Фредерик Браун - Ed McBain’s Mystery Book, No. 3,1961

“It wasn’t me but my agent,” he protested. “And I’m not with that galoot any more. I’m sorry, honest. So why not take this and we’ll talk tomorrow?” Carefully, but calling upon his shy, lonesome grin, the one that made so many women want to mother him, he removed all the money from the clip, then put back a ten, and kneeled to place the money on the carpet where Rhoda could reach it. Once she stretched an arm, and if she lowered the gun, he would make his move. And for sure he was going to call the police, and if San Marino objected, then the hell with her, because a man faced with a shootin’ iron capable of putting a hole through him the size of a fist couldn’t be concerned with too many niceties. “That’s almost five hundred.” He pointed at the money. “Count it.”

Her kick at the money fluttered the bills. “Don’t have to. You’re honest Tell me” — she looked at him — “tell me the secret.”

“Of what?”

“Your luck.” She looked surprised at his unawareness of good fortune. “Is that the secret? That you didn’t push yourself and other people always did? You know what the kids say about you?”

“Your friends?” he asked.

“Once they were your friends, too.”

“Sound another note, will you?” he told her flatly. One of her kind was too many, but he was willing to go along until she got out of the apartment. Then would he fix her wagon! First, he would prefer charges, then as an act of charity which would be well applauded, would withdraw them. But the police wouldn’t let her go because she had threatened him with a gun. “Any time the sponsors get a letter saying how lousy my show is, I wonder which one of my friends has been using his poison ballpoint. Look, Rhoda, I’m trying awfully hard to keep things amigo between us. If I haven’t seen you recently—”

“More’n a year!”

“... it’s because I’ve been busy. Thirty-nine shows and personal appearances to keep the small fry happy don’t give me much time for friendlyizin’! You’ve been here. Had time to look around the spread and see what’s to be seen.” Again his arms swept the apartment. “And you didn’t find girl things around? So there.” He spread both arms in a gesture of nobility. “I haven’t picked up any new friends.”

“Liar.”

“Acquaintances, yes. But side kicks, no.” He was gently didactic. “Now look, Rhoda—”

“You look.” She pointed the heavy gun at him and held it steady with both hands. “I’ve just got to test that luck of yours.” For a moment, she stared at him along the sight and Tucson felt his palate and lips become dry as cold beads of perspiration began to dot his lips. “I’ve just got to see how lucky our big Western star really is. So we’re gonna play Russian roulette.”

“You’re crazy!”

“Say that again and you’ll find your luck’s run out,” she warned him. Now she stood to point the gun at his middle and moved to place a sofa between them. “I’m taking out five bullets,” she said as she broke the Colt. With the airy grace of a princess, she dropped five bullets on the sofa and warned him not to approach by raising the Colt. “Who goes first?”

“Me,” he said too quickly.

Her laughter was contemptuous of the obvious: if she had agreed and given him the gun, there wouldn’t be any game. Still laughing, she spun the cylinder and locked the gun with a hard snap before she retreated toward the bedroom.

“We’ll play in there,” she said. “It’ll be like old times.”

“Rhoda—”

“Before, neither one of us amounted to anything but I meant more than you. I had a chance” — she beckoned to him with the big blue gun — “because I had some luck. But I gave it all to you. All to you,” she repeated dully. “I let it pass from me to you and you never said thanks.”

“All right, thanks!” He pounded the upholstered back of the sofa. “Now take the money and get out and call me tomorrow if you want to get put on as an extra or want to try writing. But get out, you goddamn pig! Out!”

Her eyes were half closed in an expression of pity as she used the gun to compel him to follow her into the large bedroom, where she turned for a quick look at the bed before she yanked the candlewick spread half off and flopped against one of his monogrammed pillows.

“I’ll try it first,” she said. “Now, if I were playing by myself, I’d be sure to blow my head off. Do you know where the bullet is?”

“Are you— I wish you’d cut it out!”

Her reply was to kick both flats across the room. “Come over here,” she ordered. “And sit right here. Nearer.” She smiled.

“Rhoda, listen—”

“Such a pretty Western shirt.” She cooed and laughed as she grasped a pocket to tear it free down one side. “You can afford it.”

She saw his terror, the heavy sweat that ran down his cheeks, saw the dryness of his lips and the quick movements of his eyes.

“I’m ready.” She pointed the gun at him. “Ready for you to pull the trigger for me.”

“No—”

There was no strength left in him, her moist, nut-brown eyes bordered in blue and black were wide and staring, the gun was pointed at his head, and with her lips parted in a bloodless smile, she reached for his right hand to fit the gun into his palm, and as the coolness of the bone grip made him shiver, Rhoda put his finger on the trigger. As he cried out, she turned the gun toward her forehead and squeezed hard. The gun went off with a roar to split her face in two as the chimes of his theme music for “Saddle-Sore” sounded through the apartment and Tucson rose slowly, the gun b his hand, realized that the dead girl on his bed would wash him out with Miss San Marino.

Rhoda’s luck had been bad, as always; sobbing, he wondered if his would hold out, for his prints were on the grip and trigger guard, and the way things looked, well, Rhoda might have put up a struggle.

Ed Gaines was a man in his thirties, tall and slim, who had lost the excitement, the drive, the verve of life during the past ten years. Working in Margaret’s father’s shoe store had done it; living with Margaret herself had done it. So he was running, fleeing down the two-lane highway which stretched over the Texas Big Bend country like a dark ribbon.

He’d left the Fort Worth store at one, saying he had an appointment at the doctor’s after lunch. That would hold his father-in-law. And the call he’d made at 5 p.m. from the gas station on the highway would hold Margaret. “I’ve run into an old friend, dear...”

Now it was almost nine and he’d penetrated deep into the near-desert. His lights tunneled a path through the blackness; a path which could end in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil — he had enough money to go anywhere, to start fresh when he got there. Eight thousand seven hundred dollars; his life’s savings; Margaret’s, too, for that matter. He had emptied their joint bank account at one thirty this afternoon. He had taken it in cash, and put it in the money belt fastened around his waist under his clothing. Now he was driving toward the Rio Grande, about three hours away. Now he was heading for a renewal of brightness and youth. Or so he hoped, and the hope was strong enough to keep him smiling and humming.

Until shortly after the gaudy Cadillac hard-top passed his Lark sedan, passed it so quickly that he failed to catch even a glimpse of the occupants. It shot ahead some hundred feet, slowed, and stayed there, matching his own sixty to seventy miles per hour. Together they streaked along the smooth, straight road, through the cloudy-night darkness, deeper into arid country.

Five minutes later, the Cadillac swerved far to the left, across the white line and into the opposite lane of the two-lane road, to smash a jack rabbit that was attracted by its lights.