The Rocketeer (16 page)

The radio was tuned in to Peevy’s favorite dramatic show,
The Shadow,
and when Lament Cranston gave that famous evil laugh, Peevy couldn’t help but imitate it with a fiendish “Mwaaa-ha-ha.”

The Shadow. All those guys from pulp fiction. Peevy had always considered that stuff to be pabulum, but now he wasn’t so sure. Seeing Cliff airborne like that, doing things no one would have dreamed possible—it was like something out of those magazines that Street & Smith published. Hell, for all he knew, Doc Savage had invented the blamed rocket pack. Sure seemed like something the Man of Bronze might create. If the rocket pack was real, maybe Doc was real too. Any minute now, a couple of his guys—Monk and Ham most likely—would come pounding through the door, demanding it back . . .

And then he heard a creaking from the back of the house.

His imagination already fired up, and fully aware that Cliff always came in through the front, Peevy was immediately on his feet. He grabbed the rocket with one hand and a ball-peen hammer in the other. If it was Cliff, and Peevy was prepared for trouble, he’d look like an old fool. But if it wasn’t Cliff, and Peevy wasn’t prepared for trouble, then he’d
be
an old fool.

“Cliff?” he called out.

Another creak, a heavy footstep, and a massive hand smashed in through the outside kitchen door.

With a yelp, Peevy dashed into the living room, clutching the rocket pack to his chest. He looked around frantically, trying to find someplace to hide it. And he knew why he was going to hide it too. Because if it was the feds, they would have announced themselves. They always blared out, “This is the FBI, come out with your hands up.” If someone was plowing their way into the house unidentified, chances were they weren’t going to be playing by the niceties of the law. They wanted the rocket pack, and they might just kill everyone involved once they had it.

Which meant that Peevy’s sole shot at living long enough to give Cliff a good pounding for getting him into all this was to stash the rocket pack.

They’d look in the closet. They’d look under the couch. And there was nowhere else . . .

Except . . .

Cliff pulled up on his motorcycle and parked it just inside the driveway. Taking the newspapers under his arm—he’d found a copy of every one on the stands, including some in languages he didn’t understand—he started up toward the porch.

It was then that he heard a heavy crash, the breaking of furniture, and glass shattering inside. Immediately Cliff dropped everything and lunged for the doorknob.

“Peevy!” he shouted, pulling on the doorknob. Locked. He continued to pound on it, push on it, pull on it. Nothing.

Peevy picked himself up from the floor as the massive shadow loomed over him. He was still clutching the ball-peen hammer and the feisty mechanic hurled it, like Thor the thunder god flinging his mighty war hammer at attacking frost giants.

This giant ducked the hammer effortlessly. It sailed past his head and bashed into a mirror on the wall, sending glass across the living room.

Seven years bad luck! Damn!
flashed giddily through the mechanic’s mind, even as he backed up toward the fireplace, looking around for a weapon. He started to make a motion for the poker, and the giant moved in that direction, but it was a fakeout. Instead, Peevy grabbed a large air race trophy from the mantel and threw it like a harpoon, like Ahab defying Moby Dick.

The great whale of a human being was struck squarely between the eyes with a satisfying thump. Peevy waited for the monstrous intruder to sag to the floor, unconscious, or at least fading fast, so that he could then make a dash for it. He heard Cliff’s pounding outside and shouting. On the one hand, he was happy that Cliff was there to help. On the other hand, he was concerned that Cliff was going to get himself killed.

The latter seemed the more likely, for the giant, his back against the front door, was shaking off the effects of the heavy trophy. It hadn’t even sent him to one knee. A second later his head had cleared, and he smiled coldly at Peevy.

But the shouting from outside was getting distracting, and besides, it might be someone who could help out with gathering information. The giant suddenly turned the doorknob and yanked the front door open.

In hurtled Cliff with such speed that Peevy realized the flier had just now been charging the door, ready to knock it down with his shoulder. Instead, deprived of a target, he stumbled in, and the giant put a meaty paw on his shoulder and added to his forward motion. He hurtled across the carpet and landed on a coffee table.

