Brett Halliday - At the Point of a. 38

After taking the loads out of Tibbett’s shotgun, Shayne moved into the back seat and untied the carton of money. Taking out one of the bills, he held it to the light.

“Damn nice job,” he commented after a moment. “It looks real to me. It feels real.”

“One of the best fakes I ever saw,” Coddington said. “The giveaway is a little blot in the spinach on Ben’s collar. See where the line thickens?”

Shayne found the imperfection, which he would never have noticed if Coddington hadn’t pointed it out. He emptied his back-seat refrigerator, and filled it with money. Coddington took everything that had come out of the refrigerator to his own car, and stayed there.

Shayne moved back into the front seat, and the waiting resumed.

Tibbett reappeared, wearing two of the band-aids Shayne had seen in Helen’s purse. His balance was better, and he moved in a straight line. But as he crouched to enter the low car, he miscalculated the opening, and banged his head. The door stayed open until he recovered.

Waiting was a major part of Shayne’s job, and he had long since adjusted to it. But Tibbett moved nervously, lighting cigarettes and throwing them away almost unsmoked. Two boys went by on bikes, wearing bathing trunks. There was little through traffic, but an occasional car or delivery truck came and went. Mail was being delivered. A salesman carrying a sample case worked along from house to house, and gave Coddington and Shayne a close inspection as he passed.

And then it happened, though not precisely the way Shayne had planned.

A black Pinto, cruising at moderate speed, braked to a stop in front of the For Sale sign, and the driver honked. Shayne turned on the ignition and went into gear.

The Buick and the MG both moved out at the same instant. Tibbett accelerated hard. The twin shotgun barrels came out the window. The driver’s door of the Pinto opened. Coming abreast, the MG slowed abruptly.

The shotgun roared.

Over the Buick’s noises, Shayne heard a scream. The MG careened ahead, then darted off at an angle, mounted the low curb, and crashed smoking into the porch of one of the almost identical houses.

Shayne pulled up to the Pinto and got out.

The driver was a youth in his late teens, with long, untidy blond hair, in a black lightweight raincoat. Like Sergeant Tibbett, he had been driving barefoot. He had been smashed back into the car, his feet still outside on the pavement. Shayne’s makeshift weld had failed to hold in one of the Winchester barrels, and the bolt-head had been driven into the boy’s chest. But the obstruction had broken the close-range pattern, and some of the pellets had gone past to tear up the front seat and strike Murray Gold, hanging from his seatbelt on the other side of the wounded boy.

Gold stared incredulously at Shayne. “Mike Shayne.”

“Who did you expect?”

Gold moaned, and picked at the tangled harness. “Get me out of this.”

“Murray, I know this is going to be hard for you, but a man in your position has to learn to say please.”

Shayne left him hanging, and looked for the money. He found an old-fashioned leather satchel on the floor of the back seat. He swung it into his own car and followed it in. Gold was making plaintive noises behind him. Shayne turned the satchel upside down and dumped the money on the floor. He refilled the satchel with counterfeits from the refrigerator, replacing them with the genuine bills-at least he hoped these were genuine. By craning, Artie Constable could have seen what he was doing, but he was going fast. He clutched himself tightly beneath the breast bone with both hands. The acne on his face stood out like stigmata. A bubble broke at his lips.

Artie’s body and Shayne’s own back screened Shayne’s actions from Gold. “You son of a bitch,” Gold said faintly. “Please.”

Artie fell back. Doors were opening along the block. Women appeared on the porches. Coddington, as instructed, stayed where he was, waiting for Shayne to signal. Shayne took a gun from each of the boy’s raincoat pockets, two more from the floor of the Pinto’s front seat, and threw them into the Buick. He honked his horn and looked up at the second floor windows. When nothing happened he honked again, a long demanding blare, and Helen came out, looking mad and frightened. This time she brought Raggedy Ann.

Shayne circled the Pinto to open the door on Gold’s side. The old man was sighing heavily.

“I need some help here,” Shayne said. “I can’t carry him.”

“You bastard.”

“Don’t blame me. I didn’t shoot anybody.”

“Don’t blame you,” she said bitterly. “You really know how to spoil things, don’t you?”

Gold said feebly, “Baby, help me.”

“God, look at Artie,” the girl said.

Artie was clearly dying. His head was against Gold’s thigh. His hands fell away from the wound, which had the circumference of a clenched fist. He rolled out of the seat and lay with his neck on the knob of the stick shift.

Shayne patted Gold and took a gun out of his waistband. Only then did he unhook the belt.

“How bad is he?” the girl said.

“Let’s take him somewhere and see. Move him to my car. You carry him. I’ll carry Raggedy.” While she struggled with Gold, Shayne went to check on Sergeant Tibbett. The top barrel of the Winchester had blown apart in his face, and there was nothing anyone could do to help. The air force would give him a military funeral.

Gold was almost as limp and floppy as Helen’s long-limbed doll. She kept him on his feet and moving. A car stopped; Shayne waved it on. Gold and the girl fell together into the back seat of the Buick.

Helen saw two things, the satchel and the shotgun. Her eyes jumped to Shayne.

“Don’t grab it,” he told her. “It isn’t loaded. But the satchel is, you’ll be glad to hear. Close the door.”

“And just leave Artie-”

“Artie forgot that when you fool around with loaded guns, they sometimes go off. But you weren’t planning to take him with you, were you? Sergeant Tibbett was more mature. A much better complexion.”

She cut her eyes at Gold, to see how much of this he was comprehending. Not much, probably.

“Your father won’t care for any of this,” Shayne said.

“Don’t I know it,” she muttered, and went on, for Gold’s benefit, “Was that Tibbett in the red car? What happened, did Artie shoot him?”

Shayne gave a barking half-laugh, and drove off. Gold was waving, begging for attention.

“Wipe off the blood and slap on a few band-aids. That’s mostly shock. Nobody’s had the guts to shoot at him in years. I think you’ll find a box of Kleenex back there somewhere.”

She worked in silence while Shayne took the turn toward the ocean, then started south. Gold gave a yip of pain.

“Are you going to tell us where the hell we’re going?” she said.

“We’ll talk about that as soon as I find a place to stop. There’s a lot of picking up to do after a double-shooting, and we don’t want to spend the day answering questions, do we?”

Hearing a faint sound a moment later, he twisted the rearview mirror so he could see what was happening in the back seat. The girl was whispering into the old man’s ear. Gold’s eyes met Shayne’s. Hearing that Shayne was willing to talk was helping him recover.

Shayne swung into a two-table picnic area between the road and the ocean, and turned everything off except the tape-recorder. Gold came up on his elbows.

“How serious?” he asked the girl.

“If you’ll hold still for a minute,” she said crossly, “maybe I can tell you.”

She spat on a folded Kleenex and scrubbed at his face. He tried to push her away.