And Not to Yield
Chapter 9
Words: 4,297
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"Well, you're in charge now; that's a decision you have to make. What? No, I don't know when I'll be back. Yeah... good bye." Rick hung up the phone and stood stiffly, looking pensively out of the windows of Higgins' study. The swelling had left his face, leaving behind fading marks of discoloration. For a moment a smoldering raw hurt of non-understanding and confusion shown deep in his troubled eyes, then as he heard footsteps enter the room his face became an expressionless mask as he turned toward the doorway and picked up the drink sitting on the desk.
"Rick," Higgins entered waving a folded newspaper. A black patch covered his right eye and he was using a cane. "An interesting article in the paper. It seems the DA won't be pressing charges against that Desiree woman.."
"Don't tell me. They decided she was too nuts to stand trial." Rick grimaced as he took a long drink.
"Yes. But it would seem to be the correct decision." Higgins shook his head grimly. "After all her behavior was decidedly abnormal in the extreme."
"Yeah, well if you think trying to make a pauper out of the one person in the world who ever tried to help her, along with cold bloodily killing whoever got in her way, is nuts, I guess so." Rick shook his head. "What's that do to any chance of making a case against those big money guys she claimed hired her to destroy the contract so they'd be able to get their hands on the stock instead? If she's declared nuts doesn't that toss her testimony out the window?"
"I'm afraid I don't know, Rick." Higgins looked down at the desk. "I spoke with the estate law firm about this once we learned of her claims, and it seems that if the deadline passed without the contract terms being exercised then it was remotely possible that other investors might have had contracts which would have allowed them to take up portions of the unclaimed stock.. but it is almost impossible to get that information."
"Yeah, plus there'd be so many cutouts in-between them and the guys who contacted her... I don't think even Ice Pick has enough contacts to sort it all out. Ahh..." Rick growled in frustration, "Even if someone did hire her, it would have been just to find and destroy the contract, not to bump anyone off; those guys don't go in for that, that was just her crazy idea. To hell with 'em, you know. This whole thing was just crazy; if Agatha hadn't mentioned to her niece, Connie, we were headed out to the old warehouse, and if that bitch hadn't called her right aftward..."
Rick's face went grim and emptying his drink he set it down and stiffly turned to picked up a small duffel bag from the floor.
"What are you doing?" Higgins looked at the bag and back to Rick.
"I'm getting out of here. What's it look like?" Rick refused to look at Higgins as he made toward the doorway.
"But, man. You're in no shape to be going anywhere. The doctors..." Higgins stepped in front of Rick, blocking his exit.
"Look, if you don't mind, I've got things to do." Rick growled as he stopped to avoid running into Higgins.
"But I do mind. As your friend, I'd like to know what's wrong."
"Nothing's wrong." Rick said evasively as he backed up peering at the doorway over Higgins' shoulder, avoiding eye contact. "I've just been here a long time, see, and its time to move on. I don't need to hang around the estate anymore, I'm healed enough, you know. Just thought its time to do something else for a change. You can get a new manager for the club easy, and..."
"Rick," Higgins came up close and put a hand on his shoulder. "Its been apparent that something has been troubling you deeply, but none of us have said anything because we didn't wish to intrude. But I wouldn't be your friend if I wasn't concerned. Before you just walk out and disappear don't you think it would help if you tell me what this is about."
Rick gave up trying to get past Higgins and backing up threw the bag on the floor, then grabbed the empty whiskey glass from the desk. Pulling a whiskey bottle from a wall shelf he filled the glass up and took a long hurried drink. "You always think you know everything."
"I know enough to know when a friend is in pain and I can't just ignore it and walk off, anymore than I could if you'd been shot and were laying bleeding on the floor." Higgins said with concern.
A stricken look passed over Rick's face, he sat the glass on the desk and then collapsed into Higgins' desk chair, covering his face with his hands.
"You don't understand." He said miserably.
"I might if you'd tell me."
"I can't Higgins, I... I can't." Rick shook his head sharply.
