Chapter 27: Take the Money
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"I bet you could use a drink," he said. "Wet the inside and even up." He reached a bottle from the workbench beside him, wedged into a clutter of robot spares, and set it on the edge and set two glasses beside it. He poured a stiff jolt into each and held one out. Walking like a dummy I went over and took it. The memory of the rain was still cold on my face. The smell of hot paint drugged the close air of the garage. "That Art," the brown man said. "He's like all mechanics. Always got his face in a job he ought to have done last week. Business trip?" I sniffed my drink delicately. It had the right smell. I watched him drink some of his before I swallowed mine. I rolled it around on my tongue. There was no cyanide in it. I emptied the little glass and put it down beside him and moved away. "Partly," I said. I walked over to the half-painted ground-car with the big metal paint gun lying along its fender. The rain hit the flat roof hard. Art was out in it, cursing. The brown man looked at the big car. "Just a panel job, to start with," he said casually, his purring voice still softer from the drink. "But the guy had dough and his driver needed a few bucks. You know the racket." I said: "There's only one that's older." My lips felt dry. I didn't want to talk. I lit a cigarette. I wanted my tyres fixed. The minutes passed on tip-toe. The brown man and I were two strangers chance-met, looking at each other across a little dead man named Harry Jones. Only the brown man didn't know that yet. Feet crunched outside and the door was pushed open. The light hit pencils of rain and made silver wires of them. Art trundled two muddy flats in sullenly, kicked the door shut, let one of the flats fall over on its side. He looked at me savagely. "You sure pick spots for a jack to stand on," he snarled. The brown man laughed and took a rolled cylinder of fifty-dollar coins out of his pocket and tossed it up and down on the palm of his hand. "Don't crab so much," he said dryly. "Fix those flats." "I'm fixing them, ain't I?" "Well, don't make a song and dance about it." "Yah!" Art peeled his rubber coat and sou'wester off and threw them away from him. He heaved one tyre up on a spreader and tore the rim loose viciously. He had the tube out and cold-patched in nothing flat. Still scowling, he strode over to the wall beside me and grabbed an air hose, put enough air into the tube to give it body and let the nozzle off the air hose smack against the whitewashed wall. I stood watching the roll of wrapped coins dance in Canino's hand The moment of crouched intensity had left me. I turned my head and watched the gaunt mechanic beside me toss the air-stiffened tube up and catch it with his hands wide, one in each side of the tube. He looked it over sourly, glanced at a big galvanised tub of dirty water in the corner and grunted. The teamwork must have been very nice. I saw no signal, no glance of meaning, no gesture that might have a special import. The gaunt man had the stiffened tube high in the air, staring at it. He half turned his body, took one long quick step, and slammed it down over my head and shoulders, a perfect ringer. He jumped behind me and leaned hard on the rubber. His weight dragged on my chest, pinned my upper arms tight to my sides. I could move my hands, but I couldn't reach the gun in my pocket. The brown man came almost dancing towards me across the floor. His hand tightened over the roll of coins. He came up to me without sound, without expression. I bent forward and tried to heave Art off his feet. The fist with the weighted tube inside it went through my spread hands like a stone though a cloud of dust. I had the stunned moment of shock when the lights danced and the visible world went out of focus but was still there. He hit me again. There was no sensation in my head. The bright glare got brighter. There was nothing but hard aching white light. Then there was darkness in which something read wriggled like a germ under a microscope. Then there was nothing bright or wriggling, just darkness and emptiness and a rushing wind and a fall as of great trees.
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Part 2