The Judas Goat (19 page)

I drove the side of my right fist into his windpipe as hard as I could and brought my forearm around and hit Zachary along the jawline. He gasped. Then Hawk was behind Zachary and kicked him with the side of his foot in the small of his back. He bent back, half turned, and Hawk hit him a rolling, lunging right hand on the jaw, and Zachary loosened his grip on me and his knees buckled and he fell forward on his face on the ground. I stepped out of the way as he fell.

Hawk was swaying slightly as he stood on the other side of Zachary’s fallen body. His face and chest and arms were covered witth blood and sweat, his upper lip was swollen so badly that the pink inside showed. His right eye was closed. His sunglasses were gone and much of his shirt was shredded. One sleeve was gone entirely. A part of his lower lip moved and I think he was trying to smile. He looked down at Zachary and tried to spit. A little bloody saliva trickled on his chin. He said, “Honkie.”

My left arm was bent a funny way above the wrist. It still didn’t hurt much but my hand twitched and jumped involuntarily and I knew it was going to hurt. The front of my shirt was gone. My chest was covered with blood. My nose felt like it was broken too. That would make six times. I stepped toward Hawk and staggered. I realized I was weaving like he was.

A Montreal police car, with the light flashing and siren whooping, came up the road toward us. Several people were pointing up in our direction, running toward the car. The car came to a skidding halt and two cops rolled out of it, guns in hand.

Hawk said to me, “Didn’t need no fucking cops, babe.” I put my right hand out, palm up. It was shaking. Hawk slapped his down limply on it. We were too tired to shake. We simply clutched hands, swaying back and forth with Zachary motionless on the ground in front of us.

“Didn’t need no jive-fucking cops, babe,” Hawk said again, and a noise came hoarsely out of his throat. I realized he was laughing. I started to laugh too. The two Montreal cops stood looking at us with the guns half raised and the doors of the cruiser swung open. Down the hill another cop car was coming.

One of them said, “Qu’est-ce que c’est?”

“Je parle anglais,” I said with the blood running off me. Laughing and gasping for breath. “Je suis Americain, mon gendarme.”

Hawk was nearly hysterical with laughter. Now his body was rocking back and forth, hanging on to my good hand.

“What the hell are you doing?” the cop said.

Trying to control his laugher, Hawk said, “We just copped the gold medal in outdoor scuffling.” It was the funniest thing I’d ever heard, or so it seemed at the time, and the two of us were still giggling when they loaded us into the car and hauled us off to a hospital.

They set my arm and packed my nose and cleaned me up, and put me in the hospital overnight with Hawk in the next bed. They didn’t arrest us, but there was a cop at the door all night. My arm was hurting now and they gave me a shot. I went to sleep for the rest of the day and night. When I woke up, a man in plain clothes was there from the RCMP. Hawk was sitting up in bed reading the Montreal Star and sipping some juice from a big styrofoam cup through a straw from one corner of his mouth. The swelling was down a bit in his eye. He could see out of it, but the lip was still very puffy and I could see the black thread from the stitches.

“My name’s Morgan,” the man from RCMP said. He showed me his shield. “We’d like to hear about what happened.”

Hawk said, with difficulty, “Paul dead. Kathie shot him with the rifle while he trying to escape.”

“Escape?” I said.

Hawk said, “Yeah.” There was no expression on his face.

“Where is she now?”

Morgan said, “We’re holding her for the moment.”

I said, “How’s Zachary?”

Morgan said, “He’ll live. We have looked into him a bit. He’s in our files, in fact.”

“I’ll bet he is,” I said. I shifted a little in bed. It hurt. I was sore all over. My left arm was in a cast from knuckles to elbow. The cast felt warm. There was tape over my nose and the nostrils were packed.

“Naturally with the games established in Montreal we kept a file of known terrorists. Zachary was quite well known. Several countries want him. What business were you doing with him?”

“We were preventing him from shooting a gold medalist. Him and Paul.”

Morgan was a strong-looking middle-sized man with thick blondish hair and a thick mustache. His jaw stuck out and his mouth receded. The mustache helped. He wore rimless glasses. I hadn’t seen those for years. The principal of my elementary school had worn rimless glasses.

“We rather figured that out from the witnesses and what Kathie told us. That doesn’t appear, incidentally, to be her real name.”

“I know. I don’t know what it is.”