"Rick, what possibly could have happened that is so heinous that you can't tell me? You know I would never betray a confidence."
"I... I know that, Higgins... but how can I tell you..."
"Just try, man."
"It was all my fault..." He began brokenly. "My best friends... you and TC almost killed because of me..."
"But that's not true..." A look of shock flashed across Higgins' face as he tried to comprehend what Rick was saying.
"Yes it is. I should have had that fight won in the first minute, instead... I failed!" Rick almost shouted the words at Higgins as he looked up wild eyed. "Don't you understand? I failed, all right! How can you expect me to stick around and look you and TC in the face everyday when I know I almost got you killed; with you ending up in the hospital almost dying, and Agatha coming that close to being busted and living in the street..." He stood up and grabbed the bottle and poured another drink.
"But good Lord, man, how can you think that?" Higgins asked uncomprehendingly.
"Because it true," Rick said halfway draining the glass. "I couldn't handle that... woman. It was sheer luck I even knocked the gun out of her hand to begin with... and then instead of getting my hands on it and ending everything then and there... I fell on my face... I failed and only a miracle saved us." His breathing became heavy and his face filled with pain as he thought back.
"So you fell... I hear what you're saying, Rick, but I fail to understand why you think you failed, or why you must assume the blame for everything."
"Because I'm over the hill, Higgins." Rick said with misery in his eyes. "I couldn't handle that woman the first time, and then the second time I couldn't handle her either. She made me look like a punk."
"But whatever are you saying, man?" Confusion reigned in Higgins' eyes. "You did 'handle' her. You did recover the documents. I don't understand, Rick."
"That's right, you don't understand..." Rick wearily shook his head. "I got the drop on her the second time, see. Then I told her we'd settle it one on one, right?" He looked up questioningly at Higgins. "And she almost beat me to death... again." He rubbed his forehead and then reached out and drained the glass and sat holding it between both hands. "Do you know why she didn't?" He looked up at Higgins who simply shook his head. "She didn't because as I lay there almost helpless on the floor just as she was ready to stomp me to death I pulled the gun and shot her. That's your god damn hero, Higgins... He can't handle a woman but he can shoot her because he had nothing left in him."
Higgins sat down quietly, looking thoughtfully at the agony encompassing his friend. After a few moments he finally spoke. "Just how old is she anyway? Do you know?"
"I don't know, Higgins." Rick listlessly shrugged his slumped shoulders. "Late twenties, thirty... I don't know. What does it matter?"
"Oh, I was just thinking that she was about the age I was toward the end of the Second World War." Higgins went on somewhat musingly. "Probably not much older than you and Thomas and TC when you were in Vietnam."
"I suppose. Maybe." Rick waved a hand dismissively.
"Yes, back then I was young and tough and never hesitated to join in a fight for a good cause... or a bad one for that matter." Higgins smiled, reflecting back on a time gone by. "But now look at me." He patted his somewhat padded stomach. "A taste for good food and good wine and the years has sadly diminished my physical abilities."
Higgins paused and then continued on as if he was somewhat talking to himself, trying to reorder events in his own mind. "No, Rick. If anyone was at fault in this affair it was me. I should have insisted on waiting until the next morning, and if not then I should have stayed at the club. I had no business going out there. My presence put you and TC at extreme risk."
"That's not true, Higgins." Rick looked up with puzzled frown on his face. "If you hadn't grabbed onto that big guy and held on we wouldn't even had a chance. You hung in there when it counted."
"Hmm.." Higgins gazed at Rick thoughtfully. "Perhaps you're correct. The true measure of a man is not his physical capabilities after all, but rather what is in his heart and his willingness to put himself at risk for others. That is why when we grow older we do not necessarily diminish and become less, even though our physical abilities lessen."
Higgins sat forward with both hands on the cane looking intensely at Rick. "Listen, Rick. You're twenty years older than when you were in Vietnam. There are many younger and more physically capable men, and women for that matter, out there now. To lose against a professional martial arts expert twenty years your junior is nothing to be ashamed of even if she is a woman. In your heart, where it counts, you are the same steadfast and brave comrade you were twenty years ago."
