Man on a Leash - Charles Williams(7)

“He walks forward with the two suitcases, puts them in that
steel box in the trunk, and latches it. If he takes one more step,
up the side of the car toward you, the whole thing goes up. If he
tries to pass you a gun or a tool of some kind, she blows. He’s
been told all that already. So he goes back to his pickup, turns
around, and heads back to the highway. It’ll be hours before he
gets there; that’s been explained to you—the rock slide. He’ll
have to walk most of the way.
“The rest of it’s marked on your map, the turns you make and
the distances. We’ll pick you up and disarm the thing before you
go out of transmitter range. It’ll be dark very shortly after then,
and we’ll be out of the country in a different set of vehicles
before they even find out what direction we went. Okay?”
Man on a Leash — 134
“If you could call it that,” Romstead said.
“So you can take off the blindfolds when I sing out. Then just
wait.” Footsteps receded. Sing out, Romstead thought. Exseaman.
So far, that was the only slip Top Kick had made.
“Okay,” Top Kick called, some distance behind them. At the
same moment a car door slammed, and he heard the other
vehicle accelerate in low gear, going away.


 He yanked off the
blindfold, winced at the sudden glare, and craned to look back.
The vehicle was already out of sight around the curve of the hill,
but he could still hear it. It had apparently turned when it came
out on the road, for it seemed to be fading away in the same
direction they were headed.
He looked around then. Paulette Carmody had put her head
down and pulled off her blindfold with her manacled hands; but
her eyes were still closed, and he could see tears on the curve of
her cheek. Her hair was in disarray from removing the cloth. He
reached over with his free right hand and did his awkward best
to smooth it back in place. He squeezed her shoulder then and
could feel her trembling.
“Thank you, Eric.” Her head was still lowered. She sobbed
once and went on shakily, “I—I’m so ashamed—”
“Of what? You didn’t break.”
“B-but I almost did. You’ll never know how close it was. I hahave
to tell you. I wanted to throw myself on the ground and
grab them by the legs and b-beg them to send you alone. Kill
you—save me. Oh, Christ—”
“Well, you didn’t, kid, and that’s where they start from when
they give out the medals. Wanting to but not doing it.” He felt
like a sadist for not telling her there was a faint ray of hope
even yet because it was Carroll Brooks who was bringing the
money, but it was too soon to begin the charade. He glanced at
his watch. It was three fifteen. Far too soon. That great
extemporizer with the chain-lightning mind wouldn’t even have
reached Barstow yet, and it would wreck everything if he said a
word before they were irretrievably committed to the delivery.
They’d call it off, and they’d have to go through the whole thing
again somewhere else with another man bringing the money.
And they wouldn’t be beyond the point of no return until after
Carroll had made the change of vehicles and recrossed the
highway, headed north. He didn’t have the faintest idea when
that would be because he didn’t know how far east of Barstow
Man on a Leash — 135
they were. They could be in Nevada for all he knew. He’d have
to wait until Carroll went by here to be sure. It would only take
a few words, anyway, to plant the doubt.
Maybe he could whisper it right against her ear. No. Let it
ride. He didn’t know how many bugging devices there were in
the car, what kind they were, or how sensitive. And it was only
the slimmest of hopes anyway. Maybe it would be even crueler
to mention it.
Her hands were tightly clasped together. She took a deep,
shaky breath and said, “It was different back in the room. It was
unreal—it wasn’t actually going to happen—and now it has.”
She shook her still-lowered head. “I’m almost afraid to breathe.”
“No. Forget that,” he said—with more confidence than he felt.
“It’s set up for electrical detonation and won’t go off unless he
does it.” He saw they’d brought her purse. It was on the seat
between them. He fumbled it open with his right hand and
brought out the cigarettes. Shaking one out, he located her
lighter, fired it up, and held it between her lips. She puffed and
inhaled deeply. If she had anything to do, he thought, it would
help.
“You’re in charge of reading the odometer,” he said. “Check it
now and add five point three so you can watch it and tell me
when it’s coming up.”
“Right.” She took another puff of the cigarette, and when he
removed it, she lowered her face and tried to wipe the tears
from her cheek by dabbing it against her sleeve. He transferred
the cigarette to his other hand and found a tissue in her purse.
