The Judas Goat (7 page)

It was after nine and the beer had worn off when I turned up Bruton Street to Berkeley Square. The walk had settled the food and drink, but my wound was hurting again and I was thinking about a hot shower and clean sheets. Ahead of me up Berkeley Street was the side door of the Mayfair. I went in past the hotel theater, up two stairs into the lobby. I saw no one in the lobby with a lethal engine. 

The elevator was crowded and unthreatening. I went up two floors above mine and got off and walked down toward the far end of the corner and took the service elevator, marked EMPLOYEES ONLY, to my floor. No sense walking like a fly into the parlor. The service elevator opened into a little foyer where linen was stored. Four doors down toward my room from the service elevator the cross corridor intersected. 

Leaning near the corner and occasionally peering out around the corner down toward my door was a fat man with kinky blond hair and rosy cheeks. He was wearing a gray gabardine raincoat and he kept his right hand in the pocket. He didn’t have to be waiting to ambush me but I couldn’t think what else he’d be doing there. Where was the other one? They’d send two, or more, but not one. He should be at the other end of my corridor so they could get me in a crossfire. They would know who I was when I stopped and put the key in my door. I stood very quietly inside the linen foyer and watched. 

At the far end of the corridor the elevator doors slid back and three people got out, two young women and a fortyish man in a three-piece corduroy suit. As they came down the corridor toward me a man appeared beyond the elevator and watched them. All three passed my door and the guy down the corridor disappeared. The one closer to me turned and looked down the cross corridor as if he were waiting for his wife. Okay, so they were trying again. Industrious bastards. Hostile, too. All I did was put an ad in the paper. 

I got back in the service elevator and went up three floors. I got out, went down an identical corridor to the public elevators and looked in behind them. The stairway was there. I descended around the elevator shaft and it was in the stairway that the other shooter was hiding three floors below. I’d take him from above. He wouldn’t be looking for me to come down. He’d be waiting for me to come up. I took off my coat, rolled my sleeves back over the elbows and took off my shoes and socks. It was psychological on the sleeves, I admit, but they bothered me and made me feel encumbered, and so what if I humor a fetish. The fifty-dollar black-tasseled loafers were lovely to look at, delightful to own, but awful to fight in, and they made noise when you snuck up on assassins. Stocking feet tend to be slippery. With my shoes off, my cuffs dragged and I had to roll them up. I looked like I was going wading. Huck Finn. 

I went down the stairs in my bare feet without a sound. The stairshaft was neat and empty. To my right the workings of the elevator purred and halted, purred and halted. At the bend before my floor I stopped and listened. I heard someone sniff, and the sound of fabric scraping against the wall. He was on my side of the fire door. He listened for the elevator stop, and if it was this floor he’d step out after the doors closed and take a look. That made it easier. He was leaning against the wall. That was the fabric scrape I heard. He’d be facing the fire doors, leaning against the wall. He’d want the gun hand free. Unless he was lefthanded that meant he’d be on the left-hand wall. Most people weren’t left-handed. 

I stepped around the corner and there he was, four steps down, leaning against the left-hand wall with his back to me. I jumped the four steps and landed behind him just as he caught a reflected movement in the wired-glass fire doors. He half turned, pulling the long-barreled gun out of his waistband, and I hit him with my forearm across the right side of the face, high. He bounced back against the wall, and fell over on the floor, and was quiet. You break your hand hitting a man in the head hard enough to put him out. I picked up the gun. Part of the same shipment. Long barreled .22 target gun. Not a lot of pizzazz, but if they shot the right part of you they would do. I felt him over for another weapon, but the .22 was it. 

I ran back up the two flights, put my shoes and jacket back on, rolled down my pants legs, stuffed the pistol in my belt at the small of my back and ran back downstairs. My man was not moving. He lay on his back with his mouth open. I noticed he had those whiskers like one of the Smith Brothers that starts at the corner of the mouth and runs back to the ears. Ugly. I opened the fire door and stepped into the hall. The man in the other corridor wasn’t visible. 

