Death of a Pusher

Chapter 19

After a time Connie said, “How far you want me to drive?”

“How much gas you got?” Kuzniki countered.

“Full tank.”

“Then just keep going until dark. After our friend leaves us, we’ll gas up and keep going south to a hideout I know.”

At this time of year it wouldn’t be dark for another seven hours, which would put us in the next state even if we only averaged forty miles an hour. Apparently Kuzniki meant to plant me somewhere far enough from home so that I’d never be found.

It was hot in the back of the truck. I could feel sweat running down my arms. Periodically I kept tugging my bound wrists upward and away from the tire iron. The necktie grew damp from my sweat and stretched a little more. It still wasn’t quite enough. Kuzniki was directly facing me, so I couldn’t put my full effort into it. If my face had started to redden with strain, he would have made me turn around so that he could check my bonds.

We had been riding about a half-hour before I managed to stretch the necktie enough to free my hands.

I gripped the tire iron, shifted position slightly, and drew it from beneath me. The movement caused Kuzniki to raise the gun from his lap and center it on me. When I remained still, he seemed to decide I had just been trying to get more comfortable, and the gun dropped to his lap again.

There was a small window in the rear door, too high for me to see anything through except a stretch of sky. Kuzniki’s head was even with it, however, as he was elevated by the suitcase he sat on. I sat a little more upright and stared curiously at a cloud passing by the window.

When Kuzniki gave me a sharp glance, I immediately shifted my gaze downward to my lap. A moment later I glanced at the window again and let an interested expression form on my face.

“What are you looking at?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I said quickly, and turned my gaze aside.

He didn’t bite. Instead of turning to glance out through the window, he called, “You watching your rear-view mirror, Connie?”

“Sure. Why?”

“What’s behind us?”

“A car about a quarter of a mile back with a guy and a girl in it. We just passed them.”

“Nothing else?”

“Nothing I can see.”

Smiling faintly, I flicked my gaze at the window again, then immediately away. This time I didn’t even see the cloud. There was only clear sky.

Centering his gun on me, Kuzniki quickly turned his head to glance back through the window. I doubt that he considered the maneuver particularly risky. Presumably my hands were tied behind my back and I was seated, with my legs awkwardly spread out before me, several feet away from him.

I whipped the tire tool from behind me and threw it pry edge first, as you would hurl a knife. He started to turn his head back just in time to catch it squarely in the left eye.

His body recoiled backward, and his full two hundred and fifty pounds hit the rear door, snapping the catch. The door flew open, and he went out head over heels, his arms outflung and blood gushing from the ragged hole where his left eye had been.

I grabbed the handle of the suitcase just in time to keep it from following him.

Possibly Connie wouldn’t have known anything was wrong behind her if the door hadn’t banged shut again, then sprung open a second time. This time it stayed open, and through it I could see Kuzniki rolling over on the concrete road in what was probably his second backward somersault. I really didn’t have my attention on him, though. I was clawing at the suitcase snaps.

I felt the truck slow, and Connie called over her shoulder, “What happened?”

When there was no answer, she braked and began to pull off the road. I had both snaps of the suitcase open now, but the thing was locked. Miraculously, the tire iron hadn’t followed Kuzniki out the back door. Grabbing it up, I shoved the pry edge under the hasp of the lock and jerked. The lock snapped open just as the truck came to a full stop and the blonde twisted around to peer in the back.

Then it was a contest of speed. Connie clawed open her handbag for the revolver in it while I threw up the suitcase lid. Charlie Kossack’s gun and shoulder holster lay on top of a folded pair of tan coveralls. Inside there was also a sawed-off, double-barreled shotgun.

The shoulder harness lay on top of the pistol, and I wasn’t sure I had time to fling it aside. I grabbed for the shotgun.

The blonde’s hand was coming out of her bag when I rested the twin barrels on the top of the seat, the muzzles inches from her head and said, “Uh-uh.”

She froze in position. The gun dropped back into the handbag, and the handbag fell to the seat. Shifting the shotgun to my left hand, I reached down with my right, plucked the gun from the bag, and thrust it into my hip holster. Then I tossed the shotgun back into the suitcase and slammed the lid. Connie was reaching for the door handle when I grabbed her under both arms and dragged her over the back of the seat. She came over face up, making a three-point landing on the metal floor of the truck.

