She shook her head slowly. The elevator started down in the shaft again. Panic flicked in her blue eyes like a ripple on water.
“No,” she said breathlessly, “but take me out of this hall.”
We were almost at my door. I jammed the key in and shook the lock around and heaved the door inward. I reached in far enough to switch lights on. She went in past me like a wave. Sandalwood floated on the air, very faint.
I shut the door, threw my hat into a chair and watched her stroll over to a card table on which I had a chess problem set out that I couldn’t solve. Once inside, with the door locked, her panic had left her.
“So you’re a chess-player,” she said, in that guarded tone, as if she had come to look at my etchings. I wished she had.
We both stood still then and listened to the distant clang of elevator doors and then steps—going the other way.
I grinned, but with strain, not pleasure, went out into the kitchenette and started to fumble with a couple of glasses and then realized I still had her hat and bolero jacket under my arm. I went into the dressing-room behind the wall bed and stuffed them into a drawer, went back out to the kitchenette, dug out some extra fine Scotch and made a couple of highballs.
When I went in with the drinks she had a gun in her hand. It was a small automatic with a pearl grip. It jumped up at me and here eyes were full of horror.
I stopped, with a glass in each hand, and said: “Maybe this hot wind has got you crazy too. I’m a private detective. I’ll prove it if you let me.”
She nodded slightly and her face was white. I went over slowly and put a glass down beside her, and went back and set mine down and got a card out that had no bent corners. She was sitting down, smoothing one blue knee with her left hand, and holding the gun on the other. I put the card down beside her drink and sat with mine.
“Never let a guy get that close to you,” I said. “Not if you mean business. And your safety catch is on.”
She flashed her eyes down, shivered, and put the gun back in her bag. She drank half the drink without stopping, put the glass down hard and picked the card up.
“I don’t give many people that liquor,” I said. “I can’t afford to.”
Her lips curled. “I supposed you would want money.”
“Huh?”
She didn’t say anything. Her hand was close to her bag again.
“Don’t forget the safety catch,” I said. Her hand stopped. I went on: “This fellow I called Waldo is quite tall, say five-eleven, slim, dark, brown eyes with a lot of glitter. Nose and mouth too thin. Dark suit, white handkerchief showing, and in a hurry to find you. Am I getting anywhere?”
She took her glass again. “So that’s Waldo,” she said. “Well, what about him?” Her voice seemed to have a slight liquor edge now.
“Well, a funny thing. There’s a cocktail bar across the street… Say, where have you been all evening?”
“Sitting in my car,” she said coldly, “most of the time.”
“Didn’t you see a fuss across the street up the block?”
Her eyes tried to say no and missed. Her lips said: “I knew there was some kind of disturbance. I saw policemen and red searchlights. I supposed someone had been hurt.”
“Someone was. And this Waldo was looking for you before that. In the cocktail bar. He described you and your clothes.”
Her eyes were set like rivets now and had the same amount of expression. Her mouth began to tremble and kept on trembling.
“I was in there,” I said, “talking to the kid that runs it. There was nobody in there but a drunk on a stool and the kid and myself. The drunk wasn’t paying any attention to anything. Then Waldo came in and asked about you and we said no, we hadn’t seen you and he started to leave.”
I sipped my drink. I like an effect as well as the next fellow. Her eyes ate me.
“Just started to leave. Then this drunk that wasn’t paying any attention to anyone called him Waldo and took a gun out. He shot him twice—” I snapped my fingers twice—“like that. Dead.”
She fooled me. She laughed in my face. “So my husband hired you to spy on me,” she said. “I might have known the whole thing was an act. You and your Waldo.”
I gawked at her.
“I never thought of him as jealous,” she snapped. “Not of a man who had been our chauffeur anyhow. A little about Stan, of course—that’s natural. But Joseph Choate—”
I made motions in the air. “Lady, one of us has this book open at the wrong page,” I grunted. “I don’t know anybody named Stan or Joseph Choate. So help me, I didn’t even know you had a chauffeur. People around here don’t run to them. As for husbands—yeah, we do have a husband once in a while. Not often enough.”
