Everybody Had A Gun (3 page)

There was a trick a bouncer friend of mine told me about once. He worked in one of the toughest joints in town and on occasion he'd had to fight two or three guys. He said a trick that hadn't yet failed him was to look at the first guy and sock the second, then look at the third and slug the first. If you slugged hard enough, that left you with only one guy. Of course, they weren't supposed to have large guns.

Well, I had only one guy. I kept looking at him as the doorknob rattled and his eyes got a little wider. The door started to swing inward and I pulled my head around toward the door and at the same instant I shot my left fist up hard and hoped to Christ this wouldn't end in a Shell Scott obituary. I waited for the explosion, but the only pop was the small one my fist made on his chin.

The door came rapidly open about twelve inches and slammed hard into the shoe on my right foot as I jerked my head back around to my left. The little guy was just folding, the automatic already dropping from his hand. He flopped to the floor against the wall and lay quietly. I felt like stepping in his face.

The door banged my shoe again but I didn't move my foot. I had a pretty good idea this was the delightful dish I'd seen starting to cross the street, but even as luscious as she was, I had more important things in hand. I'd been shot at already this morning and the little guy slightly unconscious on my carpet might be able to explain that for me.

It was the confused doll that stopped traffic, all right. She'd pushed halfway into the room, squeezing between the wall and the door, and it was some of the nicest squeezing I'd seen in my life. She stopped there, left hand clutching a little black handbag with red drawstrings at the top, and with half of her wool sweater tilting happily at me, and when she gasped, "Oh, Mr. Scott!" I looked up at her face.

It was nice enough to have rated first look. Her eyes were a bright blue that went with the red hair tumbling over one shoulder, and her lips were moist and shining and inviting.

"Oh, Mr. Scott," she gasped again. "Thank God you're all right."

Sure. I was fine. I was dandy. I was shaking like a leaf. And now I was really going around in circles.

"Honey," I said, "I'm busy right now. I—"

She didn't hear me. She started babbling and it got to me that she looked ready to come apart at the seams. Her lovely face was twisted and her bright blue eyes were frightened.

She said rapidly, running the words together, "They locked me inside, but I went up the dumb-waiter to Clark's. I came here as soon—"

"You what?" I yelped. "You went up what?"

She still didn't hear me. She kept on going like mad: "As soon as I could. I called and called, but nobody answered. Oh, I was so glad when I saw you."

"Baby," I said. "Take it easy. What in the hell are you talking about?"

She looked blankly at me for a moment, then sighed heavily. "I'm sorry. I was just so scared. I—Aaah!"

I'd been glancing down at the little guy to make sure he stayed put while the gal was spraying words at me, and she finally followed my gaze and saw him sprawled on the floor. He was lying with the right side of his face pressed into the carpet and the left side up so it was in plain view, and as soon as she spotted him she let out a squeak.

I thought she was just startled to see a man lying on my floor. It isn't an everyday occurrence. But she surprised me some more.

She sputtered, "What—how—he works for Sader! Oh!" And then she started squeezing back out of the door and into the hall.

"Hey, wait a minute," I yelled. "What gives here?"

"I don't want him to see me. He mustn't see me. He works for Sader. Get rid of him. Get rid of him!"

"Honey, I can't toss him out the window. What's the matter?"

"I've got to talk to you. I have to." She looked ready to start bawling.

"Baby," I said, "get a grip on yourself. Relax. It can't be as bad as all that. Look. Downstairs, just to the right of the entrance, there's a bar called Pete's. You go down there and have a double shot. Have something. I'll be down as soon as I get rid of this." I gestured toward the man on the floor.

She said, "All right. But hurry." She paused, then blurted rapidly, "Sader's after you and—oh, mister, you're in awful trouble. So am I. They want to kill us. They will. I know they will. And it's my fault—all my fault." She finished that up almost wailing.

Then she slipped out the door and went click-click back down the hall and I craned my head around and stared after her and I couldn't even enjoy the delightful sway of her hips. My eyes must have looked like the crosses they put in cartoons.

She had said, "They want to kill us." Not sue us, or call us names. Nothing simple like that. I was playing with it, and wondering where this tied in with my previous brainspins, when the guy on the floor groaned.

