Buried Caesars (16 page)

Wylie reached for my neck. I tried to scramble backwards, but he grabbed my shirt. There wasn’t much time. Conrad and Pintacki had to hear the shotgun blast. They’d be here in a few seconds. I punched at Wylie’s face with my left hand and connected with his neck, which was even better. He let go of my throat and gasped for air. I scrambled to my feet as Hammett hit the floor. He picked up the shotgun and kneeled next to the gasping Wylie. Wylie, still choking, tried to stop Hammett from going through his pockets, but Hammett wasn’t having any. He pushed Wylie’s hands away, reached into Wylie’s overalls and came out with two shotgun shells just as Conrad and Pintacki came to the stairs at the carpeted landing farther below us.

“Far as you go,” Hammett ordered, aiming the empty gun at the two men, who froze halfway up.

“Bluffing,” said Pintacki, “like Mary Pickford in Griffith’s
The Londale Operator
. I was in one Pickford film,
Sparrows
.”

“I don’t think anyone really gives a shit, Pintacki,” I said, getting up.

“Not bluffing,” Hammett said, holding up one of the shotgun pellet loads he had taken from Wylie.

Wylie tried to catch his breath and actually got something like a word out.

“Don’t care,” said Pintacki. “Worth a chance to me. Put the gun down or Conrad’s going to take out his pistol and shoot you right between the eyes.”

“Then I think I’ll start by making a lot of holes in Conrad,” said Hammett as I moved to his side.

Conrad hesitated, hand on the pistol in his holster. Wylie was on his knees, rubbing his neck.

“Shoot him, Conrad,” Pintacki ordered. “Shoot them both. We’ve got things to do, a world to save and no time for bullshit and bragging.”

Still Conrad hesitated. We wanted to get down the stairs and Hammett had put one foot in that direction, the shotgun leveled at Conrad’s stomach.

“Shit,” muttered Pintacki, reaching over to take the pistol from Conrad’s hand.

Hammett and I looked at each other and knew what to do. We turned and jumped for the stairway as Pintacki fired. Wylie made a grab for my leg. I kicked his arms away.

“My hand used to be as steady as a desert rat’s dick,” wailed Pintacki, clomping up the stairs toward the landing behind us. I led the way, got to the next landing and pushed open the door of my old cell. Hammett, empty shotgun in hand, was right behind me. Pintacki was at the bottom of the flight of narrow stairs. He fired again. This one went between us and tore into the ceiling just over our heads. I slammed the heavy door shut and looked for something to block it with. I went for the nearby dresser while Hammett calmly but quickly broke open the shotgun, dumped the empty shells and inserted the two loaded ones he’d gotten out of Wylie’s pocket.

We could hear Pintacki coming up the steps.

“Stop,” shouted Hammett. “I’ve got it loaded now.”

“You’ll just have to prove that to me,” panted Pintacki. “Or we’re coming in, and we are damned disgruntled.”

Hammett aimed at the door and fired. The pellets thudded into the thick wood.

There was a beat and Pintacki’s voice outside came back.

“Wylie tells me you got two loads of shot. That’s one. You’ve only got one left. I’d call this a stalemate.”

“We’re getting out,” I said.

“Don’t see how,” called Pintacki. “Come out the door and whoever’s here will greet you with gunfire. If you’re lucky enough to get the draw on him, you’ll have to face the rest of us and we’ll know for sure that you’ve got nothing to back yourselves up with. We have both a stalemate and a fiasco, gentlemen. I’m man enough to admit it. This hasn’t gone well at all. The man who can admit his mistakes and rise above them is the man who will prevail. But I’ll learn from this and go on.”

“Pintacki,” I said, as Hammett sat on the bed. “You are out of your damn mind.”

“Maybe so, maybe no, but I’ve got the MacArthur papers and you two corked like June bugs in a wine bottle,” he said. “We’ll just wait it out. I’ve got till half past forever, if need be. When you get hungry or thirsty, you just call out and we’ll make some kind of deal, if I’m in a good mood.”

