Man On A Leash Part 12

They heard him coming.

It had to be. The car was coming up from the south. As it approached at moderate speed, he was conscious that he was holding his breath. It was going past now on the other side of the hummock. Still going. Maybe they'd called it off- Then it came, two short blasts of the horn. He exhaled softly as he hit the ignition switch and started up, automatically checking the odometer again as he'd already done a half dozen times before. It would read 87.7 at the stopping point.

The ground ahead was uneven and rock-strewn, and he eased forward at a crawl, feeling the tightness in his throat at every lurch and sway. It wasn't the dynamite as such or even the detonating caps he was thinking of. They'd be cus.h.i.+oned. It was that relay. How strong was the current that was keeping it pulled over against the tension of its spring? Well, it would be cus.h.i.+oned, too, he thought.

They came around the end of the hummock and onto the road. It wasn't even graded, just a track running north across the level floor of the desert. The old pickup truck was ahead, a little less than a quarter mile and going very slowly, waiting for him. As he closed the distance, it began to pick up a little. Now? he thought. No, wait'll you pa.s.s and be absolutely sure it's Carroll. And it'd be a lot more effective if he could get Paulette to give him a cue to lead into it. Coming on cold with it could have a very phony ring, and Kessler, whatever else he was, was no fool.

The pickup was pulling off now. It stopped a scant twenty feet from the road. Romstead slowed. The driver was hatless, and he'd taken off his sungla.s.ses as he leaned out the window to wave, a man with prematurely gray hair and a lean, alert face stamped with a questing intelligence. During their college years Brooks had wanted to be an actor; his only drawback was an inability, or unwillingness, to learn lines, when it was so much more fun to make them up himself. Give him one cue, and he'd ad-lib the whole play. Romstead sighed.

He slowed a little as the pickup fell in behind them. They had only four miles now to the transfer point. The road ran straight ahead across absolutely flat terrain unbroken by any irregularity except for another low hummock or stony ridge far ahead. Kessler had chosen his spot well. With his telescope he could see for miles in any direction across a landscape where nothing could be concealed. They and the pickup were the only vehicles anywhere in the immensity of it. Three miles.

Okay, he thought; air time. He began to whistle "Sweet Georgia Brown," drumming the beat on the wheel. Paulette Carmody raised her head and stared at him in horrified disbelief. He grinned and winked and cupped an ear in the listening gesture.

"My G.o.d, aren't you even scared?" she asked.

"Relax," he replied. He had no idea where the bug was, but it didn't matter. He'd be heard. And of course, there'd be another in the trunk to monitor Brooks. "They're not going to blow it while the money's still in the pickup, that's for sure. And I don't think they're going to blow it afterward either."

She swallowed, and moistened her lips. He could see her wanting desperately to hope but not daring to. "What-what do you mean?"

"Intelligence slipup. Theirs is pretty good, but they didn't go quite far enough. They investigated you, and Jerome Carmody, and me and my background, but they should have done just a little checking into Brookie's background, too."

Two point six to go. Her eyes were imploring. Her lips formed "Please," but nothing came out. He went on. "That's the reason I kept nudging him on with that bat sweat about its being impossible, that the FBI would find a way to ring in one of their men. I wanted him to insist on Brooks and get him. You see, Brookie and I used to be a team in an outfit that forgot more dirty tricks last week than Kessler'll know in a lifetime-"

She nodded, and said in a small voice. "I thought so. The CIA."

"You said it; I didn't. Anyway, we operated in Central and South America because we're both bilingual in Spanish and English. We've been through kidnappings before-from both sides of the fence, whether you agree with it or not. So I don't think they're going to blow this car. I know what I'd do if they had Brookie, and our minds always seemed to operate along the same lines. I would have told you before, but it had to wait till they were committed. They can't call it off now, so they're stuck with Brookie. Right, Kessler?"