She shook her head slowly and her hand stayed near her bag and her blue eyes had glitters in them.
“Not good enough, Mr. Dalmas. No, not nearly good enough. I know you private detectives. You’re all rotten. You tricked me into your apartment, if it is your apartment. More likely it’s the apartment of some horrible man who will swear anything for a few dollars. Now you’re trying to scare me. So you can blackmail me—as well as get money from my husband. All right,” she said breathlessly, “how much do I have to pay?”
I put my empty glass aside and leaned back. “Pardon me if I light a cigarette,” I said. “My nerves are frayed.”
I lit it while she watched me grimly, no fear—or not enough fear for any real guilt to be under it. “So Joseph Choate is his name,” I said. “The guy that killed him in the cocktail bar called him Waldo.”
She smiled a bit disgustedly, but almost tolerantly. “Don’t stall. How much?”
“Why were you trying to meet this Joseph Choate?”
“I was going to buy something he stole from me, of course. Something that’s valuable in the ordinary way too. Almost fifteen thousand dollars. The man I loved gave it to me. He’s dead. There! He’s dead! He died in a burning plane. Now, go back and tell my husband that, you slimy little rat!”
“Hey, I weigh a hundred and ninety stripped,” I yelled.
“You’re still slimy,” she yelled back. “And don’t bother about telling my husband. I’ll tell him myself. He probably knows anyway.”
I grinned. “That’s smart. Just what was I supposed to find out?”
She grabbed her glass and finished what was left of her drink. “So he thinks I’m meeting Joseph,” she sneered. “Well, I was. But not to make love. Not with a chauffeur. Not with a bum I picked off the front step and gave a job to. I don’t have to dig down that far, if I want to play around.”
“Lady,” I said, “you don’t indeed.”
“Now I’m going,” she said. “You just try and stop me.” She snatched the pearl-handled gun out of her bag.
I grinned and kept on grinning. I didn’t move.
“Why you nasty little string of nothing,” she stormed. “How do I know you’re a private detective at all? You might be a crook. This card you gave me doesn’t mean anything. Anybody can have cards printed.”
“Sure,” I said. “And I suppose I’m smart enough to live here two years because you were going to move in today so I could blackmail you for not meeting a man named Joseph Choate who was bumped off across the street under the name of Waldo. Have you got the money to buy this something that cost fifteen grand?”
“Oh! You think you’ll hold me up, I suppose!”
“Oh!” I mimicked her, “I’m a stick-up artist now, am I? Lady, will you please either put that gun away or take the safety catch off? It hurts my professional feelings to see a nice gun made a monkey of that way.”
“You’re a full portion of what I don’t like,” she said. “Get out of my way.”
I didn’t move. She didn’t move. We were both sitting down—and not even close to each other.
“Let me in on one secret before you go,” I pleaded. “What in hell did you take the apartment down on the floor below for? Just to meet a guy down on the street?”
r />
“Stop being silly,” she snapped. “I didn’t. I lied. It’s his apartment.”
“Joseph Choate’s?”
She nodded sharply.
“Does my description of Waldo sound like Joseph Choate?”
She nodded sharply again.
“All right. That’s one fact learned at last. Don’t you realize Waldo described your clothes before he was shot—when he was looking for you—that the description was passed on to the police—that the police don’t know who Waldo is—and are looking for somebody in those clothes to help tell them? Don’t you get that much?”
The gun suddenly started to shake in her hand. She looked down at it, sort of vacantly, slowly put it back in her bag.
“I’m a fool,” she whispered, “to be even talking to you.” She stared at me for a long time, then pulled in a deep breath. “He told me where he was staying. He didn’t seem afraid. I guess blackmailers are like that. He was to meet me on the street, but I was late. It was full of police when I got here. So I went back and sat in my car for a while. Then I came up to Joseph’s apartment and knocked. Then I went back to my car and waited again. I came up here three times in all. The last time I walked up a flight to take the elevator. I had already been seen twice on the third floor. I met you. That’s all.”
