I nodded again.
Downes gestured at the door with his head and the three of them got up and left.
I closed the door behind them and slid the bolt. The doctor had given me some pills for the pain if it got bad. I didn"t want to take them yet. I needed to think. I sat on the bed and changed my mind quickly. Lying was a better idea. Lying on my stomach was the best idea of all. Shot in the a.s.s. Susan would doubtless find that funny. Only hurts when I laugh.
This was not a dumb group. They had me thinking about tomorrow and while I was thinking about tomorrow they would ace me tonight. Not bad. But now what. Would they show up tomorrow? Yes. They would be there looking to see if I were there looking to see if they were there. I couldn"t know that tonight"s trouble was them. They didn"t know I had Identikit drawings. Even if I did, I wouldn"t know-h.e.l.l, I didn"t know-that the people who wanted to see me were the same ones who tried to blow me away tonight. Maybe there really was an informant. Maybe tonight"s people were trying to stop me from getting to the informant. I"d have to go tomorrow.
I left a wake-up call for seven-thirty, took two painkillers, and in a little while I went to sleep on my stomach. It was a pill and pain sleep, fitful, and full of brief awakenings. Killing two kids didn"t help any. I was up before the wake-up call, relieved at the dawn, feeling like I"d backed into a stove. I had slept in my clothes and my pants were stiff with dried blood when I took them off: I showered and did my best to keep the bandage dry.
I brushed my teeth and shaved and put on clean clothes. Gray slacks, blue-and-white-striped shirt with a b.u.t.ton-down collar, blue knit tie, black-ta.s.seled loafers, shoulder holster with gun. Continuity in the midst of change. I pasted on my fake mustache, adjusted my wig, put on a pair of pink-tinted aviator gla.s.ses and slid into my blue blazer with the bra.s.s b.u.t.tons and the full tattersall lining. You can trust a guy with a tattersall lining. I checked the mirror. The roll in my collar wasn"t quite right. I loosened the tie and redid it not quite as tight.
I stepped back for a look in the full-length mirror. I looked like the bouncer in a gay bar. But it might do. I looked a lot different than I had yesterday in sweat pants and track shoes in the lobby. I put six more bullets in my inside coat pocket and I was ready. I powdered the floor again, and went to the hotel coffee shop. I hadn"t eaten since the steak and kidney pudding and it was past time. I ate three eggs sunny side up and ham and coffee and toast. It was eight-ten when I got through. In front of the hotel I got a cab and rode up to the zoo in comfort.
Leaning a little to the right as I sat.
9.
They were there.
The girl I"d spotted before was looking at the flamingos as I walked up from the south gate past the hawks and eagles in the birds of prey displays. I stopped with my back to her and looked at the parrots in the parrot house. She didn"t know I had spotted her before so she made no attempt to hide. She just looked casual as she strolled over to the crows" cage. She didn"t take any note of me. Spenser, master illusionist.
For the next two hours we did something difficult and complex like the ritual mating dance of ring-necked pheasants. She looked for me without appearing to and I watched her without appearing to. There had to be some others around. People with guns. They didn"t know what I looked like, though they probably had a description. I didn"t really know what they looked like unless the Identikit drawings were very accurate and they were the same people who had wasted the Dixons. She strolled to the chimps" lawn. I strolled to the c.o.c.katoos. She walked to the parrots, I moved to the north end of the gibbons" cage. She looked at the budgies while keeping an eye out for me.
I had a cup of coffee at the garden kiosk while making sure I didn"t lose her. She was wondering if there were undercover cops around. I was looking for members of her group. We were both trying to look like ordinary zoo patrons who chose to stay around the east tunnel area of the zoo. My part was complicated by the fact that I felt like a horse"s a.s.s with my wig and my mustache. I was having a little trouble with the coffee because of the mustache. If it fell off that might give the bad guys a hint that something was up. The strain of it was physical.
