“Just remarking on military strategy. Ever do that? Sit around and talk to yourself about military strategy?”
“No, sir. ”
“You’re probably wise not to. Here, take this with you. ” I dropped most of my-steak and kidney pie into his trash bucket. He moved on. I wanted two things, maybe three, depending on how you counted. I wanted not to get killed. I wanted to decommission some of the enemy. I wanted at least one of them to get away with me following, Decommission. Nice word. Sounds better than kill. But I am thinking about killing a couple of people here. Calling it decommission isn’t going to make it better. It’s their choice though. I won’t shoot if I’m not taking fire. They try to kill me, I’ll fight. I’m not setting them up. They are setting me up… Except I’m setting them up to set me up so I can set them up. Messy. But you’re going to do it anyway, kid, whether it’s messy or not, so there’s not too much point to analyzing its ethical implications. Yeah, I guess I am. I guess I’ll just see if it feels good afterward.
They were experienced with explosives. And they didn’t worry about who got hurt. We knew that. If I were they I might wait till I got inside the tunnel, then roll in some explosives and turn me into a cave painting. Or they could do me in on the bridge over the canal. I knew who they were. I knew the girl and I had the pictures that Dixon had given me. Only the girl knew who I was. She’d have to be there to spot me. Maybe I could spot them first. How many would they send? If they were going to trap me in the tunnel, at least two plus the spotter. They’d at least want one at each end. But when they blew up the Dixons there were nine of them that Dixon spotted. They didn’t need nine. It must have been their sense of community. The group that blasts together lasts together. My bet was they’d show up in force. And they’d be careful. They’d be looking for a police setup. Anyone would. They wouldn’t be that stupid. So they’d be watching too.
I stood up. There was nothing to do but blunder into it. I’d stay out of the tunnel, and I’d keep away from open areas as best I could, and I’d look very carefully at everything. I knew them and they didn’t know it. Only one of them knew me. That was as much edge as I was going to get. The shoulder holster under my coat felt awkward. I wished I had more fire power. The steak and kidney pie felt like a bowling ball in my stomach as I headed out onto Prince Albert Road and caught a red double-decker bus back to Mayfair.
7
On the way back to my hotel I got off the bus on Piccadilly and went into a men’s specialty store. I bought a blond wig, a blond mustache, and some make-up cement to attach it. Spenser, man of a thousand faces. Outside my door there was a white talcum powder footprint. I kept on going past my room and on down the corridor. When it intersected with a cross corridor I turned right and leaned against the wall. There was no sign of anyone lurking. A standard approach to this kind of business would be one on the inside and one on the outside, but that didn’t seem the case. Of course it could have been a hotel employee on innocent business. But it might be someone who wanted to shoot me dead.
I put the bag with my disguise in it on the floor and slid my gun out of the shoulder holster. I held it in my right hand and folded my arms across my chest so the gun was concealed under my arm. There was no one in the corridor. I peeked around the corner. There was no one in that corridor either. I went down the corridor softly to my room. Took the key out of my pocket with my left hand; my right had the gun in it, chest-high now, and visible. The dim sounds of the hotel’s muffled machinery whirred on around me. The elevators going and stopping. The sound of air-conditioning apparatus, faintly a television playing somewhere.
The hotel door was dark oak, the room numbers in brass. I stood outside my room and listened. There was no sound. Standing to the right of the door and reaching with my left hand, I put the key as gently as I could into the lock and turned it. Nothing happened. I opened the door a fraction to free the catch. Then I wiggled the key out, and slipped it back in my pocket. I took a deep breath. It was hard to swallow. I shoved the door open with my left hand and rolled back out of sight against the wall to the right of the door. I had the hammer back on my gun. Nothing happened. No one made a sound. The lights were off, but the afternoon sun was shining and the room shed some light into the corridor.
I edged a few steps down the corridor so that I could get a better angle on the door, and crossed. If someone came out shooting they’d expect me to be where I had been, to the right of the door, on the same wall. I folded my arms again to hide the gun, and leaned against the wall and looked at the open door and waited. The elevator stopped to my right and a man in a tattersall vest got off with a lady in a pink pantsuit. He was bald, her hair was bluish gray. They looked past me, rigorously not being curious as they walked by. They were equally careful not to look into the open door of the room. I watched them as they went on. They didn’t look like bombers but who can tell a bomber by his appearance. You have to be a little suspicious of anyone who wears a tattersall vest anyway. They went into a room about ten doors down. Nothing else moved.
I would feel like a terrible numb-nuts if the room turned out to be empty and I was poised out here like agent X-15 for hours. But I would be a terrible numb-nuts if I just went and bought the farm right here in Merry England because I wasn’t patient. I would wait. He would wait, too, apparently. But I was betting the tension would get him. The open door would get wider and wider open as he looked at it. If there were two of them it would-take longer. One guy gets scareder than two guys. But I had nowhere to go till ten next morning. I was betting I could wait longer.
An Indian woman in a white uniform rolled a laundry cart past me, looked curiously into the open room but paid me no attention. I was finding that more and more women were paying me no attention these days. Perhaps tastes were drifting away from the matinee idol type. The light from my room waned. I kept my eyes on it because I knew there’d be a shadow when the assassin made his move. Or maybe he knew that too and was waiting till dark.
Two African men came off the elevator and walked down past me. They both wore gray business suits with very narrow lapels. They both wore dark narrow ties and white broadcloth shirts with collars that turned up slightly at the ends. The one nearest me had tribal marks scarred into his cheeks. His companion had round gold-framed glasses on. They were speaking in British-accented English as they went by me, and paid no attention to me or the door. I watched them peripherally as I watched the door too. Anyone could be an accomplice.
The phone was near the door, and in the reeking silence I was pretty sure that the assassin couldn’t call without me hearing him. But there might have been a signal of some sort from the window, or there might be a prearranged time when if he didn’t call the back-up came looking. It was hard watching both the door and the corridor traffic. I was getting tired of holding the gun. My hand was stiff, and with the thing cocked I had to hold it carefully. I thought about shifting it to my left hand. I wasn’t as good with my left hand, and I might need to be very good all of a sudden. I wouldn’t be too good if my gun hand had gone to sleep, however.
I shifted the thing to my left hand and exercised my right. The gun felt clumsy in my left. I ought to practice left-handed more. I hadn’t anticipated a gun hand going to sleep. How’d you get shot, Spenser? Well, it’s this way, Saint Pete. I was staked out in a hotel corridor but my hand went to sleep. Then after a while my entire body nodded off. Did Bogie’s hand ever go to sleep, Spenser? Did Kerry Drake’s? No, sir, I don’t think we can admit you here to Private-Eye Heaven, Spenser. I was getting soft standing out there in the corridor. My right hand felt better and I shifted the gun back. No more light came out of the open door of my room. A family of four, complete with Instamatics and shoulder bags, came out of the elevator and walked past me down the corridor. The kids looked into the open door. The father said, “Keep walking.” He had an American accent and his voice was tired. The mom
