Clive Cussler - The Chase

“How did you get in?” Bell asked simply.

The stranger held up a key. “Skeleton key,” he said in a voice that came like a rock crusher. “I never leave home without one.”

“What is your name?”

“It won’t matter if you know my name. You’ll never get a chance to use it. But since you’ve asked, it’s Red Kelly.”

Bell’s photographic memory shifted into gear and the recollection of a report he’d once read came back. “Yes, the infamous Red Kelly, boxer, Barbary Coast saloonkeeper, and murderer. You fought a good battle against world champion James J. Corbett. I once studied a report on you in the event you ever wandered beyond the California border. This is a mistake on your part. You have protection from crooked politicians that keeps you from getting extradited for crimes in other states, but that won’t help you in Colorado. You’re subject to arrest here.”

“And who is going to arrest me?” said Kelly showing an expanse of gold teeth. “You?”

Bell stood loosely, waiting, and expecting a move from Kelly. “You wouldn’t be the first.”

“I know all about you, pretty boy,” said Kelly contemptuously. “You’ll bleed just like the other poor slobs I’ve put in the grave.”

“How many detectives and police?”

Kelly grinned nastily. “Three that I can remember. After a while, the numbers began to fade.”

“Your days of murder are over, Kelly,” Bell said calmly.

“That’ll be the day, pretty boy. If you think you can bully me with that popgun in your hand, you’re wasting your breath.”

“You don’t think I could kill you with it?” Bell said.

“You’d never get the chance,” Kelly retorted coldly.

There it was. Bell caught it instantly. The sudden shift in the eyes. He swung into a crouch and, in the blink of an eye, aimed and fired a shot into the forehead of the man who was creeping up behind him from where he’d been, hidden by a curtain. The report reverberated out the open door and throughout the atrium of the hotel.

Kelly glanced at the body of his henchman with all the interest of a horse that had stepped on a prairie dog. Then he smiled at Bell. “Your reputation is well founded. You must have eyes in the back of your head.”

“You came to kill me,” said Bell evenly. “Why?”

“It’s a job, nothing more.”

“Who paid you?”

“Not necessary for you to know.” Kelly laid aside the paper and slowly got to his feet.

“Don’t try for the gun in the belt behind your back,” Bell said, the derringer as steady as a branch on an oak tree.

Kelly flashed his gold teeth again. “I don’t need a gun.”

He sprang forward, his powerful legs propelling across the room as if he had been shot from a cannon.

What saved Bell in those two seconds was the span between them, a good eight feet. Any less distance and Kelly would have been all over him like an avalanche. As it was, Kelly struck him like a battering ram, a glancing blow that knocked Bell sideways over a chair and onto the grass green carpet. But not before he pulled the trigger of the derringer and sent a bullet into Kelly’s right shoulder.

The brute was stopped in his tracks but did not fall. He was too powerful, too muscular, to fold with a bullet that did not penetrate his heart or brain. He contemplated the spreading of crimson on his shirt with the detached look of a surgeon. Then he grinned fiendishly. “Your little popgun only holds two bullets, pretty boy. Now it’s empty.”

“I wish you would stop calling me pretty boy,” said Bell, leaping to his feet.

Now it was Kelly’s turn to reach behind his back and retrieve his Colt revolver. He was just bringing it level to pull the trigger when Bell hurled his derringer like a baseball pitcher receiving the signal from the catcher to throw a fastball. At four feet away, he couldn’t miss. The little gun, solid as a piece of quartz, thudded off Kelly’s face just above the nose and between the eyes.

Blood gushed from the gash and quickly covered the lower half of Kelly’s face. The blow staggered him more than the slug in his shoulder. There was no gasp of pain, no bloodcurdling cry. He made no sound other than a great sigh. The gun was still in his hand, but he did not lift it to aim. He couldn’t. Bell put his head down and charged the strong man like a porpoise into a great white shark, accelerating with every step, thrusting his head into Kelly’s stomach with all his strength. The ex-boxer merely grunted and brushed Bell away, throwing him halfway across the room with a strength nothing less than phenomenal.

Bell crashed into a wall with a crunch that forced the breath from his lungs. If the impact had been any harder, he’d have been in traction for two months. But his bone-jarring charge had not been in vain. During the collision of his one hundred eighty-five pounds against Kelly’s two-fifty, he had snatched the revolver from the hand of the killer.

There was no command to cease another assault, no “Stop or I’ll shoot.” Bell had been through the mill and knew you don’t waste words on a killer dead set on sending you to a marble slab at the county coroner’s. He had no illusions about beating Kelly in a man-to-man fight. The murderer was stronger and more ruthless. Bell barely got off two shots before Kelly recovered enough to reach out and grasp Bell around the neck with the ferocity of a gorilla, his massive hands choking the life out of the detective. He fell against Bell, pressing him into the carpet, his massive weight crushing Bell’s torso and pinning his arms so he couldn’t fire the Colt again. Kelly squeezed calmly and purposely, as though the bullets he had taken were a mere annoyance.

Bell couldn’t move, and there was no reaching up in an attempt to pull off the fingers digging into his neck. Kelly’s strength went way beyond Bell’s. Bell didn’t doubt that he wasn’t the first man Kelly had strangled. Unless he did something very rapidly, he wouldn’t be the last. Blackness was edging his line of vision, and getting darker by the moment.

What stunned Bell more than the realization that he was only seconds away from death was what happened to the two bullets he had pumped into Kelly. He was certain he had struck the Goliath in the body. Bell looked up into two eyes that were as dark as evil and the blood that had turned the lower face into a horrific mask of crimson. What was keeping him alive, why wasn’t his strength ebbing? The man wasn’t human.

Then, perceptibly, Bell felt the pressure begin to ease slightly. Rather than try to pry the hands from around his neck, Bell reached up and embedded his thumbs in Kelly’s expressionless eyes, knowing it would be the final move before darkness closed over him. In a violent, corkscrew motion, Bell twisted his body out from under Kelly.

The big boxer groaned and covered his eyes with his hands. Unseeing, he crawled toward Bell, who kicked out viciously, catching Kelly in the stomach. Only then did he see the two bullet holes seeping blood through Kelly’s shirt below the rib cage. What kept him going? Bell wondered. He should have died before now. But, instead, Kelly reached out and grabbed Bell by the leg.

Bell felt himself being pulled across the carpet, now stained and soaked with Kelly’s blood. He lashed out with his free foot. It bounced off Kelly, who acted as if he never felt it. The grip on Bell’s calf tightened. Fingernails dug through his pants into his flesh. He was pulled closer to Kelly, seeing an agonized face, the eyes glaring with hatred.

It was time to end this ghastly fight. Bell’s right hand still held the Colt. With deadly calm, he raised the barrel until the muzzle was only inches from Kelly’s face, deliberately pulled the trigger, and sent a .44 caliber bullet into Kelly’s right eye.