You Never Know With Women (7 page)

I let out a yell you could have heard in San Francisco, turned to run, changed my mind, spun around to face the brute. He came over the lawn, low to the ground, his eyes like red-hot embers, his teeth as white as orange pith in the moonlight. I still dream about that dog, and I still wake up, sweating, think he’s coming at me, feeling his teeth in my throat. He stopped dead within ten yards of me, dropped flat, turned to stone. I stood there, sweat dripping off me, my knees budding, too scared even to breathe. I knew one flicker out of me and he’d come.

We stared at each other for maybe ten seconds. It seemed like a hundred years to me. I could see his tail stiffening and his back legs tightening for his spring, then there was a sharp crack of an automatic. I heard the slug whine past my head. The dog rolled over on its side, snarling and biting, its teeth snapping horribly at empty air.

I didn’t wait to assess the damage. I ran towards the beam of the torch that flashed from the top of the wall. I got there, pulled myself up, fell with a thud on the far side.

Parker grabbed me around the waist, half dragged, half carried me to the car. I rolled in, slammed the door as he let in the clutch.

“Keep going!” I yelled at him. “They’re right behind. They’ve got a car and they’ll be after us.”

I wanted to get him rattled so he wouldn’t ask questions until we had gone too far to go back. I got him rattled.

He drove down the hills like he was crazy. That guy certainly could drive. Why we didn’t go over the mountain road beats me. We tore down the road, took hairpin bends at eighty, our wheels inches from the over-hang.

At the end of the mountain road he suddenly slammed on his brakes, skidded across the road, straightened up and turned on me as if he were out of his mind.

“Did you get it?” he screamed at me, grabbing my coat lapels and shaking me. “Where is it, damn you! Did you get it?”

I put my hand in the middle of his chest and gave him a shove that nearly sent him out of the car.

“You and your damned bomb!” I yelled back at him.

“You crazy dumb cluck! You nearly killed me!”

“Did you get it?” he bawled, beating on the steering-wheel with his clenched fists.

“The bomb blew it to hell,” I told him. “That’s what your bomb did. It blew the whole safe and everything in it to hell,” and I hit him flush on the button as he came at me.

CHAPTER FIVE

I CAUGHT a glimpse of myself in the mirror over the mantel as I came into the lounge. I was smothered in white plaster dust, my hair hung over my eyes, the sleeve of my coat was ripped, one knee showed through my trouser leg. If that wasn’t enough, blood ran down my face from a cut above my eye and the side of my neck where Ned had socked me was turning a nice shade of purple. With the elegant Parker draped over my shoulder it wasn’t hard to see we had run into trouble, and plenty of it.

Gorman sat motionless in an armchair, facing the door. His great arms rested on the arms of the chair, his thick fingers gripped the chair arms as if he wanted to squeeze the wood to pulp. His fat face was as stony as a cobbled sidewalk.

In another chair by the fireplace Veda Rux sat, stiff and upright, her lips pressed tightly together, her eyes carefully blank, but wide open. She was dressed in white: a strapless gown that held itself up by will-power or suction or something: the kind of gown you’d keep watching in case you missed anything.

I swung Parker off my shoulder and dumped him on the chesterfield. Neither Gorman nor Veda said anything. The tension in the room was terrific.

“He threw an ing-bing and I had to slug him,” I explained to nobody in particular and started to dust myself down.

“Did you get it?” Gorman asked. He didn’t look at Parker.

“No.”

I went over to the sideboard, poured myself a drink and sat down in a chair facing them. I knew I shouldn’t have come back to this house. I should have dumped Parker, picked up the compact when things had cooled off and had it all my own way. But playing it safe would have lost me Veda, and I didn’t reckon to lose her if I could help it.

Gorman didn’t move. The chair arms creaked as his grip tightened. I shot a quick look at Veda. She was relaxed now. A muscle in her cheek twitched. It kept pulling one side of her mouth out of shape.

I emptied the glass at a swallow. I wanted that drink. As I set down the glass, Parker stirred, groaned and tried to sit up. Nobody looked at him. He might have been at the bottom of the sea for all anyone cared, and that included me.

