I reached the top of the hill. For a moment I must have been outlined against the sky. Because, suddenly, the night was torn by a loud explosion that echoed. And I heard something whistle by me.
I drove myself over the peak and found a hard, flat path. I started racing down it like a fool, clearly visible. In the bright moonlight. I don’t know what I had in mind. Maybe getting distance between Steig and me. My legs trembled as I ran, they felt as if they were ready to collapse.
Another shot. It kicked up dirt by me and sent me plunging to the right. I couldn’t see where.
My footing was gone. I found myself sliding and clawing down a steep embankment covered with shrubbery. My hands tried to find something to stop my rapid and helpless descent but I got only friction burns. My body kept rubbing and banging against earth and rocks and bushes.
At the bottom of the drop, I turned a complete somersault and landed on my side with a violent impact.
Only fear got me up. My breath was gone. It felt as if it had been ripped from my lungs. My side ached sharply. Every limb ached. Only a force of survival could have kept me moving. I started across the ground, in a hollow so deep that a hill kept most of it in dark shadow.
I heard something overhead and I stopped dead. I thought that if I were silent he might think the fall had killed me.
I looked up and, on the crest of the embankment, saw his big form outlined. He was looking down. I held my breath.
He stooped down for support and started climbing down.
I turned and ran. Shrubbery whipped past me, clawing at me like maniacal arms. Branches flailed at my face and body. My chest ached. I breathed through a wide open mouth.
Then Steig lost his grip. I stopped and whirled. I couldn’t see but I heard him clawing his way down the embankment and landing heavily. Silence. I waited. Was it possible he’d been knocked out? I waited, trying to hear something beside my own breathless, whistling gasps.
He was moving again.
I turned with a whimper and started running again. He was still coming. Slower but still coming. He must have been deranged. It was all I could think of. No man could be so intent on killing and be in his right mind. His thick, Teutonic brain was devoid of everything but murderous hate.
I ran into the embankment. And, gasping, looked up to see that I was trapped, blocked by an almost perpendicular wall of earth and bush. No way out but back or sideways. I had no idea how small the hollow was. And if I ran sideways I’d be running out into the spotlight of the moon. I felt a panic-stricken cry tear at my throat. Help! I wanted to scream it. But who was there to hear? At least I didn’t lose my mind that badly.
I heard Steig stumbling through the brush. It was like one of those crazy dreams where no matter how ingenuously you hide yourself, your pursuer finds you without any trouble. As if he knew where you were at every moment. That’s what I felt about Steig.
In a brainless fright, I spun around and started to pull myself up the sheer incline. Some of the bushes I held on to slipped out and I grabbed out for more. I half-climbed, half-pulled myself up by my aching arms. I was closer now. I dug my feet into the earth and lurched up the embankment for a way.
I stopped dead and hung there against the earth trying to be absolutely quiet as Steig came bursting through the shrubbery and stood at the bottom of the rise.
I clenched my teeth. The breaths caught and almost choked me. My heart was hammering violently. Was it possible he didn’t see me? I didn’t know then that he’d lost his glasses in his fall and couldn’t see much of anything.
Then dirt trickled down from under my feet and it silted through the air, down on Steig. I twisted my neck to look down. I could see the dark, shapeless hulk of him down there. He was looking up, I was sure. It was an insane picture. A half sightless killer ready to fire bullets into my body and me clinging to the side of a hill no more than twenty-five feet above him. Wondering if he could see me. Thinking, momentarily, that Jim had won his victory.
Steig started to climb up.
It was no use going on, I knew that. The hill got steeper and steeper as it went up until it was vertical with the trees and bushes growing out sideways. I couldn’t take it. I was too exhausted. I’d slip and fall. He’d be able to see me.
My mind felt all jumbled and thick as I tried to think of some way to defend myself. I had to have a weapon. A stick, a rock, anything. My eyes fled around, squinting.
I saw one. A big rock. It was perched precariously to my right. My hand touched it, then I had to pull it back quickly to get support.
I reached for the rock again. I lost balance and had to throw myself against the dirt, slapping for support. The dislodged dirt slid down on Steig. He didn’t say anything but kept climbing methodically. I could hear his breathing now, thick, whistling breaths. He was an animal with a quest. Insensitive and mute, he climbed up to kill me. Crawling fear covered my flesh.
I edged over quickly and my fingers touched the cool stone surface. I almost jarred it loose. My heart leaped at the sensation of complete terror in me. I felt as if my hands would freeze, my whole body be struck with paralysis and I would just be stricken there until he came up to me, put the barrel of the gun against my body and pulled the trigger.
The breathing. Closer. Coming up at me. My lips drew back in an uncontrolled gasp of horror. There was no time. No time! My mind howled the words. He had heard me, I knew he’d heard me. In a matter of seconds he would be able to see me despite shadow, despite impaired sight. He was almost to the point where his hands touched my feet.
I lurched over, slipped and caught onto a heavy root with one hand, to the rock with the other. I pressed my body against the rock and looked down. My feet slipped and I hung down loosely a moment before I found a foot support. I tested the support with frantic haste. I had to have both hands free.
