The Poisoners

XXVII

For a girl born in the land of the rickshaw, if her story was correct, she had internal combustion ambitions. She took the gravel road at a pace that had me bouncing around the rear seat while I tried to peel away the decorative foil that covered my sharp-edged belt buckle. Succeeding in this, I got to work on my bonds. They were tough, braided clothesline, which is difficult stuff to cut under the best conditions; and in spite of the jolting of the car, it seemed desirable to do the job without severing any essential veins or arteries..

Abruptly, Bobbie swerved the big wagon to the side of the road, skidded it to a halt, cut the engine, and began to cry, burying her face in her arms, folded on the steering wheel. We were now quite high in the foothills of the mountain range towards which the road seemed to lead. Looking out the rear window, I could see the geometrically correct line the distant freeway made across the empty landscape. A little closer, I could see the police car where we'd left it. Somebody had turned off the flasher.

It had company; a jeep and a truck mounting a big white cylinder. Mr. Soo was undoubtedly holding a council of war.

If I could see them, they could see me; and I renewed my efforts with the trick buckle, but it was slow going.

"Oh, stop wiggling!" Bobbie said abruptly, lifting her head. She ran her sleeve across her eyes, and did some wiggling of her own, digging into the pocket of her jeans, not designed for quick-draw work. There was a metallic click. "Here… Well, stick out your wrists, stupid!"

She was holding my knife over the back of the seat, open, edge up. I held out my hands. A moment later I was free. She turned the knife around and presented it to me handle first. I reached down to cut the ropes about my ankles, and straightened up, closing and pocketing the knife.

"Thanks," I said. "What about my gun?"

She shook her head quickly. "No. I can't give you that. I'm helping you get away, isn't that enough?"

"Not really," I said. "It's not my job to get away."

"Well, I don't want to be involved in any more killing!" I said deliberately, "What are you so uptight about, sweetheart? Like I said before, it was just a lousy cop. I thought you hated the pigs."

"You're not very funny. You're not funny at all!" She drew a ragged breath. "I don't want anybody else to be killed, not even you! Don't you understand? I certainly can't help you kill them… Ouch, what are you doing?"

I'd seized her left hand, which had been resting on the top of the seat as she sat twisted around to look at me. There are several ways of exerting pressure on a hand so that the owner thereof can't move without tearing a few ligaments in the fingers or wrist and causing himself-or herself-excruciating pain in the process. I picked the one that seemed most appropriate.

When, having tested my grip and found it agonizingly effective, she was quiet once more, I looked over the seat. My revolver was lying where she'd dropped it when she started driving, on the seat beside her. I picked it up.

"What about the Walther you had?" I asked.

"Mr. Soo took that back. It was his. Didn't you recognize it just now?"

"All right," I said, releasing her. "Sorry if it hurt." She rubbed her fingers and spoke without looking at me. "You're a lousy, treacherous bastard, aren't you? I saved you, and instead of being grateful-" I said wearily, "Bobbie, cut out the corn. Didn't they teach you anything about this business except how to imitate a movie-mad kid from Arizona?" She didn't speak, and I went on: "We're not playing kid games with grateful and ungrateful. I have a job to do. Mr. Soo has a job to do. The two assignments are, let us say, incompatible. Therefore you'd damn well better forget about converting the whole world to non-violence, at least for the moment, and make up your mind whose side you're on."

She was silent for several seconds. "I don't know!" she breathed at last. "Can't you understand, Matt, I don't know any longer. Everything's changed. It all looks so different from when I came over here. Oh, God, I wish I were still the same stuffy, dedicated, brainwashed little creep who came over here so cocksure she knew exactly what was right and noble and Marxist-and what was wrong and decadent and capitalist!" She made a face. "I really don't know what's the matter with me, darling! It isn't as if this country of yours had been particularly good to me. You'd think I'd had a wonderful time over here and everybody'd treated me swell, the way I'm talking, but I haven't and they didn't. It's been a hell of a grind, even apart from knowing that sooner or later I'd get the word from somebody and have to start earning my keep…" She stopped, and drew a long breath. "I don't want to be a goddamn spy!" she said. "Not for them or for you. I just want to… All I want is to be left alone to live my own life, don't you understand?"

I said callously, "Sure, so did that cop. So, undoubtedly, did Dr. Osbert Sorenson, not to mention our girl O'Leary, and a colored pugilist type named McConnell, and five Cosa Nostra characters who were shot to death in their drugged sleep. They all wanted to be left alone to live their own lives, such as they were."

