Carny kill

'He's mine, gawddamn you, Bob! You hear me? Wait'll I get Chad's gun.' And then, a second or so later, Pansy-face cried, 'Aw gee-_sus_, Bob! You see what he done to Chad?'

I kept on crawling along the ditch till that blazing streak of opaque light overhead lost its power of penetration and started to dissolve in the darkness beyond. Then I snaked up to the edge of the parapet and looked back down the road.

The car's headlights glowered at me like jack-o-lantern eyes. Pansy-face's silhouette cut across them. He was holding Chad's pistol at hip-level. I eased myself out of the ditch and sat down in the road facing the car and tested my gun arm on my cocked right knee and gave it support with my other hand and took a sight and called, 'Down here.'

Pansy-face spun around with the front of the car at his back and gave me a beautiful fullfront silhouette. I squeezed off but it went high again and nabbed him in the neck and threw him back against the nose of the hood. Then his knees buckled and he went down in the road like a dropped shirt.

I only caught a flicker impression of the driver piling back into the car and I snapped one at him but God knows where it went. The motor was still idling and all he had to do was flip off the emergency and punch a button and give it the gas.

But he forgot about Pansy-face.

'_Jesus Christ, Bob, wa-!_'

The car lurched forward and went thump over the meaty obstacle and a shriek like I never want to hear again ripped the fabric of the night.

The driver was already rattled and the good-god realization that he had just mashed Pansy-face must have unglued him completely. He floored it and that big rumbling crystaleyed sedan came hurtling down the road at me, but it was already slated for crashvile when I started jerking off shots at the windshield, and it swerved out of control and to the left and I took a frantic roll back into the ditch.

The tires howled and the brakes started to scream and all of it went into a great metallic crash and seemed to surround me in a shivering glass ball of sound. Then it popped and all I could hear was the quiet, tentative giving of ruptured metal parts and the plippity-plip of draining liquid puddling. The headlights were burning steadily at a crazy tilt.

I climbed out of the ditch and went across the road and looked down the other side. The car had turned turtle on the slope. It was on its top and two of the tractionless wheels were still spinning. The driver was partly out the window and he was in a crumple on his head and shoulders. The black liquid running over his face looked like oil but of course it wasn't.

I went down the road and looked at Pansy-face. His legs were at an odd angle to his body and he was hemorrhaging from the mouth. I hoped he hadn't died right away.

I wiped off the pistol and pitched it in the field by the wreck. I didn't see any reason why I should get involved with the law-any more than I already was. I started hoofing back the way we had come.

16

It cost me an hour to reach the highway and another halfhour to find an all night coffee stand. I phoned for a taxi from there and it was 12:45 when I paid off the hack in front of Billie's apartment, the Regency.

Billie was getting ready for bed and she was in one of those skimpy nylon nighties that end where Eve wore the fig leaf. She looked at me as if I'd just dropped out of the moon.

'Why, Thax!'

I stepped into her room and closed the door and said, 'I had a little trouble.'

She gave me a half wondering, half critical look.

'You look like you've been rolling in it. What happened?'

I told her it was a car accident.

'Well, whose car? Was anybody hurt?'

'Nobody was hurt. Just three guys were killed. Okay I use your bathroom? I feel as grimy as a Union Pacific engineer.'

I told her about it after I got out of the shower and put my shorts back on. 'It was an anachronism. An honest to God old-fashioned ride. Like something out of the _Little Caesar_ days.'

'But why, Thax? Who would want to do such a crazy thing to you?'

'Someone who figures I'm getting too smart.'

'You mean the same person who killed Rob Cochrane and Terry Orme?'

I shook my head and asked her if she had a drink around there. After-reaction was setting in and I suddenly needed a drink very badly. She had bourbon.

'No,' I told her. 'It wasn't the same person. The person who fixed Cochrane and Orme does his own dirty- work. This Edward G. Robinson-type ride is someone else's style.'

Billie looked annoyed. 'I don't understand. Just how many people at Neverland have homicidal tendencies?'

I grinned at her. 'One too many. That's what had me going in circles so long. I didn't figure it that way.'

'Honestly, Thax. You're the most maddening person I know. Are you going to tell me what it's all about, or just leave me up in the air?'

'Up in the air is one place I'm not going to leave you. Not while there's a nice warm bed waiting ten feet away. Shut up now like a good little girl, huh? And come to daddy.'

I didn't want to talk about murder. I had just been too damn close to my own. I had been lucky and now I was full of the joy of living and I had to do something vital and energetic to establish my love of life.

'Really, Thax,' Billie said. 'Sometimes I wonder about you.' But she was smiling.

I took her by the hand and walked the ten feet.

We drove to Neverland around noon. We had decided I should find myself a room somewhere. There were no doors I could lock in Tarzan's hut and it was no longer a very safe place for me to sleep in.

'I've got a couple of clean shirts and whatnot tucked under Tarzan's bed,' I told her. 'I'll pick 'em up after we close tonight and meet you at the main gate.'

'Thax,' Billie said, 'be careful. Don't trust anyone.'

'Stop worrying about it, will you?'

'I can't help worrying about it. We're so close to everything I've ever wanted. In another week we'll be starting out for a glorious new life.'

I nodded, thinking about it, looking at Neverland.

'Like conquistadors in a fabled city, plundering the treasure vaults of their frozen jewels,' I said.

'What's that supposed to mean?'

'Just something else de Saint-Exupery said about aviators and the stars. It doesn't matter.'

Billie looked at me doubtfully.

'Well, I'm afraid I don't see the connection,' she said. 'But just the same, don't do anything to spoil it.'

'Don't worry,' I said. 'I'll take care of myself. See you tonight.'

I was never more wrong in my life. I wasn't going to see her that night and someone else was going to take care of me. I had forgotten that a man's will has very little to say about the direction he is going when he is caught in a current.

It was a hot, almost sultry day with no help from the sea, and we had a good crowd. I worked my stand for a few hours but my mind wasn't on it. I kept waiting for something to happen and when nothing did I began to wonder if I'd been wrong.

The way I figured it a crack had to appear in the egg-shell soon so that the chick could show its beak. When it didn't, I started to get nervous.

I stayed at my stand till about four and then I went over to Gabby's gallery.

'Smoke break,' I said.

He was agreeable. He said, 'Want a snort?'