“Sure,” I said. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
At the Marmont, the desk clerk told us that Mr. Spillane was in the Red Room, “with all those pulpcon freaks.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Pulpcon? What’s that?”
“Pulp magazine convention — where all these freak-type collectors meet to swap issues and gas it up about the grand old pulp days. They have a big get-together each fall and this year they picked this hotel for their weirdo shindig.”
Suddenly I turned as green as my socks and pulled the .380 Browning from my belt. “The poem! Mickey was all wrong about the poem!”
“Nick! What’s happened?” Charlene was staring at me, wide-eyed, like the desk clerk.
“You know the poem I quoted to Mickey. I told you about it...”
“Yes, but—”
“Those old magazines were made from woodpulp — and that was what he meant when he said ‘the thief will die near the woods.’ He didn’t mean Big Sur. And when he said ‘while the Eye is watching,’ he meant the camera eye! That psycho’s going to blow Mickey away during the beer commercial!”
And I took off for the Red Room at full gallop.
Franklin E. Edwards, alias John D. Carroll, alias Carroll John Daly, was off to one side of the big convention room, standing behind a red velvet-covered pillar, his Winchester aimed at Mickey, who was holding up a beer can and grinning for the camera when I came through the wide oak-and-brass swing door like a bull into a china shop, knocking six startled pulp collectors flat on their asses.
The place was jammed with addicts poring over piles of flaking yellowed magazines stacked on some two dozen large display tables across the room — but I spotted our boy instantly, dropped to one knee, and squeezed off a round. And another. And another. Missing him with all three shots.
I was nervous.
Edwards swung the pumper in my direction and blew two crystal lamps that were set into the flocked-velvet wall above my head into tiny glittering pieces. Guess he was a little nervous himself.
Then with everybody yelling and stampeding, with tables falling and magazines fluttering, Edwards darted through a side door, me right after him, and sprinted up a short flight of stairs to a freight elevator. I got there just as the sliding door shut, but I could guess where he was headed.
Straight for the hotel roof.
I caught the next elevator and followed him up there, snapping a fresh clip into the Browning.
After I’d ducked out of the elevator and taken a dive behind a large standing air vent, the roof got very, very quiet. In all the Red Room confusion my gun-happy friend had made a clean getaway. Apparently I was the only one to follow him up here.
Which was an unsettling thought.
Here we were, me with my .380 pea-shooter, which suddenly felt very small in my fist, against a killer with a cannon powerful enough to blow away half the building. I’d robbed him of his cosmic destiny, and I knew he was plenty pissed.
Nicky boy, I said to myself, you have royally screwed up. There’s a good chance you are going to leave this hotel with no head.
A mothering big 747 made a lot of noise then, coming in low for its landing approach at LAX, going over us like the wrath of God. The whole roof vibrated.
When things had quieted down again I tried a yelclass="underline" “Give it up, Edwards! The cops are on the way. Put down that Winchester and come out with your hands in the air where I can see ’em and you won’t get hurt.”
This was prime bull and we both knew it. I wasn’t going to hurt him; he was going to hurt me.
And when the air vent blossomed into sudden shell-burst fragments in front of me I knew I was right. The concussion knocked the .380 out of my hand. It ricocheted across the roof, hitting the psycho’s shoe.
He stood up, into the light, maybe ten feet in front of me, with the round black mouth of that Winchester aimed at my belly. He pumped the weapon, setting it up for the shot.
“Oh, shit,” I said.
There was no place to hide. It was time for me to enter private eye heaven.
Which was when Sam showed. I saw him crawl out of an open glass skylight directly behind the psycho, saw him raise the short-barrel Colt .45 he was packing and cock it.
The psycho spun at the sound. Brought up his gun. But not fast enough.
A round from the Colt took his head apart.
Sam walked over to me.
“I’ve seen you before,” I said. “Earlier tonight. Leaving Kathleen’s apartment.”
“Right,” he said. “I was tailing our friend here. But I lost him out on Harbor Boulevard. That was embarrassing because I’m a pretty fair shadow man. Usually I don’t lose people.”
“How long have you been following him?”
“Ever since the day I spotted that Winchester pump in the back seat of his car. Then there was something about his eyes. Aroused my suspicious nature.”
“You a cop?”
“Nope. I’m an insurance salesman. But I used to be a Pink.”
“A Communist?”
He chuckled. “A Pinkerton detective. Last time I worked that game was in the early twenties back in Frisco. Long time ago.”
“You don’t look that old.”
“I’m not. Not in this life. Ask Kathleen about me sometime. She’ll tell you my story.”
“Who are you?”
“You mean, who was I. That’s more important.”
“Who then?”
“When I was a Pink they called me Sam. I never used my middle name till I became a writer. I mean, who the hell ever heard of a Pink named Dashiell?”