When he blotted at them, she smiled wanly. “You know, I think
you are a gentle man. Maybe I won’t tell your girl to get the hell
out before it’s too late.”
He made no reply. He was studying the desolate and sunblasted
country around them, trying to guess where Kessler
would be. Judging from the time and the shadows of the few
cacti around them, they must be facing approximately north.
They seemed to be on the floor of an immense valley, perfectly
flat except for an occasional small hill or rocky ridge and, a few
miles farther west, three higher hills shaped like truncated
cones. He could be on one of those, he thought; he’d want to be
as high as possible, but still not on anything isolated and
conspicuous. He turned to look back. It was rougher there, in
the distance, at least, a naked badland of much higher ridges
Man on a Leash — 136
and towering buttes, but that might be on the other side of the
highway. Ahead of them, at a distance he guessed must be ten
miles or so, the country began to rise again and break up into a
lunar landscape of desolate ridges and canyons.
He could see nothing to the right because of the hill behind
which they were concealed. He leaned down to look up through
the window and saw it wasn’t much more than a stony hummock
some twenty feet high and perhaps a hundred yards long dotted
with big boulders and here and there a cactus struggling for
survival in the flinty ground.
He wondered if the other side might be where the charge was
placed to drop a rock slide in front of Carroll’s car so he’d have
to walk back to the highway, as Kessler had said. The terrain
here, however, was so flat he could drive around it, so it must
be farther back. His thoughts broke off then. A car was coming.
It couldn’t be this soon, could it? No, it was approaching from
the north. Well, even in this Godforsaken place there must be a
little traffic on the roads. It went on by, traveling fast.
They waited. It was 4 P.M ... 4:30. The sun beat down. Heat
waves shimmered above the desert floor, distorting everything
in the distance. He looked around and saw Paulette had her
eyes closed, her lower lip clenched between her teeth, silently
crying. He put a hand on her arm and squeezed. She nodded
thank you but didn’t trust herself to try to speak.
It was five. A quarter of six.
They heard him coming.
* * *
It had to be. The car was coming up from the south. As it
approached at moderate speed, he was conscious that he was
holding his breath. It was going past now on the other side of
the hummock. Still going. Maybe they’d called it off— Then it
came, two short blasts of the horn. He exhaled softly as he hit
the ignition switch and started up, automatically checking the
odometer again as he’d already done a half dozen times before.
It would read 87.7 at the stopping point.
The ground ahead was uneven and rock-strewn, and he eased
forward at a crawl, feeling the tightness in his throat at every
lurch and sway. It wasn’t the dynamite as such or even the
detonating caps he was thinking of. They’d be cushioned. It was
that relay. How strong was the current that was keeping it
Man on a Leash — 137
pulled over against the tension of its spring? Well, it would be
cushioned, too, he thought.
They came around the end of the hummock and onto the road.
It wasn’t even graded, just a track running north across the
level floor of the desert. The old pickup truck was ahead, a little
less than a quarter mile and going very slowly, waiting for him.
As he closed the distance, it began to pick up a little. Now? he
thought. No, wait’ll you pass and be absolutely sure it’s Carroll.
And it’d be a lot more effective if he could get Paulette to give
him a cue to lead into it. Coming on cold with it could have a
very phony ring, and Kessler, whatever else he was, was no fool.
The pickup was pulling off now. It stopped a scant twenty feet
from the road. Romstead slowed. The driver was hatless, and
he’d taken off his sunglasses as he leaned out the window to
wave, a man with prematurely gray hair and a lean, alert face
stamped with a questing intelligence. During their college years
Brooks had wanted to be an actor; his only drawback was an
inability, or unwillingness, to learn lines, when it was so much
more fun to make them up himself. Give him one cue, and he’d
ad-lib the whole play. Romstead sighed.
He slowed a little as the pickup fell in behind them. They had
only four miles now to the transfer point. The road ran straight
ahead across absolutely flat terrain unbroken by any irregularity
except for another low hummock or stony ridge far ahead.
Kessler had chosen his spot well. With his telescope he could
see for miles in any direction across a landscape where nothing
could be concealed. They and the pickup were the only vehicles
anywhere in the immensity of it. Three miles.
Okay, he thought; air time. He began to whistle “Sweet
Georgia Brown,” drumming the beat on the wheel. Paulette
Carmody raised her head and stared at him in horrified
disbelief. He grinned and winked and cupped an ear in the
listening gesture.