It was less than two miles now. She had lowered her head again, and her hands were clenching and unclenching. He looked back. Carroll was hanging a steady quarter mile behind. The road, if you could call it that, ran straight on with nothing to break the monotony of the desert floor except the low stony ridge coming up on their right. The seeds of doubt should be planted now, they had a few minutes to germinate, and now it would all depend on Carroll. He reached out a hand and squeezed Paulette's arm. She raised her head, tried to force a semblance of a smile, and checked the odometer again. He glanced at it. It read 86.8. Nine-tenths to go.

He looked off to the left toward the three hills that resembled truncated cones. One of those was bound to be where Kessler was. There was no real elevation anywhere off to the right, and anyway that hummock or ridge was coming up on that side not more than two hundred yards off the road- Panic hit him then for an instant, along with a surge of guilt and rage at his own stupidity. Maybe it was already too late, and he'd killed the friend behind him. He'd been so intent on the other thing he'd missed it entirely. He'd blown it. The odometer read 87.1, and the .1 was already past the center and moving up. He cut the throttle and rode the brake. It would look like a crash stop to them, so he said, "d.a.m.n! Almost overran it."

Paulette Carmody jerked her head around and was opening her mouth to speak when he got a finger to his lips and gave a violent shake of the head. He looked at the odometer again as they came to a full stop, and then at the nearest point on the ridge. Call it nine hundred yards. Maybe he'd saved it. Just maybe. The rifle would be sighted in for two hundred, and changing the elevation on the scope was guesswork without a few rounds to check it, but the man, whichever one he was, was plenty good. He'd seen some of his work.

How in h.e.l.l could he have fallen for that rock-slide story? He'd heard the car go off toward the north, hadn't he, and then a little later another car go by them headed south? Kessler couldn't keep that communications frequency jammed for very long at a time or the FBI would use their direction finders to zero in on his jamming transmitter, and anyway they had to keep Carroll from getting back to the highway for longer than any hour or two. He should have seen all that, but he'd been too wrapped up in some way to save his own neck.

He looked back through the settling dust of their pa.s.sage. The pickup was stopped a hundred yards behind them, and Carroll Brooks was getting out.

Pal, he thought, this could be the biggest role you ever played; just pick up your cues and ad-lib the h.e.l.l out of it.

12

Paulette was still looking at him imploringly. He pointed toward the ridge and crooked his index finger in a triggering motion. She shuddered and closed her eyes, and he realized she was very close to the edge. This kind of tension continued long enough could break anybody. He looked back again. Carroll had the two big suitcases out now; he picked them up and started toward them. They seemed to be heavy; well, no doubt they were. Two million dollars, in any denominations, would be a lot of tightly packed paper. Shadows were lengthening; it would be dark in less than an hour.

He was getting closer. Fifty yards now. Romstead stuck his head out the window and called, "Que tal, amigo? Hace muchos anos." "Que tal, amigo? Hace muchos anos." Carroll didn't know a word of Spanish, but his reply, if any, wouldn't be distinguishable at that distance. The other appeared to shake his head, but he said nothing. He came on. Carroll didn't know a word of Spanish, but his reply, if any, wouldn't be distinguishable at that distance. The other appeared to shake his head, but he said nothing. He came on.

He was at the back of the car now. He put the suitcases down. "Been a long time, Brookie," Romstead said out the window. He never called him Brookie. "That crummy barrio barrio back of Lake t.i.ticaca, wasn't it?" Carroll was the only one he'd ever told about it. back of Lake t.i.ticaca, wasn't it?" Carroll was the only one he'd ever told about it.

"When they sent Ramirez back to us in two boxes and a rolled poncho?" Brooks asked. "Who could ever forget it?" He was ready. He raised the lid of the trunk. No doubt he'd seen the pictures and knew what the steel box was for, but another look at it would help. And he'd be speaking right into the bug.

"What did you use?" Romstead asked. "Thermite or acid?"

