Death of a Citizen

CHAPTER 30

MAC used to have a little lecture he gave when he was putting the final polish on us.

"Dignity," he'd say. "Remember that dignity is the key to any man's resistance, or any woman's~ As long as your subject is allowed to feel that he's still a human being with rights and privileges and self-respect, he can usually hold out indefinitely. Take, for instance, a soldier in a clean uniform, lead him politely to a desk, seat him decorously on a chair, request him to place his hands before him, stick splinters under his fingernails, and set fire to them… and you'll be surprised how often he'll watch his fingertips cooking and laugh in your face. But if you take the same man, first, and work him over to show that you don't mind bruising your knuckles and don't have a bit of respect for his integrity as a man-you don't have to hurt him much, just mess him up until he can no longer cling to a romanticized picture of himself as a noble and handsome embodiment of stubborn courage…"

I'd caught her completely by surprise. She went back against the wall with a crash that shook the cabin; then she slid to the floor, her legs gracelessly apart, her eyes wide and stunned. Slowly, looking up at me in shocked wonder, she put her hand to her mouth, took it away, and looked at the blood on the palm. Outside, the compressor kept up its outboard-motor clatter.

Tina shook her head to clear it, and pushed her hand along her thigh to wipe it clean, leaving an ugly smear on the white trousers. She started to push herself to her feet. I reached down and hauled her up by the front of her fancy shirt, feeling buttons, cloth, and stitching give way under the strain. Holding her by the bunched material, I slapped her repeatedly until her short, dark hair was whipping across her face and her nose was bleeding. Then I shoved her away from me hard. She stumbled backwards, turned, tried to catch herself, and went heavily to hands and knees. It was too good an opportunity to miss. I put my foot in her rear and pushed, so that she pitched forward and slid a couple of feet across the dusty wooden floor on her face and stomach. Since we were evening old scores, I might as well collect for the time I'd got the short end of that horseplay on~the desert.

I waited for her to pick herself up and pull herself together. I had shut off my mind completely. There was nothing to think about-except what I had to do.

Waiting, I said, "If you come up with a' weapon, darling, I'll kick your face in."

It was a different Tina who climbed slowly to her feet and turned to face me: a torn, dirty, and bloody creature-oddly sexless, thank God-that wiped its mouth and nose on the rags of its shirt and cleaned its hands on the seat of its pants without a downward glance at the damage that had been inflicted upon it. Not a pretty woman who'd been hurt, with some instinctive concern for her appearance, but a wary, wounded animal at bay, with eyes only for the hunter.

"You fool!" she breathed. "What do you think to gain?" She had taken a step sideways; suddenly she was at the window. The blind flew up with a clatter. She wheeled to face me again. Her expression was savage. "There! Loris will go now! I warned you. Now it is too late. No matter what you do to me, it is too late!"

I grinned at her, and picked up the paper-wrapped package from the bed, and tossed it at her. She wasn't prepared for the weight of it. She caught it all right, but it pushed her back a step.

"Open it," I said.

She glanced at me. I saw her eyes widen slightly with speculation, perhaps with a hint of fear. She came forward to the bed, set the package down, and ripped off the paper, revealing nothing but mink and satin lining. She glanced at me again, and started to unfold the stole carefully, and stopped, staring at what it contained. I heard her breath catch at the sight of Loris's big revolver lying there. Around it, the glossy fur was matted with the half-dried blood that had been on the weapon. It looked like something ugly and dangerous that had fouled its nest.

"You would send warnings to my wife," I murmured. "Tina, you're a fool. I didn't get to be Mac's best boy by trembling at dead cats."

She recognized the gun of course. After a moment, she reached out and touched it, quite gently. "He is dead?"

"Probably, by this time," I said. "He'd have needed a new heart and lungs to keep on living. You're through, Tina."

She swung about to look at me. She hadn't really heard me. She was still thinking about Loris. I don't suppose she'd loved the man, and certainly, from what

I'd seen this morning, he'd felt no need to be faithful to her. I think it must have been for her something like losing an arm-a strong and useful appendage, unable to think for itself of course, but how much do you expect of an arm, anyway? They'd made a good team, I suspected, better than she and I; we'd had too many brains and ambitions between us.

