Dead-Bang (9 page)

The gun dropped with a clatter as he bent forward and then fell suddenly, heavily. His shoulder thudded against the floor, his head snapped down and hit with the crack of a handball bouncing from cement. I jumped forward and kicked the gun away—forgetting I was in my stocking feet, and grunting as pain ripped through my foot—then backed across the room and pressed my shoulders against the wall.

The stocky man wasn't dead yet; but he didn't have far to go. He quivered the way a man will quiver in freezing cold, turning onto his back, right leg pulling up toward his body, then sliding down again, the heel of his shoe the only sound, a tiny scraping sound, sliding and then stopping.

For a little time, I'm not sure how long a time, I could see the pale off-white streak where his heel had scraped the blood away, then it flowed in and covered the mark, and there was a smoothly glistening redness again.

8

I turned my eyes—and gun—toward the door through which I'd come. But there was no further sound, no shouts or footsteps. I went out, down the hall, gave the rest of the house a fast check. Nothing. Back in the room I eased the tape from Bruno's mouth, started untying him. And the first thing he said to me in a rich, full, resonant voice was, “How do you do, Mr. Scott?”

Like, “Isn't it a lovely day?”

“I'll let you know,” I said. “Anyone else around here besides that guy and Cassiday? It is Dave Cassiday, isn't it?”

“Yes, it is. There were two other men. They left nearly half an hour ago. There is no one here now except the four—” He glanced at the stocky man's body and went on, “—or perhaps three of us.”

“Three. What happened?” I worked on the rope around his wrists.

He didn't mention Dru, but obviously assumed—correctly—that she must have told me everything she knew and had guessed, and went on as though merely adding his information to what she'd told me. “I met André in front of the church. Dave had just arrived and was with André who had phoned him also. Within seconds the two men who are not now here—one is your height but heavier and with a ruddy complexion, the other slim and probably one inch under six feet, with a grayish white streak in the hair at the center of his forehead and a small mole at the left side of his nose—approached with guns in their hands and forced us all to enter a year-old dark-blue Chrysler sedan, four-door, with a slightly dented right-rear fender and a right-front fender that had been repainted, and eighteen thousand, four hundred and twenty miles on the speedometer. I don't know the license number.”

“How come?”

“I didn't see it.”

Cassiday was making noises behind his gag. It sounded as if he were humming the latest teen-agers' hit. I glanced at him. “Be with you in a minute.”

“Nor did I see the left side of the car,” Bruno continued. “I was able to examine the car's right side because before we entered it another auto came into the parking lot and its lights briefly illumined the Chrysler. That car parked well beyond us. A girl got out of it and hurried toward the church, waving as she passed quite close to us. The shorter, slimmer man had pushed Dave into the middle of the front seat and was still standing outside the car waiting for André to get in. I was in back with the other man and André was just entering the front of the car. I doubt she knew the gunman, so I concluded she was waving to André. She went on into the church and the tall man drove us to this address, where the man you just killed was waiting. Do you have any questions to this point, Mr. Scott?”

“Not … very many. Go on.”

“I was brought into this room first and the man you shot bound me, and after that he bound André. Dave was brought in then and tied to a chair as well. I haven't been able to speak with him, of course, but before they tied and gagged him there were sounds as of … scuffling.”

“Yeah. Somebody popped him.”

There were some more humming and grunting noises from behind me. I twisted around and said, “Be with you in a shake, Mr. Cassiday. I can only do one thing at a time.” He said,
“Whuwh”
and wiggled a little.

I said to Bruno, “You weren't mistreated?”

“Not physically.” He stared silently for moments, the strong face slightly twisted, as if he were looking at something repulsive. “The men told me what they wanted—my formula for Erovite, working papers, record of experiments, everything—and insisted I write a note to Dru telling her to bring the ERO envelope to the location mentioned in it.”

“Uh-huh. They knew what they were after, but did they know the papers were in an envelope marked ERO and that the envelope was in your floor safe?”

“No. They seemed only to know that I did possess such papers. Naturally I refused to do what they asked.”

