There was a click as the drill plunged through, and as he withdrew the bit and set the drill down on the chair beside him, I heard him grunt—a breathy, falsetto sort of grunt caused by the old injury to his larynx.
I said, “Stand still, Pete. Freeze.”
DeAngelo wheeled. In the flickering strange light of the tumbling flashlight I had a glimpse of his grin, a spasm of clenched teeth and drawn lips. His hand, as quick as a diamondback’s strike, was spinning a silencer-weighted pistol toward me.
He wasn’t allowing any argument. I pulled the trigger, too much in haste, and saw vividly the jump and puff of his shirtsleeve as the flesh received the bullet. It stung him but he was still moving, diving toward the desk. The automatic in his fist made a little puff of sound and I heard the solid whack of the bullet driving into the wall above my head. I wheeled back, flattening against the outside of the doorjamb; slid down to the floor and went into the room on my belly, gun out in front. But he took me by surprise: he launched a chair through the picture window, and in the crashing confusion went out through the jagged opening.
He had a ten-foot drop to the ground. I got my feet under me and crossed the room fast. The leg of a chair, unseen in the dark, tripped me; I sprawled, cursed, got up and peered down through the shattered window.
I had a glimpse of him, running with a limp past the neon drugstore sign, his face a twisted ugly mask of fury. He stopped and fired at me, just once; I ducked, put my head out again and watched him disappear at a shambling run. The only explanation I could think of was that he must have been running out of ammunition.
He would probably summon help from the nearest phone. I didn’t have much time. I went to the wall safe.
Luck, this time in my favor. He had broken the lock with his drill just before I had surprised him. The door swung open. I picked up his pencil light from the floor and played it around the inside of the safe.
There was only one thing inside that hadn’t been there when I’d looked inside this morning. The addition was a gun—a Walther 9 mm automatic.
I took it out, checked its loads, and put it in my pocket.
I tested the safe for false walls or bottom, but it seemed sturdy, and there was no money in it. I looked around quickly, going through drawers and the brown filing cabinet. The loot wasn’t in the office. I spent only five minutes going through the rest of the examining rooms and closets; what I sought was bulky and I didn’t waste time on small enclosures. There was no money, and as far as I could tell there was no evidence lying around that could, in Sylvia Brawley’s words, blow the Mafia sky-high.
It had to be somewhere. Brawley had had it; DeAngelo hadn’t found it.
I went back outside, very scared now, but remembering what Joanne had told me—the loot might have fitted into the trunk of a car. I got Brawley’s keys from the ignition and went back and opened the trunk, all the while keeping my senses alert for sign of DeAngelo’s return or the arrival of reinforcements.
It was all there, stuffed into the trunk of the pink Cadillac, crammed tight into every inch of space.
From the linen closet of Brawley’s office I took a stack of folded bedsheets, the kind that nurses used to cover the examination tables. They weren’t too large but they had to do. I opened the sheets one at a time and made laundry bundles of the money from the Cadillac trunk, tying the sheets up by their corners. I put them all in the bed of the Jeep and put the metal lockboxes, seven of them, on top to weight the sheets down; I slammed the Cadillac trunk, tossed the keys on the seat beside the dead man, and went around the Cadillac wiping fingerprints. I did a fast job and headed for the Jeep with a gun in my hand—I had spent far too much time here.
Then a sound rocked my head back: the wail of a siren’s idiot laughter, somewhere close by.
I backed the Jeep down the service road to a wide spot, turned around, and headed up toward the shopping center plaza, which was the only way out.
I came out from between two buildings in second gear, pushing the gas, but the police car slithered across my path and squealed to a halt. The door slammed open and the driver leaped out—Joe Cutter, lifting his .357 Magnum.
DeAngelo must have called him in. I ducked my head, spun the wheel and braked the Jeep. Cutter’s gun boomed. My windshield took another bullet hole, the second for the day; by then I was out, diving flat, hitting the asphalt painfully on one shoulder and rolling. I rolled past the Jeep in time to see him shift his aim toward me; he had the Jeep’s headlights in his eyes and he was squinting with a ferocious scowl crouching down on one knee to aim. I used Brawley’s Walther pistol. My steady, firm pressure on the trigger made it go off. It caught me almost by surprise, as it should. Magically, as if by stop-motion photography, a dark disc appeared on the side of Cutter’s heavy face. Blood burst from his cheeks; his head snapped to one side under the bullet’s impact.
He pitched to the pavement, full in the cone of the headlights.
I sprinted across the fifty feet that separated us. The hole in his cheekbone was rimmed by droplets of crimson froth. His expressionless eyes blinked twice and stayed open, focused on my knees.
There didn’t seem to be anyone about. I turned a circle on my heels to make sure. As I completed the turn, my eyes fell on Cutter’s heavy .357 revolver. Of all the people I’d known, Cutter had been most likely to die by the sword. Sometimes I had thought he was just batting around seeking a place to die. He had found it.
I picked him up and put him in the squad car, put the Magnum in his hand and drove the squad car through the alley; I parked it behind the Cadillac and left Cutter dead behind the wheel. Then I walked over to the pink Cadillac and pressed the Walther pistol into Brawley’s dead hand. Paraffin tests would prove Brawley hadn’t shot him, but a superficial investigation would suggest he had. And I had no doubt the Walther was the same gun that had killed Aiello. It had been in Brawley’s safe and I presumed it was registered to Brawley. Let the cops figure it out. There was nothing to tie me in, except DeAngelo, and he wasn’t likely to finger me for the cops.
I had things in mind for DeAngelo. I walked back out to the Jeep and drove away; in the bed behind me, wind rattled the bedsheet bundles of money.
Chapter Eleven
I eased Joanne’s beige convertible to the curb by a roadside phone booth and switched off the ignition. The morning sun whacked the boulevard, traffic swishing by. Joanne said, “Are you sure we have to do it this way?”
“Yes. Scared?”
“Yes.”
I patted her hand, got out, and went into the phone booth. It was Freddie’s dull voice that answered my ring and I asked him to call Madonna to the phone. Madonna came on the wire growling. “Where are you?”
“Is that the only question you know how to ask?”
“Listen, Crane, I—”
“Let me do the talking. You want to know where that missing property is, don’t you?”
“You son of a bitch.”
“Sure. Look, the reason I’m calling first, I don’t want to get mown down by artillery on your doorstep. I’m coming up to your house and I’m bringing Mrs. Farrell with me.”
“Come ahead,” he said. “I’ll be waiting.”
“Not like that,” I snapped. “I know where that property is, but you’ll never find it if you don’t give me a chance to talk to you.”
“You’ll have plenty chance to talk to me, Crane. I promise you that.”
“Not under a gun,” I said. “You may recall there were certain items in that shipment of property which could make things a little uncomfortable for you if they got released to the wrong parties. Some of those items are in the care of a person who’ll release those items at midnight tonight unless I intercept that person and give instructions not to release it. And don’t think I can be pressured into giving you that person’s name, because even if the muscle boys went to work on me they wouldn’t be able to get to this person in time to keep the stuff from being released. You understand?”