Monsters and Magicians (11 page)

She had been halted at a red light and, when it changed, she slowly accelerated into the intersection. All of the time she had sat there, not one other vehicle of any description had graced visible portions of any of the streets, yet she had barely started out when, with horn blaring wildly, a large, battered

sedan made a wallowing turn out of an alley and roared through the red light, very narrowly missing collision with her. Half a block to her left, the offending car essayed a U-turn, skidded on the wet blacktop and fishtailed up onto the sidewalk, through a chain fence and crashed into the side of a parked delivery-van.

Shaking her head and muttering disgustedly about drunken drivers, she continued on toward her apartment building, still undecided about whether to tell Pedro all of the rest of Mr. Haras strange story. She needed peace and quiet in which to think the thing through and she thought she knew just the place in which to do it.

After seeing Danna into her automobile, the engine properly warmed up, the vehicle put into gear, backed out, and headed for the ramp down to the ground level and exit gate, Pedro Goldfarb walked briskly back up to the elevator and depressed the "down" button, his own auto being some levels lower. He waited more than the usual amount of time for such a late hour, then depressed the button once more; but there was no noise of mechanical movement from within the shaft and the level-indicator number never changed or even blinked, so with a shrug the dark-haired man walked the few feet to the door opening onto the stairs and lightly and rapidly descended to the proper level, then pushed open the door and went up the ramp toward his parking place.

There were a few more vehicles still parked on this level than had been on the one above, but even so the impression of the place was one of deserted,

lonely emptiness. Therefore it as almost shocking when up ahead an ignition ground briefly, then an engine roared into life, taillights glowed as the auto backed out of a slot, halted, then accelerated down-ramp, all four headlights glaring blindingly in the ill-lit gloom.

Disturbed that the driver of the oncoming vehicle seemed not to be in perfect control of the car, as if he was unfamiliar with it or had steering problems or, more likely, was a few sheets to the wind, Pedro eased a little farther over to his left and quickened his pace, wishing that the erratic driver would hurry up getting past him.

But he was still a good thirty feet from his own vehicle when the almost-new Bonneville suddenly swerved frighteningly close to him, came to a rocking stop and two men came out of the nearest doors to confront him. Even in the less than adequate lighting, Pedro could see that one of them, the smaller, was holding a large pistol—a Colt Government Model from the look of it.

Smiling in what he hoped was a disarming manner, the attorney said, "Gentlemen, I've something like a hundred and fifty dollars on me. It's in the wallet in the left breast pocket of this jacket. I've used the Colt Auto in combat and I'm not about to try to give you a reason to use that one."

The tall, skinny pistolero nodded at his massive companion and the big black man stepped behind Pedro, jammed hands and arms under (lie attorney's arms and locked ham-sized hands behind his victim's neck in a full-nelson hold. That was when Pedro decided that this was not a common run-of-the-mill

mugging and that he just might be in real trouble this time around. All good attorneys left a trail of enemies in their professional wakes and Pedro knew he was no exception, but he also knew that he never before had so much as seen either of these two men, so most likely they were hired help and could he make it worth their while, then perhaps . . . ? It was, he felt, worth at least a try.

Looking up from beneath his brows, which was the only way he could see with his head being forced forward and down by the thews of the big black man, he addressed the man with the pistol.

"Do you know who I am? I'm Pedro Goldfarb, an attorney. I own a law firm in the Mutual Building. I don't know who hired you on to do his dirty work, I don't know whether you're supposed to beat me or kill me, but 111 guarantee you that I can pay you more not to do it than whoever is paying you to do it."

"I done thought you 'llowed you dint have but a hunnerd an' fifty dollars, Mr. Lawyer-man?" rumbled the man who was holding him.

'That is all I have on me" responded Pedro with alacrity, "but as I just said, my offices are next door and there's more money, there—cold, hard cash-type money. How much is whoever hired you paying?"

The gunman had thrust the big pistol under his waistband and now he stepped closer, saying, "Don't you tell the bastid nuthin, hear!" With that, he cocked back an arm and slammed rock-hard knuckles into Pedro's abdomen, first one fist, then the other.

