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“I asked you, Sammy, plain what?”

“Gripes, if I could just get a drink. I tell you, I’m stir crazy. I could punch a hole in that wall, like a guy I knew once. He punched a hole clean through a wall. We got all this money, and for what? No dames, no liquor, no golf, no fresh air. We’re in a stinking, lousy jail. And her in there, she’s going to have the screaming willies. You taken a good look at her eyes? What’re you going to do when she starts yelling? Yeah, what you going to do? Put a shot through her like some goof-up kid who loses his head? And get knocked off making a break?”

Dan said slowly, “Maybe you got a point there.”

Sammy continued, “It’s not like there’d be any blood. Few minutes after she’s asleep I’ll lay her away, and we’ll have ten hours before they find her. You tell the landlady ahead of time we got a job in another town, so she won’t get all stirred up when she finds us gone. We can make five, six hundred miles

.”

“What if she screams?”

“I’ve never had one yet. These fingers, they move so fast. You should see ‘em. And strong. You wouldn’t believe it. They could strangle a horse. Comes from my ma making me take piano. She used to say, ‘I’ll give you good learnin’, start you right.’ But I never got anything out of her except these fingers. No, Dan, she won’t scream.”

They never knew how close she came to it at that second.

17

As D.C. disappeared around the Randall house, Zeke moved swiftly across the back yard. His foam rubber soles touched the thick sod softly and noiselessly. He smelled a strong burnt powder odor as he passed Mike’s “launching pad,” and then the heavy, cloying scent of a night-blooming jasmine.

Rounding the corner, he brought himself up short and scanned the long, narrow passageway between houses for sign of movement. The night was so black that he could barely discern the outline of shrubs. He was conscious of his own breathing, which was loud in the stillness. He noted he was opposite the Macdougall kitchen, and sensed a presence in­side. He dropped to a squatting position.

Up near the street a luminous tail swished back and forth from under a shrub as D.C. cased the layout ahead, his eyes mica bright. A fellow couldn’t be too careful in scouting enemy territory. In that no man’s land beyond, dogs roamed about, determined to maintain their fancied superiority, thinking themselves a superior race. He hated the breed. And tomcats lurked out there like so many punk hoodlums, eager to win a reputation for themselves fighting.

D.C. swished his tail again. That jerk who had followed him out of the house was stalking him. He thought he was being quiet, as if D.C. didn’t have a good hearing. D.C. knew what he was up to. The jerk thought he had a duck buried, and the minute D.C. dug it up the jerk would steal it. From the beginning D.C. had had him pegged as a no-good, two-faced sneak.

As D.C. started to cross the street, Zeke trailed him, al­ways keeping the same distance between them. Suddenly tires screeched as a car rounded a corner and bore down on D.C. at fifty miles an hour, its dual pipes roaring. Seized with panic, Zeke raced into the street, waving his arms and shouting. The headlights were two brilliant spots racing to­ward him with unbelievable speed.

D.C. neither hurried nor slowed his pace. He chose to ig­nore the car. There were times when a man must assert his rights to what was properly his, and he had as much right on the street as anyone.

Zeke leaped for his life as the car’s headlights encompassed him. The driver slammed on his brakes and the car shrieked to a stop, only feet from D.C., who neither turned nor ran but continued leisurely to the far sidewalk. If a man held his ground, they always stopped.

Zeke leaned against a tree, wheezing like an old race horse. The driver yelled at him, “You stupid bum. Whatcha trying to do, get yourself killed?”

He shouted other imprecations until the first shock wore off. From the far side D.C. looked up with interest. The night was starting off fairly well. He went under a parked car where he sat motionless, observing his eight-inch-high view of the world ahead and, more specifically, Greg Balter’s house and the driveway.

Zeke reduced his breathing to a point near normal, and said into the mike, “Informant under car. Repeat – informant under car.”

Two miles away a police officer in a cruise car leaned for­ward in his seat. He had no business tuning in the FBI radio band, but he and his partner were experiencing a dull night. He asked, “Did you hear that, Tracy ? An informant – under a car.”

Tracy nodded. “Those FBI boys sure get some weirdies.”

His partner agreed. “Probably dead drunk.”

On hearing footsteps, Zeke lighted a cigarette. A worker approached, returning home late, and looked Zeke over as if he might be the Boston strangler. Zeke crossed the street, angling to a point some distance from the car being used as a forward outpost by D.C. Zeke whispered into the mike, “All cars, hold where you are.”