Some Die Hard

  SOME DIE HARD

  Stephen Mertz

  Some Die Hard by Stephen Mertz

  Smashword Edition

  Copyright 2014 by Stephen Mertz

  Originally published under the pseudonym Stephen Brett

  "Afterword: From the Manor Torn"

  Copyright 2014 by Stephen Mertz

  Rough Edges Press edition published 2014

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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  Some Die Hard is a work of fiction.

  Though actual locations may be mentioned, they are used in a fictitious manner and the events and occurrences were invented in the mind and imagination of the author except for the inclusion of actual historical facts. Similarities of characters or names used within to any person – past, present, or future – are coincidental except where actual historical characters are purposely interwoven.

  To Don Pendleton, for his time, his guidance,

  and most of all, his friendship.

  CHAPTER ONE

  My Nova was in the garage for repairs when the plant manager's call reached me. But I'd worked for Lewellyn Sugar before and they'd been pleased. The price they brought up for the present assignment was a healthy one. So I forgot about the inconvenience of not having a car, told them I was on my way and called Amtrak for a reservation on the next train out.

  The Lewellyn plant is in Langdon Springs, a company town of some twenty thousand souls located on the Colorado prairie about eighty miles northeast of Denver on the interstate.

  The job concerned two people, a man and a woman, who worked in their accounting office, and only took three hours the next morning to wrap up. Nine times out of ten, by the time a head office calls you in on a thing like that they already have everything they need. They just want you to walk through your paces and make the bust so they can have a licensed man in their corner when they go into court, if it gets that far.

  By twelve-thirty that afternoon I'd completed my part of the necessary paperwork and Dugan Investigations had been paid in full. The check was in my wallet. The only problem now was that Amtrak's next train to Denver wouldn't be through until eleven that night. Langdon Springs is nice but Denver is home, so I called the town's one cab and got a lift down to the Continental Trailways depot. They had a 1:10 bus scheduled to Denver, and I was on it.

  And that's where, and when, this story really begins...

  He climbed aboard at the last minute just as we were ready to pull out and plopped down in the seat next to me, which was the only vacant one left; the last seat in the rear, opposite the John.

  There was something about him right from the start. We nodded to each other the way strangers will on a bus, but there was more to it than that. He was sizing me up with eyes that were nervous but didn't miss a thing, and he seemed to make up his mind about something before he actually took the seat. I didn't think much of it at the time and that was the only point when we made eye contact. After that it was like I wasn't there.

  He had other things on his mind.

  He was somewhere in his early fifties, thin and wiry, with a look that said life that given him a hard time. He'd hung on, but the struggle showed. It showed in the lines which Time had etched into his narrow face and in the perpetual squint of those nervous eyes that now darted up and down along the rows of passengers, seeming to catalogue everyone's position and tuning in instantly on every unexpected movement. The one time on the trip that someone came back to use the head, my seatmate tightened up to the point where I could almost smell his fear.

  The bus made good time out of Langdon Springs and after awhile he somehow managed to calm down a bit. But a bit wasn't enough. There was still just enough of that undercurrent of nervous energy about him to be noticeable, and dissettling. For the most part, though, I was able to ease him out of my mind, thanks to Erle Stanley Gardner. I'm a mystery fan, have been since I was knee high to the Hardy Boys, and I'd brought along a Perry Mason paperback that I'd somehow never got around to. Everything Gardner ever did is topnotch and this one was no exception. The Colorado scenery seemed to fly by.

  It was three-forty when we pulled into the Denver metro terminal. There's a particular type of fatigue that travel breeds and, as I slipped the book into my coat pocket, I realized that it had me in its grip, but good. The fatigue, that is. I felt woozy, groggy. But Duffy's Shamrock Inn, a very good, very Irish little restaurant, is just across from the depot. There was still time for a drink and dinner before the supper crowd hit, and I'd be good as new.

  So as the bus pulled to a stop and the wiry guy beside me got up on his feet, I reached overhead for my suitcase and that's all I was thinking about: Duffy's, food and home.

  The mass of boxed-in humanity inside the bus moved snail-like toward the front door; toward the friends, families and various welcoming parties that milled about on the sidewalk and loading apron outside.

  My erstwhile traveling partner was in front of me. I was bringing up the rear.

  The semblance of calm which he'd worn through roughly the last half of the trip had given way to the nerves again by the time I-76 joins I-25 north of the city for the freeway assault into downtown. The wiry man was a tensed bundle of nerves. The tension was ready to explode. I couldn't ignore it any longer.

  We were moving past the driver's seat now, down the steps. The crowd outside and below had begun dispersing, returning to the pace of their everyday lives.

  The man before me took two paces from the bus.

  Then he saw them.

  They'd been loitering beside a mirrored cigarette machine, about ten yards to our left. They were dressed casually. Two guys passing the time of day. But their eyes had been on every face alighting from the bus.

  They saw the man, and the man saw them, at the same time. They pulled erect and moved forward. The one on the right was hellaciously huge, with a mean pockmarked face.

  They might have been cops but I didn't think so.

