Part 16 (2/2)

But then for a moment I could see that gorgeous face before me, that sensational body, and it actually soothed my jangled nerves a bit. At least the vision changed the direction of my thoughts a little, and for a second or two I stopped thinking of getting killed and began thinking of how to stay alive. That was enough. All of a sudden it hit me. Maybe there was a way out of here. Maybe I could stay alive after all. Ah, women are good for me. No doubt about it.

I jumped inside Quinn's office and started yanking off my clown costume, ripped it in my hurry. Then I looked out the door again. Down below, at the foot of the stairs, Hal the Cad, the man I'd shot in the leg was pulling himself over the floor like a crippled crab. Only a couple other men were in sight, the rest of them were where I couldn't see them, or shoot them. That was fine with me.

I aimed close to one of the two men visible, and fired. All of a sudden n.o.body except the injured man was in sight, and then he too was among the missing. I left the doorway, jumped back into the room. Barracuda was just starting to stir, and I didn't have time to do the thing nicely. I kicked him in the head. His gun was still on the floor, against the wall. There were only two bullets left in my revolver, so I stuck the .38 back in its holster and shoved Barracuda's .32 into my belt, then grabbed the unconscious man.

I wrestled with him, pulled off the black robe that covered him, jumped back to the door. Already, in the few seconds it had taken me, a couple men had started cautiously up the stairway. Not cautiously enough, however. I emptied Barracuda's .32 into them and at them. One of them fell backwards, the other ran.

It took me about five seconds to pull the black robe over me. Then I grabbed off the floor the hood which had been part of Barracuda's Executioner costume. With it over my head I could see through the eyeholes - not well, but at least the thing covered my painted-clown face, and the white hair. Some might soon wonder why the mask was being worn, but with luck there would be too much going on in a minute for clear thinking to take place. And it gave me a chance - a pretty good chance, I was beginning to believe.

I was even feeling halfway good again. Clammy and sweaty, and unhappy at the same time, but so keyed up that I felt almost as if I might dissolve into popping atoms. A glance out the office door showed me that another brave, or foolhardy, hood had started up the stairs. Behind him were a couple others, less daring. Fine. Now they could come up and shoot me.

I was grinning involuntarily under my black hood and grease paint as I turned and jumped back into the office, and then went on into the next room where the dead man still lay. The dead clown - Sh.e.l.l Scott.

Somebody had already mistaken the guy for me; why not again? I'd thought for a moment earlier, when I'd first seen him, that he was a reflection of me; except for the switch in the color of his nose, and the b.u.t.tons on his outfit, we had been clothed in almost identical fas.h.i.+on. And I was now dressed exactly as Barracuda had been, in the black robe and hood. It would have looked good, I thought, even to me.

There was so much adrenalin and thyroxin and pituitin and maybe vegetable soup in my veins by now that I lifted the dead clown clear up on my shoulder with no more effort than if I'd been lifting a sack of potatoes. Then I trotted heavily toward the door of this second room, the bedroom which opened at the head of those stairs. I got the door opened and staggered forward through it, my arms wrapped tightly around the dead clown's waist.

Past him I could see the three men, now at the head of the stairway. They all had pistols in their hands and two of them pointed the guns at me and the clown, but the other yelled something and they didn't fire. I couldn't see what they did then, because as soon as I toppled through the door clutching my clown, I fell forward to the floor at the head of the stairs, rolling, holding the dead man's arms tight to his sides.

As I reached the stairs I got my feet under me somehow and half raised up, pulling the clown along with me, muscles stretching painfully in my back and side, but I got him up far enough. His head fell backward limply, but I moved so fast that maybe n.o.body noticed. As his head dropped back I slammed a fist against his chin. He fell back loosely, like a rag man, toppling over the body of Jim Lester, hitting the steps and starting to roll very slowly down to the next one.

