Hamilton, Donald - Matt Helm 14 (15 page)

           
"What is it?" she asked
through the open window of the sedan. "I mean, whose is it? Carl's?"

           
"Maybe," I said. "I
certainly hope so. It would save us a lot of time and cleverness-assuming I can
sneak up on him up there on the ridge without getting shot. You stay here. If
somebody comes, particularly somebody with a uniform, you're sound asleep. When
they wake you, you say you got tired of driving and turned off the highway to
find a quiet place to take a nap. You don't know anything about the truck. It
was here when you got here. You thought it was just an abandoned wreck. While
you're resting, you can figure out a plausible story to explain why you rented
a car in Texas and drove it into Oklahoma. Good luck."

           
As I started to turn away, she said,
"Matt."

           
"Yes?" I said over my
shoulder.

           
"No, come back here a minute.
This is important."

           
I turned back. "Shoot. But make
it snappy, please."

           
Her face was very serious, looking
up at me from the car window. The heavy, dark eyebrows made a startling, but
somehow not unbelievable, contrast with the long shining hair.

           
"I've helped you," she
said. "Haven't I? I put on this masquerade for you, and drove the car for
you. Didn't I?"

           
"You helped," I said.

           
"Then you've got to tell me
something."

           
"What?"

           
She licked her lips. "You've
got to tell me that you're going to stop it. You're not going to let him kill
him. Otherwise . . . Otherwise I'm going to have to go to him and warn
him."

           
There were some confused pronouns in
that, but the meaning was clear enough. I studied her face for a moment longer.
"Just what is this thing you have for cops, anyway, Borden?" I asked.

           
"I don't have a thing for cops!
I just have a thing for
for
human beings!"

           
"Only sheriff-type human
beings. Not Carl-type human beings."

           
She said sharply, "That's just
the point! Your friend Carl is not a human being any longer. He's a machine, a
ruthless vengeance-machine. You've got to promise to stop him."

           
I drew a long breath. "Sure.
I'll do my best to stop him. Hell, that's what I'm here for. Keep your fingers
crossed."

           
I turned away, wishing I was leaving
behind me a good, reliable agent like Lorna-if I had to have somebody along. At
the moment, operating alone, with nobody's temperament to consider but my own,
seemed very desirable. Maybe I could talk Mae into giving me an assignment all
by myself next time out, if there was a next time out.

           
It wasn't bad stalking country. The
brush was pretty thick, but it wasn't dry and crackly; and the ground was
reasonably soft. There was plenty of cover. Moving quietly and staying out of
sight was no problem at all. Picking the easiest and most silent route, I kept
finding tracks in the ground ahead of me: heavy work shoes, considerably worn.
Well, Carl was pretty good about detail. Footgear like that would match the
truck below. He'd been brought up on a farm, I remembered, and was pretty good
outdoors, unlike some of our city-bred agents who are hell in streets and
alleys but tend to get lost in a forty-acre pasture.

           
The thought made me careful. I
remembered the ultimatum Carl was supposed to have delivered, to the effect
that anybody Mac sent after him wouldn't come hack. It sounded like Carl. He
hadn't actually been speaking to Mac when he said it, of course, but he didn't
know that. He did know me, however. If his mood was still the same, he'd
undoubtedly jump to the wrong conclusion and try to blow my head off the
instant he saw me, unless I arranged to prevent it somehow.

           
I made the last hundred yards on my
belly, an inch at a time, and there he was. At least there was somebody in the
brush to my left. I could make out the vague shape of a man. He was holding a
pair of binoculars to his eyes; it was the slight movement he'd made to focus
that had drawn my attention. Lying beside him was some kind of a rifle I
couldn't make out clearly.

           
Very cautiously, I worked my way up
to where I could see the blacktop highway half a mile away, and the ticky-tacky
urban blight off to the left, and the farm dead ahead just as Martha had
described it except that a blue Volkswagen and a white official sedan with a
buggy-whip antenna were standing in the yard along with the Cadillac sedan
she'd mentioned. A short, heavy man was just getting out of the radio-equipped
car. He wore a big white hat and an ivory-handled revolver-well, at that
distance, it could have been white plastic or adhesive tape. A thin, tall woman
in jeans and a short-sleeved white blouse was speaking to him as he got out.

           
I lost the rest of the scene. The
man just down the ridge had caught my attention once more, raising his head
from the glasses, perhaps to rest his eyes. He wasn't Carl.

           
He was, it turned out, a slight and
skinny older man, somewhere in his sixties, with a gaunt country face-a
mountain face, rather-
stubbled
with gray beard. His
hair was also gray, rather thin and wispy beneath the ancient felt hat that
fell off when I jumped him from behind. He was stronger than I'd expected, all
wire and whipcord, and it was a good thing I hadn't missed my grip or he'd have
given me real trouble despite the difference in our ages. As it was, he managed
to get me once on the shin with the heel of his heavy shoe, before I could
apply pressure properly and put him out.

