The Erection Set

“I doubt if that will be necessary, but I think it was all a sheer waste of energy. What have you gained?”

“My ten grand, for one thing.”

“In stock certificates. I needn’t tell you what their future values will be.”

“How many times do I have to remind you that I’m an optimist?”

“So were the ones who died trying to fly before the Wright Brothers found the secret.”

“Just get the papers ready.”

“When do you plan to, er, confront them? It isn’t really necessary, you know.”

“Ah, but it is. And I want to go all the way with it. There’s still Cousin Alfred.”

“I see.”

“Saturday night, Counselor?”

“Very well.”

“You make the arrangements.”

Hunter nodded, looked at me several seconds, then said, “Do you think you’ll have time to enjoy your triumph. Dog?”

“I’ve lived this long,” I told him. “Survival’s a matter of being the fittest.”

I took the old road out of town, deliberately circumnavigating the Barrin factory where the battery of Klieg lights set up for the night scenes glowed like a yellow umbrella over a normally darkened area. A generation ago it would have been a normal sight, the floods ringing the buildings making Barrin the bright heart of the city. Now it was almost like the last gasp of a dying fish.

Twice, I cut my lights before making turns, taking no chances on being followed. I had trailed too many cars myself under blackout conditions, guiding myself by the taillights ahead, completely out of sight of the lead car, and I didn’t want it done to me. To double check I stopped twice too, waiting to see if anything went by me. Nothing did so I picked up the road leading out to Lucy Longstreet’s retreat, picking out the landmarks through the metronome clicks of the windshield wipers.

When I reached it I eased into the driveway, cut the engine and went up and banged on the door. Nobody answered, so I waited a few seconds, knocked again and heard Lucy’s raucous voice holler for me to come on in.

She was sitting by herself at a card table with a Scrabble game half finished, an empty coffee cup beside her, looking annoyed as hell. “Lose your partner?” I asked her.

“Temporarily. It ain’t much fun playing alone, so sit down, Johnny.” She reached her leg out under the table and kicked the chair out for me, squinted at me impatiently and said, “Let me get this word down and you can play too.”

There was something about her that wasn’t hanging right and when she picked four tiles out of the holder and laid them down it made a lousy job of Scrabble but a good piece of explanation. The word didn’t fit, but it was clear enough. It spelled out trap.

And Lucy Longstreet had been around long enough to anticipate all the moves and when I was hurtling off the chair she was sliding for the floor as feet pounded through the doorway behind me. I had the .45 out and blasted the overhead light out with the first shot before a foot took the rod out of hand and sent it skittering across the room. But the odds weren’t all that bad anymore. Anyone I touched was the enemy and they had to identify me personally. And the first one tripped over me into a ball of knuckles that put his teeth down his throat and left my fist slimy with blood. When he crashed into the wall I was rolling to the left, my arm sweeping out to yank the legs of another one out from under him. The gun in his hand blasted a swath of light into my face, hot, stinging powder etching a burn across my cheek. My hand grabbed the gun in his fingers, my other hand getting leverage on his elbow and I broke his wrist with a single twist and smashed the scream out of his throat when I backhanded the iron across his skull.

There just wasn’t enough time. I saw the shadow looming above me and spotted the movement, so long-conditioned reflexes jerked my head aside and let padded metal ricochet off my temple in a blinding wave of pain and lights. I tried to move, but nothing worked at all and I knew that it was all over because the flickering glow of a cigarette lighter snapped on and there was enough peripheral vision left to see the outline of an automatic in it.

I knew I let out a weak curse when the crash came and all I could think of was that it was the silliest noise I ever heard a gun make and dying wasn’t so bad after all if it could distort sounds like that and not even let you feel the agony of a bullet at all. No pain. Just a heavy, crushing weight that pressed down and down and down.

When the light went on I blinked the tears out of my eyes and through the ringing in my ears I heard Lucy Longstreet say, “You okay, kid?”

“Shit.”

“Do that later. Right now get out from under that clown. He’s dripping blood all over you.”

I heaved up on my knees and felt the body roll off my back, got to my feet and looked at the mess on the floor. They were all alive and breathing, but pretty damn sick, especially the one Lucy had damn near brained with the old-fashioned lamp that used to be the centerpiece of her whorehouse parlor table.