The Removers

Chapter Twenty-three

LOGAN'S labored breathing didn't change rhythm. He was out cold with shock, to look at him: he hadn't heard a thing. Martell stared at Joey, and turned towards the cot. He walked closer and stood looking down at the wounded man. Slowly, his thick lips formed a grin.

"They told me you were tricky," he murmured. "Cute, real cute." He glanced at Joey again. "Now you see why we had to keep him alive? He came driving up here a little too innocent-looking for a man of his experience. I figured he must have left himself something to bargain with… Stand still, Duchess!"

Beth said breathlessly, "But I've got to… He'll bleed to death if you don't let me help him!"

Martell studied her for a moment. Then he nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, sure."

He reached into his pocket and brought out my little knife. He glanced at Joey to make sure the other man had everything under control. Joey nodded. Martell put his gun away, and opened the Solingen knife, and used the sharp blade to slit the Duke's trouser leg, baring the bullet-hole, from which blood was still welling thickly. He stepped back and tried to close the knife, but as I've said, it locks open. He glanced down irritably, looking for a catch. I opened my mouth to tell him how to do it

– you press on the back of the small blade to let the large one close-but before 1 could speak, he'd snapped the knife in two and thrown the pieces aside.

Well, I'd done the same for Tony, so I suppose I had it coming, but it was a funny thing: it did what all the face-slapping and shin-kicking and general roughing-up hadn't succeeded in doing. I mean, that was all part of the job, but I'd carried the little knife a long time. It was an old friend and wartime comrade. It made things personal between Martell and me. He knew it, all right, and he gave me a kind of challenging glance, asking what I intended to do about it. I started to speak angrily, stopped, and lowered my glance quickly, letting him know I was afraid to antagonize him, lest he come over and hit me again.

Martell laughed. "All right, Duchess," he said, and gestured towards Logan. "Fix him up so he'll last a little while."

Beth had caught the silent exchange between us; she was looking at me in a half-puzzled, half-scornful way. I wasn't measuring up to what she'd expected of me; I wasn't making the right, courageous speeches. She turned at Martell's words.

"Yes," she said quickly, "of course." She walked rapidly to the cot, and I heard her breath catch as she saw the ugly wound at close range.

Martell had stepped back to let her by. Now he put his hands on her shoulders from behind. "They don't look like much, flat on their backs, do they?" She tried to shrug his hands away. She was looking around helplessly for something to use to stop the bleeding. Martell chuckled. "Is this what you need, Duchess?"

His hands closed on the collar of her blouse, and jerked apart and down. There was a shrill, ripping sound, and a stifled cry from Beth as the cloth cut into her here and there before yielding to the strain. Some buttons rolled on the floor. Martell opened his hands and let the wrecked blouse fall, in two halves, to her waist.

"There you are, Duchess. Plenty of bandages, but if you need more, we can probably find you some."

He was looking her over with a lot of pleasure, although I didn't see anything to merit all that attention. She didn't look very exciting to me as she freed herself from the torn silk: just a woman wearing a handsome chino skirt and, above the waist, a business-like brassiere more or less concealed by a nice, white, obviously quite expensive slip with some lace on it-attractive, but hardly world-shaking.

Martell licked his lips, however. Even Joey was interested, in his stolid way. Martell said, "Well, go on, Duchess."

She didn't look at him. She was examining a fistful of white silk, obviously closing her mind to the fact that it had very recently been a garment and forcing herself to think of it only as suitable raw material… She tore it into strips, bandaged her husband's leg quite competently, and wiped her hands clean.

"There should be a splint to immobilize it," she said, straightening up.

