I would feel like a terrible numb-nuts if the room turned out to be empty and I was poised out here like agent X-15 for hours. But I would be a terrible numb-nuts if I just went and bought the farm right here in Merry England because I wasn’t patient. I would wait. He would wait, too, apparently. But I was betting the tension would get him. The open door would get wider and wider open as he looked at it. If there were two of them it would-take longer. One guy gets scareder than two guys. But I had nowhere to go till ten next morning. I was betting I could wait longer.
An Indian woman in a white uniform rolled a laundry cart past me, looked curiously into the open room but paid me no attention. I was finding that more and more women were paying me no attention these days. Perhaps tastes were drifting away from the matinee idol type. The light from my room waned. I kept my eyes on it because I knew there’d be a shadow when the assassin made his move. Or maybe he knew that too and was waiting till dark.
Two African men came off the elevator and walked down past me. They both wore gray business suits with very narrow lapels. They both wore dark narrow ties and white broadcloth shirts with collars that turned up slightly at the ends. The one nearest me had tribal marks scarred into his cheeks. His companion had round gold-framed glasses on. They were speaking in British-accented English as they went by me, and paid no attention to me or the door. I watched them peripherally as I watched the door too. Anyone could be an accomplice.
The phone was near the door, and in the reeking silence I was pretty sure that the assassin couldn’t call without me hearing him. But there might have been a signal of some sort from the window, or there might be a prearranged time when if he didn’t call the back-up came looking. It was hard watching both the door and the corridor traffic. I was getting tired of holding the gun. My hand was stiff, and with the thing cocked I had to hold it carefully. I thought about shifting it to my left hand. I wasn’t as good with my left hand, and I might need to be very good all of a sudden. I wouldn’t be too good if my gun hand had gone to sleep, however.
I shifted the thing to my left hand and exercised my right. The gun felt clumsy in my left. I ought to practice left-handed more. I hadn’t anticipated a gun hand going to sleep. How’d you get shot, Spenser? Well, it’s this way, Saint Pete. I was staked out in a hotel corridor but my hand went to sleep. Then after a while my entire body nodded off. Did Bogie’s hand ever go to sleep, Spenser? Did Kerry Drake’s? No, sir, I don’t think we can admit you here to Private-Eye Heaven, Spenser. I was getting soft standing out there in the corridor. My right hand felt better and I shifted the gun back. No more light came out of the open door of my room. A family of four, complete with Instamatics and shoulder bags, came out of the elevator and walked past me down the corridor. The kids looked into the open door. The father said, “Keep walking.” He had an American accent and his voice was tired. The mom had an admirable backside. They turned right at the cross corridor and disappeared.
It was getting late. I was working overtime here. Sudden-death overtime. Ah, Spenser, what a way you have with words. Sudden-death overtime. Dynamite. My feet hurt. I was beginning to experience lower back pain from standing so long. Why do you get more tired standing than walking? An imponderable. Waiting for someone to jump out of a dark doorway and shoot at you is tiring too. Pay attention. Don’t let the mind wander. You tended to lose sight for a minute when the mom with the backside walked past. If that had been fight time you’d have cashed it in right there, kid.
I looked hard at the door. The assassin would have to appear from the right. The open door was flush against the left-hand wall. He’d roll around the right wall looking for me down the corridor. Or maybe not, maybe he’d come on his belly, close to the floor. That’s what I would do. Or would I? Maybe I’d dive out of the door and get an angle on me from across the corridor, try to be too quick for the guy who’s been standing there getting hypnotized by staring at the door. Or maybe I wouldn’t even be there. Maybe I would be an empty room and some nervous dimwit would stand outside and stare at the emptiness for a number of hours. I could call hotel security and tell them I’d found my door open. But if there was someone in there the first person through the door was going to get blasted. The assassin had been in there too long to make fine distinctions. And if he was a Liberty type he didn’t care much who got killed anyway. I couldn’t ask someone else to walk in there for me. I’d wait. I could wait. It was one of the things I was good at. I could hang on.
Up the corridor past me a room service waiter, dark-skinned in a white coat, wheeled a table full of covered dishes off the service elevator and around the corner to the right. A faint baked potato smell drifted back down the corridor to me. After my steak and kidney pie I had thought about extensive fasting, but the baked potato smell made me reconsider. The assassin came out in a scrabbling crouch, and fired one shot down the corridor toward the elevator on the wall opposite to where I was, before he realized I wasn’t there.
He was quick, and half turned to shoot toward me when I shot him in the chest, my arm straight, my body half turned, not breathing while I squeezed off the shot. At close range my bullet spun him half around. I shot him again as he fell on his side with his knees up. The gun skittered out of his hand as he fell. Small caliber. Long barrel. Target gun. I jumped over and dove through the open door of my room, landed on my shoulder and rolled past the bed. There was a second man, and his first bullet took a piece out of the door frame behind me. His second one caught me with a sharp tug in the back of my left thigh. Half sitting, I shot three times into the middle of his dark form, in faint silhouette against the window. He went backward over a straight chair and lay on his back with one foot draped on the chair seat. I raised to a full sit-up against the wall. That’s why they could wait so long. There were two.
My breath was coming very heavy and I could feel my heart pumping in the middle of my chest. I’m not gonna get shot, I’m gonna have cardiac arrest some day. I took in deep breaths of air. In the right-hand breast pocket of my blue corduroy Levi jacket were twelve extra shells. I opened the cylinder of my gun and popped out the spent cartridges. There was one live round left. I felt down at the back of my left leg. It didn’t hurt yet, but it was warm and I knew I was bleeding. The gun shots in the enclosed corridor had been very loud. That should bring some cops pretty quick.
I edged over to the dark shape with his foot on the chair. I felt for pulse and found none. I got to my feet and walked a little unsteadily to the door. The first man I shot lay as he had fallen. The long-barreled target pistol a foot from his inert hand. His knees drawn up. There was blood on the hall carpet. I put my gun back in its holster and walked over to him. He was dead too. I went back into my room. The back of my leg was beginning to hurt. I sat down on the bed and picked up the phone when I heard the footsteps in the hall. Some of them stopped a little way from my room and some came on to the door. I put the phone back down. “All right in there, come out with your hands up. This is the police.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “There’s a guy dead in here and I’m wounded. Come on in. I’m on your side.” A young man in a light raincoat stepped quickly into the room and pointed a revolver at me. Behind him came an older man with graying hair and he pointed a revolver at me too.