My Hero (27 page)

‘No gunbelt?'

‘Not even to please you.'

The bounty hunter shrugged. ‘No derringers in the vest pocket?'

‘No vest pocket. Ergo, no derringers.'

‘Bowie knife slipped inside your sock?'

‘Negative. The same goes for Gatling guns cunningly stashed under my dental plate. I do have a paperclip somewhere in the lining of my trouser pocket, but perhaps you could see your way clear to trusting me with that.'

‘On your feet then, pard.'

Regalian stood up and turned his head through twenty-five degrees or so until he had a clear view of the doorway. By a substantial effort of will, he managed not to register surprise at what he saw there.

‘Fancy dress, huh?' he said.

The bounty hunter frowned (rip rip, crinkle crinkle). ‘Reckon you should keep your smartass remarks to yourself, buster,' he said, now with twenty per cent added extra menace, absolutely free. ‘Reckon a guy could take offence real easy, if he had a mind to.'

A tiny cog or gear engaged in Regalian's mind. He gave the bounty hunter a long, considered looking over.

‘Excuse me,' he said, ‘but have you got a gun?'

‘Not on me,' the bounty hunter replied.

‘Thought not. Then why the hell am I doing what you tell me to?'

The bounty hunter thought for a moment. ‘Because I'm seven feet tall and I got superhuman strength?' he hazarded.

Regalian shook his head. ‘Wouldn't have thought so,' he replied. ‘I mean, the height, yes; I can see for myself you're pretty tall. And I take your word for it about the strength. But if you want to overawe people with your sheer physical presence, I should do something about the stuffing coming out of the split seam under your armpit, if I were you. It lets the side down.'

In the split second it took for the bounty hunter to glance under his arm, Regalian grabbed a heavy object - an old-fashioned, cast-iron, crank-operated coffee mill, to be exact - drew back his arm like a baseball pitcher and let fly. His aim wasn't spot on; he was trying for the centre of the bounty hunter's forehead, but he failed to allow for the sheer weight of the projectile, and the shot landed twenty-seven inches low. It's results that matter, however, and certainly Regalian had no cause for complaint as the bounty hunter moaned horribly, buckled at the knees and sank to the floor, his hands cupped over his groin; a testament to the thoroughness and attention to detail of his creators. When a Yorkshireman builds an artificial human, he doesn't cut corners and leave bits out, arguing that his artefact would never in a million years find any use for
those
. While the bounty hunter was thus occupied, Regalian had plenty of time to rootle around in the kitchen drawers until he found Skinner's rolling pin, walk round the back of the bounty hunter and bash him nine times very hard until he fell over and went, apparently, to sleep. A few turns of washing line around the arms and upper body, a singularly repulsive duster wedged between the jaws to ensure the peace and quiet so necessary when
one is engaged in creative work, and another problem solved, under budget and ahead of schedule.

That was easy. Beating the crap out of large, savage enemies is to heroes what filing pink pro-formas in triplicate is to civil servants. Now, back to the difficult stuff. He sat down in front of the tape recorder, switched it back on and cleared his throat.

 

The door opened.

‘Hello,' Jane said. ‘Who's there?'

Whoever it was didn't believe in switching on the light. Easy enough to think of several perfectly good reasons why he shouldn't; cost of electricity, place is an awful mess, bulb gone again (how many private investigators does it take to change a light bulb?) - all manner of perfectly rational, non-bloodcurdling explanations. Why do I feel sure, Jane asked herself, that none of them is likely to be the truth in this sentence?

‘Hello?'

Shunk-shunk
. Courtesy of SFX Unlimited, the sound of well-oiled metal parts moving together. Could be someone adjusting the settings on a washing machine. No earthly reason to assume it's the slide of a .45 automatic being racked. Good grief, Jane, you
will
jump to these absurd conclusions . . .

She made one final effort to extract herself from the wastepaper basket; in vain. Death with dignity? Ah, shucks.

‘Okay,' said a deep, grating voice. ‘Ditch the hardware, hands where I can see 'em.'

‘Excuse me.'

‘Don't get wise with me, kid,' the voice growled. ‘Try any funny business and you're going home in a box.'

‘Excuse me,' Jane repeated, ‘but could you possibly help me get out of this wastepaper basket?'

