had an admirable backside. They turned right at the cross corridor and disappeared.
It was getting late. I was working overtime here. Sudden-death overtime. Ah, Spenser, what a way you have with words. Sudden-death overtime. Dynamite. My feet hurt. I was beginning to experience lower back pain from standing so long. Why do you get more tired standing than walking? An imponderable. Waiting for someone to jump out of a dark doorway and shoot at you is tiring too. Pay attention. Don’t let the mind wander. You tended to lose sight for a minute when the mom with the backside walked past. If that had been fight time you’d have cashed it in right there, kid.
I looked hard at the door. The assassin would have to appear from the right. The open door was flush against the left-hand wall. He’d roll around the right wall looking for me down the corridor. Or maybe not, maybe he’d come on his belly, close to the floor. That’s what I would do. Or would I? Maybe I’d dive out of the door and get an angle on me from across the corridor, try to be too quick for the guy who’s been standing there getting hypnotized by staring at the door. Or maybe I wouldn’t even be there. Maybe I would be an empty room and some nervous dimwit would stand outside and stare at the emptiness for a number of hours. I could call hotel security and tell them I’d found my door open. But if there was someone in there the first person through the door was going to get blasted. The assassin had been in there too long to make fine distinctions. And if he was a Liberty type he didn’t care much who got killed anyway. I couldn’t ask someone else to walk in there for me. I’d wait. I could wait. It was one of the things I was good at. I could hang on.
Up the corridor past me a room service waiter, dark-skinned in a white coat, wheeled a table full of covered dishes off the service elevator and around the corner to the right. A faint baked potato smell drifted back down the corridor to me. After my steak and kidney pie I had thought about extensive fasting, but the baked potato smell made me reconsider. The assassin came out in a scrabbling crouch, and fired one shot down the corridor toward the elevator on the wall opposite to where I was, before he realized I wasn’t there.
He was quick, and half turned to shoot toward me when I shot him in the chest, my arm straight, my body half turned, not breathing while I squeezed off the shot. At close range my bullet spun him half around. I shot him again as he fell on his side with his knees up. The gun skittered out of his hand as he fell. Small caliber. Long barrel. Target gun. I jumped over and dove through the open door of my room, landed on my shoulder and rolled past the bed. There was a second man, and his first bullet took a piece out of the door frame behind me. His second one caught me with a sharp tug in the back of my left thigh. Half sitting, I shot three times into the middle of his dark form, in faint silhouette against the window. He went backward over a straight chair and lay on his back with one foot draped on the chair seat. I raised to a full sit-up against the wall. That’s why they could wait so long. There were two.
My breath was coming very heavy and I could feel my heart pumping in the middle of my chest. I’m not gonna get shot, I’m gonna have cardiac arrest some day. I took in deep breaths of air. In the right-hand breast pocket of my blue corduroy Levi jacket were twelve extra shells. I opened the cylinder of my gun and popped out the spent cartridges. There was one live round left. I felt down at the back of my left leg. It didn’t hurt yet, but it was warm and I knew I was bleeding. The gun shots in the enclosed corridor had been very loud. That should bring some cops pretty quick.
I edged over to the dark shape with his foot on the chair. I felt for pulse and found none. I got to my feet and walked a little unsteadily to the door. The first man I shot lay as he had fallen. The long-barreled target pistol a foot from his inert hand. His knees drawn up. There was blood on the hall carpet. I put my gun back in its holster and walked over to him. He was dead too. I went back into my room. The back of my leg was beginning to hurt. I sat down on the bed and picked up the phone when I heard the footsteps in the hall. Some of them stopped a little way from my room and some came on to the door. I put the phone back down. “All right in there, come out with your hands up. This is the police.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “There’s a guy dead in here and I’m wounded. Come on in. I’m on your side.” A young man in a light raincoat stepped quickly into the room and pointed a revolver at me. Behind him came an older man with graying hair and he pointed a revolver at me too.
“Stand up, please,” the younger man said, “and put your hands on top of your head, fingers clasped.”
“There’s a gun in the shoulder holster under my left arm,” I said. Several uniformed bobbies and two more guys in civilian clothes crowded into the room. One of them went directly to the phone and began to talk. The guy with the graying hair patted me down, took my gun, took the seven remaining bullets from my jacket pocket and stepped back.
The young one said to the man on the phone, “He’s bleeding. He’ll need medical attention.” The guy on the phone nodded. The young cop said to me, “All right, tell us about it, please. ”
“I’m a good guy,” I said. “I’m an American investigator. I’m over here working on a case. If you’ll get hold of Inspector Downes in your department he’ll vouch for me.”
“And these gentlemen,” he nodded at the body on the floor and included, with a sweep of his chin, the guy I had dumped in the corridor.
“I don’t know. I’d guess they were going to put me away because I was on this case. I came back to the room and they were waiting for me.”
The gray cop said, “You killed them both?”
“Yeah.”
“This is the gun?”
“Yeah.”
“Some identification, please?” I handed it over, including the British gun permit. The gray cop said to the one on the phone, “Tell them to get hold of Phil Downes. We’ve got an American investigator here named Spenser that claims to know him.” The cop on the phone nodded. As he talked he stuck a cigarette in his mouth and lit it.
A man came in with a small black doctor bag. He had on a dark silk suit and a lavender shirt with the collar spread out over the suit lapels. Around his neck were small turquoise beads on a choker necklace. “Name’s Kensy,” he said. “Hotel physician.”
“You staid British doctors are all the same,” I said. “No doubt. Please drop your pants and lie across the bed, face down.” I did what I was told. The leg was hurting a lot now, and I knew the back of my pants leg was soaked with blood. Dignity is not easy, I thought. But it is always possible. The doctor went into the bathroom to wash. The cop in the light raincoat said, “You know either of these people, Mr. Spenser?”
“I haven’t even gotten a look at them yet.” The doctor came back. I couldn’t see him but I could hear him fumbling around. “This may sting a bit.” I smelled alcohol and felt it sting as the doctor swabbed off the area. “The bullet still in there?” I asked. “No, went right through. Clean wound. Some blood loss, but nothing, I think, to be concerned over.”