“My God, aren’t you even scared?” she asked.
“Relax,” he replied. He had no idea where the bug was, but it
didn’t matter. He’d be heard. And of course, there’d be another
in the trunk to monitor Brooks. “They’re not going to blow it
while the money’s still in the pickup, that’s for sure. And I don’t
think they’re going to blow it afterward either.”
Man on a Leash — 138
She swallowed, and moistened her lips. He could see her
wanting desperately to hope but not daring to. “What—what do
you mean?”
“Intelligence slipup. Theirs is pretty good, but they didn’t go
quite far enough. They investigated you, and Jerome Carmody,
and me and my background, but they should have done just a
little checking into Brookie’s background, too.”
Two point six to go. Her eyes were imploring. Her lips formed
“Please,” but nothing came out. He went on. “That’s the reason
I kept nudging him on with that bat sweat about its being
impossible, that the FBI would find a way to ring in one of their
men. I wanted him to insist on Brooks and get him. You see,
Brookie and I used to be a team in an outfit that forgot more
dirty tricks last week than Kessler’ll know in a lifetime—”
She nodded, and said in a small voice. “I thought so. The CIA.”
“You said it; I didn’t. Anyway, we operated in Central and
South America because we’re both bilingual in Spanish and
English. We’ve been through kidnappings before—from both
sides of the fence, whether you agree with it or not. So I don’t
think they’re going to blow this car. I know what I’d do if they
had Brookie, and our minds always seemed to operate along the
same lines. I would have told you before, but it had to wait till
they were committed. They can’t call it off now, so they’re stuck
with Brookie. Right, Kessler?”
It was less than two miles now. She had lowered her head
again, and her hands were clenching and unclenching. He
looked back. Carroll was hanging a steady quarter mile behind.
The road, if you could call it that, ran straight on with nothing to
break the monotony of the desert floor except the low stony
ridge coming up on their right. The seeds of doubt should be
planted now, they had a few minutes to germinate, and now it
would all depend on Carroll. He reached out a hand and
squeezed Paulette’s arm. She raised her head, tried to force a
semblance of a smile, and checked the odometer again. He
glanced at it. It read 86.8. Nine-tenths to go.
He looked off to the left toward the three hills that resembled
truncated cones. One of those was bound to be where Kessler
was. There was no real elevation anywhere off to the right, and
anyway that hummock or ridge was coming up on that side not
more than two hundred yards off the road—
Man on a Leash — 139
Panic hit him then for an instant, along with a surge of guilt
and rage at his own stupidity. Maybe it was already too late, and
he’d killed the friend behind him. He’d been so intent on the
other thing he’d missed it entirely. He’d blown it. The odometer
read 87.1, and the .1 was already past the center and moving
up. He cut the throttle and rode the brake. It would look like a
crash stop to them, so he said, “Damn! Almost overran it.”
Paulette Carmody jerked her head around and was opening
her mouth to speak when he got a finger to his lips and gave a
violent shake of the head. He looked at the odometer again as
they came to a full stop, and then at the nearest point on the
ridge. Call it nine hundred yards. Maybe he’d saved it. Just
maybe. The rifle would be sighted in for two hundred, and
changing the elevation on the scope was guesswork without a
few rounds to check it, but the man, whichever one he was, was
plenty good. He’d seen some of his work.
How in hell could he have fallen for that rock-slide story? He’d
heard the car go off toward the north, hadn’t he, and then a
little later another car go by them headed south? Kessler
couldn’t keep that communications frequency jammed for very
long at a time or the FBI would use their direction finders to
zero in on his jamming transmitter, and anyway they had to
keep Carroll from getting back to the highway for longer than
any hour or two. He should have seen all that, but he’d been too
wrapped up in some way to save his own neck.
He looked back through the settling dust of their passage. The
pickup was stopped a hundred yards behind them, and Carroll
Brooks was getting out.
Pal, he thought, this could be the biggest role you ever played;
just pick up your cues and ad-lib the hell out of it.
Man on a Leash — 140
12
Paulette was still looking at him imploringly. He pointed toward
the ridge and crooked his index finger in a triggering motion.
