Murder Run-Around

Chapter Three Her Way to Kill

Consciousness was a grayness just above him. It seemed that he moved like a swimmer, struggling up toward the grayness. At last he broke through the surface. His neck ached. He found that he was on his side, his head braced at an awkward angle against the wall. He moved away from the wall a bit, lowered his head onto his arm and closed his eyes, waiting for the weakness to go away.

When he opened his eyes, he saw her. The couch was against the wall. She sat facing him; her face bloodless; her eyes holding a look of wildness.

He opened his mouth and swore. She gave no sign that she heard him. He saw the stains then, the dark crusting stain on the skirt of the robe, the red wetness on the back of her hand.

Slowly she closed her eyes. She leaned over on her side on the couch, her feet still on the floor. With the same slowness, she fell off the couch onto her face on the floor and lay still.

It was quicker to crawl to her than it was to try to stand up. Only then for the first time, did he straighten up and look around the room.

August Brikel sat on the webbed leather chair, smiling at him. The familiar face was as florid as ever, but there was something loose about his mouth. The eyes were still chips of flint, but the polish was dulled. August sat with the fingers of both hands wedged against his body. The front of his clothes was dark and heavy with blood. August had an uncanny motionless about him.

After Bren lifted Laena onto the couch, he went over to Brikel. The drying splatters of blood led from where Bren had been lying over to the chair. Brikel was quite dead.

Bren had gone to sleep for a hundred nights thinking of how Brikel would look when he was dead. But now there was no satisfaction in seeing it. The face, perfect mirror of the soul, showed clearly the evil, a pitiful quality when revealed by a corpse.

Hearing the distant sound of moaning, he traced it to its source in the kitchen. Maria of the long dark hair was crouched half under the sink, her cheek against the wall, wailing endlessly. He tried to talk to her. She didn’t look up at him. He soaked a cloth under the sink faucet, hurried back into the living room and gently bathed Laena’s face. Her eyelids quivered and slowly she opened her eyes. He saw confusion, changing quickly to terror, and then to a tired resignation.

“Cigarette,” she said weakly.

He lit one and placed it between her lips. She exhaled in a long shuddering breath.

“You tried to make a deal, didn’t you?” he asked.

She nodded. “I had his phone number. I called and said I would do what he wanted and told him you were on the way. I told him not to kill you and that if he did, I’d kill him with my own hands. He said he would come right away with Gowan and you’d find no one home. His car dropped him off here. I phoned to say I wouldn’t be at work. We talked. We decided you would come here. He gave me a leather thing with lead in the end of it. We waited.”

“What was the idea?”

“I would hit you and he would tie you up. When you came to, you would know that he was warned. He promised to talk you into giving up the idea and, if that failed, talk to a friend of his to get your turista card rescinded so that you would have to go back home right away, Bren.”

“And you?”

“I was buying your life. I did what he told me to. He had that door open a crack and a gun held on you. He made it clear that if I tried to warn you, he’d shoot. His gun has a silencer.”

“And then he didn’t want to play your game?”

“He came out and stood over you. The hardest thing I ever had to do was to hit you, Bren. He smiled at me. He told me that he’d thought of a better way. He said that his gun was small calibre. He said that there would be very little blood if he shot you between the eyes. Later their people would — would leave you in an alley. He said that you were dangerous to him and that his way was best, as he had a big deal on and didn’t want to take any chances of your spoiling things for him.”

“And then?”

“Your head was at a funny angle. To shoot you properly he had to bend over to aim the gun. It gave me a chance to get to him. I am small but I am a dancer, and my muscles are trained. I grabbed his arm just above the elbow and dug my thumb into the nerve near the bone. It is painful. He straightened up.

“I dug harder and it made his hand open. The gun dropped and he bent to grab it from the floor. I grabbed for it; too. But it hit the floor and went off. It made a very small noise. I didn’t even know he was hurt until he fell across my hand and the edge of the robe. I pulled away. Somehow he got up and walked over to that chair. He was smiling with the pain. Just as you awakened, he died.”

Bren looked around and saw the gun.

“Did you touch it?”

“The gun? I picked it up and then I saw that he was dying. I put it on that table.” Her lips spread in a wild smile and she began to laugh.

He pulled her up to a sitting position, slapped her smartly, forehand and backhand. “There’s no time for that. Go wash your hands. I have to think.”

When Laena came back she was calm. Her face was still pale. She had changed to a wool dress in a rich brown shade that complemented her hair.

“How about Maria?”

“I think she’s completely loyal, Bren.”

“Go talk to her. She’s still moaning. Quiet her down. Send her away.”

Laena hurried to the kitchen. He heard the soft sounds diminish and cease. Laena came back and sat, watching him like an obedient child as he paced back and forth. She did not look toward August Brikel although he sat like a ghastly witness to the conversation.

“As far as you know, they are still in the dope business?”

“I think so. They have agents who smuggle it across into the States. The Corner Club was a wholesale distribution point for a metropolitan area.”

“And there’s a big deal coming up?”

“He said so,” she said in a flat voice. Bren could see that her calm was achieved only through great effort.

“How gullible is Gowan Teed?”

“You know that as well as I. I’d say he was anything but gullible.”

“Do you know what hotel he’s at?”

“Yes.”

“Have you got some black thread?”

She frowned in confusion. “Y-yes.”

“Use your phone and call up Gowan Teed. Tell him that you sneaked out to phone him. Tell him that I’ve been taken care of, that August had several drinks to celebrate and wants you to go away with him. Say that August told you that he is going to leave Gowan Teed holding the bag on a big deal coming up, and that the authorities will quiet down if they can get their hands on someone.

“Say that you called him because you know he’ll be generous with you for giving him the information. Tell him that August and my body are in your apartment and that you’re afraid to go back; that August is making too much noise. What do you think?”

