again and rounded a turn and was out of sight.
Parker ran forward to Ed, and plucked from his hand a Colt Commander automatic in .38 caliber, a gun with a nine-cartridge clip., He ejected the clip from the handle and it was full. He shoved it back in, put the gun on the floor, and turned the body over. He searched it, but Ed had carried no extra clips on him. Going up against one man, he apparently hadn’t thought he’d need it.
Tommy was out of the building by now, and spreading the alarm. But that hardly mattered. It was a new ball game. Parker had a gun.
Five
THE TRICK now was to lead them one way and go another. Parker had an idea for a way to end it, to get himself out of this park and away from these people, and now that he had a gun it was possible, but before he could work it he’d have to hole up for half an hour or so. Something else that he was waiting for had to happen first, and then he could move.
He didn’t follow Tommy, but went back the other way. By climbing over the velvet rope and going through the displays, through the black curtain between displays, he could go directly to the front entrance, getting there just as Tommy was bursting out on the other side of the building. Parker heard him hollering back there, and looked out the half-open doorway, and saw two guys running around toward the rear of the wax museum. He was about to step out when two more appeared, from the Hawaiian restaurant across the way. The loud-hailer sounded, and they waved their arms — meaning the loud-hailer had been hailing them, and they’d heard and understood — and then they came running this way, toward the entrance Parker was hidden behind.
He had a gun now. Shoot them on the street? No, the idea was to stop leading an accurate trail. Parker waited, hidden by black draperies just to the side of the entrance.
He let the first one run into the building, then stepped out quickly as the second one barreled through the doorway, and stuck the gun barrel hard into his stomach, and pulled the trigger. It made a very small noise; only three people heard it. One of them was falling to the ground, one was Parker, and the third was trying to turn around and defend himself before Parker could get to him and do the same thing.
No noise, that was the most vital thing. Parker lunged forward, like a duelist with a sword in his hand instead of a pistol, trying to use the same silencing method as before. But this one, in a panicky scramble, managed to shove Parker’s gun hand to one side, and Parker had to continue the lunge, pushing off with the balls of his feet, driving his shoulder into the guy’s midsection, so that they both toppled over, the other guy backward, landing heavily on his back, Parker on top of him.
They were about equally matched for size and weight. The shock of landing on his back with Parker on top of him had made the other guy drop his own gun, but now he had the wrist of Parker’s gun hand in his grip and was holding it out away from the two of them, and trying to get his breath together to shout.
He couldn’t shout. Parker, trying for an advantage, trying to do something useful with his other hand, could do nothing for the moment except butt at the other guy’s mouth, feeling the teeth sharp and abrasive against his forehead, having to do something, anything, to keep the guy quiet. While his left fist was kidney-punching, the only thing it was in position to do effectively.
The guy twisted his head back and forth, trying to keep away from the butting, and then made his mistake. He let go of Parker’s wrist because he was tormented by the butting, he let go and tried to push Parker’s head away, and Parker brought the gun in quickly against the guy’s side, up near the armpit, and fired once.
The guy thrashed, like a fish on a schooner’s deck, and then stopped. Parker rolled off him and got to his feet and went over to look out the half-open doorway again, and now the space out front was deserted.
He stepped out, keeping close to the front of the building. Ahead of him was the snow-covered blacktop path marking the line between park sections, all crisscrossed now with footprints, and he knew that path was open and clear down to the right all the way to the central fountain, and that one of Lozini’s men would be down there by the fountain watching the path, waiting for Parker to try and cross it, heading from Alcatraz to Hawaii. And on the other side of the Alcatraz section there was another straight open path separating it from Treasure Island, and that path would also be watched.
He wanted to get back close to the gate again, but to move to where he could see the gate he would have to cross a minimum of three of those open spokes radiating out from the fountain — from Alcatraz to Hawaii to Pleasure Island to Island Earth. They knew he was in the Alcatraz section now, or they would know it very soon, once Tommy quit hollering out there on the other side of the building and started to make some sense, and with Parker limited to one-eighth of the park, it wouldn’t take them long to find him.