Westlake, Donald E - Novel 43 (32 page)

 
          
Farley
said, “Do we have a deal, Mister St. Michael?”

 
          
“Let
me think about this, Mister Farley,” Innocent said. Kirby the murderer is up to
me, he thought. Inexorably he was sliding toward a decision that was very
unlike him, very out of character. And yet, there it was. And still he hung
back from it.

 
          
Tomorrow,
he promised himself. Tomorrow I’ll choose; Farley or Kirby. “I’ll get in touch
with you by tomorrow afternoon, Mister Farley,” he said, “at the
Fort
George
.”

 
          
Farley
was surprised. “How do you know I’m staying at the
Fort
George
?”

 
          
Innocent
laughed, though his mind was full of Kirby the murderer. “Every American I do
business with is at the
Fort
George
, Mister Farley,” he said.

 
          
“Seven,”
said Kirby.

 
          
“Fourteen
for two,” said Manny.

 
          
Kirby
grinned, and laid down a third seven. “Twenty^one for six,” he said, and moved
his back peg forward six spaces on the cribbage board. Only then did he look up
to see every tooth gap in Manny’s head gleaming at him; the man smiled like a
tunnel entrance. “No,” said Kirby.

 
          
“Yes,”
said Manny, and gently placed the fourth seven on the table. “Twenty^eight for
twelve.” He leaned forward to study the board. “And the game.”

 
          
It
was true; the 12 points put Manny out. “At least it wasn’t a skunk,” said
Kirby, whose lead peg was 11 spaces from victory.

 
          
“What’s
the score now?”

 
          
Kirby
turned the board over, where ink checkmarks in groups of five ran in battalions
down two strips of masking tape, which were themselves laid over previous
strips bearing previous battalions.

           
Making another mark with his
ballpoint pen, Kirby said, “You’re ahead, as you damn well know.”

 
          
“How
much? How much?”

 
          
“Three
hundred twenty^nine games to two hundred seventy-eight.” Shaking his head,
Kirby turned the board over. “I should have taught you checkers instead.”

 
          
“Teach
me now.”

 
          
“You
sound too eager,” Kirby told him, and glanced over as a couple of the dogs—who
had been peacefully watching Guatemalan televb sion with Estelle and the
kids—got up and turned around and looked at the door.

 
          
“Somebody
coming,” Manny said.

 
          
“Could
be Tommy.”

 
          
Manny
liked Tommy Watson well enough, but Estelle always got pursedipped when the
Indian was around, as she did now, remaining silent but giving Kirby a quick
look. “I’ll talk to him outside,” Kirby promised.

 
          
And
in fact he had something to tell Tommy. Yesterday’s expedition to San Pedro had
been a bust, at least from a business point of view, but when he’d flown in
here just before noon today—not wanting to miss Estelle’s lunch—there had been
a message waiting which Cora had brought down from Orange Walk. It was Witcher
and Feldspan’s answer to his cable, and it assured him Sunday would be just
fine for taking delivery on the first shipment. So Kirby’s message to Tommy
would be,
Produce some Zotzes!
Let’s
start these new customers off right, with a nice platoon of devibgods. No more
excuses about how everybody’s too superstitious and afraid to make the damn
things.

 
          
Estelle
still looked disapproving—she felt Tommy’s mere existence was a bad influence
on the children, whom she had dreams of civilizing some day—so Kirby got to his
feet and said, “Okay, okay, I’ll head him off.” While Manny sat shuffling the
cards like the scraggliest cardshark in history, grinning faintly to himself,
Kirby went out to greet his faithful Indian companion.

 
          
Except
it wasn’t. Squinting in the outer sunlight, Kirby first saw the gray Land Rover
over near Cynthia, and then saw it was Innocent St. Michael who was clambering
out of it. And not only that, but he was clambering out of the driver’s seat;
he’d come here alone.

 
          
Here?
Innocent St. Michael,
here
?

           
Kirby walked over toward the
heavyset man, noticing that Innocent seemed rumpled, troubled, very unlike his
usual smooth self-confident self. Innocent saw Kirby approach and reached back
into the Land Rover to pick something up off the passenger seat. Kirby was just
calling, “What’s happening, Innocent?” when Innocent turned around with the
gun, pointed it more or less toward Kirby, and started shooting.

 
          
The
gun was a British-made revolver, the Webley and Scott Mark VI, weighing two pounds
six ounces, length eleven and a quarter inches, six-shot capacity, firing a
.455 calibre cartridge, and famous in the British Army and in many police
forces around the world for a whole
lot
of recoil. Wherever Innocent had gotten this monster, the thing clearly had not
come with instructions, nor had he taken it around the block for a few practice
spins ahead of time. He clenched his jaw, squeezed the trigger, the gun made a
sharp explosive sound flattened in the surrounding air, and the bullet went up
over Kirby and over the house and headed out on a rising line toward the coast.

 
          
“Hey!”
said Kirby.

 
          
Innocent’s
second bullet whizzed up and away southward, climbing into the sky, straining
toward a far-off tree just inland from Punta Gorda.

 
          
“What
the hell!” said Kirby.

 
          
Innocent’s
third shot went almost straight up into the empyrean. Some time later, in fact,
it landed unnoticed between Kirby and the house.

 
          
“Jesus
Christ
!” said Kirby.

 
          
Innocent,
looking intent, exasperated, determined, flustered, enraged, grieving, and
bollixed, grabbed the goddam gun with both hands and wrestled its barrel back
down to point at Kirby’s nose.

 
          
“A
hhhr
said Kirby.

