The Name of the Game is Death Page 2

  I stood up and kicked the stool I'd been sitting on in his direction. "Sit, Doc. Real still." I looked in the small mirror at the basin where he'd washed up. The mirror reflected a suntanned hard face with short black hair. I laid the gun on the edge of the basin, ran the water, and found a clean towel.

  Stooped over, I could watch the doc's feet. If he could get to me before I got to the gun, he was a better man than I thought. One-handed I washed the oil and lampblack from my hair and the suntan makeup from my face and neck. When I emerged from behind the towel, Sanfilippo stared at hair and skin a nationality lighter.

  I looked him over. Thin as he was, I still couldn't carry him from the office. "Walk out to the car ahead of me," I told him. "I'm going to tie you and leave you in the garage."

  He didn't like it. I could see him thinking furiously, and I could have predicted the instant he brightened. Would I have paid him if I were going to kill him? Certainly not. The stupid bastard never stopped to realize if I'd been going to leave him around to do any broadcasting, he'd never have seen me out of the war paint. I followed him from the examination room after picking up something with a bone handle and six inches of steel from his surgical tray. I stuck it in my belt.

  During the walk along the passageway I got out the Woodsman and put it under my armpit where I could get to it in a hurry. At the car Sanfilippo turned and looked at me expectantly. I kept a careful ten feet away from him. " Think something's wrong—" I mumbled, weaving on my feet. Then I did a long, slow pinwheel to the garage floor, careful to stay off my bad side. From beneath nearly closed eyelids I could see Sanfilippo's startled look as he stared down at me.

  My hand was close enough to the Woodsman to stop his clock if he came after me, or if he tried to run out of the garage. I didn't expect him to do either. I'd tabbed this guy as a wisenheimer, and I was willing to let him prove himself.

  He took a final look at me, then spun around to the Ford. He flung open the rear door, and I could hear him pawing through the back seat. He left that in a hurry and tried the front. He ripped off something in Spanish and darted around to the rear. I'd paid him in hundreds, so he was sure the swag was in the car.

  He wasn't bad, the doc. I couldn't see what he used— nil I could see were his legs under the Ford—but he popped the back deck lid in no time. I heard the whaaaaang of broken metal as he snapped the locks on my tool chests in the trunk. When he found nothing he sounded off again and came around the car on the trot. He dived into the back seat again, only his legs outside.

  I eased myself to my feet and got over there. Sanfilippo had a knife out, and he was slashing away at the seat cushion. He was right down to the springs in a couple of places. I pulled the flat-bladed surgical tool from my belt. Sanfilippo whacked away at the cushion, cursing like a sailor, and then all of a sudden my presence got through to him. He started to turn, and I gave him four-and-a-half inches between the second and third ribs, blade flat to the ground for easier passage between the bones.

  Sanfilippo was looking over his shoulder at me, and his black eyes didn't believe it. I pulled it out and gave it to him again, then grabbed his belt and steered him down away from the car. He sank like a deflated balloon, slowly at first and then with a rush.

  His own knife was still in his hand. I left the surgical steel in him after wiping the handle. I reached down again and yanked his wallet from his hip pocket, stripped it, wiped it, and threw it down beside the body. It would be open and shut to any investigator: killed while pursuing a thief from his office. And for a bonus, no bullets in him to be matched up with the ones they took out of the bank guards.

  I backed the Ford out of there and drove up to Nineteenth and Van Buren to a big motel, The Tropics. I registered as Earl Drake, the jacket again over my bandaged arm. "I'll try your Western hospitality till my office gets me a new sample line," I told the middle-aged desk clerk. "They busted into my car in Nogales last night and cleaned me—clothes, samples, camera, the works. I'll pay you for a week."

  The clerk clucked sympathetically as he handed me my change. "Excellent shops within a block or two, sir. Sorry to hear of your misfortune. I hope you enjoy your stay with us."

  I took the number 24 key he gave me and drove the car down in front of that unit. I went inside and locked the door, washed my face, eased down carefully into an inclined chair with a footrest, and closed my eyes.

  I had a lot of unwinding to do.

  The last conscious thought I had before I drifted off was that tin people at the bank were going to have one hell of a glass bill.

