Run Lethal p-8, page 10
part #8 of Parker Series
‘You will have no more trouble with them after tonight,’ Baron told him. ‘No one will.’ But he was distracted even while he was saying it.
It had to be tonight. Every night since Heenan had pointed the two of them out, the ones called Grofield and Salsa, the anticipation and alarm and apprehension had been building in Baron, until now it was almost a relief to know it was over, that tonight had to be the night.
He’d been sure of it at quarter to ten, when the word was passed to him that the man called Salsa was in the process of getting rid of the two policemen who had been following him around the island every night. ‘Let him do it,’ Baron had said, the nerves tingling in his stomach. ‘Let him do it to both of them, and then watch him to see what he plans next. Stop him from doing any harm to anyone or anything else, just wait till you see what he intends to do, and then disarm him and bring him up here to me. And keep watching the other one, Grofield.’
That was at quarter to ten. By ten of ten Salsa had divested himself of his police followers, and a minute later he had disappeared. Everyone was apologies, excuses, bafflement. ‘We don’t know how he could have done it! Into a shadow, and through it, and gone!’
‘Find him!’ Baron screamed. ‘He’s on the island, find him, find him, find him!’ And took out his long black cigarette holder with fingers that trembled.
Heenan began to whine, and Baron told him to shut up, but it took Steuber’s hand to convince Heenan to be quiet. Then Heenan sat and sulked, like a stubborn child forced to sit in a corner.
At two minutes to ten Salsa was found, on the dancing field, moving in the arms of an ugly fat fifty-year-old matron to the strains of a Viennese waltz. Two staff members fidgeted at the edge of the field till the waltz was finished, then collared Salsa and brought him upstairs.
Salsa’s eyes went first to Heenan. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Now I understand. You work for everybody, Heenan.’
‘Don’t believe a word he says,’ Heenan shouted, telling Baron there was something to learn about Heenan if Baron was interested.
Baron was not interested. Other matters concerned him. ‘Where have you been? What were you doing?’
‘I have been dancing.’
‘Steuber. Quickly, quickly, we don’t have much time.’
Salsa said, ‘What time is it?’
‘Ten o’clock.’
‘Then it no longer matters,’ Salsa said, and the phone rang.
Baron picked it up, his hand shaking. ‘Yes? What is it?’
It was Rudi, downstairs, telling him Grofield had started, just as Salsa had started. ‘Watch him,’ Baron said. ‘Keep him in sight.’ He hung up and turned back to Salsa. ‘Where were you? What were you doing?’
‘I set three fire bombs,’ Salsa told him. ‘They will go off in a very few minutes.’
‘Where? Where are they?’
‘The exact locations are hard to describe. It might take half an hour to give you the precise idea.’
Baron said, ‘Steuber. Find out.’
While the two who had brought Salsa up held him, Steuber and his hands began to ask the questions. Salsa closed his eyes at once, went limp, and said no more, no matter how strenuously Steuber asked him.
Five after ten. Eight minutes after; the phone rang. It was Rudi again, and he was excited, too excited to talk. But two things came through clearly; Grofield had killed Bud and Arnold and had disappeared, and the casino was on fire.
‘Get it out,’ Baron said. ‘Find Grofield. Get the fire out, and find Grofield.’
‘But the people,’ Rudi kept saying. ‘But the people.’
It took Baron a minute to understand what Rudi meant, but then he got it. The fire wasn’t really bad, not yet, was only in a back corner of the casino, but the casino had been full of people, all of whom were panicking, milling about, trying to get out of the building all at once, making it impossible for Rudi and the other staff men to get through and do something about the fire.
Then Rudi said, ‘The cockpit! The cockpit, too! Fire,
on fire!’
Baron threw the phone across the room. ‘The third one,’ he said. He spun around and grabbed Heenan by the shirt-front and dragged him to his feet. ‘The third one!’ he shouted. ‘Parker! Where is this bastard Parker?’
