Rath jerked his hand back, thrust at me again with the knife, and I stepped aside. It seemed that I had all the time in the world and as the point of the knife leaped at me I slapped my hand past its arc and clamped my fingers on Rath’s thin wrist. My other hand shot to his elbow, jerked as I pressed downward on his wrist, and in the slow motion of my mind I saw the knife turn to point at his chest, my fingers slipping down to cover his hand and imprison the knife there as he shouted in sudden pain. I gripped his elbow tight, then shoved with all my strength against Rath’s hand.
The hand went back, carrying the knife against his chest. Slowly the knife went in, slowly, an inch, and then two, and it was as though no fine flesh and muscle and tendons were there to stop the thin steel as it sank deeper into his chest until at the end it was buried there.
Rath staggered back, his mouth twisted. Perhaps it was the drug in my veins, or the blood pounding in my head, but it seemed that his face grew an expression not of fright or terror, but of an almost unholy pleasure. His lips were pulled back from his teeth and his eyes were stretched wide. I remembered that Chatita had said Rath liked to be hurt, to feel pain, and he was feeling pain now, deadly pain.
He stood quite still for seconds, facing me as his hands crept up to the handle of the knife and tugged gently at it, then still with that odd, crazed expression on his face he fell forward to his knees. Slowly he toppled to the floor, the projecting knife handle holding him at a queer angle. It took him quite a while to die.
I forgot to tell him about Chatita, and I wished I’d remembered. Rath seemed to die too happy.
I picked up the .38 and turned to the bed, every sense and nerve in my body keyed up and tingling. Elena threw herself into my arms, buried her head in my shoulder, and let all the horror and revulsion come out of her in a steady stream of tears.
She whispered, “Shell. Oh, my God, Shell,” and then she pressed herself against me, put her arms around me and pulled me close, tight against her naked body.
She was a wild, hot, frenzied woman for a long minute, savagely alive in my arms, pressing against me, kissing me, clutching and caressing me with hands and breasts and body, as if she couldn’t thank me enough, as if she were thanking me with everything she owned.
“Elena, honey,” I said. “Who else is here?”
She pulled away from me, suddenly remembering where she was, suddenly remembering the danger around us.
“Hammond is here. That is all.” She spoke in short phrases, her breathing as unsteady as my own. “Rath was... just getting ready to...” She shuddered. “I thought he was going to kill you with the knife. We heard something outside. I did not know what or who it was. When I saw you, I thought he would kill you.”
I got off the bed, moved away from her, the gun in my hand again. “What about the others?”
“Hammond only is here. Downstairs. I do not know where.” She paused. “Shell, what are you going to do?”
I grinned at her, the blood pounding through my veins, thundering in my head. “I’m going to kill him.”
She licked her lips and stared at me, leaned back on the bed with her arms behind her, conical breasts thrusting forward, stomach sucked in sharply, the long smooth sweep of thigh and leg extending to the floor. She didn’t speak.
I left her there and went out. I found stairs leading into darkness below me and I walked down them, almost floating, alive in every pore and atom of my being. Then there was a hallway, light seeping under a door. I opened the door, stepped quietly inside.
Arthur Hammond stood at a bookcase on my right, his back to me. On his left a few feet away was a polished desk. There was a snub-nosed revolver on its top, out of place and ugly against the gleaming wood. Hammond’s coat was off and I could see the strap of a shoulder harness he was still wearing. He must have taken the gun from its holster and put it on the desk top once he was safe in his home. He hadn’t yet heard me.
I pointed my gun at his back, thumbed the hammer on full cock, let my finger tighten ever so lightly on the trigger.
“Hammond,” I said softly.
He turned, placing his finger between the pages of a book he held in his hands. “What?” He blinked at me. For an eternity he stared at me, uncomprehending, then his features slackened as if the muscles that held his face to the skull were dissolving beneath the skin. His jaw sagged, his pouchy cheeks drooped, and he began to tremble.
“No, no,” he said, his voice quavering. “Wait. Please, please wait.” I could hardly hear him; his voice was a whisper floating in the room.
“This is it, Hammond,” I said. “For killing Pete Ramirez. For a lot of things that you’ve done.”
“I didn’t kill him. I didn’t.” He said the same thing five or six times, unable to take his eyes from the bore of the gun I pointed at him. My finger almost trembled on the trigger. The gun had a soft pull and I knew just a breath more pressure and the hammer would fall, the pin would strike, the slug would rip into Hammond’s fat, quivering body. He knew it too. He kept talking, repeating the same words over many times, but he never stopped, as if he knew that once he stopped speaking, a bullet would slam into him, rip into his heart or his brain.
“I didn’t kill him. It was a drug. In the gum. It couldn’t kill him. Please. It was Rath, he gave it to him, put it in his pocket after he hit him. The kid wasn’t supposed to get killed, just lose the race. I had to make him lose.”
“But it killed him, Hammond, as surely as if you’d shot him. He might have died even if he hadn’t fallen.”
That was the first time I’d spoken for quite a while, and it seemed to break the almost hypnotic spell that had gripped him. He put his hands out in front of him and moved sideways a little — toward the desk.
He reached to his cheek and pinched it hard, unconscious of the movement. “Let me go, Scott,” he said.
“No.”
“I haven’t done anything. You were right about the races, but I didn’t mean to kill Ramirez. I had to win. I’d already wired the name of the winner, Ladkin, to the men in Los Angeles. He had to win. They’d have killed me.” He kept moving slowly toward the desk. His body hid the gun from my sight now, but his hands were still in front of him.
“What men in Los Angeles, Hammond?”
He gave me some names, rapidly. They didn’t mean anything to me — but they would to Cookie Martini. Then he said, “I’ll make you rich if you let me go, Scott. We pick the winner here and bet on the other horses to make the odds right. There’s books in the States, and some here, that take Mexico bets. There’s millions in it. I’ll make you rich.” His right hand rested on the edge of the desk behind him.
“How do you pick the winner, Hammond?” Just a little more time, I thought. He was going to try it soon. He kept edging closer to the gun.
“We know, from friends, when a horse is ready for a good race. About the jockeys, we... bought a couple. One other was married, stepping out with a chippie, and we held that over him. Ramirez was just... a mistake, Scott, a bad break.” He was getting some of his nerve back now. “Listen, Scott,” he said. “Be sensible. You can take me in to the cops, but they won’t keep me. You know Valdez? He won’t let a rap stick. He’ll cover for me, fix any charges. There’s no proof anyway. You can’t win, Scott. And I’ll give you a hundred thousand dollars.”
“That’s not enough.” His hand was out of sight behind him now; I knew he had his hand on the gun, was just working up his nerve, pushing himself to the point where he could make his try. And I knew Hammond was telling the truth. I couldn’t make a charge against him stick. Not here. And Valdez would get him out of any mess I got him into.