“Put your hands on your head and step out where we can see you,” Procane called. I glanced at him. His eyes sparkled and there was a tight grin beneath his ginger moustache. The moustache fairly bristled. Procane seemed to be enjoying his work.
The man stepped out from behind the Mustang’s open door into the glare of our single headlight, but his hands weren’t on top of his head. Instead the right one was wrapped around the grip of his automatic and the left one was bracing his right wrist. He was in a half-crouch. It was a thoroughly professional stance, the kind that expert pistol shooters go into when they want to make sure that they’ll hit what they’re aiming at. The automatic pistol was aimed right at me.
It all fell into place then, of course, just as I was about to die. It was partly intuitive leap, but mostly it was remembering small things that happened when they shouldn’t have happened. If I hadn’t been going to die so soon, I could have told someone all about my wonderful memory and the brilliant deductive process that was my mind. I could also have told them who killed Bobby Boykins and who threw Jimmy Peskoe out of an eighth-story window.
Procane tried, of course. He pulled the trigger of his Walther, the one with all the fancy engraving on its slide. Something made a dry little click that had a disparaging sound to it, like the “tch-tch” you make with your teeth and tongue when something that’s of minor importance goes wrong.
I was going to die, of course, and I didn’t think that that was anything minor, but there was nothing I could do about it except stare at the gun that was leveled at me with rock-steady aim. I was just beginning to wonder about why he didn’t go ahead and get it over with when a man’s voice called, “Behind you, friend!”
The man whirled, still in his gunfighter’s crouch. He was nearly all the way around before the first bullet smashed into him. He fired back, but his aim was off and I don’t think he even came close to Miles Wiedstein who walked toward him now, firing as he came. Wiedstein shot the man in the stocking mask three times before he hit the ground. The first shot seemed to double him over, the second one straightened him up, and the third sent him staggering backward toward Procane and me.
He fell before he reached us. His arms were flung out carelessly at his sides. His unbuttoned jacket and topcoat gaped open. I could have placed a small saucer over the three red-black holes in the white shirt that gleamed up at the sky. I wondered who had taught Wiedstein how to shoot; it couldn’t have been Procane.
Procane turned to me, his eyes fixed on the Walther that he held gingerly in his right hand as if it were some kind of a rare bug. “It misfired,” he said.
“So I noticed.”
“Yes. I imagine you did. I suppose I should have thrown it at him.”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
He looked at the dead man. “No, it doesn’t, does it?”
Wiedstein came up to us followed by Janet Whistler. I thought both of them looked pale and then I wondered how I looked to them.
“He was pretty good,” Wiedstein said, touching the dead man’s shoulder with his toe.”
“Both of them were,” Procane said.
“They weren’t supposed to be that good,” Wiedstein said. “Maybe we’d better find out who they were.” He looked at Procane.
Procane started to kneel by the dead man to take off the stocking mask. Janet Whistler turned away. Wiedstein decided to look up at the sky to see what the clouds were like.
“You don’t have to do that,” I said to Procane.
He looked up at me. “Why?”
“I know who they are,” I said and tried not to make my voice sound smug. I think I succeeded because I didn’t feel smug.
“Who?”
“That one’s Frank Deal. The one with the shotgun was Carl Oller.”
“The detectives,” Procane said. “They talked to me. Yesterday.” He didn’t sound as though he believed me.
“All right,” I said. “Go ahead. Take it off his face.”
Procane grimaced but peeled the stocking from the dead man’s face. Frank Deal’s cold gray eyes were open. They seemed to be staring at me.
“You want to take a look at the other one?” I said.
“No,” Procane said. “That won’t be necessary.”
He rose and brushed his hands together as though they were covered with dirt. “Why did they do it?” he said, but not as if he expected an answer.
“Two reasons,” I said.
“What?”
“The first was a million dollars.”
“What was the second one?”
“Today is Wednesday.”
“So?”
“Wednesday was their day off.”
22
I helped get the three suitcases out of the Mustang’s back seat. We put them in the trunk of Wiedstein’s car. The one that I carried didn’t weigh much, not more than thirty pounds, so I assumed that it was the million dollars in currency. It can weigh far less than a million dollars in heroin.
“What’re you going to do with it?” I said as I got in the back seat next to Janet Whistler.
Procane turned to look at me. “With what?”
“The heroin.”
“Destroy it, of course. I’m not quite sure—”
He didn’t finish his sentence because Wiedstein, not quite into the driver’s seat, looked back and said, “Down!”
I turned instead and saw the dark Oldsmobile slide to a stop just behind Procane’s car which was still smashed into the Mustang. The four doors of the Oldsmobile again flew open and four men tumbled out. They did some gesturing and some pointing and when they were through with that they seemed to start aiming something in our direction and I lost interest and ducked down behind the rear seat.
Wiedstein had the car moving by the time I heard the first shots. Janet Whistler was also half-lying on the rear seat, her face no more than six inches from mine, her eyes closed. When we felt Wiedstein skid the car onto Highway 27 she opened her eyes and looked at me. Then she smiled and winked. We sat up.
Procane was looking back toward the drive-in’s exit. “They’re going to try to come out the entrance,” he said.
Wiedstein nodded. “I know. I thought Mace was supposed to last longer.”
“It does when properly applied.”
“They looked awfully unhappy.”
“Yes, they did, didn’t they? Can you lose them?”
Wiedstein shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
By now we were just past the entrance to the drive-in and it felt as though we were already hitting eighty miles per hour.
Procane looked back. “They’re coming out of the entrance now. Are you sure you can’t lose them?”
“I don’t know these roads,” Wiedstein said. “I might turn down a dead end.”
Procane nodded. “Then we’ll have to use your alternative method, won’t we?”
“Yes,” Wiedstein said, “I suppose we will.”
I started to ask what the alternative method was and how many persons it might kill and whether I might be among them, but Procane had his own questions and he had to shout them because the speedometer said that we were now doing close to ninety. That was far too fast on that road at night. It was really too fast in daytime. My answers to Procane’s shouted questions were almost mechanically shouted replies because I kept watching the road — not only in front of us, but also behind us where the two headlights of the pursuing Oldsmobile crept steadily nearer.
What Procane wanted to know first was, “How did you know — that those two men — were Deal and Oller?” He shouted it above the wind noise in phrases because he kept running out of breath.
“They had to be,” I yelled back.
“Why?”
“Little things.”
“What little things?”