By eleven o"clock I was sweating and the back of my neck hurt. My wound was hurting all the time. And not limping was a matter of concentration all the time. It must have been hard for her too, though she hadn"t been shot in the back of the lap. As far as I knew.
She was a pretty good-looking person. Not as young as the people I"d met last night. Thirty maybe, with straight hair, very blond that reached her shoulders. Her eyes were very round and noticeable, and as close as I"d gotten they looked black. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were a little too large but her thighs were first quality. She had on black sandals and white slacks and a white open-necked blouse with a black scarf knotted at the neck. She had a big black leather shoulder bag, and I was betting a gun in it. Handgun probably. The bag wasn"t quite big enough for an ant.i.tank gun. At eleven-forty-five by the clock tower she gave up. I was nearly two hours late.
She shook her head twice, vigorously, at someone I couldn"t see and headed for the tunnel. I went after her. The tunnel was something I wanted to avoid, but I didn"t see how I could. I didn"t want to lose her. I"d gone to a lot of trouble for this contact and I wanted to get something out of it. But if they caught me in the tunnel I was dead. I had no choice. Disguise, do your duty. I went into the tunnel after her.
There was no one in it. I walked through slowly, whistling and unconcerned, with the trapezius muscles across my back in a state of tension. As I came out of the tunnel I ditched the pink-shaded gla.s.ses in a trash basket and put on my normal sungla.s.ses. I took my tie off and stuck it in my pocket and opened the collar of my shirt three b.u.t.tons. I read in a d.i.c.k Tracy Crime Stopper that a small change in appearance can be helpful when following someone surrept.i.tiously.
She wasn"t hard to follow. She wasn"t looking for me. And she was walking. She walked east on Prince Albert Road and turned down Albany Street. We went south on Albany across Marylebone onto Great Portland Street. To the left the Post Office Tower stuck up above the city. She turned left ahead of me and started up Carburton Street. The area was getting more neighborhood and small grocery store. More middle cla.s.s and student. I had a dim memory that east of the Post Office Tower was Bloomsbury and the University of London and the British Museum. She turned right onto Cleveland Street. She had a h.e.l.l of a walk. I liked to watch it and I had been now for ten or fifteen minutes. It was a free, long-striding, hip-swing walk with a lot of spring to it. It was fast pace for walking wounded, and I felt the gunshot wound with every step.
At the corner of Tottenham Street, diagonally across from a hospital, she turned into one of the brick-faced buildings, up three steps and in the front door. I found a doorway with some sun and stood in it, and leaned against the wall where I could see the door she"d gone in, and waited. She didn"t come out until almost two-thirty in the afternoon. Then it was just to walk half a block to a grocery store and back with a bag of groceries.
I never had to leave my doorway. Okay, I thought, this is where she lives. So what? One of the things about my employment was the frequency with which I didn"t know what I was doing or what to do next. Always a fresh surprise. I have tracked the beast to its lair, I thought. Now what do I do with her? Beast wasn"t the right word, but it didn"t sound right to say I"ve tracked the beauty to her lair. As so often in dilemmas of this kind, I came upon the perfect thing to do. Nothing. I decided I"d better wait and watch and see what happened. If at first you don"t succeed put it off till tomorrow.
I looked at my watch. After four. I had been watching the girl and her doorway since before nine this morning. Every natural appet.i.te and need pressed upon me. I was hungry and thirsty and nearly incontinent and the pain in my backside was both real and symbolic. If I was going to do this for very long I was going to need help. By six I had to pitch it in. It was less than two blocks from the Post Office Tower. They had most of what I needed and I headed for it.
On the way I took off my wig and mustache and stuffed them in my pocket. The dining room opened at six twenty and the second thing I did after I reached it was to get a table by the window and order a beer. The restaurant was on top of the tower and rotated slowly so that in the course of a meal you saw the whole 360-degree panorama of London from much the highest building. I knew that rotating restaurants like this atop a garish skysc.r.a.per were supposed to be touristy and cheap and I tried to be scornful of it. But the view of London below me was spectacular, and I finally gave up and loved it. Furthermore, the restaurant carried Amstel, which I could no longer get at home, and to celebrate I had several bottles.
