John D. MacDonald

Murder Run-Around

Chapter One

Death for Three

As he had expected, it was no trick to buy a gun in Mexico City. The plane from San Antonio had towered high over the flat dryness until at last the Sierra Madre, jutting steeply up from tropical slopes, reached toward the belly of the plane and the motors droned a new song.

He had been by the window, and, except for the upholstery, except for his quiet business suit instead of battle dress, it was like that dawn four years before when, at the jump master’s signal, he had snapped onto the static line, tested, moved toward the door, hand on the shoulder of the man in front of him, fear tight in his throat. Then the whip of the slip stream, the jar of the harness, the pendulum swing down through three hundred feet of tracer fire...

This was very different, and yet somehow the same.

When he shut his eyes he could see the outline of a gun that would fit his hand, a grip that would jar solidly back against the heel of his hand with each shot, sending the faint impact through wrist and elbow to shoulder.

And he could see three faces. The wide florid face of August Brikel, with salesman’s smile and eyes like flecks of polished flint. The bird-face of Gowan Teed, with flat hard forehead, sharply pointed nose, greenish eyes constantly in motion. And of course, Laena Severence. Hair the precise shade of ancient and invaluable ivory — a rich gold-white — contrasting with the dark brows. Flare of nostrils, sway of cheekbones, lips of subtle savagery.

He wondered how it would feel to kill a woman. Would you feel forever soiled? Impact of slug on dancer’s body.

After he checked in at a small hotel near Alameda Park, he used the daylight hours to find the gun. He avoided the shops of Juarez and Madera, took a taxi down to the Plaza de la Merced. There he found what he wanted. It was a .38 Special with the barrel sawed short, and the front sight removed. He tucked it inside the waistband of his trousers and went back to the hotel. It was not a gun for long-range work, but it satisfied Brendon Harris. He wanted to be close. Very close.

He sat on the bed with the gun beside him. He looked at his turista card. “Motivo del viaje” — purpose of the trip. “Recreo” — Recreation. The smile strained his lips. Maybe it was recreation. Maybe it would be the most delightful recreation he had ever enjoyed. Tomorrow he would look for them. And tomorrow he would find them.

Dusk had turned to night. He opened the shutters and looked down on the noisy brawling traffic. The lights of the Del Prado shone on the other side of the park. He decided that on this first night here he would go out alone...

At eleven o’clock he walked slowly down a block of luxury. The Reforma on the corner, Nick’s bar close by, a plush nitery on the other side, a swank restaurant beyond that. He was a big man with square hands and coarse brown hair that wouldn’t respond to brush or comb. There was, about him, a look of controlled force, of energy held in check, a hint of ruthlessness.

During the evening he had drunk in many places, but sparingly and cautiously. In one little bar there had been a man at a piano, a girl sitting alone on a stool at the bar. For a moment he had wanted a girl beside him during this evening. But when he looked at her carefully, he saw the puffiness around her eyes, the liquorglaze, the hand uncertain with the match, and he turned away.

In the restaurant he sat at the counter, ate ham and eggs and drank two tarros of the strong black draught beer. He left the place, yawning, half-willing to go back to the hotel. He walked away from Reforma, turned a corner to the left, and stopped as though he had run into an invisible wall.

The place was called El Torero, A small blue neon sign spelled out:

“Con Laena Severence.”

He remembered another club in another city in another country. Her name had been in lights there, too.

As he stood there two girls in short dresses, arm in arm, giggled as they brushed by him, turned to look at him and giggle again, calling out something in Spanish which he could not understand.

He took a breath so deep that it made his lungs ache. He walked to the doorway of El Torero, pushed by the deep red curtain that hung just inside the door. The bar was at the left, the tables directly ahead, with dance floor and tiny orchestra playing Cuban music beyond the tables. As the waiter stepped up to him, Harris motioned toward the bar. He went to the end of the bar nearest the dance floor, where he saw an empty stool.

The bartender spoke English. Harris ordered a scotch and water and asked when Laena Severence would dance again. In fifteen minutes.

He sat with his back to the bar and sipped his drink as he looked around the small club. It was nearly full. There was a sprinkling of turistas, but most of the clientele was Mexican. Against the far wall, two over-dressed American women in their late forties were using shrill schoolgirl Spanish on the two sleek young men accompanying them. On the floor, a vastly drunken Britisher was attempting to dance with a slim Mexican girl. The hot fierce rhythm of the music was as stirring as a scream in the night.

When he was on his second drink, his lips faintly numbed, his reflexes a shade slow, a man in a white mess jacket pulled a mike out in front of the band and a chord of music cleared the floor. The sidelights dimmed and a blood-red spot shone on the M.C.

The Spanish was like the sputter of firecrackers. The crowd laughed. Then Harris caught the name of Laena Severence. The crowd applauded. The man dragged the mike to one side and the spotlight moved to pick her up as she came through a side door, onto the floor.