  I lived in that chair for a week, aside from short trips to the on premises restaurant, I didn't dare get into the big double bed without a sling on the arm. The first incautious movement would have broken the wound open again. With a sling on, I might as well wear a sign: "Here I Am." I stayed in the chair.

  I didn't sleep too much after the first day, but I dozed all the time. The first morning I caught a bright-looking busboy in the motel restaurant, gave him a list of sizes, and sent him out for clothes. I specified long-sleeved sport shirts. He came back with stuff that would have turned a bird of paradise pale with envy. I started to refuse it until I thought that it might be a good thing to have people looking at the clothes instead of at me.

  The papers that first morning had a ball. The headlines were glaring. TWO GUARDS SLAIN IN BOLD DAYLIGHT BANK ROBBERY. KILLERS ESCAPE WITH BANK'S $178,000. ONE BANDIT, TWO GUARDS DEAD IN DOWNTOWN BANK SHOOT 'EM UP.

  I looked at that figure of $178,000 a couple of times. It rested easily on the eye. Even allowing for the bank officers adding in their personal loan accounts, which isn't unknown, it was still a nice touch.

  The papers speculated that one of the escapees might have been wounded. The descriptions were varied. One eyewitness insisted there'd been five bank robbers. The consensus, though, settled for a husky Swede and a little Mexican. Like I said, I'm five-ten. I weigh one-seventy, but I've noticed before that a big man doesn't always look big himself. He just makes anyone with him look small.

  FBI IN CHARGE, the subheadings blared. The dear old FBI. I hadn't talked to them in a long time. They'd trace the kid's prints to St. Louis, and between here and there they'd tear everything up, down, and sideways. A hell of a lot of good it would do them. When he left St. Louis, the kid didn't know where he was going, and either Bunny or I had stayed with him all the time to make sure lie didn't do any talking about his newfound partners. It should make for less heat on the west coast of Florida.

  I found a short paragraph on an inside page of the paper. Area Physician Stabbed In Garage, the small-type headline said. The story continued. "The body of Santiago E. Sanfilippo, M.D., 31, of. . . ."

  I read the item three times before I put the paper aside. The police would be out rounding up all known arm-blasters and pill-poppers. It plugged the last hole in the blueprint the kid had kicked by not staying with the car.

  I wasn't afraid of Bunny's getting picked up. He had the best naturally protective coloration I'd ever seen. It was^ one of the reasons I'd picked him, along with his nerve and his confidence in me. I've been in this business a

  while. Two guys with guts and a to-hell-with-you-Jack disregard for consequences have about three chances in ten of pulling off a big, well-planned smash-and-grab. If one of them can shoot like me and the other one is Bunny, the odds are a damn sight better.

  The first week at the Tropics I had a fever nearly all the time. The arm needed treatment which I couldn't get. I swallowed aspirin by the gross. When the arm wasn't throbbing, it was itching. The second week my fever was gone, but my legs felt like spaghetti. I'd wake from a nap dripping with sweat, needing to change from the skin out.

  It was lonely in that damn motel room. When I'm on the road, I usually have a dog with me. Animals I like. People I learned a long time ago to do without.

  For the first five days the newspaper headlines listed us as having been sighted in half the towns between Guantanamo, Cuba, and Nome, A
laska. We dropped back onto the ninth page after that, and then right out of the news.

  The third week I began to take an interest in the restaurant's menu instead of just shoveling something down. The arm was going to be scarred but otherwise it seemed all right. A couple of times when it had been bad I'd debated slipping down into Nogales, Mexico, and trying for a doctor but I decided I couldn't risk it. If the authorities weren't watching anywhere else in the world; they'd watch that Mexican border.

  I drove to the main post office the middle of the third week. I had a wallet full of crap identifying Earl Drake. There were two envelopes at the general delivery window, and I signed for them. Hack in the car I slit the first one and unwrapped ten hundred-dollar bills neatly sealed in oilskin paper, The second was a duplicate. There was no message in either, T he return address said Dick Pierce, General Delivery, Hudson, Florida. Bunny had made it big.

  Five days Inter there was another envelope.