  The man in front of me surprised me at first. I thought he'd be ready if trouble came. But the first thing he did after he saw them was to turn around and try to make it back into the bus. He thudded into me and for a moment I could see his lean face, pulled and frozen with panic. Then he regained his senses. He took off running along the side of the bus. Away from the two men.

  To my left, the two guys also broke into a run. They whipped past me. They were pushing and shoving people out of their way as they took off after the first man.

  I heard myself sigh. Okay, Dugan. Forget about Duffy's, food, and home.

  I dropped my suitcase and I started running, too. I came out through the front entrance right on their tails.

  The terminal fronts Nineteenth Street, one of the city's major arteries. I could see that the man from the bus hadn't wasted any time. He'd done all right for himself. He'd made it across Nineteenth. Now he stood on the opposite corner, looking around him hurriedly, judging his options. Trying to decide which way to go next.

  A three lane flow of cars, buses and trucks streamed between his side of the street and ours. The rear of the pack was still a block and a half away but closing in fast.

  The two bruisers were in a hurry to get across, but they weren't crazy. They stood and waited like the other ten or so pedestrians around us. Waiting for the light to change or at least a break in the traffic.

  Neither came
in time for what happened next. The man across the street could have run back down Nineteenth or up Arapahoe, which intersects it along the bus terminal. But for some reason he decided to race across the side street and head north.

  That was the ballgame.

  He was scared and he was careless.

  And he only made it halfway across the side street. Then he was killed.

  The car was a taxicab, and it came barreling down to make a yellow. It shot around the curb onto the side artery faster than it should have. The driver saw the man and the man turned his head slightly and saw the cab. But by then it was too late. Even from across the intersection, above the general hubbub, I could hear plainly the thudddddd! of hard metal plowing into a human body, and the shrill squeal of tromped brakes.

  I couldn't tell which sound came first, and with the time element of so few seconds involved it probably doesn't matter anyway.

  For sure it didn't matter to the man who had shared my seat on the bus from Langdon Springs.

  The impact of the blow kicked him back in the direction he'd come from. When his feet hit the curb he went down like a puppet with its strings cut, and stayed down.

  Traffic was pretty well tied up after that. The two big guys moved into the thick crowd that immediately formed around the scene. Somehow in the shuffle of morbid rubberneckers, I lost sight of them. I moved through the crowd but they were gone.

  I didn't try to reach the body. People all around me were telling each other that the man was dead and I believed them.

  I wondered if the two bruisers had gotten to the body through the crowd, and why it had been so damned important in the first place.

  Then I heard the sound of approaching sirens and I stopped wondering. I made my way back across into the terminal to retrieve my bag and headed home to fix my own damn lunch. There was nothing I could do for the nervous man now. There might have been, but I'd blown it.

  I'd blown it good.

  And I guess it was that feeling—a sort of restless conscience—that decided me to stay involved after I found the envelope an hour later.

  It was nestled between the pages of Perry Mason, evidently stashed there by the wiry man when he'd turned and bumped into me just outside the bus. He hadn't panicked at all. He had given me what the two bruisers were after. Then he had gone and died.

  And what a perfectly appropriate stash it was.

  Perry, old friend, you never had it so bad.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The apartment house was on South University, not far off the Denver U campus. I was hoping to have a talk with a Ms. Susan Court. Her name and this address were on the envelope that was now in my pocket.

  It was a pleasant neighborhood of residential streets, older well-kept houses and plenty of trees and foliage, far enough south to be out of the pollution belt; Denver's ugly brown cloud. The apartment house was a twenty unit affair, about ten years old. Four or five others exactly like it stood in the immediate vicinity. High-priced housing for students and young singles.

  Far away from the smell of fresh blood on hot pavement.

  I stood in a clean, aseptic smelling hallway, waiting for my ring at a doorbell to be answered. Susan Court's doorbell.

  I was in luck.

  The door opened a crack, held that far by a chain, and a blue eye stared out at me. No words, just the eye.

  "Miss Court?"

  No answer.

  "Miss Court, I'd like to speak with you. My name is Dugan."

  Silence.

  I reached into my pocket, came out with my wallet and held the laminated identification up to the narrow space.

  "I'm a private detective," I said. "I have something for you."

  That brought a reaction. Of sorts.

  The blue eye blinked.

  I put my wallet away and brought out the envelope.

  "It's from Langdon Springs," I said, and I held the envelope up where the wallet had been.

  "Oh!" I heard a voice say. A husky, feminine voice. "Just a moment."

  Then the eye disappeared and there was a series of faint clicking sounds. The door opened and two blue eyes were staring out at me.

  "I'm sorry, Mr. Dugan. Please come in."

  The lady with the blue eyes was of medium height, about five-nine, and nicely built. On the slim side. Her brown hair was worn in a stylish cut and her face was American West, Female Version. Softly sculptured and feminine but with a look of inherent confidence and self-reliance. An effect that was at the moment countered by the mild look of apprehension in those eyes. They were on my every move as I stepped into the apartment.

  It was a small utility place, comfortably furnished with the woman's touch by someone who knew what she was doing.