"Acid," Brooks replied with no hesitation at all. "Fooling around with ignition hardware for thermite gets too complicated."

"Nitric?" Romstead, winking at him in the mirror.

"Sulphuric." Brooks set the first suitcase in very carefully, as though it contained eggs. "Two liters in each bag, side by side in scored flasks. If he blows it, he's going to have two million dollars' worth of beautiful green slime."

"With bubbles," Romstead said. "Hold the second bag a minute. There's a sniper on that ridge. I goofed and didn't get it in time. His rifle will be sighted in for two hundred yards, and I make it between eight and nine, but he's an artist. He won't open up till you've got the trunk closed, so slam it fast, hit the dirt on this side of the car, and I'll back up and give you cover to the truck."

"No." Brooks shook his head. "He'd blow it sure as h.e.l.l then. To get me. If I make it back to the highway, he's had it."

"I don't think he will," Romstead said.

Brooks was lifting in the other case. He closed the lid of the steel box as though he had all the time in the world. "Don't bet on it," he said. He slammed the trunk shut then, whirled, and started to run, bent low and zigzagging.

He apparently caught the rifleman as much by surprise as he did Romstead, for he'd covered nearly twenty yards before the first shot came. A puff of dust erupted just ahead of him but a good ten feet short of the road, followed by the crack of the gun up on the ridge. By this time Romstead had jammed the car into reverse and was trying to overhaul him. There was a second explosion of dirt in the road itself but still five feet short as Brooks veered wildly to the right. Romstead was closing now, but he saw he was going to do more harm than anything. The way Brooks was hurtling back and forth across the road in his evasive tactics he'd be more likely to run over him than help him. He had less than thirty yards to go now anyway.

There was the sound of another shot, but Romstead couldn't see where it had hit; it must have gone high. Then Brooks went down, still twelve or fifteen feet short of the truck. The sound of the shot followed. Romstead cursed and slammed the car into reverse again, but Brooks was up almost instantly. He was hobbling and holding his left leg. He lunged for the door of the pickup, and as he yanked it open, the gla.s.s in it shattered. He made it behind the wheel. The pickup sprang forward in a wide turn, bouncing over the uneven ground off the road, and then was accelerating as it drew away.

There was no telling how badly he was hurt or whether he might pa.s.s out from loss of blood before he could make it to the highway. Romstead's face was savage as he slammed the car into gear. It leaped forward. He gunned it and heard rubber shriek. He didn't know whether the rifleman would try to get him or not. If it were Top Kick he might; he'd know how to disarm the explosive charge. He could take it over here, though it was dangerously close to where the country would be swarming with police ten miles to the south. And Tex was stupid enough, on the other hand, for anything to be possible. They were doing sixty-five when they came abreast of the near end of the ridge. He became conscious then that Pauline was shouting something at him, over and over.

"Aren't you going back? For the love of G.o.d, aren't you going back?"

"No," he said. Then the wing window shattered just in front of her. A hole appeared in it, it cracked in a crazy pattern like a spider web, and fragments of gla.s.s showered into the car. She screamed, took a long, shuddering breath, and screamed again. She slumped forward. Romstead heard another bullet strike the car somewhere else as they tore ahead. They couldn't go back. The minute he started to turn around, Kessler would blow it. He'd have nothing to lose then, acid or no acid, because the money would be gone anyway, and he'd have everything to gain. They knew who he was, and even if he got out of here, the FBI would pick him up within days. But as long as he was going ahead, into their country, they'd hesitate to blow it.

At least for a few more minutes, he thought. Then they'd begin to have second thoughts about it, whether anybody would destroy two million dollars as casually as that; once this credibility gap appeared, it would widen, and he had to break his way out of the car before it did because they'd be able to hear what he was up to. Of course, there was an excellent chance that what he was going to do would blow it up anyway, but after a certain point you'd reached saturation in the possibilities for disaster, so one more didn't matter much.