I pushed the door shut, slammed the bolt, picked up the automatic, and got my gun out of the guy's pocket. Then I walked over to the fish tank. I scooped up some water in my hands, careful not to get any baby guppies, and splashed the water into the little man's face. I still felt like stepping on it.

After another double handful of water he groaned again and blinked at me. I grabbed him under the arms, wrestled him across the room, and slammed him, urgently, down in the swivel chair behind my desk. He shook his head, looked up at me, then shifted his eyes nervously around the room.

I bent over the little guy and said, "I'm going to tell you something, friend. And then I think I'll break your jaw. Or maybe your neck. You start right at the beginning and spill everything you know about this job. Who are you? Why'd you shove a gun at me? Who shot at me this morning?"

He licked his lips and looked at me from nervous eyes, but he didn't say anything.

I remembered the girl had said something about this lug's working for Sader. The more I thought about the girl, the more anxious I was to see her, find out what had been eating her and what she'd started to tell me. And some damn thing about her visit—besides what she'd said—was worrying me, but I couldn't pin down what it was. Seemed like I was forgetting something. I shook the feeling off and grabbed the little man by the lapels of his coat and rattled him. I shook him so hard his head bobbed around as if he had rubber vertebrae; then I dropped him back into the chair.

"Buster, start talking, and fast. Who put you up to this deal?"

He breathed a little faster and his eyes darted back and forth more rapidly, but he didn't say anything. I wanted to paste him one, but I couldn't quite make myself do it. When he'd been jabbing a gun at me it was easy, or if he hadn't been so obviously helpless now or had been a little bigger maybe I could have. High on the list of my pet peeves are guys who point guns at me. Maybe I couldn't quite make myself hit him while he sat there refusing to look at me, but I sure came close.

I balled up my right fist and held it in front of his small face, practically blotting it out. I said, "Five seconds, beetle, and you spill or I start busting your teeth."

It wasn't any good. He let out a couple of little wheezes but he didn't spill anything. He was more afraid of talking than he was of me. I had a creepy feeling I'd spent enough time with this guy for the moment; I wanted to talk to the jiggling redhead. I grabbed the phone off my desk, dialed police headquarters, and reported a man with a gun to the policeman at the complaint board. I reported the guy as at my office, hung up, and waited.

The little joe was still not talking when the radio car arrived with two patrolmen, and right behind them came Detective Sergeant Danny Russo. I unlocked the door and let everybody in.

Danny frowned at me. "No peace," he said. "No peace at all around you. What the hell now?"

I jerked my head toward the desk. "This little guy wanted to take me for a walk. Or a ride." I handed Danny the .45 automatic. "He used this to persuade me. Know him?"

Danny looked past me and spotted the little man hunched over behind my desk. "Uh-huh. Ex-con. Ozzie York, one of Marty Sader's boys. What's Sader got against you, Shell?"

Sader. The girl hadn't been kidding when she'd said, "He works for Sader." I wondered if she'd been kidding about any of the rest of it. I told Danny, "You got me. I'm starting to wish the hell I knew. And I've never even met this punk. Take him away, will you?"

Danny raised an eyebrow at me, then walked over to the desk. "What is this, Ozzie?"

No answer.

"Make it easy on yourself, Ozzie," Danny said.

I butted in. "He won't say anything, Danny. Wouldn't open his yap for me anyway."

Danny looked over his shoulder at me, then back at Ozzie. "We'll see," he said quietly.

I hurried the boys up and Danny slipped the handcuffs on Ozzie's small wrist. Danny said, "Well, come on, Shell," and started out.

"Uh, Danny. You go ahead. I'll come down to Homicide later. O.K.?"

He frowned. "Look here, Shell. You're the guy that called in on this—"

"I've got urgent business, Danny. I'll come down and make the crime report soon as I can. What difference does it make whether I give you the report now or later? I'll be down."

He sighed. "O. K. But don't wait all day. Room Forty-two, pal."

"I'll be there. Thanks, Danny."

When they'd gone I checked my .38 Colt Special, released the catch and pushed the cylinder out and made sure all the chambers were loaded, then pressed the cylinder back in place. Me and my gun were ready to go. I locked the office door and took off to see if the double shot had calmed my hysterical redhead.