‘I don’t know, I don’t know, how should I know?’
Baron threw him away as he’d thrown the phone and ran across the room to where Salsa still hung limp in the arms of the two staff men, with Steuber waiting patiently to one side.
Baron grabbed Salsa by the hair, held his head up. ‘Where’s Parker?’ he shouted. ‘Where’s your other man?’
Salsa didn’t open his eyes, but he smiled.
Baron raged around the room, furious with doubt and fear. There was an onyx desk set on his desk and he yanked it up, spilling out the pens. He rushed back to Salsa and slashed at his head with the desk set, hitting him till blood streamed down over Salsa’s face and the staff men finally dropped him and stepped back, looking whitefaced and confused.
‘Guns!’ shouted Baron. ‘Guns, guns, where are the guns?’
It was ten minutes after ten. Steuber moved stolidly across the room, pulling his keys from his pocket, on his way to unlock the guns.
5
FOR the first time in his life, there was no background music.
Grofield sat against a treetrunk in pitch darkness, examining himself as best he could with half-numb fingers. So far as he could tell, he had been shot four times, but none of them serious; he didn’t seem to be carrying any of the bullets with him. One had sliced through the fleshy inner part of his upper arm, a few inches above the elbow, leaving a strong ache like a Charley horse in its wake. Another had drawn a line across the top of his left shoulder, barely breaking the skin and leaving behind it a faint stinging feeling. The third had gone in his right side at the waist, through the spare tyre he kept meaning to exercise off, and out again, with a burning sensation where it had gone in and a dull ache where it had come out. And the fourth had gone through the fatty part of his left leg, a couple of inches below the groin, causing more bleeding than all the other three wounds combined, but with practically no pain at all.
These were the first four times in his life he’d been shot. The experience took some getting used to.
But slowly he was getting his equilibrium back. He touched himself all over, stretched his arms and legs and found that everything was working all right, and then grinned in the darkness. ‘If that’s the best they can do,’ he whispered, ‘then, what the hell.’
The background music started again as he climbed up the tree to a standing position. Sombre music, portentous. Would he get through? Would he get to the cavalry in time to save the settlers from the Indians?
His left arm was stiff and his left leg was slightly numb, but he could still navigate. He moved through the tangled growth back the way he had come, and for the first time he noticed the new flickering quality of the light ahead of himself.
The place was on fire! Salsa had done his part, the fires were started.
What the hell time was it? If Parker and Ross tried to land, and Baron’s men were in control at the boathouses
Grofield hurried the rest of the way back to where he’d left the two guys who’d shot him they’d come out worse than him, they were still lying there on their faces and went past them towards the boathouses; up ahead of him he could hear the sounds of gunshots.
No good. He didn’t have a weapon on him.
He went back to the two guys he’d killed, and found their guns, both Colt automatics. There were three rounds left in the clip of one of them, and five in the other. Carrying them both, Grofield headed towards the boathouses again.
A cabin boat was in towards shore, bobbing in the waves as though there were neither a man at the controls nor an anchor out. Three guys on shore, protected behind the walls of the boathouses, were firing at it, and occasionally there was a flash of a gunshot from the boat.
Grofield picked his spot, steadied his right hand with his left, and picked them off one two three, doing it so fast the third one didn’t even have time to turn all the way around. Then he hurried on down to the water’s edge and called, ‘Parker! Come on in!’
The boat limped in to shore, bumping against the dock beside the boathouses. Grofield came out on the dock and Parker tossed him a line and Grofield made the line fast.
Parker climbed out of the boat, tossing two light plastic suitcases ahead of him, and said, ‘What’s gone wrong?’
Grofield waved his hands, with the guns in them. ‘They know about it, don’t ask me how. I got rid of the Feds on my back, and then two of Baron’s men put the arm on me. They knew my name, they acted as though they knew everything. I shot my way out of it, but I got hit a few times.’ He was proud of the offhand way he had said that, and at the same time knew that with Parker there was no other way he could have said it. In fact, it would have been better to say nothing at all, but that cool he couldn’t be.
