The Long Night (21 page)

His eyes screwed up like he was about to cry and the pleading look came into his face again. “If you do . . . I'll be all washed-up. Once it comes out that I was in Judith Walker's apartment after two o'clock in the morning, it won't matter what the law does. I'll be finished. The world will
believe what it wants to believe . . . I'd be better off dead.”

“The world needn't ever find out you were anywhere near the apartment, that night or any other night,” I said. “What if the guy I saw wasn't you?”

“But——” he swallowed and sucked in a quick breath “—but that'd be perjury. I was the one you saw. I've admitted it. You couldn't——”

“O.K.” I said. “If you want to talk yourself into the death-house, don't let me stop you. Just go on down to police headquarters and find yourself Lieutenant Cooke and tell him you're the gink he's looking for. You'll have the satisfaction of knowing you're saving the taxpayers' money.”

In a dead voice, Warner said, “I've thought of going to the police more than once since I heard the girl had been murdered . . . but now I can't.”

“Why can't you?”

“Because you've told me something I never even suspected before. Now I'm no longer worried for myself. I don't give a damn what happens to me but——” the muscles of his face had gone flabby “—if I'm involved, my daughter will be dragged into it, too. And I'm afraid—afraid for her. I don't know what to think . . . I'm just frightened . . . she wouldn't hire you to kill Richard Gilmore to protect me; that's sheer nonsense. She knows I'm adequately protected from any form of violence he's likely to use. . . .”

Warner's voice tailed off. He put his face in his hands and mumbled, “God help me . . . everything Gilmore touches becomes corrupt. I didn't harm that girl and, if you had killed her, you wouldn't have come here. But someone entered the apartment after I had gone . . . someone. . . .” He rested his elbows on the desk and went silent.

He didn't look up and he made no answer when I said, “I'll call you to-morrow. In the meantime, do nothing. Until we're sure, keep your suspicions to yourself. Whatever happens, wait for my call.”

I was at the door before he pulled himself together. Then he took his hands away from his face and he sat up straight. In a strange voice, he said, “You're name's not Wylie . . . is it? Why do you use a phoney label? What're you afraid of?”

“My name is Bowman,” I said. “I'm a private detective
who's as much of a fall-guy in this business as you are. The way I see it, King Gilmore picked on me to sew the frame good and tight on you. That's how I came to be invited to Judith Walker's apartment; I was the monkey pulling the chestnuts out of the fire for Mister Gilmore. My part was to be the unbiased witness to Mister Lloyd Warner's indiscretions. This was to be the badger game with a difference.”

“But something went sour . . . that's what I don't understand.”

“You're not the only one, brother. My guess is that King's been using an ice-pack ever since that night. Otherwise he'd have put the screw on you long ago.”

“Judith Walker wasn't intended to die . . . I know that now.” Warner ran his fingers through his grizzled hair and felt the back of his neck again. “But Gilmore didn't know she was dead; he didn't know his stunt had misfired. Why did he stop away from her apartment? . . . It must have some bearing on her death . . . and another thing——” he dropped his hand and stared at me with his head on a side “—why hasn't Gilmore been in touch with you to learn what happened?”

“He has been in touch with me,” I said. “Which is my reason for the phoney name . . . but that's another story. Just do me a favour and don't tell him I'm in circulation.”

“In case of what?”

“In case I have an accident,” I said.

Outside Warner's room, Nat took me in tow. He didn't say anything after he'd a quick peek into the office to see that his boss was still O.K. I didn't hear Warner speak to him, either.

We went along the quiet passage to the corridor that led to the top of the stairs. Philip was waiting for us. He was in no more talkative mood than his partner. His eyes were still trying to remember something.

At the foot of the stairs I said, “You don't need to give yourself a headache. I made the grade with the big white chief. You can relax now.”

He fingered the nice straight parting in his hair and he grinned at me unpleasantly. With a twisted mouth, he said, “Why should you worry about my headaches? By the time you call again, I'll have remembered who you are.”