Brendon Harris felt the old and familiar tightness in his throat. Her hair was longer. She wore a tight silver bandeau and a shimmering silver skirt that almost touched the floor. It was V cut in front like a harem-dancer’s skirt. The drum alone picked up the rhythm and, as always, she danced without the faintest shade of expression on her face, contorting her body into postures of angular gracelessness that were somehow more enticing than any amount of grace would have been. Her magic stilled the last whisper in the room.

As the drum beat quickened, as the dance grew more abandoned, the thin clear clarinet picked up an oriental counterpoint, a wail that had in it all of the sorrow and poignancy of the East. At the.climax of the dance she spun like a silver top. Then, on the last, almost physical blow of the music, with a stamp of her bare feet, she stopped, head thrown back, feet spread, clenched fists raised. The roar of applause was like the crash of a storm wave.

Her next number was pure Spanish, the costume, the castinets as crisp as the stamp of her metal-shod heels against the floor. In this number she was grace itself, holding the gun-fire of castinets over her head as she leaned back, spinning slowly, with a ballet dancer’s sureness.

The following dance was the one she had created, had done with so much success in the other club. The M.C. announced it and Harris knew that he was explaining to the crowd that Miss Severence was going to do her imitation of a very proper young girl from the country who goes to the city to become a great actress and is talked into trying to do a hula — to the great loss of her dignity.

Harris leaned against the bar and half shut his eyes. He could almost imagine that this was taking place back in the Corner Club. He watched her through the mists of memory. The dance was the same, with a howl of laughter greeting its finale.

That ended her turn. He borrowed paper, scribbled a note and handed it to a passing waiter along with a twenty-peso bill. He turned back to the bar and ordered his third drink. His fingers were cramped with the tightness with which he had held the glass as he watched her.

Her voice at his elbow was as much a part of him as his memories of childhood. “Bren,” she said. “Bren, darling.”

He turned slowly. The tinyness of her was always a new shock. Great gray eyes under the dark brows, face so delicate as to almost be too thin, framed by the lush and silky mass of the white-gold hair. She wore a black evening dress, the bodice supported only by two thin black cords attached to the black collar that encircled her slender throat.

The bulge of the gun was hard against his flat stomach. He could hold the muzzle against the front of the dress. Two shots would forever smash the dancer’s body. She read his eyes and he saw the shadow of fear, the tiny compression of lips.

“We can’t talk here, Bren. Come to a table. That one.”

She walked in front of him, her bare shoulders straight, her chin high. He was so much taller that he could look down onto the part in the white-gold hair, its clean white scalp.

He held the chair for her, then sat opposite her.

“Why did you come here, Bren?”

“It’s a very trite story, Laena. Sure you want to hear it?”

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“No doubt. Maybe seeing me makes you remember how easy it was for you to put so many stars in my eyes that I couldn’t see what was going on. Or maybe you’ve done that job so many times that you can’t even remember the names and faces. Who are you working on here? Another sucker like good old Bren Harris?”

“I have to know what you want, Bren,” she said tightly.

“She has to know what I want! Honey, you left before the fireworks started. But you know what happened.”

He held the gun in his hand, leveled it under the table. He wondered how her eyes would look — if he shot her in the stomach.

“Sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do, Bren.”

“Poor, abused little girl, forced to do nasty things by nasty men.”

Her voice had a small quaver in it. “You were a good memory, Bren. Don’t spoil it for me. There aren’t many... memories that are good.”

“Turn it on like a faucet, honey.”

“You hate me, don’t you, Bren?”

“Hate is a flavorless and colorless word for what I feel about you and your two partners.”

“Your eyes look... funny, Bren.”

“Maybe I’ve grown up too fast. That could be it. My brother Tommy and I had such big fat plans. And we had the seventy-thousand bucks my father left us. We talked about our plans in the barracks at night. You wouldn’t understand about that. And we walked in where angels fear to tread. We went into partnership with your two pals, Brikel and Gowan Teed.

“They convinced us they knew the ropes. Boy, they knew them all right! The Corner Club was going to be a combination of everything Tommy and I liked. When Brikel brought you in to dance for the people, Tommy and I loved it. I even thought I loved you. That’s silly to think of now, isn’t it?”

“If you say so, Bren.”

“You put the big stars in my eyes, honey, while your pals used the Corner Club as a front for peddling the shakes to a lot of miserable hopheads.” He dropped his napkin over the gun.

“There are things you don’t understand.”

“That I’m willing to admit, Laena. I didn’t understand why Brikel and Gowan Teed got jittery. I didn’t understand why those quiet little government men in dark suits were hanging around the club. I was too busy adoring you. It all went to hell when you pulled out without a note or a word to me.

“Tommy was the one who got the evidence on your friends. He wanted to save our investment. So like a damn fool he tried to bargain with your pals right after you left. They were to turn the place over to us and clear out. This is only a guess, you understand.”

“A guess? What does Tommy say?”

Harris stared at her for a long incredulous moment. Then he laughed harshly.