‘Huh?'

‘If it wouldn't be too much trouble.'

There was a heartbeat of silence. ‘Did you say wastepaper basket?'

‘Yes.'

And then there was light. ‘Hot damn,' said the man in the doorway, ‘you're right. You
are
sitting in the wastepaper basket.'

‘Mr Marlowe?'

The man narrowed his eyes. ‘How'd you know my name?' he demanded.

Jane paused before answering. The trenchcoat, with the collar folded up. The dark brown fedora. The shiny black automatic looking like a natural extension of the right arm. The hard lines of the face, the weary blue eyes.

‘It's written on the door,' she said.

‘Oh. Yeah. Right.'

Marlowe pocketed the gun, bent down and put one arm under Jane's knees, the other behind her head, and lifted. The bin came too, like a drip mat stuck to the bottom of a beer glass.

‘It's all right,' Jane muttered, pushing at the bin with both hands. ‘I think I can—'

‘Ouch.'

‘Oh. Sorry.'

‘That was my foot.'

‘How clumsy of me. You can put me down now.'

The long, tough face leered at her. ‘You sure you wanna be put down, kid?'

‘Yes, please.'

‘Oh.' Marlowe glowered at her as if he'd just bitten into an apple and found her there. ‘Well, in that case, I guess . . .'

‘Anywhere here will do. Thank you ever so much.' As soon as her feet touched the ground, Jane scuttled like a
crab running for a train and put the width of the desk between herself and Mr Marlowe. Not that she had anything definite against him as yet; but he hadn't shaved in a while and his breath didn't smell very nice. ‘Well, now,' she said.

‘Yeah?'

‘I expect you'd like to know,' Jane said, ‘what I'm doing in your office.'

‘I can guess.'

Jane blinked. ‘You can?'

‘Sure.' Marlowe laughed. ‘I'm a detective, remember.' Suddenly his voice became cold and hard, like a leftover fried egg. ‘You figured that if Maybury shot Stein, then the pearls must still be here.You double-crossed Pedersen, but it didn't occur to you that Michaels had the stuff hidden in the other sock. When you found the body it was too late, so you put the tablespoon in Gobler's hand to make it look like suicide and called the cops. Then you came here, figuring that if the cops didn't get me, Shaftberg would. Only you figured wrong, sister.' His hand disappeared into his coat pocket again. ‘That's the trouble with me, I never do what I'm supposed to. I get letters of complaint about it all the time. Right?'

Jane bit her lip. ‘Actually,' she said, ‘no.'

Marlowe looked as if someone had just stolen his trousers. ‘No?'

‘No,' Jane repeated.

‘You mean Hellman had the jade all along and really Thelma was Chase's
sister
?'

Jane sighed. Unless she did something about it, this could go on all night. ‘I really am awfully sorry, Mr Marlowe, but I actually don't properly belong in your plot. I, er, just dropped in. On my way somewhere.'

Marlowe sneered. ‘Sure,' he said. ‘Only hundred-thousand-dollar blondes don't just drop in on guys like
me. There always has to be a reason. I reckon Pavlinski and Stein—'

‘Excuse me,' Jane insisted, feeling a little bit dazed at being described as a hundred-thousand-dollar blonde. She couldn't help glowing a little inside, even though her hair was, of course, a sort of shoe-polish brown. ‘I know this sounds a little strange, but I'm not actually from Fiction. I'm real. Really.'

‘Sure,' Marlowe snarled, and shot her.

 

‘Who?'

‘Hercule Poirot,' Skinner hissed. ‘He's a detective.'

‘What's a detective?' Titania asked.

Skinner didn't answer. He was beginning to wish he'd stayed in
Painted Saddles
. All right, it was tawdry and cheap and there were always men with guns jumping out and trying to kill him, but at least one day followed another in something like a logical sequence and he knew where all the public lavatories were. If all the future had to offer was diving in and out of other people's books until he finally got stabbed, lynched or squashed by a bookmark, he couldn't see very much point in continuing to run.

The big leather armchairs looked very comfortable. He sat down in one. A thought occurred to him.

‘Hey,' he said.

Poirot, who was kneeling beside the body examining something through a magnifying glass, looked round. ‘M'sieur?'

