Masters of Noir: Volume 4

The Fast Line by Art Crockett

Rudy Ferris didn’t have any trouble smashing my door open because he’s a real big guy. He stood facing me, his black automatic pointed straight at my throat.

It didn’t take me long to figure out what had happened. Ella had told him — everything. That little fool!

I spread my hands helplessly. “Now, look, Rudy. Let me—”

“Shut up, Chuck!” The guy’s massive chest was heaving like a ground swell. “I don’t want no talk. That’s all we got since you blew in.”

I shut up. Nothing I could say would wipe his brain clean. He was too far gone. Mad. Killing mad. So I shut up and watched his small eyes as they snapped to both sides of my room and then back to me. “You alone here?”

I nodded, wishing I wasn’t. Rudy closed the door, its lock dangling, as if a closed door would muffle the blast of that cannon he held. That door was the only way out, unless I chose to leap out the window, which was two stories up, and kill myself that way.

Maybe I had it coming. In Rudy’s eyes I guess I was a heel. But the big, overgrown jerk was stone blind and had been ever since Ella had decided he was her boyfriend, long before I had shown up in Leadsville. Otherwise he’d have known she was the type who got a charge out of anybody who could put some kicks into her miserable life.

Ella Barnes was fresh out of a haystack, like all the dames in Leadsville. But with her there was a difference. There was a restlessness in her that kept her on edge every minute, a restlessness that kept her dissatisfied with herself even though she’d snared the biggest, best-looking hayseed in town.

And there was something else about Ella. I found this out during the night I spent with her in her old man’s barn.

We were in the loft. Her eyes lit up as she said, “Chuck, I’d like to stir up this town before I leave. I mean really stir it up. I’m so sick and tired and bored with everything in it that I’d like to give them a jolt they’d never get over.”

Those were approximately her words. I’d only half listened. I’d already had what I’d come for so I wasn’t much interested in her babbling. But now her words were coming back to me, or at least the gist of what she had been trying to say.

But I couldn’t dwell on it. Rudy Ferris was coming forward, the .45 steady in his hand. “I’m gonna blast your brains out,” he was saying. “You got it comin’ to you.”

He was so close I could smell the stench of his sweating body and the cheap whiskey on his breath.

I swallowed hard. “Ella tell you about it?” It was a stupid question, but I had to say something for a stall.

“I saw you an’ her sneakin’ outa the barn. After you left, I grabbed Ella an’ made her tell me what you did.”

He raised his gun to my head.

“Hold it, Rudy!” My voice was scratchy and cracked, because I was scared. My only defense was to keep talking. “Let me have my say, Rudy. What harm can it do? I can’t get out of here, can I? Just let me tell you...”

He brought the gun up close to my temple and clicked off the safety.

“All right, Rudy. Go ahead and shoot!” I was practically screaming at him. “I wasn’t Ella’s first. She’s already pregnant by somebody else.”

The words had flowed smoothly out of my mouth. It was all a big lie. But I had to shock him with something. For the time being, it appeared to have done the trick.

I’d stunned him. His gun hand relaxed a little. I kept talking so he wouldn’t have a chance to think about me. “Ella played you for a fool, Rudy. Can’t you see that? All she wants is kicks. She told me so. She told me she was bored stiff with everybody in this dead town, including you.”

All the things Ella had told me up in the hay loft were coming out now. I kept talking because I didn’t want to stop and give him a chance to do his own thinking. He was listening all right. And that was what I wanted. His mouth hung open goonishly now and his gun hand was down at his side.

“I didn’t force Ella to do anything she didn’t want to do. Lord knows how many others she’s had. She’s sick, Rudy. Sick for the want of thrills. She’d do anything to stir up a rumpus.”

A real out was hitting me now. It made me a little sick to think of it, but it was all I had. After all, it was my life that depended on it.

“That’s why she told you about what happened in the barn. She knew you’d come here to kill me. And after you’re finished with me she’ll tell you about the other guy, the one who made her pregnant.”

Sweat rolled down my face and some of it went into my mouth. Rudy’s head was swaying with disbelief, but my words were reaching him, digging into him cruelly.

“Want to know something else, Rudy? I’ll bet you anything that Ella is outside right now waiting to see what happens.”

I backed toward the window. “Bet she’s out there, Rudy. Take a look! She’s waiting for you to kill me, then the other guy. You know why? So all the dames in this burg will look at her as the gal Rudy Ferris knocked off two guys for. She’ll have what she wants. Recognition. Excitement. Plenty of it. And the other hayseeders around here will think she really has something because two men died for her. So they’ll make love to her, Rudy, while you’re sweating your brains out waiting for your turn in the electric chair.”

“No! It ain’t like that! You’re just trying to lie your way out of a bullet.”

“I am not. All you have to do is look outside. Go ahead, Rudy. Put the lights out and take a look.”

He motioned to me with his gun. “Get over by the window. Stand there so I can see you.”

I did as I was told, feeling sick to my stomach because of what I was doing. Rudy snapped off the wall switch and moved toward the window. He pushed the curtain aside just a crack. I took a look myself, and let out a sigh of relief.

In the lighted doorway of a store across the street, a bare leg swung back and forth. It was a woman’s leg. Ella’s. She was sitting on a stool just inside the door.

“What’d I tell you, Rudy?” I whispered. “She’s waiting to hear your gun go off. She sent you on the errand and now she wants to see that you carry it out.”

He was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, “Pack your bag and get outa here!”

“Yeah, sure, Rudy.” It took me no more’n three minutes to shut my suitcase on a full load.

“So long, Rudy.”

He didn’t answer, nor turn his head away from the window. I squeezed hurriedly out of the door and then took the back stairs on the double down to the alley that circled the hotel. I wanted to get away from there, fast.

I was in the alley when I heard the shots. I counted six. I felt like throwing up. All the way to the bus station I kept trying to rid my brain of the promise I’d made Ella up in the loft. I’d promised to take her away from Leadsville that very night.

I told her to wait for me across the street from the hotel.