“All right. But I can’t see why he’d–”
“Win, lose, or draw, we rumple the hell out of that bed, rub lipstick on the pillow, squirt some of your perfume on him, undress him, and leave him in the bed. And dump the rest of that bottle into the john.”
“Okay. But you know, he didn’t seem like somebody who’d–”
“For chrissake, Penny!”
“All right. I’m sorry.”
“We knew it was a big man. We know he was from out of town. We know he went to see Pike.”
He checked the other pockets. Then the girl asked about the shirt pocket. He rolled me onto my back again. She was standing close. I opened my eyes just far enough to make out the shape and distance of his head as he bent over me. I hit him solidly in the side of the throat with my right fist, rolling my body to the left as I did so to give it more leverage, and then swung my legs in a wide arc at floor level. I clipped her right at the ankles and she landed flat on her back with a very large thud for a girl that size. Her friend had rolled over onto his back and back up onto his knees. He got up just as I did. He was making gagging, strangling sounds. Eyes bulged. Mouth hung open. Sandy-blond with a lot of neck, shoulders, and jaw. Look of the college lineman six years later, twenty pounds heavier, and a lot softer.
But as he got his back against the wall, he pulled a blue-black and very efficient-looking revolver out of somewhere and aimed it at my middle. I stopped very suddenly and took a cautious step backward, and raised my arms, and said, “Easy now. Easy does it, friend.”
He coughed and gagged and massaged his throat. He spoke in a rasping, traumatic whisper. “Back up and sit on the edge of the bed, smartass. And hold the back of your neck with both hands.”
I obeyed, slowly and carefully. Penny was still on her back on the floor. She was making a horrid articulated sound with each inhalation. She had hiked her knees up. Her clenched fists were against her breast. The fall had knocked all the wind out of her.
He went over and looked down at her. Her breathing eased. He gave her his hand and he pulled her up to a sitting position, but she shook her head violently and pulled her hand away. That was as far as she wanted to go for the moment. She hugged her legs, forehead on her knees.
“Two hours you said,” he whispered. “Or three.”
“He… he must be resistant to it. He had enough for… a full-grown horse.”
With his eyes on me, he moved the straight chair over and placed it about five feet from me, the back toward me. He straddled it and rested the short barrel on the back of the chair, centered on my chest. “We’ll have a nice little talk, smartass.”
“About what? This lousy setup? I’ve got eight hundred on me, so take it. Wear it in good health. Leave.”
She got to her feet, took one step, and nearly went down again. She hobbled over toward the head of the bed, her face twisted with pain.
“My ankle,” she said. She was having a clumsy evening.
“We are going to have a little talk about Doctor Stewart Sherman, smartass.”
I frowned at him, my bafflement entirely genuine. “I never heard of the man in my life. If this is some variation of the badger game, friend, you are making it too complicated.”
“And we are going to talk about how you are putting the squeeze on Tom Pike. Want to deny seeing him today?”
“I went to see Maurie and Biddy, the two daughters of Mick Pearson, a friend of mine who died five years, nearly six years ago, not that it is any of your business.”
There was a look of uncertainty in his eyes for just a moment. But I needed more advantage than that and, remembering their very personal little squabble, and remembering how she had reported having no trouble at all with me, I thought of an evil way to improve the odds.