I walked straight down the hall past my door. I could sense a slight movement at the corner of the corridor. I turned the corridor corner and he was standing a little uncertainly, trying to look unconcerned but half suspicious. I must look like his description, but why hadn’t I gone into my room. His hand was still in his raincoat pocket. The raincoat was open. I walked past him three steps, turned around and yanked the open raincoat down over his arms. He struggled to get his arm out of his pocket. Without letting go of his coat I took the gun out from under my arm with my right hand and pressed it into the hollow behind his ear. 

“England swings,” I said, “like a pendulum do.” 

“Take your right hand about one inch out of your pocket,” I said, “and stop.” 

He did. There was no gun in it. 

“Okay, now put both hands behind your back and clasp them.” I let go of his coat with my left hand and reached around and took the pistol out of his pocket. Target gun number four. I stuck it in my left-hand jacket pocket where it sagged very unfashionably. I patted him down quickly with my left hand. He didn’t have another piece. 

“Very good. Now put both hands back in your pockets,” He did. “What’s your name?”

“Suck my ass,” he said. 

“Okay, Suck,” I said. “We’re going down the corridor and pick up your buddy. If you have an itch, don’t scratch it. If you hiccup or sneeze or yawn or bat your eyes I am going to shoot a hole through your head.” I held the back of his collar with my left hand and kept the muzzle of my gun pressed in behind his right ear and we walked down the corridor. Past the elevator, behind the fire doors there was nobody. I hadn’t hit him hard enough and whiskers was up and away. He didn’t have a weapon and I didn’t think he’d try me without one. I had already killed two of his buddies armed. “Suck, my boy,” I said, “I think you’ve been forsaken. But I won’t turn my back on you. We’ll go to my place and rap.”

“Don’t call me Suck, you bloody bastard,” His English sounded upper class but not quite native. I took out my room key and gave it to him. The gun still at his neck. 

“Open the door, Scum Bag, and step in.” He did. No bomb went off. I went in after him and kicked the door shut. “Sit there,” I said and shoved him toward the armchair near the airshaft. He sat. I put the gun back in my shoulder holster. Put the two target pistols on the top shelf of the closet, took my wig and mustache and tie out of my pockets, took off my blue blazer and hung it up. 

“What’s your name?” I said. He stared at me without speaking. “You English?” 

He was silent. 

“Do you know that I get twenty-five hundred dollars for you alive or dead, and dead is easier?” 

He crossed one pudgy leg over the other one and locked his hands over his knees. 

I went to the bureau and took out a pair of brown leather work gloves and slipped them on, slowly, like I’d seen Jack Palance do in Shane, wiggling my fingers down into them till they were snug. “What is your name?” I said. 

He gathered some saliva in his mouth and spit on the rug in my direction. I took two steps toward him, grabbed hold of his chin with my left hand and yanked his face up at mine. He took a gravity knife out of his sock and made a pass at my throat. 

I leaned back and the point just nicked me under the chin. I caught the knife hand at the wrist as it went by with my right, stepped around behind him, put my left hand into his armpit and dislocated his elbow. The knife fell to the carpet. He made a harsh, half-stifled-yell. I kicked the knife across the room and let go of his arm. It hung at an odd angle. 

I stepped away from him and went to look at my chin in the mirror over the bureau. There was already blood all over my chin and dripping on my shirt. I took a clean handkerchief from the drawer and blotted up enough of the blood to see that the cut was minor, little more than a razor nick, maybe an inch long. I folded the handkerchief over and held it against the cut. “Sloppy frisk,” I said. “My own fault, Suck.” He sat still in the chair, his face tight and pale with pain. “When you tell me what I want to know I’ll get a doctor. What’s your name?”

“Up your bleeding ass.”

“I could do the other arm the same.” He was silent. “Or the same one again.”

“I am not going to say nothing,” he said, his voice strained and shallow as he held against the pain. “No matter what you do. No bloody red sucking Yankee thug is going to make me say anything I don’t want.” I took my Identikit sketches out and looked at them. He could have been one of them. I couldn’t be sure. Dixon would have to ID him. I put the sketches away, took out the card that Downes had given me, went over to the phone and called him. “I guess I got another one, Inspector. Fat little guy with blond hair and a Colt .22 target pistol.”

“Are you at your hotel?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll come over there, then.”

“Yes, sir, and he needs a doctor. I had to bend his arm some.”

