Kill Me Tomorrow (31 page)

“Is she all right?”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

“Absolutely? Lucky Ryan wasn't in this room when I banged inside. Why not? Where was
that
bastard?”

“They sent him up outside her room.” He looked a bit closer at my face.
“Outside
, not in it. Really. They just didn't want him in here. They wanted him to think he was guarding the door or something. It was just so he'd be out of the room.”

“Because they were playing the tape.”

“Yes,” he nodded. “She's all right, believe me. She hasn't been hurt—or anything.”

“Let's hope, for your sake, for the sake of everybody around here, that you're correct.” I paused. “Anybody else in the house? Besides Lucky and those who were in this room when I first came in?”

“No. Eight of us. That's all. Where—”

“Never mind. Who are you? What's your name?”

“Stephens. David Stephens.”

I looked at him silently for at least ten seconds. “Kerwin Stephens' brother?”

“Yes.” He nodded. “Yes.”

“Well.” I said. “So you're the guy Gil Reyes talked to early Tuesday morning.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

For quite some time I'd known, by combining information from three sources—the Jenkins tape itself, Voiceprints, and Bludgett—the identities of six of the seven men on that tape: Lecci, Weeton, Archie, Ace, Fleepo, and Frankie. It would have been logical to assume Henry Yarrow was number seven, except that Professor Irwin had assured me my No. 1, Yarrow, was
not
on the Jenkins tape, which eliminated him.

Enter: David Stephens. The seventh man.

“Tell me, Davey,” I said—using the name one of the hoods had used for him when I'd been eavesdropping on them, while unconscious—“Kerwin's the boy handing out the federal loot, the millions of the billions, right?”

“Yes,” he nodded. “Yes.”

Very cooperative. I couldn't help wishing all crooks were like this. Of course, he wasn't the ordinary kind of thief. Neither was his brother.

I said, “Kerwin Stephens, chairman of the Commission on AGING. The one lad, above all, who can report that Sunrise Villas does—or does not—qualify for, say, fifty or a hundred million bucks from the AGING fund.”

He nodded. Silently this time.

“Would I maybe be not too wide of the mark if I guessed any fat grants to Sunrise Villas would have been administered and distributed by Lecci's handpicked do-gooder? And that Sunrise Villas is—was—about to qualify absolutely?”

He swallowed. “Was is right.”

There was a little spark left in him yet.

He even started to go on, “Only it wouldn't have been Le—” and cut it off abruptly, his eyes rolling away from me toward “Le—” which is to say, Lecci.

It was all right. I was reasonably certain he'd been going to say, “Only it wouldn't have been
Lecci's
handpicked do-gooder,” something like that. I'd used the name myself merely to shorten the conversation. Which had already lasted long enough.

“OK,” I said. “We can wrap up the details later.” I shifted the heavy Magnum in my hand, gripped it by the barrel. “You want to turn around?”

“What? What for?”

“I don't have any rope. Look, you're getting off easy. I'm going to feed your brother poisoned birdseed.”

“What?”

“Well, you can watch if you want to.” I lifted the gun.

He got it then. He turned around. He turned around and just stood there. Not a squawk out of him. David Stephens. A born loser.
Whop
. And he'd lost again.

Lecci had finally struggled to his feet, amoeba-splotched gray skin corpse-pallid from the exertion, that crepey wattle beneath his chin still wiggling. He'd struggled to his feet just in time to see what happened to Stephens.

I turned toward him.

“You—” he said.

I raised the Magnum over my head.

“You—wouldn't.”

“Wouldn't what?”

“You—you wouldn't hit a ninety-year-old man!”

“Wouldn't I?” I said.

I stood outside the door upstairs and yelled, “Lucrezia!”

The hallway was dark. In the beam of my pencil flash I saw a switch on the wall, flipped it. The hallway stayed dark, but a slice of brightness slid beneath the door. Sure; the boys would have wanted illumination inside when necessary, but not a switch that might be used—like dot-dash-dot, maybe—by the occupant, or prisoner. Prisoner … Lucrezia!

“Lucrezia!” I yelled, even louder.

“Shell?”