“For a minute, honey, you had me going. Brikel and Teed cleaned out the account. I was drinking too much because you had left. I was easy to manage. I woke up in Police Headquarters. They had had to use a stomach pump on me to drain out the liquor that your pals poured down my throat. It took me a long time to realize that they had found me in my apartment, dead to the world, with a gun in my hand and Tommy on the floor. Only he was really dead to the world. Did you get a big bang out of it when Brikel told you how he’d worked it?”

Her eyes widened. She held her clenched hand against the side of her mouth and said faintly, “No, Bren. Oh, no!”

“Oh, yes. And don’t get theatrical. Amateur acting turns my stomach.”

“But how did you...”

“Get out of it? They horsed around with me long enough to give Brikel and Teed a chance to use their plane reservations. They weren’t even citizens. You knew that. They’d been chased out of the country years before and had established citizenship in a nice understanding South American country and had smuggled themselves back in to set up a drop-off for their dope shipments, with me as the stooge.

“They took a wax test of my hand and proved that I hadn’t fired the gun. The war record helped me. They got me unraveled from the frame that Briket and Teed had set up. The property reverted to me. It just happened to be on a corner that a chain wanted. I still own the corner and I have a fat lease which pays me twenty-one thousand a year.”

“Why do you tell me that?”

“Because I want to brag a little. It cost me three thousand dollars for complete reports on you and August Brikel and Gowan Teed. Honey, I know when and where you drew your first breath. And two weeks ago the agency told me that all three of you are in Mexico City for an extended stay. Brikel and Teed are up here on visas. You are here on an immigrante basis. So I’m paying a friendly visit. For Tommy. He couldn’t come, you understand.”

“Bren, don’t talk like that. You don’t sound... well.”

“If you’re well, do you just forget it? Do you just talk about good ole Tommy and say that it’s too bad that they can’t extradite the killers? Do you just say that it’s a big rotten shame, or do you come down here and do something about it yourself?”

Her eyes narrowed. “What are you trying to say?”

“I’m trying to say that big jovial Brikel and birdy little Teed and Laena, the lush angel, have lived too long already. Don’t you think you’ve lived too long, darling?”

Her gray eyes were steady on his. “Yes, Bren. I do.”

“For what you helped do to Tommy?”

“You won’t believe me, so there’s no point in telling you that this is the first I’ve heard about him. You won’t believe me if I tell you that there is no personal or business relationship between me and Mr. Brikel and Mr. Teed. I ran out on you, Bren. I ran fast, because I hated myself and what I was doing to you. I tried to run away from you, Bren. But I brought you with me. In my heart.”

“Poetic, angel. Very, very poetic.”

She stood up quickly. Her lip curled. She said, “I go on again, soon. If you have a gun, Bren, I’ll walk away slowly. Make it quick, Bren. Very quick.”

She turned. She walked slowly. At the end of the dance floor, she turned and gave him one quick bitter stare. He was surprised to see the glint of tears.

Bren put the gun back in his waistband. The waiter brought a fresh drink. He remained at the table and watched her as he sipped the drink. In the middle of her second number, he shook his head slowly. The bright spotlight on her seemed to retreat to a vast distance as though he held a telescope reversed. The sound of the music set up counter-echoes in his head, fuzzing the rhythm, blurring the tempo.

He was conscious of faces turned toward him, of wise smiles. He tried to stand up but slumped back on the chair. His head was a stone, a weight too heavy to support. His forehead rested on the white tablecloth. A careless movement of his hand tipped over the dregs of the drink. He felt the coolness of it against his cheek...

...aircraft lurching in turbulent currents... he sat on the bucket seat with the grease gun across his knees... they sat opposite, August, Gowan and Laena... wise smiles... you have to jump soon, darling, Laena said... Soon, soon, sang August and Gowan... gray flint eyes, quick bird movement of head, Laena’s silver clothes... jump soon, out into the night, and he knew that the parachute pack was empty... they had taken it... stand up, darling, Laena said. Stand up, darling... stand up, darling... dizzy sway of the plane...

He opened dulled eyes. Most of the lights were out. A waiter was shaking him by the shoulder.

“Stand up, darling,” Laena said.

He tried to curse her. There were no words, only a thickness in his throat. She spoke rapid Spanish to the waiter. He came back with another man. They lifted him, supported him out to the waiting cab. Then the cab was hurtling through streets that tipped dizzily and Laena was scent of perfume beside him.

Once again he was being shaken. There were other men. Hallway. Elevator. Clink of key against the lock face. Room that swam in light. Bed. Darkness.

Then there was blank nothingness.

Chapter Two

Devil’s Doublecross

Pain rolled and rumbled and surged through his head, pulsing against the back of his eyes. His skin was greasy with cold sweat and the sunlight that came between the blinds was a shower of golden needles piercing his brain. He sat up and gagged, pressing hard against his lips with his knuckles.

