Дональд Уэстлейк - Forever and a Death

Oh, he would have gotten Manville anyway, that wasn’t a problem. Curtis’s people were watching the banks, and no later than Monday he’d have known where Manville and the girl were hiding out. He’d still know, come Monday, and the way things were, he’d probably find the girl there. She’d lost Pallifer and his new pals, that was true, but she’d also lost Manville, and what else would she do but go back to whatever mouse hole they’d been hiding in, to wait for her protector to return? Where else could she go? Nowhere. So she’d most likely still be there, wherever it was, hoping for the best, when Pallifer and his friends dropped by to scoop her up on Monday.

But for now, he had the more important one, he had Manville. Curtis had wanted Manville alive, at least temporarily, at least if it wouldn’t be too much trouble; the girl he simply wanted gotten rid of, so that could happen at any time. Curtis would be very pleased to know that Manville was already in their hands.

Pallifer was pleased, too. The events on the Mallory still rankled. He and Arn had had to finish off Bardo and Frank, both wounded by Manville. He’d told Curtis that it was Manville who’d killed them, because you never tell anybody you did some killing, but in fact Manville had left the two of them alive but useless. Pallifer couldn’t carry them, couldn’t nurse them, couldn’t fix Frank’s broken bones or dig that bullet out of Bardo. He had no more use for them, so what could he do but drop them into the sea, once that miserable Chink captain came slinking down to see what was what and finally agreed to untie him and Arn?

Which was why he’d had to go around among people he knew, people he’d been connected with in the past, to find new partners. Arn had got spooked out there on the Mallory , and didn’t want any more of this job, so he was out, and these new fellas were in. Steve on the other side of Manville, and Raf up front. Pallifer had already worked with both of them more than once, and knew he could count on them.

And now, after he brought them aboard, the job was turning out so simple and easy, he barely needed them at all. Already he had Manville, and the girl was such a piece of cake he could almost send a cabdriver to pick her up. In fact, maybe that was the thing to do. Make Manville write a note, send it with a cabby, pop the girl in privacy and comfort, at Pallifer’s leisure.

Well, that was the pleasure for next week. For now, as the chauffeur purred them out of downtown, skirting Albert Park, heading out Musgrave Road to leave Brisbane toward the west, Pallifer reached forward to the black leather pouch mounted on the side panel behind the door, took out the cellphone, and called Richard Curtis at the hotel. He got a secretary, who said Curtis was out. “Tell him it’s Morgan,” Pallifer said. “Tell him I took early delivery on that package he wanted. I’m bringing it out to the ranch.”

“He’ll know what this is about?”

“Oh, yes,” Pallifer said, and winked at the stolid-faced Manville next to him on the wide seat. “He’ll be happy at the news,” he assured the secretary, and broke the connection, and twisted around a bit more to look at Manville head on. “Give me your ear, you,” he said.

Manville didn’t react at all, so Pallifer poked him in the chest with a hard finger. “And give me your eye, too, while you’re at it,” he said.

Now Manville did look at him, and once again Pallifer was startled for just a second by how cold and deadly those eyes could look. But then he caught himself, he reminded himself who was in charge here now, and he grinned into those eyes as he said, “I’m about to tell you what’s happening here.”

Manville said, “Where’s Kim?”

“Oh, Kim is it? The hero’s been getting his reward, has he? Hear that, Steve? The hero’s been getting his reward.”

Steve was looking out his side window at the passing bustle of Brisbane, not interested in the conversation. So Pallifer quit his grinning, and said to Manville, “She run away from us. Would you believe that? She run away clean, but that’s why we knew you’d show up at the same place.”

“Oh,” Manville said, and turned to look at the back of Steve’s head. “That’s why you said she was out of breath.”

Steve turned to give Manville his own cold look. “I’m done with talk for today,” he said, and turned aside, and looked out the window some more.

Pallifer said, “Steve isn’t your social type. Steve is more your killer type. And the situation is, Mr. Curtis asked Steve and Raf and me to collect you and Kim — Kim? is that it? — yeah, Kim. To collect you and Kim, because he misses you. He said to me, he said, ‘Morgan, that George Manville is a right smart engineer, I could use his brains some more, so would you just collect him and bring him to me, so we can let bygones be bygones?’ And I said, ‘Mr. Curtis, I will. But what if it turns out this Manville makes trouble?’ And you know how he is, Mr. Curtis, you know how he talks. He just shrugged, you know how he does, and he said, ‘Oh, if he makes trouble, kill him.’ Now, you know I’m not lying to you, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Manville said.

“And this isn’t a lie, either,” Pallifer told him. “You pestered me out on that ship, you truly did. I didn’t like it, and I must say I don’t like you. Now I know Mr. Curtis would like it better if you didn’t make any trouble, but I’d like it better if you did. You follow me?”

“I won’t make trouble,” Manville said.

“Well, that’s a shame,” Pallifer told him, “although it will make Mr. Curtis’s day. Now, we got about four hundred miles to travel, so just you take it easy, don’t do any scheming with that bright brain of yours, and everything will be okay.”

Apparently, Manville believed him. To Pallifer’s astonishment, the son of a bitch folded his arms, put his head back, shifted his body around into a more comfortable position on the seat, and closed his eyes.

It was more than four hundred miles, though not many more, all of it almost perfectly due west. Out of the city of Brisbane, they stayed on route 54 past Ipswich and Toowoomba, on the rim of the Great Dividing Range, and on to Dalby, where they left the main road for the almost as big Route 49, dipping slightly south to run across the Darling Downs, the great fertile flatlands, boring but fecund, with mile after mile of cotton and wheat, sprawling ranches, tiny towns, huge sky.

Twice they stopped for everyone to walk off into the fields to relieve themselves, both times with Manville where the others could keep a close eye on him. At St. George, with darkness just creeping up behind them, the sun out in front of them floating downward toward the broken line of hills to the west, they stopped to refuel, again giving Manville no opportunity to make a move unseen.

Beyond St. George, with a great bruised sunset burning its way down the sky, the chauffeur squinting and ducking his head behind his dark glasses, the farms of the Darling Downs petered out, giving way to herds of grazing sheep and cattle, none of whom paid any attention in the gathering darkness to the occasional passage of headlights out on the road. The land looked dryer here, reaching away in brown folds, like a tumbled blanket.

At the small settlement of Bollen, they turned left again, onto a much smaller and more twisty road, climbing into dry hills. They passed Murra Murra, barely a dozen lights in the blackness, and then turned off onto an unmarked dirt road that twisted up into the dark, posting back and forth, detouring around the hillocks. They drove past groups of shaggy-coated cattle that blinked in their headlights and shuffled slowly out of their way, bumping their shoulders together as they went. They drove on for three or four miles, over rolling open country, the Daimler taking the terrain like a good powerboat on a moderate sea, and then all at once they crested a rise and a bowl of lights appeared before them, down a farther hill, like a wide low glass jar full of fireflies.