“You'd do better using your one-track mind to guard your boss.”

Philip said, “Maybe that comes to the same thing . . . you know how you can take a sort of instinctive liking to some people first time you meet them?”

“Well?”

“Well——” he stopped at Miss Armitage's door and reached for the knob “—I had the same kind of feeling about you—only mine was the other way round.” His grin faded as he added, “Freely translated, that means you're short of one hole in the head and I hope you get that one soon . . . do I make myself plain?”

“You talk too much,” I said. “It stops you concentrating on your job. For example. . . .” I made like I was reaching for my hip pocket. His hand darted inside his coat where the shoulder holster bulged and he forgot my left wasn't occupied.

Now this was a tactical blunder. As he drew the gun on me, that left found work to do. It stuck itself several inches
into the soft spot just above his belt where his lower ribs parted.

Thereupon Philip did some more forgetting. He even lost sight of the idea of what he had meant to do with the gun. A couple of seconds later, he lost the gun as well. He was too busy digesting a solid right on the same soft spot.

While he rested against the wall alongside Miss Armitage's door and tried to uncross his eyes, I removed the police positive from his lax fingers. He didn't want it, anyway. What he wanted right then was enough air to go on living.

I said, “See what I mean?”

He made a bubbling noise in his throat and pawed at his middle and slid a little lower down the wall. His face was the colour of Mamma Schwartz's cream cheese when it's kept too long. I guess he couldn't see what day it was when I left him.

Miss Armitage mislaid her complexion, too, soon's I walked in pointing the gun at her. She did a rapid double-take and her mouth dropped open. Behind her tortoiseshell glasses her eyes became large and bulging and slightly glazed. She said, “Ugh?” like it was a question to which she didn't want any answer.

“I'll trade you this for mine,” I said. “And make it a fast deal.”

She fumbled with the middle drawer of her desk like she had five thumbs on each hand. When the drawer opened, all she did was point dumbly and push her chair back so's to get out of my way. I got the idea only her corset was holding her up.

I exchanged Philip's gun for mine and shut the drawer and put my .38 out of sight. Miss Armitage was breathing through her mouth and looking blotchy. I said, “Tell Mr. Warner he'd better get himself a new housedog. Philip is a liability.” Then I made my exit by the door leading to the elevator.

Down in the lobby there were a lot of people coming and going and standing around. It was purely by chance that I caught a glimpse of the man in the belted raincoat.

He had nothing to distinguish him from a hundred other guys; nicely polished black oxfords, well-creased pants, a
polka-dot bow tie, and a dark homburg. Just another guy. And I didn't know him at all. But I had seen him before. The last time he'd been leaning against the same pillar in almost the same position and reading the same newspaper. He'd been there when I arrived to make my call on Lloyd Warner.

None of which was a breach of the city ordinances; the guy could've been waiting for somebody. But there were three things about him that rang a warning bell in my alarm system. As I walked across the lobby on my arrival, I'd seen him glance at me and look away. And he'd made not looking at me into a positive action, although it hadn't registered with me at the time. Now he was doing likewise again. The third thing was that his paper was still folded open at the same page. If I'd needed any more, he had placed himself so that he had an uninterrupted view of the express elevator reserved for the use of Trans-Continental.

I went out to the street and halted at the kerb to light a cigarette. The guy in the raincoat hadn't followed me. A full minute passed and he still hadn't followed me. That could've meant his job was to check who visited Lloyd Warner . . . maybe to give an advance tip-off to the guards up above whenever danger was about to ride up in the elevator . . . or to keep tabs on Warner when he left . . . which might be a service King Gilmore was paying for . . . if he still had a yen to give Warner the rub-out. . . .

But Warner was behind the eight ball and no one should've known it better than the sonovabitch who'd built the frame for him. Warner didn't dare talk out of turn, either to the grand jury or to anybody else. It was no longer necessary to eliminate him. He had more to gain by keeping his mouth shut than Gilmore had—a lot more. And not just for himself. A guy thinks twice before he says or does anything that can send his daughter to the hot seat. The way it looked to me, Warner had better than a hunch that daughter Susan was the someone who'd entered Judith Walker's apartment after he had gone.