“Naturally?”

I finally got the rope untied and pulled it free of his wrists. He breathed deeply, rubbed first one wrist and then the other as I squatted to work on the last knot, in a separate rope binding his ankles to the chair legs. There were some more smothered comments from Dave Cassiday, but I ignored them.

“On gaining possession of the formula and notes,” Bruno said calmly, “they would have killed me, and Dave. If Dru had been foolish enough to actually bring the papers—which I was confident she would not be—they would have killed her as well. They could not be sure that except for myself only Dru knew the entire formula, but men such as these would have killed her merely to prevent her from reporting to others what had occurred. Or for
no
sane reason. If you doubt it—” he nodded toward the white, waxy corpse in the chair near the man I'd shot. “That was André Strang. They killed him quite callously, with astonishing lack of any apparent human emotion, and for no other reason—unless there are reasons I've not considered—than to force me to write that note to Dru.”

The knot loosened, I pulled the rope through it, and in a few seconds Bruno's ankles were free. I straightened up. My feet were wet. Wet with cold blood. My socks squished as I stepped over to Cassiday and removed the tape gag from his mouth, started to reach for the rope around his wrists.

“There's a knife in my pants pocket,” he said.

I stared at him, dully. Then I looked at my fingers, the tips red, as if sandpapered. “Now you tell me.”

His wide face creased in a crooked grin, then suddenly his dark eyebrows pulled down and in, and he laughed.

Some pair I've got here
, I thought. Dead man, blood all over the place, I crash in and shoot a guy, Bruno says, “How do you do, Mr. Scott, so glad you could come for tea, isn't it a lovely day?” and Cassiday starts laughing.

He didn't laugh long. “Stupid of me,” he said. “I should have mentioned it.”

I grinned at him, shaking my head, then found the knife in his pocket, opened it, stepped behind him and with one neat
flick
cut through the rope around his wrists. They'd used only one rope on him, running it down and wrapping it around his ankles and the chair legs, so it only took one
flick
. “I don't mean to be unkind,” I said. “But please speak up the next time this happens.”

He was staring at me. Intent, not smiling. O.K., so he was the only funny guy in the room. “Don't think I'm not grateful,” he said. “I am. For myself and for Doc. But where in hell did you
come
from?”

“My name's Shell Scott, but the rest will have to wait. I feel strongly we should get out of this joint.”

“You and me both,” he said.

I retrieved my shoes, took off my sticky socks and cleaned the redness from my feet as best I could with a handkerchief. Cassiday had stood up and was stretching, and while I squeezed my bare feet into the shoes he walked to the stocky guy, squatted, and put a finger against his throat.

After a few seconds he said quietly, “He's dead.”

“If he was still alive,” I told him, “I'd trade in my Colt for a sawed-off twelve-gauge. Those were Super Vel pills I put into him. Three of them. He was probably finished before he rolled over on his back.”

“Super Vel?”

“One's usually enough.”

As I tied my shoelaces, Cassiday said to Bruno, “Where in hell did this guy come from? How did he
find
us? I heard you talking—while this baboon was ignoring my conversation.” The quick, crooked smile he flashed me took some of the sting Out of “baboon.” “But that didn't tell me much. It couldn't have been something in the note they made you write …
could
it?”

“Yes, Dave,” Bruno said. “That's what it was.” He quickly explained.

Cassiday was looking at him in an odd way, and when Bruno finished he said, with something close to incredulity in his voice, “You mean, you managed to think of that, and
do
it, while André …” He let the question trail off.

Bruno didn't say anything. Before straightening up I took another look at the incredibly white face of the late André Strang. “What did happen to him?” I asked neither of them in particular. “Him—and who else? It looks like there was a massacre in here. All that blood couldn't possibly have come from one guy.”

