The sun was low now, the rays angling into the trees. One of them picked up a strange color in the brush at the foot of the hill, an odd color that never should have been there. I stared at it, trying to make out what it was.
Then I knew.
The fingers of my hand squeezed involuntarily and Velda let out a little cry, the pain of it shocking her. I said, "Stay here," and snapped to my feet.
"Mike..."
I didn't take the time to answer her. I ran down the hill toward the color and with each step it took shape and form until it was what I knew it had to be.
A thirty-year-old taxi cab. A yellow and black taxi that had been stolen off the streets back in the thirties.
The tires were rotted shreds now, but the rest of it was intact. Only a few spots of rust showed through the heavy layers of paint that the cab had been coated with to protect it against the destruction of the wind-driven grit in the city.
I looked it over carefully and almost wanted to say that they sure didn't make them like this any more. The windows were still rolled shut hard against their rubber cushions so that the stuff fused them right into the body of the car with age. The car had been new when it was stolen, and they made that model to last for years. It was an airtight vault now, a bright yellow, wheeled mausoleum for two people.
At least they had been two people.
Now they were two mummies. The one in the front was slumped across the wheel, hat perched jauntily on a skeletal head covered with drawn, leathery flesh. There wasn't much to the back of the head. That had been blown away.
The guy who did it was the other mummy in the back seat. He leaned against the other side of the car, his mouth gaping open so that every tooth showed, his clothes hanging from withered limbs. Where his eyes were I could see two little dried bits of things that still had the appearance of watching me.
He still, held the rifle across his lap aimed at the door in front of me, fingers clutched around its stock and his right forefinger still on the trigger. There was a black stain of blood on the shirt that could still give it a startlingly white background.
Between his feet were three canvas sacks.
A million dollars in each.
I had finally found Blackie Conley.
She came up on bare feet and I didn't hear her until her breath hissed with the horror of what she saw. She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth to stop the scream that started to come, her eyes wide open for long moments.
"Mike... who... ?"
"Our killer, Velda. The Target. The one we were after. That's Blackie Conley in the back seat there. He almost made it. How close can a guy come?"
"Pretty close, Mr. Hammer. Some of us come all the way."
I didn't hear him either! He had come up the side of the hill on sneakered feet and stood there with a gun on us and I felt like the biggest fool in the world! My .45 was back there in the love nest and now we were about to be as dead as the others. It was like being right back at the beginning again.
I said, "Hello, Sonny."
The Snake. The real snake, as deadly as they come. The only one that had real fangs and knew how to use them. His face had lost the tired look and his eyes were bright with the desirous things he saw in his future. There was nothing stooped about him now, nothing of the old man there. Old, yes, but he wasn't the type who grew old easily. It had all been a pose, a cute game, and he was the winner.
"You scared me, Mr. Hammer. When you got as far as Malek you really scared me. I was taking my time about coming here because I wasn't ready yet and then I knew it was time to move. You damn near ruined everything." What I used to call a cackle was a pose too. He did have a laugh. He thought it was funny.
Velda reached for my arm and I knew she was scared. It was too much too fast all over again and she could only take so much.
"Smart," he said to me. "You're a clever bastard. If all I had was the cops to worry about it would have been no trouble, but I had to draw you." His mouth pulled into a semblance of a grin. "Those nice talks we had. You kept me right up to date. Tell me, did you think I had a nice face?"
"I thought you had more sense, Sonny."
He dropped the grin then. "Get off it, guy. More sense? For what? You think I was going to spend all my life in the cooler without getting some satisfaction? Mister, that's where you made your mistake. You should have gone a little further into my case history. I always was a mean one because it paid off. If I had to play pretty-face to make it pay off I could do that too."
"You won't make it, Sonny."
"No? Well, just lose that idea. For thirty years I pull him into his hidey hole and shot him in the head. But he never lived through my shot. No chance of that. Man, this is my big day... the biggest damn day in my life! Now I got everything!"
He drew himself erect at the thought, a funny expression changing his face. He said, "Only one thing I ain't got any more," and this time he was looking at Velda.
"Take those clothes off, lady."
Her fingers that were so tight on my arm seemed to relax and I knew she was thinking the same thing as I was. It could be a diversion. "If she could step aside and do it so we were split up I might get the chance to jump him.
I didn't watch her. I couldn't. I had to watch him. But I could tell from his eyes just what she was doing. I knew when she took the skirt off, then the bra. I watched his eyes follow her hands as she slid the skirt down over her ankles and I knew by the quick intake of his breath and the sudden brightness of his eyes when she had stepped out of the last thing she wore.
She made the slightest motion to one side then, but he was with it. He said, "Just stay there, lady. Stay there close where I can get to you both."
Not much time was left now. The fire in his eyes was still burning, but it wouldn't last.
"Real nice, lady," he said. "I like brunettes. Always have. Now you can die like that, right together."
No time at all now.
"Too bad you didn't get the money, Sonny."
He shook his head at me, surprised that I'd make such a bad attempt. "It's right on the floor there."
"You'd better be sure, Sonny. We got here ahead of you."
If he had trouble opening the door I might be able to make the move. All he had to do was falter once and if I could get past the first shot I could take him even if he caught me with it. Velda would hit the ground the second he pulled the trigger and together we'd have him.
"No good, Hammer. It's right there and Old Blackie is still guarding it with his rifle. You saw it."
"You didn't."
"Okay, so you get one last look." He reached for the door handle and gave it a tentative tug. It didn't budge. He laughed again, knowing what I was waiting for but not playing it my way at all. The gun never wavered and I knew I'd never get the chance. From where he stood he could kill us both with ease and we all knew it.
The next time he gave the door a sharp jerk and it swung open, the hinges groaning as the rust ground into them. He was watching us with the damndest grin I ever saw and never bothered to see what was happening in the cab. The pull on the door was enough to rock the car and ever so steadily the corpse of Blackie Conley seemed to come to life, sitting up in the seat momentarily. I could see the eyes and the mouth open in a soundless scream with the teeth bared in a grimace of wild hatred.
Sonny knew something was happening and barely turned his head to look... just enough to see the man he had killed collapse into dust fragments, and as it did the bony finger touched the trigger that had been filed to react to the smallest of pressures and the rifle squirted a blossom of roaring flame that took Sonny Motley square in the chest and dropped him lifeless four feet away.