By the time he was on the highway it was getting dark. What a day. Five miles out of Sidon he turned right on a black macadam road that wound around the fringes of some good-sized estates and snapped on his lights. I left mine off. Wherever he was going, he wasn’t in a hurry. Apparently the road went nowhere, twisting around hills and cutting a swath through the oaks lining the roads. After a while the estates petered out and the countryside, what was visible of it, became a little wild.
Ahead of me his taillight was a red eye, one that paced itself at an even thirty-five. On either side of me were walls of Stygian blackness, and I was having all I could do to stay on the road. I had to drive with one eye on the taillight and the other on the macadam, but Dilwick was making it easy for me by taking it slow.
Too easy. I was so busy driving I didn’t see the other car slide up behind me until it was too late. They had their lights out too.
I hit the brakes as they cut across my nose, my hand fumbling for my rod. Even before I stopped the guy had leaped out of the car and was reaching through my window for me. I batted the hand away from my neck then got slammed across my eyes with a gun barrel. The door flew open. I kicked out with my feet and somebody grunted. Somehow I got the gun in my hand, but another gun lashed out of the darkness and smashed across my wrist.
Damn, I was stupid! I got mousetrapped! Somehow I kicked free of the car and swung. A formless shape in front of me cursed and grunted. Then a light hit me full in the face. I kicked it out of a hand, but the damage had been done. I couldn’t see at all. A fist caught me high on the head as a pair of arms slipped around my waist and threw me into a fender. With all my strength I jerked my head back and caught the guy’s nose. The bone splintered and hot blood gushed down my collar.
It was kick and gouge and try to get your teeth in something. The only sounds were of fists on flesh and feet on the road. Heavy breathing. I broke free for a moment, ducked, and came in punching. I doubled one up when I planted my knuckles in his belly up to the wrist. A billy swooshed in the air, missed and swooshed again. I thought my shoulder was broken. I got so damn mad I let somebody have it in the shins and he screamed in pain when I nearly busted the bone with my toe. The billy caught me in the bad shoulder again and I hit the ground, stumbling over the guy who was holding his leg. He let go long enough to try for my throat, but I brought my knee up and dug it in his groin.
All three of us were on the ground, rolling in the dirt. I felt cold steel under my hand and wrapped my fingers around a gun butt as a foot nearly ripped me in half. The guy with the billy sent one tearing into my side that took the breath out of my lungs. He tried again as I rolled and grazed me, then landed full on my gut with both his knees. Outlined against the sky I could see him straddling me, the billy raised in the air, ready to crush in my skull. Little balls of fire were popping in my brain and my breath was still a tight knot in my belly when that shot-weighted billy started to come down.
I raised the gun and shot him square in the face, blowing his brains all over the road.
But the billy was too much to stop. It was pulled off course yet it managed to knock me half senseless when it grazed my temple. Before I went completely out I heard feet pounding on the road and an engine start up. The other guy wasn’t taking any chances. He was clearing out.
I lay there under a corpse for three-quarters of an hour before I had enough strength to crawl away. On my hands and knees I reached my car and pulled myself erect. My breath came in hot, jerky gasps. I had to bend to one side to breathe at all. My face felt like a truck went over it and I was sticky with blood and guts, but I couldn’t tell how much of it was my own. From the dash I pulled a flashlight and played its beam over the body in the road. Unless he had some identifying scars, nobody would ever be able to tell who he was. Ten feet away from his feet his brainpan lay like a gooey ashtray on the road.
His pockets held over a hundred bucks in cash, a wallet with a Sidon police shield pinned to it and a greasy deck of cards. The billy was still in his hand. I found my own gun, cleaned off the one I had used and tossed it into the bushes. It didn’t matter whether they found it or not. I was going to be number-one client in a murder case.
Lousy? It was stinking. I was supposed to have been rubbed out. All very legal, of course. I was suspiciously tailing a cop down a dark road with my lights out, and when ordered to halt put up a fight and during it got myself killed. Except it didn’t happen that way. I nailed one and the other got away to tell about it. Maybe Dilwick would like it better this way.
So they caught me. They knew I was trailing them all day and laid a lot of elaborate plans to catch me in the trap. I had to get out of there before that other one got back with reinforcements. I let the body stay as it was, then crawled under the wheel and drove onto the grass, swinging around the corpse, then back on the highway. This time I used my lights and the gas pedal, hightailing it away as fast as I could hold the turns. Whenever I reached an intersection I cut off on it, hoping it wasn’t a dead end. It took me a good two hours to circle the town and come out in the general vicinity of York’s place, but I couldn’t afford using the highway.
The car was in my way now; it could be spotted too easily. If they saw me it would be shoot to kill and I didn’t have the kind of artillery necessary to fight a gang war. Dilwick would have every cop in town on the lookout, reporting the incident to Price only after they cornered me somewhere and punched me full of holes, or the death of the cop was printed in the papers.
There was only one reason for all the hoodah . . . Grange was still the key, and Dilwick knew I knew he had her.
Trusting luck that I wasn’t too far from home, I ran the car off the road between the trees, pulling as far into the bushes as I could get. Using some cut branches for camouflage I covered up the hood and any part that could be seen by casual observation from the road. When I was satisfied I stepped out and began walking in a northerly direction.
A road finally crossed the one I was on with phone wires paralleling it. A lead from a pole a hundred yards down left the main line and went into the trees. When I reached it I saw the sleepy little bungalow hidden in the shadows. If my feet on the pavement didn’t wake the occupants, my sharp rapping did.
Inside someone said, “George . . . the door.”
Bedsprings creaked and the guy mumbled something then crossed the room to the door. A light went on overhead and when the guy in the faded bathrobe took a look at me he almost choked.
“I had an accident. Do you have a phone?”
“Accident? Yeah . . . yeah. Come in.”
He gulped and, glancing at me nervously, called, “Mary. It’s a man who’s had an accident. Anything I can do for you, mister? Anybody else hurt?”
The guy back there would never feel anything again. “No, nobody else is hurt.”
“Here’s the phone.” His wife came out while I dialed Price’s number. She tried to fuss around with a wet rag, wiping the blood off my face, but I waved her off. Price wasn’t there, but I got his home number. He wasn’t there, either, he had left for headquarters. The woman was too excited. I insisted that I didn’t need a doctor, but let her go over my battered face with the rag, then dialed headquarters again.
Price was there. He nearly exploded when he heard my voice. “What the hell happened? Where are you?”
“Out of town. What are you doing up at this hour?”
“Are you kidding? A police reporter slipped me the news that a cop was killed south of town. I got the rest from Dilwick. You’re in a jam now.”
“You’re not telling me anything new,” I said. “Has he got the police combing the town for me?”