She shuddered and closed her eyes, and he realized she was
very close to the edge. This kind of tension continued long
enough could break anybody. He looked back again. Carroll had
the two big suitcases out now; he picked them up and started
toward them. They seemed to be heavy; well, no doubt they
were. Two million dollars, in any denominations, would be a lot
of tightly packed paper. Shadows were lengthening; it would be
dark in less than an hour.
He was getting closer. Fifty yards now. Romstead stuck his
head out the window and called, “¿Que tal, amigo? Hace
muchos anos.” Carroll didn’t know a word of Spanish, but his
reply, if any, wouldn’t be distinguishable at that distance. The
other appeared to shake his head, but he said nothing. He came
on.
He was at the back of the car now. He put the suitcases down.
“Been a long time, Brookie,” Romstead said out the window. He
never called him Brookie. “That crummy barrio back of Lake
Titicaca, wasn’t it?” Carroll was the only one he’d ever told
about it.
“When they sent Ramirez back to us in two boxes and a rolled
poncho?” Brooks asked. “Who could ever forget it?” He was
ready. He raised the lid of the trunk. No doubt he’d seen the
Man on a Leash — 141

pictures and knew what the steel box was for, but another look
at it would help. And he’d be speaking right into the bug.
“What did you use?” Romstead asked. “Thermite or acid?”
“Acid,” Brooks replied with no hesitation at all. “Fooling
around with ignition hardware for thermite gets too
complicated.”
“Nitric?” Romstead, winking at him in the mirror.
“Sulphuric.” Brooks set the first suitcase in very carefully, as
though it contained eggs. “Two liters in each bag, side by side in
scored flasks. If he blows it, he’s going to have two million
dollars’ worth of beautiful green slime.”
“With bubbles,” Romstead said. “Hold the second bag a
minute. There’s a sniper on that ridge. I goofed and didn’t get it
in time. His rifle will be sighted in for two hundred yards, and I
make it between eight and nine, but he’s an artist. He won’t
open up till you’ve got the trunk closed, so slam it fast, hit the
dirt on this side of the car, and I’ll back up and give you cover to
the truck.”
“No.” Brooks shook his head. “He’d blow it sure as hell then.
To get me. If I make it back to the highway, he’s had it.”
“I don’t think he will,” Romstead said.
Brooks was lifting in the other case. He closed the lid of the
steel box as though he had all the time in the world. “Don’t bet
on it,” he said. He slammed the trunk shut then, whirled, and
started to run, bent low and zigzagging.
He apparently caught the rifleman as much by surprise as he
did Romstead, for he’d covered nearly twenty yards before the
first shot came. A puff of dust erupted just ahead of him but a
good ten feet short of the road, followed by the crack of the gun
up on the ridge. By this time Romstead had jammed the car into
reverse and was trying to overhaul him. There was a second
explosion of dirt in the road itself but still five feet short as
Brooks veered wildly to the right. Romstead was closing now,
but he saw he was going to do more harm than anything. The
way Brooks was hurtling back and forth across the road in his
evasive tactics he’d be more likely to run over him than help
him. He had less than thirty yards to go now anyway.
There was the sound of another shot, but Romstead couldn’t
see where it had hit; it must have gone high. Then Brooks went
down, still twelve or fifteen feet short of the truck. The sound of
Man on a Leash — 142
the shot followed. Romstead cursed and slammed the car into
reverse again, but Brooks was up almost instantly. He was
hobbling and holding his left leg. He lunged for the door of the
pickup, and as he yanked it open, the glass in it shattered. He
made it behind the wheel. The pickup sprang forward in a wide
turn, bouncing over the uneven ground off the road, and then
was accelerating as it drew away.
There was no telling how badly he was hurt or whether he
might pass out from loss of blood before he could make it to the
highway. Romstead’s face was savage as he slammed the car
into gear. It leaped forward. He gunned it and heard rubber
shriek. He didn’t know whether the rifleman would try to get
him or not. If it were Top Kick he might; he’d know how to
disarm the explosive charge. He could take it over here, though
it was dangerously close to where the country would be
swarming with police ten miles to the south. And Tex was stupid
enough, on the other hand, for anything to be possible. They
were doing sixty-five when they came abreast of the near end of
the ridge. He became conscious then that Pauline was shouting
something at him, over and over.
“Aren’t you going back? For the love of God, aren’t you going
back?”