I froze rigid. Steig was just below me. He’d stopped climbing. He was reaching into his pocket as he squinted up. It was so still I could hear his fumbling hands on his trouser leg.
I grabbed onto the rock and tried to turn. The scuttling sound made him throw up his arm. An explosion surrounded me and I felt a hot flame gouge through the flesh on my right shoulder.
It must have been the pain that did it. Because I suddenly forgot about balance. I just grabbed onto the rock and started falling down toward Steig.
He threw up his gun again with a guttural cry as my dark body came heaving down on him.
He had no chance to fire. I held the rock before me and drove it violently into his face and we both went flopping down the hill like broken dolls. I grabbed out for support as we fell and managed to grab onto a bush and cling there as his body went all the way down and landed with a single hollow thud.
Silence.
I hung on a long time, my chest shuddering as I breathed. Then, finally, when I’d stopped the terrible shaking a little, I eased myself down the hill to where he was.
I stood over the body.
His face was in moonlight which made it even whiter. It was crushed in.
The sight of it made me gag and turn away. I stood with my back to him, shuddering uncontrollably. Steig’s left arm was twisted out of shape too. He’d been climbing that hill after me with a broken arm.
***
I don’t know how I found my way back to the car. I was sick and I was exhausted. My legs trembled under me. I shivered from the cold wind. I kept wiping the sweat off my face and neck as I stumbled through the wilderness.
I got lost for a while but finally I spotted the headlights still shining and heard the rumbling of the Cadillac’s motor. Mine had stalled.
I climbed into the Ford and slumped down on the seat. I pulled the door shut and turned out the light and turned off the ignition switch. Then I lay down on the cool seat cover, pressing my cheek against it, gasping for breath. I turned on my back with my legs bent up.
I must have fallen asleep or into an exhausted coma for more than an hour. I jerked up quickly, eyes staring aro
und me and I didn’t remember what had happened for a good minute. Then I straightened up with a groan. My body was sore and aching. Every bone felt bruised, every inch of skin either torn or scratched.
It took a while to back out of the soft earth. I went backwards around the fence, into the stable area again. I left the Cadillac still running, its lights on. I swung my car around and headed back for town.
I went up Sunset and then down Chatauqua to the coast highway. I stopped at a bar and called Jones and told him about Steig and told him I was going back to my room. He asked me to come in but I hung up. I was too tired. I went back to the car. I just wanted to go to bed and forget everything.
I drove slowly up the canyon and down Seventh Street. I turned left at Wilshire and parked across the street from my room. I unlocked the door and stumbled across the room in darkness.
In the light of the bulb I saw my face in the medicine cabinet mirror. It was puffy and scratched. I gritted my teeth in pain. I drew open my torn shirt and looked at the thin line of blood-caked flesh where the bullet had gouged. I drew in a pained breath. Then I stared at the mirror and felt a burst of insane rage in me. I felt rage at Steig and wanted to kill him again. I wished I had Jim alone too. The same rock in my hand.
“Son of a bitch!” I snarled at the mirror, at the world. “Dirty, lousy son of a bitch!”
“So he failed,” said Jim Vaughan.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I whirled and stared at my bed.
He was sitting there in the shadows, hat and top coat on.
“Where is he?” he asked.
I started for him, then stopped as he leveled the gun at me.
“Don’t come any closer, David,” he said, “or I’ll take the pleasure of putting a slug in your belly.”
I gaped at him. Sickness hit me again. I’d just escaped from death. Was I to be asked to face it again? I don’t know whether I was afraid or outraged at the turn of events. I think it was more outrage. Fear had been so much in me that there wasn’t any left. I had to concentrate to realize that I might die now too.
“Well?” he asked.
“He’s dead,” I said. “I killed him.”
Surprise on his face a moment. The slightest of consternation. Then a flicker of amusement. Even now Jim could force upon himself the pose of detached bystander.
“Dead,” he said. “So, at long last, you are also guilty of murder.”
“Murder,” I said. “You speak of murder.”
“Indeed,” he said, smiling deceptively, “I’m quite versed on the subject.”
He was drunk. I hadn’t realized it at first. That smile, the slightly, almost imperceptibly disheveled appearance. The tie knot slightly off center, the hair slightly uncombed, the hat at the minutest wrong angle. All added up. I remembered how Jim had been at college the few times he’d been drunk. He’d been quite unpredictable. And this time he had a gun in his hand. And hate for me.
And I remembered something else, too. Me refusing to go down to the station to see Jones. He must have known that Jim would be after me. Now it was too late.
“I know you’re versed on the subject,” I said, my mind tripping over itself in the attempt to find an escape, “well versed.”
He gave me a look of dispassionate criticism.
“So the poor, bungling kraut finally found his peace,” he said. “And to think it was at your hands. The hands of a dull, indefinite pacifist. The young American idealist, the writer of novels, the seeker of truths…”
He kept rattling on. There was a reddish tint in his cheeks. And a light in his eyes that wasn’t there normally. I let him rattle. I hoped he’d rattle himself to sleep.
I moved for my chair.
