Red Wind (17 page)

I sipped my drink and waited. At last he said in his lipless “stir” voice:

“How come Peeler didn’t
come
hisself?”

“For the same reason he didn’t stay when he was here.”

“Meaning which?”

“Figure it out for
yourself
,” I said.

He nodded, just as though I had said something with a meaning. Then:

“What’s the top price?”

“Twenty-five grand.”

“Nuts.” Sunset was emphatic, even rude.

I leaned back and lit a cigarette, puffed smoke at the open window and watched the breeze pick it up and tear it to pieces.

“Listen,” Sunset complained. “I don’t know you from last Sunday’s sports section. You may be all to the silk. I just don’t know.”

“Why’d you brace me?” I asked.

“You had the word, didn’t you?”

This was where I took the dive. I grinned at him.
“Yeah.
Goldfish was the password. The
Smoke Shop
was the place.”

His lack of expression told me I was right. It was one of those breaks you dream of, but don’t handle right even in dreams.

“Well, what’s the next angle?” Sunset inquired, sucking a piece of ice out of his glass and chewing on it.

I laughed. “Okey, Sunset. I’m satisfied you’re cagey. We could go on like this for weeks. Let’s put our cards on the table. Where is the old guy?”

Sunset tightened his lips, moistened them,
tightened
them again. He set his glass down very slowly and his right hand hung lax on his thigh. I knew I had made a
mistake, that
Peeler knew where the old guy was, exactly. Therefore I should know.

Nothing in Sunset’s voice showed I had made a mistake. He said crossly: “You mean why don’t I put my cards on the table and you just sit back and look ’em over.
Nix.”

“Then how do you like this?” I growled. “Peeler’s dead.”

One eyebrow twitched, and one corner of his mouth. His eyes got a little blanker than before, if possible. His voice rasped lightly, like a finger on dry leather.

“How come?”

“Competition you two didn’t know about.” I leaned back, smiled.

The gun made a soft metallic blur in the sunshine. I hardly saw where it came from. Then the muzzle was round and dark and empty looking at me.

“You’re kidding the wrong guy,” Sunset said lifelessly. “I ain’t
no
soft spot for chiselers to lie on.”

I folded my arms, taking care that my right hand was outside, in view.

“I would be—if I was kidding. I’m not. Peeler played with a girl and she milked him—up to a point. He didn’t tell her where to find the old fellow. So she and her top man went to see Peeler where he lived. They used a hot iron on his feet. He died of the shock.”

Sunset looked unimpressed. “I got a lot of room in my ears yet,” he said.

“So have I,” I snarled, suddenly pretending anger. “Just what the hell have you said that means anything—except that you know Peeler?”

He spun his gun on his trigger finger, watching it spin. “Old man Sype’s at Westport,” he said casually. “
That mean
anything to you?”

“Yeah.
Has he got the marbles?”

“How the hell would I know?” He steadied the gun again, dropped it to his thigh. It wasn’t pointing at me now. “Where’s this competish you mentioned?”

“I hope I ditched them,” I said. “I’m not too sure. Can I put my hands down and take a drink?”

“Yeah, go ahead. How did you cut in?”

“Peeler roomed with the wife of a friend of mine who’s in stir. A straight girl, one you can trust. He let her in and she passed it to me—afterwards.”

“After the bump?
How many cuts your side? My half is set.”

I took my drink, shoved the empty glass away. “The hell it is.”

The gun lifted an inch, dropped again. “How many altogether?” he snapped.

“Three, now Peeler’s out.
If we can hold off the competition.”

“The feet-toasters?
No trouble about that. What they look like?”

“Man named Rush Madder, a shyster down south, fifty, fat, thin down-curving mustache, dark hair thin on top, five-nine, a hundred and eighty, not much guts. The girl, Carol Donovan, black hair, long bob, gray eyes, pretty, small features, twenty-five to eight, five-two, hundred twenty, last seen wearing blue, hard as they come.
The real iron in the combination.”

Sunset nodded indifferently and put his gun away. “We’ll soften her, if she pokes her snoot in,” he said. “I’ve got a heap at the house. Let’s take the air Westport way and look it over. You might be able to ease in on the goldfish angle. They say he’s nuts about them. I’ll stay under cover. He’s too stir-wise for me. I smell of the bucket.”

