Confusion was immediate. They tried to run and had no place to go. There were more of them than I expected, but they had no way of knowing how many were coming behind me and their first thought was to get out. They were there for pleasure and stayed for panic and when the guy at the door blasted two quick shots in my direction it added to the turmoil. The crowd parted in front of me, faces and bodies just a blur in the dim light.
Not Greta though. She never moved. She couldn’t.
I let go two quick blasts through the cage and took the heads off the snakes just as she let herself go and crumpled up on top of their thrashing bodies.
They came in fast from all sides, gun muzzles winking death, the roar lost in the screams and hoarse shouts of the ones trying to get away. I caught one in the chest and shot the leg out from under another, but they weren’t the ones I wanted.
Belar Ris was my target and he was someplace in the dark. I almost had it made. I took down one who blocked the exit and I almost made the door. I could have brought those agents patrolling the area swarming onto the place with a couple of fast gunshots into the night and they could have taken over and finished the job.
That
almost
was the big one. My luck ran out. I felt the searing finger crease my skull and I went down on my face, hoping the blackness would come before the pain.
The lolling motion of my head woke me up. Dizzy waves of pain swept over me and my stomach heaved in the spasms of nausea. I felt twisted out of shape and tried to pull myself together but couldn’t move. My feet were tied and my hands bound together behind my back. I forced my eyes open, saw the two who carried me, and beside the ones who held me under the arms, Dulcie and Belar Ris.
Dog met dog again. He saw me looking at him and said, “You are a fool.”
But I didn’t answer him. I looked at the other dog and said to Dulcie, “Hello, bitch.”
She didn’t answer me. The one carrying my feet stopped and said, “In here, Belar?”
“Yes, with the others, Ali.”
He let my feet go and turned, taking a set of keys from his pocket. This time I got a good look at his face. I had seen it twice before. Once in a news photo standing near Belar Ris. But the first time was when I was leaving Dulcie’s office and he stepped out of the elevator.
The picture was complete. Only no one was going to see it. Like the one Cleo painted of me, I thought. That was all that was left. My eyes closed and I felt my head fall again, but I could still hear them.
Dulcie said, “You think it’s safe?”
Belar’s voice was a deep rumble. “The windows are barred and the door is triple locked. They’ll keep until we can dispose of them.”
“But ... ”
He cut her short. “You get upstairs and quiet the others. Someone could have heard the shooting. If there’s an inquiry we can arrange to have the guards say there was a prowler on the grounds. If not, we’ll simply sit down, let everyone return to normal and discuss how we can get rid of the bodies this one provided us with.”
I heard the door swing open, then I was tossed inside and the door closed with a metallic clang behind me and the bolts shot home. I lay there waiting, retching at the pain that was like a hot iron against my head, the cold concrete of the floor grinding against my face.
Then there was the rasp of a match and a light blossomed in the comer of the room and a familiar voice said, “Mike?”
Surprise shook me back to normal. I saw her face in the light, grimy with dirt, but smiling. “Hi, Velda.” You’d think we were meeting for lunch.
She laughed, reached up and pulled a cord. A single bulb suspended from the ceiling came on, the light barely reaching the corners of the room. She came over, untied my hands and feet, watched while I rubbed the circulation back into them and looked at the cut on my scalp. It was superficial, but painful. At least I wouldn’t die from it.
When I could stand up she pointed behind me. Greta Service was lying there, hands and feet tied, a large, blue bruise on her forehead. “They brought her here first,” Velda said. “Are there any others?”
“No.”
She bent down and untied Greta, then massaged her into gradual consciousness. I let her get done, made sure Greta was all right, then pulled Velda up to me. “Let’s have it, kitten. How the hell did you get here?”
“Julie Pelham. That man found her. He must have been looking for her and forced her into the car, then didn’t know what to do with her. I saw them go by, grabbed the plate number and had it checked out. It was registered to one of the ones in the legation that occupies this building. I tried to come in through a back way, got cornered by one of those dogs and a guard grabbed me. They were having a conference on what to do with me when some of the others began arriving, so they tied me up and dumped me in here. It took me about an hour to break loose, but at least I wasn’t shut up in the dark.”
“What happened to the girl?”
Velda pointed toward the far corner with her thumb. “Look.”
Two bodies were curled together in a heap. “They both made mistakes,” I said. “He couldn’t explain the girl, but she explained him.” I glanced around me peering into the shadows. “Have you checked this place out?”