It was midweek and early and the restaurant wasn"t yet crowded. No one hurried me. The menu was large and elaborate and seemed devoid of steak and kidney pudding. That in itself was worth another drink. As the restaurant inched around 1 could look south at the Thames and to the east at St. Paul"s with its ma.s.sive dome, squat and Churchillian, so different from the upward soar of the great continental cathedrals. Its feet were planted firmly in the English bedrock. I was beginning to feel the four Dutch beers on an empty stomach. Here"s looking at you, St. Paul"s, I said to myself. The waiter took my order and brought me another beer. I sipped it.
Regent"s Park edged into view from the north. There was a lot of green in this huge city. This sceptered isle, this England. I drank some more beer. Here"s looking at you, Billy boy. The waiter brought my veal piccata and I ate it without biting his hand, but just barely. For dessert I had an English trifle and two cups of coffee, and it was after eight before I was out on the street heading for home. There had been enough beer to make my wound feel okay and I wanted to walk off the indulgence, so I brought out my London street map and plotted a pleasant stroll back to Mayfair. It took me down Cleveland to Oxford Street, west on Oxford and then south on New Bond Street.
It was after nine and the beer had worn off when I turned up Bruton Street to Berkeley Square. The walk had settled the food and drink, but my wound was hurting again and I was thinking about a hot shower and clean sheets. Ahead of me up Berkeley Street was the side door of the Mayfair. I went in past the hotel theater, up two stairs into the lobby. I saw no one in the lobby with a lethal engine.
The elevator was crowded and unthreatening. I went up two floors above mine and got off and walked down toward the far end of the corner and took the service elevator, marked EMPLOYEES ONLY, to my floor. No sense walking like a fly into the parlor. The service elevator opened into a little foyer where linen was stored. Four doors down toward my room from the service elevator the cross corridor intersected.
Leaning near the corner and occasionally peering out around the corner down toward my door was a fat man with kinky blond hair and rosy cheeks. He was wearing a gray gabardine raincoat and he kept his right hand in the pocket. He didn"t have to be waiting to ambush me but I couldn"t think what else he"d be doing there. Where was the other one? They"d send two, or more, but not one. He should be at the other end of my corridor so they could get me in a crossfire. They would know who I was when I stopped and put the key in my door. I stood very quietly inside the linen foyer and watched.
At the far end of the corridor the elevator doors slid back and three people got out, two young women and a fortyish man in a three-piece corduroy suit. As they came down the corridor toward me a man appeared beyond the elevator and watched them. All three pa.s.sed my door and the guy down the corridor disappeared. The one closer to me turned and looked down the cross corridor as if he were waiting for his wife. Okay, so they were trying again. Industrious b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. Hostile, too. All I did was put an ad in the paper.
I got back in the service elevator and went up three floors. I got out, went down an identical corridor to the public elevators and looked in behind them. The stairway was there. I descended around the elevator shaft and it was in the stairway that the other shooter was hiding three floors below. I"d take him from above. He wouldn"t be looking for me to come down. He"d be waiting for me to come up. I took off my coat, rolled my sleeves back over the elbows and took off my shoes and socks. It was psychological on the sleeves, I admit, but they bothered me and made me feel enc.u.mbered, and so what if I humor a fetish. The fifty-dollar black-ta.s.seled loafers were lovely to look at, delightful to own, but awful to fight in, and they made noise when you snuck up on a.s.sa.s.sins. Stocking feet tend to be slippery. With my shoes off, my cuffs dragged and I had to roll them up. I looked like I was going wading. Huck Finn.