Peevy leapt forward, landing squarely on the giant’s back. The huge thug reached around and grabbed Peevy’s collar as the mechanic pounded with utter futility on the massive back, doing more damage to his own fists than to the intruder. The giant flipped Peevy aside like a poker chip. Peevy landed in an easy chair with such force that the chair, and Peevy, toppled backward from the impact.

The giant turned back toward Cliff, who was just trying to get to his feet. He grabbed Cliff by the face and, for the second time that day, Cliff left the ground through the force of a superior power. The giant held him high in the air and shook him like a rag doll, the flier’s feet dangling above the carpet.

“Where is it
?” snarled Lothar.

Cliff’s voice was muffled since the giant’s hand was covering his face, and Lothar readjusted his grip so that Cliff could at least see and speak. But he couldn’t breathe any too well, and he was still hanging several feet above the carpet. Insanely, Cliff noticed that the ceiling needed cleaning.

“Where’s what?” gasped the pilot.

“The rocket!” rumbled Lothar.

Cliff actually had no idea. He had assumed it would be on the kitchen table or someplace out in the open. It would—

His eyes widened as, just past Lothar’s shoulder, he saw the rocket pack.

It was sitting on an end table with a very nice fringed shade atop it, and looked for all the world like an art deco lamp. Through pure audacity and a degree of luck—Cliff had accidentally broken the lamp that went with the shade just last week, and Peevy hadn’t gotten around to fixing it, so it was sitting stuck in a closet somewhere—Peevy had managed to hide the thing in plain sight.

Cliff forced a ragged smile. “Sure you’ve got the right house?” he asked.

Snarling, Lothar shoved Cliff upward, slamming his head through the lath and plaster ceiling. Powder fell all around him and Cliff coughed and thought he was going to pass out. Peevy started to pull himself up from behind the easy chair, and it was at that moment that they were all suddenly transfixed by the glare of headlights coming in through the windows.

“Secord!” came a shouted voice. “Peabody! Open up! FBI!”

The giant hurled Cliff aside and drew twin .45s from within his jacket. Without hesitation he started firing through the windows and doors.

Cliff, to his horror, heard the thud of a falling body on the porch, and he saw shadows in the headlights diving and running for cover. Seconds later there was the sound of return fire, and bullets ripped through the windows, chewing up the walls and furniture.

The giant ran out of the living room and Cliff crawled across the floor to Peevy, shouting, “We gotta get outta here!”

“Let’s just surrender!” Peevy yelled back.

“Aw, great idea, Peev!” screamed Cliff. “The rocket pack we could just make like we found, but that palooka was shootin’ at them! They’ll never believe it wasn’t us! They’ll put us away for a hundred years!”

Cliff looked at him expectantly, and Peevy tried desperately to figure out what was the right thing to do—right meaning the way that was least likely to get them shot or jailed.

Into the kitchen ran Lothar, not weighed down by any concerns heavier than putting distance between himself and the feds.

He paused only a moment, his attention caught by the diagram on the kitchen table. He grabbed it and glanced at it. He couldn’t begin to understand it, but it looked important, and that was enough for him to shove it into his pocket. Then he turned and headed for the back door.

Agent Wolinski had made it around back while Fitch and the others had run to safer cover behind their cars.

Finding out the names and backgrounds of the occupants of 1635 Palm Terrace had been a snap. But the thing was, there was nothing in the backgrounds of either Secord or Peabody to indicate that they would put up this kind of resistance. They had no record of any kind. Where did they get this kind of hardware, not to mention the sheer nerve to engage in a shootout with the FBI? It didn’t make sense.

But Wooly was convinced that he would have his answer in a moment. While they were preoccupied with a defense of the front, he would come in the back and—

—and that was the moment that the door burst free of the frame. It slammed Wooly to the ground, knocking the wind out of him as Lothar pounded across the door and down a nearby alleyway.

