Chapter 23

The gun was a .38 calibre S. and W. revolver with a six-inch blue steel barrel, serial number 58237. I shoved it into the pocket of my jacket. Melliotes’ striped linen coat was draped over a hanger in the closet. In its inside pocket, I found both my automatic and my wallet. I put them where they belonged and made for the door. Melliotes’ breathing had slowed down, but he was still sleeping the sleep of the sapped.

My shoes squished on the floor of the corridor. There were heavy doors on either side, all of them closed and locked. The hallway was as dim and ugly as the one in my dream. The only light came from a curtained door at the far end. I had it open and one foot on the porch when someone cried out behind me. It was a woman’s cry, muffled by thick soundproof walls. I went back into the building.

“Let me out.” The consonants were blurred and only the vowels came through: “Lemmeow,” like a hurt cat’s yowling. “Pleaslemmeow.”

The cry was louder at one door than at the others. When I shook that door, the woman said: “Who is it? Let me out.” Mavis again. My heart sank into my boots and bounced back into my throat. The burnt child can’t stay away from the fire.

I said under my breath, “To hell with you, Mavis,” but these were only words.

What I did was go back to Melliotes and take his keys and try them on the door till I found the one that opened it. Mavis stood back and looked at me, then moved into my arms with a little tearing sigh. “Archer. You came.”

“I’ve been here for some time. I seem to be fairy-godfather-in-residence.”

“Anyway, you’re here.”

She walked backward into the room and sat down weakly on the cot. It was a cell much the same as the one that I had occupied, complete with wire-screened window and padded walls. The angels of mercy took good care of their patients.

“What kind of a clientele does Melliotes have? The wet-sheet set?”

Pale and distraught, she looked a little mental herself. She moved her head back and forth, and her eyes swung back and forth as if by their own great weight. “I’ve never been here before.” And in the same tone, quiet and forlorn: “I’m going to kill him.” There were flakes of dried blood on her lower lip where she had bitten it.

“There’s been too much killing already. Buck up, Mavis. This time you’re going to Mexico for sure.”

She leaned forward blindly, her small head against my thigh. Her hair parted at the nape and fell forward around her face like two bright wings. From that hiding place she whispered: “If you’ll go with me.”

We were back where we had left off. The yacht and the water-chamber, Kilbourne and Melliotes, were characters and scenes in a morphine dream. I remembered the fire-blunted features of Pat Reavis, and backed away from her. “I’ll go as far as the airport with you. I’ll even buy you a ticket, one-way.”

“I’m afraid to go by myself.” Her voice was a wisp, but her eyes were bright behind the web of hair.

I said that I was afraid to go along. She stood up suddenly and stamped one high-arched foot on the hard composition floor. “What’s the matter, Archer, have you got a girl somewhere?”

She was a very bad actress, and I was embarrassed. “I wish I had.”

She stood in front of me with her arms akimbo and accused me of impotentia coeundi. Those weren’t the words she used.

I said: “Men have been spoiling you since grade school, haven’t they? But there’s no percentage in standing here calling names. In just two minutes I’m walking out of here. You can come along if you like. As far as the airport.”

“As far as the airport,” she mimicked me. “I thought you liked me.”

“I like you. But I have two good reasons for staying clear. One, what happened to Reavis. Two, the case on my hands.”

“I thought you were working for me?”

“I work for myself.”

“Anyway, aren’t I the best part of the case?”

I said: “The whole is always greater than the parts.”

But I didn’t hear the sound of my own voice. A car door slammed somewhere, and footsteps scraped on concrete, growing louder. Somebody heavy and fast was coming up the walk. She heard the sounds and froze: a nymph on an urn.

I drew my gun and sighted down the corridor. The curtained front door was standing slightly ajar the way I had left it. A shadow rose on the curtain, the screen door creaked. I stepped back into the room and examined the clip of my automatic. It was full, and the cartridge was still in the chamber. The footsteps approached the open doorway of the room we were in, lagging slower each time.

Mavis’s fingers bit into my shoulder. “Who is it?”

“Be quiet.”

But the heavy feet had stopped. They moved indecisively, and retreated. I stepped out into the corridor. Kilbourne was waddling rapidly toward the open front door.

I said “Stand,” and shot at the wall beside him. The bullet tore a six-inch gash in the plaster, and halted him in his tracks.

He turned slowly, his hands ascending under hydraulic pressure. He was wearing a Homburg and a fresh dark suit with a mottled pink carnation in the lapel. His face was the same mottled pink. “Melliotes was right,” he said. “I shouldn’t have let you live.”

“You’ve made a lot of mistakes. There are hundreds of people still living—”

The car door closed again, almost inaudibly. I handed the blue revolver to the woman behind me, “Can you use it?”

“Yes.”

“Take him into the room and keep him there.”

“Yes.”

I elbowed Kilbourne out of my way, ran for the front door and slid behind it. A man ran up to the porch, the breath in his ruined nose like a fanfare of trumpets. When Kilbourne’s chauffeur came through the door I hooked his shins with my toe. He went down heavily on hands and knees, and I poleaxed him with the butt of my forty-five. The screen door slammed.

Its echo came back to me from the far end of the corridor, amplified to a heavy gun’s explosion.

She met me in the doorway, empty-handed. “I had to do it,” she chattered. “He tried to take it away from me. He would have shot us both.”

“Leave me out of it.”

“It’s true, he was going to kill me.” The parrot screech of hysteria drowned out Mavis. She looked at her hands as if they were evil white birds. A wicked magician named Kilbourne had attached them to her by witchcraft.

Kilbourne was reclining on the floor, one heavy shoulder propped against the cot. A mound of flesh expensively dressed for death, with a single flower which he had bought for himself. A darker carnation blossomed in one eye-socket Melliotes’ gun lay across his lap.

“Will you take to the airport?” she said. “Now?”

“Not now.” I was feeling the flaccid puffed wrist. “You always do the wrong thing, beautiful.”

“Is he dead?”

“Everybody is dying.”

“I’m glad. But take me away from here. He’s horrible.”

“You should have thought of that a minute ago.”

“Don’t uncle me, for God’s sake. Take me away.”

I looked at her and thought of Acapulco. The fine warm fishing waters and the high sea-cliffs and the long slow tequila nights. Ten million dollars and Mavis, and all I had to do was a little fixing.

It went past the secret eye of my mind like a movie that had been made a long time ago. All I had to do was take it out of the can and dub in dialogue. Not even dialogue was necessary. The chauffeur had been knocked out before the shot. Melliotes was unconscious. And the slug in Kilbourne’s brain was from his gun. Mavis and I could walk out of there and wait for the will to be probated.

I took a long hard look at her full body and her empty face. I left it in the can.

She saw my intention before I spoke. “You’re not going to help me, are you?”

“You’re pretty good at helping yourself,” I said. “Not good enough, though. I could cover up for you, but you’d let something slip when the men from the District Attorney’s office came around. It would be first degree then, and I’d be in it.”