I don’t think the jar hurt her feet, but the third point she landed on brought an indignant “Ouch!” from her.

“You shouldn’t have tried to run,” I said, pulling her to her feet. “You would hurt a lot more if I’d had to shoot you there.”

Pushing her to the rear door, I jumped down and dragged her after me.

Two hundred yards back, a car had stopped on the shoulder alongside the sprawled figure of Casmir Kuzniki, and a man was just getting out from behind the wheel. I figured that was too far for us to walk.

The truck door’s rear lock was broken so that the door wouldn’t latch. Letting it hang open, I marched Connie to the cab’s left door, pushed her under the wheel to the far side and slid into the driver’s seat.

“You don’t have to be so rough,” she complained.

“I lose my chivalry with gun molls,” I said. “Give me any trouble and I’ll backhand your head off your shoulders.”

She understood that kind of talk. She probably was used to hearing it from the kind of men she went with. She sat quietly with her hands in her lap as I made a U-turn and drove back to where Kuzniki lay.

I parked on the right-hand shoulder and dragged the woman along by the arm when I crossed the road, feeling no desire to have to chase her down across country. Kuzniki had completed his final somersault by landing on his face, and the back of his head was a flattened and bloody pulp. He must have hit head down when he fell from the truck, killing himself instantly.

The face of the driver who had stopped was a pale green. He was only about twenty years old, and a girl of about the same age still sat in the car. He wasn’t doing anything about the dead man. He was just standing there staring down sickly.

I said, “Don’t grieve about him. He would have ended up in the gas chamber anyway.”

He looked at me without understanding.

Glancing at Connie, I saw she was as green as the young man. I knew she wouldn’t try to run, for the moment, at least no farther than to bend over the ditch edging the shoulder. Releasing her arm, I stooped to pick up and pocket the automatic lying in the road, then dragged the body by the feet over to the shoulder.

A state patrol car drove by at that moment, made a U-turn, and came back to see what the trouble was.

It was three-thirty P.M. when I turned Connie and the suitcase over to Robbery Division. She had clammed up so completely during the drive back to town that I still didn’t know her last name. She had no identification on her and she wouldn’t tell me. I left the problem of finding out who she was to the Robbery Division cops.

From Robbery I went to Homicide to report the rigged suicide of Marvin Johnson. This held me up some more, so it was nearly four when I finally walked into Vice, Gambling, and Narcotics.

Captain Spangler, Lieutenant Wynn, Hank Carter, and Carl Lincoln were standing in a circle around someone seated at a corner table. When I pushed into the group, I saw it was Charles Kossack. He glanced up at me, and his was the third face I had seen turn green that afternoon.

I said, “Hello, Charlie. How’d your story go over?”

Before he could answer, Lieutenant Wynn exploded, “Where have you been, Sergeant? What do you mean leaving a suspect unattended in the squadroom and wandering off for hours?”

“I guess it went over,” I said to Kossack.

“I’m speaking to you, Sergeant!” Wynn yelled. “And where’s your necktie?”

I guess it was the last question that did it. Suddenly I was fed to the eyebrows with Robert Wynn. I turned to face him and I felt my nostrils flare. But before I could open my mouth, the captain said, “Rudowski!”

When I glanced at him, he shook his head. “Don’t say it. What happened?”

I looked back at Wynn and saw his face had smoothed. Now that Spangler had taken over the inquisition, he wouldn’t dream of intruding with any more questions of his own.

My anger died. “I accidentally walked into the hideout of the pair that pulled the Whittington payroll robbery,” I said. “Kossack here and our old friend Cas Kuzniki. They decided to take me for a ride, but first they had to rig an alibi for Kossack because Lieutenant Wynn knew I was moving in to pick Kossack up. So they thought up the bright idea of having him drive my car down here and letting a squadroom full of dumb cops be his alibi.”

Everyone stared down at Kossack. If he had been a turtle, his head would have disappeared.