“Careful, careful,” he warned, breaking off his bantering continuity.
“I’m not trying anything,” I said, disgustedly. “Do I look like I’m in any condition to try anything?”
“You look like something three cats dragged in,” he said. He lowered the gun.
I wondered what he was planning. He might have been confused; it was just possible. I don’t think he knew what to do. He wanted me dead but the idea of personally committing murder had never occurred to him, I’m sure. That fell in the province of menial labor. But he might change his mind.
Except for one thing. My mind seized on it. Steig had done those killings. I was sure of that. And now Steig was dead. And there was no one who could prove Jim was involved. He was clear. I think even he realized that.
“So poor, benighted Steig, Kaiser Wilhelm’s beloved warrior, Chicago’s beloved killer and navigator of getaway cars, is dead. We bow our heads for Walter Steig, victim of society’s perverseness.”
His face grew cold, the humor drained from him in an instant.
“I never trusted the fool. He was a lunk-head.”
Amusement back.
“It must have been the climate that got him,” he said.
He stopped talking and looked at me. He raised the gun.
“I should shoot you,” he said, “now, while the opportunity is here.”
A car motor. Headlights coming to the curb. I saw them out of the corner of my eye. My heart thudding. Was it Jones? And, if it was, would he come thudding up or the porch?
It was fortunate that Jim was drunk. Otherwise he surely would have heard the car door slamming, the footsteps on the porch, the shadowy figure that stopped outside of the screen window.
“Now that you’re going to kill me,” I said, “you can tell me about your murdering of Albert and Dennis.”
He looked at me with that thin, supercilious smile on his lips. The light reflected off his polished, rimless glasses.
“You had them killed, didn’t you?” I said, hoping that there was no sign of eagerness in my voice.
His face sobered.
“Of course I did,” he said. “They both stood in my way.”
“Albert?” I said.
“He attacked her,” he said.
“And Dennis?”
It seemed too good to be true. A confession in the hearing of a police lieutenant.
“Why go on?” he said. He raised his gun and pointed it at me.
“And now a third victim?” I said.
Jim didn’t point the gun at me. He just let it hang loosely in his hand.
“Who knows?” he said.
“You can put down that gun now,” Jones said from the window.
Vaughan twitched a little. But he didn’t turn. He seemed to listen a moment as if waiting for Jones to say something else. Then that smile came to his lips again.
He seemed too drunk, too emotionally exhausted to feel fright.
“Trapped,” he said.
Then Jones took Jim Vaughan away.
I rushed over to Peggy and told her and we decided to drive down to Tijuana the next day. When she saw my bruised, swollen face and the torn gully in the flesh of my shoulder she cried terribly and couldn’t help me bandage it.
We packed her clothes and then I went back to my room and packed some things for myself. My shoulder throbbed and I felt exhausted but I was at peace.
I slept that night. I turned out the light without dread. The end of it, I figured, closing my eyes.
No.
***
Because the next day after I’d gone to a doctor, after I’d picked up a wedding ring, after I’d bought a bottle of champagne to open that night, I found a note slipped under my door.
I opened it.
At first I couldn’t believe it. It seemed too cruel a joke.
The letterhead was Santa Monica Police and the message said that…
I drove as fast as I could up Wilshire. I wheeled around the corner of 15th and jerked to a stop in front of Peggy’s house.
I ran in the open door.
She whirled in fright as I entered. Her fingers clenched on the dress she was holding.
“Davie! What is it?”
“Are you finished packing?” I asked quickly. “We have t
o get out of here right away.”
“Why?”
I handed her the note. She looked at it. Then looked up at me, her eyes frightened.
“Jim?” she said.
The note said that Jones hadn’t shown up yet.
My car raced down Lincoln. Every time I hit a red light I thought it was a plot. My eyes stayed fastened to the road ahead. I wasn’t going to the police. I didn’t want to stay in town. I wanted to get out fast.
I remember looking out the rear view mirror.
But I didn’t notice anything. Because, without thinking, I was only looking for a black Cadillac.
***
Tijuana. A five hour drive. Dirty and almost wordless, with me looking at the rear view mirror. With Peggy sitting close by me and glancing at me in fear every once in a while.
We stood side by side in the little place and I slipped the ring on Peggy’s finger. It felt wrong though. As if I were being forced into it. As if we really weren’t sure but had to go through with it. Inevitable. There was nothing casual, nothing leisurely or pleasant. The nerve-wracking aspect of a man following to kill me. And if I felt uneasiness at the haste of the wedding, Peggy felt it twice as much.
“What is it?” I asked.
For the last ten miles she’d been staring ahead glumly at the highway. She shook her head.
“What is it?” I asked again.
She tried to smile and press my hand reassuringly.
“Nothing,” she said.
“Tell me.”
She shrugged.
“Oh…”
“I guess I know,” I said. “The wedding. The way we’re rushing. It isn’t what we’d hoped for. It doesn’t seem like a wedding at all.”
“I…” she started. “I guess it’s because it reminds me of my first wedding. The same rushing and… I was even more scared then.”
“Scared?”
“Of him. Of… my… of George.”