A Deadly Shade of Gold (39 page)

"N-Now what?"

I took her out and we found his photo files. It was an extensive and complex system, with thousands of negatives cross indexed to proof sheets and print files. There was another complete filing system for color, and a third for movies both black and white. It wasn't a collection you could burn in a wastebasket. Connie was fascinated by the files of finished prints.

She kept dipping into them, looking for familiar faces, gasping with a mixture of horror and delight when she found them.

I set her to work emptying all the files, dumping everything into a pile in the middle of that small room which adjoined the photo lab. I went back out into the museum part. The glass covering
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the gold statue niches was set permanently in place. I could see no clue that the niches were hooked up to any alarm system. It took three solid blows with the pipe to open up each niche, one to shatter the glass, two more to hammer shards out of the way so I could pull the heavy images out.

I remembered the two big cushions on the couch and went back to the little studio. I ripped the covers off, and had two sizeable sacks. I divided the statues evenly between the two sacks. I took the whole thirty-four. The Menterez collection had grown. The sacks weighed close to a hundred pounds each, though the contents were not bulky. They were all jumbled in there, like jacks in a child's game. I bound them with twine. Little Santy Claus packs for good children. I lifted them carefully, one in each hand. The stitches held. I put them back down again.

I went back to the file office. Connie had finished her work. It was spilled wall to wall in the middle of the room, about three feet high at the peak. She was pawing through it, still looking at things.

"You have no idea!" she said. "My God, some of these people are so proper! How in the world did he ever...."

"Listen to me. I've got Tomberlin's keys here. Take them. I think this one unlocks the museum door. I've got things to carry. Now get the sequence. We take Tomberlin and the little guy out into the museum. I unwrap Tomberlin. I come back and get this stuff burning. We'll have to wait a few minutes to be certain it is going real good. Then we unlock the door and go out, yelling fire. Because there is going to be a nice fire, there is going to be considerable confusion. You head for the car as fast as you can. I'll be right behind you. We go to your place and split up. My car is there. You are going to pack quickly and get out quickly and take a little vacation."

I saw fifty questions in her eyes, and then she straightened her shoulders and said, "Yes dear."

It nearly worked. It came within inches and seconds of working. She was trotting ahead of me, the ends of the big stole flying out behind her, a rather hippy and bovine trot but she was making good time. We were almost at the car when the voice of authority called "Halt!" I risked a glance. It was George Wolcott, of the little leaden eyes and the large damp mouth.

"Keep going!" I ordered Connie.

"Halt in the name of the law!" he yelled with stentorian dignity and precision, fired once in the air as the book says, and fired the second one into my back, without a suitable pause. I was fire-hot-wet in back, and fire-hot-wet in front, without pain but suddenly weakened. I wavered and stumbled and got the gold into the car with a vast effort, ordering her to take the wheel and get us out of there. I clawed my way in.

She had it in motion the instant the engine caught, and she slewed it between and among the few cars left, then straightened and headed for the gate. The man there jumped out and then back, like a matador changing his mind about a bull. We went over a hump, screeched down the long curve of drive and onto Stone Canyon Drive, accelerating all the time. She slammed into curves, downshifting, shifting back, keeping the rpm well up toward the red, showing off, laughing aloud.

"Okay," I said. "Ease off. You're great."

She slowed it down. "My God, it's too much!" she said. "What a change in a dull evening! My God, that couch for a frolic, and those cameras clucking like a circle of hens, and those dirty pictures curling and steaming in that lovely fire. And the great Tomberlin with his mouth full of wig. And a lovely lovely madman smashing glass and stealing gold. And shots in the night. For God's sweet sake, I haven't felt so alive in a year. Darling, wasn't that that dull fellow, actually shooting?"

"That was that dull fellow."

"But why?"

"It didn't seem a very good time to ask. I'm glad it was a fun evening for you. There's a pretty little girl back there with the top of her pretty head blown off. And Claude Boody is dead. He's always good for laughs."