She said, "I know, darling, I know! That's why I

Oh, I'm just so damned mixed up! I don't know what-" She was silent again, briefly; then she sighed. "I suppose I've got to go back there."

"Why would you want to do a silly thing like that?"

"I didn't say I want to. I said I've got to." Bobbie hesitated. "I've got to, because they spent a lot of time and money on me, and I'd be dead now if they hadn't.

No, don't bother to tell me again that they did it strictly for their own sinister purposes. I know that. The fact is, they did it, and I benefited from it. There's got to be a little… a little loyalty, even a little gratitude although you make fun of it. There are just too damn many people making up too damn many beautiful reasons for switching sides these days. I'm not going to be one of them."

There was nothing I could say to that. The fact that the people to whom she was returning, dutifully and gratefully, might very well shoot her for setting me free would, I knew, make no difference to her, so I didn't bother to point it out. Nor did I trouble to warn her that if she rejoined them I might have to shoot her myself. She knew all that, and considered it irrelevant. When their consciences get into the act, no logic has any effect on them.

I suppose I could have overpowered her and tied her up to prevent her from making a serious mistake. There are people who make careers of saving other people from themselves-Charlie Devlin, for instance-but it's not my line of. work. Anyway, I didn't know how much of a mistake she was actually making, practically speaking. She might just as easily get killed if I kept her with me.

So I said only, "I have to have the station wagon. Sorry."

"Of course." There was a hint of scorn in her voice. "I wouldn't dream of depriving you of it." She opened the door and stepped out into the road. "Good-bye, Matt."

"Good-bye, Bobbie."

She looked at me for a moment longer. Neither of us found anything more to say. She turned abruptly and marched away towards the tiny group of vehicles in the distance. Her back was very straight and she never glanced around. I remembered the slinky satin Hollywood-blonde she'd been impersonating when I first met her. I remembered the nice girl-next-door type in crisp linen to whom I'd made love. I remembered the reckless tomboy-in-jeans who'd been so eager to help me take care of five armed and dangerous Mafia hoodlums… She wasn't any of those girls now. I guess I'd found the real Roberta Prince at last.

I should, of course, have been feeling greatly relieved by the turn of events, and diabolically clever to boot. After all, my hands and feet were free. I had my gun and knife. I even had a car. I was back in business. I'd gambled that, whoever she was, the kid would come through for me, and she had. There was no reason for me not to savor my moment of triumph, except that I just didn't feel particularly triumphant.

I got behind the wheel of the big Ford wagon, started the engine, and drove ahead slowly towards the piсon-studded mountains ahead. Somebody would come after me, I was sure. Mr. Soo couldn't afford to let me reach a telephone. I hoped he'd send the right man ahead to take care of me. He did.

From a vantage point on the shoulder of the mountain, with the station wagon parked out of sight down the road, I saw the white jeep heading my way, dragging a plume of dust behind it. I watched it approach, disappearing here and there in the dips and folds of the terrain, but always reappearing a little closer. Once it remained invisible for several minutes. When it showed again, there were two figures behind the windshield instead of one. Obviously, Willy had met the girl trudging down the road and stopped to question her. He'd brought her along. Well, I couldn't let that make any difference to me. I'd pointed out to her the choice she had to make, and she'd made it.

I checked the loads in the revolver I'd retrieved from her, but it was not at the moment my primary weapon. Trying to shoot somebody out of the seat of a fast-moving vehicle with a snub-nosed.38 Special is not recommended as surefire homicide. Even if you solve the problems of lead and timing correctly, there's always something to deflect the bullet. I had to get him out of his car… I got back into the station wagon and sent it slowly up the road, watching the rearview mirror.

It was the usual twisty, unpaved mountain road carved into the side of the slope; not exactly the ideal spot for a two-ton family vehicle almost six feet wide, even though it did have all the power anybody could want who didn't have drag racing ambitions. I cruised along deliberately, waiting for my man to catch up with me. When he burst into sight behind me in the bouncing and swaying jeep, I hit the gas pedal as if I hadn't really expected pursuit; as if I'd been panicked by his sudden appearance.

It was quite a race for a while, up into the pass and down the other side. In sports cars, it might have been fun, but neither of our vehicles had been designed for competitive mountain driving. I could see him, behind me, sweating over the wheel of the sturdy four-wheel-drive job that wanted to plow right off the road in the curves. I had the opposite problem. The heavy rear end of the wagon had a tendency to whip around whenever I got gay with the power.