“Swell,” I said heartily. “I’m an old goldfish fancier myself.”

Sunset reached for the bottle, poured two fingers of Scotch and put it down. He stood up, twitched his collar straight, then shot his chinless jaw forward as far as it would go.

“But don’t make no error,
bo
. It’s goin’ to take pressure. It’s goin’ to mean a run out in the deep woods and some thumb twisting. Snatch stuff, likely.”

“That’s okey,” I said. “The insurance people are behind us.”

Sunset jerked down the points of his vest and rubbed the back of his thin neck. I put my hat on, locked the Scotch in the bag by the chair I’d been sitting in, went over and shut the window.

We started towards the door. Knuckles rattled on it just as I reached for the knob. I gestured Sunset back along the wall. I stared at the door for a moment and then I opened it up.

The two guns came forward almost on the same level, one small—a .32, one a big Smith and Wesson. They couldn’t come into the room abreast, so the girl came in first.

“Okey, hot shot,” she said dryly.
“Ceiling zero.
See if you can reach it.”

VIII

I BACKED slowly into the room. The two visitors bored in on me, either side. I tripped over my bag and fell backwards, hit the floor and rolled on my side groaning. Sunset said casually: “H’ist ’em, folks.
Pretty now!”
Two heads jerked away from looking down at me and then I had my gun loose, down at my side. I kept on groaning.

There was a silence. I didn’t hear any guns fall. The door of the room was still wide open and Sunset was flattened against the wall more or less behind it.

The girl said between her teeth: “Cover the shamus, Rush—and shut the door. Skinny can’t shoot here. Nobody can.” Then, in a whisper I barely caught, she added: “Slam it!”

Rush Madder waddled backwards across the room keeping the Smith and Wesson pointed my way. His back was to Sunset and the thought of that made his eyes roll. I could have shot him easily enough, but it wasn’t the play. Sunset stood with his feet spread and his tongue showing. Something that could have been a smile wrinkled his flat eyes.

He stared at the girl and she stared at him. Their guns stared at each other.

Rush Madder reached the door, grabbed the edge of it and gave it a hard swing. I knew exactly what was going to happen.
As the door slammed the .32 was going to go off.
It wouldn’t be heard if it went off at the right instant. The explosion would be lost in the slamming of the door.

I reached out and took hold of Carol Donovan’s ankle and jerked it hard.

The door slammed. Her gun went off and chipped the ceiling.

She whirled on me kicking. Sunset said in his tight but somehow penetrating drawl:

“If this is it, this is it. Let’s go!” The hammer clicked back on his Colt.

Something in his voice steadied Carol Donovan. She relaxed, let her automatic fall to her side and stepped away from me with a vicious look back.

Madder turned the key in the door and leaned against the wood, breathing noisily. His hat had tipped over one ear and the ends of two strips of adhesive showed under the brim.

Nobody moved while I had these thoughts. There was no sound of feet outside in the hall, no alarm. I got up on my knees, slid my gun out of sight, rose on my feet and went over to the window. Nobody down on the sidewalk was staring up at the upper floors of the
Snoqualmie Hotel.

I sat on the broad old-fashioned sill and looked faintly embarrassed, as though the minister had said a bad word.

The girl snapped at me: “Is this lug your partner?”

I didn’t answer. Her face flushed slowly and her eyes burned. Madder put a hand out and fussed:

“Now listen, Carol, now listen here. This sort of act ain’t the way—”

“Shut up!”

“Yeah,” Madder said in a clogged voice. “Sure.”

Sunset looked the girl over lazily for the third or fourth time. His gunhand rested easily against his hip bone and his whole attitude was of complete relaxation. Having seen him
pull
his gun once I hoped the girl wasn’t fooled.

He said slowly: “We’ve heard about you two. What’s your offer? I wouldn’t listen even, only I can’t stand a shooting rap.”

The girl said: “There’s enough in it for four.” Madder nodded his big head vigorously, almost managed a smile.

Sunset glanced at me. I nodded. “Four it is,” he sighed. “But that’s the top. We’ll go to my place and gargle. I don’t like it here.”

“We must look simple,” the girl said nastily.

“Kill-simple,” Sunset drawled. “I’ve met lots of them. That’s why we’re going to talk it over. It’s not a shooting play.”

