Don't Lie to Me (19 page)

Jerry—that would be the fourth man, Knox. So I would probably be meeting him in the kitchen.

The light in the living room had robbed me of most of my night vision, but I still wasn't ready for normal light either. And my haste was making me forget the details of my own house; I slammed my hip painfully into the corner of the dining-room table on the way by.

I reached the door to the kitchen and pushed it open, and all the lights had been turned on. I raced in, squinting, trying to see in all directions at once, and something hit me a hard blow across the bridge of my nose, just below my eyes. The force of it stopped me and almost knocked me down, and for a second or two I could neither see nor think. It was an automatic gesture to put my arms up in front of my face, so that the next blow landed on my forearms, stunning me so that I dropped the nightstick.

But I had the thong around my wrist. The nightstick fell, twisted on the end of the thong, and caught me sharply on the elbow. That, and the pain in my forearms, brought me back to myself, and I blinked around through my arms and saw a big heavy-set guy swinging a broom handle around for a third time.

I ducked under and away from that one, losing my balance in the process and going down on one knee. My flailing left arm hit the stove, and I used it to pull myself up again.

Missing me had made Jerry Knox lose his own balance, though not as badly as I had. Still, it gave me an extra few seconds to get to my feet and try a counterattack, lunging at him, the nightstick in my hand again and upraised over my head.

But he was fresher than me, and less damaged, and had had more time to set himself. Instead of swinging the broom handle again, he jabbed the end of it very hard into my stomach.

I gagged, and felt myself toppling over forward, and couldn't do a thing to stop it from happening. My hands splayed out in front of me, and I hit the kitchen floor hard, the nightstick bouncing next to my right hand.

The pain in my stomach was so severe that I wanted to do nothing but curl up around it like a bug around a pin. But I wouldn't let it happen; I immediately started struggling my feet under me, and moved my right hand for the nightstick again.

A heel came down hard on my right hand and stayed there, bearing down. A voice above me said, “You make one move, you son of a bitch, I'll knock your head right off your body.”

I didn't move.

T
HEY LET ME UP
when Fred Carver came into the room, Jerry Knox first stooping to slip the thong of the nightstick off my wrist. I got up slowly, rubbing the back of my hand where Knox had stepped on it. My eyes were watering, and the flesh of my face felt puffy around my eyes and nose. I squinted at the two of them, and waited for whatever would happen next.

I recognized Fred Carver; he hadn't changed much in the last few years. I'd helped to pick him up three or four times back in the old days, though never on anything that had stuck. A big and beefy man, with thinning brown hair and a manner of wronged belligerence as though someone had just purposely short-changed him, Fred Carver was tough only in the limited sense that he pushed people around if they were weaker than he was, or in a position where they couldn't fight back. The barroom brawler, half bully and half coward, was obvious in his face, in his every movement, in his words, in the very sound of his voice.

And Jerry Knox was more of the same; just younger, that's all, with bushy red hair. And maybe a little less belligerence, a little more self-confidence; now that he'd bested me, Knox showed no inclination to do anything further to me.

The same was not true of Fred Carver. Once I was on my feet, he came over and stood in front of me and said, “So you're tough, are you? You like to make trouble, do you?” He swung his right arm to hit me backhanded across the face. It was a clumsy slap, but I too was clumsy and couldn't entirely get away from it; he caught me partly, on the portion of my face that already ached, making my eyes burn and water even more. I staggered back against the wall, and leaned there, blinking, trying to see, keeping my arms up to protect myself.

But he didn't come after me. Knox had distracted his attention, saying, “Okay, we got him. Now what?”

“Now we teach him a lesson,” Carver said angrily.

“Yeah, but how'd he get in here, that's what I want to know.”

“Who cares? We've got him, that's all.”

“People are expecting me back,” I said, mumbling through thick lips.

“You shut up,” Carver told me.

“That's what I meant,” Knox said. “How do we know there won't be more show up?”

“Because he's alone.”

“He is now. And where the hell is Mort?”

It was all too much for Carver to think about at once. He gave me an enraged look, gave Knox one almost as angry, and turned to glare at the swing door to the hallway. “Keep an eye on him,” he said, and lunged away out the swing door.

I looked at Knox. Was there anything I could do? He'd put the broom handle down now, and had my nightstick in his right hand, the thong around his wrist. Even if I were in the best of condition, I wouldn't have been able to fight him and beat him, nor would I have been able to get out of this room without being brought down by that stick. In my current state, there was no hope at all, nothing to do but stand there and wait.

The kitchen door was still swinging, little quick arcs, when Carver yelled from up by the front door, “Goddammit, look at
this!
Jerry, bring that son of a bitch out here!”

I started moving even before Knox gestured at me with the nightstick. He didn't bother to say anything, and I preceded him through the swing door. For one brief second I tried to visualize myself slamming that door behind me into Knox, then rushing on Carver and bowling him over and getting through the front door and clear, but it wasn't going to happen and I knew it.

Carver was standing over Mort Livingston, who was lying on his back just where I'd left him. He glared at me and yelled, “Look what you did! He's bleeding!”

I didn't say anything. I stopped in the hallway, and Knox jammed me in the back with the nightstick to make me move on.

As I came opposite the living-room doorway, Willie Vigevano came boiling suddenly out of it, yelling at me and swinging both fists. There was a small line of blood down one side of his face.

I fell away from his first rush, backing against the wall by the stairs, but then I saw an opening and hit him in the face as hard as I could with my left fist. It stopped him for a second, but before I could do anything else Knox had clubbed me on the shoulder and Carver was yelling for everybody to cut it out.

