Gene Wolfe - Free Live Free

“Okay, turn around.”

He turned as instructed. “I just wanted to talk to you for a minute. Put away your gun and let’s sit down.”

“You said you had an electric razor. Where is it?”

“I left it in the bathroom.”

“Switch those lights on again and point to it. All right, go over to it slow.” Sergeant Proudy followed him into the bathroom, the muzzle of his revolver jammed against Barnes’s spine. “Unplug it and drop it in the crapper.” Barnes started to protest, and the revolver made an ominous click. “You do what I tell you. Do it now .”

The razor sank with a soft splash, trailing a column of tiny bubbles. Barnes left the wire hanging out of the bowl. “Is that all right? If it is, how about putting your gun away? You’ve seen I haven’t got one. I’d like to sit down and talk.”

The revolver no longer jabbed his spine, and he heard the shuffle of the policeman’s feet as he backed out of the bathroom. “You’d like to jump me. That’s what you’d like to do.”

“I could have jumped you while you were asleep,” Barnes protested.

“Yeah, but you didn’t. Lost your nerve. You sit down; sit on the bed.”

Barnes seated himself gingerly, wondering what the maid would say, how she would report it to the management when she found the bed of an unoccupied room so rumpled and creased.

“I’m putting my gun back in this shoulder rig,” Proudy announced. “You see it? I can get it a hell of a lot quicker than you can get your hanky, and I’m hoping, yeah, hoping you’ll try something. Because you’re going to be dead before you ever get your ass off that mattress.”

“I won’t try anything,” Barnes said.

“God damn you, you’d better not.”

“I just came here to talk to you. You’re watching Madame Serpentina and Stubb and—ah—the rest of us? Isn’t that true?”

“You’ve got this all wrong, bud. I don’t answer questions. I ask them.”

“All I want,” Barnes said carefully, “is a little advice. You see, Sergeant, I’ve been offered a business proposition—by Stubb and Madame Serpentina specincally—and it occurred to me that if they were suspected of something, maybe I ought to find out about it before I give them my decision.”

“What you’re telling me is you’re not working with them already.”

“I’m not. We’re friends, that’s all.”

Sergeant Proudy had begun to pace the room. Barnes watched him, trying to recall him as he had been the day before, when he knocked at the door. A harsh band of daylight had penetrated the drapes; when Proudy entered it, he seemed haggard, as though he were a creature of the night who lost all life and color there, as sea creatures do, taken from the water.

“I know about you,” Proudy said after he had paced the room a dozen times. “You don’t think I do, but I do. You don’t think anyone knows, do you. Well, I do. I’m the only son of a bitch that does, but I know more about you than you do about yourselves.”

“Then maybe you’ll give me your advice.”

“Me give you advice? Oh, no, not me.” Proudy turned a humorless smile toward him. “What could I say? Quit? Your boss won’t allow you to quit. I know that, and you know it too. Confess and bargain with the Prosecutor’s Office for police protection? They wouldn’t believe you any more than they would me. Kill yourself? That wouldn’t work either, now would it?”

“I guess not,” Barnes said.

“So you see, there’s nothing I can tell you to do.” Proudy drew his revolver again, spun the cylinder so that it made a sharp clicking, then thrust it back into his holster. “We’ll fight it out, you people and me. I got a hand tied behind me: I got to work inside the law, or pretty much. You can do as you damn please. There’s four of you with God knows how many millions or billions behind you, and only one of me.” He thumped his chest. “That’s okay too.”

Barnes said, “I believe you should sit down, Sergeant. You look tired.” A thought struck him. “Maybe we could go down to the coffee shop and have breakfast. Talk this over.”

“To hell with you!” Proudy stopped suddenly, grinning. “Say, that’s pretty good, ain’t that right? ‘To hell with you.’”

“I’ll say. It certainly is.” Fumbling at his shirt pocket, Barnes found a crushed pack of Winstons. It held only a few crumbs of tobacco. He wadded it into a ball and tossed it at the wastebasket.

“You out? Here, have one of mine. That’s the way they do, ain’t that right? You want a blindfold too?”

“Thanks,” Barnes said. “I’ve been trying to quit, but thanks.”

“Least I can do.”

Barnes reached into his coat pocket and saw Proudy freeze. For an instant he froze himself. When Proudy spoke, he sounded as if he were choking. “What is that? Beretta twenty-two?”

“Get them up and keep them up,” Barnes said, astonishing himself. “And shut up.”

Clumsily, nearly dropping it, he grasped the butt of Proudy’s revolver with his left hand and jerked it out of the shoulder holster. “Get in the bathroom. You can shut the door and lock it, then we’ll both feel safer.”

The door closed and the lock clicked. Barnes let out a great whoosh of breath and pulled the trigger of the little silver pistol. A small blue flame appeared at the end of its barrel. He lit the cigarette Proudy had given him and sucked in smoke.

“I got a gun too now,” Proudy called through the door. “I had a backup, a derringer strapped to my ankle. You didn’t think of that, did you, you smart bastard?”

“You’ll be a sitting duck coming out of there,” Barnes told him. He dropped the cigarette lighter back into his pocket and transferred Proudy’s snubnose to his right hand. Would it shoot if he just pulled the trigger? He could not be sure.

“I’m not coming out. Just don’t you come in.”

Barnes said, “I’ll come in when I’m good an’ ready, ya swab.”

There was a muted clumping sound, and he imagined Proudy climbing into the tub, hiding himself behind the shower doors. He wondered if Proudy really had another gun.

A trick sliding chart under the telephone gave emergency numbers as well as those for the hotel gift shop, valet service, and so on: Doctor, Hospital, Police, Fire. After a moment’s thought, Barnes pushed the number for Hospital.

“Holly Angels,” the operator said enigmatically.

“Listen …” Barnes discovered he did not know where to begin. “A friend of mine got hit on the head. He’s acting funny now. You know what I mean?”

“Ya want Belmont,” the Holly Angels operator told him. “Belmont’s psycho. I kin connect ya.” There was a click and a buzz.

“Belmont Hospital.”

As quickly as he could, Barnes said, “Listen there’s a maniac in Room Seven Seventy-One of the Consort he’s got a gun and if you don’t do something he’s goingtokillsomebody.”

He slammed down the phone and gasped for breath. Would they come? When you called people, they didn’t, not always. Sometimes not even the Fire Department came, he had heard. One of his customers had told him once that sometimes she could not even get salesmen to come, and he knew that not all the salesmen he had called to Free’s had come. He toyed with the idea of telling Proudy again that he would shoot him if he came out, but that might only make Proudy come out sooner.

The notebook by the telephone showed half a page of scribbled comments: “ … after going in. Kidnap? Dead? How disp bdy? Cart? Later maybe. Still there, 2:50. Listened at door. Sleeping and talking. Rtnd stkt cald # grl. Ans dvc. Sd where you? Call when come in.”

Barnes closed the notebook, picked up his order book, and dropped both into his pocket. As he left the room, he toyed with the idea of taking the tape from the door, but that would not, of course, keep Proudy in, only delay the men from the hospital, if men from the hospital ever came. For an instant he visualized thorny-winged green beings in robes of red, one carrying a net, the other a straitjacket. No, Belmont. Madmen, then. Belmont was psycho. Better get away before they came.