He looked back. He couldn't see the pickup anymore, but there was too much dust to be sure it hadn't stopped or gone off the road. There appeared to be no other dust plume behind them yet, but again you couldn't be certain of that either through the s.h.i.+fting curtains of their own. Rougher country was just ahead; somewhere in there he should find what he was looking for.

But he was going too fast. They hit a b.u.mp, and for an instant all four wheels were off the ground; he seemed to be somewhere far off, watching with clinical detachment and arriving at a decision: if they came down without exploding, he'd better cool it a little. He eased the throttle. There was a rocky ridge on the right now with a scattering of large boulders on its slopes, and just ahead the road dived into a shallow canyon between two of them. He cut his speed to thirty, and then to twenty, as he entered it. Kessler couldn't see them now, no matter where he was. But he could still hear, he thought.

Up ahead the slopes on each side closed in and steepened, but he saw what he was looking for before that. He slammed on the brakes. Along the base of the slope to his left, just off the road, were several large boulders, some bigger than the car, shrugged off the hillside in some seismic upheaval of the geologic past. They were in a variety of shapes, but one of them had a configuration he thought would do. He put the car into reverse, shot backward a few yards, and pulled over beside it. This side was practically vertical, with a slight outcropping approximately where he wanted it. He leaned his head out the window and looked down.

They'd left at least an inch and a half of the threaded rod protruding beyond the washer, and the nut on this side. He'd have to attack it in reverse, however; going ahead would push the rod back against them if he managed to tear it at all, and it could cut them in two. He pulled ahead about ten feet, cut the wheels, and looked back to line it up. Paulette Carmody had raised her head now and was staring at him in a sort of benumbed wonder, unable even to guess what he might do next. He s.h.i.+fted into reverse and came back, hard, turning the wheel a little more to wipe the door right across the jagged and nearly vertical face of the rock.

There was a screech of rending metal as the door handle came off, tearing away a section of the skin. But his wheels were spinning now, digging in with a whining sound of their own. His angle was too steep, and he was jammed against it. He s.h.i.+fted and shot ahead four or five feet and started back again.

"Good G.o.d in heaven," Paulette Carmody said, and shut her eyes. He tried not to think of that relay himself. They came into it with a crash and another shriek of metal, and he gunned it hard to keep going. The door buckled in toward them; they hung for a second or two, and in this fleeting hiatus in the sounds of destruction marred only by the high whining of the wheels he heard Paulette praying beside him, "-hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come-" Then they were moving again, to another keening of agonized metal, and when they lost contact with the face of the boulder the rod was some four inches in front of him, and he could see the long tear in the material lining the inside of the door. He stopped and looked out the window.

The rod had ripped through the sheet metal for at least five inches in a widening tear that was now nearly the width of the washer, and one side of the washer was already in it. He caught the rod with both hands, palms up in a weight lifter's hold, braced his elbows against the back of the seat, and heaved. At first nothing happened. He relaxed, came up again, and then put his whole strength into one burst of upward pressure. There was a sound like a breaking guitar string as the washer popped through and the rod bent upward. He tore it through the composition material lining the door, slipped his ring off it, and pushed the end of it from between Paulette's shackled wrists. It wouldn't go on out through the hole in the right-hand door, of course, because the nut and washer were still on it and jammed now beyond removal by anything short of a hacksaw, but it didn't matter.

Paulette Carmody's eyes were open now, and she was looking at him in a sort of numb blending of awe and grat.i.tude and returning hope. She started to speak; he cut her off with an abrupt, almost savage, gesture for silence, shoved the door open on her side, and waved-get the h.e.l.l out, run. She looked startled, almost as if she were as much afraid of him now as of the dynamite, scrambled out of the seat, and began to run along the edge of the road. She looked startled, almost as if she were as much afraid of him now as of the dynamite, scrambled out of the seat, and began to run along the edge of the road.