For a brief second hope flared in Rick's eyes, then he hung his head again with a short vicious shake. "I... I guess I can live with getting older, Higgins, but... but that isn't all of it. Its not the worst of it." Higgins sat quietly, silently willing his friend to say what needed to be said. Rick took in a deep breath and then let it out. "That first time, it wasn't so much that I failed physically, it was that I... I..." Rick buried his head in his hands again and started trembling. "I froze, Higgins. I didn't get that gun because I chickened out. I'm just a punk... a no good cowardly punk."
Higgins sat bolt upright. "Pull yourself together, man. That is simply not true. I've known you too long, and seen you risk your life too many times to believe such nonsense."
"Well, you'd better believe it because it happened."
"It? What ever are you talking about, man? Explain yourself."
"My hand... my hand was inches from that pistol. All I had to do was reach out and grab it and I didn't... I froze. I heard that hammer cock and I froze inside. I knew... I knew if I moved my hand a hair's breath I was going to die."
"Hammer?" Higgins interjected quickly. "What hammer?"
"I heard him... her... cock a piece and I knew she'd pulled a hideout gun and it was all over."
"Well, for God's sakes, man, how does that make you a coward?" Higgins demanded somewhat angrily.
"Because she didn't have a hide out piece." Rick kept shaking his downcast head back and forth.
"But..." Higgins stopped, at a lost for words.
"The bitch had a gun, but..." Rick's voice choked up with mortification, "it was a toy... a..." He sat up and grabbing the bottle by its neck drank from it directly. "It was a toy cowboy pistol." He wiped his lips with the back of his hand and stared belligerently at Higgins, as if defying him to contradict what he had just said.
"But... what on earth was she doing with a toy gun?" Higgins sat slack in his chair in amazed wonderment.
"It must of been in those boxes of junk that got knock all over in the fight... its all I can think of." Rick shook his head.
"Are you telling me she grabbed a toy pistol out of the junk strewn around in the dark of that warehouse and then had the audacity to pull it on you?" Higgins voice raised in near disbelief.
"That's what I'm telling you." Rick said defensively.
Higgins sat stunned for a moment and then bowed his head between his arms, his hands folded on the cane in front of him. His shoulders started to shake and then he let out a burst of laughter that soon had him shaking all over.
"It isn't funny, damn it." Rick glared at Higgins furiously.
"Oh... oh... Rick, I'm sorry." Higgins wiped tears from his face. "No, on second thought, I'm not either... oh." He threw his head back and his laughter echoed throughout the room.
"I don't know what the hell you find so funny." Rick said furiously. "I never should have told you..." He placed both hands on the desk and glared at Higgins as he pushed himself erect and then turned to leave.
"No... no, Rick." Higgins held out a hand as he fought to control the laughter. "Please, just listen to me. Just for a moment."
Rick stopped and turned, still glaring at Higgins.
"Just think a moment will you." Higgins said between gasps as he got his himself under control. "Pretend that your roles had been reversed. You'd just been thrown in a pile of junk and she was going for the pistol, all right?" He look smilingly at Rick.
"So what?" Rick growled.
"She almost has the pistol and then she hears you cocking one. What would she have done?"
"Her?" Rick said in disgust. "That crazy bitch would have went for it."
"Okay, okay." Higgins held out his hand again as the laughter momentarily broke from his control. "Forget her. What would any other professional soldier or criminal you've ever met done in those circumstances?"
"A normal crook, a professional hired to do a job? They're nobody's fool. They know a robbery isn't worth getting rubbed out for. They'd of..." Rick blinked his eyes and went quiet.
"Exactly. A professional would expect their opponent to be carrying. And if they heard a pistol being cocked they would automatically assume it was a back up piece. Exactly as you did. The only thing I find surprising here, is that she apparently wasn't. But then she wasn't exactly a professional."
"Well..." Some of the tension went out of Rick's frame as he thought about what his friend had just described. Then his eyes lit up again as he scowled at Higgins. "But I still don't see what is so damn funny," he growled indignantly.
