The Blue Movie Murders (16 page)

Cynthia, black-clad as always, was in the forefront of the mob, holding high one of her placards. As the last of the guards fell back in despair, she began a new chant.

“Xavier, Xavier, we've a plan! Filthy films need a ban!”

The others took it up, and suddenly—like some placard-carrying Joan of Arc—Cynthia exploded through the gates, running with her chanting warriors towards the main plant building. McCall cursed and broke into a run. Glancing back, he saw that Lieutenant Powell was out of his car and running too.

“Damn women!” one of the guards muttered, struggling to his feet.

McCall ran past him, cutting across the grass to the side door he and April had used the night before. He thought he could head off Cynthia's group before they reached the main plant and if necessary slam shut one of the steel fire doors.

He was pounding up the stairs towards the offices above when there was a shout of victory and he saw three of Cynthia's Raiders burst on to the landing. She'd split her forces and got some of them in by a different route. “It's McCall!” one of them shouted. “Grab him!”

He pushed the first one away, gently but firmly, but the second clung to his neck. In a moment Cynthia herself had joined them, panting and triumphant. “We're in!” she yelled to them. Then, seeing McCall wrestling with the two girls, she joined in.

“I don't want to hurt anybody,” he gasped, finally breaking free of a bear hug.

“Then we'll see that you don't!” Cynthia's left hand came out of her pocket and before McCall knew what was happening she'd snapped a handcuff on to his right wrist.

“What the hell!”

“Just to keep you under control,” she said, snapping the other cuff around the metal railing of the stairway and dancing out of reach. “Enjoy yourself!”

McCall cursed as they ran back through the offices, leaving him. He tugged at the handcuff, but he was firmly a prisoner, helpless until he could be released.

Far away he could make out the amplified words of a police loudspeaker warning the women to leave the plant at once or face arrest. He tried shouting, but there was no longer anyone near enough to hear him. The liberated women had moved on to the plant itself, and apparently the Mann office staff had come in for the Sunday shift. Chuck Verry was probably out in the plant, defending the machines from the rampaging females.

McCall tried to narrow his wrist and slip it through the steel cuff, but Cynthia had done too skillful a job. He felt like a child trapped in some foolish predicament, wanting to be rescued but afraid of the humiliation it would bring. He could almost picture Governor Holland's face when he heard about this one!

Suddenly there was a sound from the office, just beyond his range of vision. Someone had entered from the other door and was moving in his direction. “Give me a hand here,” he shouted. “I need help!” He didn't exactly know what anyone could do, but if it was a police officer he might have a key that would fit the cuffs.

Attracted by his shout, a man rounded the corner and stood in the doorway staring at him. McCall felt his heart skip a beat. It was Carry Tanner.

Staring hard at him, as if unable to believe this stroke of good fortune, Tanner muttered, “I'll be damned! It's McCall himself!”

“Call one of the police officers,” McCall growled. “I need to get out of here.”

“Sure! I'll do just that—so you can have me locked up again.”

He took a step forward and lunged at McCall, just missing his face with a wild swing. “You're making it hard on yourself, Tanner.”

“Shit!” The big man retreated into the office and McCall heard him rummaging through the desk drawers. Presently he returned, holding a long daggerlike letter opener in one hand. “I'm goin' to fix your hash, McCall. Right now.”

He lunged forward again and McCall kicked at his hand, knocking the weapon aside. Tanner gave an ugly chuckle and moved in again, circling slowly. McCall slid back down the steps, until the handcuff caught on a baluster and stopped him. Tanner moved towards him down the steps, jabbing wildly with the letter opener.

Then, in the doorway, McCall saw Cynthia. Her hand was to her mouth, suddenly terrified by the scene before her. “The key!” McCall shouted.

Tanner turned, mouthed an obscenity, and started after her. Cynthia moved away, backwards, and with a quick flip of her hand hurled the little key over Tanner's head towards McCall. It landed on the steps and bounced down, just out of McCall's reach. He cursed and tried to stretch his foot out to it. In the office, out of sight, he heard the crash of an overturned chair.

