Wild (15 page)

My heart stopped at the sound of that gun.

The slug caught her in the middle of the spine. He fired again, standing there, his face pale. You knew her back was broken. She arched the wrong way. She fell down and did not move.

There was the pungent odor of burned cordite in the room. There was silence.

I turned to Hendrix. “Her blood is on you,” I said. “On you—get that.”

He stared at me.

“Look at those bank books,” I said. “She’d have to sign them. She’ll never sign them now.”

Stewart stood in the strained pose with the gun still pointed at the doorway. I knew he was ready to kill anybody. He was confused.

Hendrix was looking at the bank books. He dropped them and moved toward Stewart with the stance of a maniac. The gun in Stewart’s fist turned and pointed at Hendrix.

“Don’t,” Stewart said.

I bulled at Hendrix’s back. Stewart turned the gun barrel and fired at me without changing expression. My left shoulder was smashed. I whirled, trying to stay on my feet. The gun roared again. I went at Stewart and caught his ankles and yanked. He came down hard. I heard the noises I was making. I kept hitting him, smashing at his face with everything in me. There was no pain in my shoulder right then. I was insensible to pain.

Hendrix tried to pull me off Stewart. It only made it worse. I kneed the man, and he screamed. I did it again and he screamed again. I got hold of his gun hand. It was limp. I grabbed the gun, thrust my foot into his gut, and turned on Hendrix and Asa.

“I’ll kill you if you move,” I said.

I stood up and walked out into the hall. Stewart groaned in a huddle by the bed. He hugged his groin, his eyes rolled back into his skull. I wondered hopefully if I had maimed him for life.

Ivor Hendrix lay on the floor in the hall. She was alive. I didn’t touch her.

“Come on, you two.” I herded Asa and Carl Hendrix downstairs and called the police. I talked with Lowell Haddock and asked him to send an ambulance to this address as quickly as possible.

Then we went back upstairs. Nobody spoke. Stewart hadn’t moved.

I knelt beside Ivor Hendrix and held her head. I tried to make her as comfortable as possible. I kept the gun handy.

Asa and Carl Hendrix stood in the bedroom and argued for a time. She cried bitterly. She cursed him. He finally stood with a strange, numb expression on his face. He had picked up the bank books. He held them in both hands as if they were alive, and stared at them that way.

There was nothing I could do for Ivor Hendrix. She did not speak. I didn’t think she felt any pain. She kept watching me silently. The truth is, she didn’t really see me—she saw nothing.

I watched her die. After a while, she was dead, lying in my arms. There was something that I’d almost had, but that I would never have now. What she had done wouldn’t have mattered. Nothing would have mattered where she was concerned.

You can’t go back to that first dream. Don’t try.

I laid her down carefully. Then I quit looking at her, stood up, and walked into the bedroom.

“We may as well go downstairs,” I said. “They’ll be along soon.”

I
WENT IN
to see Chief of Homicide Lowell Haddock the next morning. He looked tired, sitting there behind his desk. He had dark gray hair and a heavy, meaty face that was dark red, probably because of high blood pressure. His eyes were brown and small and intelligent. The whites of his eyes were muddy because he seldom got enough sleep. He tried hard to do his job well.

He sat there looking at me, with a dead, well chewed cigar in the brass ash tray on the desk. Sweat streamed down the sides of his face.

“There’ll be a one year’s revocation of license,” he said. He continued to watch me. “Maybe I’m sorry about that. If I am sorry, it’s because of old Jim.”

I said nothing.

He said, “I’d get my ass et if I didn’t put it before the board. You had it coming.”

I moved to a more comfortable position in the stiff-backed chair facing his desk, tendering my left arm in the sling. I said, “Maybe I have, at that.”

Sweat dangled on his upper lip. He blew it off and smeared his face with one hand.

“Cocky,” he said. “Cocky, and with a lot to learn.”

I didn’t speak.

“How’s the shoulder?” he said.

“Kind of stiff. Doc Hestern gave me a needle about two hours ago. It’s holding. He dressed it fine.”

Watching me, he looked angered. He blew some sweat off, reached under his desk and came up with a dirty towel. He mopped his face, then threw the towel back under the desk. Behind him, the alley window was open. The sun in the alley was very bright.

“Get any sleep?” he said.

“Your beds aren’t so hot,” I said. “I feel like a waffle iron. I’ll sleep tonight, I guess. I don’t seem to feel tired.”

“
I suppose you think I’m a son-of-a-bitch and all that—getting your license revoked, raising hell with you the way I did when they brought you in last night.”

“It’s all right. I was a little mad, then. I’m okay now.”

He turned his gaze down as if it was the hardest thing the world to do and stared at the blotter on his desk. reached for his cigar, but didn’t touch it.