“I didn’t get it,” I said to Gorman, “and I’ll tell you why. Right from the start you’ve been too smart and too tricky. You and your pixey hadn’t the guts to get that compact for yourselves. So you put your smart minds together and you thought up an idea to get it so you’d be in the clear, and the sucker you picked on to do the job would be way out on a limb if he failed. It wasn’t a bad idea: a little elaborate, but still, not a bad idea. It might have worked, but it didn’t because you knew all the answers and you kept them to yourself. You picked on me because I was in a jam. You found out the cops were waiting for a chance to throw a hook into me. You found out I was broke, and there wasn’t much I wouldn’t do for solid money.

Where you slipped up was you didn’t take the trouble to find out just how far I’d go for money. You knew I’d been mixed up in a couple of shady deals, but even at that you were scared to put your cards on the table and tell me you wanted me to steal something from Brett. You thought if it came to a proposition like that I’d buckle at the knees and squeal to the cops. But I wouldn’t have done that, Gorman. Cracking a safe wouldn’t have scared me away from a thousand bucks, but you weren’t smart enough to know it.”

Veda made a sudden little movement. It could have been a warning gesture or it might have been a nervous reflex. I didn’t know.

I went right on: “You don’t think I was sucked in by the sleep-walking act and the Cellini dagger, do you? I wasn’t. I knew the compact belonged to Brett, and for some reason or other you wanted it. I wouldn’t have given a damn one way or the other. I wanted your dough: that was all I cared about. But you weren’t smart enough to know it. If you’d told me the dagger case was a bomb I would have known what to do, but you didn’t. And when I found out it was a bomb I got rattled. Everything happened at once. I heard the ticking of the bomb and the guard coming all at the same time. I’d just opened the safe. All I could think of was to get rid of that bomb. I shoved it in the safe, locked the safe and went for the guard as he came in. I saw the compact in the safe, but I didn’t touch it. It was still there when I closed the door of the safe. I could have handled the guard, only the second guard showed up.

“It looked as if I was in a mess, and then your home-made bomb went off. The safe door was blown off its hinges and it went through those two guards the way a hot knife goes through butter. It wrecked the room too. It was a good bomb, Gorman. Whoever made it can be happy about that. I stayed long enough to see nothing but dust was left in the safe. The compact simply doesn’t exist any more. Then I came away.” I got up, walked to the sideboard, poured another drink.

Parker was sitting up now, his hand to his jaw. He stared at me fixedly, his face white and drawn, his eyes vicious. “He’s lying,” he said to Gorman. “I know he’s lying.” Gorman released a little puff of breath.

“I hope he is,” he said in his scratchy voice.

“Go and look for yourself,” I said. “Take a look at those two guards. That’s murder, Gorman.”

“Never mind the guards,” Gorman said. “It’s the compact I’m interested in. Why did you leave it in the safe when you heard the guard coming?”

“I’d be a sucker to let him find it on me, wouldn’t I?” I said evenly. “Look at it this way. If I was caught and they found nothing on me it’d make a difference to the sentence I’d get. I thought of that. I could have taken the compact after I’d settled the guard.”

“On the other hand,” Gorman said smoothly, “you might have put the compact in your pocket and chanced being caught.”

Did he think I’d come back here with the compact in my pocket? Did he think I was that much of a sucker? The way I was playing it put me in a sweet position. He might think until he was blue in the face that I had the compact but he couldn’t prove it.

“Go ahead and search me,” I said. “Look me over if it’ll set your mind at rest.”

Gorman nodded to Parker.

“Search him,” he said.

Parker went over me as if he’d like to tear me to pieces. I could feel his hot breath on the back of my neck as his hands ran over my clothes. It was an uncomfortable feeling. I expected him to bite me.

“Nothing,” he said, his voice harsh with fury. “Is it likely the rat would have it on him?”

“Now look,” I said, stepping away from him, “you guys are sore. All right, I understand that. But don’t take it out on me. I did what I was paid to do. It’s not my funeral you had to act smart and mix a bomb up in this.”

Parker turned on Gorman. He was shaking with rage.

“I told you not to go to him. I warned you, didn’t I? I said over and over again we didn’t want a man with his record. You knew he was tricky. Now look where he’s landed us: we don’t know whether he’s lying or not. We don’t even know if the case was blown to bits as he says or whether he’s hidden it somewhere.”