Remembering the night, he forced his eyes open again. The room was large, sparsely furnished. He yanked the covers away, swung his feet out of the bed, cautiously stood erect on the cool tile floor. He swayed, clutched the bedpost, then walked heavily over to the closet and flung it open. It was empty. He felt his way around the wall to the door and tried the knob. It was locked. A tall pitcher of water stood on the bureau. He ignored the glass and, bracing his hip against the bureau, tilted the pitcher high, drained most of it without taking it from his lips.

He ripped a strip from the top sheet, soaked it in the remaining water, lay on the bed again, the wet cloth across his eyes.

Then he heard the grate of the key in the door. Laena Severence came in. Her gold-white hair was braided, tied with bits of colored yarn. She wore a cotton print dress, too short to be fashionable, and red sandals on her bare feet. She looked like a small girl playing house.

He said thickly, “I should have been smart enough to expect a mickey from you, Laena.”

“It was chloral hydrate. I know how miserable you must feel.”

“Your solicitude touches me deeply.”

She pulled a chair over near the bed and sat down, her back straight, her eyes on him. She said, “We are going to talk, Bren.”

“Is there anything to talk about?”

“I’ve sent the maid out. Bren, you were heading for trouble. I knew you wouldn’t listen unless I could force you to listen. I told the barman what to do for your own good, Bren. Believe me.”

“Believe you? I wouldn’t believe you if you were on fire and I stood in front of you with a bucket of water. And there’s nothing you can say that I’m interested in hearing. When I see you dead, Laena, I’ll feel that one third of a debt is paid.”

There was no expression in her eyes. She stood up quickly and left the room.

She was back in a few moments with the gun and a towel. She wrapped the towel around the muzzle.

“We’re alone in the apartment. The walls are thick. The towel will muffle the shot. Your clothes are in the closet in the next room. If you go down the back stairs, no one will see you leave.”

She thrust the gun into his hand, her fingers still holding the towel around the barrel, and came close to the bed. “Go ahead, Bren. I found out once that I don’t have what it takes to do it to myself. You have to pull the trigger.”

His finger was on the trigger. The seconds stretched out interminably. Suddenly he laughed hoarsely. “Oh, fine! You want to see just how far I’ll go. Just how serious I am. Then when the gun clicks, you can run off and tell the other two that Harris really means business. Nice act, Laena.”

He twisted the gun away from her and pulled the trigger. The gun bucked and the slug punched a hole in the plaster across the room, high up in the corner.

“That’s twice you haven’t done it, Bren,” she said unsteadily.

The scorched towel dropped to the floor. He held the gun and looked at it as though seeing it for the first time. His mouth was dry.

He laid the gun gently on the counterpane and said, “You wanted to tell me something, Laena.”

She sat down again. There was no triumph on her face or in her tone. “You are like a child with a cap pistol, Brendon. You are like a little boy mad because he caught his finger in a screen door. You said you had a report on me. Then you know that my father was an expatriate.

“In 1929, when I was five, my mother drowned in the Mediterranean. She was drunk at the time. A month later my father killed himself in a car, doing a hundred and ten miles an hour on the Paris road. There was enough money left to educate me in Switzerland. Although I was born on a French passenger ship, the little matter of my American citizenship was something that slipped my father’s mind. In 1939, when I was fifteen, I was dancing in a little club off the Rou Pigalle. I had no interest in politics.

“After the German occupation, I was still dancing. I met a young German officer. He was sweet. I was in love, I thought. He hated the war. We tried to get to Portugal together. He was captured and shot for desertion. I spent seven months in a French prison. France was no good for me after the war. Suspicion of collaboration. I wanted to come to the country where my parents had been born. I worked hard on colloquial English. I had my French papers. I went to Portugal. I danced in Lisbon.

“In Lisbon, I met August Brikel. He was nice to me and arranged forged papers. I could not get into the United States legally because of my ‘bad’ record. But I wanted to get to the states so badly that it was like an incurable disease. August helped me through the four months before I went to work for the Corner Club. I liked you when I met you. One night August came to my room and told me that I must make you fall in love with me. He said that I must quiet any suspicions you might have about what they were doing at the Corner Club.

“August told me what they were doing and said that if any trouble occurred through you, he would make an anonymous report to the immigration people. I still had my French papers, hidden away. I did what he said. But I loved you. I couldn’t bear to deceive you. And then I realized that I never could relax in the States, because just by being there I was cheating what I considered to be my country.

“When I had saved enough money, I crossed into Mexico on the forged papers, used my real papers to apply for Mexican citizenship. Now I’m an immigrants. Brikel has no hold over me. I knew nothing about Tommy. After I ran away from you I cried every night. I don’t cry any more, Bren. You are the only thoroughly decent thing that has ever happened to me. I ran away because I was doing wrong, and I was tired of doing wrong.”

He looked up at the ceiling in the long silence after she stopped speaking. He said softly, “The report wasn’t as complete as that. I... I don’t know.”

