The Secret Squad (Illustrated) by David Goodis

Author:David Goodis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 1961-11-19T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

You goofer. You butter-fingered, wrong-way artist. If they hand out awards for lousing things up, you’re a cinch to get first prize. And don’t gimme no excuses, either. Don’t tell me you had other things to think about. Don’t tell me you only got two hands and that’s why you hadda let go of the gun. You clown; you can’t remember letting go of the gun. It just slipped away from your fingers and now it’s down there somewhere at the bottom of the pool and you can forget about it. But jim I swear you really irk me sometimes.

He shook his head slowly, crouching low again. Bullets were hitting the rock and bouncing off, others whizzed through the gap where he’d shown his face.

Then suddenly the firing stopped, as though someone had given them an order to stop firing. He waited a minute, but there was no further firing. So now they’re getting clever, he thought. Now it’s strategy and they’ll try a flank maneuver. They know they can’t get you with frontal shooting and they’ll hafta figure some way of crossing the pool. They do that, they’ll be coming in from the left flank or the right flank or both flanks and it’s the end of the line. You know, it’s almost enough to give a man the blues.

Well anyway, they got that pool to cross and how they’re gonna cross it is their headache. Maybe they won’t be able to cross it. Maybe they’ll be stymied and—

Or maybe they’re crossing it already.

You better take a look and check what they’re doing.

He lifted his head and peered through the gap. The moonlight cast a blue-white glow on them. They were assembled in a tight circle at the edge of the quagmire. Then the circle broke up and Corey frowned, puzzled. He counted them, focusing hard to make sure he was counting correctly. There were six.

First five and now six. He stated the fact to himself, narrowing his focus to exclude the five faces he’d seen before, his eyes slitted and straining, aiming like twin needles at the sixth man.

The sixth man was tall and had wide shoulders. The moonlight lacquered his curly black hair. His features were rugged, yet wholesome and pleasant, and he could have posed for an ad captioned, “He Takes Vitamins,” or smokes X brand of cigarettes. Or wears a certain type of elastic-waisted shorts. Or uses a certain cologne that lists him positively as a man of merit, a specimen of quality.

And that’s what she saw when she saw him for the first time, Corey reasoned. She saw them big fine shoulders and all that bulk packed in nice and solid, some two hundred pounds on a six-foot frame. So a female, any female, would naturally take a second look and what Lillian saw with that closer inspection was something she musta been hoping for or let’s say starved for. She musta caught the vibration that under all that muscle and power there was what they call the true blue, the clean thoughts and the honest striving and so forth.

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