The punches hurt, of course, but they were not crippling; Pedro was in very good shape, far better

shape than most fifty-five-year-old professional men, and he had tightened the dense layers of muscle which protected the organs of his flat midsection. But he had also come up with another plan, since he no longer was so urgently threatened by the big, deadly weapon.

A heightened degree of acting skill is a required talent in a top-flight trial lawyer; Pedro Goldfarb possessed such talent and to spare. At the second blow, he gasped in what sounded like an excess of agony, then slumped limply, allowing the big black to support all his weight. Gasping, speaking jerkily, he informed and beseeched, "Heart . . . bad heart . . . please, nitro . . . glycerin . . . bottle, right side pocket . . . ahhhh." Then he made a gargling noise for emphasis and offered a prayer that it would all work on his assailants.

It did. The man holding him demanded, "Well, what you waitin' for, man? Git the damn heart-attack pills outen his pocket and then put one in his mouf, unner his tongue is what you do."

Wrinkling up his brows and shaking his head slowly, the other just stood, saying, "Aww, I dunno. He could be fakin' you know. And ..."

"And he could be the best thing to dead right now, you dumb, white-trash, honky fool!" rumbled the black man. "And if he comes for to die here, now, with us here doing what we's doing to him, we gone be charged with capital murder, man!"

"Shit!" burst out the other man, "I ain't hit him hard a-tall, hear. A frigging heart attack ain't murder, you crazy swamp-guinea."

"Yeah, well, my one-time brother-in-law, he was

burglaring a place where the old lady lived there had herself a heart attack and he hadn't never touched her or hardly seen her and he's right now doing hard time, twenny-five years to life, cause she come to die while he's in her house that night," declared the massive black, loosening his hold on Pedro's neck and letting his thick arms, alone, support the dead weight of his victim. "You wanna spend the rest of your natcherl life in the penitentiary or wearing a lowng chain and picking up trash off the innerstates, you gone do it all alone. Now am I gone hafta get the man his medicine my own sef, okay?"

From one of the still-open doors of the Pontiac, a raspy voice demanded, "What the diddly-squat's going on? You-awl gonna work the prick ovuh like we's told to or run your mouths and trade fighting-words or what? Thishere wheels is hot, baby, and I ain't gonna be caught driving this heap in the daytime, hear me?"

"The gennaman's done had him a heart attack," stated the big black man. "Mr. White-ass Knowitall here wouldn't get him his medicine out his pocket, and I think he's dead ... or closes' thing to it."

"Sheeeit!" With no other words, the driver put the big sedan in gear and, with a screeching of tortured tires, he headed for the downramp, open doors flapping unheeded. At the ramp, the left side of the car sideswiped one of the concrete pillars and, all the way down the spiral toward ground level, the nerve-racking shrieks of metal scraping against the side-walls of the ramp could be clearly heard.

"Couldn't keep them big liver-lips shut, could you, boy?" snarled the skinny man. "My paw alius did say

didn't none you damn niggers have the GAARRR-GGHHl"

That was the sound the man made when the toe of Pedro's fine, Italian-made ankle-boot came into such hard contact with his exposed crotch as to almost lift him completely off his feet. At the same time, the "dying man's" elbow accurately found brief lodgement in the big black man's solar plexus. Both movements were executed so swiftly that even as the gagging, retching and thoroughly agonized skinny man's legs began to fold under him, his erstwhile victim was able to step forward and jerk the pistol from under his waistband.

With the skinny man writhing and moaning and gasping on the hard concrete floor, while the huge black man simply stood, eyes bulging from the sockets, hands lapped over his lower ribs, mouth wide open, making earnest, frantic efforts to again start to breathe, Pedro stepped back a few feet and hurriedly checked the weapon he had acquired. He found one round in the chamber and six more in the worn magazine of the battered, rusty piece, so he engaged the safety and took the cracked grips loosely in hand.

"If either of you types try to run or to hide," he informed the men, "I'll shoot you in the back; that's no threat, that's a promise . . . and I always keep my promises, in case you didn't know. When I was in the Marine Corps, I earned an Expert Badge in this and a number of other weapons."

Having spoken, he strolled down to the emergency wall phone and lifted the receiver. When a voice responded, he said, "This is Pedro Goldfarb. I'm on Blue Level, on the exit side, and I'm holding

their own pistol on two men who tried to mug me. Call the cops, huh?"

