Color Him Dead Read Online Free Page A

man in an elevator. Finally I’d had it; one night after he’d gone to sleep I sneaked out and caught a taxi. I was nervous, nervous as hell. The driver was a young Italian, and I guess he’d seen women like me before. He made it easy—”
    “You like to talk about it, Edith?” he asked softly.
    She was silent a moment, and he heard the gurgle of the martini jug. A moment later he felt her hands on his shoulders, pressing him down as she pushed herself to her feet. “I’m going to change.”
    He turned to watch her walk toward the little bath house. It looked raw and savage without paint. Her steps gradually slowed, until at the door she stopped and turned. “If you decide to come, bring the blanket.”
    As she closed the door, he felt his thought process smothered in a wild surge of excitement. Here was the offer, no strings attached. Just come, man, bring yourself, no need to renounce Carey, nothing. Hadn’t she told that story about the cab driver to show that there’d be no complications, no unpleasant aftermath? There would be a brief contact, nothing more; two people wanted something they couldn’t get alone, so they pooled their resources in a temporary alliance until the end had been achieved, then went their separate ways and no hard feelings….
    He had gotten up and walked stiffly to the bath house. As he turned the knob and pushed open the door, he’d felt only a slight stab of premonition, a feeling that he was stepping off into deep, deep water….
    Now they were lowering the casket. For a moment the eyes were off Drew, watching the descent of that ridiculously ornate box, with their minds plunged into thoughts of their own mortality.
    It was time….
    He gambled that Cornell and Fellini would not shoot into the crowd. He plunged into the thickest of the mass, smashed through, and was running free, down the hill toward the line of cars. The first shot ripped the air over his head with a sound like tearing tissue paper. The second slug made a starburst in the windshield of a parked car. He gambled that they wouldn’t shoot accurately downhill, and he won that gamble too. The guns barked above him like angry dogs as he ran behind the cars in a low gorilla’s crouch. A slug burned the paint off a fender in front of him, then made a long, disappointed whine out over the valley. They had his range now; he prayed that his third gamble would pay off. He knew he’d won when he found a car with the leather key case dangling from the dash, lovely as a diamond pendant. Still crouching, he opened the door, turned the key, pressed the dashboard starter, and jumped in as the engine roared. He squealed out, crouching low over the wheel. As he looked up at the mirror, he saw Fellini and Cornell ranged on top of the hill like rookie cops at target practice.
That’s it boys, hold the guns the way the book says, straight from the shoulder with the body turned sideways, and never mind the part that says you can’t hit a bull’s ass with a scoop at twenty yards, let alone fifty …
    Now a hundred … two hundred….
    Here was the narrow one-way bridge, the bottleneck. Halfway across, Drew twisted the wheel and rammed the hood beneath one railing. He felt the rear bumper strike the other side. He threw the keys in the river and ran on. Now there was only the marshal, old Cash Macklehaney, leaving the intersection in a stiff-legged old man’s run. Drew shouted “Get him! Get him!” as he ran past, and the old man stopped and peered with bewildered, nearsighted eyes to see what Drew was chasing. Drew had jumped in the old man’s car and was roaring off when he heard the dull boom of a .44 Colt. He didn’t worry because he was a moving, going-away target, and old Mac’s gun hadn’t cleared leather in twenty years—
    The slug punched a hole in the door just behind the hinge, flattening as it did so and losing a good half of its muzzle velocity. It lost a little more passing through the car’s upholstery, but it