He was a good driver. I remembered being told that he'd been a motorcycle racer once. He may have been better than I was, although I'd done a bit of sports car racing in my time, but it didn't really matter. The road was too narrow and my car was too wide and had too much power for him to get up alongside, and a little ahead, where he'd have to be to nudge me over the edge. At last, desperate at being blocked every time he tried it, he stuck his big revolver out the jeep's window, left-handed, and fired a couple of shots. However, there are very few men who can shoot well from a moving car, particularly if they have to steer the car, and neither of the bullets hit the station wagon.

Finally, as we roared down the curves and switchbacks, he was reduced to trying to ram my rear bumper to send me, he hoped, out of control and off the road. Just how a straight push down the road was supposed to accomplish this desirable purpose wasn't readily apparent, but it's something they're always doing in the movies, and I guess he figured he'd better try it and see if they knew something he didn't.

It was, of course, what I'd been waiting for. It was why I'd held my speed down in the straights where the big Ford engine could easily have given me a good lead. Now I let him nudge me once, lightly, and did some frantic jockeying through the next set of curves to make him think I'd been terrified by the contact.

Another straightaway showed ahead. I jacked up the speed to tease him along. In the rearview mirror I saw him coming in beautifully, straight as any bullfighter could wish, to ram me again. I slammed my brakes on hard and slid down in the seat to support my head and neck since the headrests provided didn't look as if they'd take a lot of strain.

Under the influence of the brakes, the nose of the station wagon went down, of course, and the rear went up. I heard him skidding in the gravel behind me as, too late, his brakes locked up; that would put his nose down, the way I wanted it, to run his bumper under mine. Then he hit. It was quite a crash. Metal bent and tore; but I'd already determined that my gas tank was located in one of the fenders; there wasn't much except bodywork that he could hurt back there.

We slid to a stop, locked together. Before he could do any shooting, while he was still standing on his brakes, I hit the gas pedal hard, praying that he hadn't wedged me so high in the air that my rear wheels had lost traction. They did spin a bit; then they grabbed hold, and the station wagon tore free with more tortured-metal sounds. Looking into the mirror as I pulled away, I saw that Charlotte Devlin's big trailer hitch had done a fine job. It had driven through Willy's grill, fan, and radiator like a spear. A lot of steaming brown water was pouring out onto the road.

The jeep was still running, however. Willy came after me recklessly, knowing that he had only a little driving time left, but I stayed ahead of him without too much trouble. Behind me, the four-wheel-drive job began to steam like a tea kettle; finally something got too hot and seized, and it slid to an abrupt halt in the middle of the road. I stopped the station wagon a hundred yards farther on, out of easy pistol range, and took out my little Smith and Wesson. I had him on foot. It was time to complete the assignment.

"Helm!" That was Willy, shouting. "Helm, drop your gun and walk this way with your hands up!"

I looked that way and sighed. It was too bad. His dossier said he'd been a good agent once, and maybe he still was, except where I was concerned. You can't afford to hate-any more than you can afford to love- in this business. It clouds the judgement.

He'd dragged Bobbie Prince out of the Jeepster, and had pushed her down the road ahead of him until they were clear of the clouds of steam and other fumes billowing from the crippled vehicle. Now he was standing there with a gun-presumably his big.44 Magnum although I couldn't see it-thrust into her back. Well, from that position he'd find it rather difficult to shoot me. I started walking. I figured it would be best to get within twenty-five yards, and twenty would be better.

"Drop it, Helm! Drop it or I'll shoot her!"

It was the same old tired routine. They will keep on trying it. One day I'll have to sit down and count how many times it's been tried on me.

I suppose he knew we'd been to bed together. He knew she had thought enough of me to turn me loose; he presumably figured I'd feel myself under a certain obligation, even if I wasn't passionately in love with her. In any case, I came from a nation noted for slushy sentimentality about children, dogs, and women.

It was too bad. Of course, he was hampered by the fact that he didn't just want me dead; he wanted me dead on his terms. He hated me too much to simply kill me painlessly; he wanted to have his fun first. And, like so many of his kind, he was under the delusion that he had a monopoly on cold-blooded ruthlessness. He was banking on the fond belief that nobody could possibly be as mean as he was.

"Stop right there, or I'll blow her spine right out through her belly!"

I lifted my gun and shot him in the right eye.