The moon was lost behind the blackest bank of night clouds ever heaped in one pile, and its light silvered only the ragged edges. I drove slowly. I parked a block away from Fred Carmichael’s big house in Flamingo Estates and got out, leaving the keys in the ignition. If things failed to work out as I intended, anybody with a license and who could drive could have the Olds.
As I marched along the wide walks, I could hear my own footsteps as I put each foot down carefully. Lights were blazing in the Carmichael mansion. I think they were on even in the cellar. Maybe, suddenly, Fred Carmichael was afraid of the dark.
I crossed the darkened lawn slowly, guided by shafts of yellow light flooding out through tall windows. Beside the pool deck I paused, remembering for no good reason the afternoon I’d walked up on Tom Flynn’s pool and Naomi. I remembered with a sudden pointlessness that she was free. From here on she would be wearing less, as I had suggested that night in my apartment.
I drew a deep breath, thinking about her, the way she would look from now on. Was she waiting in my apartment with bourbon and ice and soft music tonight—while I was out here keeping a different, grimmer kind of date?
I circled the house. There was a man on guard outside, and I could see two other goons through the first-floor window
The punk outside was easy. He was leaning against a tall pillar on the front veranda, smoking a cigarette. The way I laid the side of my gun behind his ear was so according to the detective’s manual that I got a faint sense of lift out of it. Personally I might be a hell of a character. But one thing I knew was my job. He was not even bruised.
I caught him under the arms as he sagged. Then I dropped him.
A front door entrance was not indicated for what I had in mind. I went around to the side of the house, found an unoccupied room. Holding my folded handkerchief against the pane, I used the gun butt again and cracked a small opening in the glass. This time there was the small clatter of falling glass. I stood in the shadow and waited, counting slowly. Nothing happened.
I reached through the jagged break, unlocked the window. The place must be bugged with burglar alarms—none of which, I knew, registered to police headquarters. But an alarm of any forcible entry was given to Carmichael’s own people—probably the goons I had seen through the window.
I shoved the window up, went through it, landing on the floor on my knees. Waves of pain rolled upward through me and I wasted a moment shaking my head, trying to clear it, at the same time getting out my gun. As I came up on my knees, the door was thrown open and the two goons came through it
I had two things in my favor. One, I had been expecting them; two, I looked like a man from Mars who’d gotten caught in his own umbilical cord—my battered head had begun bleeding again, and the bandages Doc had wrapped around it were blood-stained and had jarred loose.
They stopped long enough to stare, open-mouthed, at the apparition I made, the bloodied gauze hanging loose around my swollen, purple face. It was the last mistake they ever made. I shot twice before either one of them recovered enough to fire the guns in their hands.
I came up off my knees as I fired and was running across the room before either one of them had hit the floor. One of them sagged against the wall beside the door, and I gave him a shove that toppled him over.
“Oscar! What the hell’s the matter?”
I paused in the foyer.
Carmichael’s voice came from the closed door at my left. I crossed the foyer, put my hand on the knob, thrust the door open.
I stood staring into a richly appointed, book-lined study.
Carmichael was standing behind his huge, polished desk, set well into the room. His face was twisted with contempt. “What do you want?” He let his gaze move over my battered face, the bloodied bandages. “Want some more, Ballard?” He pressed buttons on his desk top. “I thought you had learned your lesson.”
“I did. I’m here to teach you yours.”
We both waited, Carmichael with his finger on the buzzer. Nothing happened. He pressed it again. Something flickered in his eyes.
I stepped into the room, kicked the thick panel-oak door shut with my heel. I backed up against it, locked it. Then I leaned there because my knees were so weak they barely supported me.
“They’re not coming, Carmichael,” I said. “Nobody’s coming to do your dirty work for you. Not any more.”
He stared at me a moment, then that scarred brow tilted slightly and he smiled. “What’s the beef, Ballard? I got tough with you because you pushed me. I had to do it. You’ve still got your job and I like your guts. Play along with me and I’ll make you rich.”
I shook my head. “I’m sick of playing along. I’ve played along until nothing’s worth living for. Not money, women, friends or booze. I hope you feel the same way I do, Carmichael, because I got the word for you. This is it.”
When he moved his hand away from those buzzers and brought it up, he had a forty-five in it. I don’t know where he got it. My eyes were almost swollen shut. My reflexes were almost gone. Maybe his hand was always quicker than the eye—maybe that was how he made it to where he was. He was a big boy, all right, a tough man. And I was all that stood in his way.
He moved around the desk now, briskly, to take charge. He held the gun ready. “Don’t be a jackass, Ballard, I’ll kill you without thinking about it”
“Even if you pull the trigger first,” I said evenly. “I’m still going to get you and I don’t miss. Do you ever miss, Carmichael?”
“Get some sense, man. You know what a forty-five does to you? It’ll tear you open. You’ll spill all out—”
“It’s not my rug.”
He fired without telegraphing his movement in the least. The slug drove me back against the door as if somebody had nailed my hide there.
I remember thinking as the Police Positive began bucking in my hand that Fred Carmichael was tougher than any man I had ever met, and smarter, and faster—that I had to squeeze the trigger coldly, smoothly, the right way, the way you did when you were on the range and not shooting at a man at all. I kept pressing it seven times, not thinking about Fred at all, but thinking about Tom Flynn, the Greek, Ernie, young Hogan and Ed Clemmons—and even Jerry Marlowe.
When the gun was empty, I realized I was face down on the deep carpeting and firing into the floor.
I raised my head slightly and saw Fred Carmichael slumped on the floor, his back against the desk. I knew he was dead, because his big forty-five was on the floor beside his leg and he made no try for it. Then I put my head down and shut my eyes. From some far distance I heard the wailing scream of an ambulance and I knew Doc Yerrgsted had ordered it sent out here because he had guessed that anywhere I went tonight an ambulance would be needed, and he had never been so right.
Doc used that airplane ticket to take himself a vacation and he came back swearing he would never touch booze again. This I learned much later, after they operated on my thick skull. The Greek survived, and so did Ernie. He is a great pal of Lupe’s and acts kind of like a grandfather to her kid—when he has time off from his duties as police commissioner, that is.
As for Naomi, I found out she was as good as she looked. We expect a baby of our own pretty soon.
THE END