“Yes. It's me! Are you all right?”

“I'm all right. But—
you
! Are you—”

“I'm … swell.” I'd already tried the door, which naturally was locked. “Lucrezia,” I said, “I suppose this will sound like a silly question. But I turned on the light from my side. I don't suppose you can unlock the door from your side, can you?”

“You're right. It's a silly question.”

“Stand against the wall the door's in,
this
wall. But clear over in the corner. I'm going to shoot the lock out!”

In a few moments she said, “I'm ready!”

“I'm ready, too!” I called.

After a little while she said, “Aren't you going to shoot the lock out?”

“Oh, yeah. Stand back!”

“I'm already back.”

“Oh, yeah. Well, here goes.”

I gave it a blast.
Terrible
crashing roar. Shot hell out of the lock. It was absolutely ruined. But it seemed so grand, so dramatic … I gave it another shot.

Then I flang the door open and jumped inside.

Lucrezia was standing in the corner.

But not for long.

I no sooner stopped staggering around the room—caught my balance, that is—than she cried, “Oh, Shell … Shell!” and started rushing toward me.

It was romantic, exciting, keen. Like movies. The girl rushing toward her guy, arms flang out, and on her face an ecstatic expression … On her face … What was going on?

Lucrezia had come to a stop, a fast stop, almost a skidding stop, and her expression as she looked at me—at my face, hair, chest, feet, coat, pants, just about everything—was … Well, it wasn't
ecstatic
.

I kept forgetting that I'd been wallowing about in the muck for what seemed a week. First escaping from those four would-be killers and lying in the mud for a while. I'd never gotten around to really cleaning up after that, I recalled, a little sadly. Then, of course, there'd been climbing under the wall, leaping back through it, all that junk.

Lucrezia stared at me. “Are you Shell Scott?” she asked.

“Am I
who?”

“You never heard of him?”

“Don't be ridic—listen, I mean, what the hell do you
mean
asking me am I …
Of course
I'm Shell Scott! Who
else
would be up here, bleeding from every pore, for a—for a
girl
!”

“It
is
you!”

“I'm glad we got that settled.” I paused, scowling. She probably couldn't tell whether I was scowling or not. “Lucrezia,” I said, “it is I, truly I, under all this slop.” I paused again. “Somehow … I expected … well, Hello
there
! or something.”

I'll say this for Lucrezia, once she was sure some dirty old man wasn't trying to trick her, she didn't let a little untidiness throw her offstride. She strode the rest of the way to me, threw her arms around my neck, and said, “Well, kiss me, you nut.”

It didn't offend me. If I was a nut, and this was what nuts got, then the crazier I got the better I'd like it.

Well, there's only so much you can say about kisses. And I'll say it if I get half a chance. But I'd already had two kisses from Lucrezia, and about all there is to say is that this third one was twice as good as those two first ones put together. Or, imagine you put those two first ones together, and they mated. And had about a million babies. And then the babies grew up. Like that.

Oh, hell, it was just a
kiss
.

When it was over, Lucrezia dropped her arms to her sides, and I stepped back a little. I don't usually do that, but I was trying to get my bearings. I looked around, but didn't see them anyplace.

“What are you looking for?” Lucrezia asked.

“Ball-bearings,” I said. “Don't know why, really, just a—a thought that occurred to me.”

She sighed. “That was quite a kiss.”

“You said a mouthful. Let's do it again, huh?”

“Shell, how—how can you be so unconcerned? Aren't some of those men still in the house? You didn't—you didn't kill them
all
, did you?”

“Don't be ridiculous. I only killed a couple of them. And then I think one guy committed suicide. Just—don't worry, there's plenty of time.”

“Time for what? You don't mean—you can't mean—”

“Who says I can't?”

“Shell, really!”

“Yeah, really.”

“I mean, we've really got to get out of here.”

“I suppose you're right. There's a couple of those guys might come to, and come up here, and come in and … yeah, we better get out of here.” I paused, thinking. “Hey, Lucrezia.”

“Yes?”

“None of those guys, they didn't, well, didn't—ah, rape you or anything, did they?”

“What do you mean, or anything?”