“No,” he said. Then the wing window shattered just in front of
her. A hole appeared in it, it cracked in a crazy pattern like a
spider web, and fragments of glass showered into the car. She
screamed, took a long, shuddering breath, and screamed again.
She slumped forward. Romstead heard another bullet strike the
car somewhere else as they tore ahead. They couldn’t go back.
The minute he started to turn around, Kessler would blow it.
He’d have nothing to lose then, acid or no acid, because the
money would be gone anyway, and he’d have everything to gain.
They knew who he was, and even if he got out of here, the FBI
would pick him up within days. But as long as he was going
ahead, into their country, they’d hesitate to blow it.
At least for a few more minutes, he thought. Then they’d
begin to have second thoughts about it, whether anybody would
destroy two million dollars as casually as that; once this
credibility gap appeared, it would widen, and he had to break
his way out of the car before it did because they’d be able to
hear what he was up to. Of course, there was an excellent
chance that what he was going to do would blow it up anyway,
Man on a Leash — 143
but after a certain point you’d reached saturation in the
possibilities for disaster, so one more didn’t matter much.
He looked back. He couldn’t see the pickup anymore, but
there was too much dust to be sure it hadn’t stopped or gone off
the road. There appeared to be no other dust plume behind
them yet, but again you couldn’t be certain of that either
through the shifting curtains of their own. Rougher country was
just ahead; somewhere in there he should find what he was
looking for.
But he was going too fast. They hit a bump, and for an instant
all four wheels were off the ground; he seemed to be
somewhere far off, watching with clinical detachment and
arriving at a decision: if they came down without exploding,
he’d better cool it a little. He eased the throttle. There was a
rocky ridge on the right now with a scattering of large boulders
on its slopes, and just ahead the road dived into a shallow
canyon between two of them. He cut his speed to thirty, and
then to twenty, as he entered it. Kessler couldn’t see them now,
no matter where he was. But he could still hear, he thought.
Up ahead the slopes on each side closed in and steepened, but
he saw what he was looking for before that. He slammed on the
brakes. Along the base of the slope to his left, just off the road,
were several large boulders, some bigger than the car,
shrugged off the hillside in some seismic upheaval of the
geologic past. They were in a variety of shapes, but one of them
had a configuration he thought would do. He put the car into
reverse, shot backward a few yards, and pulled over beside it.
This side was practically vertical, with a slight outcropping
approximately where he wanted it. He leaned his head out the
window and looked down.
They’d left at least an inch and a half of the threaded rod
protruding beyond the washer, and the nut on this side. He’d
have to attack it in reverse, however; going ahead would push
the rod back against them if he managed to tear it at all, and it
could cut them in two. He pulled ahead about ten feet, cut the
wheels, and looked back to line it up. Paulette Carmody had
raised her head now and was staring at him in a sort of
benumbed wonder, unable even to guess what he might do next.
He shifted into reverse and came back, hard, turning the wheel
a little more to wipe the door right across the jagged and nearly
vertical face of the rock.
Man on a Leash — 144

There was a screech of rending metal as the door handle came
off, tearing away a section of the skin. But his wheels were
spinning now, digging in with a whining sound of their own. His
angle was too steep, and he was jammed against it. He shifted
and shot ahead four or five feet and started back again.
“Good God in heaven,” Paulette Carmody said, and shut her
eyes. He tried not to think of that relay himself. They came into
it with a crash and another shriek of metal, and he gunned it
hard to keep going. The door buckled in toward them; they hung
for a second or two, and in this fleeting hiatus in the sounds of
destruction marred only by the high whining of the wheels he
heard Paulette praying beside him, “—hallowed be Thy name,
Thy kingdom come—” Then they were moving again, to another
keening of agonized metal, and when they lost contact with the
face of the boulder the rod was some four inches in front of him,
and he could see the long tear in the material lining the inside
of the door. He stopped and looked out the window.
The rod had ripped through the sheet metal for at least five
inches in a widening tear that was now nearly the width of the
washer, and one side of the washer was already in it. He caught
the rod with both hands, palms up in a weight lifter’s hold,
braced his elbows against the back of the seat, and heaved. At
first nothing happened. He relaxed, came up again, and then
put his whole strength into one burst of upward pressure. There
was a sound like a breaking guitar string as the washer popped
through and the rod bent upward. He tore it through the
composition material lining the door, slipped his ring off it, and
pushed the end of it from between Paulette’s shackled wrists. It
wouldn’t go on out through the hole in the right-hand door, of
course, because the nut and washer were still on it and jammed
now beyond removal by anything short of a hacksaw, but it
didn’t matter.