"We won't bother with that," Martell said. "He's not going very far, if you know what I mean." He took her by the arm, clearly pleased that there was no longer a sleeve, even a thin one, to interfere with his enjoyment. In some ways, he was a man of very simple pleasures, Martell. "Now," he said, "you and I, Duchess, are going in the other room. We're going to have a lot of fun in there, until your husband chooses to wake up and tell us what he did with that tire-"

Beth's face had an incredulous and horrified look. I don't know why; she must have known it was coming. Maybe she'd closed her mind to that, too. She gave a sudden, frantic jerk and pulled away; then she was running for the door. With amateurs, it could have been a break, and I braced myself to come out of the chair, but Martell was no amateur. He had a weakness, serious for a man in his line of work, but he knew his business. He didn't waste a moment looking after Beth. His gun came out smoothly, and he took a backward step to a point from which he could cover both Logan and me.

He said, "Got her, Joey?"

Joey said, "Yeah, I've got her."

"Slap her down," Martell said without turning his head.

"Sure."

It had been a neat bit of team-play, Martell taking over responsibility for Logan and me while Joey, closer, instantly covered the door. Beth had run right into him. Now he held her off a bit with his left hand, and slapped her hard, twice.

Martell said, "That's enough. We don't want to spoil her looks, eh, Joey? Don't worry. You'll get your turn. Now watch these two cute ones while I take her back in there and-"

Beth was sobbing helplessly, less with pain than with sheer terror. The sound annoyed me. I don't want to sound hard-boiled or anything, but I'd been taking a beating for several hours. Logan was on the cot with a badly injured leg. We all stood a good chance of dying if we didn't work together properly, and here she was making a big fuss about something of relatively little importance.

I mean, she was obviously going to be raped anyway. It had been inevitable since early that morning when she'd let them take the shotgun from her. I'd assumed she'd known it-hell, all she had to do was look at the guy-and was planning on it, figuring how best to make use of the fact that she was female, for the common good. I mean, it wasn't as if she were an innocent young virgin. She was a woman who'd had two husbands and three children. Why did she think I'd wigwagged her to play up to him, anyway?

I guess the fact is that I'd been counting on her as I'd have counted on a good female agent in the same spot-or any woman with courage and good sense, for that matter. I'd been depending on her to take Martell out of the play and be real nice to him when the opportunity presented itself, like now, long enough for me to put in some propaganda work on Joey, who was long on experience and know-how, but a little short on brains.

But it was fast becoming obvious that the thought hadn't crossed her mind, or that if it had, she'd dismissed it as something too horrible to be seriously considered. A provocative glance or two, maybe, even a smile, perhaps, but if anybody seriously expected her to go into that room with this vile man and entertain him… Well! How disgusting could you get, anyway? I wasn't going to get any help from her, that was abundantly clear.

At the moment, I would gladly have traded her, and three more like her, for just one kid I could remember, named Tina, who'd have put up a fight, sure, who'd have sobbed and pleaded, perhaps, but who would have yielded at just the right moment, reluctantly at first and then enthusiastically, as if she couldn't help herself, making Martell feel big and strong and virile and irresistible, keeping him busy and happy until she could get her hands on his gun and blow his brains out. With Tina, I'd have had nothing to worry about except Joey. Martell would never have come out of that room alive.

Well, Tina was dead. As a matter of fact, I'd had to kill her myself, under orders, the way you kill a savage female watchdog that starts biting the wrong people. It was Tina's death last year, and Beth's stumbling upon the unpleasant scene although she'd been warned to stay away, that had led to the break up of our marriage. At the moment, disappointed and disillusioned and a little scared, knowing it all depended on me now, I couldn't really see how I'd come to marry the fool woman in the first place.

Joey had us men covered. Martell had Beth by the arm again, and was pulling her across the room.

"Please!" she was crying, holding back desperately, "oh, please…

I mean, it was really kind of a silly performance, from a grown woman. I'd known teen-aged girls in France, nice, sheltered young girls, who'd done much better when the Nazis came, without a fraction of Beth's knowledge and experience. Her terror was too much for the Duke. Whatever he'd had in mind, playing dead-it was a gambit with good possibilities-he gave it up right then.

"That won't be necessary," he said, opening his eyes and pushing himself up on the cot. "The spare wheel you want is five miles back down the road, five-point-three by my odometer. Look for a ravine on the south side. You may have to climb down a ways. Wheels roll, don't you know?"