'If you think you know an answer to it... call me.'
'All right, Mike.' She started to get out, stopped and turned her head. 'You looked like fun, Mike. For both of us, I'm honestly sorry.'
Her mouth was too close and too soft to just look at. My fingers seemed to get caught in her hair and suddenly those lovely, wet lips were only inches away, and just as suddenly there was no distance at all.
The bubbling warmth was just what I expected. The fire and the cushiony softness and the vibrancy made a living bed of her mouth. I leaned into it, barely touched it and came away before there was too much hunger. The edges of her teeth showed in a faint smile and she touched my face with the tips of her fingers, then she climbed out of the car.
All the way back to Manhattan I could taste it. The warmth and the wetness and a tantalizing flavor.
The garage was filled so I parked at the curb, gassed up for an excuse to stay there and walked into the office. Bob Gellie was busy putting a distributor together, but he dropped it when I came in.
I said, 'How did it go, kid?'
'Hi, Mike. You gave me a job, all right.'
'Get it?'
'Yeah, I got it. I checked two dozen outlets before I found where those heads came from. A place out in Queens sold ?em. The rest of the stuff I couldn't get a line on at all. Most of it's done directly from California or Chicago.'
'So?'
'They were ordered by phone and picked up and paid for by a messenger.'
'Great.'
'Want me to keep trying?'
'Never mind. Those boys have their own mechanics. What about the car?'
'Another cutie. It came out of the Bronx. The guy who bought it said it was a surprise for his partner. He paid cash. Like a jerk the dealer let him borrow his plates and it got driven down, the plates were taken off and handed back to the dealer again.' He opened the drawer and slid an envelope across to me. 'Here's your registration. I don't know how the hell they worked it but they did. Them guys left themselves wide open.'
'Who bought the car?'
'Guess.'
'Smith, Jones, Robinson. Who?'
'O'Brien. Clancy O'Brien. He was medium. Mr. Average Man. Nobody could describe him worth a hoot. You know the kind?'
'I know the kind. Okay, Bob, call it quits. It isn't worth pushing.'
He nodded and squinted up his face at me. 'Things pretty bad, Mike?'
'Not so bad they can't get worse.'
'Gee.'
I left him there fiddling with his distributor. Outside the traffic was thick and fast. Women with bundles were crowding the sidewalks and baby carriages were parked alongside the buildings.
Normal, I thought, a nice normal day. I hauled my heap away from the curb, cut back to Broadway and headed home. It took thirty minutes to get there, another thirty for a quick lunch at the corner and I went into the building fishing my keys out of my pocket.
Any other time I would have seen them. Any other time it would have been dark outside and light inside and my eyes wouldn't have been blanked out. Any other time I would have had a rod on me and it wouldn't have happened so easy. But this was now and not some other time.
They came out of the corners of the lobby, the two of them, each one with a long-nosed revolver in his fist and a yen to use it. They were bright boys who had been around a long time and who knew all the angles. I got in the elevator, leaned against the wall while they patted me down, turned around and faced the door as they pushed the LOBBY button instead of getting off, and walked out in front of them to my car.
Only the short one seemed surprised that I was clean. He didn't like it at all. He felt around the seat while his buddy kept his gun against my neck, then got in beside me.
You don't say much at a time like that. You wait and keep hoping for a break, knowing that if it came at all it would be against you. You keep thinking that they wouldn't pop you out in broad daylight, but you don't move because you know they will. New York. This is New York. Something exciting happening every minute. After a while you get used to it and don't pay any attention to it. A gunshot, a backfire, who can tell the difference or who cares. A drunk and a dead man, they both look the same.
The boy next to me said, 'Sit on your hands.'
I sat on my hands. He reached over, found my keys in my pocket and started the car. 'You're a sucker, mac,' he said.
The one in the back said, 'Shut up and drive.' We pulled out into the street and his voice came again. This time it was closer to my ear. 'I don't have to warn you about nothing, do I?'
The muzzle of the gun was a cold circle against my skin. 'I know the score,' I said.
'You only think you do,' he told me.
Chapter Nine
I could feel the sweat starting down the back of my neck. My insides were all bottled up tight. My hands got tired and I tried to slide them out and the side of the gun smashed into my head over my ear and I could feel the blood start its slow trickle downward to join the sweat.
The guy at the wheel threaded through Manhattan traffic, hit the Queens Midtown Tunnel and took the main drag out toward the airport. He did it all nice and easy so there wouldn't be any trouble along the way, deliberately driving slowly until I wanted to tell him to get it rolling and quit fooling around. They must have known how I felt because the guy in the back bored the rod into me every time I tightened up and laughed when he did it.
Overhead an occasional plane droned in for a landing and I thought we were going into the field. Instead he passed right by it, hit a stretch where no cars showed ahead and started to let the Ford out.
I said, 'Where we going?'
'You'll find out.'
The gun tapped my neck. 'Too bad you took the car.'
'You had a nice package under the hood for me.'
The twitch on the wheel was so slight the car never moved, but I caught the motion. For a second even the pressure against my neck stopped.
'Like it?' the driver asked.
He shouldn't have licked his lips. They should have taught him better.
The pitch was right there in my lap and I swung on it hard. 'It stunk. I figured the angle and had a mechanic pull it.'
'Yeah?'
'So I punch the starter and blooie. It stunk.'
This time his head came around and his eyes were little and black, eyes so packed with a crazy terror that they watered. His foot slammed into the brake and the tires screamed on the pavement.
It wasn't quite the way I wanted it but it was just as good. Buster in the back seat came pitching over my shoulder and I had his throat in my hands before he could do a thing about it. I saw the driver's gun come out as the car careened across the road and when it slapped the curbing the blast caught me in the face.
There wasn't any sense holding the guy's neck any more, not with the hole he had under his chin. I shoved as hard as I could, felt the driver trying to reach around the body to get at me while he spit out a string of curses that blended together in an incoherent babble.
I had to reach across the corpse to grab him and he slid down under the wheel still fighting, the rod in his hand. Then he had it out from the tangle of clothes and was getting up at me.
But by then it was too late. Much too late. I had my hand clamped over his, snapped it back and he screamed the same time the muzzle rocketed a bullet into his eyeball and in the second before he died the other eye that was still there glared at me balefully before it filmed over.