Parker looked away towards the casino. ‘The place is burning. Salsa’s working.’
‘What time is it?’
Parker checked his watch. ‘Twenty after.’
‘He should be down here by now with the first load.’
That was the way it was supposed to work. Salsa would fire the main buildings, then in the confusion break into the cashier’s cage in the casino, grab as much cash as he could carry, and come down to meet the rest at the boat. Then all of them but Ross would go back to finish cleaning the place out. By twenty after Salsa should already be here.
Parker said, ‘We better go look for him.’
Grofield was looking towards the boat. ‘Where’s Ross?’
‘Dead.’ Parker nodded towards the three Grofield had taken care of. ‘They opened up too early, before we docked. They got Ross right away, because he was up at the wheel.’
‘It’s a lemon, Parker, a big fat lemon.’
‘Let’s go look.’
They each picked up one of the plastic suitcases, empty now and ready to carry money. Grofield replaced his guns with two more fully loaded ones from the beach defenders, and then he and Parker walked up the path towards the main building.
Now it did look like the last days of Pompeii. The main building and the dormitory and the cockpit were all ablaze. Men and women were running around in circles, shouting and screaming; there was a crush of them down on the piers, trying to get off the island. Just beyond the piers, two yachts, turning to get away, had rammed into one another and stuck together, and now wallowed in a death-grip, both of them burning. Firelight bloodied the dark water around the island and the boats, picking out the bobbing heads of people swimming. An overturned dinghy floated like a comic afterthought, with several people in the water clinging to it.
Because it had so few windows, the casino was burning less furiously than the other two buildings. The cockpit was one yellow-red flame, and the dormitory looked unreal: a hollow black hulk with flames shooting from every window.
No one paid any attention to Grofield and Parker. A musician ran by, wild-eyed, his violin tucked up under his arm like a precious message. A guy Grofield recognized as the stickman from the roulette table rushed past in the opposite direction, still toting his rake.
Behind the main building the flames had leaped from the cockpit to the jungle itself. Crackling louder, the fire swept up the hill towards the two storage sheds, engulfing them, and then on towards the power plant.
Parker went into the casino first, and Grofield followed him. The main hallway was not yet burning, but flames were gobbling up the innards of the dining room, tables and chairs and draperies and carpeting and all; the dining-room doorway glared like the gateway to Hell. To the right, fire flickered uncertainly in the casino. With no windows, brick and plaster walls, widely spaced furniture, the flames had trouble in here making headway.
Still, the casino was deserted, and the gate in the cashier’s cage gaped open. Parker and Grofield hurried in there and Parker began to yank open drawers. ‘It’s here,’ he said.
There were a few bills scattered on the floor, and the main drawers were not entirely full, so at least one other person had done a little looting on the way out. But he’d left more than he’d taken, so it was all right. Parker and Grofield opened their suitcases on the counter and began transferring the money.
The lights flickered, and then flickered again. Parker took a flashlight from his pocket, and the lights went out for good. Parker switched the light on, and they went on filling the suitcases. Between the flashlight and the firelight they could see well enough.
When the hidden panel in the far wall opened and the bulky guy came running into the room, came catapulting in as though he’d just raced down a long steep hill, Grofield looked up and at first saw that the form looked familiar and second realized who it was. Softly, he said, ‘Parker,’ and when he felt Parker look over, he nodded towards the guy, now coming to a stop in the middle of the room, looking around crazily, a gun waving in his right fist.
Parker looked, and called, ‘Heenan!’
Heenan hadn’t seen them till then. Now he did see them, and recognized them. ‘It wasn’t me!’ he shouted, and started pulling the trigger, bullets spraying into the wall high above Grofield’s head.
Grofield rested his right elbow on the suitcase and emptied a borrowed gun into the leaping silhouette in front of the flames. Beside him, he could see Parker doing the same. Between them they must have fired ten times.