This whole operation had taken only four or five seconds, and before he rolled more than an inch my .38 was in my hand. There was a h.e.l.l of a lot of noise, a real pandemonium with voices and shouts and screams, with the three men now behind me and a dozen more below coming up making a lot of racket, but at least those nearest me must have heard me shout hoa.r.s.ely, with my voice as near to rasping huskiness of Barracuda's as I could make it: ”Kill that clown! I told you he's Sh.e.l.l Scott!”

And I fired my last two .38 slugs into the dead man's body.

Before I even poured the second one into him, though, at least six other shots sounded. A lot of the hoodlums helped me kill that slob, Sh.e.l.l Scott. So many guns fired almost at once there that for a few moments it sounded as if somebody were letting fly with a machine gun. There was even one woman popping at me with a chromed .22 pistol and I thought, ”What did I ever do to her?” But all of a sudden there was nearly complete quiet.

After the staccato bark and boom of guns, the silence was almost oppressive, heavy and thick. The dead man's body was still moving, turning slightly as it settled onto the lower step of the stairs, but then it stopped, was still. It looked as if he had just been shot, and suddenly stopped living. Right now everybody here thought Barracuda had fought valiantly and fiercely, and just eliminated, with the help of a few other guns, that foul and much unloved private eye, Sh.e.l.l Scott.

In fact, one little hoodlum was looking down at the clown's body, with his mouth hanging open, and then he said, ”You know, they was times when I thought that fink, Scott, wouldn't never get killed.”

Nineteen.

I was starting to feel weak. A flush went over my skin, and then it got a little chilled. Man, my glands were about to give up in disgust. I'd no more let them get a little calmed down than something would happen to light their fuses again. And right now I was thinking about how far I still had to go to get out of this joint.

With my voice harsh and rasping in my throat I said, ”Haul the jerk out back. I'll tell Nevada what happened.”

And with that I walked on down the stairs. n.o.body stopped me. I was still Barracuda, or Hacker, to them, walking out to tell the gateman what the score was. n.o.body had yet asked why it was necessary for the black-robed Hacker to tell anybody at the gate anything. Or why I was wearing the hood over my head still - when it hadn't been on at the start of my battle, when ”I” had appeared at the head of the stairs shouting ”Kill that clown!” Or why the corpse of white-haired Sh.e.l.l Scott was now wearing a ta.s.seled clown cap, when his cap had fallen off earlier and was even now lying on the stairs. Everybody was still pretty well shaken up - and emotional rather than logical - for the moment.

I had told the men to carry the corpse out back, because I sure didn't want them going upstairs and finding the real Barracuda - and their host, Frank Quinn - sprawled out in Quinn's office. That was bound to happen sooner or later, but the later it happened, the sooner I'd like it. I walked through the softly muttering crowd, and my black-robed and black-hooded figure got a good many stares. Even among killers and burglars and thieves of all descriptions, a gun battle and killing is not usually the height of the festivities at a party. And all in black, I must have looked pretty creepy, anyway, like Death striding among the revelers.

But I made it to the hall and down it to the front door, and outside. The air was cool; it felt like rain. I was wet with perspiration and the chill in the air transferred itself to my skin, and then my bones. I walked toward the rented Lincoln, feeling for the keys. I couldn't find them. In all the running around and fighting I might have lost them.

Several men had come out the door behind me. Some of the guests were undoubtedly preparing to leave, without even saying goodbye to the host - and that was just dandy with me; I didn't want them saying goodbye to their host. It might have looked odd for the real Barracuda to hop in a Lincoln to drive the short distance to the gate. Especially if he drove a Mercury, say. But that was a chance I was willing to take. Walking out of here on foot, however, was simply asking for it. But I kept fumbling in pockets, and at last my fingers closed around the metal key; it had been buried in a ma.s.s of papers I'd stolen - at least I still had them.

In the Lincoln, I gunned to the gate and slid to a stop in front of it. A light on top of the gatehouse illumined the darkness around us for twenty or thirty yards. Nevada was just stepping out of the little house, the familiar shotgun in his hands. Only it wasn't in the crook of his arm this time; he held it at the ready, finger curled around the trigger, both barrels pointed at my head.

