Макс Коллинз - Shoot the Moon (and more)

“The proverbial sitting ducks,” she said. And smiled.

And smiled, for God’s sake.

So did I.

“How about a public phone, there’s surely one around here someplace, Smitty,”

“No go, kid. Bars are long since closed, and as for a booth, we can’t stand around in one spot that long. If we could find one. No, we’ll have to find some place to hide till the streets get busy. Toward mid-morning, when the people are thick on the street, we can blend into the crowd and then maybe get away because it’d attract too much attention if they shot at us in broad daylight.”

“What will we do, Smitty, what can we do?”

I latched onto her hand. I pulled her in close and looked her right in her pretty Karen face and said, “You are on my side, aren’t you, kid? I killed a man tonight and if you’re not on my side I’m liable to do other things.”

Her thin arms wrapped around me and she held herself close to me, warm to me, soft to me, saying, “I’m on your side, Smitty. On your side all the way.”

I put my hands on her waist and held her away from me. “Then come on. Let’s get the hell out. In the john, out the window.”

“Huh?”

“Fire escape, kid, follow me.”

“All the way, Smitty.”

The scape got stuck toward the bottom and I had to jump half a story. Suzie eased down into my arms and I set her down and we stood and brushed ourselves off, looking all about us. No sign of anyone. I kept the .32 tight in my shaking hand, moving it in front of me back and forth in a steady swinging arc, a pendulum extending from my shoulder.

“You... scared, Smitty?”

“Shitless.”

She laughed. “So am I. Boy, so am I.”

I smiled at her. Going to get killed any minute and she’s laughing. Well, what the hell, and why not? Hadn’t I smiled back?

I turned and looked down the alley. A block down, a solid block down uninterrupted by streets, two tight walls of building on each side, the alley stopped in a dead end. The dead end was the back of an old factory of some kind: faded lettering read “Christie Brothers Manufacturing Company.” I could see steps presumably leading down to a back entrance.

“Come on, Suzie,” I whispered.

And we ran, footsteps echoing.

The door had an old-fashioned key-hole lock, and all it took was a good swift kick to pop it open and in we went.

It was a dusty dump, but it was home.

There were a couple dozen old wooden crates of various sizes scattered about the room. Which wasn’t very big, as rooms go: long and narrow and naked, a boxcar of a room. The floor held a good inch of dust and the cobwebs hung from the low ceiling like old lace curtains.

The first thing we did was barricade the door behind us with three of the sturdiest crates. Another door, opposite the one we’d just entered by and leading, most likely, into some part of the deserted old factory, we likewise barricaded with two heavy boxes. There were several windows, but they were smoked with age, so there was no sweat to that. I cleared a spot in one corner and dusted off two crates for us to sit on and piled all the others in front of us.

I sat down on one of the crates and she sat next to me and we smoked two of the ten cigarettes I had left. The burning tips glowed in the room like lights on a boat lost in fog.

“I like you, Smitty,” she whispered. All the rest of the time we talked it was in whispers.

“I like you too, Miss Stewart.”

“That... that isn’t really my name.”

“The hell...”

“I’m not Suzie Stewart.”

Shrugged. “I was kind of afraid of that. It was a sucker play, wasn’t it.”

“I don’t know what it was, Smitty.”

“Who hired you? Vin?”

“Mr. Thompson, you mean?”

“Yeah, him. Was it him?”

“Yes.”

“It’s coming slow, but it’s coming.”

“Smitty?”

“What?”

“Who do you work for?”

“Who do I work for? Well, starting alphabetically, I guess it’d be Ace Insurance, Acme Insurance, Atlas Insurance, Carolina Casualty...”

“No... I mean really. Really.”

“Really. Ace Insurance, Acme Insur...”

“I don’t get it, then, Smitty.”

“Look, Suzie, we’ll have to piece it together bit by weary bit, okay?”

“Okay.”

“First off, who the hell are you?”

“I’m Susan Wynn, a secretary.”

“Well, that’s something at least. I can still call you Suzie.”

She smiled a nice little smile. Nice even in the dust and dark. “Does it matter to you?” she asked, and I said it didn’t.

“Are you going to kiss me, Smitty?”

“Yes, and lots of other things as soon as we get this figured out.”

“Kiss me now, Smitty. We may not get it figured out at all.”

She was right, so I kissed her and it was fine. The dust and the cobwebs and the blood of somebody dead on my hands and all of it didn’t matter. It was fine.

“I hope I get to kiss you a lot more, Suzie. A million times more. I hope sometime next week you and I will be kissing each other in the hot sun on warm white sand somewhere. And since I’d like to be doing that with you next week somewhere, alive, I’m not going to kiss you for a while so we can figure this out and try to save our skins.”

But it was too late. She had started to cry and I had to kiss her again, soft and warm and with her tongue touching my teeth lightly and the salty taste of her tears, and then I was touching a white, rose-tipped breast, then kissing it, and her soft young body was all around me on the dusty floor and it was too late. Karen, I thought once, but only once.

“Will we be killed?”

“Shush. I’m thinking.”

She held tight to my waist and we lay huddled together in the dirty corner, behind the crates.

“Let’s go over it again, slowly,” I said, ignoring the dry coat of grime on my lips.

“All right, Smitty.”

“Thompson came to you as a representative of the government and asked your help. Very spur of the moment, as it was with me.”

“Yes... but how spur of the moment was it, really?”

“Not very. Obviously they’ve groomed us for our roles for quite some time. I was chosen because Vin knew me and knew I wasn’t the biggest hero the world had ever seen, knew I’d probably panic and blow sky high when thrown into a situation like this. And because he thought I could be easily browbeaten into it in the first place. My being a coward was his ace in the hole.”

“You’re no coward.”

“How many heroes do you know of run into the can and puke their guts out?”

“Life isn’t a movie, Smitty.”

“You call this living?”

“But Smitty, why’d they pick me for this?”

“You have a superficial resemblance to the real Susan Stewart. Who has a superficial resemblance to a girl named Karen, to whom I was almost married. Once. A long time ago.”

“Another reason why you were chosen for a leading role?”

“Right. And another reason why you were chosen for yours. You, too, have a superficial resemblance to Karen. Psychological warfare. Your resemblance to my Karen is the mental torture chamber those bastards have planned my breaking point around.”

“I’m following this... I guess. But what’s it all about?”

“Organized crime or someone involved with it trying to keep Senator Stewart’s death a mystery, I assume. Vin and his pals are either in it themselves, or hired by someone who is. Being involved in the murder of said senator makes it follow that they’re wanting to kill Susan Stewart, the only witness. I was supposed to be framed for it.”

“How?”

“Well, I was set in that room guarding you with a gun loaded with blanks. I suppose that set-up was meant to get me to fire that gun and plaster my hand with power burns and such, which, incidentally, I did. Then my gun, with live ammunition, would be used to kill the real Suzie Stewart — who was probably being held captive in the backseat of the Lincoln they brought me over in — and I’d be set up as the murderer.”