He shoved at his door. It was jammed. He was about to slide over and get out on her side when it suddenly gave way and fell open as much as swung open. The screws in the upper hinge had been sheared off by the pressure. He shoved it out of the way, got out, and pulled the seat forward.

Kessler had long since figured out what he was up to, and if he were going to blow it at all, he'd do it within the next few minutes. By this time he must have serious doubts regarding that moons.h.i.+ne about the acid, and anyway he'd send it up to prevent their escape. No amount of money was going to save him if they got away to identify him. The sun was gone out of the canyon entirely now, and the light was poor on the floor behind the seats; he could just make out the detonating caps and their wires. They weren't soldered, thank G.o.d; merely twisted. He pulled the first one loose, and then the other. It was disarmed.

He sighed, and his knees felt weak for a moment in testimony to the amount of tension they'd been under for hours now, and then it was gone, and he was plowing ahead. He pulled the two detonating caps free, straightened, and threw them back up the road, indifferent as to whether they exploded or not. They didn't. He yanked at the webbing holding down the two bundles of dynamite, tore it loose, and set the explosive out on the ground at the base of the boulder. Paulette Carmody had climbed a short distance up the slope a hundred yards away and was watching him from behind another big rock. He gestured that she could come back now.

He tore off the straps holding the piece of electronics equipment in place and hauled it out. All the interconnecting wires, several still fast to dangling cl.u.s.ters of batteries like the fruit of some electronic grapevine, seemed to converge into one cable at the back of it. He caught it by the cable and swung it against the boulder, batteries and all. Parts began to detach and drop among the sticks of dynamite at his feet as Paulette came up.

He threw up the lid of the trunk, hauled out that transmitter or receiver or whatever it was in there, swung it once against the boulder, and let it fall. It landed on another stick of dynamite. Paulette winced but made no move; she seemed to be in a trance. The left-hand door was still sagging open on one hinge. He caught it, swung it down, using it as its own fulcrum, and the bottom hinge tore out. He tossed it aside.

"Can we go back now?" Paulette asked, almost timidly.

"No. Go way up the hill there and hide. Don't show yourself to anybody until you see a car with police markings."

He threw up the lid of the steel box and lifted out one of the suitcases. "Just in case this thing burns," he said as he heaved it out of sight on the other side of the boulder.

It landed with a thud, and Pauline winced. "But-the acid?"

He grabbed out the other bag and tossed it. "There is no acid. It was only a bluff, to keep him from blowing it until we could get out." He waved. "Hide. Take cover."

"Wh-what are you going to do?"

He'd already lunged into the seat and was fastening the belt. He grinned, and she seemed almost to recoil. "I want Kessler," he said. "And I've got one more dirty trick, if it works."

He hit the ignition switch. Wheels spun, caught, the car lurched back on the road, the rod still sticking out on the right, and began to gather speed. She looked after it, her lips just moving as she whispered. "Berserk ... berserk ..." She turned then and began to climb up the slope.

The canyon turned left just ahead. He made it on screeching tires. There was a clatter on his right as the rod struck something and bent back along the side of the car. The canyon ran straight ahead for nearly half a mile between steep walls with scarcely room for two cars to pa.s.s. He was doing seventy now. This was the place to do it, right here, if he still had time. Kessler would be hot on their trail, G.o.d only knew how far behind.

The road ran out of the canyon, climbing into rougher hills. There was a jeep track going up over a ridge to his left. He swung onto it, skidding, and went bounding up, rocks clattering against the underside of the car. At the top he could see most of the immense valley to the south of him and the three hills still somewhat west of south. And a plume of dust. He grinned again, the same wolfish grin that had startled Paulette Carmody. There he was.

The car was traveling eastward at high speed from the general area of the three hills, headed for the road they'd come up. The rifleman, whichever one he was, would be afoot. Kessler was going to pick him up, and they'd turn north in pursuit of their $2,000,000 and their unarmed victims.