Paulette Carmody’s eyes were open now, and she was looking
at him in a sort of numb blending of awe and gratitude and
returning hope. She started to speak; he cut her off with an
abrupt, almost savage, gesture for silence, shoved the door open
on her side, and waved—get the hell out, run. She looked
startled, almost as if she were as much afraid of him now as of
the dynamite, scrambled out of the seat, and began to run along
the edge of the road.
He shoved at his door. It was jammed. He was about to slide
over and get out on her side when it suddenly gave way and fell
Man on a Leash — 145
open as much as swung open. The screws in the upper hinge
had been sheared off by the pressure. He shoved it out of the
way, got out, and pulled the seat forward.
Kessler had long since figured out what he was up to, and if
he were going to blow it at all, he’d do it within the next few
minutes. By this time he must have serious doubts regarding
that moonshine about the acid, and anyway he’d send it up to
prevent their escape. No amount of money was going to save
him if they got away to identify him. The sun was gone out of
the canyon entirely now, and the light was poor on the floor
behind the seats; he could just make out the detonating caps
and their wires. They weren’t soldered, thank God; merely
twisted. He pulled the first one loose, and then the other. It was
disarmed.
He sighed, and his knees felt weak for a moment in testimony
to the amount of tension they’d been under for hours now, and
then it was gone, and he was plowing ahead. He pulled the two
detonating caps free, straightened, and threw them back up the
road, indifferent as to whether they exploded or not. They
didn’t. He yanked at the webbing holding down the two bundles
of dynamite, tore it loose, and set the explosive out on the
ground at the base of the boulder. Paulette Carmody had
climbed a short distance up the slope a hundred yards away and
was watching him from behind another big rock. He gestured
that she could come back now.
He tore off the straps holding the piece of electronics
equipment in place and hauled it out. All the interconnecting
wires, several still fast to dangling clusters of batteries like the
fruit of some electronic grapevine, seemed to converge into one
cable at the back of it. He caught it by the cable and swung it
against the boulder, batteries and all. Parts began to detach and
drop among the sticks of dynamite at his feet as Paulette came
up.
He threw up the lid of the trunk, hauled out that transmitter
or receiver or whatever it was in there, swung it once against
the boulder, and let it fall. It landed on another stick of
dynamite. Paulette winced but made no move; she seemed to be
in a trance. The left-hand door was still sagging open on one
hinge. He caught it, swung it down, using it as its own fulcrum,
and the bottom hinge tore out. He tossed it aside.
“Can we go back now?” Paulette asked, almost timidly.
Man on a Leash — 146
“No. Go way up the hill there and hide. Don’t show yourself to
anybody until you see a car with police markings.”
He threw up the lid of the steel box and lifted out one of the
suitcases. “Just in case this thing burns,” he said as he heaved it
out of sight on the other side of the boulder.
It landed with a thud, and Pauline winced. “But—the acid?”
He grabbed out the other bag and tossed it. “There is no acid.
It was only a bluff, to keep him from blowing it until we could
get out.” He waved. “Hide. Take cover.”
“Wh-what are you going to do?”
He’d already lunged into the seat and was fastening the belt.
He grinned, and she seemed almost to recoil. “I want Kessler,”
he said. “And I’ve got one more dirty trick, if it works.”
He hit the ignition switch. Wheels spun, caught, the car
lurched back on the road, the rod still sticking out on the right,
and began to gather speed. She looked after it, her lips just
moving as she whispered. “Berserk ... berserk ...” She turned
then and began to climb up the slope.
The canyon turned left just ahead. He made it on screeching
tires. There was a clatter on his right as the rod struck
something and bent back along the side of the car. The canyon
ran straight ahead for nearly half a mile between steep walls
with scarcely room for two cars to pass. He was doing seventy
now. This was the place to do it, right here, if he still had time.
Kessler would be hot on their trail, God only knew how far
behind.
The road ran out of the canyon, climbing into rougher hills.