“You said something about a husband,” I grunted. “Where is he?”
“He’s at a meeting.”
“Oh, a meeting,” I said nastily.
“My husband’s a very important man. He has lots of meetings. He’s a hydro-electric engineer. He’s been all over the world. I’d have you know—”
“Skip it,” I said. “I’ll take him to lunch some day and have him tell me himself. Whatever Joseph had on you is dead stock now. Like Joseph.”
She believed it at last. I hadn’t thought she ever would somehow. “He’s really dead?” she whispered. “Really?”
“He’s dead,” I said. “Dead, dead, dead. Lady, he’s dead.”
Her face fell apart like a bride’s piecrust. Her mouth wasn’t large, but I could have got my fist into it at that moment. In the silence the elevator stopped at my floor.
“Scream,” I rapped, “and I’ll give you two black eyes.”
It didn’t sound nice, but it worked. It jarred her out of it. Her mouth shut like a trap.
I heard steps coming down the hall. We all have hunches. I put my finger to my lips. She didn’t move now. Her face had a frozen look. Her big blue eyes were as black as the shadows below them. The hot wind boomed against the shut windows. Windows have to be shut when a Santa Ana blows, heat or no heat.
The steps that came down the hall were the casual ordinary steps of one man. But they stopped outside my door, and somebody knocked.
I pointed to the dressing-room behind the wall bed. She stood up without a sound, her bag clenched against her side. I pointed again, to her glass. She lifted it swiftly, slid across the carpet, through the door, drew the door quietly shut after her.
I didn’t know just what I was going to all this trouble for.
The knocking sounded again. The backs of my hands were wet. I creaked my chair and stood up and made a loud yawning sound. Then I went over and opened the door—without a gun. That was a mistake.
III
I DIDN’T know him at first. Perhaps for the opposite reason Waldo hadn’t seemed to know him. He’d had a hat on all the time over at the cocktail bar and he didn’t have one on now. His hair ended completely and exactly where his hat would start. Above that line was hard white sweatless skin almost as glaring as scar tissue. He wasn’t just twenty years older. He was a different man.
But I knew the gun he was holding, the .22 target automatic with the big front sight. And I knew his eyes. Bright, brittle, shallow eyes like the eyes of a lizard.
He was alone. He put the gun against my face very lightly and said between his teeth: “Yeah, me. Let’s go on in.”
I backed in just far enough and stopped. Just the way he would want me to, so he could shut the door without moving much. I knew from his eyes that he would want me to do just that.
I wasn’t scared. I was paralyzed.
When he had the door shut he backed me some more, slowly, until there was something against the back of my legs. His eyes looked into mine.
“That’s a card table,” he said. “Some goon here plays chess. You?”
I swallowed. “I don’t exactly play it. I just fool around.”
“That means two,” he said with a kind of hoarse softness, as if some cop had hit him across the windpipe with a blackjack once, in a third-degree session.
“It’s a problem,” I said. “Not a game. Look at the pieces.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Well, I’m alone,” I said, and my voice shook just enough.
“It don’t make any difference,” he said. “I’m washed up anyway. Some nose puts the bulls on me tomorrow, next week, what the hell? I just didn’t like your map, pal. And that smug-faced pansy in the barcoat that played left tackle for Fordham or something. To hell with guys like you guys.”
I didn’t speak or move. The big front sight raked my cheek lightly, almost caressingly. The man smiled.
“It’s kind of good business too,” he said. “Just in case. An old con like me don’t make good prints—not even when he’s lit. And if I don’t make good prints all I got against me is two witnesses. The hell with it. You’re slammin’ off, pal. I guess you know that.”
“What did Waldo do to you?” I tried to make it sound as if I wanted to know, instead of just not wanting to shake too hard.
“Stooled on a bank job in Michigan and got me four years. Got himself a nolle prosse. Four years in Michigan ain’t no summer cruise. They make you be good in them lifer states.”