“It did,” Cassiday said. “I watched it. Doc and I both watched it. The blood came from that cut in André's calf, in a steady stream, until he died, and after he died, for a hell of a time after he died—”

“Wait a minute. Not for a hell of a time after he died, please. I've seen a lot of men bleed, and I've bled a bit myself. You can bet the boy I just shot has already stopped bleeding, and I'd guess there are as many holes in him as there are—”

Bruno interrupted me. “There is, in André's body, only that one cut, Mr. Scott. Upon my continued refusal to do as they wished, the shorter and slimmer of the two men who brought us here—who seemed to be in charge, I would say—explained matter-of-factly that they would kill André most horribly, by letting him bleed to death before me, if I persisted in my refusal. I …”

His voice and brisk narrative faltered a bit, then he went on. “I did not believe him. The man took a leather case from his jacket pocket, and from it a filled hypodermic syringe. A ten c.c. syringe with, I believe, a twenty-three gauge needle. He thrust the needle into the large vein in the ante-cubital fossa—pardon me, the area at the crook of André's arm—and emptied the syringe's contents into his bloodstream. After a few minutes during which no one spoke—except André, who just before he was gagged said he was beginning to feel strange, light-headed, with a cool prickly sensation on the skin over his entire body—the same man took a small sharp instrument from the case and cut quite deeply into André's calf. Very casually as if he were merely … opening an envelope.”

Bruno took another deep breath, moving his legs, tensing them, and turning his feet back and forth, working to restore full circulation.

“Can you walk?” I asked him.

“In a short while, Mr. Scott. The bonds were quite tight. Unnecessarily so.” He reached down and rubbed one ankle, then the other. “André's wound began to bleed and did not stop, did not clot, continued to bleed. Clearly, André was injected with something similar to heparin—a drug which helps to prevent clots in the blood, reduces the prothrombin, increases the clotting time—but much more effective than, say, warfarin. It is something of which I have no personal knowledge. When I saw what was occurring I told the men I would do as they wished. I asked them to stop the flow of blood. They said they would do so only after I completed the note.”

I looked at him more closely, at the clear bright blue eyes, the firm and now unsmiling mouth. “You mean, you had to write that note to Dru while André Strang was bleeding to death?” And as I asked the question I understood that odd note in Dave Cassiday's voice.

“Yes. It was difficult. I completed the note as quickly as I could. But—” He looked at me. “I know something of the nature of men, Mr. Scott. How base and cruel some men can sometimes be. But I did not believe they would let André die. They did, however. Deliberately. Even after I had given them the note. It was, their spokesman told me calmly, in order to impress upon me the seriousness of their intent, their determination to achieve what they were after. Or words of that nature—that ‘they meant business,' I believe the man actually said. I was quite seriously upset, and not as attentive to the exact nature of his remarks as I would otherwise have been.”

“That's hardly surprising. Then you're telling me all this—” I indicated the redness around us—“came out of one man? André? It just … drained out of him?”

Bruno nodded.

Cassiday said, “Nobody who didn't see it can know how horrible it was, Scott. He got pale and clammy and then started to sweat, finally began making awful noises behind his gag, and then, well, he went into convulsions. Just before he died. But even after that he kept bleeding.”

“Hypoxia,” Bruno added. “He convulsed because of a lack of oxygen. The blood carries oxygen to all the cells, to the brain, and he didn't have much blood left in him then. Too little blood, too little oxygen, hypoxia, convulsion, death.”

I looked at Cassiday, noticed his puffed eye, and asked, “How'd you get the mouse?”

He put on half a smile. “For a couple of seconds I made the mistake of thinking I was a hero. After they got us all into the house there was a minute or so when I was in the front room with only the slim guy guarding me. Well, he took his eyes off me and I grabbed for his gun.” Cassiday licked his lips. “Didn't even touch it. He merely moved the gun out of the way and smacked me with a fist like a bag of rocks. Next thing I knew, I was on my butt.”

“This slim guy. He's left-handed?”

“Well … yeah.” He looked puzzled. “Did I mention it?”

I shook my head. “It's just the most likely explanation. He bounced his fist off your left eye, so probably he was swinging his right. If so, the gun would have been in his left hand—he didn't hit you with the gun or you'd be cut. And if he's left-handed, that might help us find him—”