“Where’s Miss Stewart?” I dropped a spent cigarette to the floor and ground it out.
Hal jerked a thumb toward the door by the bed. From behind the door came the sound of a flushing toilet, and I deduced that it concealed the john and not a closet and watched as it opened and Susan (a.k.a., Suzie) Stewart came out.
She wasn’t bad. Not the Playmate of the Month, mind you, not top heavy enough for that. She reminded me so much of someone else it shook me. But she wasn’t Karen. She was just a nervous young thing with hands moving around as if looking for someone to latch onto and full lips twitching and her lean long-legged body shifting uneasily as she walked over to me.
“You... you’re mister... mister Smith?”
“Yeah. Smitty’ll do. Glad to know you, Miss Stewart,” and she took my hand and shook it. She had a nice soft hand, smooth, but no fishy grip either. Who needed Hal?
“I’m going to have to lock the door, Smitty,” Vin told me. “You won’t have a key. In approximately an hour I’ll be back and relieve you of Miss Stewart and that will be all.”
“I turn in my badge so soon?”
“That’s right, Smitt.”
“Okay by me. What if somebody tries to get in?”
“Anyone who is supposed to get in will have a key.”
“What about... unwanted guests?”
“Better use that box of shells I gave you and get that .32 of your loaded up.”
“Now, come on, Vin, come on!”
“I’m leveling with you Smitt. Load it. And use it if you have to.” Half-smiled. “Aim at the head, remember?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
He motioned Hal out, patted me on the shoulder and give me his weird almost-smile and closed the door. I heard him working the lock on the other side. And that was it.
“Trapped,” she said.
She smiled, gently. Pretty girl, shoulder length hair, darkish blonde, eyes big bright and brown, wisp of a nose, nice lips, teeth with a sexy little buck to them, clean clear complexion, pretty girl.
“How did you... get into this, Smitty?”
I shrugged, a habit I picked up from Vin. “I don’t know, Miss Stewart. I don’t know. But I sure am in it.”
“You seem... seem different, somehow... than what they said... said you’d be.”
“Thanks.” As nervous as she was, I half thought they’d told her to expect the Boston Strangler.
“I... I didn’t mean anything bad... just... just that they said...”
“What did they say?”
“Nothing... nothing at all.”
“Tell me, kid. What have you got to lose?”
“I’m sorry... sorry... maybe I shouldn’t be talking to you... maybe we better... it’d be better not to talk... they’ll be mad.”
Shrugged again. “I don’t care, Miss Stewart. I’d rather talk to you, though. Might help me to piece some more of this together so I could understand it a little.”
Her mouth took on a slightly pouty look; eyes teary. “It’s better... better not to understand. Care if I... sleep a while?”
“Go ahead.”
She reclined on the bed. The short dress hiked up over long nyloned legs. Lovely legs.
I looked away.
I opened the box of shells and loaded the .32. It was coldly new, though ten years old. Unfired. I hadn’t shot a gun since Korea, and then unwillingly. Damn. Started filling the cylinder of the little revolver with the bullets. Looked over at the girl, who had fallen asleep. Nice girl. Pretty. Looked a little bit like Karen. Quite a bit like Karen.
Karen.
Karen, that bitch.
Married in some suburb with a bunch of brats hanging on her and her bastard Brad with his fifty thou a year. Fuck ’em.
I got a Christmas card from them once, had their picture on it, Karen, the bastard, the brats and a Collie who looked like the bastard only more intelligent. The bastard. Lucky bastard.
Damn Christmas cards anyway, Christmas cards to Vin Thompson helped get me in this hole in the first place. And damn Karen for being Karen.
Susan Stewart, pretty like Karen, so much like Karen, or like Karen was. So pretty. But nervous, so nervous.
And why not? Of course she’s nervous, her father dead and her the only witness. Her father was an important senator, too, by God what was it he was involved in? Hearings on organized crime, wasn’t it? A lot of people could have wanted him dead, and the kind of people who wouldn’t mind making him that way.
Not to mention some of the “straight” people involved with organized crime who sit at their fat corporate desks and tsk tsk the high crime rate. The kind of people who don’t like to look at the truth themselves, let alone let others look at it. Maybe Senator Stewart was clearing some of the fog away and somebody didn’t like that. A lot of people like fog.
And I was one of those people sitting in the fog and wondering just what the hell was going on.
The girl slept.
I laid the .32 on my lap and leaned back in the hard chair and stared at the door and at the girl and back again, shifting from one to the other every minute or so, girl, door, girl, door...
At four-fifteen my bladder beckoned and I headed for the can. It wasn’t the cubby-hole I’d expected, but was large, with tub, sink, head and even a window. Beyond the window, a fire escape. Good thing to know. The window was locked already, to my relief.
Back to the chair.
Four-twenty.
Outside the door, noise. Footsteps. Careful footsteps, but plainly footsteps, coming down the corridor. I eased over to the bed, placed my hand over Susan Stewart’s mouth and jostled her awake. Her eyes golf-balled and sounds tried to come out of her, but I wouldn’t let them.
“Trouble, maybe,” I whispered.
She began to tremble.
“Easy, Suzie, easy. Please. Stand over at the left of the door. Over in the corner. Quick!”
She rose and padded quietly across the room and molded herself as well as she could into the corner. She was terrified. Almost as terrified as I was.
Key in the lock, moving in the lock, working in the lock.
Door exploded open.
Hal.
Hal stood in the doorway and fired an automatic and fired it and fired it, not aiming at anything, not bothering to look at anyone. He emptied the gun. Then he looked to see if he had hit anyone. Which he hadn’t.
“Nobody’s that stupid, Hal,” I said, “except maybe you.”
I lifted the .32 at him, quivering, my face as tight as a clenched fist, my vision a searing, brilliant red. Squeezed the trigger. The gun belched fire at him and I squeezed some more and it belched more fire at him.
And Hal stood there and grinned at me.
I couldn’t be that bad a shot, good God no, not at six feet!
Yet there Hal stood, grinning, stuffing another clip of bullets into his automatic.
It was then that I realized that there wasn’t anything wrong with my gun, and probably not even with my aim: only the bullets. The bullets I’d been given were blanks.
I noticed too that Suzie was screaming, screaming a strange sort of a scream. Soft, sort of, and to herself. Almost distant.
And Hal was bringing the automatic up toward me and saying, “Now get the hell over against that wall and wait.”
He’s not going to kill us yet, I thought. He’d been aiming after all, aiming to miss us. Just trying to scare hell out of us, I guessed. Which he had. But, Sweet Christ, he was not going to kill us yet! There was time, time!
Time, time if only I wasn’t so God Almightily scared, my stomach such a queasy mass of jelly, but I had to keep my guts from flying apart somehow.
“Hand over the .32, Smith,” Hal told me. Softly, as to a child.
I just looked at him.
“I want that .32, Smith.”
I managed, “Go fuck yourself, Hal.”