“How’d you know he’d come in there?” I croaked.
“I didn’t. Oh yeah, I was lookin’ for him. I was wanting to see him all right. I got a flash of him on the street night before last but I lost him. Up to then I wasn’t lookin’ for him. Then I was. A cute guy, Waldo. How is he?”
“Dead,” I said.
“I’m still good,” he chuckled. “Drunk or sober. Well, that don’t make no doughnuts for me now. They make me downtown yet?”
I didn’t answer him quick enough. He jabbed the gun into my throat and I choked and almost grabbed for it by instinct.
“Naw,” he cautioned me softly. “Naw. You ain’t that dumb.”
I put my hands back, down at my sides, open, the palms towards him. He would want them that way. He hadn’t touched me, except with the gun. He didn’t seem to care whether I might have one too. He wouldn’t—if he just meant the one thing.
He didn’t seem to care very much about anything, coming back on that block. Perhaps the hot wind did something to him. It was booming against my shut windows like the surf under a pier.
“They got prints,” I said. “I don’t know how good.”
“They’ll be good enough—but not for teletype work. Take ’em airmail time to Washington and back to check ’em right. Tell me why I come here, pal.”
“You heard the kid and me talking in the bar. I told him my name, where I lived.”
“That’s how, pal. I said why.” He smiled at me. It was a lousy smile to be the last one you might see.
“Skip it,” I said. “The hangman won’t ask you to guess why he’s there.”
“Say, you’re tough at that. After you, I visit that kid. I tailed him home from headquarters, but I figure you’re the guy to put the bee on first. I tail him home from the city hall, in the rent car Waldo had. From headquarters, pal. Them funny dicks. You can sit in their laps and they don’t know you. Start runnin’ for a street car and they open up with machine guns and bump two pedestrians, a hacker asleep in his cab, and an old scrubwoman on the second floor workin’ a mop. And they miss the guy they’re after. Them funny lousy dicks.”
He twisted the gun muzzle in my neck. His eyes looked madder than befo
re.
“I got time,” he said. “Waldo’s rent car don’t get a report right away. And they don’t make Waldo very soon. I know Waldo. Smart he was. A smooth boy, Waldo.”
“I’m going to vomit,” I said, “if you don’t take that gun out of my throat.”
He smiled and moved the gun down to my heart. “This about right? Say when.”
I must have spoken louder than I meant to. The door of the dressing-room by the wall bed showed a crack of darkness. Then an inch. Then four inches. I saw eyes, but I didn’t look at them. I stared hard into the baldheaded man’s eyes. Very hard. I didn’t want him to take his eyes off mine.
“Scared?” he asked softly.
I leaned against his gun and began to shake. I thought he would enjoy seeing me shake. The girl came out through the door. She had her gun in her hand again. I was sorry as hell for her. She’d try to make the door—or scream. Either way it would be curtains—for both of us.
“Well, don’t take all night about it,” I bleated. My voice sounded far away, like a voice on a radio on the other side of a street.
“I like this, pal,” he smiled. “I’m like that.”
The girl floated in the air, somewhere behind him. Nothing was ever more soundless than the way she moved. It wouldn’t do any good, though. He wouldn’t fool around with her at all. I had known him all my life but I had been looking into his eyes for only five minutes.
“Suppose I yell,” I said.
“Yeah. Suppose you yell. Go ahead and yell,” he said, with his killer’s smile.
She didn’t go near the door. She was right behind him.
“Well—here’s where I yell,” I said.
As if that was the cue she jabbed the little gun hard into his short ribs, without a single sound.
He had to react. It was like a knee reflex. His mouth snapped open and both his arms jumped out from his sides and he arched his back just a little. The gun was pointing at my right eye.
I sank and kneed him with all my strength, in the groin.
His chin came down and I hit it. I hit it as if I was driving the last spike on the first transcontinental railroad. I can still feel it when I flex my knuckles.