“I’ll call the hotel and have their man sent up.” The doctor arrived about five minutes before Downes did. It was Kensy, same doctor who’d been in to treat me. Today he had on a three-piece gray worsted suit with the waist nipped in and a lot of shoulder padding and a black silk shirt with long collar rolled out over the lapels. “Well, sir,” he said as he came in, “how’s your arse?” And put his head back and laughed. “What do you wear in surgery,” I said, “a hot pink surgical mask?”

“My dear man, I don’t do surgery. I’d better have a look at that chin though.”

“Nope, just look at this guy’s arm,” I said. He knelt beside the chair and looked at the kid’s arm. 

“Dislocated,” he said. “Have to go to a hospital to have it set.” He looked at me. “You do this?” 

I nodded. 

“You’re quite a lethal chap, aren’t you?” he said. 

“My entire body is a dangerous weapon,” I said. 

“Mm, I would think so,” he said. “I’ll put a kind of splint on that, my man,” he said to the kid, “and give you something for the pain. And then we’d best bundle you off to the hospital and have an orthopedic man deal with it. I gather you have to wait on the authorities, however.” The kid didn’t speak. 

“Yeah, he has to do that,” I said. 

Kensy took an inflatable splint from his bag and very gently put it onto the kid’s damaged arm. Then he blew it up. He filled a hypodermic needle and gave him a shot. “You should feel better,” he said, “in just a minute.” Kensy was putting the needle back in the bag when Downes came in. He looked at the kid with his arm in the temporary cast that looked like a transparent balloon. 

“Another half a car, Spenser?”

“Maybe. I think so, but it’s hard to be sure.” There was a uniformed cop and a young woman in civilian clothes with Downes. “Tell me about this one,” Downes said. The young woman sat down and took out a notebook. The uniformed bobby stood by the door. 

Kensy had his bag closed and headed for the door. “That’s only a temporary cast,” he said to Downes. “Best get him prompt orthopedic attention.”

“We’ll get him to the hospital straight away,” Downes said. “Fifteen minutes, no more.”

“Good,” Kensy said. “Try to avoid hurting anyone for a day or two, would you, Spenser. I’m going on holiday tonight, and I won’t be back until Monday.”

“Have a nice time,” I said. He left. “Can you hold him for Dixon to look at?” I said. “I imagine we can. What charges are you suggesting?”

“Oh, what, possession of a stolen weapon, possession of an unlicensed weapon, assault.”

“You assaulted me, you red sucking son of a bitch,” he said. “Using profanity in front of a police officer,” I said. “We’ll find an appropriate charge,” Downes said. “Right now I’d like to hear the story.” I told him. The young lady wrote down everything we said. “And the other one ran off on you,” Downes said. “Unfortunate. You’d have had the start, perhaps, on another car.”

“I could have killed him,” I said. “I am aware of that, Spenser. It’s one reason I am not pressing you harder about all this.” He looked at the bobby. “Gates,” he said. “Take this gentleman down to the car. Be careful of his arm. I’ll be right along and we’ll take him to the hospital. Murray,” he said to the young lady, “you go along with them.” The three of them left. The kid never looked at me. I was still holding the handkerchief to my chin. “You ought to clean that up and get a bandage on it,” Downes said. “I will in a minute,” I said. “Yes, well, I have two things I wish to say, Spenser. One, I would get some help, were I you. They’ve tried twice in two days. There’s no reason to think that they will not try again. I don’t think this is a one-man job.”

“I was thinking the same thing. I’ll put in a call to the States tonight.”

“That’s the second thing I wish to say. I am ambivalent about this entire adventure. So far you have probably done the British government and the city of London a favor by taking three terrorists out of circulation. I appreciate that. But I am not comfortable about an armed counterinsurgency movement developing in my city, conducted by Americans who operate without very much concern for British law or indeed for British custom. If you must import help, I will not allow an army of hired thugs to run loose in my city shooting terrorists on sight, and, in passing, making my department look rather bad.”

“No sweat, Downes. If I get help it will be just one guy, and we’ll stay out of the papers.”

“You hope to stay out of the papers. But it will not be easy. The Evening Standard and the Evening News have been very insistent on getting the story of last night’s shooting. I’ve put them off but inevitably someone will give them your name.”