In the sudden silence after all the shooting, Parker said, ‘I say we find Salsa upstairs.’
They had all the cash from down here anyway. Grofield shut the suitcases, leaving the full one on the floor and carrying the other one. Ahead of him, Parker stooped and took the automatic from Heenan’s fist, and then the two of them went through the open panel and up the stairs to the lightless second floor.
6
BARON crouched in the darkness under his desk, in the kneehole, waiting for whatever would happen next. He knew now that this stage of his life was done, no matter what. The gambling island of Cockaigne was destroyed. Even if he should manage to rebuild, from where would the customers come, now that this debacle had occurred? Beyond that, the Russians and the Cubans, as single-minded and dull-witted as the majority of men everywhere, unable to think about anything but their own petty global concerns, would be convinced, unshakably convinced, that this holocaust was the work of American counterespionage, that his ‘cover’ (their word) had been broken, and that he was no longer of any use to them.
So Cockaigne was finished. But was Baron?
It was bad now. The men named Grofield and Parker were surely together on the island somewhere, and wouldn’t they be seeking their comrade? Salsa lay inert on the floor a little ways away, near the dead Steuber, whom Heenan had shot
That had been stupidity, stupidity compounded. Steuber had unlocked the cabinet where the handguns were kept, had swung wide the door, and suddenly Heenan was there, raging, terrified, clawing past Steuber, his hand closing on a Luger, an old gun, one from an earlier life. Steuber, rather than keep hold of the Irishman and wrest the gun away from him, had flung the stocky man away, with a grunt of impatience. The Irishman had landed heavily, and rolled, and had come up apoplectic. He was still close to Steuber, and Steuber took a step that brought him even closer, and he fired twice and Steuber fell over on his back.
That moronic Irishman. He had swivelled then, seeking out Baron, and had found him just as the lights flickered and went out. But he fired anyway, just once, as Baron leaped sideways in the sudden dark, and perhaps the sound of Baron hitting the floor had deceived him. In any case, he had done no more shooting, but had groped his way towards the stairs, Baron clearly hearing his progression across the room.
Baron himself was all turned around, and didn’t dare move to find a familiar piece of furniture and orient himself, not till the Irishman’s blundering footsteps had clattered away down the stairs. Then he had moved, and had just crawled into the side of the desk when he heard the firing begin downstairs.
He would not have heard any firing if the soundproofed door were shut, so Heenan must have left it open. Heenan himself necessarily was part of the gunplay down there, and the only ones Baron could think of who would be shooting at Heenan were Grofield and Parker, so those two were surely down there and would surely be coming up here. Baron crawled at once into the kneehole under the desk, crouched there in a ball, and waited to see what would happen.
He didn’t have long to wait. An uncertain light edged nervously along the walls, telling him someone was coming up with a flashlight. Then he heard their footfalls on the carpet in the room, and the beam of the light splayed around once, and one of them said, ‘Here’s Salsa.’
‘How is he?’
They all waited, Baron too, until the other voice said, ‘Dead. They beat his head in.’
Baron frowned. Had he done that? He’d let himself get too overwrought, too hysterical.
Above him, around him, they were prowling through the room, the flashlight stabbing this way and that. The sessions of his life had made him a man who did not easily get attached to a place, a landscape or a room or a piece of furniture, but the time spent on Cockaigne and specifically in this room had been among the most pleasant days of his life and so he had not been able to avoid developing a certain sense of proprietorship, a sense that now was violated by these strangers come to rob him of his money, his business, his safe harbour, and perhaps even his life. They prowled the room, hulking figures in the darkness behind their light’s stabbing beam, and from his crevice in the furnishings Baron watched them with eyes that hated and feared.
For a few moments the legs of one of them were thick prison bars just inches from his face; over his head the interloper was poking about the desk, riffling the papers and going through the drawers. He found the cashbox in the bottom righthand drawer, and said with muffled eagerness, ‘Parker!’ But he did not find Baron.