“I didn’t have you drugged just to plead my case, Bren. I know that as far as we are concerned, it’s all over. I wanted to tell you about Brikel and Gowan Teed. They have an organization here, as well as in South America. You can’t walk up and shoot either of them. You’d be dead the moment your hand touched the gun. And I couldn’t bear the thought of that.

“When August came into El Torero two weeks ago, he had two men with him. They were wary men, Bren. It was the second time I’d seen him since I came down here. He has a house he rents in Cuernavaca. He wanted me to come down and visit him. I told him that he could no longer tell me what to do.”

He turned quickly toward her, “You fool! You poor, golden-headed fool!”

Her face stiffened. “What do you mean?”

“When August Brikel told you to be nice to me, why on earth didn’t you come to me with the whole story? Why? I can’t understand it.”

She looked down at her hands. “Because you would have known I was a criminal. That’s what I was, Bren, when I was in the States. And even without that, I... I’m hardly a bargain. My life hasn’t been a round of sorority teas, and sleigh rides and Sunday picnics. It’s been scabby little dressing rooms and prison and dirt.”

“Shut up, Laena!” he said quickly.

“I left while you could still remember me as something... nice.”

Slowly she raised her head until their eyes met. He spoke firmly to her. She came to him with a thin lost sound in her throat, and curled against his chest, her forehead pressing against the lean angle of his jaw, a gold-white braid across his face. Tears were a tempest and he enclosed the storm in the circle of his arms until, at long last, it died slowly away.

The words he whispered to her were not connected in orderly sequence. They did not shape themselves into neat and orderly sentences.

When at last she raised her head, her cheeks were streaked, her eyes puffy, but she was smiling.

“You cried too,” she said softly.

“Maybe it was contagious. Laena, I feel as though I’d been ill for a long long time.”

“Maybe you have been,” She laughed softly. “I know you were ill when I brought you here last night.”

“I owe you a mickey, darling.”

She stood up. “You will need a great deal of food. And then we will talk.”

He reached out and caught her hand. “I guess that I wouldn’t have killed you. I guess that I couldn’t have done it.”

Laena raised his hand to her lips. “I guess that you will kill no one, Bren.”

He snatched his hand away, said coldly, “A very slight error, Laena. Nothing that has happened between us has changed the fact that Brikel and Teed are walking around. And Tommy isn’t.”

“No, Bren! No! Even if you succeed, the policia will have you. And once again... I shall have nothing.”

“You almost make me think that all this was a gag so you could save their lives.”

“I know you’re trying to be cruel, Bren. I’ve been hurt too much. It is very difficult to hurt me with words now.”

He gave her a long look. “We will talk about it at breakfast.”

She handed him a brown paper bag containing comb, razor, blades and shaving cream, as well as tooth brush and paste. “I sent Maria after those,” she called.

“Then your horrible secret is out.”

“I know that Maria has thought me a strange one — until now. She is singing in the kitchen. I think she likes having a man in the house.”

At the door he paused, as they were ready to leave and said, “The gun, Laena. Where is it?”

“But, Bren, I—”

“The gun, Laena.” She went obediently off, but without the usual proud lift of her head. She brought it back and silently handed it to him. He checked the cylinder, snapped it shut and shoved it back in the waistband of the trousers. She watched him passively. To lighten the tension he said, with a smile, “You take orders nicely, honey.”

She didn’t smile. She said, “My people were American but I was brought up as a European girl.”

“And yet you ran out,” he said thickly. He caught her to him, found her lips...

Over the breakfast table he talked of Tommy. It was the first time he had talked of him since his death.

When he had quite finished, Laena said, “You call him a ‘crazy kid’ and you say that the biggest job you had in the war was keeping Tommy out of trouble. You must have loved him very much.”

“And that’s why Brikel and Teed are going to pay off. In spades. You might as well tell me if you know where they are. I can find out anyway. You’ll just save me some time.”

She drew on the tablecloth with a fork tine. Tiny frown wrinkles appeared between her dark eyebrows. “All right, Bren. If I tell you, can I come with you?”

“Of course not!”

“There is no way you can keep me from coming with you. They are in the rented house in Cuernavaca. It’s Wednesday now, but they’ll be in Mexico City this weekned. Their house is in the Colonia Miraval, a large house with a high wall and a staff of servants. I do not think you could get in there. When they come to the city, they stay at a large hotel. They come in a group, usually with women. They are seen with men who, here in the city, are known to be criminals, but who seem to be outside the grasp of the law. Bren, I don’t think you should try to kill them.”

He leaned closer to her. “I have to shave this face every morning. I have to look into these eyes. I want to be able to go on doing it without being ashamed of myself.”

“Revenge is childish.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Back in Nazi France I saw some samples of revenge, Bren. Did I say childish? The word is right if you can visualize a child with a deformed mind and the eyes of a beast.”

“This is the job I’ve laid out for myself.”

“Then, of course you must go through with it,” she said bitterly.

