Ричард Деминг - Man-Trap

“Mr. Davis wants to find out if Farmer Cole and I actually do have anything in common,” I explained. “Go along with Mr. Davis.”

Laurie escorted her out as courteously as though he were leading her onto a dance floor. At the door he paused to look back at me with no rancor whatever.

“Understand I have no quarrel with your ideals, Mr. Moon. As a matter of fact I admire a man with principles. It’s one of the things which made me back Lancaster for lieutenant governor. But if you insist on tweaking the devil’s nose, you really have no cause for complaint when you find his horns in your stomach.”

“Sure,” I said dryly. “No hard feelings. I’ll ring Murdoch’s flat when I’m ready for you to come after your boy.”

I think he might have let himself laugh, had it not required so much effort. Instead he contented himself with a dry final remark.

“Let the Farmer call me, if you don’t feel like lifting the phone.”

After the door closed, Farmer Cole and I sat examining each other a few moments. Finally the Farmer spoke.

“All the boss wants is the name of that firm,” he said reasonably. “You could save us both trouble.”

“You get paid pretty well?” I asked.

He considered the question. “Pretty well.”

“Then why should I save you trouble? Earn your money.”

Still seated, he contemplated me with an almost vacuous expression on his face. Unexpectedly his hand flashed under his coat. On top of catching me completely by surprise, it was the fastest draw I ever saw, at least twice as fast as I could have managed. My fingers were just dipping past my lapel when I froze them there because I found myself staring at the bore of a forty-five automatic.

“I didn’t expect gunplay,” I said. “Going to shoot the information out of me?”

“The element of surprise is half the battle, son. Bring it out easy, with just your thumb and forefinger. Put it on the floor in front of you.”

In slow motion I complied.

“Now kick it over here.”

I toed the P-38 across to him.

Rising from his chair, he walked to the window in back of him and laid both guns on the sill. “No gunplay,” he said explanatorily. “Just a precaution. I couldn’t have you reaching for a gun, and maybe have to wing you.”

“I see,” I said. “Thoughtful of you.”

“Now the program,” he explained without expression, “is for me to make you want to tell the name of that firm. It’s only fair to tell you I know a million techniques, and you couldn’t stop any of them. You got a last chance to tell me peacefully.”

“Stop calling it a firm,” I said. “It’s a corporation.”

Again he moved with the speed of light, but this time not unexpectedly. He intended it to be unexpected, but I have a prejudice against being caught napping twice in a row.

With almost unbelievable swiftness he was across the room and one bony hand was darting for my left wrist for a judo hold. I got the wrist out of the way by shooting a left jab where his face should have been. It wasn’t.

During the next few minutes I discovered the Farmer had better than an amateur knowledge of boxing, judo and plain wrestling. He made no attempt to hit me, employing his boxing skill only in defense. Apparently his design was to get me in his hands and bend parts of me until I felt like talking. The closest I came to tagging him was a solid right cross meant for his jaw which landed high on his left shoulder.

If he wanted judo, we would fight on his terms awhile and see what happened.

What happened was that he threw me half across the room on my face, flopped on my back before I could roll clear, clamped a scissors around my legs and twisted my right arm up into the middle of my back, where he kept it with a double arm lock.

“In case you hadn’t noticed, the fight is over,” he said.

Gradually he increased the pressure on my arm. When he saw the sweat dripping from my face and knew the pain almost had me screaming, he said, “This goes on until you tell me that firm name.”

You don’t stand pain like that for long without either crying uncle or going unconscious, and he kept it at a point just short of where I could find relief in unconsciousness. He kept it there for five minutes.

“You’re biting your lip,” he said finally. “It’s bleeding.”

I decided to break the hold.

Working my left hand under my chest, I began to draw my knees forward.

“You damn fool!” the Farmer said. “Don’t make me cripple you.”

Slowly, despite the excruciating pain, I forced my knees forward until they were solidly under me. The next step was to push my face off the floor, roll sidewise and dislocate my shoulder.

Farmer Cole knew exactly what I was doing. When I got my face six inches from the floor, he suddenly released me.

When I climbed unsteadily to my feet and began to massage my numb arm, he was standing three feet away eyeing me moodily. “I pass,” he said.

I continued to massage my arm.

“I should waste my time,” he elaborated. “Any idiot stubborn enough to pull what you just tried isn’t going to tell me anything no matter what I do to him.”

“That’s right,” I agreed. Licking my lips, I discovered he had been telling the truth about my biting them. They tasted of blood.

“So it’s a draw,” the Farmer said. “No hard feelings?”

“No hard feelings,” I told him.

Then I moved unexpectedly. Driving forward, I wrapped him in a bear hug and carried him against the wall at a dead run. As the air whooshed out of him, I banged him in the left eye with my forehead.

That dazed him enough so that he stood still while I unwrapped my arms and smashed an elbow into his jaw. I followed it with the other elbow, stepped back and watched him slide to a sitting position on the floor.

His jaw must have been iron, for he wasn’t quite out even after that punishment. After a moment he shook his head and looked at me groggily.

“The element of surprise is half the battle, son,” I told him.

The damned fool grinned at me.

It was another twenty minutes before we bothered to phone Murdoch’s apartment. First we brushed each other off, then washed our hands and faces, then he painted my lip with iodine and I put a cold compress on his left eye.

After that we had a drink.

By the time the Farmer finally got around to phoning, we were on our second drink and had discovered, as Laurie Davis suggested, we had a lot in common. I was mixing a third drink when Laurie and Fausta returned.

Both of them looked from my swollen lip to the Farmer’s swollen eye, but neither said anything.

“It was a draw,” Cole explained briefly.

I mixed drinks for Fausta and Davis.

I have to credit Davis with being a cheerful loser. He simply accepted the situation and asked no questions whatever. His sole reference to the matter was an oblique remark he made just as he and the Farmer were leaving.

“If the Farmer ever leaves me, would you be interested in a job as a bodyguard, Mr. Moon?”

“Let’s take that up when it happens,” I suggested.

When they were gone, Fausta said, “I never in my life heard of such childishness. Two grown men fighting like babies, and then ending up friends. Your lip looks awful.”

I grinned at her.

“Also, it is way after noon, and time for you to feed me.”

Since she wanted to check up on how the club was functioning in her absence, we killed two birds with one stone by lunching at El Patio. It was a casual remark of Fausta’s during lunch which upset the applecart of the assassin of Walter Lancaster and Willard Knight.

She said, “Does it not make you think sometimes, Manny, that a person’s whole life may be changed by some small irrelevant thing which in itself is entirely unrelated to the person?”