Carol Donovan slipped a suede bag from under her left arm and tucked her .32 into it. She smiled. She was pretty when she smiled.

“My ante is in,” she said quietly. “I’ll play. Where is the place?”

“Out Water Street. We’ll go in a hack.”

“Lead on, sport.”

We went out of the room and down in the elevator, four friendly people walking out through a lobby full of antlers and stuffed birds and pressed wildflowers in glass frames. The taxi went out Capitol Way, past the square, past a big red apartment house that was too big for the town except when the Legislature was sitting.
Along car tracks past the distant capitol buildings and the high closed gates of the governor’s mansion.

Oak trees bordered the sidewalks. A few largish residences showed behind garden walls. The taxi shot past them and veered on to a road that led towards the tip of the Sound. In a short while a house showed in a narrow clearing between tall trees. Water glistened far back behind the tree trunks. The house had a roofed porch, a small lawn rotten with weeds and overgrown bushes. There was a shed at the end of a dirt driveway and an antique touring car squatted under the shed.

We got out and I paid the taxi. All four of us carefully watched it out of sight. Then Sunset said:

“My place is upstairs. There’s a schoolteacher lives down below. She ain’t home. Let’s go up and gargle.”

We crossed the lawn to the porch and Sunset threw a door open, pointed up narrow steps.

“Ladies first.
Lead on, beautiful. Nobody locks a door in this town.”

The girl gave him a cool glance and passed him to go up the stairs. I went next, then Madder, Sunset last.

The single room that made up most of the second floor was dark from the trees, had a dormer window, a wide day-bed pushed back under the slope of the roof, a table, some wicker chairs, a small radio and a round black stove in the middle of the floor.

Sunset drifted into a kitchenette and came back with a square bottle and some glasses. He poured drinks, lifted one and left the others on the table.

We helped ourselves and sat down.

Sunset put his drink down in a lump, leaned over to put his glass on the floor and came up with his Colt out.

I heard Madder’s gulp in the sudden cold silence. The girl’s mouth twitched as if she were going to laugh. Then she leaned forward, holding her glass on top of her bag with her left hand.

Sunset slowly drew his lips into a thin straight line. He said slowly and carefully:

“Feet-burners, huh?
Burned my pal’s feet, huh?”

Madder choked, started to spread his fat hands. The Colt flicked at him. He put his hands on his knees and clutched his kneecaps.

“And suckers at that,” Sunset went on tiredly. “Burn a guy’s feet to make him sing and then walk right into the parlor of one of his pals. You couldn’t tie that with Christmas ribbon.”

Madder said jerkily: “All r-right. W-what’s the p-pay-off?” The girl smiled slightly but she didn’t say anything.

Sunset grinned. “Rope,” he said softly. “A lot of rope tied in hard knots, with water on it. Then me and my pal trundle off to catch fireflies—pearls to you—and when we come back—” he stopped, drew his left hand across the front of his throat. “Like the idea?” he glanced at me.

“Yeah, but don’t make a song about it,” I said. “Where’s the rope?”

“Bureau,” Sunset answered, and pointed with one ear at the corner.

I started in that direction, by way of the walls. Madder made a sudden thin whimpering noise and his eyes turned up in his head and he fell straight forward off the chair on his face, in a dead faint.

That jarred Sunset. He hadn’t expected anything so foolish. His right hand jerked around until the Colt was pointing down at Madder’s back.

The girl slipped her hand under her bag. The bag lifted an inch. The gun that was caught there in a trick clip—the gun that Sunset thought was inside the bag—spat and flamed briefly.

Sunset coughed. His Colt boomed and a piece of wood detached itself from the back of the chair Madder had been sitting in. Sunset dropped the Colt and put his chin down on his chest and tried to look at the ceiling. His long legs slid out in front of him and his heels made a rasping sound on the floor. He sat like that, limp, his chin on his chest, his eyes looking upward.
Dead as a pickled walnut.

I kicked Miss Donovan’s chair out from under her and she banged down on her side in a swirl of silken legs. Her hat went crooked on her head. She yelped. I stood on her hand and then shifted suddenly and kicked her gun clear across the attic. I sent her bag after it—with her other gun inside it. She screamed at me.