Эд Макбейн - Learning to Kill - Stories

The hands continued, moving feverishly, and suddenly she realized there was wild strength in the fingers. She looked down in panic. This wasn’t... couldn’t be...

The hand she saw was covered with hair.

Long slender fingers, but dark masculine hair.

“I thought...” she murmured, and then she began screaming.

When the train pulled into 125th Street, she was still Screaming. The tall girl who’d also been standing behind her left the car with the other passengers, all shaking their heads.

The policeman held the short, squat man firmly.

“He was molesting me!” she told the policeman. “A man. A man! ” And then, because he was looking at her so strangely, she added, “This man, Officer.”

I promise.

This story carried the Richard Marsten byline when it was first published in Manhunt in February of 1953. As a twist on a Woman in Jeopardy yarn, it combines an exotic locale with a sort of action-adventure hero and a true bandito-style villain. It is an absolute coincidence that the bad guy in this story is called Carrera whereas the good guy in the 87th Precinct series, three years later, would be called Carella.

The Mexican sky hung over our heads like a pale blue circus tent. We crouched behind the rocks, and we each held .45s in our fists. We were high in the Sierra Madres, and the rocks were jagged and sharp, high outcroppings untouched by erosive waters. Between us was a stretch of pebble-strewn flatland and a solid wall of hatred that seemed alive in the heat of the sun. We were just about even, but not quite.

The guy behind the other .45 had ten thousand dollars that belonged to me.

I had something that belonged to him.

His woman.

She lay beside me now, flat on her belly, her hands and her feet bound. She was slim and browned from the sun. Her legs were long and sleek where her skirt ended. Her head was twisted away from me, her hair as black as her boyfriend’s heart.

“Carrera!” I shouted.

“I hear you, señor, ” he answered.

His voice was as big as he was. I thought of his paunch, and I thought of the ten G’s in the money belt pressed tight against his sweaty flesh. I’d worked hard for that money. I’d sweated in the Tampico oil fields for more than three years, socking it away a little at a time, letting it pile up for the day I could kiss Mexico good-bye.

“Look, Carrera,” I said, “I’m giving you one last chance.”

“Save your breath, señor, ” he called back.

“You’d better save yours, you bastard,” I shouted. “You’d better save it because pretty soon you’re not going to have any.”

“Perhaps,” he answered.

I couldn’t see him because his head was pulled down below the rocks. But I knew he was grinning.

“I want that ten thousand,” I shouted.

He laughed aloud this time.

“Ah, but that is where the difficulty lies,” he said. “I want it, too.”

“Look, Carrera, I’m through playing around,” I told him. “If you’re not out of there in five minutes, I’m going to put a hole in your sweetie’s head.” I paused, wondering if he’d heard me. “You got that, Carrera? Five minutes.”

He waited again before answering.

“You had better shoot her now, señor. You are not getting this money.”

The girl began laughing.

“What’s so damn funny?” I asked her.

“You will never outwait Carrera,” she said. Her voice was as low and as deep as her laugh. “Carrera is a very patient man.”

“I can be patient, too, sister,” I said. “I patiently saved that ten thousand bucks for three years, and no tinhorn crook is going to step in and swipe it.”

“You underestimate Carrera,” she said.

“No, baby, I’ve got Carrera pegged to a tee. He’s a small-time punk. Back in the States, he’d be shaking pennies out of gum machines. He probably steals tortillas from blind old ladies down here.”

“You underestimate him,” she repeated.

I shook my head. “This is Carrera’s big killing — or so he thinks. That ten thousand is his key to the big time. Only it belongs to me, and it’s coming back to me.”

“If you were smart,” she said, “you would leave. You would pack up and go, my friend. And you wouldn’t stop to look back.”

“I’m not smart.”

“I know. So you’ll stay here, and Carrera will kill you. Or I will kill you. Either way, you will be dead, and your money will be gone, anyway.” She paused. A faint smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “It is better that you lose only your money.”

I glanced at my watch.

“Carrera has about two minutes, honey.”

“And after that?”

“It’s up to him,” I said. As if to check, I shouted, “You like your girlfriends dead, Carrera?”

“Ten thousand dollars will buy a lot of girlfriends,” he called back.

I looked down at her.

“Did you hear your boyfriend?” I asked.

“I heard.”

“He doesn’t seem to give a damn whether I shoot you or not.”

She shrugged. “It is not that,” she said. “He simply knows that you will not kill me.”

“Don’t be too surprised, baby.”

The smile flitted across her face again, was gone almost before it started. “You will not kill me,” she said.

I didn’t answer her. I kept looking at my watch until the time was up. Nothing came from Carrera. Not another word.

“Now what?” she asked.

“What’s your name?”

She didn’t answer.

I shrugged. “Suit yourself,” I said.

“My name is Linda,” she said.

“Make yourself comfortable, Linda,” I told her. “We’re going to be here for quite some time.”

I meant that. I still hadn’t figured out how I was going to get my money from Carrera, but I knew damn well I was staying here until I did get it. Crossing the open dirt patch would have been suicide. But at the same time, Carrera couldn’t cross it, either. Not unless he wanted a slug through his fat face. I thought of that, and I began to wish he would try to get across the clearing. Nothing would have pleased me more than to have his nose resting on the sight at the end of my gun muzzle.

Ten thousand bucks! Ten thousand, hard-earned American dollars. How had Carrera found out about it? Had I talked too much? Hell, it was general knowledge that I was putting away a nest egg to take back to the States. Carrera had probably been watching me for a long time, planning his larceny from a distance, waiting until I was ready to shove off for home.

“It’s getting dark,” Linda said.

I lifted my eyes to the sky.

The sun was dipping low over the horizon, splashing the sky with brilliant reds and oranges. The peaks of the mountains glowed brilliantly as the dying rays lingered in crevices and hollows. A crescent moon hung palely against the deepening wash of night, sharing the sky with the sinking sun.

And suddenly it was black.

There was no transition, no dusk, no violets or purples. The sun was simply swallowed up, and stars appeared against the blackness. A stiff breeze worked its way down from the caps of the mountains, spreading cold where there had once been intolerable heat.

“You’d better get some sleep,” I said.

“And you?”

“With that pig across the way? I’ll stay awake, thanks.”

She grinned. “Carrera will sleep. You can bet on that.”

“I wish I could bet on that. I’d go right over and make sure he never woke up.”

“Oh my,” she mocked, “such a tough one.”

I said nothing.

“I don’t even know your name,” she said.

“Jeff,” I told her. “Jeff MacCauley.”