Nobody else was in sight, and the nearest house was a block away. He got out the automatic and jacked a cartridge into the chamber. Then he walked across the street and into the shop. Russ didn’t realize he had a visitor, because his back was turned and he was using a power tool that made a high spitting whine.
The guy’s back looked like a wonderful target. His own back must have looked that way just before the slug tore into it in China. Maybe he ought to think about drilling Russ right now, while his back was turned, while the power tool was making such a racket. He had a hunch that Russ wasn’t going to talk. So plugging him now would save trouble. Why was it worse to shoot a man in the back than in the front? The result was the same. In fact it was probably the humane thing to do because it was all over before the guy knew what hit him. Lots of guys had been shot in the back and hadn’t objected to it.
He looked at the automatic and at Russ’s back. His stomach began feeling as if he were pulling out of a steep dive. It was no use arguing with himself. He hadn’t been brought up in a tough enough school. He was trained to pat a guy on the back, not to put a bullet in it.
Four
HE REACHED out disgustedly and flipped the switch that controlled the overhead doors. They came clanking and rumbling down behind him. Russ turned. He stood there like a big startled grizzly, mouth open, eyes staring, long arms dangling, rolling his head slowly from side to side and sniffing as if to get the scent.
“Bill,” he said. “Jeez, it’s Bill.”
“I’ll take it from there. The next line is, jeez, Bill, I thought you was dead.”
“Jeez, no, I didn’t. Some guy I knew in Philly sends me a story out of the paper saying you was alive and back home and I figure papers can’t make up stuff like that and—Bill, old guy, it’s good to see you!”
He came shambling forward, wiping his right hand on the coveralls and then holding it out in front of him like a man groping through a dark room. A smile oozed onto his face and froze there. It made him look as happy as if he had broken a leg and a doctor was starting to set it.
Bill lifted the automatic and said softly, “You want to shake hands with this?”
Russ stopped as if he had walked into a wall. He stared at the weapon and muttered, “That’s a gun.”
“Wonderful what Air Force training will do for a man. Yeah, you guessed it. It’s not a bunch of posies but a forty-five-caliber Government Model Colt Automatic Pistol.”
“Whatcha doing with a gun, Bill?”
“I’m carrying it in my right hand, Russ. You know what? It’s legal to tote a gun in Wyoming as long as it isn’t concealed. I don’t know whether it’s also legal to shoot a guy with an unconcealed gun but maybe I’ll find out.”
Russ’s face was grimy and the sweat coming out on it looked like drippings from a crankcase. He said hoarsely, “You don’t want to shoot me, Bill.”
“That’s odd. I thought I did. How do you suppose I got the idea?”
“Jeez, well, maybe you had some screwy idea I was the guy plugged you back in Nanking. Don’t get sore, now. I’m not saying you’re screwy. I guess it’s a natural thing, a guy has a dust-up with his friends and starts walking away and bingo, he’s shot.”
“You mean it’s a natural thing that, bingo, I was shot?”
Russ wiped a sleeve across his eyes and left a white mask around them. “No, I mean it’s a natural thing that . . . that . . . now I forget what I meant. You know. Help a guy out, will you?”
“It’s a natural thing to figure you shot me?”
“You got me wrong, Bill! I wasn’t even there! I was going out the back door of the office and you was walking out the front and one of these dumb Nationalist soldiers was excited and didn’t know the score and told you to halt and you didn’t hear and he upped with his rifle and plugged you.”
“You saw all that through the building?”
“They tell me about it afterward, Bill. And we all think you’re dead and we go after this dumb soldier and—”
“He couldn’t have been dumb, Russ. Anybody who can shoot a forty-five pistol bullet out of an Army rifle is pretty clever.”
“Was it a forty-five? Yeah, that’s right, he plugs you with a forty-five automatic and we all run out of the office—”
“How did you get back in the office so fast? You’d gone out the back, remember?”
“You keep mixing a guy up!”
“No, I keep trying to untangle you. Okay, so my old pal Russ got to me first and—were you first, Russ?”
“I, uh, maybe I was second or third. So we got to where you was lying. So we got there, see? Then, uh, then . . .”
“It’s tough to work this part out, isn’t it, Russ? Because nobody carried me back into the office or cut open my shirt or broke out a first-aid kit or anything. You just let me lie there on my face and beat it the hell out to the plane and took off.”
Russ gulped. It looked as though he might be trying to swallow a piston. “Yeah,” he mumbled, “it don’t look good. Only you got to remember the whole joint was in a flap and it looked like you was dead. But you know I never shot you, Bill. We always got along good. I’m your pal, see? Ask me right now and you can have the shirt off my back.”
“Maybe I’ll wait until it has a bullet hole in it.”
Russ said in a cracked whisper, “You got the wrong guy. Maybe one of the others did plug you. Honest, like I said I went out the back and all I know is what they told me and things was so mixed up a guy had no time to check. Go see the other guys, Bill. You know where to find them?”
“Sure. You all wrote very sad letters to my folks, after you got back, about how I’d been captured by the Reds. And you’ve all been swell guys and have been sending my folks Christmas cards ever since. So my addresses are pretty good. Your last Christmas card was so pretty I hate to think of shooting you.”
“Look, Bill. You shoot me and get caught and then you’ll never find out if one of the others done it.”
“What makes you think I’ll get caught if I shoot you?”
“Jeez, Bill, everybody’ll know you done it.”
“Nobody knows I’m here except you. I’ve never told anybody what really happened to me back in Nanking. It would only have worried my folks. And as for telling the cops, hell, what could I prove? I figured that would put me in the middle when I started to settle things myself. No, Russ. There isn’t a cop in the world who’ll have any reason to suspect me if you get found shot up.”
“The others will know. Cappy and Domenic and Ken and Frankie.”
“Maybe they won’t hear about what happened to you before I drop in to tell them.”
Russ backed away a few steps. He licked his lips with a gray tongue, glanced at the work bench beside him. He seemed to study the position of a tire iron lying on the bench. His right hand, close to the tire iron, twitched.
Bill said, “I’m following right along, chum. Yeah, that works both ways, doesn’t it? If nobody knows why I’m here and if you get a chance to knock me off and drop me out in some gully, you’re in the clear. But if I were you I wouldn’t bet a tire iron against a forty-five.”
The big hand near the tire iron stopped twitching and began to shake. “There’s a guy coming to see me,” Russ said. “He might be here any sec.