“Up with the hands now,” he murmured. He was one of those men whose voices go soft and mild when they are in killing mood. He had the glassy impervious eyes of a killer. “Is Bart dead? My brother?”
“Very dead. He was shot in the belly.”
“Who shot him?”
“That’s the question.”
“Who shot him?” he said in a quite white-faced rage. The single eye of the gun stared emptily at my midriff. “It could happen to you, bud, here and now.”
“A woman was with him. She took a quick powder after it happened.”
“I heard you say a name to Alfie, the piano-player. Was it Fern?”
“It could have been.”
“What do you mean, it could have been?”
“She was there in the room, apparently. If you can give me a description of her?”
His hard brown eyes looked past me. “I can do better than that. There’s a picture of her on the wall behind you. Take a look at it. Keep those hands up high.”
I shifted my feet and turned uneasily. The wall was blank. I heard him draw a breath and move, and tried to evade his blow. No use. It caught the back of my head. I pitched forward against the blank wall and slid down it into three dimensions of blankness.
The blankness coagulated into colored shapes. The shapes were half human and half beast and they dissolved and reformed. A dead man with a hairy breast climbed out of a hole and doubled and quadrupled. I ran away from them through a twisting tunnel which led to an echo chamber. Under the roaring surge of the nightmare music, a rasping tenor was saying:
“I figure it like this. Vario’s tip was good. Bart found her in Acapulco, and he was bringing her back from there. She conned him into stopping off at this motel for the night. Bart always went for her.”
“I didn’t know that,” a dry old voice put in. “This is very interesting news about Bart and Fern. You should have told me before about this. Then I would not have sent him for her and this would not have happened. Would it, Gino?”
My mind was still partly absent, wandering underground in the echoing caves. I couldn’t recall the voices, or who they were talking about. I had barely sense enough to keep my eyes closed and go on listening. I was lying on my back on a hard surface. The voices were above me.
The tenor said: “You can’t blame Bartolomeo. She’s the one, the dirty treacherous lying little bitch.”
“Calm yourself, Gino. I blame nobody. But more than ever now, we want her back, isn’t that right?”
“I’ll kill her,” he said softly, almost wistfully.
“Perhaps. It may not be necessary now. I dislike promiscuous killing–”
“Since when, Angel?”
“Don’t interrupt, it’s not polite. I learned to put first things first. Now what is the most important thing? Why did we want her back in the first place? I will tell you: to shut her mouth. The government heard she left me, they wanted her to testify about my income. We wanted to find her first and shut her mouth, isn’t that right?”
“I know how to shut her mouth,” the younger man said very quietly.
“First we try a better way, my way. You learn when you’re as old as I am there is a use for everything, and not to be wasteful. Not even wasteful with somebody else’s blood. She shot your brother, right? So now we have something on her, strong enough to keep her mouth shut for good. She’d get off with second degree, with what she’s got, but even that is five to ten in Tehachapi. I think all I need to do is tell her that. First we have to find her, eh?”
“I’ll find her. Bart didn’t have any trouble finding her.”
“With Vario’s tip to help him, no. But I think I’ll keep you here with me, Gino. You’re too hot-blooded, you and your brother both. I want her alive. Then I can talk to her, and then we’ll see.”
“You’re going soft in your old age, Angel.”
“Am I?” There was a light slapping sound, of a blow on flesh. “I have killed many men, for good reasons. So I think you will take that back.”
“I take it back.”
“And call me Mr. Funk. If I am so old, you will treat my gray hairs with respect. Call me Mr. Funk.”
“Mr. Funk.”
“All right, your friend here, does he know where Fern is?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Mr. Funk.”
“Mr. Funk.” Gino’s voice was a whining snarl.
“I think he’s coming to. His eyelids fluttered.”
The toe of a shoe prodded my side. Somebody slapped my face a number of times. I opened my eyes and sat up. The back of my head was throbbing like an engine fueled by pain. Gino rose from a squatting position and stood over me.
“Stand up.”
I rose shakily to my feet. I was in a stone-walled room with a high beamed ceiling, sparsely furnished with stiff old black oak chairs and tables. The room and the furniture seemed to have been built for a race of giants.
The man behind Gino was small and old and weary. He might have been an unsuccessful grocer or a superannuated barkeep who had come to California for his health. Clearly his health was poor. Even in the stifling heat he looked pale and chilly, as if he had caught chronic death from one of his victims. He moved closer to me, his legs shuffling feebly in wrinkled blue trousers that bagged at the knees. His shrunken torso was swathed in a heavy blue turtleneck sweater. He had two days’ beard on his chin, like moth-eaten gray plush.
“Gino informs me that you are investigating a shooting.” His accent was Middle-European and very faint, as if he had forgotten his origins. “Where did this happen, exactly?”
“I don’t think I’ll tell you that. You can read it in the papers tomorrow night if you are interested.”
“I am not prepared to wait. I am impatient. Do you know where Fern is?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I did.”
“But you know where she was last night.”
“I couldn’t be sure.”
“Tell me anyway to the best of your knowledge.”
“I don’t think I will.”
“He doesn’t think he will,” the old man said to Gino.
“I think you better let me out of here. Kidnaping is a tough rap. You don’t want to die in the pen.”
He smiled at me, with a tolerance more terrible than anger. His eyes were like thin stab-wounds filled with watery blood. Shuffling unhurriedly to the head of the mahogany table behind him, he pressed a spot in the rug with the toe of one felt slipper. Two men in blue serge suits entered the room and stepped towards me briskly. They belonged to the race of giants it had been built for.
Gino moved behind me and reached to pin my arms. I pivoted, landed one short punch, and took a very hard counter below the belt. Something behind me slammed my kidneys with the heft of a trailer truck bumper. I turned on weakening legs and caught a chin with my elbow. Gino’s fist, or one of the beams from the ceiling, landed on my neck. My head rang like a gong. Under its clangor, Angel was saying pleasantly:
“Where was Fern last night?”
I didn’t say.
The men in blue serge held me upright by the arms while Gino used my head as a punching bag. I rolled with his lefts and rights as well as I could, but his timing improved and mine deteriorated. His face wavered and receded. At intervals Angel inquired politely if I was willing to assist him now. I asked myself confusedly in the hail of fists what I was holding out for or who I was protecting. Probably I was holding out for myself. It seemed important to me not to give in to violence. But my identity was dissolving and receding like the face in front of me.
I concentrated on hating Gino’s face. That kept it clear and steady for a while: a stupid square-jawed face barred by a single black brow, two close-set brown eyes staring glassily. His fists continued to rock me like an air-hammer.