With that he went silent, or seemed to. I went to the door and put my ear against it. I could hear Pintacki’s voice whispering but I couldn’t make out the words. I pushed the dresser in front of the door and turned to Hammett, who had put down the shotgun and was using his mouth and uninjured hand to fashion a bandage from a piece of bed sheet he had tom from the bed. I gave him a hand.

The cat jumped out from under the bed where he had apparently been hiding and feaped onto the window ledge. His tail wasn’t bleeding but it looked just a bit shorter.

“Well,” I said, sitting next to Hammett. “What now?”

“You’re the boss,” he said with a dry smile.

“Okay,” I answered. “We get out of this room, find the telephone, call for help, grab the MacArthur papers and get the hell out of here. How do you like it?”

“Fine,” said Hammett. “But how?”

“You asked me
what
we’re going to do, not
how
. I don’t know how.”

Outside the door someone padded down the stairs. I wandered over to the window to look out at the desert through the bars. The cat looked up at me and meowed. I didn’t feel like playing.

A
bout an hour after we pushed the dresser in front of the door, a rifle shot cracked out in the desert, followed by the ping of a bullet against one of the iron bars on the window. A second shot hit the painting of Tom Mix on the far wall, punctuating the portrait right between the eyes. The cat was already gone. He’d rubbed against my leg, looked into my eyes, meowed in anger and, finally, realizing he wasn’t getting any water or food out of us, he jumped on the window ledge, squeezed between the bars and leaped into space. Hammett, sitting on the bed, watched while I ran to the window just in time to see the cat roll over in the sand, shake himself off, and head in the general direction of nowhere.

After the cat was gone, Hammett and I had planned our strategy and escape. It took us ten minutes. His plan was to quietly move the dresser, and then to throw open the door and get the first shot off at whoever was waiting. If we got him, we could take his gun. If we missed, we were dead anyway. I didn’t like it. There might be two of them on the stairs. They might be hiding or even up the stairs above us. I didn’t have a better plan. I was leaning against the wall, trying to figure out a variation on his suicide run, when the rifle shot came.

Hammett went flat and rolled off the bed. I dropped to the floor. We looked at each other. Both of us were in shirt-sleeves and sweating. The desert heat baked the stone walls. There was a big fan in the room but Pintacki had cut off our electricity.

“Well,” said Hammett, grinning at me. “We know one of them is out there. Can’t be more than two on the stairs.”

I didn’t answer. I crawled to the window, got up with my back to the wall and peeked out. About forty yards away, well out of shotgun range, Conrad sat in a wooden chair under a bench umbrella. A rifle rested in his lap and what looked like a two-gallon jug rested in the sand next to him, in the shade of the umbrella. I moved over to take a better look. Conrad spotted me and raised the rifle. I was well back against the wall when the second shot came. This one hit the wall outside. A third shot tore into the far wall, splitting a wood panel.

“Pintacki’s going to have a hell of a repair bill,” said Hammett, getting up.

“Let’s do it,” I said.

“Let’s hold out a few hours,” Hammett countered. “They’re tense and ready now. They’ll ease up, get tired, lazy.”

“Maybe,” I said, pulling my wet shirt away from my underarms. “And maybe they have a good idea of how long we can hold out without food and water.”

“Maybe,” he agreed. “Knew a fellow once when I was working for Pinkerton in San Francisco. Name was Dusty Knight. Little guy. Got into the closet of an apartment where the Knock Phillips gang was planning a heist. Dusty got the goods on Phillips but he was trapped in the closet. Couldn’t get out till the gang left, and the gang decided to stay right there and keep an eye on each other till they went on a bank job in two days. Closet was hot, dark, not much air. They could have opened it any time, seen him there and dusted Dusty. Dusty just sat there on the floor for three days and nights. Don’t ask me what he did about a toilet. Nothing in there but half a pack of Blackjack gum. Dusty finally went a bit nuts on the third day. It wasn’t hunger or thirst, mind you. He said that had passed by the second day. It was anger. He sat there blaming everything wrong in his life on Knock Phillips and his gang, even got the idea that they knew he was in the closet and were quietly giggling, pointing at the closet, doing crude imitations of him—Dusty had a slight lisp and a drooping left eyelid. It was too quiet in the room beyond the closet. Dusty got up, quietly moved his legs for about ten minutes to be sure they’d hold him, and went through the door, gun in hand.”