She waited a long time before answering. “I think I see what you mean.” She looked at August. “We can slide the chair over there facing the door. The little bedroom lamp doesn’t throw much light. With the table beside him and the lamp on it he would look—”

“Exactly.”

“But how about the two kinds of bullets in August?”

He snapped his fingers. “You could meet Teed in front and hand him August’s gun. I’ll clean it off. You could say that you sneaked it out of here and that August has still another gun. I’ll let August use mine.”

She stood with her back against the door. The one small light glowed near August’s chair, shining upward on his face. She moved the table a few inches and went back to the door. Bren lay on the floor off to the other side of the table, his face in the light.

He said, “Does the black ink look like Hood in this light, Laena?”

“That spot on your forehead. It looks like a hole. It’s... horrible.”

“That’s the way I want it to be.”

“Turn your head just a little bit this way. Good.”

Bren memorized the position, stood up and checked the gun once more. To make the position of the gun more realistic once he had forced himself to wrap Brikel’s fat chilling fingers around the grip, it had been necessary to thumbtack the dead man’s coatsleeve to the wooden arm of the chair. He bent over and sighted along the gun, saw that it aimed just to the left of the door, where Gowan Teed would enter.

The black thread was doubled for strength, drawn back and looped around one leg of the small table.

Bren said, “Get down there, Laena. He ought to be along soon. Did he sound suspicious?”

“A little. Puzzled, sort of.”

After she had gone, lie went to the door and looked at Brikel. In death Brikel had become more of a symbol than an individual. It was hard to imagine that the slack body had constituted a menace. To hold Brikel’s head erect, he had inserted the hook of a wire coat hanger in the back of the man’s collar, twisted the other portion of the hanger around the top of the back of the chair.

He took his position on the floor, found the end of the doubled thread and waited. He forced himself to take long slow breaths so that it would be easier to hold his breath when Gowan Teed arrived. The minutes dragged on. Had Teed become suspicious of Laena? Had Brikel been in a position where he could have crossed Teed? Bren was becoming cramped from his position. The heavy thump of his heart seemed audible in the room.

There was a soft footstep in the hall, the tiny scrape of leather on tile. Bren half shut his eyes. He could see the door. It opened slowly inward and Gowan Teed stood there, the lamplight making a small glitter on his rimless glasses. The glasses were incongruous in comparison with the lean gun in his hand, the bulk of the silencer lengthening the barrel by a good four inches. His head moved in quick birdlike motions as he took in the room.

Teed said softly, as he pushed the door shut, “Stupid, August. Very stupid to kill him here. You make it difficult. The girl told me something interesting. Put the gun away, August. We must talk.”

Gowan Teed stood tense, pointed his weapon toward Brikel. His voice was more shrill. “You’re drunk, August. Put the gun away!”

With a slow movement of his fingers, Bren increased the tension on the thread. He had a horror of it breaking. The jet-white blast, the whip-thunder of the shot was enormous, contained as it was in the tile and plaster room.

Gowan Teed fired three methodical shots. Each shot was a bit louder than the last as the packing in the silencer was worn away. The third shot was as loud as a cap pistol. Harris heard the thud of slug into dead flash with each shot.

Teed reached slowly for the door knob, and then his hand paused. He came on tiptoe across the room.

When he was within range, Bren swung his legs parallel to the floor, striking Teed at ankle level, sweeping his feet out from under him. Teed gasped as he fell. Bren scrambled onto him, found that Teed had a surprising wiriness. He caught the gun wrist and Teed twisted it away, trying to bring the weapon to bear.

Bren flattened down against him, got his right hand on Teed’s sparse hair, lifted the head and banged it down solidly against the tile. Teed sighed as his muscles relaxed. Bren lifted himself up, delicately gauged the distance, chopped Teed on the jaw with a right hand blow that didn’t travel over eight inches.

The other gun dangled from Brikel’s index finger. Bren pried out the thumb tacks, released the thread, unhooked the coat hanger. As he did so, Brikel’s body bent slowly forward, head descending. As it passed the balance point, Brikel fell heavily, face down, across the unconscious Teed.

There were voices in the hall. Bren raced into the bathroom and scrubbed the ink from his forehead. He hid there, hearing the door open, the voices louder, Laena’s shrill, scream.

The concrete bench in Alameda Park was, absurdly, in the precise shape of an overstaffed sofa. The afternoon sun touched the flowers, the children on bicycles, the men selling kikos.

Bren Harris sat and smoked nervously, glancing at his watch from time to time. At last he saw her, a distant tiny figure, the sun making her hair look pure white, her shoulders square in the dark suit. She walked slowly. On impulse he stood up and went down a curving side path, watching until he saw her go by. He followed.

He came up behind her, watching the rhythm of her walk, hair in movement, slight swing of her slender arms.

“Can you pick up girls in this park?” he asked.

She whirled. “Bren, you didn’t have to stay. I told you in the note that you should go back. I’m not right for you, Bren. I’m no good for anyone, even myself.”

He put his hands on her shoulders. “Shake well before using. Let me decide what is right for me. How are you and the policia getting along?”

She smiled. “They think I’m a trusting little girl with naughty friends. Teed’s adopted embassy has given him up. He’ll be a long, long time in a Mexican cell. Bren, please. Go home and forget me.”

“After all the trouble I went to figuring out that you’d be walking through here at this time?”

“Don’t joke about it.”

A great hairy clattering insect appeared a few inches from her cheek. With a frightened gasp she ran into the circle of his arm, her face against his chest, shuddering.

The super-salesman who held the mechanical monster on the end of a string said, with a wide grin, “Buy souvenir de Mejico, meester.”

Bren looked down at the top of Laena’s fair head. He said softly, “No thanks, friend. I’ve already got one.”