The edge of delight was gone from her voice. "So there is going to be a big and classic stink about all this?"

"Yes."

"But then I don't think it would be so very smart for me to go away, do you? I don't know very much. The little I do know, I can lie about. I think you had a little gun in my back. You forced me to do things. I don't know who you are or where you went."

"That's fine, if it's police questions. But Tomberlin will have some questions. He won't ask them himself. He might send some people who wouldn't be polite."

She thought that over as we waited for a light. "But if I am just... absent, there'll be a stink about that, officially. I think the best thing is to... report this myself. As an injured party. I can make a statement, whatever they want, and tell them I am going away, and be very careful and go quickly"

"That probably makes more sense."

"How will I ever find you again?"

"Maybe you won't."

"But isn't that a horrible waste? Don't you feel that way about it?"

"I can't guarantee the same kind of evening every time, Connie."

"Are you sleepy? You sound sleepy. It's a reaction, I guess."

"I parked around in that back street, the same as before."

She spotted the little English Ford and pulled up behind it. I was assembling myself to get out.

No pain yet. Just numb-hot on the right side, from armpit to hip. I had the feeling I was carrying myself in a frail basket. As with my care with the stitching on the pillow covers, I felt I had to stand up very slowly and carefully. I opened the car door. She put her hand on my knee. "Will you be all right now?" she asked. "You have everything all planned?"

"Nearly everything."

I got out, feeling as if I moved in separate parts and pieces. I felt as if the left side would work better than the right. I got one sack in my left hand and took the strain of it as I swung it out.

Nothing seemed to tear, in the sack or in me. The sack weighed a mere thousand pounds. I marched slowly to the rear of the little car, put the sack down, found the keys, opened the trunk.

I was cleverly constructed of corn flakes and library paste.

Her car lights were bright on the trunk of the little car. I got the sack in and floated back to her car and got the other sack. I had dry teeth and a fixed grin. I put the second sack in and when I closed the back lid I folded against it for a moment, then pushed myself back up to my dangerous height. Her car lights went off and suddenly she was with me, a strong arm around me.

"You're hit!" she said.

"There's probably some blood in your car. Wipe it off. Go home. Make your statement. Get the hell out of this, Connie."

"I'll get you to a hospital."

"Thanks a lot. That's a great idea."

"What else?"

"Anything else. Because they'll nail me with some of the trouble back there. And make it stick.

And I'd rather be dead than caged. So would you, woman."

I expected the moral issue then and there. Did you kill anybody? But she was the kind who set their own standards.

"Do you have a place to go?" she asked. "A safe place?"

"Yes."

She helped me to the passenger side of the little car, and helped me lower myself in. She wrested the car keys out of my hand. I made protest.

"Shut up, darling. I won't be long. Try to hold on. In case you can't, tell me the address now."

After hesitation, I told her. She hurried off. She didn't start her car for a few moments, and I suspected she was swabbing my valuable blood off her leather upholstery. She swung out and went up the street and turned into the underground garage. I undid my jacket, pulled my shirt out of my pants and looked at the damage in front, by the flame of my lighter. It was on the right side, in the softness of my waist. Exit holes are always the worst, unless it is a jacketed slug. This seemed about half dollar size, so the slug hadn't hit anything solid enough to make the slug mushroom very much. My posture kept the lips closed, and it was not bleeding badly.

I tucked the soaked shirt tail back in and hugged myself. I wished I knew more anatomy. I wondered what irreplaceable goodies were within that line of fire. From the absence of pain I
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knew I was still in shock. There was just a feel of wetness and looseness and sliding, and a feel of heat. But there was another symptom I did not like. There was a metallic humming in my ears, and the world seemed to bloat and dwindle in a regular cycle. I hugged and waited, wondering if on the next cycle the world would dwindle and keep dwindling and be gone. If she was a very smart woman, if she came back and found me too far gone, she would do well to take me to the address I gave her, and walk away from it.

