Брайан Гарфилд - The Hit

It had to be somewhere. Brawley had had it; DeAngelo hadn’t found it.

I went back outside, very scared now, but remembering what Joanne had told me — the loot might have fitted into the trunk of a car. I got Brawley’s keys from the ignition and went back and opened the trunk, all the while keeping my senses alert for sign of DeAngelo’s return or the arrival of reinforcements.

It was all there, stuffed into the trunk of the pink Cadillac, crammed tight into every inch of space.

From the linen closet of Brawley’s office I took a stack of folded bedsheets, the kind that nurses used to cover the examination tables. They weren’t too large but they had to do. I opened the sheets one at a time and made laundry bundles of the money from the Cadillac trunk, tying the sheets up by their corners. I put them all in the bed of the Jeep and put the metal lockboxes, seven of them, on top to weight the sheets down; I slammed the Cadillac trunk, tossed the keys on the seat beside the dead man, and went around the Cadillac wiping fingerprints. I did a fast job and headed for the Jeep with a gun in my hand — I had spent far too much time here.

Then a sound rocked my head back: the wail of a siren’s idiot laughter, somewhere close by.

I backed the Jeep down the service road to a wide spot, turned around, and headed up toward the shopping center plaza, which was the only way out.

I came out from between two buildings in second gear, pushing the gas, but the police car slithered across my path and squealed to a halt. The door slammed open and the driver leaped out — Joe Cutter, lifting his .357 Magnum.

DeAngelo must have called him in. I ducked my head, spun the wheel and braked the Jeep. Cutter’s gun boomed. My windshield took another bullet hole, the second for the day; by then I was out, diving flat, hitting the asphalt painfully on one shoulder and rolling. I rolled past the Jeep in time to see him shift his aim toward me; he had the Jeep’s headlights in his eyes and he was squinting with a ferocious scowl crouching down on one knee to aim. I used Brawley’s Walther pistol. My steady, firm pressure on the trigger made it go off. It caught me almost by surprise, as it should. Magically, as if by stop-motion photography, a dark disc appeared on the side of Cutter’s heavy face. Blood burst from his cheeks; his head snapped to one side under the bullet’s impact.

He pitched to the pavement, full in the cone of the headlights.

I sprinted across the fifty feet that separated us. The hole in his cheekbone was rimmed by droplets of crimson froth. His expressionless eyes blinked twice and stayed open, focused on my knees.

There didn’t seem to be anyone about. I turned a circle on my heels to make sure. As I completed the turn, my eyes fell on Cutter’s heavy .357 revolver. Of all the people I’d known, Cutter had been most likely to die by the sword. Sometimes I had thought he was just batting around seeking a place to die. He had found it.

I picked him up and put him in the squad car, put the Magnum in his hand and drove the squad car through the alley; I parked it behind the Cadillac and left Cutter dead behind the wheel. Then I walked over to the pink Cadillac and pressed the Walther pistol into Brawley’s dead hand. Paraffin tests would prove Brawley hadn’t shot him, but a superficial investigation would suggest he had. And I had no doubt the Walther was the same gun that had killed Aiello. It had been in Brawley’s safe and I presumed it was registered to Brawley. Let the cops figure it out. There was nothing to tie me in, except DeAngelo, and he wasn’t likely to finger me for the cops.

I had things in mind for DeAngelo. I walked back out to the Jeep and drove away; in the bed behind me, wind rattled the bedsheet bundles of money.

I eased Joanne’s beige convertible to the curb by a roadside phone booth and switched off the ignition. The morning sun whacked the boulevard, traffic swishing by. Joanne said, “Are you sure we have to do it this way?”

“Yes. Scared?”

“Yes.”

I patted her hand, got out, and went into the phone booth. It was Freddie’s dull voice that answered my ring and I asked him to call Madonna to the phone. Madonna came on the wire growling. “Where are you?”

“Is that the only question you know how to ask?”

“Listen, Crane, I—”

“Let me do the talking. You want to know where that missing property is, don’t you?”

“You son of a bitch.”

“Sure. Look, the reason I’m calling first, I don’t want to get mown down by artillery on your doorstep. I’m coming up to your house and I’m bringing Mrs. Farrell with me.”

“Come ahead,” he said. “I’ll be waiting.”

“Not like that,” I snapped. “I know where that property is, but you’ll never find it if you don’t give me a chance to talk to you.”

“You’ll have plenty chance to talk to me, Crane. I promise you that.”

“Not under a gun,” I said. “You may recall there were certain items in that shipment of property which could make things a little uncomfortable for you if they got released to the wrong parties. Some of those items are in the care of a person who’ll release those items at midnight tonight unless I intercept that person and give instructions not to release it. And don’t think I can be pressured into giving you that person’s name, because even if the muscle boys went to work on me they wouldn’t be able to get to this person in time to keep the stuff from being released. You understand?”

The cold bass voice said, “Crane, you’re talking into a dead phone. Get the hell up here. I’ll listen to what you’ve got to say but let’s quit making threats. I don’t like threats.”

“Sure — just so we understand each other. One more thing. Don’t believe everything Pete DeAngelo tells you.”

“I don’t believe everything anybody tells me. You’ve still got till noon to close our deal. It’s ten o’clock now. When will I see you?”

“We’ll be there in twenty minutes,” I said, and hung up.

I slipped into the driver’s seat. Joanne said, “All set?”

“All set.”

“Put your arms around me, darling.”

I did. Nose to nose, we drowned in each other’s eyes. I grinned at her. I felt jumpy but alert; I had taken a speed tablet, one of Nancy Lansford’s diet pills. We had been up all night, busy.

We kissed at length, right out in what Mike would have called bare-ass daylight, and when Joanne straightened out and arranged herself on the seat she said, “I’ll probably never stop thanking you for what you did with that film.”

I turned the key and pulled out into the traffic, heading for the foothills. I had burned the movie film at my house at midnight and flushed the ashes down the toilet. It had made a terrible stink, the burning film. I hadn’t looked at it before destroying it.

It was the only part of the loot I hadn’t examined, in detail; that was what had taken all night. That, and arranging for the safekeeping and possible release of the material — my weapon against Madonna and DeAngelo.

We turned onto the Strip. Joanne said, “I’m still scared to death. I will be until it’s over.”

“It’ll work,” I said. I grinned at her. “If you can’t join ’em, lick ’em.”

“I know, but something could go wrong.”

I didn’t answer. We were underdogs against the organization, of course. But the weapon of an underdog’s survival is cunning. With a little luck we might come out all right. But she was right, there were risks. I was sure DeAngelo had spent the night trying to find a wall to nail us to. It would be a bad mistake to underestimate him.

By the time we crunched to a stop behind the beautiful old Continental in Madonna’s driveway, Freddie the Neanderthal had the door open and was standing there, leaning forward like Buster Keaton, wearing a rumpled sports jacket over his gun and glowering at us. I saw DeAngelo’s Mercedes and the blue Ford that Senna and Baker had visited us in. That was all right; the more muscle in the house, the better — if my scheme worked.