Man on a leash - By Charles Williams Page 0,49

something over and over.

“Eric, for God’s sake, what do you mean, if the threat is right?”

“A radio-detonated explosive device on him somewhere, probably in the crotch. Having somebody by the balls is not just an expression.”

“But why couldn’t he tell somebody?”

“You just told me that too. He was bugged. Whatever he said to anybody or anybody said to him was being piped right into the ear of the bastard with the control transmitter. Kessler. Got up as a hippie with hair down to his shoulders to hide the plug in his ear. I’ve got to call Brubaker.”

The chief deputy might be home by now, but he could try the office first. He flipped the directory open to the emergency numbers and picked up the receiver. Before he could start to dial, the tone went off. He jiggled the switch. Nothing.

“Your phone’s gone dead,” he said.

Paulette Carmody looked up in surprise. “That’s funny. It was all right a half hour ago.” She put down her drink. “I’ll try the bedroom extension.”

She went through the foyer toward the bedroom wing and came back in a moment, shaking her head. “Dead as Kelsey’s jewels.”

The lights went out all over the house, and then those in the pool. The faint humming of the air conditioner stopped. In blackness and total silence he thought he heard a door open somewhere and at the same time the sharp indrawn breath of an incipient outcry from Paulette. He reached for her, got a hand over her mouth, and pushed her down to the floor beside the sofa.

9

He placed his lips against her ear and whispered, “Stay down.” Feeling her head move as she nodded, he pushed away from her and stood up, trying to remember the dimensions of the room and the placement of all its furniture. He didn’t know which door it was he’d heard, but it was most likely the one at the other end of the kitchen; the electric panel with its switches and circuit breakers would probably be in the garage.

His eyes hadn’t had time to adjust yet, and the blackness was still impenetrable as he began to feel his ,way toward the wall by the kitchen doorway. He stopped to listen. He was on carpet, but if somebody were traversing the tile floor of the kitchen he should make some sound. The silence was unbroken. He stepped forward again, his hands groping for contact with the wall. Then the light burst in his face. Paulette screamed behind him.

It was white, focused, and blinding for an instant, the beam of a six-cell flashlight, and just below it and extending slightly into the beam were the ugly twin tubes of a sawed-off shotgun. He froze where he was, a good six feet from the ends of the barrels, and he could make out a little of the shadowy form behind the light. The man was clad in a black jump suit and black hangman’s hood. He’d made no sound on the kitchen floor because he was wearing only socks. They were black, too. Paulette screamed again. There must be another one behind him.

“Well,” the man with the shotgun said, “if you want to carry the big son of a bitch—”

Romstead started to turn his head. A fiery blossom of pain exploded inside it. The light in front of his eyes receded to some great distance and then went out.

* * *

He opened his eyes, winced, and closed them again as he fought off waves of nausea. In a moment he tried once more. It appeared to be daylight wherever he was—faint daylight, to be sure, but at least he could see. He was lying fully clothed except for coat and tie on a narrow and too-short bed covered with a blue chenille spread, looking up at what appeared to be a varnished knotty-pine ceiling. He was a light drinker, and only a very few times in his life had he consumed enough to have a hangover; but he was conscious of some woolly and unfocused impression that this must be the distilled essence of all the hangovers in history. His mind was beginning to function a little now, however, and he remembered the man with the shotgun and Paulette Carmody’s warning cry. He put a hand up to his head. There was a painful lump at the back of it, and his hair was matted with dried blood.

He looked at his watch. When he could get the face of it to swim into focus