‘So,” he said. “You were a little mad, but it’s all okay now.” He paused, still staring at the blotter. When he looked up at me, his eyes were plain angry. “You really honest-to-God expect to keep working in this town?”

“Yeah.”

“Using Jim’s old office?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Jim and I were good friends.”

“So I hear.”

He smeared the sweat around on his face.

“You’ve got a hell of a lot more to learn than I figured,” he said.

“Some of the boys you employ have a lot to learn.”

He sighed deeply. “Maybe I should’ve let them go ahead and press charges against you. It took some damned fast talking to calm those
boys
you’re speaking of.”

“Okay,” I said. “Is that all?”

“No, it damned well isn’t all, my friend.” He leaned forward on his desk, staring at me. “You talk about your old man being a nothing—a phony….”

“I didn’t say that.”

“And I didn’t like hearing it. But I’ll tell you this. You’ll really have to be a hot baby to keep working in this town. Because, for you, Lee, it’s going to be a very, very hot town.”

“I like them hot.”

He stared at me, blinked slowly, and sat back. His voice changed, became more businesslike. “There was a reward,” be said. “Of course, you knew about that.”

“Yes. Sure.”

“Well, for old Jim’s sake, I’m getting you off the griddle using your share of the money to pay up a couple of citizens who are slightly bothered.”

“Who’s that?”

He spoke softly. “A guy who runs a gas station. Name of Bronsky. Seems you stole his car and fouled it up. I saw the interior. It looks like an army camped in the back seat.” He paused. “Then there’s a small matter of a stoler boat.”

“Okay.”

“Okay, the man says. Okay!” He snapped his finger “Just like that, it’s all okay. What about all the rest of You have generally mucked up. Don’t you realize that

“I realize it.”

“You withheld evidence. You beat up two of my men. You played hell with them. Rudy Vagas and Lew Steifer. All right, I calmed them a little. But they won’t change toward you. And they’ll probably be around a long time.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Sad, isn’t it,” he said. “Sad, hell. Well,” he said. “You might be interested in this. We had the Tampa marine operator put out a call to all ships to watch for that drunk—Elk Crafford. A shrimper spotted him about nine-thirty this morning. Said it was the
Carol
, all right. About forty miles off Nokomis. Riding out a calm, under full sail. They took a close look. He was drunk as hell, wandering around on deck, swearing at the seagulls. A Coast Guard launch went out to pick him up.”

“Well,” I said. I stood up. The arm was aching a little. That was all.

“What you going to do for a year?” he said.

“First I’ll finish cleaning up the office,” I said. “Then maybe just take it easy, get to know this country again.”

He grunted and sat there. “Yeah,” he said. “You could damned well afford to do that, all right.” He paused, then said, “We found the station wagon. This Gamba’s. There was one woman’s shoe in it, caught up under the front seat.”

“It figures,” I said.

“You stood in the way of police procedure, Lee.”

There was nothing I could say.

“Your old man,” he said. “He didn’t work the way you want to work.”

I shrugged.

“You think it won’t be tough?” he said. “It’s going to be goddamned tough.”

I shrugged again.

He had about run out. There was a lot more he wanted to say, but he wouldn’t say it.

“It’s a bitch of a thing,” he said. “This business. All that killing. No damned excuse.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll see you, Lowell.”

He nodded. “Lee?” he said as I reached the door. “There’s a slim chance I might be able to work it for six months, instead of a year.”

We looked at each other. “Don’t do it if it’s going to speak your heart,” I said.

He just stared at me.

“But,” I said. “I’d appreciate it.”

“Go on,” he said. “The hell with you.”

I went outside into the corridor and closed the door. Two plainclothes men were talking over by the drinking fountain. They looked at me and went into a huddle. A sharply dressed blonde walked swiftly out of Missing Persons with a sheaf of papers in her hand. She started upstairs, her heels smacking.

I walked down the corridor and saw the hound sitting there. My hound, now. I wondered what I would call him. He was a black shadow against the sunlight. He lifted his behind, gaped at me, and we moved down into the street together. It was hot and the traffic was heavy. I blinked against the sunshine.

We passed a corner phone booth. I remembered something, and told the hound to wait. He plunked himself down. I went inside the booth and looked up the number of another girl I had loved madly once. As I dialed the number I wondered if she had ever married, or if she were still loving free lance. I wondered if she had a dog, so we could double-date. I wondered if she had any corpses she’d like investigated.

I almost hung up. Almost, but not quite.

Life must go on.

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Copyright © 1958 by Fawcett Publications, Inc.
Registration Renewed in 1986 by Verlaine Brewer

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

eISBN 10: 1-4405-4251-1
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4251-0

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