           
I laid him down, rubbed my shin, and
took inventory. First I checked that the brief flurry of action on the ridge
had attracted no attention at the house half a mile away. Then I massaged my
shin some more, and looked down at the man who had kicked it. In addition to the
lethal, high-laced shoes and the now-misplaced hat, he was dressed in overall
pants, a gray work shirt, and the dark coat of an old suit, frayed at wrists
and elbows. The 'rifle beside him was a .300 Savage Model 99, perhaps the best
of the old lever actions, although the
Winchester
was the one that got all the glory. This
specimen was so old that the bluing had worn off all the metal parts, leaving
them silvery, and no finish remained on the stock, but the bore was clean and
seemed to be in good condition. His optical equipment was an ancient pair of
field glasses that could have gone to war with Robert E. Lee or maybe Ulysses
S. Grant.

           
I found some keys on him, a pair of
rimless glasses in a hard case, a small plastic container of unidentified
pills, a blue bandana handkerchief, some loose change, and a two-bladed pocket
knife with the stag handle worn quite smooth. There was also a wallet
containing a driver's license made out to Harvey
Bascomb
Hollingshead
, 72, of
Bascomb
,
Kentucky. I sighed, looking down at the thin, stubborn old face. I'd missed the
age by a few years. I rubbed my shin once more. For a septuagenarian, he kicked
hard.

           
I tied his wrists with his belt and
his ankles with mine, used his handkerchief to gag him, and slung him over my
back. Well, I'd like to be able to say it was as easy as that. Actually, slight
as he was, he made a heavy and unwieldy load, and I was out of practice and
maybe a little out of condition. Swimming and fishing in
Mexico
with attractive blonde company isn't the
best preparation for heavy backpacking.

           
It took me three tries to get him
up; and then I thought I'd end up in the coronary ward before I managed to
transport him through the brush to the grove of trees in which Martha was
waiting. I didn't take him all the way to the car, however. I didn't dare leave
him alone with the girl. Her unpredictable humanitarian impulses might well
cause her to revive him and turn him loose. Having labored hard over this warm
body, I had no intention of losing it.

           
I hid the old man in a ditch,
therefore, and went back up the hill for the rifle and glasses I hadn't been
able to manage on my first trip. I also remembered to pick up the fallen hat.
Martha wasn't very good about obeying orders. When she heard me coming, instead
of playing possum as instructed, she jumped out of the rental car and ran to
meet me.

           
"Mart, what have you been doing
all this time? I've been going out of my mind worrying....What's that'?"

           
"Spoils of war," I said,
moving past her to lay the stuff on the hood of the car.

           
"So you got him." Her
voice was suddenly flat. "Did you.. . did you have to hurt him?"

           
I glanced at her sharply, but she
was quite sincere, and quite oblivious to the fact that the man whose health
she was now worrying about was a man whom she'd recently been denouncing as
totally non-human.

           
"I got something," I said.
I fished out the ring of keys I'd confiscated and handed them to her.
"Find the right one and open up the back door of this ancient hearse, will
you, while I bring it in."

           
She had the doors open by the time I
came staggering up with my bound prisoner. I dumped him into the rear of his
vehicle, not too gently. I was getting tired of lugging him around, and my shin
still hurt. Martha stared at him.

           
"But that old man isn't. . .
That can't be the Carl you've been telling me about!"

           
"You're so right," I said.
"He can't be. Get that gear from the hood and toss it in here, will you?
Don't be seared of the gun. I've got the cartridges in my pocket." While
she was gone, I checked the bandana gag to make sure it wasn't too tight. To
hell with his wrists and ankles. I didn't want to strangle him, but gangrene
didn't worry me. He could do a lot of talking before he died of gangrene. As
I've said, I was a little tired of the old gent, and he was a complication I
didn't appreciate. "Okay, you drive the Chevy; I'll handle this
wreck," I said as Martha put the rifle, hat, and glasses beside the old
man. "Follow me, but stay well back so it won't look too much as if we're
together. Hold it!"

           
We stood motionless, listening, as a
car drove by on the dirt road, but it went on without slowing or stopping.
Martha was looking down at the unconscious captive.

           
"But.. . but who is he?"

           
"Miss Borden," I said,
"allow me to present Mr.
Hollingshead
, of
Bascomb
,
Kentucky
."

           
"
Hollingshead
?"
She frowned briefly. "
Hollingshead
! That was the
name of one of the students who . . .
Dubuque
,
Hollingshead
,
and Janssen."

           
"Right," I said.
"Apparently, Mr.
Hollingshead
is another of
those perverted oddball characters you object to so strongly, who resent having
their kids shot. At least I can't think of any other motive that would bring
him clear from
Kentucky
and put him on the ridge above the sheriff's house with a loaded
rifle."

           
She didn't respond to my sarcasm.
She just said: "But haven't you got him tied awfully tightly, Matt? Those
straps look as if they're cutting off the circulation."

           
I stared at her, a little awed. She
was so consistently inconsistent it approached true genius.

