By the time McCleany hauled that five-gallon can of gas up the stairs and to the door he was heaving for breath … goddamn, he thought, wouldn’t it be a pisser if after all this I keeled over from a heart attack right now. But then as he gave the prospect some serious consideration he felt a tug of conscience because if he really was about to die from a coronary, maybe he shouldn’t kill those people in this room after all. McCleany stood there with a queer expression on his face wondering where this sudden fucking wave of humanity came from.
When he got his breath back he felt better, more like his old self as he began pouring gasoline under the door and into the room.
“Can you hear me?” Annie shouted from inside.
“Yeah I hear you, red.” McCleany kept pouring.
“I found the elephant! It’s here in the room.”
He put the gas can on the floor.
“It’s worth three million dollars,” she continued. “Solid gold with diamonds and rubies and … it’s beautiful, you can have it if you let us go.”
McCleany remembered Camel and Paul Milton both having made references to an elephant. He hefted the gas can and began pouring again … it’s the chess piece J. L. Penner owned, the one J.L. had said was worth more than everything else in his collection put together. Did they really have it there in the room with them?
Camel was at the door now, telling McCleany, “Growler gave me the photographs before he died. I’ll turn them over to you, those pictures are the only hard evidence against you, everything else you can deny, your word against ours. When we were in my office that’s the deal you wanted, you get the pictures and leave us alone. You can have this elephant too, just let us walk out of here.”
McCleany finished emptying the can without answering. Stepping well away from the gasoline he thumbnailed a kitchen match to relight his cigar. “Camel you must take me for a complete idiot.”
“You’re an idiot if you leave this elephant to burn in the fire, yeah. Everything’s right here on the floor in front of the door, just open up and—”
“You got another side arm on you … I know you’re up to something.”
“I’m up to saving my ass is what I’m up to McCleany. I don’t have a weapon. Open the door and take a look, see if I’m not playing this straight with you.” He continued talking, urging McCleany to be reasonable … Camel was good at this, nudging people toward the reasonable, and McCleany listened carefully while puffing on the cigar.
“If you know my reputation,” Camel told him, “you know I don’t lie … I’m playing this straight with you.”
He removed the cigar from his mouth. “If I open this door I want to see all three of you standing in the middle of the room with your hands on top of your heads, if I don’t, if those pictures and that elephant aren’t all right there on the floor I swear to God I’ll start shooting and then torch you all to hell.”
“Annie and I are in the middle of the room right now! Can you hear me?”
“Where’s Growler?”
“I told you he’s dead, laying over there against the wall. Everything’s just the way you want it Gerald, we got a deal?”
McCleany unlocked the padlock, lifted it out, doing all this with his left hand, the .38 in his right, using it to push open the door while he kept himself to the side in case Camel did have another weapon.
With the door open McCleany knelt down and quickly peeked around the jamb ready to shoot … but Camel and Annie were out in the middle of the room as promised, hands on their heads, Growler lying over against a wall.
On the floor right there by the doorway where it got soaked with gasoline was a fire screen and on it were eleven snapshots and an elephant eight inches long and about the same height, solid gold, foot and trunk raised in triumph, studded with jewels. “I’ll be damned,” McCleany muttered.
“You take the elephant,” Camel was telling him, “and you take the pictures, then let us go … after that I don’t care if you burn this place, fly to South America or what. We have a deal?”
“Yeah sure,” McCleany said as he stepped onto the fire screen, keeping the revolver pointed at Annie and Camel, kneeling down to look at one of the photographs. “She was a sweet piece of ass.”
“That elephant’s the real McCoy,” Camel said. “Gold.”
McCleany stuffed the photographs in a pocket.
“Solid gold,” Camel said.
When McCleany put his hand on the elephant to lift it, Camel shouted, “Liar!” … and McCleany died instantly.