  Seven days later there wasn't.

  The mail clerk handed me a telegram addressed to Earl Drake. I got away from his window fast and opened it. It said IN TROUBLE STAY PUT DO NOTHING WILL CALL YOU. DICK.

  I stared blankly at the recruiting posters on the walls. Bunny was in trouble, all right, but not the kind I was supposed to think. The telegram was a clinker. When we'd Inst teamed up, I'd arranged with Bunny that a telegram from either of us was to be signed "Abie."

  I tut that was just the least thing wrong with the telegram. If he lived to be a hundred-and-four, Bunny would never call me about anything. The knife slash that gave him the livid throat scar had also reached his vocal cords. Bunny was a mute.

  Bunny hadn't sent the telegram.

  Only someone who had intercepted a thousand-dollar envelope meant for Earl Drake could have sent the telegram. I looked at it again. It had originated in Hudson, Florida.

  I drove back to The Tropics and found Hudson in an atlas. It was a crossroads town south of Perry on U.S. 19, en route to Tampa.

  I checked out of the motel.

  The soreness was gone from the shoulder. It was still stiff, but it would have to do. Three-fifty, four hundred miles a day without killing myself, I figured. Five days.

  Knowing Bunny, I was sure there was only one way he could have been dealt out of the game.

  I had business in Hudson, Florida.

  II

  The only time I was ever in the pen, the boss headshrinker gave me up as a bad job.

  "You're amoral," the prison psychiatrist told me. "You have no respect for authority. Your values lire not civilized values."

  That was after he'd Hipped his psychiatric lid at his inability to pierce my defense mechanism, as he called it. I had him taped from the first sixty seconds. He didn't care what I was; he just wanted to know how I got that way. It was none of his damn business, so I gave him a hard way to go.

  Oh, I could have told him things. About the kitten, for Instance. I was maybe eleven or twelve. Fifth or sixth guide. I saw this kitten in the window of a pet shop. A blue Persian, although right then I couldn't have told it from a spotted Manx. I ran my finger across the glass and watched her little pink nose and big bronze eyes follow it, and I knew she was for me.

  I went home to make my case. I wasn't from any underprivileged family. The kitten's price might have jolted my folks a little, but I wasn't in the habit of asking for much. I was the youngest in the family, with a bushel of sisters and mints, so getting me the kitten became a family project. I they'd been trying for some time to get me to play more with the neighborhood kids. I'd given up trying to explain that other kids gave me a pain, king-sized.

  I named the kitten Fatima. First syllable accented, ail short vowel sounds. It seemed to suit her coppery eyes and smoky coloring. I played with her by the hour. I even taught her tricks. No one teaches a kitten anything it doesn't want to learn, but Fatima humored me. We had a grand time together.

  I still got a load of guff frequently from the family about not participating more with my age group. I paid no attention. I had Fatima, and she was all the company I needed. In some moods she was a natural-born clown, but in others she had an aloof dignity. I'd never have believed that anything so tiny could be so fearless. Fatima would have tackled a lion if one had got in her way.

  Some women's organization in town gave a pet show. YWCA, Junior League, Women's Club, American Legion Auxiliary, BPOE Does—I don't remember which, but I remember women were running it. I bought a little red leash for Fatima out of my paper-route money, and I entered her in the show.

  Fatima and her red leash knocked their eyes out. She was a real ham. She sat up in the center of the outdoor ring and went through her whole bag of tricks, better than she did them for me in private. She went through the kitten and cat classes like a streak, and we were brought back for best in show. In the ring for the final judging there was Fatima, a big boxer dog. a black rabbit, a hamster, a goat, and a bowl of topical fish shaded from the sunlight.

  The boxer belonged to a kid who went to the same school I did, a fat tub of lard a grade or so ahead of me. I knew him by sight. If I ever knew his name, I've forgotten it. When I saw the boxer, I steered Fatima to the other side of the ling, She just plain didn't like dogs. The fat kid saw what I was doing, and he followed me in a smart-alecky way.

