Trumps of Doom (13 page)

“No.”

“Strange.
 
It has to be a coincidence-“

“What?”

“I did hear a reference to a kind of dreamland place called Amber, last week.
 
But I never mentioned it to anybody.
 
It was just drunken babbling.”

“Who? Who said it?”

“A painter I know.
 
A real nut, but a very talented guy.
 
Name’s Melman.
 
I like his work a lot, and I’ve bought several of his paintings.
 
I’d stopped by to see whether he had anything new this last time I was in town.
 
He didn’t, but I stayed pretty late at his place anyway, talking and drinking and smoking some stuff he had.
 
He got pretty high after a while and he started talking about magic.
 
Not card tricks, I mean.
 
Ritual stuff, you know?”

“Yes.”

“Well, after a time he started doing some of it.
 
If it weren’t that I was kind of stoned myself I’d swear that it worked-that he levitated, summoned sheets of fire, conjured and banished a number of monsters.
 
There had to’ve been acid in something he gave me.
 
But damn! It sure seemed real.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Anyway,” he went on, “he mentioned a sort of archetypal city.
 
I couldn’t tell whether it sounded more like Sodom and Gomorrah or Camelot-all the adjectives he used.
 
He called the place Amber, and said that it was run by a half mad family, with the city itself peopled by their bastards and folks whose ancestors they’d brought in from other places ages ago.
 
Shadows of the family and the city supposedly figure in most major legends and such whatever that means.
 
I could never be sure whether he was talking in metaphor, which he did a lot, or just what the hell he meant.
 
But that’s where I heard the place mentioned.”

“Interesting,” I said.
 
“Melman is dead.
 
His place burned down a few days ago.”

“No, I didn’t know.” He glanced into the mirror again.
 
“Did you know him?”

“I met him-after you left this last time.
 
Kinsky told me Julia’d been seeing him, and I looked the guy up to see what he could tell me about her.
 
You see-well, Julia’s dead.”

“How’d it happen? I just saw her last week.”

“In a very bizarre fashion.
 
She was killed by a strange animal.”

“Lord!” He braked suddenly and pulled off the road onto a wide shoulder to the left.
 
It looked upon a steep, tree-filled drop.
 
Above the trees I could see the tiny lights of the city across a great distance.

He killed the engine and the headlights .
 
He took a Durham’s bag from his pocket and began rolling a cigarette.
 
I caught him glancing upward and ahead.

“You’ve been checking that mirror a lot.”

“Yes,” he replied.
 
“I was just about sure a car had been following us all the way from the parking lot down at the Hilton.
 
It was a few turns behind us for the longest while.
 
Now it seems to have disappeared.”

He lit his cigarette and opened the door.
 
“Let’s get some air.”

I followed him and we stood for a few moments staring out across the big spaces, the moonlight strong enough to cast the shadows of some trees near to us.
 
He threw down the cigarette and stamped on it.

“Shit!” he said.
 
“’This is getting too involved! I knew Julia was seeing Melman, okay? I went to see her the night after I’d seen him, okay? I even delivered a small parcel he’d asked me to take her, okay?”

“Cards,” I said.
 
He nodded.

I withdrew them from my pocket and held them toward him.
 
He barely glanced at them there in the dim light, but he nodded again.

“Those cards,” he said.
 
Then: “You still liked her, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I guess I did.”

“Oh, hell,” he sighed.
 
“All right.
 
There are some things I’m going to have to tell you, old buddy.
 
Not all of them nice.
 
Give me just a minute to sort it all out.
 
You’ve just given me one big problem-or I’ve given it to myself, because I’ve just decided something.”

He kicked a patch of gravel and the stones rattled down the hillside.

“Okay,” he said.
 
“First, give me those cards.”

“Why?”

“I’m going to tear them into confetti.”

“The hell you are.
 
Why?”

“They’re dangerous.”

“I already know that.
 
I’ll hang onto them.”

“You don’t understand.”

“So explain.”

“It’s not that easy.
 
I have to decide what to tell you and what not to.”

“Why not just tell me everything?”

“I can’t.
 
Believe me-“

I hit the ground as soon as I heard the first shot, which ricocheted off a boulder to our right.
 
Luke didn’t.
 
He began running in a zigzag pattern toward a cluster of trees off to our left, from which two more shots were fired.
 
He had something in his hand and he raised it.

Luke fired three times.
 
Our assailant got off one more round.
 
After Luke’s second shot I heard someone gasp.
 
I was on my feet by then and running toward him, a rock in my hand.
 
After his third shot I heard a body fall.

I reached him just as he was turning the body over, in time to see what seemed a faint cloud of blue or gray mist emerge from the man’s mouth past his chipped tooth and drift away.

“What the hell was that?” Luke asked as it blew away.

“You saw it, too? I don’t know.”

He looked down at the limp form with the dark spot growing larger on its shirtfront, a 38’ revolver still clutched in the right hand.

“I didn’t know you carried a gun,” I said.

“When you’re on the road as much as I am, you go heeled,” he answered.

“I pick up a new one in each city I hit and sell it when I leave.
 
Airline security.
 
Guess I won’t be selling this one.
 
I never saw this guy, Merle.
 
You?”

I nodded.

