Rudy yelled and I felt the car lurch as it shot across the corrugated safety zone. I barely straightened up, and had no time to grab the wheel, as the heavy car plunged down an embankment. In the space of a heartbeat, the Pontiac hit, throwing me against the dash. I saw one of the concrete lamp posts rush toward us, then veer to one side. We hadn’t slowed down much. There was a hideous shrieking sound of torn metal as the post was sideswiped. The car rocked, the back end starting to swing around as we slammed through a board fence. Something hit my head. The seat seemed to tip sharply and throw me out. I had no sensation of hitting the concrete pavement inside the fence.
Through a hot black fog I heard a vague roaring. I moved a hand and an arm and touched my face. Lights swished by my eyes, appearing and receding in the fog. I hurt everywhere. The thought of the Ford and the shotgun put me on my feet. There was blood on the back of my hand. I didn’t know where it had come from. I shut my eyes tightly, opened them, steadied my swaying body.
Twenty-five yards behind me the Pontiac — what was left of it — was burning at the base of one of the storage tanks. I didn’t have time to worry about that, or about Rudy. The Ford was parked on the highway at the edge of the embankment we had driven down and a man stood beside the open door, raising a rifle to his shoulder. I could see him well. He was wearing some kind of pale blue hat with a light-colored band.
I tried to run but fell and rolled away as a sharp cracking sound jumped the distance between us and a rifle bullet screamed off the concrete where he had corrected for me. He was good and quick. With the car burning behind me I was better than a target hung on a wall. I got up and took a couple of steps and he shot again. He was low. The slug hit the heel of my shoe and knocked me down. I knew he wouldn’t miss again. Rudy was yelling, but I was too busy to listen.
I had my own gun but the short barrel made it useless from that distance. A boxcar parked a hundred feet away on a siding offered cover. I started to crawl desperately that way, looking back over my shoulder at him. My throat was dried up tight. The only thing that was in my mind was the pale blue hat and a vision of Elaine running along the beach.
From somewhere another rifle was fired, two shots, a second apart, and one window of the Ford splintered. The gunman looked at it, looked away from me in confusion, the rifle resting on his forearm, butt against his side. A third shot sent him sprawling inside his car. The automobile was in motion before he pulled the door shut and tires screeched as the driver threw the Ford into a tight turn in the middle of the highway. There was a distant sound of sirens.
I turned and saw Rudy crouched behind the burning car, holding a carbine. “Get out of there, Rudy!” I yelled at him.
He backed away from the Pontiac and one leg buckled. If the car was going to blow up, it would have done so before, but the heat from the flames was apt to set off the storage tank above it. I limped toward him, feeling the heat against my face. He was sitting on the concrete with the carbine between his knees, his face full of pain. I took him under the arms and lifted him, sliding him away, toward the boxcar.
“Thanks,” Rudy said, coughing wildly. “Something with the... leg. Be all right, I suppose.”
Big red trucks were roaring through a gate nearby, trailing slack hose. I picked up the rifle and my revolver and threw them into the boxcar. I started back toward the wrecked automobile. Rudy stopped me for a second. His face was streaked with dirt and dripping perspiration and blood. His eyes were frightened behind the dirty lenses of his glasses.
“Now you see?” he choked. “Now you see why you had to come back, Pete?”
Chapter Four
Macy Barr’s home was on a small island thirty miles south of Castile. The island was about three hundred yards from shore, accessible by an old causeway barely wide enough for one car. At the island end of the causeway was a small house of weathered coquina, and an eight-foot gate consisting of heavy fence wire woven inside an iron frame. I hit the horn and turned off the headlights as Rudy instructed. A big spotlight on the building brightened the inside of the rented automobile.
A man carrying a submachine gun came out of the gatehouse and opened the gate. I drove through, followed a winding drive up an incline to the house and parked near a large garage. Rudy was nursing his head with an ice pack and didn’t say anything.
We unloaded charred suitcases and went inside. It was a nice house, two floors and various levels, a cross between modern and Mediterranean, built to take advantage of every stray breeze. We left the luggage in the spacious foyer, and Rudy, after looking at his watch, showed me to Macy Barr’s room. The effort of every step marked his face.
Macy wore an old faded bathrobe over a heavy frame that had gone to fat. He needed a haircut and a shave. He sat in an old armchair as shabby as he was and watched me with soft burning eyes. Then he looked at Rudy leaning against a wall behind me.
“What happened to you?” he said. Every breath he took made a faint husking noise in his throat.
“We were bushwhacked outside of Port Wentworth,” I said. “Two or maybe three in on it. One to phone ahead. They used a shotgun and then they used a rifle. The Pontiac cracked up and fire gutted it. Rudy hauled a carbine from under the dash and ran them off. The Wentworth cops let us go when they checked the registration. They told us to keep our family fights down south so their citizens don’t get hurt.”
Macy cleared his throat thoughtfully. His eyes burned like dying coals. There were ugly smears of darkened skin under the eyes. “You hurt?” He meant both of us.
“I lost some skin when I went out of the car. Contusions everywhere. Rudy got burned some, pulled a muscle in his leg. We were lucky.”
“Nerves shot to hell,” Rudy said through his teeth.
“Who were they?” Macy sat stiffly in the chair, not moving a finger.
“I don’t know. Neither does Rudy. I got a look at one of them, the lad with the rifle. A chunky bastard wearing a sky-blue hat. I’ll know him again when I see him.”
Macy moved then, looked at his thumbs. His lips folded together loosely, pinched down at the corners. His chest heaved a couple of times beneath the old robe. I wondered why he still wore the thing. They were putting better material in sugar sacks these days. I heard Rudy coughing delicately, as if every cough cost him pain.
“You go on to bed,” Macy told Rudy. “Better get a hot bath.” Rudy went out. “You want a drink, Pete?”
“God, yes.”
He waved me to a small bar. I chose a bottle. “Give me some whisky,” he said.
“What you want in it?” I said.
“I don’t want nothing in it!” he said peevishly.
I gave him some whisky. He held it as somebody else might hold a rare flower. He drank it slowly. In between sips I could hear the breath in his throat.
I mixed one for myself. There wasn’t any ice so I did without. I sat on his bed and looked at him sullenly.
“I’m glad you’re back, Pete,” he said. I didn’t say a word. “Sorry you ran into trouble on the way down.”
“Maybe you got some idea who planned it,” I said.
“No. I ain’t had any trouble like that.” He tapped his long fingernails against the glass. It was good crystal that must have cost two hundred for the set. Tapping it produced a clear lingering sound. “So you’re not happy,” he said. “I can’t help it.”
“Let me tell you how happy I am,” I said, getting up. “Six years ago I walked out on you because I was sick of you and your whole rotten business. I tried to forget you. I met a nice girl who didn’t know what a fix was, who didn’t know men were murdered every day in this country because guys like you can pull strings. I love her as I never loved anybody before. I used the money you paid me because I earned that money and I built a little business and bought a home against the day I’d be married, and tried to behave like a normal, everyday kind of guy. It was hard because at first I was acting. Then I began to feel that it was coming out all right, that the old life hadn’t scarred me too deep.”