Then he saw something else. Far to the south, miles beyond the other car, were more streamers of dust. Several cars, at least, and they seemed to be going flat out, headed north. He sighed in relief. Carroll had made it back to the highway.

Kessler had turned north now, along the road they'd come up. When the car came abreast the low ridge where the rifleman had been, he could see it slow and stop for an instant, though it was too far to see the man himself. Then it came on, doing seventy at least, still miles ahead of the cars to the south.

He looked left along the ridge and the canyon below it. It would be a quarter mile at least till he'd be above the narrowest part of it, a rock-strewn demolition course, gullied, grown up with cactus, blocked by boulders, with no road at all. A jeep could make it, or anything with high clearance and four-wheel drive, but could this thing? He grinned again as he swung the wheel over and gunned it off the jeep track. There wouldn't be much of it left, but then there wouldn't be much left anyway.

He plowed through p.r.i.c.kly pear, smashed the winds.h.i.+eld on a limb of a dead tree, got stuck in loose gravel but made another run at it and got through, and tore two fenders off as he caromed off boulders, and then a hundred yards short of his objective there was a crunch underneath from a rock too high to clear. He looked back and saw a black line of oil. He'd punctured the pan, and the motor was going to freeze up any minute. He looked down and to his left. This would do.

The narrow canyon was below him, some three hundred feet down a fifty-degree slope. Kessler was still in the flat a mile away, approaching the entrance at seventy miles an hour. Still far back, the other plumes of dust were rising in pursuit, but gaining little if at all. He turned, stopped the car on the brink, and held it with the brake while he unfastened the belt. Kessler went out of sight at the upper end; then he was skidding around the turn into the narrow, half-mile straightaway below him. He released the brake, held the wheel while the car picked up momentum, headed it straight down, and jumped.

Romstead replaced the phone and picked up his drink. Mayo stood looking moodily out the window at the East Bay lights in the gathering dusk. He went over to her.

"That was Brubaker," he said. "I asked him to call and reverse the charges. They found him this afternoon. Out at the old Van Sickle place."

"Found whom?" she asked.

"You remember. Top Kick-that is, Delevan-said the old man killed one of them-"

"And the only reason you didn't kill two more is that the police got there in time to stop you. The strain is improving."

"d.a.m.n it, Mayo-"

"In another two or three generations I see a sort of super-Romstead, capable of wiping out whole communities."

"Look, if you have to fight me, at least be fair about it and stick to the facts. I wasn't trying to kill them. I was trying to get them out of the wreck before it burned. There was gasoline all over it-"

"And the dams don't even seem to matter," she went on, as if she hadn't even heard him. "They're only the receptacles, like the gla.s.s jars in Brave New World. Brave New World. Plant the seed anywhere, in a gently raised and civilized young Andalusian girl from Havana descended from five generations of university professors, and it germinates like dragon's teeth and comes clawing its way out of the womb one hundred percent Romstead, impervious to all other genes, to any distaff-inherited tendencies toward civilization at all-" Plant the seed anywhere, in a gently raised and civilized young Andalusian girl from Havana descended from five generations of university professors, and it germinates like dragon's teeth and comes clawing its way out of the womb one hundred percent Romstead, impervious to all other genes, to any distaff-inherited tendencies toward civilization at all-"

He sighed. He'd been through these things before; the only thing to do was heave to and ride it out. Keep your a.s.s down, or as the bureaucrats put it nowadays, maintain a low profile.

"Mrs. Carmody said that while you were throwing that dynamite around like confetti and tearing the car apart with your bare hands, even she was afraid of you, and you were on her side."

The police had most of the facts now. Tex actually was from Texas, a fringe-area rodeo performer named Billy Heard who'd done federal time for narcotics smuggling along the border below El Paso. It was in prison that he met Kessler. The two of them, plus the girl named Debra and the man whose body Brubaker had found this afternoon, had planned the kidnapping of his father.