  Fatima swelled her throat ruff and hissed a Persian's surprisingly loud hiss at the boxer. The fat kid laughed. I asked 111111 to move his dog away. Deliberately he gave him more leash The boxer leaned down for a closer look, and quicker than I can say it, Fatima raked his nose. The boxer snarled, then snapped. Just once.

  Fatima lay on the grass, one tiny little dot of blood on her ruff. Her neck had been broken. The big dog nosed at the inanimate bit of blue gray fur, then looked up at me as though half-ashamed. I didn't blame the boxer. He'd done the natural thing for any dog.

  I picked up Fatima's body and turned blindly away. All I wanted was to get out of there. The fat kid—who'd first looked scared and then defiant—grabbed my arm and spun me around. "Look!" he crowed. "Lookit him! Cryin' like a baby!"

  I beat the shit out of him.

  The women got me off him finally. I was scuffed up, and so were a couple of them. There was a hell of a lot of gabble-gabble I walked out on. I took Fatima home and buried her in the backyard.

  That was Saturday. Sunday I hung around the house most of the day. Monday afternoon I waited in the schoolyard for the fat kid, and I beat the shit out of him all over again.

  That night his father came over to my house, and there was a big pow-wow. My family was surprised to learn about Fatima's having been killed. They hadn't missed her. Finally they settled everything to their satisfaction. The fat kid's father would get me another kitten, and I would apologize to the fat kid.

  I told them no. I was polite, but I told them no. I told them I didn't want anything from anyone. My father took me upstairs for a little talk. I listened and said nothing. When he saw he was getting nowhere, we went back downstairs. The pow-wow broke up with all the adults making baffled sounds at each other.

  The next afternoon I had to chase the fat kid from school clear to within a couple blocks from his house before I caught him. It didn't help him a bit when I did.

  There was a lot of telephoning that night. My father was mad. He took me upstairs again and gave me a licking. He said we were going over to the fat kid's house, and I was going to apologize. I was still crying from the licking, but I told him I wouldn't do it. He made a lot of sputtering noises before he left the bedroom. We didn't go

  anywhere.

  Later that night our minister came to the house. He talked to me for a long time—all about the unexplainable things that happen in life and the necessity for understanding. I listened to him. I was polite. I wasn't going to give them a chance to call me surly or bad-mannered. When he was tired of talking, the minister went away. I don't think even he thought he'd accomplished much.

  The fat kid wasn't in school the next day. I wa
s disappointed. When I got home, there was something for me. The fat kid's father had left a carrying case with a blue Persian kitten. I didn't say anything to my mother or my sisters. I took the case out into the backyard, and when they stopped watching me I walked crosslots to the pet shop and gave the case and kitten back. I told the pet shop man to give the fat kid's father his money back. The pet shop man looked funny, but he took the kitten, and he didn't say anything.

  My father blew his stack when he got home that night. I didn't answer him back when he started in on me. All I wanted was to be let alone, and no one would let mc alone. My father said I was damn well going to do what I was told, and if the new kitten wasn't back in the house the next night the consequences would be mine. I knew it wasn't going to be there.

  So when I got a licking the next night it was partly for having caught the fat kid again on his way home from school, and partly for not having gone back to the pet shop for the kitten.

  The next day in school I was called down to the principal's office. He talked a long time, too. The gist of it was that one more go-round with the fat kid and I'd be expelled from school. I asked him politely what the situation had to do with school. I can still see his face tightening up. muscle by muscle. The principal said sharply I was persevering in an attitude I would regret to the last day I lived, but he never did answer my question.

  The fat kid wasn't in school that day, but I got a licking anyway that night for not having brought the kitten home. I got another the next night, and another the next. They were almost ritualistic by then, without a word being said on cither side. I overheard my mother arguing with my father about his handling of me, and him shouting at her. I was sorry to hear it. I didn't want sympathy. I didn't want anything. I was stronger than they were, and I knew it. I had undivided purpose. I didn't feel like a martyr. I felt like someone doing what he had to do.

  At school I was having trouble finding the fat kid. He was leaving by different doors, at different times. It was three days later before I caught him. The next morning I was back in the principal's office. He wasn't there, but his secretary told me I was expelled. She looked kind of funny all the time she was telling me. I just kind of hung around nil day and went home at the usual time.