Wooly waited for the world to stop spinning, and was about to rise from under the door when two more sets of feet came stomping across it. This time the gun was knocked from Wooly’s hand, and he lay there, dazed and helpless, as Cliff and Peevy—carrying the helmet and rocket—jumped a hedge and disappeared into the darkness.

T
he South Seas Club was, quite simply, the hottest spot in town. Huge palm trees festooned the orange and white exterior, which had a series of porthole windows in the facade, and the words
South Seas Club
blinked on and off in intermittent neon flashes on a large overhead sign. Stunning women in sarongs placed leis around the necks of various entering Hollywood gentry, whose admission was carefully monitored by tuxedoed doormen. Photographers and autograph hounds jockeyed each other for position at the velvet rope barricade, rubbernecking each new arrival.

A black limousine rolled up to the curb and a uniformed valet immediately hopped forward to open the door. There was a cheer from the crowd as Neville Sinclair stepped from the car, turned, and extended his arm. Jenny emerged with the beauty of Botticelli’s Venus emerging from the clam shell. She was a bit more elaborately clothed than Venus, however, wearing a stunning evening gown so clinging that it looked as if it had been painted onto her. She looked around in wonder, her fantasy of an evening on the town being played out before her very eyes. She had wondered if this evening could be everything she had hoped. It never occurred to her that it could be more.

Sinclair’s fans were shoving autograph books, napkins, body parts, everything they could at him for the purpose of getting his signature. One book was shoved into Jenny hands, and automatically she turned to pass it to Sinclair. And then, to her shock, the autograph hound shouted, “Not him, doll,
you
!”

Her face lit up. She couldn’t believe it. Almost numb with delight, she scribbled her name and drew the signature heart around it. Her first autograph. She handed it back to him and he said, “Thank you!”

“Oh, thank you!” she said with a blinding smile, and then was swept into the nightclub by Sinclair.

The autograph hound, in the meantime, stared down at the signature. “Jenny Blake! Aw, nuts! Who in Sam Hill is Jenny Blake? I thought she was Paulette Goddard!” And with disgust he ripped the autograph out of his book and tossed it away, then turned back to watch for Hollywood types of more importance to come in.

Fortunately out of earshot, Jenny was inside the club. The decor was deco/tropical, with full-size palms and glowing lanterns. Sarong-clad cocktail girls walked past wearing gardenias in their hair. All around were pools of rippling water reflecting shimmering patterns. Incredibly, a woman dressed beautifully as a mermaid sat in a circular aquarium, smiling in a sultry manner to passersby.

At the moment, up on the stage, the orchestra was playing a lilting rendition of, of all things, “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” with a stunning female vocalist standing in the midst of a giant clam shell and doing a very sultry rendition of it. For a moment it reminded Jenny that the previous night, that song had been playing on her radio just before she’d gone out on what was probably her final date with Cliff.

Now, why the devil couldn’t she get him out of her mind? She forced his image away and instead smiled engagingly at Sinclair, who in turn smiled back and maneuvered her through the crowd with practiced ease.

The moment they were seated at their table, Jenny’s eyes opened wide as a familiar gentleman with an equally familiar martini in one hand approached. “Neville, you old scoundrel!” he bellowed. “Fall off any chandeliers lately?”

“Hello, Bill,” said Sinclair with genuine fondness. “Miss Jenny Blake, may I introduce Mr. W. C. Fields?”

Fields took her hand, gallantly clicking his heels. “Charmed, my dear,” he said silkily, and rather obviously allowed his gaze to linger on her cleavage. “Doubly charmed.”

Jenny tried not to laugh at the overtness of the comment. Fields was so obviously lewd that it couldn’t be taken seriously . . . she thought. And then, to her surprise, she noticed that Sinclair was having something whispered in his ear by a rather odd-looking man. Sinclair nodded, then turned and said, “Forgive me, Jenny. I’ve received an urgent call. I won’t be a moment. Bill, look after the young lady.”