The Long Night (13 page)

“They wouldn't set the dog on you. I'd tell them what happened.” After a moment, she added, “What's wrong with a guy like you, anyway? Why the inferiority complex?”

“My kind doesn't belong in the kind of home you live in,” I said.

“No . . .? Sounds like the start of a hard-luck story.” She put her hands in her pockets and sucked the rain off her lips while her dark eyes took me to pieces. “Why not?” she asked. “Are you on the run from the police?”

Now I know it wouldn't have made any difference to her if I'd been wanted for grand larceny. She was that sort of dame. They don't come very often. I didn't know it then or I'd have saved myself a load of malarkey. I said, “I shouldn't have thought you'd have needed the reward money.”

“Meaning I should mind my own business. Is that Wood on your face or just plain mud?”

“It doesn't feel like blood,” I said.

“And you haven't busted anything?”

“Not so far as I can tell right now,” I said.

“So you aren't really hurt, at all . . . are you?”

“No,” I said. “But I could still use that drink.”

She studied me slowly and carefully from head to foot and back up again. I studied her. I hoped she was as satisfied with what she saw as I was. But nothing of what she was thinking showed in her voice when she said, “If you won't accept my father's hospitality, the only other thing would be for me to run you to the Windsor. It's down on the highway not far from the Beach.”

“I like the only other thing,” I said.

That seemed to confirm something she'd been considering. In the tone of a dame who knows where she's going, she said, “1 ought to tell you that it's quite a popular place. All sorts of people go there.”

“Go ahead and tell me,” I said.

She didn't get angry. And she didn't get into her car and drive up to the house and leave me leaning on my ear. Instead she shook back her hair and winked the rain out of her eyes and hunched a little deeper into her collar. She said, “Don't pretend to be stupid. You know perfectly well what I mean. Someone belonging to the police might see you.”

By then I was beginning to think I was only a little less crazy than she was. The rain wasn't impressed by our verbal cut and thrust; it just went on raining. And we went on getting wetter and wetter. Her fur coat looked like the pelt of a beaver after a night's dam building in the river. I said, “Me, I'm a democrat.”

Wherever she'd been planning to go, she arrived. She said, “Would a guy like you have any money?”

“Any is too elastic a word,” I said.

“Could you use some money?”

“Fascinating question . . . what's it leading up to?”

“Would you accept fifty dollars compensation for your injuries?”

“Wouldn't that be admitting liability on your part?”

“Supposing it would . . .?”

“Thought knocking me down wasn't your fault?”

Her right hand came out of her pocket and disappeared inside the front of her coat. When it came out again, it was holding half a C note folded twice. She said, “You should've been a lawyer . . . if you take this, you won't expose me to embarrassment. People always get the wrong idea when they see a woman paying for drinks.” It might've been a trick of the poor light, but I thought she was faintly smiling.

I took the bill without any more talk. We got into the car. She reversed smoothly off the sidewalk and across the pavement and gunned the motor to the first bend of the winding road she'd just climbed in such a hurry. We went down to the highway too damn' fast to suit a guy who'd barely recovered from an auto accident.

The Windsor was a half-timbered layout built on piles that supported it out over the waters of the Beach. Business was humming. The car park was packed nose to tail and two attendants in streaming slickers were running cars on to the last available space.

We drove under an awning and a guy dressed in Haile Selassie's best admiral suit opened the door. When he saw my face he did a double-take, but he still saluted her like she was good for a dollar tip any time. He said, “Good evening, Miss Warner. Nice to see you again.”

One of the attendants took the car away. With my muddied coat over my arm, I followed her into the lobby.

It was nice and warm and dry in there. And the bar on the right looked inviting.

She said, “Your face is a mess and so is mine. I'll join you in the bar in ten minutes. . . .”

It took me ten minutes at that to clean up so's to be semi-respectable. My results weren't nearly as satisfactory as hers were. What's more, she was waiting for me.