“Hell, I don't know. Pinch you, maybe?”

“They didn't do anything! They didn't even rape me!”

“Don't sound so disappointed.”

“Oh, Shell, you—you—”

“Can't a guy be jealous?”

“Shell, I saw you. I
saw
you.”

“Saw me what?” I'd just been standing here, simply standing. Except for that kiss, of course. She sure said some funny things.

“I
saw
you.”

“There you go again.”

“In the courtyard. Down there.” She flang an arm out, in the general direction of the mayhem and havoc below. “I even saw you on the telephone pole—in the lightning. Only I didn't know it was you, then.”

“Well … That's all right. I wasn't at my best on the telephone pole. It's not my bag. To tell the truth, I wasn't feeling well at all up there—”

“And then, when the lights came on, I saw you again.” She pointed. “See, I could look down right from there and see everything!”

This was the sort of turret room, wall curving out and around, so I guessed she would have had a pretty good view at that. There were bars over the window, but she could have seen me through the bars—and, I thought glumly, might again. Too bad Lucrezia's first good look at me had been when I was running like a scalded orangutan away from all those apes. Maybe she wouldn't mention it.

“I saw you running away from all those men,” she said, “and when you went
right through the wall
!”

“Well, I probably should explain about that, but …”

“And then shooting, and yelling and screeching—”

“I didn't, either—”

“—and roaring and bellowing, and shooting, and fighting. I even saw that great huge man jump at the wall. He was the
funniest
thing!”

“How do you mean that? Funniest? Like funny, funnier—Who
else
was funny?”

“Oh, Shell, you were just magnificent! You were wonderful!”

“I was?”

“I never saw anything so thrilling and exciting in my
life
. There's never been anything like it, even in the
movies
.”

“Well, I don't know—”

“I was so proud of you. Of course, I thought you were going to get killed. But you didn't.”

“No, that's about the only thing I didn't do.”

“But I was—and I am. So proud of you.”

“Ah … I'm sorry if I was a little snippy. Didn't really mean it. It's, uh … Well, it's been a hard night.”

She smiled. Then she said, sweetly and softly, “I know. I know. But I'll take care of you, my darling.”

And, somehow, I knew she would.

There was another special council meeting. Tony Brizante called it. I addressed it. The council members—the ten who were present, since naturally two couldn't make it—knew merely by looking at me either every word I spoke was the truth or I was just naturally dirty.

I gave them a fast fill-in on the Cosa Nostra or Mafia, told them about DiGiorno-Lecci, hit a few bits of background and described a little, only a little, of what I'd been running up against since Friday afternoon.

Then I said, “So here's a quick summing-up, gentlemen. Lecci, restless in retirement, got the itch to come a little way
out
of retirement, and being a creature of unalterable habit brought in some helpers, got a black finger—of a black hand—into many little pies here at Sunrise Villas. Not enough action for the big boys, the Dons, the Commission to worry about. Until: AGING. DiGiorno putting the squeeze on a small Arizona community—a little rakeoff here, some muscle there, skimming a few thousands from too-cheap paving or sewers or corrupt contracting or strikes, that was one thing. But ex-
capo
Pete Lecci with his hooks in Sunrise Villas when the millions—dozens and scores of millions if it was handled right and by the right men—were about to start pouring in, that was another thing entirely. That was the
big
pie, and the top dog couldn't be The Letch himself, he was too old, too far behind the new times and new ways.

“So the Cosa Nostra Commission met and, with some wisdom, decided to take over. In a way, you should be flattered, gentlemen, because more than a year ago, when AGING legislation was barely out of the cradle, the
Commissione
, the twelve most powerful
mafiosi
bosses in this entire land, held a special meeting—much as you're now meeting in special session yourselves—concerned solely with Sunrise Villas. They decided the first step should be to send in their own man not merely to guarantee effective control of your community but to make sure Letch made no serious mistakes in the little time left to him. And I do mean, even if Lecci might normally have lived to be a hundred and ninety-nine, the little time left to him. Because he had to go, and the members of his small organization, anybody ‘loyal' to him, either had to switch over to the new bosses or else—well, or else.