Nothing moved in the hail. I gave it another couple of minutes by the watch, and the silence outside remained unbroken. Well, it was time I had a little luck on this job, for whatever good it could do me now. I drew a long breath and turned from the door, to meet Jenny's eyes. She was crouching on the rug in numb silence, exactly where she'd landed after trying to throw me for a loss. She was staring at me helplessly, perhaps because in that room I was the only other creature showing life.
It was kind of a shambles. Larry was dead almost at my feet, and a little distance away the kid lay sprawled in her pajamas, still out cold. I hoped it was no more than that. Across the room, Hans Ruyter sat against the wall with open eyes and a red shirtfront. I walked over to him. He'd finished dying while I checked the hall; he was as dead as he'd ever be. As far as I was concerned, it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. I wasn't a bit sorry for him, only for myself.
I stood looking at him grimly, knowing that I'd made the one mistake that's inexcusable in my line of business: I'd let a mistaken humanitarian impulse louse up an assignment. I'd had strict orders to see that Ruyter got through at any cost. I'd known just how to do it, and I'd had the weapon to do it with, but I'd hesitated over paying the full price in blood. I'd tried to do a bargain job instead of the one I'd been assigned.
So two men were dead instead of one, and the job was shot to hell, and sooner or later I'd be back in Washington facing a couple of departmental psychiatrists who'd try to determine the full extent of the softening of the brain and whether or not the disease was curable-but that was kind of beside the point, at the moment. I squatted to examine the thing that looked like a cigarette package-a British brand called Players, if it matters-and saw the little hole out of which something lethal was supposed to come if you squeezed the right place the right way. It occurred to me that this, or something like it, could be the real answer to what had killed Greg, not the hypo left in Elaine's room.
I didn't monkey with the thing. I didn't know if it had been fired or not, and I didn't know how to fire it. It might even be booby-trapped in some way, and I'd made enough of a fool of myself for one night without winding up with a cyanide dart in the eye. But they certainly were a tricky bunch, with their acids and their silencers and their disguised blowguns.
I walked over to Larry. He had a hole in the head. In a sense, I reflected, he'd always had a hole in the head. It had just taken him a while to die from it. I felt nothing particular about his death, now, except regret that it hadn't happened on my first shot instead of my second. I looked at the crazy automatic I was still holding, and I looked at Jenny, still crouching there as if she was afraid to move. Maybe she was.
I said, "What the hell kind of loused-up weapons did your boyfriend carry, Irish? If his gun had shot straight, he'd be alive now. But this crummy thing shoots two feet high at four yards. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it."
She was still staring at me, wide-eyed. Crouching there on the rug, she was no longer the self-possessed woman to whom I'd recently almost made love: she was a scared girl. Well, death by violence isn't pleasant to see, particularly if you've never seen it before. I sensed that she hadn't.
She licked her lips. "But you… you shot a U.S. agent!" she breathed. "I thought… I don't understand She stopped, looked at me with vague suspicion, maybe hope, and said stiffly, "Another trick, Mr. Clevenger? Tell your friend to get up and wipe the catsup off his face."
"You tell him," I said.
She looked at Larry, obviously dead, and the hope-if it had been that-faded. I looked at the gun in my hand and saw some stuff hanging out of the silencer. Part of the sound-absorbent packing had been blasted loose by the two shots I'd fired. I examined the weapon more carefully, and saw that the whole silencer was cockeyed. Hans had either crossed the threads, screwing it on in the dark, or he'd bent it, dropping the gun at Larry's command. Not lining up properly, the silencer had thrown my shots way off. Maybe I owed Hans an apology. You could make a case for its not being his fault.
I took out my handkerchief, wiped the gun clean, and Went over and put it into his hand, closing the dead fingers around it.
"What are you doing?" Jenny asked, behind me.
"They shot each other," I said. "They shot it out at point-blank range and both died. Very neat. Maybe the cops will buy it."
"But it isn't true," she said dully. "You shot him. The government man. I saw you." She frowned up at me, as if her thinking processes were slow and difficult. "Why?"
I'd had time to think it over after a fashion, and I said, "That's a goddamn silly question, Irish."
She licked her lips again. "What do you mean?"
I said, "All right, all right. So you didn't get me into bed and crawl all over me. So you didn't say you wanted a friend in your corner when the showdown came. Okay. Nobody's quoting you, are they? Who's throwing your words in your teeth? Not me."
She said, shocked, "You can't mean-"
"Cut it out," I said. "You're not responsible. Nobody's saying you are, are they? I killed him. Say I killed him because I didn't like the way he shaved his head. Say I killed him because he was twisting the kid's arm. Relax, Irish. I'm a big boy and I don't ask anybody to share the blame for what I do. I'm not asking you. But don't pretend you don't know why I did it, or I'll…" I stopped, and grimaced. "Ah, hell. It's a mess, anyway. It always is, when they break out the guns. That's why I leave mine home when I can. You'd better see about Penny. I'll get some water."
But her maternal instincts weren't operating yet. She was still staring at me in a horrified way. "But I never meant… I never asked you to kill..
I said, "Sure, Irish. Sure. Don't brood about it. I'll figure a way out. Just give me a little time to think."
"But you can't have shot him just because I said-"
"I told you," I said. "I shot him because he was hurting the kid, and I'm a sucker for kids."
"When we first met, you said you hated the little creeps." She got up slowly, never taking her eyes from me. When I didn't speak, she went on breathlessly: "But it's mad! It's absolutely crazy! You can't think I ever meant for you to-"
I said, "Look, Irish, the guy is dead. See? Dead, like in corpse. Let's not waste any more time on who meant what. If I misinterpreted your desires, ma'am, I most humbly apologize. To you and to him. There really wasn't time for a consultation, if you'll recall. I just did my poor best, ma'am, and the next time you get in bed with a man, ma'am, and tell him you're doing it because you need his help, you'd better spell it out a little better or pick a guy who can read minds."
It wasn't a very nice line to take, I guess. Basically, it was the same cheap love-at-first-sight approach that Greg had probably tried, earlier. However, unlike Greg, I now had a dead body to lay at my feet to prove my sincere affection. The fact that she didn't seem to want it-either the body or the affection-didn't really matter.
She whispered, "I'm sorry. Really, I'm sorry. I had no idea anything like this would happen or I'd never…" She stopped, frowned at me, and said: "He was a government agent and you shot him! Does that mean that you're not… I mean, that you weren't working with him; that all the time you were really-"
"A poor damn private dick from Denver, named Clevenger," I said. "Just like I always said, ma'am. And right now I'm a poor damn private dick named Clevenger on his way to the electric chair, if we don't get the hell out of here quick. She's your daughter, not mine. We'll just leave her lying there if you say so."