Morgan looked at Hawk, “You?”

Hawk said, “I don’t know.”

Morgan looked back at me, “Anyway the rifle with the scope, the mark on the wall, that sort of thing. We were able to figure out pretty well what the plan had been. What we’re interested in is a bit of information on how you happened to be there at the proper time and place. There were quite a number of weapons at the scene. None of you seemed able to hang on. There was a thirty-eight caliber Smith and Wesson revolver for which you have a permit, Mr. Spenser. And there was a modified shotgun, which is illegal in Canada, for which there is no permit, but for which your companion seems to have had a shoulder rig.”

Hawk looked at the ceiling and shrugged. I didn’t say anything.

“The other guns,” Morgan went on, “doubtless belonged to this Paul, and to Zachary.”

I said, “Yeah.”

Morgan said, “Let us not bullshit around anymore. You are not tourists, either of you. Spenser, I have already checked you out. Your investigator’s license was in your wallet. We called Boston and have talked about you. This gentleman,” he nodded at Hawk, “admits only to being called Hawk. He carries no identification. The Boston Police, however, suggested that a man of that description who used that name was sometimes know to associate with you. They described him, I believe, as a leg-breaker. It was not a pair of tourists who took Mr. Zachary, either. Tell me. I want to hear.”

I said, “I want to make a phone call.”

Morgan said, “Spenser, this is not a James Cagney movie.”

I said, “I want to call my employer. He has a right to some anonymity and the right to be consulted before I violate it. If I violate it.”

Morgan nodded his head at the phone on the bedside table. I called Jason Carroll. He was in. I had the feeling he was always in. Always at the alert for a call from Dixon.

I said, “This is Spenser. Don’t mention the name of my client and yours, but I have finished what we agreed I’d do and the cops are involved and they are asking questions.”

Carroll said, “I think our client will not approve of that. Are you at your Montreal address?”

“No. I’m in the hospital.” The number was on the phone and I read it off to him.

“Are you badly hurt?”

“No. I’ll be out today.”

“I will call our client. Then I will be in touch.”

I hung up. “I have no desire to be a pain in the ass,” said to Morgan. “Just give me a few hours till I talk with my client. Go out, have lunch, come back. We cleaned up something for you. We prevented a very bad scene fo you.”

Morgan nodded. “I know that. We are treating you very nicely,” he said. “You’ve had experience with the police. We don’t have to be this nice.”

From the next bed Hawk said, “Haw.”

I said, “True. Give me a few hours till I hear from my client. ”

Morgan nodded again. “Yes. Certainly. I’ll be back before dinner. ” He smiled. “There will be an officer outside your door if you need anything.”

“He got on a bright red coat?” Hawk said.

“Just for formal occasions,” Morgan said. “For the Queen, yes. Not for you.”

He left. I said to Hawk, “You really think she shot hin trying to escape?”

Hawk said, “Hell no. The minute we took off after Zachary she picked up the rifle and shot him. You know goddamned well that’s what she did.”

“Yeah, that’s my guess.”

“I don’t think they know different, though. Morgan don’t look dumb but he got nobody to swear it wasn’t like she telling it, I think. I bet everybody looking at you and me and old lovable Zach, when she done it.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I think that too.”

Three hours and fifteen minutes later, the door opened and Hugh Dixon came in in a motor-driven wheel chair and stopped beside my bed.

I said, “I did not expect to see you here.”

He said, “I did not expect to see you here.”

“It’s not bad, I’ve had worse.” I gestured at the next bed. “This is Hawk,” I said. “This is Hugh Dixon.”

Hawk said, “How do you do.”

Dixon nodded his head once, without speaking. Behind him in the doorway was the Oriental man who had opened doors for me the last two times. A couple of nurses looked in through the half open door. Dixon looked at me some more.

“In a way it’s too bad,” he said. “Now I have nothing.”

“I know,” I said.

“But that’s not your fault. You did what you said you’d do. My people have verified everyone. I understand they have the last one in jail here.”

I shook my head. “Nope. She’s not in it. I missed the last one.”

Hawk looked over at me without saying anything. Dixon looked at me a long time.

I said, “How’d you get here so fast?”

“Private plane,” Dixon said, “Lear jet. She’s not the one?”

“No, sir,” I said. “I missed the girl.”