That son of a bitch had been too eager. The look of people hurrying away with a burden had gotten him terribly excited. The business shot had come about a second and a half after the warning shot. He sounded official. Maybe he was after a citation.

I hung on. I felt suspended in a big membrane, like a hammock, and if anything jounced, it would split and I would fall through.

Suddenly she opened the car door and bounced in. The bounce stirred the first tiny little teeth of pain.

"How are you?" she asked. She threw a small bag into the back seat. She had changed her clothes. She was breathing hard.

"I'm just nifty peachy dandy, Mrs. Melgar."

She got the little car into motion very swiftly, giving the little teeth a better chance to gnaw. She said, "Just as I was leaving, the phone rang. Men down at the desk. Police. I told the night man to send them right up. I went down the stairs."

"Fun and games. The romantic vision. Have fun, Connie."

"My friend, once you decide you want the animal to charge, and once he begins the charge, you cannot change your mind. You stand there and you wait until he is close enough so you can be absolutely sure of him."

"Grace under pressure. Kindly spare me the Hemingway bits."

"Are you always so surly when you're wounded?"

"I hate to see people being stupid for no reason. Get out of this while you have the chance."

"Darling. I will take every chance to feel alive, believe me."

The little man inside me decided that teeth weren't enough. He threw them aside and got a great big brace and bit, dipped it in acid, coated it with ground glass and went to work, timing each revolution to the beat of my heart. She parked in front of 28. I leaned against the side of the bungalow while she unlocked the door. She took me in. My legs were too light. They wanted to float. It was hard to force them down to the floor to take steps.

She managed the lights and the heavy gaudy draperies. She had changed to a dark pleated skirt and a dark sweater. I kept my jaws clamped on the sounds I wanted to make, and settled for the occasional snort and whuff. We got the ruined jacket and shirt off. I sat on a low stool in the bathroom, forearms braced on my knees, head sagging.

She said, "It's off to the right, in back just under the last rib. You've got to have a doctor."

"I've lasted pretty good so far."

"You look ghastly," she said. "I think we can stop the bleeding, though."

She went scouting around and I heard her tearing something into strips. She found a sanitary napkin and fashioned two pads and bound them in place by winding the strips around my middle and knotting them. Now I felt as if I had a heavy bar of lead through me, from back to front, red hot. She found the bourbon and poured me a heavy shot. I asked her to leave the bathroom. I urinated, but it was not bloody. I could take a deep breath without any inner rattling or gargling. But something essential had to be messed up.

As I headed for the bed, I went down. Very slowly, protecting myself, bracing myself, rolling onto my good side. She helped me up and onto the bed. I stretched out on my back, but it felt better to keep my knees hiked up.

She looked down at me and said, "I'm going to use the phone."

"What are you thinking of?"

"Pablo Dominguez. He might have an idea. At three in the morning, he might have an idea, you know. But is that all right with you?"

"That's very much all right."

"Is it hurting a lot?"

"It didn't help it very much, falling down. This is a borrowed place."

"It looks it."

"And a borrowed car. I was planning on getting out of here without leaving a trace, without leaving people around with a lot of questions. Tell Paul if he can manage it, if he can manage anything, getting out of here should be part of it."

"I don't think you should be moved any more."

"Tell him I have some interesting things to tell him."

I heard her on the phone, close beside me, but I couldn't keep track of what she was saying. Her voice turned into three simultaneous voices in echo chambers, overlapping into a resonant gibberish. I raised my hand to look at it. It came into sight after a long time, hung there, and then fell back into darkness.

I was jolted awake. Somebody was saying in a husky whisper, "Careful. Easy now!" They were trying to get my legs up over a rear bumper. It was a panel delivery truck. I had clothes on.

There was a faint grey of dawn over Buena Villas. My gear was in the truck. There was a mattress in there.

I helped them. I crawled toward the mattress. I had been sawed in half and glued back together,
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