“That’s Dan Martinez, the man I was telling you about.”

“Oh, boy,” he said.
 
“Another damn complication.
 
Maybe I should just join a Zen monastery someplace and persuade myself it doesn’t matter.
 
I-“

Suddenly, he raised his left fingertips to his forehead.
 
“Oh-oh,” he said then.
 
“Merle, the keys are in the ignition.
 
Get in the car and drive back to the hotel right away.
 
Leave me here.
 
Hurry!”

“What’s going on? What-“

He raised his weapon, a snub-nosed automatic, and pointed it at me.

“Now! Shut up and go!”

“But-“

He lowered the muzzle and put a bullet into the ground between my feet.

Then he aimed it squarely at my abdomen.
 
“Merlin, son of Corwin,” he said through clenched teeth, “if you don’t start running right now you’re a dead man!” I followed his advice, raising a shower of gravel and laying some streaks of rubber coming out of the U-turn I spun the wagon through.
 
I roared down the hill and skidded around the curve to my right.
 
I braked for the next one to my left.
 
Then I slowed.

I pulled off to the left, at the foot of a bluff, near some shrubbery.
 
I killed the engine and the lights and put on the parking brake.
 
I opened the door quietly and did not close it fully after I’d slipped out.
 
Sounds carry too well in places like this.

I started back, keeping to the darker, righthand side of the road.
 
It was very quiet.
 
I rounded the first turn and headed for the next one.
 
Something flew from one tree - to another.
 
An owl, I think.
 
I moved more slowly than I wanted to, for the sake of silence, as I neared the second turning.

I made my way around that final corner on all fours, taking advantage of the cover provided by rocks and foliage.
 
I halted then and studied the area we had occupied.
 
Nothing in sight.
 
I advanced slowly, cautiously, ready to freeze, drop, dive, or spring up into a run as the situation required.

Nothing stirred, save branches in the wind.
 
No one in sight.

I rose into a crouch and continued, still more slowly; still hugging the cover.

Not there.
 
He had taken off for somewhere.
 
I moved nearer, halted again and listened for at least a minute.
 
No sounds betrayed any moving presences.

I crossed to the place where Martinez had fallen.
 
The body was gone.
 
I paced about the area but could locate nothing to give me any sort of clue as to what might have occurred following my departure.
 
I could think of no reason for calling out, so I didn’t.

I walked back to the car without misadventure, got in and headed for town.
 
I couldn’t even speculate as to what the hell was going on.

I left the wagon in the hotel lot, near to the spot where it had been parked earlier.
 
Then I went inside, walked to Luke’s room, and knocked on the door.
 
I didn’t really expect a response; but it seemed the proper thing to do preparatory to breaking and entering.

I was careful to snap only the lock, leaving the door and the fame intact, because Mr. Brazda had seemed a nice guy.
 
It took a little longer, but there was no one in sight.
 
I reached in and turned on the light, did a quick survey, then slipped inside quickly.
 
I stood listening for a few minutes but heard no sounds of activity from the hall.

Tight ship.
 
Suitcase on luggage rack, empty.
 
Clothing hung in closet-nothing in the pockets except for two matchbooks, and a pen and pencil.
 
A few other garments and some undergarments in a drawer, nothing with them.
 
Toiletries in shaving kit or neatly arrayed on countertop.
 
Nothing peculiar there.
 
A copy of B .
 
H.
 
Liddell Hart’s Strategy lay upon the bedside table, a bookmark about three-quarters of the way into it.

His fatigues had been thrown onto a chair, his dusty boots stood next to it, socks beside them.
 
Nothing inside the boots but a pair of blousing bands.
 
I checked the shirt pockets, which at first seemed empty, but my fingertips then discovered a number of small white paper pellets in one of them.
 
Puzzled, I unfolded a few.
 
Bizarre secret messages? No .
 
.
 
.
 
No sense getting completely paranoid, when a few brown flecks on a paper answered the question.
 
Tobacco.
 
They were pieces of cigarette paper: Obviously he stripped his butts when he was hiking in the wilderness.
 
I recalled a few past hikes with him.
 
He hadn’t always been that neat.

I went through the trousers.
 
There was a damp bandana in one hid pocket and a comb in the other.
 
Nothing in the right front pocket, a single round of ammo in the left.
 
On an impulse, I pocketed the shell, then went on to look beneath the mattress and behind the drawers.
 
I even looked in the toilet’s flush box.
 
Nothing.
 
Nothing to explain his strange behavior.

Leaving the car keys on the bedside table I departed and returned to my own room.
 
I did not care that he’d know I’d broken in.
 
In fact, I rather liked the idea.
 
It irritated me that he’d poked around in my Ghostwheel papers.
 
Besides, he owed me a damned good explanation for his behavior on the mountain.

I undressed, showered, got into bed, and doused my light.
 
I’d have left him a note, too, except that I don’t like to create evidence and I had a strong feeling that he wouldn’t be coming back.

He was a short, heavy-set man with a somewhat florid complexion, his dark hair streaked with white and perhaps a bit thin on top.
 
I sat in the study of his semi-rural home in upstate New York, sipping a beer and telling him my troubles.
 
It was a breezy, star-dotted night beyond the window and he was a good listener.