I went down the stairs in my bare feet without a sound. The stairshaft was neat and empty. To my right the workings of the elevator purred and halted, purred and halted. At the bend before my floor I stopped and listened. I heard someone sniff, and the sound of fabric sc.r.a.ping against the wall. He was on my side of the fire door. He listened for the elevator stop, and if it was this floor he"d step out after the doors closed and take a look. That made it easier. He was leaning against the wall. That was the fabric sc.r.a.pe I heard. He"d be facing the fire doors, leaning against the wall. He"d want the gun hand free. Unless he was lefthanded that meant he"d be on the left-hand wall. Most people weren"t left-handed.
I stepped around the corner and there he was, four steps down, leaning against the left-hand wall with his back to me. I jumped the four steps and landed behind him just as he caught a reflected movement in the wired-gla.s.s fire doors. He half turned, pulling the long-barreled gun out of his waistband, and I hit him with my forearm across the right side of the face, high. He bounced back against the wall, and fell over on the floor, and was quiet. You break your hand hitting a man in the head hard enough to put him out. I picked up the gun. Part of the same shipment. Long barreled .22 target gun. Not a lot of pizzazz, but if they shot the right part of you they would do. I felt him over for another weapon, but the .22 was it.
I ran back up the two flights, put my shoes and jacket back on, rolled down my pants legs, stuffed the pistol in my belt at the small of my back and ran back downstairs. My man was not moving. He lay on his back with his mouth open. I noticed he had those whiskers like one of the Smith Brothers that starts at the corner of the mouth and runs back to the ears. Ugly. I opened the fire door and stepped into the hall. The man in the other corridor wasn"t visible.
I walked straight down the hall past my door. I could sense a slight movement at the corner of the corridor. I turned the corridor corner and he was standing a little uncertainly, trying to look unconcerned but half suspicious. I must look like his description, but why hadn"t I gone into my room. His hand was still in his raincoat pocket. The raincoat was open. I walked past him three steps, turned around and yanked the open raincoat down over his arms. He struggled to get his arm out of his pocket. Without letting go of his coat I took the gun out from under my arm with my right hand and pressed it into the hollow behind his ear.
"England swings," I said, "like a pendulum do."
10.
"Take your right hand about one inch out of your pocket," I said, "and stop."
He did. There was no gun in it.
"Okay, now put both hands behind your back and clasp them." I let go of his coat with my left hand and reached around and took the pistol out of his pocket. Target gun number four. I stuck it in my left-hand jacket pocket where it sagged very unfashionably. I patted him down quickly with my left hand. He didn"t have another piece.
"Very good. Now put both hands back in your pockets," He did. "What"s your name?"
"Suck my a.s.s," he said.
"Okay, Suck," I said. "We"re going down the corridor and pick up your buddy. If you have an itch, don"t scratch it. If you hiccup or sneeze or yawn or bat your eyes I am going to shoot a hole through your head." I held the back of his collar with my left hand and kept the muzzle of my gun pressed in behind his right ear and we walked down the corridor. Past the elevator, behind the fire doors there was n.o.body. I hadn"t hit him hard enough and whiskers was up and away. He didn"t have a weapon and I didn"t think he"d try me without one. I had already killed two of his buddies armed. "Suck, my boy," I said, "I think you"ve been forsaken. But I won"t turn my back on you. We"ll go to my place and rap."
"Don"t call me Suck, you b.l.o.o.d.y b.a.s.t.a.r.d," His English sounded upper cla.s.s but not quite native. I took out my room key and gave it to him. The gun still at his neck.
"Open the door, Sc.u.m Bag, and step in." He did. No bomb went off. I went in after him and kicked the door shut. "Sit there," I said and shoved him toward the armchair near the airshaft. He sat. I put the gun back in my shoulder holster. Put the two target pistols on the top shelf of the closet, took my wig and mustache and tie out of my pockets, took off my blue blazer and hung it up.
"What"s your name?" I said. He stared at me without speaking. "You English?"
He was silent.
