The Convertible Hearse by William Campbell Gault

Author:William Campbell Gault [Gault, William Campbell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4405-4067-7
Publisher: Prologue Books
Published: 1985-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

NINE

THE BLANKET WAS dusty and my nostrils seemed dry and gritty. My knee ached and my heart pounded and the Imperial moved over the bumpy surface of the alley to the street.

We turned right and I tried to remember the area, in an attempt to get some clue to our route by the increased sound of traffic at crossings.

But this was a part of Hollywood with which I wasn’t familiar, and I noticed no increased sound of engine noises at the crossings. It was a heavy car, with heavy doors, and the blanket helped to muffle the outside sounds.

If we went toward the ocean, I might be able to smell the sea, though even that was doubtful. Damn that old man and his bad hearing….

I heard the sound of a siren and thought I heard one of the men in front chuckle. The siren went by, going the other way.

The old man would describe me and they’d find my car in front, but the old man wouldn’t know about this car, parked off the alley. The police would have no way to trail me, none at all.

I thought of Leo Dunbar, now ashes. I thought of Louis Reno and I thought of my father. Was this all in the pattern?

I saw Crazylegs going up for a pass and Waterfield coming in that day at Milwaukee when he’d driven the Packers insane. Twelve minutes to go and we were losing by twenty-eight to six and he won it, thirty to twenty-eight. One of the great ones, old Waterbuckets.

I thought of my father.

The Imperial hummed along, quiet as a hearse.

All this because Jan had wanted to watch Loony Leo on television. No, that wasn’t fair. I didn’t have to check on that Cadillac and I didn’t have to accept Dorothy Dunbar as a client.

The big car turned right and its speed increased. We couldn’t be out of the heavy traffic by this time unless we were heading west. I shifted my bad knee, trying to get it into a more comfortable position.

They must have Hans Deutscher, too. The conversation I’d heard behind the thin door of his apartment indicated that. So Deutscher hadn’t been working for them. Who, then …?

Maybe being captives of the same enemy would make Dutch a confidant of mine and he would tell me who he was working for. If either of us lived long enough. I remembered they’d said they’d get the information they wanted out of Dutch before they “dumped” him. What had they meant by that? It didn’t necessarily mean “kill,” I told myself.

The Imperial went over some tracks and tracks are rare in my town. I tried to guess which they could be. The motor hum rose and it seemed to me we were really moving now.

I could taste the dust of the blanket, and I tried to push it gently away from my nose.

The man in front said, “Easy, Callahan; I’m watching you.”

“This blanket’s dusty,” I said. “It’s hard to breathe under it.”

“I could fix you so you wouldn’t have to breathe.

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