There was a jeep track going up over a ridge to his left. He
swung onto it, skidding, and went bounding up, rocks clattering
against the underside of the car. At the top he could see most of
the immense valley to the south of him and the three hills still
somewhat west of south. And a plume of dust. He grinned again,
the same wolfish grin that had startled Paulette Carmody. There
he was.
The car was traveling eastward at high speed from the
general area of the three hills, headed for the road they’d come
up. The rifleman, whichever one he was, would be afoot. Kessler
was going to pick him up, and they’d turn north in pursuit of
their $2,000,000 and their unarmed victims.
Man on a Leash — 147
Then he saw something else. Far to the south, miles beyond
the other car, were more streamers of dust. Several cars, at
least, and they seemed to be going flat out, headed north. He
sighed in relief. Carroll had made it back to the highway.
Kessler had turned north now, along the road they’d come up.
When the car came abreast the low ridge where the rifleman
had been, he could see it slow and stop for an instant, though it
was too far to see the man himself. Then it came on, doing
seventy at least, still miles ahead of the cars to the south.
He looked left along the ridge and the canyon below it. It
would be a quarter mile at least till he’d be above the narrowest
part of it, a rock-strewn demolition course, gullied, grown up
with cactus, blocked by boulders, with no road at all. A jeep
could make it, or anything with high clearance and four-wheel
drive, but could this thing? He grinned again as he swung the
wheel over and gunned it off the jeep track. There wouldn’t be
much of it left, but then there wouldn’t be much left anyway.

He plowed through prickly pear, smashed the windshield on a
limb of a dead tree, got stuck in loose gravel but made another
run at it and got through, and tore two fenders off as he
caromed off boulders, and then a hundred yards short of his
objective there was a crunch underneath from a rock too high to
clear. He looked back and saw a black line of oil. He’d
punctured the pan, and the motor was going to freeze up any
minute. He looked down and to his left. This would do.
The narrow canyon was below him, some three hundred feet
down a fifty-degree slope. Kessler was still in the flat a mile
away, approaching the entrance at seventy miles an hour. Still
far back, the other plumes of dust were rising in pursuit, but
gaining little if at all. He turned, stopped the car on the brink,
and held it with the brake while he unfastened the belt. Kessler
went out of sight at the upper end; then he was skidding around
the turn into the narrow, half-mile straightaway below him. He
released the brake, held the wheel while the car picked up
momentum, headed it straight down, and jumped.
* * *
Romstead replaced the phone and picked up his drink. Mayo
stood looking moodily out the window at the East Bay lights in
the gathering dusk. He went over to her.
Man on a Leash — 148
“That was Brubaker,” he said. “I asked him to call and reverse
the charges. They found him this afternoon. Out at the old Van
Sickle place.”
“Found whom?” she asked.
“You remember. Top Kick—that is, Delevan—said the old man
killed one of them—”
“And the only reason you didn’t kill two more is that the police
got there in time to stop you. The strain is improving.”
“Damn it, Mayo—”
“In another two or three generations I see a sort of super-
Romstead, capable of wiping out whole communities.”
“Look, if you have to fight me, at least be fair about it and
stick to the facts. I wasn’t trying to kill them. I was trying to get
them out of the wreck before it burned. There was gasoline all
over it—”
“And the dams don’t even seem to matter,” she went on, as if
she hadn’t even heard him. “They’re only the receptacles, like
the glass jars in Brave New World. Plant the seed anywhere, in
a gently raised and civilized young Andalusian girl from Havana
descended from five generations of university professors, and it
germinates like dragon’s teeth and comes clawing its way out of
the womb one hundred percent Romstead, impervious to all
other genes, to any distaff-inherited tendencies toward
civilization at all—”
He sighed. He’d been through these things before; the only
thing to do was heave to and ride it out. Keep your ass down, or
as the bureaucrats put it nowadays, maintain a low profile.
“Mrs. Carmody said that while you were throwing that
dynamite around like confetti and tearing the car apart with
your bare hands, even she was afraid of you, and you were on
her side.”
The police had most of the facts now. Tex actually was from
Texas, a fringe-area rodeo performer named Billy Heard who’d
done federal time for narcotics smuggling along the border
below El Paso. It was in prison that he met Kessler. The two of
them, plus the girl named Debra and the man whose body
Brubaker had found this afternoon, had planned the kidnapping
of his father.