"Do you know that I get twenty-five hundred dollars for you alive or dead, and dead is easier?"
He crossed one pudgy leg over the other one and locked his hands over his knees.
I went to the bureau and took out a pair of brown leather work gloves and slipped them on, slowly, like I"d seen Jack Palance do in Shane, wiggling my fingers down into them till they were snug. "What is your name?" I said.
He gathered some saliva in his mouth and spit on the rug in my direction. I took two steps toward him, grabbed hold of his chin with my left hand and yanked his face up at mine. He took a gravity knife out of his sock and made a pa.s.s at my throat.
I leaned back and the point just nicked me under the chin. I caught the knife hand at the wrist as it went by with my right, stepped around behind him, put my left hand into his armpit and dislocated his elbow. The knife fell to the carpet. He made a harsh, half-stifled-yell. I kicked the knife across the room and let go of his arm. It hung at an odd angle.
I stepped away from him and went to look at my chin in the mirror over the bureau. There was already blood all over my chin and dripping on my shirt. I took a clean handkerchief from the drawer and blotted up enough of the blood to see that the cut was minor, little more than a razor nick, maybe an inch long. I folded the handkerchief over and held it against the cut. "Sloppy frisk," I said. "My own fault, Suck." He sat still in the chair, his face tight and pale with pain. "When you tell me what I want to know I"ll get a doctor. What"s your name?"
"Up your bleeding a.s.s."
"I could do the other arm the same." He was silent. "Or the same one again."
"I am not going to say nothing," he said, his voice strained and shallow as he held against the pain. "No matter what you do. No b.l.o.o.d.y red sucking Yankee thug is going to make me say anything I don"t want." I took my Identikit sketches out and looked at them. He could have been one of them. I couldn"t be sure. Dixon would have to ID him. I put the sketches away, took out the card that Downes had given me, went over to the phone and called him. "I guess I got another one, Inspector. Fat little guy with blond hair and a Colt .22 target pistol."
"Are you at your hotel?"
"Yes, sir."
"I"ll come over there, then."
"Yes, sir, and he needs a doctor. I had to bend his arm some."
"I"ll call the hotel and have their man sent up." The doctor arrived about five minutes before Downes did. It was Kensy, same doctor who"d been in to treat me. Today he had on a three-piece gray worsted suit with the waist nipped in and a lot of shoulder padding and a black silk shirt with long collar rolled out over the lapels. "Well, sir," he said as he came in, "how"s your a.r.s.e?" And put his head back and laughed. "What do you wear in surgery," I said, "a hot pink surgical mask?"
"My dear man, I don"t do surgery. I"d better have a look at that chin though."
"Nope, just look at this guy"s arm," I said. He knelt beside the chair and looked at the kid"s arm.
"Dislocated," he said. "Have to go to a hospital to have it set." He looked at me. "You do this?"
I nodded.
"You"re quite a lethal chap, aren"t you?" he said.
"My entire body is a dangerous weapon," I said.
"Mm, I would think so," he said. "I"ll put a kind of splint on that, my man," he said to the kid, "and give you something for the pain. And then we"d best bundle you off to the hospital and have an orthopedic man deal with it. I gather you have to wait on the authorities, however." The kid didn"t speak.
"Yeah, he has to do that," I said.
Kensy took an inflatable splint from his bag and very gently put it onto the kid"s damaged arm. Then he blew it up. He filled a hypodermic needle and gave him a shot."You should feel better," he said, "in just a minute." Kensy was putting the needle back in the bag when Downes came in. He looked at the kid with his arm in the temporary cast that looked like a transparent balloon.
"Another half a car, Spenser?"
"Maybe. I think so, but it"s hard to be sure." There was a uniformed cop and a young woman in civilian clothes with Downes. "Tell me about this one," Downes said. The young woman sat down and took out a notebook. The uniformed bobby stood by the door.
Kensy had his bag closed and headed for the door. "That"s only a temporary cast," he said to Downes. "Best get him prompt orthopedic attention."
