Роберт Беллем - Pulp Frictions

‘Sure.’ The cop lumbered away. Chet stared after him with narrowed eyes. Like to let him have it. Now he hoped that Bourse wouldn’t appear on the doorstep until the cop was around the next corner.

The patrolman had just disappeared when a big car hummed into Alamo Street from the avenue. Its brakes crunched; it stopped in front of 558... A department car; yes, Hemingway could see a gong above the running-board. Bourse got out.

Chet swallowed the last tiny morsel in his mouth. He brought out his gun; the belly-gun from inside his trousers — he had two, now — and one had been taken from Adamic’s shop that morning. Wait until the car was at least half a block up the street. The old devil would still be fooling with his door key, or at least standing in the vestibule, plainly visible from outside. The men in the car would either have to turn it, or else jump out and run back; that was all the start Hemingway would need.

‘Nine o’clock.’

‘You bet, sir.’

A cab was coming from the direction of the avenue, coming slowly, as if hunting for an address. The big department car moved away from the kerb — screeched into second gear — went purring away down the block. Chet’s left hand went to the automatic, Adamic’s gun, and brought it out. He would have to stop that cab before it interfered, though experience had taught him to fear nothing from the terrorised bystanders at such a scene.

Inspector Bourse’s portly body was sharply outlined against the vestibule lights. Oh, you old Mick, thought the bandit, I’ve seen you more than once before this... His belly-gun began to stutter. Bourse fell against the door. Those were soft-nosed bullets, and they would play hell with any man’s ribs. With his left hand, Hemingway turned his automatic towards the advancing taxicab. One shot in the radiator or windscreen — he wasn’t particular—

A long, bright smear came from the side of the cab, and something tore at the skirt of Chet Hemingway’s coat. He snarled, and stepped back into the narrow court between the buildings. He had fixed old Bourse, but he wasn’t expecting this. Bullets squirted all around him, flattening among the bricks. He let his whole clip speed towards the taxicab, then he turned and ran. In his heart he was cursing savagely. Those damn fly-cops — they were half a block or more away, and out of the picture. But this cab— Who in—

A bullet screamed from the concrete beside him, and still he could feel that wrenching blow which had tom at his coat. Just that close... He sprinted twenty yards down the alley, dodged between a line of garages, and sped out into the street beyond. It was a through street, and there were plenty of cars, parked or moving. In the distance behind him he heard yells and pounding feet. At the first entrance he found, he dodged inside. Luck. Plenty of it. He needed it.

It was an office building with an L-shaped vestibule opening on the side street and on the avenue as well. Over here the humming traffic had drowned all the affray on Alamo Street. Chet strolled round the corner of the corridor, trying to still the hammering heart inside his body. The one elevator man on duty nodded at him.

Hemingway glanced at the directory on the wall. The little white lines of names were swimming. He picked one out... Jacobson, Rudolph. 420. He turned to the elevator man.

‘Is Mr Jacobson gone?’ His gasping lungs pushed up against his throat, but he fought them back.

‘Yes, sir. It’s after six. Most everybody’s gone.’

‘Okay.’

He went out to the avenue. A row of waiting taxicabs blurred before his eyes, and distantly he could hear a siren whining. These folks would think it was a fire truck. Well, it wasn’t any fire truck.

He stepped into the first cab. ‘Let’s go downtown,’ he said.

‘Yes, sir.’

They went towards the bridge, through the evening crush of cars, and Chet Hemingway had the pleasure of watching traffic cops clear the north-bound lanes to make passage for a rocketing squad car which hooted its way towards Alamo Street. He fumbled for a cigarette, and found a tom paper of matches ground into the hole in his coat pocket. The bullet of the would-be avenger had come just that close. He swore. But there was his food — a little of it, still left to him. Chet began to chew it.

He’d better get out of town as soon as possible. One way or another. They’d have picked men at every station, and the highways wouldn’t be very safe. He’d have to think.

He arrived at his hotel safely enough and went without further incident to his room. But during the next hour, when he sat munching, enjoying a cigarette or two and coldly re-enacting the finish of Inspector Bourse, his leaping brain would have turned to jelly had it visualised the steel net which was closing in on him.

Bourse drew a long breath. ‘Glennan,’ he said to Nick, ‘what was that about your being the seventh son of a seventh son?’

‘It wasn’t me. It was the old man.’

‘Nevertheless—’

‘Heras will be hotter than ever in hell, sir, when he realises that you was wearing his bullet-proof vest.’

The old inspector rubbed his sore body and examined the shreds in his clothing, it’s a wonderful vest, boy. I don’t see why hoods always have these things better than the cops, but they do. At least nobody could ever blame you for not dropping Hemingway, up there on the roof.’

‘I should have drilled him through the head, sir.’

Bourse fingered a tiny scrap of limp, gilded cardboard which he held in his hands. ‘At least you drilled this out of his pocket.’

‘Yes, but it’s twice in one day that I had him under my gun and let him get away.’

They stood there together in front of a gleaming spotlight while officers swarmed through every nook and cranny along Alamo Street. Bourse turned to Sergeant Dave Glennan. ‘No use, Dave. He’s gone. But he left his calling card.’

The fat sergeant waddled over to the shaft of light. ‘I’ll take you on, sparrow cop,’ he told his younger brother, ‘at any shooting gallery in the Palace Amusement Park, when it opens in warm weather.’

‘You go to hell,’ whispered Nick.

‘Shut up your big gab, Dave,’ added the inspector, kindly. ‘Nick was shooting from a moving taxicab, into the dark — shooting at gun-flashes — and anyway, if it hadn’t been for him you’d be getting your shoes shined for an inspector’s funeral.’

He offered the tom scrap of cardboard. ‘This was over there across the street where he stood, when we looked for bloodstains.’

Dave turned the fragment between his big fingers. He spelled aloud, ‘Diamond Match Com... E... L. And what’s this that looks like the west end of a spider?’

‘It’s a coat-of-arms, Owl Eyes,’ snarled his brother, ‘and that is by way of being his stopping place. You don’t recognise the souvenir matches of high-priced hotels, but the inspector does. He says that is part of a fold of matches from the Aberdeen Hotel.’

‘Just because you found it there—’

‘If you look close, Owl Eyes, you can see the fuzz of lead along one side. The luck of Nicholas Glennan was working; I ripped open his pocket, and half the tom paper of matches comes out.’

‘But,’ cried Dave, ‘that’s no sign he’s there!’

‘He took a suit from Adamic’s store, or I don’t know where else. And do them second-hand guys leave matches lying around in the pockets of their suits? No, Macushla. He gathered that up today since he’s been on the loose. And not in no one-arm restaurant, but likely enough in a hotel room.’

The inspector said, ‘Get your squad together, Dave. Tell Rhineheimer to get his.’

‘Yes, sir. But... God... you can’t raid the whole hotel. It’s got twenty-two hundred rooms!’