When I got back to the room Venus was still at the table, but the crowd was gone. She only had a little pile of bills left and the stickman had stopped sweating. I poked her in the ribs with my thumb and she jumped to attention. “From rags to riches and back again, huh?”
“Damn it, where’d you go? If you had stayed around I could have left with a fortune.”
“Sorry. What I had to do wouldn’t wait.”
“Oh.” She raked in what she had left and stuck the bills in her pocketbook. “Ready to go?”
“Any time.”
I steered her to the door and we had a nightcap in the bar downstairs. One of the off-duty cops spotted me and wrinkled his face as if he were puzzled. I wasn’t for sticking around long enough for something else to happen, so we took a quick tour of the dance floor just for luck. But if Eddie Packman was around he wasn’t where we could see him and they didn’t have rooms for rent in that joint.
Venus looked as disappointed as I felt. “Lousy try, huh?”
“Stinking,” I agreed.
“Want to try anyplace else?”
“Where?”
“Ah, there are a lot of places he might be. I think you’d do better to try the hotels. Unless he’s with a woman who’s giving him a hard time, he won’t be wasting the night floating around the clubs.”
“Ah, the hell with it. Tomorrow’s another day. I’ll find him.”
“But I wanted to see it happen,” she pouted.
“You’re a bloodthirsty devil.”
“Aren’t I though?”
She laughed up at me, her teeth flashing in the night. I bent over and let my mouth lean against hers. She didn’t kiss me. Her fingers grabbed my arms and she bit my lip then took the sting out of the bite with her tongue.
All so damn fast it was like being struck by a snake whose venom was a vicious, poisonous pleasure that left you rigid and trembling in your shoes.
Her breath came so fast the words tumbled out. “Don’t... ever do that again. Not you... not when there’s people around!”
I knew just how she felt. I slid my hand under her arm and made her walk to the car, feeling her leg touching mine, deliberately keeping pace with me, knowing her eyes were crawling over me. Venus knew how to make it rough on a guy.
When I got behind the wheel the boy came out of his little cabaña, waved me out for another four bits and I turned back toward town.
This time he earned his four bits. For a curious second he flashed his torch on the car that came roaring up behind me with the headlights off and I caught the reflection in the rear-view mirror. I didn’t have the chance to jump the Ford into high when the big job slammed into the back bumper then darted past on the right with the roaring slam of a heavy gun spitting holes in my windshield.
I did the only thing I could; tried to duck and wrench the wheel over as hard as possible, then jarred forward into the wheel when the tires hit the sand on the shoulder of the road. The rear wheels went up into the air as the nose tipped forward, then smashed back and bounced the car around in a quarter-arc before coming to a shuddering standstill.
Venus was jammed against me covered with splintered glass, the marks of it traced in blood on her cheeks. I couldn’t get my voice to say anything except “Damn, damn!”
The blood was there on her chest too, a dark trickle moving into the V of her jacket. I grabbed the lapels and tore them apart. The button held, then ripped loose and she was shamefully naked from the waist up and I was screaming mad because such beauty had to be wasted. My hand went out to stop the bleeding... do anything to keep her alive. My fingers probed for an ugly hole that should be swelling and didn’t find any so I wiped the blood away with the flat of my palm to look for it.
And it wiped away clean. There wasn’t any hole. I said, “Damn!”
Then her eyes opened and she whispered, “You can say that again.”
So I said it again, only this time with a grin.
“But you can keep looking if you want to,” she added softly.
I did that, too, looking and thinking how nice and round she was where it seemed so necessary, and so damn glad she was very much alive. Just why, I couldn’t figure. I could still hear the hum of those bullets passing in front of my nose.
She didn’t want to, but I made her close the jacket again.
Chapter Nine
“You all right?”
“I... think so.” Her hand passed over her face and brushed a fragment of glass away. “Who... was it, Johnny?”
“Somebody who’s so damn anxious to see me dead he doesn’t give a hoot who else dies in the process. It’s not very healthy to be around me any more, baby.”
“No. That’s a fact, isn’t it?” She looked around at the holes, her face blank with astonishment as she visualized how close she’d come to getting booted out of this land of the living. She fumbled for a cigarette, lit two and stuck one in my mouth. When she had a deep drag settled in her lungs she asked. “How did he miss? I don’t understand.”
“I do,” I told her. “The jerk misjudged his distance. If he hadn’t plowed into us I probably would have kept going straight ahead and been a lovely target. At least I know one thing; he was alone, that’s why he stayed on the right, so he could shoot through the driver’s side instead of firing across the seat. With all his plans he muffed it anyway. Well, we can’t just sit here. Climb out a minute.”
When we were both outside I dug the jack handle from under the seat and knocked out the rest of the glass in the frames. Venus found a whisk broom in the glove compartment and cleared off the cushions and we were ready to get moving. Luckily, the rear wheels were still on the pavement, so it wasn’t any trouble hauling the front free. Just about the time I got the heap rolling the headlights of the first car turned out of the parking area back down the road. When he saw we were moving the car stopped, turned around and went back to the parking lot.
Either the wind wasn’t right or the people in this section weren’t very curious when other people started popping away with a rod. Hell, maybe they thought it was a gag. Yeah.
The breeze whipped in through the blank space in the windshield, kicking the dust around our faces. Venus waited until we had reached the main highway before she finally broke down and let herself cry. When the spasm passed I said, “Feel better now?”
“Much, only I need some coffee. Stop someplace, all right?”
“Sure.”
I pulled in at the first all-night joint I came to. It was a regular Hollywood affair, a fancy dog palace sprawled along the highway with tables inside and out, car-hop service and a small bar if you wanted one for the road. The place was packed with couples heading home after a big time in Lyncastle and there were more drunks around trying to sober up than anything else.
Venus wanted to go inside so I found a table, signaled a waitress over and ordered two coffees and a foursome of hot dogs. My eyes were hungrier than my stomach. You don’t get almost shot up then try to get your insides to take things calmly. The dogs wrinkled up on the plates, but the hot coffee held me together somewhat.
Or almost did anyway. Just before I finished the cup I saw something happen to Venus’s eyes and looked where she was looking. There was a table in the far comer completely dominated by a red-headed bundle of curves who would have gone six feet in her stocking feet. She almost completely obscured the guy who was leering across the table at her.
Venus’s mouth made silent words that said, “Eddie Packman,” and something went crawling up my back. The little bastard’s hair shone over a face that should have been peering out of a cage. There were muscles built into the hundred-buck suit he wore and I could see the flash of the diamond on his hand all the way across the room.