Energy and sensation began returning to his muscles. He turned slowly and carefully. For the first time we were face to face. His mug shots had been accurate. He was big, rangy, flat-bellied. With a strong-boned, good-looking face marred only by the thin white scar along his jawbone, he looked like a one-time college football player — which he was — who’d gone on to reach middle age in a rugged, outdoors field of endeavor — which he hadn’t.
The thinning brown hair over the broad forehead caught the light dully. The hazel eyes reflected it like hard, polished chips of resin.
“You’d better make the most of this,” he said quietly. “You won’t be telling any grandchildren about it.”
“We’ll see.”
“I’m not alone, you know.”
“My primary interest,” I said. “We’ll talk about this person who made the contract with you.”
“What contract?” He turned toward the bureau and reached for a cigarette package. I hit him across the knuckles with the gun barrel. He jerked his hand back. An expression of pain flicked across his face. Then he laughed thinly, lifted his knuckles to his mouth, and sucked off the flecks of blood.
“You can do this any way you like, McJunkin. The hard way. The reasonable way.”
He gave me a hooded glance, walked to the bed, and sat on the edge of it. With the long years of experience behind him, he was cool and collected. He’d been in and out of too many tight spots to believe in the finality of defeat.
“You’re not talking to a punk kid, Rivers.”
“You convinced me of that at the very start,” I said.
“I got rights.”
“Have you? I remember seeing your rights carted off in the meat wagon, McJunkin.”
He sat brooding. “I ought to castrate the sonofabitch who gave you this room number.”
I put the gun barrel under his chin and tipped his head up.
“Glom the truth, McJunkin. You’ve dealt with lenient or corrupt judges, charitable juries, do-gooders on parole boards for so long you feel the ultimate disaster can’t really happen to you. It can. It has.”
“What will it get you? It won’t bring the dead chicks back.”
“Then they’ll have company, McJunkin.”
“And where will you be?”
“Around,” I said.
“Not for long. There are others like me, and plenty of money to hire them. You got icky ideas, Rivers, a cluckhead way of looking at things.”
“Coming from you, thanks for the compliment.”
“I’m thinking of the best thing for everybody.” He swallowed against the pressure of the gun barrel. “It’s not too late. You want your tail in a coffin or sitting on velvet? I can talk to my principal. I think I can swing it. Nobody wants to keep this thing stirred up. The quicker we close the book on it, the better.”
“I’m hard of hearing, McJunkin.”
“The ailment can be fixed.”
“Are you the doctor?”
“Why not?” he said. “Just repeat what Jean Putnam and Lura Thackery said to you. Mention how long Jean was able to talk before she died.”
“How much do you think she talked?”
“Not much,” he said. “She didn’t spell it out, or you’d have broken it by now. But the catch is, she reached you. She started you on the Claverys and the Sigmons. She got you into it, and as long as you’re in it, you’re dangerous. It’s a chance we can’t take.”
“You’ve no choice left about taking chances, McJunkin.”
“I think you got it twisted, friend. I’m offering you a brand-new, and very final chance. To step aside. To do nothing. How many people can set a price on doing nothing?”
“I like to stay busy,” I said.
“Be busy in style. Write your own ticket. Buy yourself a dozen chicks. Take a trip around the world.”
Very gently, he lifted his hand, touched my wrist, eased the force of the gun barrel from his chin.
“Think about it for a minute,” he said. “We’re professionals, you and me. We sell the same products, nerve and muscle and service.”
“To a different clientele, McJunkin. For different reasons.”
“Okay. I won’t argue the point. You work one side of the street; I work the other. We lock horns: it’s in the line of business. Nothing personal. You shoot at a guy one day; maybe you want to protect him the next. Depends on the setup. All a matter of business.”
“Think I need your protection, McJunkin?”
“Maybe we got a mutual need, mutual interests. There’s more money involved than you could count in half a dozen lifetimes, Rivers. A little of the small change will set you up for a long time to come.”
“For doing nothing,” I said.
“Just change teams, Rivers.”
“You got worms in the wrinkles of your brain, McJunkin.”
“Then I got the most plentiful parasites in the world. Only difference is, I don’t hide mine behind fancy words and a hypocritical front. I’m what I am, Rivers, and I never go back on a deal. You can trust me when it comes to business. Once you’re in, we’ll have to trust each other.”
“No sale, McJunkin.”
The hazel eyes clouded with confusion, the inability to comprehend that it all wasn’t as clear and reasonable to me as it was to him.
“Maybe I didn’t make this clear,” he said.
“Very.”
“Then I don’t dig,” he said. “Right now, whatever you do to me, you got a one-way ticket to nowhere. You can trade it for plush. What’s holding you back?”
“If you were capable of understanding, McJunkin, you wouldn’t need an explanation.”
“Man, what else can I say?”
“One word,” I said.
He shook his head. A quiet sadness came to his husky face. “You know I can’t.”
“His name, McJunkin. Or hers.”
“I made a deal, Rivers.”
“I’m unmaking it,” I said. “My only out is to reach your principal before a parade of McJunkins stops me from being a danger.”
“I offered you the smart way out. You’re too dumb to like money.”
“I like it very much,” I said, “but not as much as my own life. You offered me a sure way to set myself up. The choice isn’t mine — but yours. Which will it be? Me? Or your principal?”
He seemed to pull down inside of himself, becoming a dumb animal prepared to endure suffering. His answer was in his silence.
Seventeen
I reached toward him to grab his collar. In reaching, I leaned forward. In leaning, I saved my life.
The gun winked on the roof of the building across the alley. Shards of glass from the window of McJunkin’s room spilled to the floor like dimes from an up-ended pocket. The sound was immediately followed by the spilling of glass from the bureau mirror as the slug crossed the spot where I had been standing.
I dropped, hit the floor, and rolled away. McJunkin crossed the room and struck the light switch. The return of intense gloom blinded me for a moment.
I fired the .38, realizing almost instantly that the shot was high. His body was a shadow that had dropped into a crouch in anticipation of the shot.
He’d grabbed the end of the dresser. Shoving with all his power, he fired it straight at me, its small metal casters rolling with a quick, angry, hollow sound.
I threw up my arm to keep the end of the rushing bureau from knocking my brains out. Twisting, I took most of the force against my shoulder. Off balance, I was slammed against the wall by the impact.
I kicked the piece of furniture aside as McJunkin threw the latch and eeled through the door. The hallway light caught him. I had time to fire once as he was slamming the door behind him.
I knew I had hit him. The slug knocked him halfway around. Then the door had boomed closed between us.
I started to rise, ducked again as the gun across the alley fired three times, the bullets searching the room at random. The nature of the volley indicated to me that it would be the last. Whoever was over there would get off the roof quickly and out of an unhealthy neighborhood.