Джон Макдональд - Flight of the Tiger

The answering shot slammed Lemon back so that his gun pointed almost straight up. Lemon rolled back with painful slowness to aim again, and as he did so. Ben made a lunge for the controls. He hit the starter, punched the throttle. The prop turned with a slow whining and caught and blasted hard. He swung the plane hard to the left, hearing the door slam shut. Lemon lay still in the grass. Gorman leaped up and ran toward the farmhouse, looking back over his shoulder. Helen had fallen and she was getting up. He throttled down, left the prop turning, went back and shoved the door open against the wind from the prop.

“Get out,” he told her.

“No, I—”

“Quick!” He pushed at her and she jumped down. Then she saw what he was trying to do. She held the door. He slid John Cassidy over and eased him down onto the grass. There wasn’t time to unload Brath too. He latched the door and got back into the seat.

Gorman was making good time. Ben got the tail up before he’d gone a hundred feet. The running man see me I to be running backward, growing larger and larger. He looked back, veered abruptly to the side and dived for the protection of the white fence. Now the farmhouse was growing large, too quickly. Ben wrenched the plane off the ground as Paul Brath had done. It settled for a moment and then began to climb too slowly. He saw he couldn’t clear the house. He dropped the left wing tip and banked steeply and waited for the wing tip to hook the ground and pinwheel the ship, waited for the crash of the undercarriage against the corner of the building. The earth tilted and dropped away, and at a hundred feet he pulled the plane around like a stone on the end of a string. Gorman had turned and was racing back out across the field toward Helen and the two prone figures. Ben saw the glint of metal in the sun in Gorman’s hand as he ran with the ponderous momentum of a big man.

He knew he had to keep them apart. He slanted over and dived at the open ground between Gorman and Helen. He pulled out, knowing that he had flubbed it and had dived too soon. Yet as he roared up again he turned and saw Gorman pick himself up, stand for a moment and then race back to the shelter of the fence. As Ben swept over him again he saw the gun come up. Ben thought he heard a faint metallic impact somewhere in the ship. He checked the gauges quickly. Gorman ran crouched along the fenceline.

Ben lost Gorman as he turned, and while trying to spot him again, he saw the station wagon begin to move. It was headed down the long drive toward the highway.

He saw then what he had to do and how it could be done. And he felt the skill, the assurance he needed in his hands. He held the wheel delicately. It was as though, in that instant, all his senses had become sharpened. And the plane felt the way the 86s had felt before he had been shot down, felt like an extension of himself.

He passed the station wagon a dozen feet above it and roared to the end of the driveway, banked high across the startled traffic on the highway and came hurtling back, streaking up the driveway with full throttle, not over a foot off the gravel, headed point-blank for the oncoming station wagon. He felt complete and absolute control. He held the plane steady, and at the last improbable fractional part of a second he yanked the wheel back hard, hurling the plane high.

He banked and saw the station wagon on its side in the ditch, one front wheel spinning. The door was pushed up and Gorman climbed out. Ben made another pass and the man dropped flat in the ditch; then he began to crawl back toward the farmhouse, using the ditch for protection. Ben laughed aloud. Gorman fired again as he made another pass. Ben turned and came back up the driveway, flying as low and slow as he dared, his left wing tip over the ditch. As he reached Gorman he tilted the left wing tip delicately into the wide shallow ditch. There was a slight thud, more felt than heard.

When Ben was able to look back he saw Gorman spread-eagled in the shallow ditch, perfectly still. He twisted the plane and put it into a flat glide. He landed it cross-wind and taxied it toward Helen. Her hair was bright in the sun. He cut the motor.

He looked at his hands. They felt numb and heavy. The brief life had gone out of them...

After the formalities were over, Detective Lieutenant Davis took them across the empty New York street for coffee. It was midnight and a misty rain was falling. There were beads of it in Helen’s hair. They got the coffee at the counter and took it back to a booth.

Davis put in four teaspoons of sugar and stirred it slowly. “Nobody.” he said, “but nobody could ever call that one on purpose, so it has to be labeled accidental death. Nobody goes around rapping skulls with a wing tip except by accident. Once a long time ago I watched a guy at an air show. He had a hook on his wing tip, or a needle or something, and he broke balloons. Not skulls.”

“I was trying to make him stop running,” Ben said.

Davis’ smile was mirthless. “You did that. Unless, of course, he was able to run with his head tucked under his arm, like that Sleepy Hollow character.” Helen, beside Ben, shuddered visibly. “Forgive me, Mrs. MacLane,” Davis said.

“Did they phone in about John Cassidy while we were in there?” Helen asked.

“I forgot about that. He’s conscious now. They let his wife and the kid see him for a while. They had to or he would have torn up the place. A groove in his skull, and a concussion. Gorman I’m not sorry about. He might have found some angle and beat the rap. But that Brath I dearly regret. He got off too easy. The slug that killed him was out of Gorman’s gun. Right in the back of the neck. A nice wing shot, but not what Gorman figured on. He meant to bust your oil line.”

“But if it hadn’t been for Lemon—” Ben said.

Davis held up his hand. “I know what you’re going to say. Don’t waste your breath, boy. He’s been out of line a long time. And he’s the one who hurt the kid. There’s enough on him in this, adding up one charge and another, to give him a nice long vacation. So that’s what he gets.”

There was a silence. Helen said, “Why did you report me dead?”

“It was something to do. The case was dragging. I thought it might stir something up. It didn’t fool anybody but you, I guess.”

“I thought my brother really believed it.”

“No. I even let him phone your folks and tell them it was just a carom shot.” Davis sighed. “Gorman could have gone on for years. But just once he had to do some of his own rough stuff. That tripped him.”

“What were they looking for in the apartment?” Helen asked.

“I heard a slight rumble on that, Mrs. MacLane. Some photographs of Gorman having a happy time with some people who should never have let the picture be taken. Celebrities who will be seriously embarrassed if they ever come out. The pictures may turn up. I think that Young girl mailed them to a fake name, care of general delivery. That would be the smart move. Gorman kept them around because he was proud of his connections. Denny Young sensed he was cooling off on her. She figured, rightly, they’d have some resale value — this is all based on the assumption that the rumor I heard isn’t wrong. Gorman lost his temper and now he’s dead. And you, Morrow, deserve to be dead. After seeing Freimak you should have come to me, like I told you to do if you uncovered anything.”

“Will you need us for anything else?”

“We’re through. In fact, you’d better get out of town, both of you. That treatment you got from the reporters was just a starter. They’ll make your life hell if you hang around town. Like the man says, this is one of those dramatic situations. They’ll put arm locks on you and get you in front of television cameras.”