           
I said, "Sweetheart, what in
the world are you worrying about? By your own definition, that's not a human
being lying there. That's just another vengeance-machine. Who cares about its
lousy circulation?"

           
"Damn you, Matthew Helm.. .
."

           
She glared at me, swung away, and
marched over to the white sedan, her long, phony hair and the brief, crisp
pleats of her skirt bouncing indignantly in unison. The car door slammed, and
the engine started with a roar. I got the old truck going without any trouble.
Half an hour later we were a safe distance, I hoped, from
Fort
Adams
and its burly sheriff. We were parked
beside a dim wheel-track across the open prairie, in a kind of fold of land
that hid us from the highway a few hundred yards away. I went back, opened the
rear of the truck, and saw that my passenger's eyes were open. I turned to
Martha, who'd come over, and drew her aside to where the old man couldn't see
or hear us.

           
"There are two ways of doing
this," I said. "I can trick him into talking, maybe, or I can try to
force him to talk. It's up to you."

           
"What do you mean?"

           
I said, "If you don't play
along with the lies I'm going to tell, I'll have to get rough. The choice is
yours. Cooperate, or watch me go into my Inquisition routine. I'm real good at
twisting arms and pulling fingernails, if I do say so myself."

           
She hesitated. "All
right," she said reluctantly, after a moment. "All right, Matt. I'll
play along as well as I can."

           
I went to the truck and untied and
ungagged
Mr.
Hollingshead
. I put
my belt back where it belonged, and moved my short-barreled revolver from a
pocket to its home in front of my left hip, now that there was something to
hold it there once more. It took a little while for speech and circulation to
return to the old gent, but it took him no time at all, after he'd managed to
sit up, to spot the location of his lever-action rifle.

           
I saw his eyes flick that way and
back to me. I reached into my pocket and brought out a handful of .300 Savage
cartridges and showed them to him. He nodded slightly and paid no more
attention to the rifle. I saw perspiration appear on his forehead as the blood
started working its way back into the constricted areas. At last he licked his
lips and spoke.

           
"Help me stand up, Sonny."
A look of faint amusement came into his faded blue eyes as I hesitated.
"What's the matter, you afraid of a feeble old man teetering on the edge
of the eternal grave?"

           
"Feeble old man, hell," I
said. "You forget, Gramps we wrestled a little. I've got a big bruise to
show for it. I don't want any more."

           
"You slipped up on me real nice
there,"
Hollingshead
said. "And that was
some kind of a fancy wrestling lock you put on me. What's your name,
Sonny?"

           
"Janssen," I said.
"Anders Janssen."

           
Martha did fine. Maybe she gave a
slight start, but I didn't think it was enough for the old man to notice,
particularly since his attention was all on me.

           
"Janssen, eh?"
Hollingshead
worked his dry lips together and spat.
"Well, that figures, I guess. You live in
Washington
, don't you? I was thinking of getting in
touch with you, but
Indiana
was more on my way, heading west. Indiana, and a man named Roger
Dubuque, if you want to call that a man."

           
"What's wrong with Roger
Dubuque?" I asked.

           
"What's wrong with a
white-faced city feller that's real embarrassed-shamed and embarrassed-because
his boy's been killed by the police? Not heartbroken, mind you, not angry, just
embarrassed and afraid of what all his city neighbors might be thinking. He had
no idea of taking any action, not he. I told him that down our way, if the
constable can't handle a kid with a rock without shooting him to death, we kick
him the hell out and get a new constable who knows his business. It made no
difference to that city man. He had half a mind to curry favor with the police
by giving them my name, he did, but I talked him out of that."

           
I grinned. "Just how did you
talk him out of it, Mr.
Hollingshead
?"

           
The old gent smiled thinly. It
wasn't a very nice smile. "Why, I told him that no matter how long they
put me in prison for, I'd manage to live long enough to come back and shoot
hell out of him. He scared easy."

           
"I'll bet," I said.

           
"It made me leery of you,
Sonny, being as you lived in the city, too. Maybe I misjudged you. When I got
here, I soon found somebody else was working along the lines I had in mind.
That you?"

           
"That's me," I lied.

           
Hollingshead
nodded slowly. "Well, I can't say I hold with them foreign methods using
slip-nooses and all. A gun's always been good enough for us
Hollingsheads
and
Bascombs
, but maybe I'm being finicky. Anyway, it
seems to me you've had your fun, Sonny. Why not go home now and leave that
child-murdering bastard of a sheriff to me? I'll take care of him for both of
us."

           
"How?" I said.
"You're not going to make a .300 Savage shoot half a mile no matter how
hot you load it; and that old gun of yours hasn't even got a scope on it."

           
"The day I clutter up a good
rifle with a lot of glass will be the day they bury me. Give me a hand, will
you? The old legs aren't what they used to be, and you didn't do them a damn
bit of good. . . .
Ahhh
." He stood for a moment,
stamping his feet cautiously. Then he spoke as if there had been no
interruption: "Wasn't going to take him from that ridge, Sonny. There's
other places. . . . The boy didn't come home from school. You know anything
about that?"