The first thing we did was barricade the door behind us with three of the sturdiest crates. Another door, opposite the one we’d just entered by and leading, most likely, into some part of the deserted old factory, we likewise barricaded with two heavy boxes. There were several windows, but they were smoked with age, so there was no sweat to that. I cleared a spot in one corner and dusted off two crates for us to sit on and piled all the others in front of us.
I sat down on one of the crates and she sat next to me and we smoked two of the ten cigarettes I had left. The burning tips glowed in the room like lights on a boat lost in fog.
“I like you, Smitty,” she whispered. All the rest of the time we talked it was in whispers.
“I like you too, Miss Stewart.”
“That... that isn’t really my name.”
“The hell...”
“I’m not Suzie Stewart.”
Shrugged. “I was kind of afraid of that. It was a sucker play, wasn’t it.”
“I don’t know what it was, Smitty.”
“Who hired you? Vin?”
“Mr. Thompson, you mean?”
“Yeah, him. Was it him?”
“Yes.”
“It’s coming slow, but it’s coming.”
“Smitty?”
“What?”
“Who do you work for?”
“Who do I work for? Well, starting alphabetically, I guess it’d be Ace Insurance, Acme Insurance, Atlas Insurance, Carolina Casualty...”
“No... I mean really. Really.”
“Really. Ace Insurance, Acme Insur...”
“I don’t get it, then, Smitty.”
“Look, Suzie, we’ll have to piece it together bit by weary bit, okay?”
“Okay.”
“First off, who the hell are you?”
“I’m Susan Wynn, a secretary.”
“Well, that’s something at least. I can still call you Suzie.”
She smiled a nice little smile. Nice even in the dust and dark. “Does it matter to you?” she asked, and I said it didn’t.
“Are you going to kiss me, Smitty?”
“Yes, and lots of other things as soon as we get this figured out.”
“Kiss me now, Smitty. We may not get it figured out at all.”
She was right, so I kissed her and it was fine. The dust and the cobwebs and the blood of somebody dead on my hands and all of it didn’t matter. It was fine.
“I hope I get to kiss you a lot more, Suzie. A million times more. I hope sometime next week you and I will be kissing each other in the hot sun on warm white sand somewhere. And since I’d like to be doing that with you next week somewhere, alive, I’m not going to kiss you for a while so we can figure this out and try to save our skins.”
But it was too late. She had started to cry and I had to kiss her again, soft and warm and with her tongue touching my teeth lightly and the salty taste of her tears, and then I was touching a white, rose-tipped breast, then kissing it, and her soft young body was all around me on the dusty floor and it was too late. Karen, I thought once, but only once.
“Will we be killed?”
“Shush. I’m thinking.”
She held tight to my waist and we lay huddled together in the dirty corner, behind the crates.
“Let’s go over it again, slowly,” I said, ignoring the dry coat of grime on my lips.
“All right, Smitty.”
“Thompson came to you as a representative of the government and asked your help. Very spur of the moment, as it was with me.”
“Yes... but how spur of the moment was it, really?”
“Not very. Obviously they’ve groomed us for our roles for quite some time. I was chosen because Vin knew me and knew I wasn’t the biggest hero the world had ever seen, knew I’d probably panic and blow sky high when thrown into a situation like this. And because he thought I could be easily browbeaten into it in the first place. My being a coward was his ace in the hole.”
“You’re no coward.”
“How many heroes do you know of run into the can and puke their guts out?”
“Life isn’t a movie, Smitty.”
“You call this living?”
“But Smitty, why’d they pick me for this?”
“You have a superficial resemblance to the real Susan Stewart. Who has a superficial resemblance to a girl named Karen, to whom I was almost married. Once. A long time ago.”
“Another reason why you were chosen for a leading role?”
“Right. And another reason why you were chosen for yours. You, too, have a superficial resemblance to Karen. Psychological warfare. Your resemblance to my Karen is the mental torture chamber those bastards have planned my breaking point around.”
“I’m following this... I guess. But what’s it all about?”
“Organized crime or someone involved with it trying to keep Senator Stewart’s death a mystery, I assume. Vin and his pals are either in it themselves, or hired by someone who is. Being involved in the murder of said senator makes it follow that they’re wanting to kill Susan Stewart, the only witness. I was supposed to be framed for it.”
“How?”
“Well, I was set in that room guarding you with a gun loaded with blanks. I suppose that set-up was meant to get me to fire that gun and plaster my hand with power burns and such, which, incidentally, I did. Then my gun, with live ammunition, would be used to kill the real Suzie Stewart — who was probably being held captive in the backseat of the Lincoln they brought me over in — and I’d be set up as the murderer.”
“On what motive?”
“Some Mob plant would point out Susan Stewart’s resemblance to Karen, and of my mental hang-up about Karen, supported by some stunts I pulled in the service following my getting jilted. And it would be assumed by all that I’d simple wigged out, killed Miss Stewart in the process of losing my marbles over her resemblance to an old love of mine.”
“Do you really think they could make that stick in a courtroom?”
“Hell no. They’d have to kill me and make it look like I shot the Stewart girl and then committed suicide or something. No, Hal wasn’t about to let me leave that room alive. Vin was used to lure me there; some time was allowed for Vin to get well away; and then Hal came back to do his number.”
“What about me?”
“They probably set it up so that various people in the neighborhood saw you going into that building earlier, of your own free will — and then the late Miss Stewart would be substituted for you in the dead of night. I guess. Otherwise I don’t really know why they chose to drag somebody else in who they’d just have to get rid of later, but they obviously did. Lives don’t mean a hell of a lot to them and to those guys you and me are just two more expendables.”
She gripped me tighter and quietly wept into my chest until she fell asleep. I sat and smoked and stroked her hair now and then and kept my shaking hand with the gun in it leveled at the center point between the barricaded doors.
I smoked down to two cigarettes.
I waited.
I tried praying for a while.
Dawn wasn’t far off, not more than half an hour.
Suzie woke up and we had the last cigarettes and talked for a while and kissed and made love again and talked for a while longer.
We talked on and on, and she asked what would happen if she got pregnant, and told her it was about the least of our worries at the moment. I got to know her pretty well, don’t really have time to tell you all about her; there are things you’ll just never be able to know, because you never got to meet her.
She was still holding on to me, tight, when the voices came.
“Hold your fire — police. All is under control. Hold your fire.”
I breathed a sigh of relief.
But then how the hell was I to know for sure?