He looked at me some more. “All right. I’ll pay you the full sum anyway.” He took an envelope from his inside pocket and handed it to me. I didn’t open it. “I’ve sent Carroll to the police,” Dixon said. “There should be no difficulty for you. I have some influence in Canada.”

“Get the girl out too,” I said.

Again he looked at me. I could almost feel the weight of his look. Then he nodded. Once. “I will,” he said. We were silent then, except for a faint whirr from his wheel chair.

“Carroll will take care of your medical bills,” Dixon said.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Thank you,” Dixon said. “You did everything I wanted done. I am proud to have known you.” He put out his hand. We shook hands. He rolled the chair over to Hawk and shook hands with him. He said to us both, “You are good men. If you need help from me at any time I will give it to you.” Then he turned the chair and went out. The Oriental man closed the door behind him and Hawk and I were alone in the room. I opened the envelope. The check was for fifty thousand dollars.

I said to Hawk, “He doubled the fee. I’ll give you half.”

Hawk said, “Nope. I’ll take what I signed up for.” We were quiet. Hawk said, “You gonna let that little psycho loose?”

“Yeah.”

“Sentimental, dumb. You don’t owe her nothing.”

“She was a Judas goat but she was my Judas goat,” I said. “I don’t want to send her into the slaughter house too. Maybe she can stay with you.”

Hawk looked at me and said again, “Haw.”

“Okay, it was just a thought.”

“She belong in the joint,” Hawk said. “Or in the funny farm.”

“Yeah, probably. But I’m not going to put her there.”

“Somebody will.”

“Yeah.”

“And she might do somebody in ‘fore they do.”

“Yeah. ”You crazy, Spenser. You know that. You crazy.“

“Yeah.” 

The Thames was glistening and firm below us as Susan and I stood on Westminster Bridge. My left arm was still in a cast and I was wearing my classic blue blazer with four brass buttons on the, cuff, draped over my shoulders like David Niven. I could get the cast through my shirt sleeve but not through the coat. Susan had on a white dress with dark blue polka dots all over it. She had a wide white belt around her waist and white sling high-heeled shoes. Her bare arms were tan and her black hair glistened in the English twilight. We were leaning on the railing looking down at the water. I wasn’t wearing a gun. I could smell her perfume. “Ah,” I said, “this sceptered isle, this England.” Susan turned her face toward me, her eyes invisible behind her enormous opaque sunglasses. There were faint parenthetical smile lines at her mouth and they deepened as she looked at me. “We have been here for about three hours,” she said. “You have sung `A Foggy Day in London Town,‘ `A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square,’ `England Swings Like a Pendulum Do,‘ `There’ll Be Blue Birds Over the White Cliffs of Dover.’ You have quoted Samuel Johnson, Chaucer, Dickens and Shakespeare.”

“True,” I said. “I also assaulted you in the shower at the hotel.”

“Yes.”

“Where would you like to eat dinner?”

“You say,” she said. “Post Office Tower.”

“Isn’t that kind of touristy?”

“What are we, residents?”

“You’re right. The tower it is.”

“Want to walk?”

“Is it far?”

“Yes.”

“Not in these shoes, then.”

“Okay, we’ll take a cab. I got a lot of bread. Stick with me, babe, and you’ll be wearing ermine.” I gestured to a cab. He stopped. We climbed in and I gave him the address. “Hawk wouldn’t take half the money?” Susan said. In the cab she rested her hand lightly on my leg. Would the driver notice if I assaulted her in the cab? Probably. I said, “Nope. He gave me a bill for his expenses and the fee for his time. It’s his way of staying free. As I said, he has rules.”

“And Kathie?” I shrugged, and my jacket slipped off my shoulders. Susan helped me slip it back on. “Dixon got her released and we never saw her. She never went back to the rented house. I haven’t seen her since.”

“I think you were wrong to let her go. She’s not someone who should be walking around loose.”

“You’re probably right,” I said. “But she got to be one of us. I couldn’t be the one to put her away. When you come down to it, Hawk shouldn’t be running loose either.”

“I suppose not. So how do you decide?” I started to shrug again, remembered my jacket, and stopped. “Sometimes I guess, sometimes I trust my instincts, sometimes I don’t care. I do what I can.” She smiled. “Yes, you do,” she said. “I noticed that at the hotel while I was trying to shower. Even with one arm. ”