Flying Blind

A few minutes later, I pulled into Lowman’s Motor Court, wondering just what the hell I’d gotten myself into. If Miller was military intelligence, willing to buy off local cops to set me up in some fashion, I needed to head home in a hurry, back to my contacts at the Trib. The sooner this was in print, the better.

I didn’t remember leaving the lights on in my cabin, and in retrospect you’d figure a guy in my business would be smarter; but the truth is, if I was smart I wouldn’t be in my business, and nobody had been parked in my stall, or the two stalls next to mine, which was the last in the row of cabins, so when I stepped inside and found the two guys tossing my room, I was genuinely surprised.

And they were surprised to see me, as after all I was supposed to be in a holding cell in Burbank or Glendale or somewhere. So I froze and they froze….

They were the best-dressed shakedown artists I ever saw, clean-shaven men in their late twenties in dark well-pressed suits with tasteful striped ties and clean collars and flourishes of hanky in their damn breast pockets and lighter-color fedoras with snappy snugged-down brims. The one nearest me was larger, with the blank expression of a college boy on an athletic scholarship; the other one was smaller but sturdy-looking with a blandly handsome face out of a shirt ad. Neither had taken off his coat to search the place, which was turned well and truly upside-down, bed stripped, mattress on the floor, drawers out of the dresser, the couple chairs upended, nightstand lamp sitting on the carpet, my suitcase on the floor, my clothing scattered. They were insurance investigators poking around the aftermath of a tornado.

The dresser, though its drawers were stacked atop each other on the floor, remained upright, and on it were a few key effects of mine, specifically my little notebook and my nine-millimeter Browning.

It took perhaps a second and a half for all of that to register, and another half-second for one of the clean-cut customers—the one nearest me, who’d been thumbing through a Bible withdrawn from the nightstand drawer, perhaps seeking guidance—to lunge at me, straight-arm slamming the door behind me, sealing me within the cabin, and with his left hand, in a blow as casual as it was powerful, slapping me with the Bible.

The Good Book taught me a lesson, sending me to my knees; but I’d learned other lessons long ago, and swung an elbow up into his groin, not once, but three times, eliciting a howl and sending him tumbling back, cushioned by the mattress on the floor, though I don’t think it did him much good.

The smaller intruder, his face white and wide-eyed with alarm, was reaching inside his suitcoat and I doubted it was for his card. I was still on my knees—the bigger guy was busy rolling around, clutching his balls and yowling in pain—and my fingers found that Bible and I flung it at the smaller bastard, and its pages fluttered like wings as it flew past him, crashing into the far wall, but startling him enough to send his fedora flying and gain me time to get to my feet, grab the nightstand lamp from the floor, and hurl it at him like a bomb.

This missed him also, smashing into, and just plain smashing, the dresser mirror, but at least it kept the bastard on his toes. The bigger one seemed to be emerging from that fetal ball he’d been rolling around in, and I stomped him in the stomach before charging toward the smaller guy, who was clawing under his suitcoat. If he wanted a gun, mine was right next to him, on the dresser, and when I reached him, I snatched the nine-millimeter in my grasp, shaking off shards of mirror making brittle rain, and whapped the barrel across his face, breaking his nose in a shower of blood, twin streams of scarlet shooting from his nostrils, and when his hand emerged from inside his suitcoat, he indeed did hold a gun, a short-barreled .38, but it didn’t last long, fumbling from his unconscious fingers as he tumbled backward, in a crumpled pile that would do his nicely pressed suit absolutely no good at all.

I turned back to the bigger intruder, who was pushing up off the mattress, a very tough man in a nice suit; his hat had flown off too, his face a mask of the rage that had overridden the pain from my elbows in the nuts and stomp to the stomach. He was digging under his suitcoat and probably wasn’t looking for his comb; I pointed the nine-millimeter at his face and said, “Let’s play Wild West and see who wins.”

Something registered in his eyes, and his hand froze within the coat, and I leaned forward and slapped him with the nine-millimeter, like he’d slapped me with the Bible, and his eyes did a slot-machine roll before he fell backward onto that mattress again.

Something was grasping at my pants leg, and I glanced over my shoulder and down where the smaller guy had crawled over—tears streaming down his face with its shattered nose and blood trailing into his mouth like a dripping scarlet Groucho mustache—and I shook him off, as if he were a dog trying to hump my leg. I pointed the gun down at him and said, “This is my best suit. Get blood on it at your own risk.”

He was breathing hard and then he started to choke on the blood in his mouth from his nose. I said, “Shit,” and stuck my gun in my belt, reached down and picked him up by the lapels and sat him on the bed’s box spring, to help him not strangle on his own blood. I’m just that kind of guy.

The bigger one, asprawl on the mattress, was still unconscious. I removed his gun from its shoulder holster, turning myself into a two-gun kid by stuffing it in my waistband next to my nine-millimeter; then I looked in his inside suitcoat pocket for his billfold. The name on his driver’s license was John Smith and he resided in Encino, California; no pictures of a wife and kids, no business cards, no nothing. The other guy, who was sitting there whimpering and snorting blood, didn’t protest when I checked out his billfold.

His name was Robert Jones, and he lived in Encino, too. He also had no wife and kids, nor any sign of being in any sort of business.

A knock came at the door. Had somebody finally noticed the slight commotion? The mild hubbub?

“Yeah?” I called.

The voice was timid, male. “Mr. Heller, are you all right? It’s the manager. Should I call the police?”

“No! No, I’m fine.”

The timid voice tried for strength. “Mr. Heller, please open the door. I’m afraid I have to insist….”

I dug in my pocket for my money clip, figuring a sawbuck ought to pave the way to a little silence. With some luck I could catch a night train to somewhere; a sleeper sounded mighty good right now. Maybe a double sawbuck…

I opened the door and William Miller’s hand holding a damp white cloth reached out and the overwhelming odor of chloroform accompanied my final thought, which was to wonder if I’d ever wake up again.

Groggy, my mouth filmed with a medicinal aftertaste and the thickness of sleep, with perhaps just a hint of Lobster Newburg, I blinked under the glare of a high overhead light, a conical shaft of brightness that singled me out in a darkened room. For the second time tonight, I was in the spotlight. If this was still tonight….