His foot was on the key now, pulling it slowly across the step. But he still couldn't reach it with his free hand. Somewhere outside a siren wailed, and for almost the first time in his life he prayed for police.

“McCall!” Cynthia gasped out.

He strained again to reach the key, but couldn't quite make it. Tanner reappeared in the doorway, the letter opener held in a knife-fighter's grip. He'd disposed of Cynthia and was returning to finish the job on McCall.

But then Cynthia was behind him, swinging a black tubular object with all her might. It caught Tanner on the back of the head and staggered him. She dropped the object and ran down the steps to McCall's side. “God, I'm sorry for all this,” she panted. “Where's the key?”

“Lower step. Hurry!”

Tanner was bent double, holding his head.

“I've got it. Just a minute.”

“What'd you hit him with?”

“A typewriter platen. They come out, you know.”

“You're some girl.”

The handcuff clicked open and he rubbed his wrist. Tanner, straightening, backed into the office, waiting for his attack. He'd dropped the letter opener and made no effort to retrieve it. McCall reached the top of the steps and charged into the office. The big man was waiting with a reel of typewriter ribbon wound around his hands.

McCall gave him a hard butt in the stomach that carried them both to the floor. Then, as the black-and-red ribbon snaked around his neck, McCall pressed his elbow against Tanner's throat. The ribbon kept tightening, and McCall was forced to throw himself backwards, snapping it. Tanner scrambled to his feet, searching for another weapon.

“We've both had enough,” McCall gasped, panting.

But Tanner had spotted a fire extinguisher with a red axe hanging next to it. He ran to the wall, kicking aside a chair in his way, and yanked the fire axe from its bracket. There was insanity in his eyes now, and the time for reasoning had passed. Behind him, McCall heard Cynthia scream.

Tanner started forward, axe raised above his head. But before he reached McCall there was a barked command from across the office. “Drop it or I'll shoot!” Lieutenant Powell ordered.

Tanner turned, hesitated, then hurled the axe at the detective. Powell dodged and fired two quick shots, almost without aiming.

Carry Tanner, turning to run, caught one of the bullets and went down hard, twisting with pain and blood and something like dying.

SIXTEEN

Sunday, May 16

Tanner died before the ambulance arrived, hunched in his blood on the office floor. Lieutenant Powell merely shook his head a bit sadly and started filling out a report.

The reinforced police had dealt quickly with the remainder of Cynthia's Raiders before they could do more than break a few windows. And Cynthia Rhodes herself, faced with the spectacle of a death she might have indirectly caused, was pale and subdued.

“It's all right,” McCall reassured her. “Men like Tanner are born to violence. If it wasn't here today, it would have been somewhere else tomorrow.”

“I suppose so,” she admitted. “But, God, it really shakes you up!”

McCall, who'd seen death in most of its guises, merely nodded. Already there were other things on his mind. Xavier Mann had arrived on the scene in the midst of the shooting's aftermath, half dressed and breathing fire.

“McCall, are you behind all this trouble? First these women attack my plant, and then one of my workers is killed by the police! What in hell is happening?”

McCall faced the bleary-eyed man. Wearing only trousers and a pyjama top, with a raincoat thrown over his shoulders against the Sunday morning chill, Xavier Mann seemed unaccustomedly vulnerable.

“Could we talk in private, sir?”

Mann glanced sideways at the girl in black and dismissed her with a half sneer. “Damn feminists!” he muttered. Then he followed McCall across the room to a little inner office.

“It's time we settled some things,” McCall told him.

“I agree. I can't risk having this plant closed down again.”

He was talking strong, but his eyes were wavering. The fire had gone out of him. McCall moved in. “I'm afraid your blue-movie business is finished, Mann. Monday morning's papers will carry the story of Cynthia's raid, and the reason for it.”

“I've already considered that probability.”

“This is a churchgoing community, an upright community. Rockview won't welcome you when the news is out.”

“They've known. They've all known.”