I switched my thoughts back to the character in the belted raincoat. Whatever his duties were, they didn't include tailing me. I'd already had enough headstart to have climbed
into a cab . . . one had pulled into the kerb behind me . . . and I could've been——

There my thoughts stopped dead. The cab behind me wasn't a cab. And even if it had been, I've never seen a New York jockey wearing a high, stand-up collar that frames grey eyes and a soft, red mouth and Titian hair with hidden fires in it. Neither does a jockey need a small automatic to persuade potential customers that they want to go for a ride.

Deborah said, “Get in. It's time you and I had a quiet talk in a quiet place . . . or would you prefer to travel alone to an even quieter place where there isn't any talk?”

She looked at me and she smiled. So did the muzzle of the gun—minus the smile. I got in.

We drove uptown like two people whose marriage has outlived its romance. She sat behind the wheel half-sideways so she could keep one eye on me, and I sat as far away from her as the length of the front seat would allow. That's how she wanted it. When a dame drives as well with one hand as she did, I thought that was how she ought to have it.

For the first few minutes, she didn't say anything. Neither did I. It was her party.

Then she said, “This gun isn't registered in my name. I bought it from a deserter in one of those pin-table places on Forty-Second Street.”

I said, “Thanks for the warning. Have you thought of the story you'd tell?”

The lights ahead changed to amber and she slowed to a leisurely stop as they became red. With her right hand resting on the seat so no one but me could see the gun pointing at my stomach, she said, “You waited for me outside my father's office . . . when I got into the car, you followed me . . . before I could do anything about it, you threatened me with the gun . . . first time you relaxed, I made a grab for it . . .
and it went off. As a story, it'd be my word against yours—and you wouldn't be around to contradict me.”

You'd have thought she was thinking up some plausible excuse for breaking a date. Her face didn't look like the face of a female killer. She was still a pretty girl in a pretty hat that had a flash of white to match her daisy ear-rings. But the automatic wasn't pretty. I wondered if she knew how much it takes before you can pull the trigger that fires a hot slug into somebody's guts.

“This is a change from second-hand murder,” I said. “When did you decide you didn't need me to do the dirty work for you?”

She flicked a swift glance at me and the tinge of blue in her grey eyes was the blue deep down in a glacier. “When I inspected a couple of bullet marks not so long ago,” she said. “Bullet marks on the wall outside a dine-and-dance-and-dame place called the Silver Peacock . . . remember it?”

“So what?” I said. “How many more times are you going to gripe because I missed from a distance of a hundred and sixty feet on a wet, dark night?”

“No more times.” She wasn't looking at me now but I knew she could still see enough of me to plant a bullet where it would do me no good . . . if I made a wrong move. “You couldn't have missed by the width of the doorway,” she said in the same unemotional tone, “unless you intended to miss. That means my first guess was the right guess: you're on King Gilmore's payroll.”

“Would you like to bet on that?”

“I only gamble where I have a chance of collecting.” Her nice teeth showed in a quick smile like she thought that was a cute thing to say. “You're a poor risk,” she added.

“Now you're acting the tough baby,” I said. “But what you don't seem to know is that you're not kidding anyone. You've no intention of using that gun on me.”

“No?” She looked at me again and I couldn't see any trace of the smile in her eyes. “Would you like to bet on that?”

As a conversation, it wasn't the kind I'd have chosen to have with a pretty girl. We seemed to have got stuck in a groove.

The car rolled on steadily through the traffic—stopping,
starting, overtaking, like all the other cars going their various ways on a rainy afternoon. The difference between this one and the others was that they weren't being handled by a dame who drove with one hand on the wheel and the other on an automatic pointed at a guy's left hip. For a guy like me in the company of a chick like her, the situation wasn't conventional.