Hammett laughed, a dry laugh that turned into a cough.

“What’s so funny?”

“Doctors back in the hospital said desert air would be good for my TB.”

“What happened to Dusty?”

“Funny thing,” said Hammett. “Turns out he was right. Knock did know he was in the closet. Place was empty when Dusty came out. Just a little note telling Dusty to help himself to a beer and a hunk of cheese. Knock and his gang had hit the bank and were on their way to Indiana where they got caught knocking over a five-and-dime.”

“There’s a point to all this?” I asked.

“At least two,” said Hammett. “One, don’t be too quick to think you’re crazy. Being crazy might be just what you need to save your life. Two, don’t wait too long to make your move or there might not be anyone there to move against and you wind up looking like a fool. And right now I’m beginning to feel a little impatient and very crazy.”

Hammett got to his knees and checked the shotgun. The morning had already cost him a pound or so he couldn’t afford. His sleeves were rolled all the way back, revealing tight, thin arms. I knew he was going for the door.

Before he could move, another shot came from outside, but it sounded different and nothing pinged into the room or hit the outer wall. Someone shouted beyond the door. We could hear feet on the stairs. Hammett got up and angled his way to the window. More shots outside.

I got up and joined him. Conrad had turned and was firing now at a jeep heading toward him from the general direction the cat and I had come from the night before. Someone in the jeep was shooting back at him. Below us, out of our line of vision, a door opened and someone joined Conrad in firing at the advancing jeep.

Hammett and I looked at each other.

“One in the hall,” I said.

He nodded and I moved as quickly and quietly as I could to the door and the dresser. Hammett put the shotgun down next to the door and helped me lift and move the dresser. Shots and shouts filled the air outside, covering some of the noise we were making.

“Now,” he said, picking up the shotgun.

“Now,” I agreed, reaching over to grab the door handle.

I opened it and Hammett stepped out. No one was there. He pointed the gun upward. Nothing.

There was nothing to say. We moved down the stairs slowly, hit the landing. More shots outside. We could hear the jeep’s motor grinding as it bounced over the sand. As we went down the second flight of stairs to the front hall we heard a second car start up.

Hammett raised the shotgun when I opened the door. The DeSoto was kicking dust behind it as it rocked down the road. The jeep spun around about twenty yards away. Major Oren Castle was standing in the passenger seat, aiming his rifle at the fleeing DeSoto. He fired. A ping as a bullet hit the fender. Then I recognized the driver. It was J.V., blue-uniformed, her hair falling over her eyes.

“Are you all right?” Castle called, taking a final shot at the distant car.

“Best two days I’ve had since I tracked down a stolen Ferris wheel,” said Hammett, shotgun at his side.

“Toby,” J.V. called, turning off the engine and getting out of the jeep. She hurried toward me, stopped, embarrassed. “You’re all right?”

“I’m fine,” I said, reaching out to touch her cheek. “Desert air agrees with me. Great for the sinuses.”

Castle’s drawn face was pointed toward the dot of the DeSoto, and I could tell that he was considering a chase. Instead, he put down his rifle and turned to us.

“Orders are to find you, get you back,” said Castle, getting out of the jeep.

Hammett was heading toward the house. I put my arm around J.V. and followed him. Castle removed the jeep’s key and came after us, alert in case Pintacki and his men returned.

We headed for the kitchen, found food and bottles of cold water in the refrigerator. Castle went in search of the telephone while we ate, drank and got an explanation of the rescue from J.V.

Major Castle had arrived early that morning and had gone directly to police headquarters—where Chief Spainy said he had no idea where Hammett and I were and he wasn’t exactly sure of how to get to Pintacki’s place. When Castle had left, J.V. had stopped him and volunteered to drive him to Pintacki’s on condition that her brother not get in any trouble. Castle wasn’t a cop. He had orders and Spainy wasn’t part of them. He’d agreed and they had set out on the rescue.