And I wanted her calm. I'd been a bit too busy to concentrate on what she'd been saying when she'd squeezed into the office, but now I remembered the words she'd forced past her fright: something about Sader's being after me for something or other, people dying to kill me, and everything was all her fault—the whole thing gasped out as if the world were coming to an end. It looked as if the nervous lady might, once she got a grip on herself, be able to explain who had been aiming at me this morning.

The Hamilton Building has two big, wide doors that fold back when the place opens up in the morning. I was starting out between them when something on the floor behind the right-hand door caught my eye. A little flash of black and red. I think I knew what it was before I bent and picked it up. And I was right. It was a black purse with bright red drawstrings that pulled the top shut by puckering the cloth up and squeezing it together. I'd seen that bag only a few minutes ago, clutched tightly in the redhead's hand.

I picked up the bag, suddenly feeling a little sick. She could have dropped it accidentally. Or it could have been another bag just like it. Sure.

I sprinted outside and to my right into Pete's Bar. Pete was lazily wiping the counter for lack of anything better to do. There was nothing better to do because there wasn't a customer in the place.

My voice was a little tight when I said, "Pete, where's the girl that came in here? The redhead."

He stopped wiping the counter top for a moment and looked at me. "Girl? Haven't seen no girl, Shell." He moved down the counter a couple of steps and started polishing again.

"You sure? It's important. Long red hair. Slacks. Beautiful shape."

Pete looked up at me again, slightly annoyed. "What's eating you, Shell? Haven't had no customers all morning. Business is—"

But I didn't hear the rest of it; I was going out the door.

Chapter Three

I RACED across the sidewalk, tossed the black pouch bag onto the seat, and dived under the wheel. I started the car, gunned away from the curb, and barreled down the street for two blocks before I realized I didn't know where I was going, or even where I should be going. I pulled over to the curb, parked, and cut the engine. Then I got out a crumpled pack of Luckies and my lighter, lit a cigarette, and called myself names. I was mad. I was burning up.

I guess one of the things that gripes me most, or gripes anyone, for that matter, is knowing you're in the wrong or that you've made a fool mistake. But the first step in cooling off and starting to think again is admitting, to yourself at least, that you are wrong and then finding out why.

So after I'd called myself a number of uncomplimentary names I tried to figure out what was going on and where I stood. I'd screwed up for sure in letting the girl out of my sight. As soon as she piped, "They want to kill us," I should have tied that in tight with the shots tossed at me earlier and latched onto her good.

And right then, a little late, I got a cold crinkling along my scalp. She hadn't said they wanted to kill me, but us. She was included in the deal they'd cooked up for us. Whoever they were. And whoever she was.

And now I knew what had been bothering me after she'd squeezed out of the office. It had been a little scraping in my subconscious trying to make me add the obvious two and two together: The girl had been scared to death of Ozzie when she'd seen him sprawled on the floor, and if she was scared of him, it followed that she'd undoubtedly be equally scared of Ozzie's partner—if he'd had one.

And, almost surely, he'd had one. Ozzie wouldn't have tried pulling a job, particularly a job like this one, alone. He'd have had help, a partner at least. Somebody to wait in the building, or out on the street, or in a car. Christ! There must have been a car. If Ozzie had figured on taking me for a trip, he sure as hell wouldn't have planned to walk. There'd have been a car waiting for us, and there'd have been somebody to drive it while Ozzie kept his.45 tucked into my side or pointed at me through his coat. It was elementary, completely clear, and obvious. Now.

I groaned, picked up the bag, yanked the mouth of it open, and dumped the stuff it contained onto the seat. While I went through the stuff I wondered how I'd got so stupid in thirty years. A lot of this morning's stupidity might be traced to my constitution. I'm so healthy it's disgusting, but it takes me a while to wake up. I creep around mornings in an ugly world till I have a couple of mouthfuls of food and plenty of coffee. Not much food, because food is not appealing when I first wake up, but plenty of coffee. This Monday morning I'd groped my way out of my Hollywood apartment and come straight downtown, had my toast and a cup of coffee while I skimmed the paper, then, still a little bleary-eyed, I'd started for the office. Too many things had happened too fast for me since then. I'd been a step behind all the way. Well, I was awake now, but where did I go from here?