  "Are you Susan Court?" I asked.

  She closed the door and came around before me. She was dressed in a bright gold blouse that curved modestly to the rise of her smallish breasts. Brown slacks encased nicely tapered thighs and legs.

  "I'm Susan Court." Her eyes flickered to the envelope, then back. "Are you an associate of Mr. Hochman's?"

  I dropped the envelope onto a low coffee table between us. I drew hasty conclusions.

  "I'm in the same business," I said. "I'm afraid I've got some pretty rough news for you. Maybe we should sit down."

  She picked up the envelope and moved to a modern but comfortable-looking chair opposite me. She held the envelope in her lap. clutching it with both hands. I sat down on the couch fronting the coffee table.

  "News?"

  I nodded. "Mr. Hochman is dead," I said, and I told her what had happened. About the bus ride, the two guys in the terminal, the accident and the envelope I'd found only a short while ago.

  Her face turned paler and paler as the story unwound and when I was done she didn't answer immediately. She looked down and her fingers tore shakily at the envelope, ripping it and pulling something out. From what I could see, it had contained double-spaced, typed pages of heavy bond paper, and four 3x3 photographs. She read the transcript through twice, gave plenty of attention to the photos, then held them in her lap the way she'd been holding the envelope.

  She said to no one in particular, "Oh, my God. I thought it might be bad, but this..."

  "He must have slipped it into my pocket when he bumped into me," I said. "I thought he just panicked, lost his sense of direction, but maybe not. He must have known what was going down and maybe he knew he didn't have a chance of giving those guys the slip."

  "It's...scary." She said it softly, but it was just something to say. A long pause followed. She was turning something over in her mind and I had a pretty good idea what it was.

  "I am a private detective," I assured her, and I told her my rates. When she didn't balk, and when she still seemed interested, I nodded to the photographs she held. "What are the pictures?"

  She lifted them vaguely. "Copies of I.O.U's from my younger brother to a man in Langdon Springs named Murray Zucco. He runs a club. There's gambling there and...my brother is into him for fifteen thousand dollars."

  "You hired Hochman to investigate your brother?"

  "Yes. I didn't feel very good about it but, well, what with Dad changing his will..."

  Inwardly, I winced. Things were far from clear, but at least now I knew what I had to know. I knew what kind of a case it would be. It would be messy. It always is when there are wills, and when people start changing them.

  I said, "Zucco's pretty tough?"

  She nodded. "Very. Tommy has owed him the money for some time. Zucco is losing his patience. Tommy keeps telling him that all Zucco has to do is wait; wait until Dad dies. Then it would be all taken care of. Well, for fifteen thousand dollars Zucco figured it was worth it. Besides, right there in Langdon Springs he could keep an eye on Tommy to make sure he didn't try anything funny. And then Dad changed his will."

  "Leaving Tommy out?"

  "Right. Dad...well, he doesn't have that much longer to live. You wouldn't believe it to look at him. He looks and acts l
ike a man half his age, but Dr. Hanley, his physician, and a whole battery of doctors have come up with only one answer. Dad's got cancer and...they say he shouldn't last more than December."

  She was starting to slip. There aren't many who can talk, or think, about something like that and not. But I didn't want her slipping now, and I didn't think she wanted it either.

  I said, all business, "Tommy's in Langdon Springs, you're living here. Why's that? Are you going to school?"

  "No..." She gulped loudly, and the threat of tears was past. "I'm interested in the theater. Acting, and dance. I did some summer stock this summer and now I'm involved with a group downtown, putting on avant garde stuff. I'm...not sure how good I am, but I knew I'd never find out by staying a small town rich girl all my life." She looked up, caught my eye with a self-conscious grin. "I don't know if I mentioned it, Mr. Dugan, but we are rich."

  "And your father doesn't appreciate the smell of greasepaint?"

  "Not a bit. He can be, well, a terribly cantankerous old buzzard when he wants to, and his reaction was that if I didn't like it there living a decent, respectable life in the community, then it was my own tough luck. And he proved how tough my luck was by cutting me out of his will without a penny."

  "And now he's changed the will?"

  "He's going to, yes. We spoke on the phone last night."

  "So Tommy's out." I paused and turned that over in my mind, drumming my fingers softly on the arm of the couch. Then I said, "The money mustn't mean that much to you. Not if you knew your father's death was only a matter of months. You could have played the angel for awhile, stayed in the will and swung out after you had the money." I didn't know how she'd like talk like that so I looked across at her and raised an eyebrow in a mildly comic manner to try and take some of the kick out. "Right?"

  "I told you," she said somewhat stiffly. "I want to create...to sing or dance. No, the money doesn't mean that much to me. And, knowing that my father was dying, please don't think I deserted him. I know him, Mr. Dugan. He didn't want me to stay there, in the house. He didn't want Tommy either, even when my brother was in his good graces. He doesn't want anyone to know...how very close he is. How close to dying. In fact, it's only the family and a very few friends who do know. I think he wants to live every day until his last just like he's always lived them, like a damned kid! And..." There was another choked pause. "...I hope he does, the poor guy."