Gene Wolfe - Free Live Free

The elderly couple were much too well bred to notice anything; they walked by chatting of something neither would be able to recall five minutes afterward. Their bellman, however, smirked and offered Barnes a congratulatory wink.

When the elderly couple and their bags had disappeared into a room beyond the witch’s, Robin asked breathlessly, “Shouldn’t you at least tell me why you did that?”

“I don’t know,” Barnes said.

“Well, it was—different.”

“For me too.” Slowly, arm in arm, they walked back toward the elevator. “If you really want to know, it was because you said what you did. About going up to your apartment and having dinner. For my whole life I’ve been waiting for you to say that to me; and now that you have, I know someway that something’s going to take it away so it won’t ever happen, we won’t ever go there and eat that dinner.” He pushed the button.

“You’re a little frightening, Osgood. Do you know that?”

“Ozzie. Anyway, I wanted to get a piece of paradise, sort of a sample I could carry around for the rest of my life, before that something came along and took the rest.”

The elevator doors slid back.

“You are frightening, in a nice way. I feel—I don’t know—as if all of a sudden I’ve got this pet panther. But, Ozzie, it’s going to be just like I said. In fact, it’s going to be wonderful—we might not order the food at all.”

He grinned at her as they stepped out into the lobby. A man in a worn check suit was waiting near the registration desk. When he saw the suit, Barnes trotted over and tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around; he was long and lean, and at least half a head taller.

“Hello, Reeder,” Barnes said. “Put them up. I wouldn’t want to cold-cock you.”

“Shipmate! Hell, I’ve been looking all over for you. I want to give you your stuff back.” He fumbled in the pockets of the suit.

“Put ’em up,” Barnes said again. Robin Valor and Little Ozzie looked from one man to the other.

“Wallet,” Reeder mumbled. “Locker key.”

He held them out and Barnes slapped his hand, knocking them to the floor. Then he slapped Reeder with a quick forehand-backhand, the two slaps coming so close together they sounded like one.

“Don’t do that,” Reeder said. He lifted his fist and Barnes hit him under the jaw, sending him reeling against the registration desk. Joe the bellman, who had been in the act of picking up a guest’s luggage, dropped it and jumped between them. Barnes hit him with his left just above the belt, his fist driving into the cheap red uniform to the wrist. Joe doubled over and collapsed, his legs turned to rags.

Reeder hit Barnes on the cheek with a left and over the eye with a right, his fists flying like pistons. Barnes ducked and bored in with the hard, quick, smacking sounds a butcher makes tenderizing meat. Reeder staggered back, but the desk would not let him fall. For a moment Barnes’s fists fell against him like rain. His face seemed to melt under the blows, growing soft and darkly crimson as the skin washed away. Then he slipped down, and two burly men in dark suits grabbed Barnes’s arms from behind.

“Hotel security,” one of them told him; Robin Valor chopped the speaker’s thick neck with the edge of her hand. He turned slowly, as though half stunned, and she kicked him in the groin. Barnes whirled on the other man, landing a punch in the belly and getting a round-house right on the ear that knocked him to the carpet.

He bounced up like a superball and came at the house dick like a power saw. The dick made the mistake of reaching toward his hip pocket for a sap. Before he could get it out, his head snapped back and he fell stiffly, as a tree falls.

The other dick was still doubled over with pain. His fists still up, his good eye nearly closed, Barnes glared at the male guests and their wives, the desk clerks, and a couple of watching bellmen. Francisco, who was one of the bellmen, touched his cap in a gentle mock salute. “ Buenas noches, Señor ,” Francisco said.

“Good night to you too.” Barnes let his hands drop. The knuckles of the pigskin gloves were bright with blood.

Robin took his arm. “Come on. We’ve got to get out of here.”

He nodded reluctantly, looking at the felled house dick. “Blow me down,” he said. “He had a real punch.”

“The police will be here any minute.”

“Aye, aye, Cap’n, sir. Where’s Swee’pea?”

“I’m Olive, remember? I’ve got his hand. Come on now.”

Outside, snow was falling once more. The soft flakes sifted into Robin’s furs and settled on Barnes’s black and shining hair. “I’ve lost me cap,” he said.

Little Ozzie held up the homburg. “I got it.”

The gray car waited at the curb a few steps away from the bright lights of the entrance. As Barnes settled the stolen hat on his head, they heard distant sirens. “Hurry up!” Robin snapped.

“They’ve been running all night because of the blackout,” Barnes said. “I doubt if they’ll send the Swat Team to a fistfight. Little Ozzie, when you got my hat for me—thank you very much—did you by any chance also get that wallet he tried to give me? Or the key?”

The little boy shook his head.

“Pull up in front of the door,” Barnes told Robin. “I’ll be right back.”

Before she could stop him, he was sprinting for the entrance. He leaped a stack of luggage and burst through the inner doors while Francisco and the Agatha Christie fan were still applying water-soaked towels to Joe. The house dick Robin had kicked was nowhere to be seen, but the other dick was on his feet again, grasping Reeder by the arm. “I dropped a brown wallet and a key,” Barnes told him. “I want them back. Now.”

The dick only glared at him. Barnes began poking around the floor, kicking at disturbances in the thick carpet that he thought might conceal the locker key. He found the dick’s sap, tossed it in the air, then dropped it into his own pocket. A white-haired woman guest discovered his wallet and handed it to him with a disconcerting look of hero-worship.

Francisco called, “ Paging Meester Jeem Stubb! ”

The sirens died away beyond the doors, and two policemen came in. Barnes walked into the street-level bar where Candy and Stubb had ordered a final drink. He was tempted to stop for a quick one, but it could only be moments before someone told the policemen what had happened and pointed to the bar.

Outside, the gray sedan still waited, its rear bumper nearly touching the front bumper of the squad car. Barnes got in and saw that Little Ozzie was already sleeping, stretched out on the back seat. “I thought they had you,” Robin said. “God knows what I would have done.” She put the sedan out into traffic.

Barnes shrugged. “You couldn’t have done anything.”

“I have friends around town. I could have phoned some of them.”

“Sure.” Barnes patted his pockets. “Don’t give me a cigarette. I’m trying to quit.”

“Good for you. But you’re frisking yourself for one right now.”

“That’s okay, I know I don’t have any.”

She laughed. She had a good, throaty, big-girl laugh, Barnes thought. It made you want to make her laugh again. He said, “I might have a cigar.”

This time it was more of a chuckle. “Look in my purse.”

It was between them on the seat, and he looked. “What are you doing with cigars in your purse? Good ones, too.” Each was cased in its own aluminum tube. Barnes opened one, sniffed the cigar, and pushed in the dashboard lighter.

“Light one for me, will you?”

“You smoke cigars?”

“Where’d you think I got these dark good looks? I’m half Spanish, mi amigo . All us Spanish ladies smoke cigars—it’s sort of a family tradition.”