“Can you talk without looking at me?”
In my racket you learn to play by ear real fast or get dead real fast and I had nothing to lose at all any more.
So I said, “Go ahead, honey,” and like her, my mouth didn’t move either except to eat.
The broad caught it immediately and said, “You did time?” and there was a hesitancy in her voice.
“No. Not quite. The fuzz would like me to go down though.”
“Service record?”
That was a peculiar angle for a new line to take. I was trying to figure her for a high class hooker or a tomato with a hot item for sale, but this bit threw the picture out of focus. I did a mental shrug and said, “A whole war, kid, but that was twenty years ago.” I half-laughed and smothered it. “Even got a few medals out of it.”
“I’m in trouble.”
“It figures,” I said.
She buttered a piece of roll, bit off a bite and glanced vacantly around the room. I cut into my pie with my fork and concentrated on my last meal.
“You’ll have to help,” she finally got out.
I swallowed and forked out another bit of pie. “Why?”
“You’re the only one who looks capable.”
“Of what?”
She lifted her coffee cup and sipped at it. “Killing somebody if you have to.”
This time it wasn’t so easy to swallow the pie. I kept chewing, wondering why the hell I always drew the loonies. Sooner or later they always wind up in my lap.
“Come off it, baby,” I told her softly.
She didn’t try to argue about it. She made it a square, simple statement that put her either way out or close inside and left me right in the middle no matter what happened.
She said, “My name is Karen Sinclair. I’m a government agent working with Operation Hightower. In my mouth I have a capsule containing a strip of microfilm that must be delivered to the head of our bureau at once. It’s a matter of national safety. Is that clear? National security is involved. I’m going to bite into a roll, push it inside and put the rest of the roll down. When I leave you pick that roll up and get it in the hands of the nearest F.B.I. agent. Can you do that?”
“Sure.” It was all I could think of to say. It still wasn’t making sense. Finally, I added, “What’s the act for?”
Unconcernedly, she said, “Because outside there are three men who are going to kill me to get that capsule back and we can’t let it happen.”
I was almost done with my pie and couldn’t stall much longer. Newbolder and Schmidt were getting impatient.
“More, baby.”
With an involuntary gesture, she bit her lip, remembered in time to fake it and sipped at her coffee again.
“They were almost ready to take me on the street. They know I have no contact here and am headed for a certain point so they suppose I really stopped to eat. What they don’t realize is that I spotted them.”
“Look, if you’re serious...”
“I’m serious.” Her voice was the same flat monotone, yet had a new note to it, quiet and deadly. She wasn’t lying.
“Hell, girl, I can...”
“You can do nothing, mister. If you want to help do as you’re told. That’s the only way this information can be passed on to the right people. You’re the only chance I have. I know what I’m up against. I’ve been in this game a long time too and knew the odds when I started. I hate to have to pass this to amateurs but when I picked you it was because you had all the signs of the kind of man who can live outside the law and still hang on to certain principles. I hope I’m right.”
She picked up a roll, broke it in half and nibbled into it. What she did, she did quickly, putting the remainder of the roll back on the plate, then washing it down with the rest of her coffee. She finished quickly without seeming to be in a hurry, put her arms back into the trench coat, belted it and picked up her pocketbook.
Before she left I felt her eyes scan my face briefly and sensed the greenish heat of them.
“Thanks,” she said, then turned and walked away.
Indifferently, I picked the half a roll up, dunked it in my coffee, and chewed into it. The capsule was a brittle plastic against my teeth and when I wiped my mouth I spit it out in my hand and quietly stuck it in my watch pocket, then finished the roll.
If it was a gag, it was a beauty.
If it wasn’t, then there was big trouble happening too fast for me to think out.
Newbolder stood up and so did I. It was about that time and now I was going to have the blocks put to me but good. Both cops knew I had the .45 on me and although they knew it was there for the Stipetto crowd they didn’t take the big chance and kept their hands held just-so right above their Police Specials. This one time they’d play it neat all the way to the squad car for old time’s sake and after that all bets were off.
I put on my hat, picked up my coat when two shots blew the night apart outside and a great blast tore the window out of the restaurant and scattered fragments all over the place. Women screamed as though they were given a downbeat and tables overturning in the sudden rush away from the front were like the crashing cymbals of a mad symphony.
I saw Newbolder and Schmidt pull at their guns and run for the door as another handful of shots were triggered off and in that one instant the door was open as they ran through I saw the big girl falling against a car at the curb while the gun in her hand pointed at something out of sight and spouted tiny red flashes.
The decision wasn’t mine at all. She had made it for me. I did the same thing everybody else did and ran, letting the crowd cover me. There was only one difference. I knew where I was running. I got to the door leading to the dishwashing section, went through quickly and paused, looking for another exit. I spotted it down the end, took a fast look through the small window in the door behind me and knew that it was no kind of a gag at all. A harmless looking rabbity guy whom I had unconsciously noticed trying to come across the room against the fleeing crowd had reached my table and was going through the remnants around the girl’s plate. He finished, made a gesture toward where I had been sitting and stopped, then looked around thoughtfully and followed the crowd toward the main kitchen doors.
I would have liked it if he had come in beside me, but he hadn’t as yet. He would, but I wasn’t going to wait.
Any broad that would go all the way out, even knowing she was going to get hit, just to deliver a small package, needed a hand up. I fingered out the capsule and looked at it for the first time. It was transparent and inside was a packed white powder. Clever. It could appear to be a medicine. But there was a faint pinpoint of dark against the plastic where a corner of hidden microfilm touched it. I grinned, put it back in my pocket and took off for the doorway.
It swung out into a corridor lit by a single overhead bulb. By the exit doorway was a light switch I flicked off so I wouldn’t step out silhouetted against a bright room.
My precautions almost worked.
Almost. Not quite.
There was a funny shock you hear rather than feel when metal hits bone and an overwhelming stuffiness began to smother me and I knew that I hadn’t made it after all.
Chapter 2
All right, I thought, where the hell am I now? I realized I was conscious without first experiencing sight or sound, a peculiar awareness that was common to a person coming out of a deep sleep. I lay there a moment, deliberately thoughtful, concentrating on the moment, trying to retrieve my last hours of remembrance.