"We"ll get him to the hospital straight away," Downes said. "Fifteen minutes, no more."
"Good," Kensy said. "Try to avoid hurting anyone for a day or two, would you, Spenser. I"m going on holiday tonight, and I won"t be back until Monday."
"Have a nice time," I said. He left. "Can you hold him for Dixon to look at?" I said. "I imagine we can. What charges are you suggesting?"
"Oh, what, possession of a stolen weapon, possession of an unlicensed weapon, a.s.sault."
"You a.s.saulted me, you red sucking son of a b.i.t.c.h," he said. "Using profanity in front of a police officer," I said. "We"ll find an appropriate charge," Downes said. "Right now I"d like to hear the story." I told him. The young lady wrote down everything we said. "And the other one ran off on you," Downes said. "Unfortunate. You"d have had the start, perhaps, on another car."
"I could have killed him," I said. "I am aware of that, Spenser. It"s one reason I am not pressing you harder about all this." He looked at the bobby. "Gates," he said. "Take this gentleman down to the car. Be careful of his arm. I"ll be right along and we"ll take him to the hospital. Murray," he said to the young lady, "you go along with them." The three of them left. The kid never looked at me. I was still holding the handkerchief to my chin. "You ought to clean that up and get a bandage on it," Downes said. "I will in a minute," I said. "Yes, well, I have two things I wish to say, Spenser. One, I would get some help, were I you. They"ve tried twice in two days. There"s no reason to think that they will not try again. I don"t think this is a one-man job."
"I was thinking the same thing. I"ll put in a call to the States tonight."
"That"s the second thing I wish to say. I am ambivalent about this entire adventure. So far you have probably done the British government and the city of London a favor by taking three terrorists out of circulation. I appreciate that. But I am not comfortable about an armed counterinsurgency movement developing in my city, conducted by Americans who operate without very much concern for British law or indeed for British custom. If you must import help, I will not allow an army of hired thugs to run loose in my city shooting terrorists on sight, and, in pa.s.sing, making my department look rather bad."
"No sweat, Downes. If I get help it will be just one guy, and we"ll stay out of the papers."
"You hope to stay out of the papers. But it will not be easy. The Evening Standard and the Evening News have been very insistent on getting the story of last night"s shooting. I"ve put them off but inevitably someone will give them your name."
"I don"t want ink," I said. "I"ll shoot them away."
"I hope so," Downes said. "I hope too that you"ll not be staying with us a great many more days, hmm?"
"We"ll see," I said. "Yes," Downes said. "Of course we will."
11.
I sat on the bed and read the dialing instructions on the phone. I was exhausted. It was hard even to read the instructions. I had to run through them twice before I figured out that by dialing a combination of area codes I could call Susan Silverman direct. I tried it. The first time nothing happened. The second time I got a recorded message that I had screwed up. The third time it worked. The wires hummed a little bit, relays clicked in beneath the hum, a sound of distance and electricity hovered in the background, and then the phone rang and Susan answered, sounding just as she did. Mr. Watson, come here, I need you. "It"s your darling," I said. "Which one," she said. "Don"t be a smarta.s.s," I said. "Where are you?" she said. "Still in London. I just dialed a few numbers and here we are."
"Oh, I had hoped you were at the airport wanting a ride home."
"Not yet, lovey," I said. "I called for two reasons. One to say that I love your a.s.s. And second, to ask you to do me a service."
"Over the phone?"
"Not that kind of service," I said. "I want you to make a phone call for me. Got a pencil?"
"Just a minute... okay."
"Call Henry Cimoli"-I spelled it-"at the Harbor Health Club in Boston. It"s in the book. Tell him to get hold of Hawk and tell Hawk I"ve got work for him over here. You got that so far?"
"Yes."
"Tell him to get the first plane he can to London and call me at the Mayfair Hotel when he gets to Heathrow."
"Mm hmm."