The illegal fires, lit by the charcoal vendors, shrouded the flanks of the mountains in drifting smoke that clouded the afternoon sun. The driver sped the heavy rented car through the mountain village of Tres Cumbres, down the tangled ribbon of road to Cuernavaca, golden in the sunset.

Harris rented a room in a hotel facing the zocolo in the center of the city. An hour later, in the gray dusk, he leaned against a gray wall and studied the house in which August Brikel lived. The dark young man he had encountered in the central square spoke adequate English. For ten pesos he had been glad to come along.

“Go over,” Harris said, “and rattle the gate until somebody comes out. Ask them if Mr. Brikel or Mr. Teed are there. Say there is someone down at the hotel asking for them. Tell them that it is a Miss Severence waiting down at the Hotel Linda Vista.”

The boy repeated the names. Bren Harris moved further back into the shadows. He went across to the gate. The gate tender came out and they talked. The boy came back. “He say, Señor, that the dos señores have go away today at the five hours.”

“Did he say where?”

“Si, he say they go on business over the montanas to Mexico and that they do not come back until... como se llama... how you say, the day after Sunday.”

“Monday. Go back and talk some more. Tell him that this is urgent. Where are they staying in Mexico City?”

This time it took a little longer. The boy came back and said, “He say he not know. I think he know, but the señores is giving orders for not saying.”

Bren Harris went back and checked out of his room at seven-thirty and ordered the driver to take him back to Mexico City. Heavy buses and trucks choked the mountain roads. Harris sat on the edge of the seat in a fever of impatience. He dropped his bag off at the hotel and had the driver take him to El Torero. It was quarter after nine when he arrived. He paid the bill and dismissed the rented car.

The club was nearly empty. The bartender gave him a quick look of surprise. “Scotch and water,” Bren said. “Without the chloral.”

“I don’t know what you mean, sir.”

“Skip it. Where’s Miss Severence? I want to see her immediately.”

“She telephoned here over an hour ago, sir. She is too ill to work tonight. Everyone will be disappointed.”

“I’m sure they will be.”

Bren drained his drink, threw a five-peso bill on the bar, searched his pocket until he found the slip of paper on which he had written her address.

There were no cars parked in front of the apartment house. He stood as the taxi drove away, tiny warning bells ringing in the back of his mind. The outside door was not locked. He went quietly up the front stairs, placed his ear against her door and listened. He could hear no sound.

He tapped on the door. It opened quickly. Laena looked at him with a start of surprise. “Bren, darling!” She wore a pale green terrycloth robe that reached to the floor.

“Are you alone?” he asked.

“Of course! Just Maria and me, Bren. Close the door and kiss me.”

His suspicions faded. He grinned and closed the door and took her in his arms. She lifted her lips. As he bent his head toward them, she made a sudden motion with her right arm and the impact behind his ear had all the dull weight of an explosion. The bones in his legs melted and he went heavily down onto his knees, his arms too weak to grasp her.

Bren swayed drunkenly on his knees, shaking his head, his vision clouded. But he saw her raise her arm again. He tried to lift his arm to fend off the blow. The last thing he remembered was her gray eyes, her expressionless face as he melted over against the floor into an utter darkness...

Chapter Three

Her Way to Kill

Consciousness was a grayness just above him. It seemed that he moved like a swimmer, struggling up toward the grayness. At last he broke through the surface. His neck ached. He found that he was on his side, his head braced at an awkward angle against the wall. He moved away from the wall a bit, lowered his head onto his arm and closed his eyes, waiting for the weakness to go away.

When he opened his eyes, he saw her. The couch was against the wall. She sat facing him; her face bloodless; her eyes holding a look of wildness.

He opened his mouth and swore. She gave no sign that she heard him. He saw the stains then, the dark crusting stain on the skirt of the robe, the red wetness on the back of her hand.

Slowly she closed her eyes. She leaned over on her side on the couch, her feet still on the floor. With the same slowness, she fell off the couch onto her face on the floor and lay still.

It was quicker to crawl to her than it was to try to stand up. Only then for the first time, did he straighten up and look around the room.

August Brikel sat on the webbed leather chair, smiling at him. The familiar face was as florid as ever, but there was something loose about his mouth. The eyes were still chips of flint, but the polish was dulled. August sat with the fingers of both hands wedged against his body. The front of his clothes was dark and heavy with blood. August had an uncanny motionless about him.

After Bren lifted Laena onto the couch, he went over to Brikel. The drying splatters of blood led from where Bren had been lying over to the chair. Brikel was quite dead.

Bren had gone to sleep for a hundred nights thinking of how Brikel would look when he was dead. But now there was no satisfaction in seeing it. The face, perfect mirror of the soul, showed clearly the evil, a pitiful quality when revealed by a corpse.

Hearing the distant sound of moaning, he traced it to its source in the kitchen. Maria of the long dark hair was crouched half under the sink, her cheek against the wall, wailing endlessly. He tried to talk to her. She didn’t look up at him. He soaked a cloth under the sink faucet, hurried back into the living room and gently bathed Laena’s face. Her eyelids quivered and slowly she opened her eyes. He saw confusion, changing quickly to terror, and then to a tired resignation.