The bar was fairly full but not too full for a daughter of Mr. Lloyd Warner to secure a cosy little alcove just big enough for two. A waiter in a white mess jacket was hovering around like an expectant father. One or two guys seemed disappointed when I sat down.

I didn't blame them. I go for redheads, too.

This one had a wide mouth and high cheekbones and grey eyes with a touch of blue in them. Her colouring went with red hair but without any tendency to freckles, and her lashes and eyebrows were dark.

She ordered peach brandy. When the waiter had gone, she said, “Tell me what you're thinking.” The tiny smile hadn't been a trick of the light. Between this and that, I came to the conclusion Miss Warner was a very pretty dish.

“For fifty bucks,” I said, “do you want I should tell you the story of my life?”

“You're very rude. And——” she rolled the glass between her hands and gave me an up-from-under look “—that wasn't what I meant. You were staring at me so much, I wondered what you thought of me.”

“Same as every other guy thinks of you.”

“Never mind the other guys. I was asking you.”

“Asking a rude character like me might expose you to some of that embarrassment you mentioned.”

“I'll take a chance . . . well?” She raised her glass with both hands and wet her lips with a sip of brandy. She wasn't smiling any more. Her eyes were alert and watchful.

“On the strength of half-an-hour's acquaintance,” I said, “I'd say you had too much money and too few scruples: that you imagined you could buy anything in pants with a few bucks or an eyeful of cleavage: that you would kiss and tease and think it fun to duck out soon's you'd filled a guy up with ideas: that you picked me up on a thin pretext because I might be a new experience and cheap at fifty dollars . . . is that enough?”

Her face hadn't changed while she listened. When I finished, she swallowed another sip before she said, “I'll go along with you on that one about your being cheap at fifty dollars; or at five dollars; or just cheap. Don't you know the hard-boiled act went out when I was in pigtails?”

“The character study wasn't my idea. Why get sore with me?”

“I'm not sore . . . is there any little thing you've overlooked?” She didn't want to know. She was just keeping me occupied while she thought about something entirely different. It's a trick that only an attractive woman can practise successfully. I've been around and I know the trick.

“Not a thing,” I said. “But I haven't mentioned a couple of items: you're as pretty as a picture; and I'm a lucky guy.”

She came out of her secret thoughts as if her mind had been behind a door waiting for someone to open it. I'd used the right key. With distant warmth kindling in her eyes, she said, “In spite of your other opinions?”

I said, “Yes. My head tells me you don't care a damn if I drop dead when you've finished with me. My circulation hopes my head is wrong. For as long as' you'll let me, I'll string along with my circulation.”

“My, my! Even the hardest-boiled
egg
has his soft spot.” She wasn't smiling now; she was laughing at me. But it was a friendly laugh—almost. “That was the nearest thing to a gallant speech I've heard in months,” she said. “You have unsuspected depths, Mister . . . Mister . . . What is your name?”

“Wylie, Cliff Wylie. What's yours?”

With no change of tone, she said, “Don't you know?”

“If I knew, I wouldn't ask you. What goes with the Warner?”

“How do you know it's Warner?” She wasn't laughing at anything now.

“The guy outside used it to tell you good evening. And why the quiz?”

“You were almost at my gate when we—met.” Her hesitation was very slight but it was there. “What were you doing?”

“Walking,” I said.

“In all that rain?”

“Why not? Hard-boiled eggs don't melt.”

Like the words unlocked another door, she said, “If you were tough, you wouldn't need to carry a gun.” In a little girl voice, she added, “I felt it when I helped you get up from the sidewalk.”

“Go on,” I said. “You can skip the build-up. Why did you want to bring me here?”

“So that we could talk.”

“About what?”

“About a man called Gilmore.” With her eyes on mine, she swallowed a quick mouthful of brandy and then rubbed
her lips together like she was trying to get rid of the taste. “You know him . . . don't you?”

“The only guy I've heard of with that name is known as King Gilmore. And I don't know him. Would he be the one you wanted to talk about?”