Jeri Bonner's only part in it was to find out where his money was and how much there was of it. She'd agreed to it, but reluctantly, because a fifty-dollar habit had already driven her to shoplifting and occasional prost.i.tution and now, finally, to desperation, but she didn't know they planned to kill him, too. He, for his part, didn't know she was on heroin, and they were sleeping together when he was in San Francisco. Romstead had never had much faith in Mrs. Carmody's dictum that his father wouldn't have anything to do with a girl that young. The old stud would take a hack at any girl who was willing and that pretty, provided she was of legal age. He was good to her, and she liked him, so presumably she hadn't bungled when she brought back only the first page of the three-page stock listing. She'd just hoped the others would never find out.

Then, when she learned they'd killed him, she began to go to pieces. She ran for Coleville. Kessler by this time had found out too that she'd double-crossed them in the matter of the stocks. This, plus the fact they were now afraid she'd crack up completely and spill the whole thing to the police, had got her killed. Heard had done it, and he was the rifle expert who'd killed Lew Bonner after Bonner received Debra's letter addressed to Jeri and started an investigation of his own. It was Delevan-Top Kick-who'd been following Bonner around San Francisco that day.

Delevan had joined them by now in the planned big score, the kidnapping of Mrs. Carmody and himself, which was the reason their intelligence operations had improved to such an extent. He was a private investigator, and a good one until he began to itch for the bigger money. He replaced the one his father had killed, a man on whom the police didn't have much of a line as yet except that his name was Croft.

There'd been no telephone out at the Van Sickle place, of course, and they couldn't very well take him to a motel to make that first call to the bank, so they'd simply brought him back home. In their pickup camper, at night so they wouldn't be seen entering or leaving the place. They'd put the camper in the garage, forced him to make the phone call the next day, and stayed there until late at night again to leave. It was during this time that his father had killed Croft.

He was in his own bedroom, gagged, his wrists and ankles bound with tape. They'd been a little slipshod and careless about it, at least until he taught them better, so he was able to break the inadequate bindings on his wrists. But before he could free his ankles, Croft came in to check him. Apparently his father had heard him coming and had replaced his hands behind his back. Croft, however, had leaned over him to see for sure, which was the last mistake he ever made in a life presumably full of them. He never uttered a sound, but the final death tattoo of his feet kicked over a chair that brought the others. They took him back and buried him in a remote corner of the Van Sickle ranch.

They hadn't caught the girl yet, the overs.e.xed chick in the next room, and n.o.body, so far, had copped out on what had happened to Debra. Romstead wasn't sure, nor were the police, why Debra had hidden a deck of junk in the old man's car out at the Van Sickle place, but it seemed likely that Heard, whose girl she was, was taking the stuff away from her when he caught her with it. He only smuggled the stuff; he detested the people who were stupid enough to use it.

Carroll Brooks was all right, recovering nicely in a San Diego hospital from a gunshot wound through the thigh. And the police so far had run down two hundred and fifteen thousand of the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars stashed in several safe-deposit boxes in San Francisco. They were hopeful of finding more.

"She was watching you-Mrs. Carmody, I mean-and hoping the police would get there in time herself. Standing there on the wreckage of one car with the second car balanced on top of it and teetering and ready to fall on you any second, beating what was left of the winds.h.i.+eld out with a rock to get at the two men inside and kill them-"

She was running down now, he thought fondly, beginning to sputter and go further into left field after new indictments. She knew as well as he did, from the police reports, that Kessler and Heard were unconscious in there, and pretty soon she'd have to start looking for a way out of accusing him of wanting to kill two helpless and unconscious men who might already be bleeding to death anyway. So she'd demand to know if he'd intended to kill Kessler if he'd been on his feet and armed.

And he'd lie to her, as he had so much already, and tell her that of course he hadn't. If he didn't lie, he'd lose her, and he didn't think he could face that. He needed her. She seemed to be the only human being he'd ever really needed in his life.