‘Is there any food in this book?'

‘Pardon?'

‘Food.' Skinner frowned. ‘
Quelque chose à manger
,' he said irritably. ‘Something to drink'd be good, too.
Le bourbon
. Also, where's the john?'

Poirot's eyebrows furrowed for a moment. ‘Ah!
Les
toilettes
.' He stopped, and rubbed the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger. ‘Now that you mention it, m'sieur, I cannot recall having seen any. In the English detective fiction,
vous entendez
, it is, how you say, taboo . . .'

Skinner shrugged. ‘Okay,' he said, ‘it's your carpet. What about the food?'

Before Poirot could answer, the door opened and a butler came in. In his hands was a tray, and on the tray—

‘Yes!' Titania shouted, vaulting over the chair Skinner was sitting in. ‘Hey, I'm beginning to like it here.'

—Cucumber sandwiches, potted meat sandwiches, tea-cakes, muffins, Victoria sponge, shortbread, biscuits. The plate was half empty before the butler was able to put it down.

‘Hey,' mumbled Skinner with his mouth full. ‘Butler.'

‘Sir?'

‘If I asked you to bring me a large Scotch, would you?'

‘Certainly, sir. Miss?'

Titania shrugged. ‘Don't mind if I do,' she said. ‘I'll have a Manhattan, thanks. No ice.'

‘Whee!' Skinner grinned, displaying a mouthful of half-chewed potted meat sandwich. ‘The hell with Reality, let's stay—'

At which point he gagged, choked, writhed like an eel in a blender, turned blue and collapsed to the floor. The crust of the sandwich fell from his twitching fingers.

A moment later, Titania crashed to the ground at his side.

‘
Sacré bleu
,' said Poirot.

 

 

Regalian stopped reading, breathed out, switched off the tape recorder and threw the Raymond Chandler paperback down on top of the pile of Agatha Christies. He felt slightly intoxicated and slightly sick, as if he'd just drunk a teacupful of sweet sherry with a triple whisky chaser. What I do for literature, he muttered to himself.

While the tape was rewinding, he decided to check on the bounty hunter. As far as he knew, basic good/evil theory states that a villain, once tied up, stays tied up, whereas a hero wrapped in string is just an escape in chrysalis, poised and waiting to happen. That was all very well; but this was Reality, not Fiction, and the bodies were flesh and blood, not dreams and verbiage. More to the point, the washing line was Sears Roebuck and about twenty years old. Probably a wise move to stroll down to the cellar and just make sure he's still . . .

Gone.

Shit.

One good thing about being in Reality, Regalian told himself as, armed with the heaviest frying-pan he could find, he embarked on a room-to-room search. In Reality you can swear as much as you like without fear of being edited into confetti to make sure we don't alienate the under-twelve market share. Having developed this happy thought, he spent the next five minutes making the best use of the unaccustomed freedom that his vocabulary allowed.

He had just searched all the upstairs rooms, and was standing on the landing wondering where the loathsome creature had got to, when the airing cupboard door opened and the bounty hunter jumped on his back. In his hands he gripped a leg ripped off a pair of long thermal
underpants, presumably intended for use as a makeshift garrotte.

Sigh. Here we go again. Choke choke, gasp gasp, aaargh! Back in the old groove, the well-worn track, the daily grind. A change (Regalian mused as he dropped to one knee and threw the bounty hunter over his shoulder and down the stairs) is supposed to be as good as a rest, but on balance I think I'd rather have the rest. On the other hand (he argued, as a cut-glass vase hurled with extreme force and prejudice hit the wall three inches from his nose and exploded into needle-sharp splinters), it wouldn't do to get rusty. A gentle workout now and again, nothing too strenuous (the bounty hunter, armed with a splintered banister rail, aimed a sickening blow at his head which he was only just able to parry with a hastily snatched chair), keeps you in trim and only takes fifteen minutes or so a day. One owes it to oneself (a brisk kick to the kneecap swept the bounty hunter's feet out from under him, after which Regalian smashed the chair to matchwood over his head) not to vegetate, something which can so easily happen (and followed it up with a swift, sharp kick to the point of the chin, sending the bounty hunter tumbling back down the stairs, rolling across the hall and bumping headlong down the cellar steps) if you get lazy.