“It’s part of an old laundry. Those are washtubs down there and there’s an old gas stove that leaks. That one window leads out to the ground level. I think we’re in the back of the house somewhere, but I’m not sure. The window bars go right into the cement.”
She tried to sound matter-of-fact about it, but I could feel the rising fear in her inflection. “Take it easy, kid. Let me look around.”
There was no chance of going through the door. It was too heavy and too securely bolted. The only other way out was the window. The glass was on the other side of the bars, coated with black paint. I felt the bars themselves, inch-thick pieces of metal with only a surface coating of rust. At a first glance they seemed to be an impregnable barrier, but the iron had feet of clay.
The old cement they were imbedded in had been eroded by dampness and leakage and I could scratch a groove in it with my fingernail. I went over to the old stove, pulled off one of the grates and began chipping away. It powdered at first, then the cracks appeared and I pulled it loose by chunks. In ten minutes I had the bars wrenched out of place. I didn’t have a gun any more, but those bars would make a good weapon if we needed one.
Greta moaned and sat up, one hand going to her head. She was still only half conscious and unaware of what was going on. I got my arms around her to pull her to her feet when I heard a short muffled buzz and held up my hand for Velda to be quiet. After a few seconds it came again, then once more and was cut off in the middle. I let Greta go and went over to the cabinet beside the stove. I pulled the door open.
Inside on the shelf was an old phone buried under a heap of moldy towels. I picked the receiver up gently, but whoever was on the other end was just hanging up. I held the hook down, let it go and listened but there was no dial tone.
The expectant look on Velda’s face disappeared when I shook my head. “It rings on an incoming call, but you can’t call out. It’s an old model they forgot to disengage when they installed the new ones. It only works because there’s a crossed wire somewhere.”
“But if someone calls in ... we could tell them ...” She stopped, realizing the improbability of it.
Yet ...
something
could be done with that phone. We might not make it out of the grounds, but we could leave our fist behind us. I pulled it out as far as I could, pried the guts out of it so that only the ringing mechanism was left. I unscrewed the bells and tied a nail to the clapper with a shoelace for greater leverage. Then I fastened the crazy rig to the light bulb so that when the phone rang that bulb was going to be smashed to bits.
Velda watched me, but I didn’t take the time to explain it to her. When I was through I went to the window, swung it outward on its hinges and helped Velda climb through. She and I both managed to get Greta out and when they were ready I went back, pulled the burners off the stove so the gas would come through at full pressure and climbed out the window. When I pushed it back in place I picked up the iron bars, handed one to Velda and said, “Let’s go.”
And the lady with the luck smiled on us. This time she was giving us a free roll of the dice. The night was our friend and the shadows our love. The guards were still there, but their anxiety made them too alert and they exposed themselves so we were able to skirt around their positions. The cool wind was at our backs so no scent reached the dogs and we made the wall and found a way over it.
The car wasn’t too far away, still concealed where I had hidden it and we got in and I started up and pulled out on the dirt road. A quarter mile down other cars paraded in their vigil, protecting those behind the walls from those outside.
It was the wrong way around, I thought.
We passed through Bradbury, found an open gas station and went in and cleaned up. I looked at the clock. In a little while the sun would be coming up.
I used one of George’s credit cards he kept in the glove compartment to wangle some cash out of the station attendant. He figured us for Saturday-night drunks and had that happen to him before and the tip was worth his handing me the change.
I made one call to Hy from the pay station outside and told him to get me the number of the phone in the building Belar Ris’ group occupied. Hy called back in five minutes, but I wouldn’t give him any information. I said I’d tell him later and I would. It was a shame he’d never be able to print it.
Velda and Greta Service came out and got in the car. I was dropping a dime in the slot when a city patrol car drove up and a uniformed cop got out, fishing in his pocket for some change. He saw me in the booth and stood outside waiting patiently while I dialed.
By now that single room would be gas-packed, a monstrous potential of destruction waiting to be triggered into instant hell.
In my ear I heard the stutter of the ringing phone.
Six miles away a brilliant glow of orange blossomed like a night flower into the sky, lasted seconds at its apex and died with the speed of its blooming. There were more seconds of night-quiet, then the thunderous roar came in with its wave of shock that rattled the windows in the buildings behind us.
The cop’s mouth dropped open, his face still taut with surprise. “What the hell was that!”
“Wrong number,” I said and walked to the car.