Роберт Беллем - Pulp Frictions

Duncan, the female impersonator, looked — and yelled.

A small, square, tinted glass window high up in the corner of the back wall had swung open quite silently. I was looking at it, past Galbraith’s ear, straight at the black snout of a tommy-gun, on the sill, at the two hard black eyes behind the gun.

A voice I had last heard soothing a dog said, ‘How’s to drop the rod, sister? And you at the desk — grab a cloud.’

The big cop’s mouth sucked for air. Then his whole face tightened and he jerked around and the Luger gave one hard, sharp cough.

I dropped to the floor as the tommy-gun cut loose in a short burst. Galbraith crumpled beside the desk, fell on his back with his legs twisted. Blood came out of his nose and mouth.

The cop in nurse’s uniform turned as white as the starched cap. His gun bounced. His hands tried to claw at the ceiling.

There was a queer, stunned silence.

A door opened and shut distinctly and running steps came along the hall. The door of our room was pushed wide. Diana Saint came in with a brace of automatics in her hands.

I got up off the floor, keeping my hands in sight. She tossed her voice calmly at the window, without looking towards it.

‘OK, Jerry. I can hold them.’

Saint’s head and shoulders and his submachine-gun went away from the frame of the window, leaving blue sky and the thin, distinct branches of a tall tree.

In the room we were five statues, two fallen.

Somebody had to move. The situation called for two more killings. From Saint’s angle I couldn’t see it any other way. There had to be a clean-up.

The gag hadn’t worked when it wasn’t a gag. I tried it again when it was. I looked past the woman’s shoulder, kicked a hard grin on to my face, said hoarsely, ‘Hullo, Mike. Just in time.’

It didn’t fool her, of course, but it made her mad. She stiffened her body and snapped a shot at me from the right-hand gun. It was a big gun for a woman and it jumped. The other gun jumped with it. I didn’t see where the shot went.

I wasn’t too nice about knocking the guns out of her hands. I kicked the door shut, reached up and yanked the key around, then scrambled back from a high-heeled shoe that was doing its best to smash my nose for me.

Duncan dived for his gun on the floor.

‘Watch that little window, if you want to live,’ I snarled at him.

Then I was behind the desk, dragging the phone away from Doctor Sundstrand’s dead body, dragging it as far from the line of the door as the cord would let me. I lay down on the floor with it and started to dial, on my stomach.

Diana’s eyes came alive on the phone. She screeched: ‘They’ve got me, Jerry! They’ve got me!’

The machine-gun began to tear the door apart as I bawled into the ear of a bored desk sergeant.

Pieces of plaster and wood flew like fists at an Irish wedding. Slugs jerked the body of Doctor Sundstrand as though a chill was shaking him back to life. I grabbed Diana’s guns and started in on the door for our side. Through a wide crack I could see cloth. I shot at that.

I couldn’t see what Duncan was doing. Then I knew. A shot that couldn’t have come through the door smacked Diana Saint square on the end of her chin.

She went down again, stayed down.

Another shot that didn’t come through the door lifted my hat. I rolled and yelled at Duncan. His gun moved in a stiff arc, following me. His mouth was an animal snarl.

I yelled again.

Four round patches of red appeared in a diagonal line across the nurse’s uniform, chest high. They spread even in the short time it took Duncan to fall.

There was a siren somewhere. It was my siren, coming my way, getting louder. Saint had to go. I heard his step running away down the hall. A door slammed. A car started out back in an alley.

I crawled over to the woman and looked at blood on her face and hair and soft soggy places on the front of her coat. I touched her face. She opened her eyes slowly, as if the lids were very heavy.

‘Jerry—’ she whispered.

‘Dead,’ I lied grimly. ‘Where’s Isobel Snare, Diana?’

The eyes closed. Tears glistened, the tears of the dying.

‘Where’s Isobel, Diana?’ I pleaded. ‘Be regular and tell me. I’m no cop. I’m her friend. Tell me, Diana.’

I put tenderness and wistfulness into it, everything I had.

The eyes half opened. The whisper came again: ‘Jerry—’ The lips moved once more, breathed a word that sounded like ‘Monty.’

That was all. She died.

I stood up slowly and listened to the sirens.

It was getting late and lights were going on here and there in a tall office building across the street. I had been in Fulwider’s office all the afternoon. I had told my story twenty times. It was all true — what I told.

The fat Chief was sweaty and suspicious. His coat was off and his armpits were black and his short red hair curled as if it had been singed. Not knowing how much or little I knew he didn’t dare lead me. All he could do was yell at me and whine at me by turns, and try to get me drunk in between.

I was getting drunk and liking it.

He took hold of his jaw and cranked it. ‘Damn funny,’ he sneered. ‘Four dead ones on the floor and you not even nicked.’

‘I was the only one,’ I said, ‘that lay down on the floor while still healthy.’

He took hold of his right ear and worried that. ‘You been here three days,’ he howled. ‘In them three days we got more crime than in three years before you come. It ain’t human.’

‘You can’t blame me, Chief,’ I grumbled. ‘I came down here to look for a girl. I’m still looking for her. I didn’t tell Saint and his sister to hide out in your town. I didn’t shoot Doc Sundstrand before anything could be got out of him. I still haven’t any idea why the phoney nurse was planted there.’

‘Nor me,’ Fulwider yelled. ‘But it’s my job that’s shot full of holes. For all the chance I got to get out of this I might as well go fishin’ right now.’

I took another drink, hiccupped cheerfully. ‘Don’t say that, Chief,’ I pleaded. ‘You cleaned the town up once and you can do it again.’

He took a turn around the office and tried to punch a hole in the end wall, then slammed himself back in his chair.

‘I’ll make a deal with you,’ he growled. ‘You run on back to San Angelo and I’ll forget it was your gun croaked Sundstrand.’

‘That’s not a nice thing to say to a man that’s trying to earn his living, Chief. You know how it happened to be my gun.’

His face looked grey again, for a moment. He measured me for a coffin. Then the mood passed and he smacked his desk, said heartily, ‘You’re right. I couldn’t do that, could I? You still got to find that girl, ain’t you? OK, you run on back to the hotel and get some rest. I’ll work on it tonight and see you in the a.m.’

I took another short drink, which was all there was left in the bottle. I felt fine. I shook hands with him twice and staggered out of his office.

I went on down the sidestreets to the ocean front, walked along the wide cement walk towards the two amusement piers.

It was getting dusk now. Lights on the piers came out. Mast-head lights were lit on the small yachts riding at anchor behind the yacht harbour breakwater. In a white barbecue stand a man tickled wienies with a long fork and droned, ‘Get hungry, folks. Nice hot doggies here. Get hungry, folks.’

I lit a cigarette and stood there looking out to sea. Very suddenly, far out, lights shone from a big ship. I watched them, but they didn’t move.

I went over to the hot dog man.

‘Anchored?’ I asked him, pointing.

He looked around the end of his booth, wrinkled his nose with contempt.