"Oh... Rick!" Higgins laughed. "In the middle of the night, in the middle of a knock-down drag-out fight this insane woman gets knocked into a box of toys, happens to grab a toy cowboy pistol and then has the presence of mind to cock it while her opponent is going for a real pistol. Think about it. Isn't that a classic?" Higgins held his side as he laughed uproariously. "Oh... oh... its too much, Rick. Its too much." Peals of laughter bounced around the room as tears oozed from under Higgins' eye patch.
Rick stood frozen for a long moment then the faintest ghost of a rueful smile played around his lips as he slowly shook his head at his friend's antics. "Ahh... I don't know. If you look at it that way..."
Higgins sat back in his chair wiping his face with a handkerchief. Rick glanced at him musingly. "It had imitation pearl handle pistol grips, you know."
"Oh... oh... no Rick, don't tell me," laughter rocked Higgins back in his chair again as he held up a hand in protest. "Pearl handle pistol grips... oh... no... no..." As the laughter faded he looked across the desk expecting to see a smile on his friend's face. But instead Rick had a far away and pensive look in his eyes, almost a look of desperation.
"Rick, what is it? Don't tell me there is more?" Higgins questioned softly, forcing the laughter from his voice.
Rick sat with his head down fighting to suppress the faint shudders that suddenly shook his body. "I wanted to kill her, Higgins. I wanted to kill that bitch more than anything. God, you don't know how much I wanted to. It was like a fire, burning me up from the inside. It was so bad that I didn't care about anything anymore." Rick said in a shaky voice.
"And now I don't know if I can trust myself again. Even after I'd shot her I wanted to kill her. I... I pistol whipped her, Higgins. I... I've never done anything like that before. Its like I lost everything that I ever believed in. The things that a man knows about himself that makes him different from just being an animal." He shook his head despondently. "After she was unconscious I put the gun to her head and I wanted to pull that trigger so bad... it took every ounce of will power..." His voice trailed off into the distance of memory.
Higgins walked over to the windows and stood quietly for a long time looking out at the estate, at the palm leaves swaying in the light breeze, the few clouds slowly moving across the limpid blue of the sky.
"We each must face our demons in our own way, Rick. Its a curse or a blessing of this life, I'm not sure which." Higgins turned finally to look at the anguish on his friend's face. "But I do know that in order to conquer them we must first understand them and that means facing up to our weaknesses. The pain this has caused is a good sign, for it means that you recognize the threat. I can't tell you if there is a right or wrong in this. But I do know that you can take heart that you didn't give in to an all consuming rage. That is a much better indicator of who you are than the mere fact that rage can possess you, for in the right circumstances it can posses us all."
Higgins turned and briefly rested his hand on Rick's shoulder. "Often times the true sign of a man's character is when he refuses to give in to over whelming temptation to do what is in his power to do. Such a man as that I am honored to call my friend."
"Yeah, well..." Rick's voice choked up and standing he rubbed his mouth and walked to the window where he stood for several moments before reaching in his back pocket and pulling out a handkerchief. A few moments later, he half turned at the sound of foot steps signaling Magnum's entry.
"Hi, guys. What's up?" Magnum asked cheerfully, then turned sober as he took in the quiet atmosphere and Rick's red rimmed eyes. "Rick, are you okay?"
"Yeah, yeah," Rick mumbled as he shoved the handkerchief back into his pocket. "In fact, I think I'll head over to the club. The place is probably falling apart without me there." He flashed a semblance of his old grin and grabbing his bag headed stiffly toward the door.
"Are you sure you should be going out? The docs said you should take it easy for another week or so." Magnum looked at Higgins for support but all he got was a faint smile in return.
"Nah, I'm fine. I'm going nuts sitting around here all day." As Rick stepped into the hallway he stopped and looked back over his shoulder. "Oh, I almost forgot. Thomas, you got a call from some dame in San Diego. Cynthia something. I left her number on the desk." He gave a slight nod of his head and cocked his finger in his old salute and then he suddenly paused and stood looking at his hand.