I looked out the car window toward him and the gun, and he just dissolved away out of my sight. All I could see was the round ends of those two barrels, and for half a horrible second I thought he was going to shoot me. I thought he was going to blast my head off. Those two round holes of the shotgun muzzles seemed to swell in my sight until they looked like cannons aimed at me, and I kept waiting for two eight-inch sh.e.l.ls to fly out and pop me in the kisser.

Well, I thought, what a h.e.l.l of a way to go. There won't be anything left of me. Just little shreds, and unidentifiable bits. Sh.e.l.l Scott will just disappear. But then I snapped out of my dizziness. There is something unnerving about a shotgun aimed at you. It can't kill you any more than a .22 pistol can, say, but it sure gives the impression that it can kill you deader.

Dust was still swirling from my sudden stop before the closed gate. Nevada said, ”What in tarnation's goin' on? Somebody jest called up from the house and said n.o.body ain't to go in nor out.”

So that meant I wouldn't be getting out through the gate for a while - not, at least, with Nevada's help. Looking beyond him into the gatehouse I could see two phones sitting on a wooden counter in there. Probably at this very moment, some of the party guests were ogling the unconscious Quinn, and Barracuda. That was probably what had caused the call to the gate.

So I swung open the car door and stepped out, saying, ”That's what I came out to tell you. Keep the gate closed, Nevada, and - ”

He was squinting at me, and the shotgun was staring wide-eyed at me, and he said, ”You ain't Hacker. What's your name, boy?”

”No,” I said. ”Hacker and me wound up with the same outfit. I'm, uh, Whitey McGafford.” Then I pulled off the hood and threw it back into the car. The clown paint was still smeared on my face. It must have puzzled Nevada, but that was O.K. with me; I wanted him puzzled for the next minute or so. And I was going to try to keep him off balance long enough for me to get a phone call out of here.

”McGafford,” he said slowly. ”I don't remember no - ”

”Oh, shut up,” I said. ”Where's the phone? The boss is shot up and d.i.n.ky's dead, so cut the gab. I got to call somebody for the boss.”

”Hey, wait a minute. Who's d.i.n.ky?”

”What difference does it make? He's dead,” I said. And I didn't wait. Possibly I was still dizzy from looking into those eight-inch cannons, but the shotgun was back to normal size now and I walked past it into the gatehouse. Only one of the two phones had a dial. I grabbed it, turned it so that Nevada couldn't see the numbers, and dialed the complaint board at the Police Building.

Nevada stepped into the doorway, about two yards from me, and moved the shotgun so that it pointed at my stomach. ”Who you callin'?” he asked. And he didn't sound so puzzled now as just plain mean. ”And what'd you say about the boss being shot?”

”I don't know all of what happened,” I said roughly, ”but there was a drunk in Quinn's office, and there was some kind of beef.” Nevada's face smoothed out a little when I mentioned the drunk. He knew I was telling the truth about that - he'd talked to the drunk himself. ”Frank's not hurt bad,” I said, ”but he wants n.o.body but Hotshot Dutton sticking a probe into him. Bullet's still in his side.”

”You callin' who?” Nevada said.

”Hotshot.”

The timing was perfect.

The officer at the complaint board had just answered, and I said it again, ”Hotshot!” Looking at Nevada, I added, ”Doctor Dutton, to you, the guy who's going to dig the bullets out of Frank Quinn and about a hundred other guys at Quinn's ranch. How many times do I have to tell you?”

In the Police Building, the term Hotshot is applied to urgent calls which come in to the complaint board and are simultaneously transmitted to Homicide or Robbery and the Detective Headquarters Unit - and to the rolling radio cars - all at once, even while the call is coming in on the phone. They would all hear the next words I said - if I had made the officer understand what I wanted.

But Nevada was squinting at me again and he said, ”Why didn't you use a phone in there?”

”I told you, there was a beef in Frank Quinn's office. They shot some clown that's supposed to be Sh.e.l.l Scott - ”

”Hold it, boy.” Nevada was looking mean again. ”Just you back up from that phone. Lay it down.”

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