Too Many Crooks (22 page)

"How much of this did you hear, Lieutenant?"

"A little. Some of the others heard it all. It doesn't mean anything yet."

"It will."

"It better." He sighed. "I don't suppose you could have pushed him."

"He jumped. You were coming in the door just as I tried to grab him—you must have seen me try to stop him. You know why he jumped. Besides, he still had his gun in his hand. And my gun in his pocket. They'll both be down below. I could hardly have pushed him, considering that, Casey."

He sighed again. "Sit down there, Scott." He nodded toward the chair behind Baron's desk. "There'll be a stretcher here in a minute."

I sat down carefully, dizziness sweeping over me momentarily again. "Lieutenant, what about Norris and the rest? If they run—"

"One thing's sure: You won't be running. You're gonna be locked up for quite a spell, Scott. Maybe as long as you live. If you live."

"Maybe. You talking about Blake?"

He chewed on the inside of his lip, heavy-lidded eyes boring into me. "We looked in the car below, too. One of them was dead."

"I know it. But Carver wasn't really a cop, you know. Any more than Blake was. He was just a hired killer, trying to earn his pay this afternoon. Well, he got paid. Casey, he was no more a cop than I am. He just wore the uniform."

He swore violently. Then he stopped, looking at the oblong case on Baron's desk. "That damn thing still on?" he asked.

"Should be."

He stepped to it, quickly flipped the switch from "On" to "Off." He had undoubtedly seen the same kind of set before. He stared at it a moment, shaking his head, then crossed his arms over his chest, leaned against the desk, and stared at me. In another minute, men came in carrying a stretcher and, a minute later, they carried it out. With me on it.

There was a swarm of people in the hall. One of them, flanked by two husky officers, was Betty. She spoke to a policeman and he walked with her to my stretcher.

"Shell," she said shakily, "are you badly hurt?"

"Nope, I'm just tired. These fellows realize that, so they're carrying me." I grinned up at her. "Baby, you are the best of them all. I don't know how you managed it, but I knew you would."

The elevator was on its way up and we waited in front of it for a few seconds. She said, "It was perfect. They tried to stop me when they saw me up on the stand, but then the words started, just like turning on a radio. It started right when Baron was saying something about you wouldn't live to tell anybody. Everybody thought it was a joke of some kind at first, but then they understood, at least partly. Shell, are you really all right?"

"Yeah. He shot me a couple of times in the head, and it rocked me, but he missed my brain."

The elevator stopped and the door opened as she smiled softly. "You must be all right."

"Sure. I'll be up and around in a week." I thought of the cell I would assuredly be headed for as soon as I got out of the hospital and added, "At least I'll be up."

The boys carried me inside, and just before the doors closed Betty said, "I'll call to you from the women's wing."

We went down to the street. I shut my eyes, wondering what was still ahead, how I'd come out. There was a chance that if enough guys talked, I'd wind up outside the bars instead of inside. All I could do was wait, and hope I made it.

It was the sixteenth of September, and the papers later said it was the hottest September sixteenth in forty-two years. I imagine, if the statisticians had pursued their passion for figures a little further, they would have come up with the thrilling information that it was the hottest 2:33 p.m. on September sixteenth in several hundred years, because from where I sat, everything was heat waves.

A lot of this, of course, was due to Betty, because where I sat was on warm sand about fifteen yards from the surf's white edge, and less than two yards from where Betty lay flat on her stomach facing me. I was minus my mustache, my hair was short and white again, and I had been out of the clink for three weeks.

After getting out of the hospital, I'd been held for the preliminary hearing and arraigned. I'd pleaded not guilty, then been held for trial in superior court—and I had heard the jury say the words I'd figured I had only a fifty-fifty chance of hearing: "Not guilty." At least half of the jurors must either have heard the Red Cross "broadcast" or read all the details in Betty's story in the
Star
, which story practically monopolized conversation for miles around for a week, or so I heard. I also heard that the Red Cross got a lot of blood.

Anyway, the jury, most members of which must have hated my guts a few weeks before, was out only two hours. There was the "Not guilty," and a scramble of reporters for phones, and a stern tongue-lashing by the judge somewhere in there, and then I took off. I hadn't been charged with murder in the first degree, because there'd been so much singing by Norris and Dorothy Craig and a dozen others that the charge wouldn't have stood up with props, but even the charge of murder in the second was behind me now. And Betty was dead-ahead.

Norris and some of his hoods were in jail: Dorothy Craig, too, and Ferris Gordon, the lawyer, plus a few heretofore respected members of the city council and city planning commission, and the city engineer, who was to have greased Baron's rezoning application. Most of them pleaded not guilty, and were awaiting trial. I hadn't got to bash Norris's face in, but I'd get in some licks at him during his trial, which was probably better in the long run. And, of course, Dane's phony will was obviously phony now, and Dane's property would go to his ex-wife and kid, as he'd wanted. Seacliff was settling down, getting back to normal.

Betty said, "You're awfully quiet, darling."

"Just thinking back. Which is foolish. From now on, I'll think ahead. Covering the next half hour, say."

She smiled, her lower lip pouting a bit. "Make it the next hour and I'll join you." She scooted close to me and lifted her face in a gesture that was familiar to me now. I bent down and kissed her, put my arms around her as she pulled me close. The sun seemed to get even warmer for a minute or two, then Betty leaned back and said slowly, "Let's take another swim, Shell. A short one. Wash off the sand, and get a little coolish. Then we'll come back here."

I kissed her nose. "Sounds like an interesting idea."

"You know it is. At least you should."

She was right, of course. Betty, lately, had been full of interesting ideas. We got to our feet and walked out toward the white combers breaking and boiling in toward the sand, my arm around Betty's waist. Just before she broke away from me and ran laughing into the water, I looked around once more.

We were on a deserted strip of beach a few miles out of Seacliff. We'd been here before. It seemed likely we'd be here again. Betty stood facing me with the water swirling around her hips, shouting something and then blowing me a kiss. I ran toward her. I was fresh out of aches and pains, and it was good to be alive. Especially here in the sun.

And it was especially good with Betty.