"Pearl handles." Higgins suddenly laughed.
"Ahh..." Rick grinned weakly, then waved Higgins off and disappeared down the hallway.
"Higgins, are you sure he should be..." Magnum turned puzzled eyes on his friend.
"Oh, Rick will be fine, just fine, Thomas." Higgins said expansively as he begun humming and waving the cane around like a baton in time to the song.
"Say, Higgins, isn't that the..." Magnum started to ask.
"To dream the impossible dream, to fight the unbeatable foe..." humming Higgins grinned at Magnum. "The theme song from the Man of LaMancha. Did you ever see the Broadway production, Thomas?"
"No, but I was just talking to someone about the off Broadway shows, not that long ago." Magnum said softly.
"Well, even the off Broadway shows were wonderful, but there was nothing like watching Richard Kiley at the peak of his prowess." Higgins eyes gleamed in remembrance as the cane rose and fell in the air. "He was magnificent."
"Ah, Higgins. Can I ask you a question?"
"Why of course, Thomas. What is it?" Higgins lowered his cane and stood rocking back and forth in time to the music in his head.
"Well, its just that when Dagett called me in to sign for you on the contract..."
"Oh, yes," Higgins interrupted. "I had meant to thank you for that, Thomas. You won't mention it to Rick or Agatha will you?"
"Well, of course not." Magnum shook his head as he looked quizzically at Higgins. "But I didn't understand some things, like why Dagett said I was acting as an agent for the Estate, for Robin Masters, when in fact the contract was in your name."
"Oh," Higgins waved his cane airily about him. "We both work for the Estate and Dagett handles most of the Estate's legal work so it is not surprising if things get slightly mixed up at times." Higgins gave a little shrug of his shoulders and began humming again. "Is that all, Thomas?"
"Actually there is something else." Thomas pointed at a bottom wall shelf close to the desk. "When I was here waiting for you or TC or Rick to call I came across that manuscript about the bio-genetic company..."
"Oh, you mean the 'Legal Inheritance Factor'?" Higgins smiled as Magnum nodded in response. "What do you think of the title? I suggested it to Robin myself."
"You suggested it?" Magnum repeated lamely.
"Oh, yes. He was kind enough to give me a loan when it became apparent that the only chance to stave off bankruptcy for Agatha's family was to preserve those investments her uncle had made that had a chance of paying off. I was fortunate to have been a confidante of his before his descent into... dotage. So I was able to keep tabs on his activities and intercede to an extent. Dagett's office by the way did a superb job of researching and making recommendations as to the viability of the various investments he had made. That's actually how Robin came to write the manuscript. He got intrigued with the subject and used the research we had done as a basis for his book." Higgins smiled at Magnum. "He offered to list me as co-author; of course that would never do. But it was kind of him to offer, what?"
"Ah..." Magnum tilted his head. "So you're saying the similarities in the book to the real situation is due to Robins' involvement in the affair?"
"Oh, quite." Higgins nodded in agreement. "Only peripherally of course, but Robin has spoken extensively to me and Dagett, plus done his normal exhaustive research on the subject, so of course he is familiar with the situation here. He sent the manuscript for me to peruse a few weeks ago. I think he'll find the most recent events in this affair most interesting. I really must find the time to get everything written up and sent off." Higgins nodded to himself as he gazed out the window. "Was there anything else, Thomas?"
"Oh, no, I guess not." Magnum shook his head suspiciously. "You always have an answer for everything."
"Hmm... what?" Higgins peered at Magnum with a smile. "Oh, don't fret about the minor things, Thomas. This has actually been an extraordinary day, most extraordinary." He suddenly glanced at his watch and turned for the door. "I must be off. I'm meeting Agatha and lawyer Dagett for tea at the club."
Before making his exit, he suddenly turned to face Magnum once more and raised his cane as though gesturing to a crowd.
"Though much is taken, much abides; and though we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are. One equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will, to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."
Higgins gave a short bow, smiled at Magnum's upraised eyebrow and walked down the hallway humming to himself.
--- The End ---