By the time he got back up to the site of the confrontation, the big black man was painfully taking ragged breaths of welcome air, though he still had not moved at all and did not look very well. "I guess I should watch how much force I put into blows," thought Pedro. "But big as he is, strong as I know he is, I was afraid to try to pull that elbow any."

The skinny man had assumed a foetal position on the dirty oil-stained floor, both his bony hands clutching at his crotch, sobbing, the side of his head and face in the middle of a puddle of his vomitus.

"The police are on their way," the attorney said, in an almost-friendly tone.

"Oh, Sweet Lawd Jesus," prayed the biggest man aloud and with intense feeling, "please save this sinner from going back into the slam!"

"Done time before, have you?" asked Pedro, adding, "Well, you and your buddy here are going to do a lot more time for this night's work. I hope you got paid in advance."

"How come you's thinking we won't just mugging you, mister?" asked the big man, diffidently.

"Because neither of you made a move for my wallet, even after you'd been told where it was and how much was in it," Pedro replied. "No, you were hired and set on me to rough me up, hurt me, for somebody—somebody too cowardly to try to do his own dirty work- I am quite anxious to find out just who paid the freight, obviously. You know that f m an attorney, I told you that already. I just might be

able ... or willing to help you if you tell me the name or names of the scum who hired you."

The black man gulped. "You . . . you'd let me make tracks Tore the Man gets here, mister?"

Pedro nodded. "If there's still time. Otherwise, I could help you beat the rap ... if I felt friendly toward you, that is. What's your name?"

The man gulped again. "Welford Roosevelt Harrison, suh. Whatall you want to know, suh?"

"What is the name of the person who hired you, Mr. Harrison?" demanded Pedro. "How much were you all paid and what were you to do to me for your money?"

Harrison waved at the oblivious, still agonized skinny man, saying, "Thet damn white-trash cracker, there, he hired me, after that chickenshit Junior Jackson, who was driving, had got in touch with me for him. Junior and me done time together back when we's both kids and he knowed f s needing money some kinda bad, too. I tole him I tole Junior I won't gone have nuthin' to do with any killin's for no amount of money, but they said you won't to be killed, just busted up bad and scared off. That and the fifty dollars they promised me was the onliest reason I'm here, suh. And that's the God's honest truth! I told Mr. Meems, there, I'd hold you, but I won't gone hit you none unless you hit me and he said that was a'right 'cause he liked to hit and hurt rich swells like you."

"All right, Mr. Harrison, now comes the question that, if answered to my satisfaction, just may keep you on the street: Who hired Mr. Meems, do you know?"

Harrison shook his head and gulped again. "All I knows, suh, is he was rattlin' on about how the money for me and Junior was ever last cent of it comin' out of his pocket, 'cause of some feller with the Guvamint wanted you hurted but won't payin' none of it. Sounded to me like as how he musta had suthin' on Mr. Meems, is what it sounds like to me, suh."

Though a bit stunned by the revelation of government involvement, Pedro did not show it. "Did Mr. Meems mention a name of this man who wanted me beaten and scared off, Mr. Harrison?"

The big man nodded slowly. "Yessuh, yessuh, he did and it was a damn weird, funny, fun-in* -soundin' name, too. But he dint say it but one, two times and I don't remember it ... I don't think. I'm sorry, suh. Lordy, am I sorry. I ... I guess you won't let me go now ... or ... or try to help me none, huh? I'm sorry, suh." Pedro saw something glistening on the man's dark-skinned face—either sweat or tears, maybe both.

"Think hard, Mr. Harrison," he ordered in a command tone, "if you don't want to be looking at the world through steel bars for the next few years, dredge up that name for me. Now! What letter of the alphabet did it start with or sound like it started with, Mr. Harrison? Think, man!"

The big man gulped yet again, then uttered what sounded very much like a sob, nor was there any longer any doubt that the rivulets of wetness on his forehead and cheeks were both sweat and tears. He started to speak several times but closed his mouth each time, he screwed his eyes tight shut and, at

length, said, "Uhh . . . a *B'. . . I thinks it was a 'B\ suh, that that name started out with. But . . . but I still can't remember it all, suh."