Death of a Citizen

CHAPTER 8

IN A way, I'll admit, it was kind of a relief. I don't mean to sound callous, but I'd been waiting for something unpleasant to happen ever since Tina gave me the sign in the Darrels' doorway. Now, at least, the game was open and I was getting to look at the cards. It was tough about the girl-still hoping to get me to read her damn little story, she must have slipped in here and interrupted something or somebody she shouldn't have-but I'd had people die I'd known longer and liked better. If she'd wanted to stay healthy, she should have stayed home.

Already I had readjusted. It had happened that quickly. Three hours ago I'd been a peaceful citizen and a happily married man zipping my wife's cocktail dress up the back and giving her a little pat on the rear to let her know I found her attractive and liked being married to her. At that time, the death of a girl-particularly a pretty girl I'd met and talked with-would have been cause for horror and dismay. Now it was just a minor nuisance. She was a white chip in a no-limits game. She was dead, and we'd never had much time for the dead. There were living people around who worried me a lot more.

Mac, I reflected, must really have been playing for high stakes, if they were authorized to knock off any casual innocent who might interfere. When necessary, we'd done it over in Europe, of course, but those had been enemy civilians in wartime. This was peace, and our own people. It seemed a little rough, even for Mac.

I frowned at the dead girl for a moment longer, fueling, in spite of everything, a certain sense of loss. She'd seemed like a nice kid, and there aren't so many good looking girls around you can afford to waste any.

I sighed and turned away, and went out of the bathroom, crossed the big room to the gun rack on the wall, unlocked it, and took down my old twelve-gauge pump shotgun. It bore the dust of years. I blew it clean, checked the bore for obstructions, unlocked the ammunition drawer below the rack, took out three buckshot shells, and fed them into magazine and chamber. The gun had a muzzle device, one of those adjustable choke gadgets that let you use the same gun for everything from quail at twenty yards to geese at sixty. I set the thing to maximum dispersion, which was still not wide enough to prevent it from putting the full load of nine buckshot into a man's chest-or a woman's-across the room.

It had been a long time since I'd seen Mac, and his people were still, it appeared, playing for keeps. For all I knew, they considered me an outsider nowadays, in spite of the confidential signals that had been passed. It wasn't exactly a friendly gesture, leaving dead bodies in my bathtub. If I was to have visitors before long, as seemed likely, I thought I'd feel a lot happier celebrating auld lang syne with something lethal in my fists.

I went back into the bathroom, set the shotgun by the door, rolled up my shirt sleeves, and bent over Barbara Herrera. It was time to get rid of some of the finer and more sensitive feelings I'd developed since the war. I wanted to know precisely how she'd died; from the front she showed no marks of violence. I found a swelling at the side of her head, and a bullet-hole in back; her long hair and the back of her white dress were bboodsoaked. It wasn't hard to read the signs. She'd been taken by surprise, knocked out and carried into the bathroom, placed in the tub where the mess could easily be cleaned up later, and shot to death with a small-caliber pistol, the sound of which would have been barely audible through the thick adobe walls.

I thought I knew whose pistol had been used, and my guess was confirmed when I saw a little.22 caliber shell under the lavatory. It almost had to be from my gun; Tina went in for those little European pocket pistols with the calibers expressed in millimeters, and Frank Loris didn't look like a precision marksman to me. If he carried a gun at all, it would be something that would knock you down and walk all over you, like a.357 or.44 Magnum. It looked as if they were setting me up for something very pretty, or at least making quite certain of my cooperation, I reflected; and then, as I eased the dead girl gently back to her former position, I felt something between her shoulders, something hard and businesslike and unbelievable beneath the stained material of her dress.

Very much surprised, I checked my discovery. The outline was unmistakable, although I'd only met a rig like that once before. I didn't bother to pull the bloody dress down to get at it. I knew by feel what I'd find. It would be a flat little sheath holding a flat little knife with a kind of pear-shaped symmetrical blade and maybe a couple of thin pieces of fiber-board riveted on to form a crude handle. The point and edges would be honed, but not very sharp, because you don't make throwing knives of highly tempered steel unless you want them to shatter on impact.

It wouldn't be much of a weapon-a quick man could duck it and a heavy coat would stop it-but it would be right there when someone pointed a gun at you and ordered you to raise your hands or, even better, clasp them at the back of your neck. Slide a hand down inside the neckline of your dress, under that long, black, convenient hair, and you were armed again. And there can be situations when even as little as five inches of not very sharp steel flickering through the air can make all the difference in the world.

Well, it hadn't worked this time. I straightened up slowly and went to the lavatory to wash my hands, meanwhile allowing my estimate of Barbara Herrera to undergo considerable revision.

"I apologize, kid," I said, turning. "So you weren't just a white chip, after all?"

I looked at her thoughtfully while I dried my hands. Then I searched her thoroughly. In addition to the knife, she carried a little clip holster above the knee-one reason, I suppose, for the squaw dress with its big skirt. The holster was empty. I looked at the dead, pretty face.

"Sorry, kid," I said. "I could have told you how it would turn out if you'd asked me. You just went up against the wrong people. You were cute and smart, but anybody could tell by looking at you that you didn't have enough tiger in your blood. But you had me fooled, I'll grant you that."

There was a ghost of a knock at the studio door. I picked up the shotgun and went to answer it.