Джордж Хиггинс - The New Black Mask (No 4)

Kay would undoubtedly hold me to my promise. Kay was a very stubborn and determined young woman. Once she got an idea in her head, she would not let go of it, even when it was in her own interests to do so. Maybe it was a characteristic of all blushing redheads. Maybe that was why they blushed.

At any rate, there must be no gladsome welcomes between us, nothing that might develop into intimacy.

Perhaps I should pretend to be asleep, yes? But yes. Definitely. It would show how little I was disturbed by her absence. It would throw figurative cold water on the hottest of hot-pantsed redheaded blushers.

I closed my eyes and composed myself. I folded my hands on my chest, began to breathe in even-measured breaths. This should convince her , I thought. Lo, the Poor Indian, at rest after the day’s travail. Poor Lo, sleeping the sleep of the just.

Kay finished her ascent of the stairs.

She came to the door of my room and looked in at me.

I wondered how I looked, whether my hair was combed properly and whether any hair was sticking out of my nose. Nothing looks cruddier than protruding nose hairs. I didn’t think I had any, but sometimes they show when you are lying down when they would not show otherwise.

Kay crossed to my bed, stood looking down at me. My nose twitched involuntarily.

She had apparently been running in her haste to get back to me. She had gotten herself all sweaty, anyway, and she stank like hell.

I am very sensitive about such things. I can endure the direct hardships — my Indian heritage, I suppose. But I can’t stand a stinky squaw.

I opened my eyes and frowned up at her.

“Look, baby,” I said. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but — b-bbbbbbb-uht—”

It wasn’t Kay.

It wasn’t anyone I had ever seen before.

He was a young man, younger than I was. I knew that without knowing exactly how I knew it. Perhaps it was due to cocksureness, the arrogance that emanated from him like the odor of sweat. He was also a pro — a professional killer.

No one but a pro would have had the incredible nervelessness and patience of this man. To loiter in a hospital lobby, say, until he could give me a murderous shove down its entrance steps. Or to wait in the fields adjacent to my house, until he could get me in the scope of his high-powered rifle. Or, missing me, to go on waiting until the house was unguarded and I was unprotected.

The pro knows that there is always a time to kill, if he will wait for it. He knows that when necessity demands disguise, it must be quickly and easily used, and readily disposed of. And this man was wearing makeup.

It was a dry kind, a sort of chalk. It could be applied with a few practiced touches, removed with a brush of the sleeve. I could detect it because he had overused it, making his face a shocking mask of hideousness.

Cavernous eyes. A goblin’s mouth. Repulsively exaggerated nostrils.

And why? Why the desire to scare me witless? Hatred? Why would he hate me?

There was a click. The gleam of a razor-sharp switchblade. He held it up for me to see — gingerly tested its murderous edge, then looked at me grinning, relishing my stark terror.

Why? Who? Who could enjoy my torture, and why?

“Why, you son of a bitch!” I exploded. “You’re Manny’s husband!” His eyes flickered acknowledgment as I looked past him. “Get him, Manny! Get him good, this time!”

He turned his head. An impulse reaction.

The ruse bought me a split second. I vaulted over the end of the bed and hurtled into the bathroom, slammed and locked the door, just as he lunged against it.

A crack appeared in the inlaid paneling of the door. I called out to the guy shakily, foolishly. “I’m a historical monument, mister. This house is, I mean. You damage a historical monument, and—”

His shoulder hit the panel like a pile driver.

The crack became a split.

He swung viciously and his fist came through the wood. He fumbled blindly for the lock. I stooped, opened my mouth, and chomped down on his fingers.

There was an anguished yell. He jerked his hand back so hard that I bumped my head against the door. I massaged it carefully, listening, straining my ears for some indication of what the bastard would try next.

I couldn’t hear anything. Not a damned thing.

I continued to listen, and I still heard nothing.

Had he given up? No way! Not so soon. Not a professional killer with a personal interest in wasting me. Who hated me, was jealous of me, because of Manny.

“Look, you!” I called to him. “It’s all over between Manny and me. I mean it!”

I paused, listening.

“You hear me out there? It’s you and her from now on. She told me so herself. Maybe you think she’s stalling by going to the hospital, but...”

Maybe she was, too. Maybe her earlier hospitalization had also been a stall. Or maybe just the thought of being tied up with this guy again had driven her up the wall. Because he really had her on the spot, you know?

She had tried to kill him, had done such a job on him that she believed she had killed him. Thus her long convalescence after his “death.” Also, after his recent reappearance, he would have discovered her painful pestering of me in the course of casing her situation. So she was vulnerable to pressure — a girl who had not only tried to kill her husband but had also pulled some pretty raw stuff on her whilom lover. And the fact that her husband, the guy who was pressuring her, was on pretty shaky grounds himself would not deter him for a moment.

For he was one of those bullish, dog-in-the-manger types. The kind who would pull the temple down on his head to get a fly on the ceiling. That was the way it was. Add up everything that had happened and that was the answer.

I called out to him again, making my voice stern. I said I would give him until I counted to ten, wondering what the hell I was talking about. Until I counted to ten, then what? But he didn’t seem very bright, either, so I went right ahead.

“One two three four — Do you hear me? I’m counting! — five six seven eight — All right! Don t say I didn’t warn you! — ni-un ten!”

Silence.

Still silence.

Well, he could be gone, couldn’t he? I’d chomped down on his fingers damned hard, and he could be seriously bitten. Maybe I’d even gotten an artery, and the bastard had beat it before he bled to death.

It just about had to be something like that. I would just about have to hear him if he still remained here.

I unlocked the door. I hesitated, then suddenly flung it open. And—

I think he must have been standing against the far wall of the bedroom. Nursing his injured hand. Measuring the distance to the bathroom door as he readied himself for the attack upon it.

Then, at last, hurtling himself forward. Head lowered, shoulders hunched, legs churning like pistons, rapidly gaining momentum until he hit the door with the impact of a charging bull. Rather, he didn’t hit the door, since the door was no longer there. I had flung it open. Instead, he rocketed through the opening and hit the wall on the opposite side. And he hit it so hard that several of its tiles were loosened.

There was an explosive spllaat! He bounced backward, and his head struck the floor with the sound of a bursting melon.

For a moment, I thought he must be dead. Then, a kind of twitching shudder ran through his body, and I knew he was only dead to the world. Very unconscious, but very much alive.

I got busy.

I yanked off my robe and tied him up with its cord.

I grabbed up some towels and tied him up with them.