She said softly, "He was a better man than you, Eric."

"Probably," I said. "In the strict sense of the word. But I wasn't competing with him in the matter of masculinity. He may have been a better man, but he wasn't much of a killer."

"If he'd got his hands on you..

"If that bed had wings we could fly it," I said. "When did I ever let a big hunk of beef like that get its hands on me? Well, once, granted, when I wasn't expecting trouble. But I'm back in the old groove now,' darling. You've put me right back into it. And I never saw a muscle boy yet who worried me, certainly not this one, with ivory between the ears." I looked at her standing before me in her wrecked shirt and her silly white pants, soiled and split at the knees. She looked very much like a kid that had got into a scrap and got its nose bloodied… I put the thought aside. It was no time for drawing sentimental valentines. She was no kid. She was a dangerous woman, responsible for many deaths and at least one kidnaping. I said it again: "Tina you're through. Mac sends his greetings."

She gave me again that little speculative, half-fearful widening of the eyes. "He sent you?"

I said, "You can have it hard or easy. Don't kid yourself for a moment, Tina. Look in the mirror. I didn't muss you up for fun; I just wanted to show you I'm quite prepared to get my hands dirty. We can save both of us a lot of trouble if you'll just take my word that I can be just as tough as I have to."

She said quickly, "Your child. Your little girl. If I don't send word by a certain time..

"What time?" I said. "This won't take very long."

"You're bluffing!" she cried. "You don't dare."

"With Loris loose I wouldn't," I said. "Which is why I removed him. Don't talk dare to me, Tina. I don't know what instructions you left with the people who are holding Betsy, but hurting a baby, a baby who can't even talk, who can't be a witness against you, takes a strong stomach. Maybe they can do it and maybe they can't, but it'll take them a while to work up to it without direct orders. And who's going to give those orders? Not Loris. Not you."

She whispered, "You can't!"

I laughed. "This is your old friend Eric, sweetheart. You made a mistake. Mac asked me to go after you, did you know that? We had a long talk in San Antonio, Mac and I. I told him to go to hell. I told 'him I was out of it, I wasn't mad at anybody, I was a peaceful citizen with a home and family, and I wasn't going back to them with anybody's blood on my hands. I'd spent a dozen years washing it off, I said, and I didn't want to get the smell back again… That's what I told him. And I made it stick. There was also a small matter of sentiment, perhaps. And then you sent Loris to snatch my child!" I drew a long breath. "You never had any kids, Tina? If you had, you'd never have touched a hair of one of mine." There was silence in the room, but outside the compressor kept chattering away. I said quietly, "Now you'd better tell me where she is."

She licked her lips. "Better men than you have tried to make me talk, Eric."

I said, "This doesn't take better men, sweetheart. This takes worse men. And at the moment, with my kid in danger, I'm just about as bad as they come."

I took a step forward. She took a step backwards; then, abruptly, she ducked towards the bed and came up with Loris' big revolver in her hand. I don't suppose she really expected it to work, but there was a chance and she had to take it. She didn't hesitate, she didn't warn or threaten me, she just aimed it at me pointblank and pulled the trigger. I laughed in her face as the hammer fell on an empty chamber. I'd have deserved to die if I'd been fool enough to leave the thing loaded.

I ducked as she hurled it at my head. Then she put a hand inside her torn shirt, and I heard the whisper of steel as the blade of the parachutist's knife slid out and locked, but she'd never been much good with edged weapons. I took the knife away from her in less than ten seconds. This wasn't a game, like that time in the desert; I wasn't holding back any, and something snapped. She gave a little cry and fell back against the wall, hugging her broken wrist. She watched me approach. Her eyes were black with hate.

"You'll never find her!" she hissed. "I'll never tell you, even if you kill me!"

I glanced at the knife in my hand, and tested the point with my thumb. Her eyes widened slightly.

"You'll tell," I said.