“Cigarette,” she said weakly.

He lit one and placed it between her lips. She exhaled in a long shuddering breath.

“You tried to make a deal, didn’t you?” he asked.

She nodded. “I had his phone number. I called and said I would do what he wanted and told him you were on the way. I told him not to kill you and that if he did, I’d kill him with my own hands. He said he would come right away with Gowan and you’d find no one home. His car dropped him off here. I phoned to say I wouldn’t be at work. We talked. We decided you would come here. He gave me a leather thing with lead in the end of it. We waited.”

“What was the idea?”

“I would hit you and he would tie you up. When you came to, you would know that he was warned. He promised to talk you into giving up the idea and, if that failed, talk to a friend of his to get your turista card rescinded so that you would have to go back home right away, Bren.”

“And you?”

“I was buying your life. I did what he told me to. He had that door open a crack and a gun held on you. He made it clear that if I tried to warn you, he’d shoot. His gun has a silencer.”

“And then he didn’t want to play your game?”

“He came out and stood over you. The hardest thing I ever had to do was to hit you, Bren. He smiled at me. He told me that he’d thought of a better way. He said that his gun was small calibre. He said that there would be very little blood if he shot you between the eyes. Later their people would — would leave you in an alley. He said that you were dangerous to him and that his way was best, as he had a big deal on and didn’t want to take any chances of your spoiling things for him.”

“And then?”

“Your head was at a funny angle. To shoot you properly he had to bend over to aim the gun. It gave me a chance to get to him. I am small but I am a dancer, and my muscles are trained. I grabbed his arm just above the elbow and dug my thumb into the nerve near the bone. It is painful. He straightened up.

“I dug harder and it made his hand open. The gun dropped and he bent to grab it from the floor. I grabbed for it; too. But it hit the floor and went off. It made a very small noise. I didn’t even know he was hurt until he fell across my hand and the edge of the robe. I pulled away. Somehow he got up and walked over to that chair. He was smiling with the pain. Just as you awakened, he died.”

Bren looked around and saw the gun.

“Did you touch it?”

“The gun? I picked it up and then I saw that he was dying. I put it on that table.” Her lips spread in a wild smile and she began to laugh.

He pulled her up to a sitting position, slapped her smartly, forehand and backhand. “There’s no time for that. Go wash your hands. I have to think.”

When Laena came back she was calm. Her face was still pale. She had changed to a wool dress in a rich brown shade that complemented her hair.

“How about Maria?”

“I think she’s completely loyal, Bren.”

“Go talk to her. She’s still moaning. Quiet her down. Send her away.”

Laena hurried to the kitchen. He heard the soft sounds diminish and cease. Laena came back and sat, watching him like an obedient child as he paced back and forth. She did not look toward August Brikel although he sat like a ghastly witness to the conversation.

“As far as you know, they are still in the dope business?”

“I think so. They have agents who smuggle it across into the States. The Corner Club was a wholesale distribution point for a metropolitan area.”

“And there’s a big deal coming up?”

“He said so,” she said in a flat voice. Bren could see that her calm was achieved only through great effort.

“How gullible is Gowan Teed?”

“You know that as well as I. I’d say he was anything but gullible.”

“Do you know what hotel he’s at?”

“Yes.”

“Have you got some black thread?”

She frowned in confusion. “Y-yes.”

“Use your phone and call up Gowan Teed. Tell him that you sneaked out to phone him. Tell him that I’ve been taken care of, that August had several drinks to celebrate and wants you to go away with him. Say that August told you that he is going to leave Gowan Teed holding the bag on a big deal coming up, and that the authorities will quiet down if they can get their hands on someone.

“Say that you called him because you know he’ll be generous with you for giving him the information. Tell him that August and my body are in your apartment and that you’re afraid to go back; that August is making too much noise. What do you think?”

She waited a long time before answering. “I think I see what you mean.” She looked at August. “We can slide the chair over there facing the door. The little bedroom lamp doesn’t throw much light. With the table beside him and the lamp on it he would look—”

“Exactly.”

“But how about the two kinds of bullets in August?”

He snapped his fingers. “You could meet Teed in front and hand him August’s gun. I’ll clean it off. You could say that you sneaked it out of here and that August has still another gun. I’ll let August use mine.”

She stood with her back against the door. The one small light glowed near August’s chair, shining upward on his face. She moved the table a few inches and went back to the door. Bren lay on the floor off to the other side of the table, his face in the light.

He said, “Does the black ink look like Hood in this light, Laena?”

“That spot on your forehead. It looks like a hole. It’s... horrible.”

“That’s the way I want it to be.”

“Turn your head just a little bit this way. Good.”