Jeri Bonner’s only part in it was to find out where his money
was and how much there was of it. She’d agreed to it, but
Man on a Leash — 149
reluctantly, because a fifty-dollar habit had already driven her
to shoplifting and occasional prostitution and now, finally, to
desperation, but she didn’t know they planned to kill him, too.
He, for his part, didn’t know she was on heroin, and they were
sleeping together when he was in San Francisco. Romstead had
never had much faith in Mrs. Carmody’s dictum that his father
wouldn’t have anything to do with a girl that young. The old
stud would take a hack at any girl who was willing and that
pretty, provided she was of legal age. He was good to her, and
she liked him, so presumably she hadn’t bungled when she
brought back only the first page of the three-page stock listing.
She’d just hoped the others would never find out.
Then, when she learned they’d killed him, she began to go to
pieces. She ran for Coleville. Kessler by this time had found out
too that she’d double-crossed them in the matter of the stocks.
This, plus the fact they were now afraid she’d crack up
completely and spill the whole thing to the police, had got her
killed. Heard had done it, and he was the rifle expert who’d
killed Lew Bonner after Bonner received Debra’s letter
addressed to Jeri and started an investigation of his own. It was
Delevan—Top Kick—who’d been following Bonner around San
Francisco that day.
Delevan had joined them by now in the planned big score, the
kidnapping of Mrs. Carmody and himself, which was the reason
their intelligence operations had improved to such an extent. He
was a private investigator, and a good one until he began to itch
for the bigger money. He replaced the one his father had killed,
a man on whom the police didn’t have much of a line as yet
except that his name was Croft.
There’d been no telephone out at the Van Sickle place, of
course, and they couldn’t very well take him to a motel to make
that first call to the bank, so they’d simply brought him back
home. In their pickup camper, at night so they wouldn’t be seen
entering or leaving the place. They’d put the camper in the
garage, forced him to make the phone call the next day, and
stayed there until late at night again to leave. It was during this
time that his father had killed Croft.
He was in his own bedroom, gagged, his wrists and ankles
bound with tape. They’d been a little slipshod and careless
about it, at least until he taught them better, so he was able to
break the inadequate bindings on his wrists. But before he could
free his ankles, Croft came in to check him. Apparently his
Man on a Leash — 150
father had heard him coming and had replaced his hands behind
his back. Croft, however, had leaned over him to see for sure,
which was the last mistake he ever made in a life presumably
full of them. He never uttered a sound, but the final death tattoo
of his feet kicked over a chair that brought the others. They took
him back and buried him in a remote corner of the Van Sickle
ranch.
They hadn’t caught the girl yet, the oversexed chick in the
next room, and nobody, so far, had copped out on what had
happened to Debra. Romstead wasn’t sure, nor were the police,
why Debra had hidden a deck of junk in the old man’s car out at
the Van Sickle place, but it seemed likely that Heard, whose girl
she was, was taking the stuff away from her when he caught her
with it. He only smuggled the stuff; he detested the people who
were stupid enough to use it.
Carroll Brooks was all right, recovering nicely in a San Diego
hospital from a gunshot wound through the thigh. And the
police so far had run down two hundred and fifteen thousand of
the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars stashed in several
safe-deposit boxes in San Francisco. They were hopeful of
finding more.
“She was watching you—Mrs. Carmody, I mean—and hoping
the police would get there in time herself. Standing there on the
wreckage of one car with the second car balanced on top of it
and teetering and ready to fall on you any second, beating what
was left of the windshield out with a rock to get at the two men
inside and kill them—”
She was running down now, he thought fondly, beginning to
sputter and go further into left field after new indictments. She
knew as well as he did, from the police reports, that Kessler and
Heard were unconscious in there, and pretty soon she’d have to
start looking for a way out of accusing him of wanting to kill two
helpless and unconscious men who might already be bleeding to
death anyway. So she’d demand to know if he’d intended to kill
Kessler if he’d been on his feet and armed.
And he’d lie to her, as he had so much already, and tell her
that of course he hadn’t. If he didn’t lie, he’d lose her, and he
didn’t think he could face that. He needed her. She seemed to
be the only human being he’d ever really needed in his life.
Man on a Leash — 151