I was ready to go when the door opened again. You could feel the freeze. Talk suddenly quieted down. The two guys in tweedy coats closed the door behind them and walked up to the bar with studied casualness. Their clothes were just the right kind, but on the wrong people because they weren't Madison Avenuers at all. One was Nat Paley and the bigger guy you called Lennie Weaver when you wanted to stay friends, but, if you had a yen for dying quick, you gave him the Pigface tab Margie Provetsky hung on him years ago.
I felt that crazy feeling come all over me and I wanted to grin, but for now I kept it in. I pushed my stool back and that's as far as I got. The little guy who stormed in was no more than 20, but he had an empty milk bottle in one hand and he mouthed a string of curses as he came at Paley and Weaver.
Trouble was, he talked too much. He tried to spill it out before he cut loose. Lenny laced him with a sudden backhand as Nat grabbed him, took the bottle away, and slammed him to the floor.
He wasn't hurt, but he was too emotionally gone to do anything more than cry. His face was contorted with hate.
Lenny grunted and picked up his drink. "You crazy, kid?"
"You dirty bastard!" The words were softly muffled. "You talked her into working for him."
"Get outa here, kid."
"She didn't have to work up there. She had a job. You showed her all that money, didn't you? That's why she worked. She always talked about having that land of money. You bastards! You dirty bastards!"
When Nat kicked him, the blood splashed all over his shoes and the kid just lay there. He twitched, vomited, and started to choke. The only one who moved was Dari.
She managed to get him facedown and held him like that until he moaned softly and opened his eyes.
She glanced up with those wild eyes of hers and said, "Sonny was right. You're dirty bastards."
"Would you like a kick in the face too, lady?" Lennie asked her.
For a second it was real quiet, then I said, "Try it, Pigface."
He spun around and my shoe ripped his sex machine apart and while he was in the middle of a soundless scream I grabbed Nat's hair and slammed his face against the bar. He yelled, swung at me, and one hand tore into the bandage over my ribs and I felt the punk draining right out of me. But that was his last chance. I almost brained him the next time and let him fall in a heap on the floor with his buddy.
I faked a grin at Dari, walked past the two cops at the table, and said so everybody could hear me, "Nice clean town you got here, friend," and went outside to get sick.
The window was open and I could see my breath in the air, but just the same I was soaked with sweat. When the knock came on the door I automatically said to come on in, not caring who it was. My side was one gigantic ball of fire and it was going to be another hour before the pills I had taken helped.
There was no sympathy in her voice. The disdain was still there, only now it was touched by curiosity. She stood there, her stomach flat under her dress, her breasts swelling out, and I remembered pictures of the Amazons and thought that she would have made a good one. Especially naked.
"Sonny asked me to thank you."
Trying to make my voice sound real wasn't easy. "No trouble."
"Do you . . . know what you're doing?"
She paused.
"What do you want in Pinewood?"
"A vacation, kitten. Two weeks. I have to do it. Now, will you do me a favor?" I closed my eyes. The fire in my side was building up again.
"Yes?"
"In my flight bag over there . . . in the side pocket is a bottle of capsules. Please . . ."
I heard the zipper run back, then the sharp intake of her breath. The gun she found in the wrong side pocket suddenly fell to the floor with a thump and then she was standing over me again. She had the bottle in her hand.
"You're a damned drug addict, aren't you? That's the way they get without their dosage. They get sick, they sweat, they shake." She poured the caps back in the bottle and capped it. "Your act in the restaurant stunk. Now act this one out." With a quick flip of her wrist she threw the bottle out the window and I heard it smash in the street.
"You filth," she said and walked out.
It was three in the afternoon when I woke up. I lay there panting and, when the sudden sickness in my stomach subsided, I got to my feet and undressed. Outside, a steady light rain tapped against the windows.
A hot shower was like a rebirth.
The .45 was still on the floor where Dari Dahl had let it drop and I hooked it with my foot, picked it up, and zippered it inside my leather shaving kit.
Every time I thought of that crazy broad throwing that bottle out the window I felt like laying her out. That wasn't getting those capsules back, though. I had maybe another two hours to go and I was going to need them bad, bad, bad. I stuffed 50 bucks in my pocket and went downstairs.
Outside my window, I found the remains of the bottle. The capsules inside had long since dissolved and been washed away by the rain.
I shrugged it off, found the drugstore and passed my spare prescription over to the clerk. He glanced at it, looked at me sharply, and said, "This will take an hour."
"Yeah, I know. I'll be back."
I headed for the restaurant. Although lights were on in storefronts and the corner traffic blinker winked steadily, there wasn't a car or a person on the street. It was like a ghost town.
The restaurant was empty. The waitress recognized me with a peculiar smile, took my order, and half-ran to the kitchen. The bartender walked across the room to me.
He was a graying man in his late 40s, a little too thin with deep tired eyes. "Look, mister," he said, "I don't want trouble in here."
I leaned back in my chair. "You know who those jokers were?"
He nodded. "We'll handle things our own way."
"Then start by keeping out of my hair, friend," I told him. "I don't know how or why those punks are here, but they're the kind of trouble people like you just don't handle at all, so be grateful for the little things, understand?"
He didn't understand at all and his face showed it. He glanced outside toward the distant slope of the mountain. "You aren't . . . on the hill?"
"Mac, I don't know what the hell you're talking about. I think you people are nuts, that's all. I pull those punks off the kid's back last night while you, the cops, and everybody else just watch and
The door slammed open and Sergeant Vance came in. He came sidling over and tossed a sheet of paper down on the table. It was my prescription.
"This calls for narcotics, mister. You better come up with a damn good explanation."
Real slowly I stood up. Vance was a big guy, but he wasn't looking down on me at all. Not at all. His face was all mean but scared too like the rest and his hand jumped to the butt of his service revolver.
I said, "Okay, you clown, I'll give you one explanation and if you ask again I'll shove that gun of yours up your pipe. That's a legitimate prescription you got there and, if you do any checking, you check the doctor who issued it first. Then, if it's bad, you come back to me. Meanwhile, you have a certain procedure to take that's down in black and white in the statute books. Now you take that prescription back and see that it gets filled or you'll be chewing on a warrant for your own arrest."
He got it, all right. For a minute, I thought I was going to have to take the rod away from him, but the message got through in time. He went out as fast as he came in. What a hell of a vacation this was. Brother!
Willie Elkins, who owned a garage, was willing to rent me his pickup truck for 15 bucks a week. It was a dilapidated thing, but all I needed. He told me how to find old Mort Steiger, who rented boats. The old guy let me have my pick, then shook his head at me and grinned through his broken plate. "You ain't no fisherman, are you?"
"Nope," I shook back. "I try once in a while, but I'm no fisherman."
He paused, watching me warily. "You on the hill?"