Bren memorized the position, stood up and checked the gun once more. To make the position of the gun more realistic once he had forced himself to wrap Brikel’s fat chilling fingers around the grip, it had been necessary to thumbtack the dead man’s coatsleeve to the wooden arm of the chair. He bent over and sighted along the gun, saw that it aimed just to the left of the door, where Gowan Teed would enter.

The black thread was doubled for strength, drawn back and looped around one leg of the small table.

Bren said, “Get down there, Laena. He ought to be along soon. Did he sound suspicious?”

“A little. Puzzled, sort of.”

After she had gone, lie went to the door and looked at Brikel. In death Brikel had become more of a symbol than an individual. It was hard to imagine that the slack body had constituted a menace. To hold Brikel’s head erect, he had inserted the hook of a wire coat hanger in the back of the man’s collar, twisted the other portion of the hanger around the top of the back of the chair.

He took his position on the floor, found the end of the doubled thread and waited. He forced himself to take long slow breaths so that it would be easier to hold his breath when Gowan Teed arrived. The minutes dragged on. Had Teed become suspicious of Laena? Had Brikel been in a position where he could have crossed Teed? Bren was becoming cramped from his position. The heavy thump of his heart seemed audible in the room.

There was a soft footstep in the hall, the tiny scrape of leather on tile. Bren half shut his eyes. He could see the door. It opened slowly inward and Gowan Teed stood there, the lamplight making a small glitter on his rimless glasses. The glasses were incongruous in comparison with the lean gun in his hand, the bulk of the silencer lengthening the barrel by a good four inches. His head moved in quick birdlike motions as he took in the room.

Teed said softly, as he pushed the door shut, “Stupid, August. Very stupid to kill him here. You make it difficult. The girl told me something interesting. Put the gun away, August. We must talk.”

Gowan Teed stood tense, pointed his weapon toward Brikel. His voice was more shrill. “You’re drunk, August. Put the gun away!”

With a slow movement of his fingers, Bren increased the tension on the thread. He had a horror of it breaking. The jet-white blast, the whip-thunder of the shot was enormous, contained as it was in the tile and plaster room.

Gowan Teed fired three methodical shots. Each shot was a bit louder than the last as the packing in the silencer was worn away. The third shot was as loud as a cap pistol. Harris heard the thud of slug into dead flash with each shot.

Teed reached slowly for the door knob, and then his hand paused. He came on tiptoe across the room.

When he was within range, Bren swung his legs parallel to the floor, striking Teed at ankle level, sweeping his feet out from under him. Teed gasped as he fell. Bren scrambled onto him, found that Teed had a surprising wiriness. He caught the gun wrist and Teed twisted it away, trying to bring the weapon to bear.

Bren flattened down against him, got his right hand on Teed’s sparse hair, lifted the head and banged it down solidly against the tile. Teed sighed as his muscles relaxed. Bren lifted himself up, delicately gauged the distance, chopped Teed on the jaw with a right hand blow that didn’t travel over eight inches.

The other gun dangled from Brikel’s index finger. Bren pried out the thumb tacks, released the thread, unhooked the coat hanger. As he did so, Brikel’s body bent slowly forward, head descending. As it passed the balance point, Brikel fell heavily, face down, across the unconscious Teed.

There were voices in the hall. Bren raced into the bathroom and scrubbed the ink from his forehead. He hid there, hearing the door open, the voices louder, Laena’s shrill, scream.

The concrete bench in Alameda Park was, absurdly, in the precise shape of an overstaffed sofa. The afternoon sun touched the flowers, the children on bicycles, the men selling kikos.

Bren Harris sat and smoked nervously, glancing at his watch from time to time. At last he saw her, a distant tiny figure, the sun making her hair look pure white, her shoulders square in the dark suit. She walked slowly. On impulse he stood up and went down a curving side path, watching until he saw her go by. He followed.

He came up behind her, watching the rhythm of her walk, hair in movement, slight swing of her slender arms.

“Can you pick up girls in this park?” he asked.

She whirled. “Bren, you didn’t have to stay. I told you in the note that you should go back. I’m not right for you, Bren. I’m no good for anyone, even myself.”

He put his hands on her shoulders. “Shake well before using. Let me decide what is right for me. How are you and the policia getting along?”

She smiled. “They think I’m a trusting little girl with naughty friends. Teed’s adopted embassy has given him up. He’ll be a long, long time in a Mexican cell. Bren, please. Go home and forget me.”

“After all the trouble I went to figuring out that you’d be walking through here at this time?”

“Don’t joke about it.”

A great hairy clattering insect appeared a few inches from her cheek. With a frightened gasp she ran into the circle of his arm, her face against his chest, shuddering.

The super-salesman who held the mechanical monster on the end of a string said, with a wide grin, “Buy souvenir de Mejico, meester.”

Bren looked down at the top of Laena’s fair head. He said softly, “No thanks, friend. I’ve already got one.”

Content

John D. MacDonald
Murder Run-Around

Chapter One Death for Three

Chapter Two Devil’s Doublecross

Chapter Three Her Way to Kill