“Don’t get excited, Dominic,” Gorman said and looked across at me. “He’s right, Mr. Jackson. We don’t know if you’re lying. But we can find out.” He lifted his hand out of his pocket. The blue-nosed automatic looked like a toy in his thick fingers. “And don’t think I wouldn’t shoot, my friend. No one knows you’re here. We could bury you in the garden and it might be years before you were found. You might never be found. So don’t try any tricks.”

“I told you what happened,” I said. “If you don’t believe it that’s your look out. Waving a gun at me won’t get you anywhere.”

“Sit down, Mr. Jackson,” Gorman said gently, “and let’s talk this over.” He suddenly seemed to be aware that Veda was still in the room. “Leave us, my dear,” he said to her. “We want to talk to Mr. Jackson. You would only be in the way.”

She went out quickly. The room seemed empty without her. I listened to the sound of her feet on the stairs, and heard something else: the swish of a sap, and I ducked. A light exploded inside my head. I guess I ducked too late.

Before Parker belted me I had noticed the hands of the clock on the mantel showed ten minutes past eleven. When I looked again it showed half past eleven and Parker was throwing water in my face. I shook my head, stared at the clock fuzzily. My head hurt and I felt a little sick. What really bothered me, was to find I was tied to the chair.

Gorman was standing by the fireplace watching me. Parker stood over me, a jug of water in his hand, a vicious snarling expression on his face.

“Now, Mr. Jackson,” Gorman said breathlessly, “let’s talk about the compact. This time you’ll tell me the truth or I’ll have to persuade you.”

“There’s no fresh news on the compact, brother,” I said steadily. “No stop press: no nothing.”

“The weakness of your story is obvious,” Gorman told me. “No one as smart as you would have left the compact in the safe once you had opened the safe. You would have grabbed it and chanced fighting your way out or you would have hidden it somewhere in the room where you could get at it quickly after you had liquidated the guard. You would never have left it in the safe, Mr. Jackson.”

He was right, of course, but he couldn’t prove anything and I grinned at him.

“I left it in the safe,” I said. “The bomb had me rattled.”

“Let me see if I can persuade you to change your story,” he said and came towards me.

I watched him come. Now you see what I mean when I said having a woman on your mind leaves you wide open to a sucker punch. As I looked into his tight fat face I told myself what a mug I’d been to come back here. I might have known he would have turned tough. Then I thought of Veda in that white dress and thought maybe I wasn’t such a mug.

He was standing over me now, his eyes like wet stones.

“Are you going to tell me what you did with the compact, or have I to choke it out of you, Mr. Jackson?”

“I looked carefully. That compact was a heap of dust,” I told him. I tried to pull away from his hands, but the rope held me. Thick fingers circled my chin and neck.

“You’d better change your mind, Mr. Jackson,” he said in my ear. “Where’s the compact?”

I looked across at Parker, who was standing by the fireplace. He was watching, a spiteful smile on his face. I braced myself.

“Nothing to add, brother,” I said and waited for the squeeze. I said that if ever that thug got his hands on my throat he’d make blood come out of my ears. He nearly did. Just when I thought the top of my head was coming off, he relaxed. I dragged in a lungful of air, tried to blink away the bright lights that swam before my eyes.

“Where’s the compact, Mr. Jackson?” His voice sounded a long way away and that bothered me.

I didn’t say anything and he squeezed again. It was worse than being strangled. I felt the bone in my jaw creak under the pressure. I seemed to fade after that. It got dark and breathless like I was drowning.

More water hit me in the face. I came to the surface gasping. Gorman was still there. He was breathing strenuously.

“You’re being foolish, Mr. Jackson,” he said. “Very, very foolish. Tell me where the compact is and I’ll give you the balance of the money and you can go. I’m trying to be fair with you. Where is the compact?”

I cursed him, trying to wrench away from his hand and the squeeze started all over again. After minutes of choking, flashes of pain and a horrible sensation of being slowly crushed, I passed out again.

The hands of the clock on the mantel showed twelve-ten when I opened my eyes. The room was very still and quiet. The only light came from a reading lamp at the far end of the room. Without moving my head I looked about the room. Parker was sitting under the lamp, reading a book, a fat cigarette hanging from his lies. There was no sign of Gorman. On the table at Parker’s elbow was a leather cosh with a wrist thong attached.