 
          
The
fourth bullet whispered in Kirby’s left ear on the way by.

 
          
“DON’T!”
said Kirby.

 
          
Innocent
mumbled something and stepped closer, holding the gun out in front of himself
with both hands, as though it were an angry cat. The cat spat, and bullet
number five made a scratch—but cauterized it immediately—on the skin above
Kirby’s left clavicle, or collarbone, which is the top of the pectoral arch,
extending from the breastbone to the shoulderblade.

           
All of this was happening very fast,
so it wasn’t until now that Kirby got around to taking appropriate action,
which was to scream and hit the dirt, so that bullet number six passed through
the air where the middle of Kirby’s head had recently been, then continued on
its way to chunk into the door frame just as Manny opened the front door to
find out what all that popping was about.

 
          
Manny
looked at the spot where the bullet had said “thup” going into the wood of the
frame. He looked at Innocent with the gun, and Kirby on his face on the ground.
He stepped back and closed the door.

 
          
Kirby
rolled over and looked up. Innocent, closer, stood over him with the expression
of a man seating himself for the first time in front of a word processor; he
will
dope this damn thing out. Both
Innocent’s hands clasped the gun, which now looked to Kirby like a roundmouthed
gray metal snake with a crest (the front sight). Innocent’s right forefinger
squeezed the trigger, and the Mark VI said, “Tsk.”

 
          
Neither
Innocent nor Kirby could believe it. They both looked at the gun. Innocent
aimed it at Kirby and pulled the trigger. “Tsk,” it said.

 
          
“Shit,”
said Innocent.

 
          
“Oh,
boy,” said Kirby, and rolled madly away, over and over across the dusty bumpy
ground. When he sat up, filthy and dizzy, he was some yards from Innocent and
the Land Rover. Shaking his head, trying to focus, he saw Innocent hurry back
to the vehicle, saw him reach inside it and come out with a small cardboard
box, saw him fumble the box open onto the Land Rover’s hood. A few cartridges
rolled away across the hood and plopped onto the ground. “For God’s sake, he’s
reloading,”
Kirby said.

 
          
Somebody,
unfortunately, had explained to Innocent how to open the cylinder. As Kirby
struggled to his feet, still dizzy, and tottered across the open ground,
Innocent pushed bullets business end forward into the cylinder. More cartridges
rolled about and fell on the ground.

 
          
Innocent
saw Kirby coming and backed hurriedly away, stumbling a bit, pushing just one
more bullet home, struggling to close the half-full cylinder and scramble
backwards at the same time, and all the while watching neither his hands nor
the world behind him. Kirby, pursuing, cried, “Innocent, why?
Why
⁷
.”

 
          
“You
killed her,” Innocent said, and slammed the cylinder shut, pinching one finger
nastily in the process. He put that finger in his mouth and pointed the gun at
Kirby.

 
          
Who
had stopped a few paces away, too bewildered to be either scared or smart.
“Killed? Who?”

 
          
“Wallawa
Weeng,” Innocent said.

 
          
“Who?”

 
          
Innocent
took his finger from his mouth. “Valerie Greene,” he said, “and you’re going to
die
for it!”

 
          
“Tsk,”
said the Mark VI, as Kirby threw his arms up to protect his head.

 
          
“God
damned
bastard
!” Innocent cried.

 
          
“I
didn’t!” Kirby yelled. “Innocent, I’m innocent!”

 
          
“Tsk.”

 
          
“Shit!
Where are they?”

 
          
“I
didn’t
do
it!”

 
          
“Boom,”
said the shotgun in Manny’s hands in the doorway of the house, and a number of
leaf bits and twig mulch pattered down onto the tableau of Innocent and Kirby.

 
          
Innocent,
wide-eyed, looked over at Manny who, untroubled by recoil, was lowering the
shotgun barrel from his aim at the tree branches to a new sighting on
Innocent’s torso. This piece of armament was a Ted Williams Over-and-under
shotgun with 28-inch barrels, 48 inches overall, weight seven and a quarter
pounds, firing either two and three-quarter or three inch standard or magnum
shells in 12 gauge, available at Sears stores. Manny’s finger had already moved
from the front trigger, which had just fired the modified choke lower barrel,
to the rear trigger, which at any instant could unleash the contents of the
full choke upper barrel.

 
          
Having
no idea what Manny planned to do next, hoping against hope he wasn’t running
into a blast of shotgun pellets, Kirby dashed forward, grabbed the Mark VI out
of Innocent’s slack hands, and ran away holding the gun in both
his
hands, yelling, “Don’t shoot! Don’t
shoot!”

 
          
Innocent
stared after him in frustration and aggravation: “How can I shoot? You took my
gun!”

 
          
“Manny!”
Kirby yelled in explanation. “Manny, don’t shoot!”

 
          
Manny
came out of the house, the Ted Williams butt still nestled into his shoulder,
cheek still lying against the hand-checkered walnut stock, right eye sighting
down the ventilated rib, directly at Innocent. Estelle came out after him,
looking stem, in her right hand the cleaver she used for quartering chickens. A
couple of the dogs came out and trotted over to Innocent, sniffing him in
search of the tastiest parts. A few children came out and arrayed themselves to
one side, as audience. Innocent looked pained.

 
          
Kirby,
at a safe distance from everybody, looked at the weapon of destruction lying
across his palms. He turned it around, held it in his right hand like people in
the movies, and pointed it down at the ground. He squeezed the trigger. “Bang!”
it said, and the recoil slammed up into his arm bones hard enough to jolt his
whole skeleton. “Jesus,” he whispered. One
tsk
from eternity.