I couldn't really fight now, only defend myself a little bit if directly attacked. So I stood there like a drayhorse, and Carver and Knox between them convinced the outraged Vigevano to wait awhile, not to waste his time attacking me until more pressing problems had been solved. Vigevano kept saying he wanted to get at me to kill me, but Carver and Knox—mostly Knox—kept telling him the important thing first was to take care of Livingston and get everybody out of this house, just in case I had anybody who might be coming around looking for me.

Vigevano was finally calmed down, and they went back to look at Livingston again. That is, Carver and Vigevano did; Knox stood guard over me, slapping the nightstick into his left palm and giving me alert looks as though he might enjoy testing his skill on me if I would give him the chance.

They sat Livingston up, leaning his back against the wall not far from the door, and spent some time calling him and slapping his face; but to no effect. I could see that a bit of blood had trickled from his nose, and knew he had a concussion; from the look of him, he was going to be out for quite a while.

Knox was gradually getting impatient with their efforts, and finally he said, “Willie, come over here and watch this bird. I'll get Mort awake.”

“With pleasure,” Vigevano said. He came over, grinning angrily, and Knox gave him the nightstick. Vigevano didn't bother about the thong on his wrist, but shook the nightstick close to my face and said, “Try something, smart boy. Try something.”

I didn't move.

Knox went over and crouched in front of Livingston and rolled his eyelid back. “Hey, Mort,” he said. There was no response to that, nor to his slapping Livingston on the cheek.

“We did all that,” Carver said.

Knox straightened and stood looking down at Livingston. “What he needs is some whiskey,” he said. “I got some in the car.” He opened the door, took one step outside, was shot in the forehead, and crashed backward into the hall.

I
WAS AS STUNNED
as anybody else, but I was more desperate. Before either of them had recovered, I shoved Vigevano backward into the living room, and was running for the kitchen.

But running isn't exactly the word. I had taken a great deal of punishment in the last several minutes, and much more punishment just yesterday; my body didn't want to move any more, didn't want to have to make any fast responses. I didn't run for the kitchen, I lumbered toward it, I shambled toward it.

Still, I made it through the swing door, and across the brightly lighted kitchen, and out the rear door, where I fell down the back stoop onto the lawn and went on all fours toward the nearest pile of bricks for my wall.

My wall. It was now six feet tall, running all the way around the yard, with no entrances or breaks anywhere on its three sides. In normal physical condition, I could have climbed that wall and gotten to the other side without too much difficulty, but not now. My arms trembled at every exertion, and my legs could barely support my weight; they hadn't been able to carry me down the steps from the back porch. I had spent two years building this wall, and now it had trapped me.

I lay panting behind the bricks, hoping to build up strength in however much time I had before Carver and Vigevano came after me. But that time would be counted in seconds, and what I needed now was days—days to rebuild my strength and let my battered body heal itself.

Still, I did have this little breather, this moment of comparative freedom, that shot from out of the night had done that much. And it had reduced my opposition by one more, also, so that what had originally been four men lined up against me was now down to two.

And it had done a third thing. It had told me who had killed the John Doe.

It's strange how the mind works, sometimes going on about its own business regardless of what is happening in the real world all around it. The instant the shot had been fired, I had known who had fired it and why, and from that I had known who had killed the John Doe and Dan Tynebourne and the girl—I supposed she was a Jane Doe now, at least for the moment—and why those killings had been done. The knowledge was absolutely useless to me in my present condition, but I did know it.

The shot had combined with two other things, both of them statements made to me by Dan Tynebourne. Two things I had heard him say, which told me the who and the why, not only of the killings, but of the forgeries.

Now I would be willing to talk to Hargerson. Now I would be happy to tell him the complete story of the woman seen leaving the museum, and my call to Marty Kengelberg, and the names and motives of those who had blinded Grinella. I would be pleased to tell him all that, because I would also be able to tell him who had done the killings, and the two things were not at all related, and the discovery of the murderer would obliterate public interest in the inadvertent little sideshow that Linda and I had almost been forced to put on.

But there was only one thing wrong with my current willingness to talk to Hargerson: the back door of the house had just opened and closed, and Willie Vigevano was coming looking for me with a knife.

I was crouched down behind the bricks, and I felt around the general area for something, anything, with which to defend myself. My hand hit something metal, and a wooden handle, and I grabbed for it—a trowel. Not much against a knife, particularly in my current condition, but it was something. A trowel in my right hand, and a brick in my left. I shifted position, got my feet under me, and waited there crouched, aching and burning in every part of my body, fully expecting to be killed at some point in the next few minutes; perhaps few seconds.

Vigevano had come out alone. Light-spill from the kitchen windows outlined him for me, and helped him pick his way through the minor construction site that I had made of my back yard. He came forward very cautiously, more cautiously than I would have thought necessary with me for his only opponent, and he moved with his head and upper torso thrust forward, the knife stretched out ahead of himself as though it were a mine detector. The knife moved left and right and left, back and forth like the head of a snake, and Vigevano moved slowly out across the yard.

Where was Carver? I kept peering up over the pile of bricks toward the house, expecting Carver to come out, but as time went by and he still hadn't showed, I realized he wasn't going to be coming out at all. Either he was still toward the front of the house, believing himself pinned down by the sniper from outside—whom I expected to be long gone by now—or he had run away, leaving only Vigevano still determined to take vengeance on me.

So we were one and one, after all, Vigevano and I; what he had offered me over the phone last night. Except that it was hardly an even match, given my condition and his weaponry.

He was getting closer. His face was in silhouette, but I could imagine the strained tense smile it was wearing, the squinting around his eyes as he tried to find me in the litter of the back yard. The light from the kitchen threw long black shadows amid the mounds of bricks and lumber, in one of which I was hiding, and all of which would prove difficult for him to see into.

He was nearly to me. My knees ached from crouching, my eyes were watering, my grip on both my weapons was shaky and uncertain. I waited.