GROFIELD SQUEALED the Datsun around the square, and suddenly they were right in front of him, frozen in the glare of the headlights, a tableau straight off the cover of a 1940 pulp magazine. Against a background of cobblestone street and dark old buildings, the slender blonde struggled in the grip of two men, two burly types in dark clothing. One of them was Honner, the other was a second new face.
Grofield braked hard, stuck the Beretta out the window, and fired into the air, at the same time shouting, “Elly! Get over here!”
The new man let go of Elly and ran for cover, out of range of the headlights. Honner, not giving up so easily, kept holding onto Elly until she kicked him three or four times, when he too let go. Elly dashed for the car.
With her out of the way, Grofield snapped two quick shots at Honner, neither of which seemed to score. Honner, ducking low and fumbling inside his coat for a weapon of his own, ran away to the right toward the row of parked cars.
Elly scrambled into the car, and Grofield had tromped down on the accelerator before she was fully in. Her door slammed, she said, “Wow!” and they careened on around the square and down the hill, headed for the road out of town.
She tried to talk a couple of times, but was too out of breath, so she just sat there, half-turned so she could look back out the rear window. Grofield drove the way the Datsun people had never intended.
After a while he said, “You’ve got to tell me what I’m up against. I can’t work blind like this; I make mistakes I don’t know about.”
“What mistakes?” She was still somewhat out of breath, but better. “You did fine,” she said.
“Sure I did. I figured the three we knew were all there was, so it was safe to leave you and go for the guys on plant around the car. But there were two new faces back there, honey, two of them.”
“Don’t get mad at me, Alan, please.”
“You damn fool.”
“Please.”
Now that they were safe again for the moment, Grofield’s irritation was growing like Topsy. “What have you got me up against, damn it? A whole army?”
“No. Not an army, honest.”
“What, then?”
“I wish I could tell you,” she said. “Maybe I can Friday, when this is all over.”
“It may be over a lot sooner than Friday,” he said.
She took a quick look out the rear window, but there was no other traffic on the road. “Why?” she said. “They can’t follow us now.”
“I’m not talking about them, I’m talking about us.”
“You mean, you’ll walk out on me.”
“Walk, hell, I’ll run. I’d fly if I could.”
“This afternoon you—”
“This afternoon we wound up in bed. Which we both had known would happen since the first minute we looked at one another. It had nothing to do with anything else. You didn’t climb into my bed as part of a contract for me to stay with you till Friday, and I didn’t service you in order to keep you with me either.”
“Service!”
“That’s the word for it.”
“You can be a first-class grade-A bastard when you want, can’t you?”
“You send me in to fight three guys and I’m up against the goddamn Light Brigade. Don’t talk about bastards.”
She folded her arms, demonstrating a czarist contempt, and stared out the side window.
They drove the rest of the way to the hotel in silence.
As they were getting out of the car she said, “You know, I rented this car. If we split up, it goes with me.”
“Take it with my blessing. You can drop me off at the first city we come to.”
“I’ll drop you off right here, you mean.”
“Don’t get smart-ass, Ellen Marie.”
“You’re a hateful man. You’re the most hateful man I ever met.”
He walked away from her, went to his room, and unlocked the door. Inside, he left the door open and started to pack. He had the keys to the Datsun in his pocket, so he wasn’t worried about her taking off without him.
The other two guns and the three wallets were in his new suitcase. He took the usable papers from the wallets, threw the wallets in the wastebasket, stowed the papers in a pocket of the suitcase, and put the two extra guns in the pockets of his new raincoat. Then he packed everything else, leaving the raincoat out to be carried separately.
She came into the room as he was shutting the lid. “I’m sorry,” she said.
He looked at her, and she was being the little girl again, this time practically Baby Snooks. “Sorry again?” he asked her. “It must be a rough life, being sorry for this and that all the time.”
“But I am sorry,” she said. She came over and sat down on the bed. “I was just upset, because of those men grabbing me and all.”
“You’re about as trustworthy,” he told her, “as a pool shark. Cut out the innocent and frightened bit, I’m wise to you.”
“I’m not faking, Alan, honest I’m not. I am innocent, in some ways, and you can bet your bottom dollar I’m frightened.”
“And you can bet your bottom dollar we’re through.”
“Alan—”
“All up,” he said.
The little girl turned on a little sex. “Please?”
“Kaput,” he said. He picked up the two suitcases. “Better get your stuff into the car. They’ll be out here looking for us sooner or later.”
“Alan, please.”
He left the room, went over to the car, and stuffed his luggage onto the back seat. Then he stood beside the car, waiting.
She came over without her bags. “It’s a beautiful night,” she said.
“Oh, bushwah. Will you cut it out?”
“If those two hadn’t jumped me, we wouldn’t be fighting, would we? We’d have come back here and had that moonlight swim—there is a moon, did you even notice it?—and then—”
“Yeah, there’s a moon,” he said. “A nice thin sliver. And a great big pool full of warm water. And a darling bed. And neither one of us would last till Friday, because you don’t have brains enough to let me know what’s going on so I can tell what to do about it.”
“Alan—”
“I leave here in two minutes,” he said, looking at his watch. “With you or without you.”
“Alan, I want to tell you!”
He stood silent, ostentatiously following the sweep second hand of his watch.
“We can keep away from them now. Mexico’s a big country, we can go wherever we want, they’ll never find us.”
He ignored her.
“We had a bargain,” she said.
“It’s off.”
“Alan, please!”
“One minute,” he said. “Better get your bags.”
“How could you be sure I was telling you the truth? How do you know I wouldn’t just lie to you again?”
He looked up from the watch. “If it sounds like a lie,” he said, “I’ll ditch you. And I think I can tell when you’re lying to me. I’ve seen better liars.”
She waved her arms in a helpless gesture. “All right,” she said. “I’ll tell you.”