“Yes. I'd hoped you wouldn't lie to me.”

“Now it's your turn to be rude. I'm telling you I've never met the guy in my life. What's it to you, anyway?”

“A lot. King Gilmore has tried more than once to kill my father. And I think——” she upended her glass and made wet rings on the table-top and stared emptily at me “—you are another of his hired gunmen.”

“Then you think wrong, sister,” I said. “Because I carry a gun doesn't make me anybody's hired killer.”

“Yet you were waiting outside our house for my father to come home. If it hadn't been for the accident. . . .” The grey of her eyes darkened with sudden understanding. She pushed her glass away and placed her hands flat on the table. Very tightly, she said, “I'm beginning to wonder if it was an accident. It could've been a smart way of getting acquainted so you——”

“—so I could take music lessons from St. Peter,” I said. “You're way off the beam. I don't work for Ricky Gilmore and I've no interest of any kind in seeing your father bumped off . . . have I said something wrong?”

She didn't answer straight off. Her face had gone hard with suspicion. When she'd spent a long minute trying to read my mind, she said, “Only someone on very close terms with King Gilmore would call him Ricky. It's not the name he's known by. Even his business intimates get no closer than Richard.”

“Who told you all this?”

“My sister.”

“Guess she must've been on more than very close terms with him . . . mustn't she? Is that the one called Susan?”

“Yes. How did you know that?”

“So you're Deborah. . . . I've heard of sister Sue; these things get around.”

“What have you heard?”

“That she's been King's woman . . . don't scowl at me.

I don't know whether it's true or not. But that's what they say.”

I took out my cigarettes and lit two together and gave her one. When she'd taken a deep drag, she said, “It isn't tine. She's come home from Europe and she says she doesn't want to have anything more to do with him . . . have you ever used that gun you have in your pocket?”

“Sure,” I said.

Deborah took her eyes off me for a moment while she stared around at the mob clustered round the bar like she was listening to the buzz of conversation. When she looked at me again, she asked, “Have you ever killed anyone with it?”

“Ever takes me back a long way. I was kinda wild when I was young.”

“Stop fooling. If you're afraid to admit it, just say so. That'll be as good an answer as any.”

“And when you have the good answer . . .?”

“I'll make you a proposition.”

“A money proposition?”

Her mouth hardened. She said, “I don't make any other kind. Are you in the market?”

“How much are you investing?”

“You can write your own cheque. I'll meet it . . . up to ten thousand.”

“Must be big business,” I said. “What do I do to earn these ten G's?”

“You put a bullet in Ricky Gilmore,” Deborah said.

FORTY-SECOND STREET was bright and glittering in the rain with a maze of sky signs duplicated on the wet pavement. The flashing lights of a score of night spots lured the good-time Charlies and the dizzy dames like giant candles luring a million moths.

From the side window of the phone booth, I could see the neon glow of the peacock projecting over the entrance to King Gilmore's luxury joint. The bird with its huge spreading tail must've been all of twenty feet high—silver tubes lining its body and red, green, blue, yellow and orange lights shimmering in its tail feathers. Winking lamps formed an arch above it and spelled out the words: S-I-L-V-E-R P-E-A-C-O-C-K. The gimmick had class. Everything about King Gilmore had class—except King Gilmore.

Somebody had stood an umbrella on the floor of the booth and a pool of water had gathered. It struck cold through the soles of my shoes. The receiver was cold, too. And the glass panes misted over from my breath while I waited.

Then a voice said, “Hallo . . .? Who is this?”

I said, “Judith asked me to give you a message, King. Are you listening?”

He said, “What's going on? Is this a gag?”

“She didn't say. She just said to tell you that you've lived too long . . . good-bye.” I hung up.

When the door of the booth slapped shut behind me, I stood for a moment looking up at the peacock sign flashing above the street. It would go on flashing until four a.m. Then King would come out to go home like he always did; like they told me he'd been doing every night for years. Only this night his routine was going to be interrupted: this night he was due for a little surprise.