“But not officially,” McCall reminded him. “It's one thing to hear the whispered rumours, brought home by the men at night. It's quite another to read it on the front pages of every newspaper in the country. Your story of helping out poor but talented college students won't hold water any more.”

Xavier Mann sat down hard. The lines in his face were deep, and he looked suddenly old. “Is this all I get for a lifetime? Is this how it ends? McCall, I fought them. I fought the courts and the police. I fought for freedom on the screen, and today we have it! The pictures that were made in this plant can be viewed by any adult on 42nd Street in New York, or in most other cities. I'm not illegal any more. Don't you understand that?”

“Laws and morals are often two different things,” McCall pointed out. “Your films may be legal, but the vast majority of the country isn't yet prepared to accept the indiscriminate exhibition of pornographic movies. I think those women have shot you down, Mann. I think they've done something even the Governor of the state couldn't do.”

And he knew his words were the truth. He knew it by the deep lines of Xavier Mann's face, and the suddenly dimmed vision of his eyes. Perhaps he was remembering how it was in the old days, in those first glorious nights with his wife. McCall tried to conjure up a picture of Xavier Mann and that lovely young girl he'd seen on the screen, but for some reason the picture would not emerge.

“McCall!” someone called from the outer office. He went to the door and saw Lieutenant Powell holding a telephone. “The Governor's on the line.”

McCall thanked him and took the phone. “Yes, Governor.”

“Damn it, Mike, what's happening? We've just had a wire-service report that a man was killed during a feminist raid on Mann Photo.”

“That just about tells it, Governor. He was killed by the police, though, and only indirectly as a result of the women.”

“What about the rest of it?”

McCall bit the lining of his mouth. “I may be close to winding it up, Governor. Give me one more day.”

“I'm anxious to get it over with, off the front pages.”

“Let me get back to you in the morning.”

“Fine, Mike. But try to keep the press off this as much as you can.”

McCall hung up and turned to see Lieutenant Powell watching him.

“Trouble with the boss?”

“He's impatient for results.”

“Aren't we all?” Powell glanced towards the inner office where Xavier Mann still sat, alone. He dropped his voice and said, “Let's go somewhere and talk, McCall.”

Following the detective down the steps and outside, McCall had the conviction that what he'd told Governor Holland was the truth. The end of the case was near. He could feel it in his bones. “It's clouding up,” he said, viewing the sky.

Powell grunted. “Spring rain. Makes the flowers grow.”

There were a half-dozen patrol cars lining the street outside, their flashers turning slowly in a show of bizarre scarlet light. “You must have the whole force here, Lieutenant.”

“Just about.” He walked a few more paces and then said, “Look, McCall, I don't want trouble. That business yesterday morning at Mann's house—what say we just forget it? You made your point, calling out the state cops. I hope it won't go further than that.”

McCall was unprepared for a local police officer seeking a truce. His experience in Banbury—and earlier in Tisquanto—had led him to expect almost anything but this. “I don't see why it has to go any further, Lieutenant. We were both a bit hot-tempered yesterday.”

“Fine, fine.” But Powell still seemed troubled. “And you'll fix it with the girl, too?”

“The girl? You mean Cynthia Rhodes?”

“The other one. April Evans.”

“What's there to fix with her?”

“You know. Chuck Verry was telling me about her. She flashed her credentials and he just withered away. Took her on a conducted tour of the whole damn plant.”

“I know about that,” McCall said, tight-lipped. “Just what credentials did she show him?”

“She's an investigator for a Senate committee looking into interstate commerce in blue movies. Damn, McCall, I don't want to be called up before a Senate committee!”

“Don't worry. I'll see what I can do.”

He left Powell standing by the gate and walked quickly to his car.

April was in her room, packing her single large suitcase. She seemed surprised to see him but opened the door wide at once. “I thought you were going to be out at Mann's plant this morning,” she said.

“I've
been
out. You haven't had the radio on.”

“What's to hear Sunday mornings, except church services? The world could end on a Sunday morning and nobody'd know it till the news departments came back to work on Monday.”