The Long Night (23 page)

She wiped the back of her hand angrily across her eyes and sniffled like a kid. Also like a kid, she said, “I wish
you'd told me that the first time we met. I wasn't afraid for myself because——” she put her head back and stared up at me and gave me a twisted smile “—I had nothing to do with the death of that girl.”

“If you did,” I said, “you don't need to be afraid of me. She was a two-timing tramp and she only got what was coming to her.”

“I'm not afraid,” Deborah said. “Now I know I should never have been afraid of you. Will you help me protect Susan . . . in case . . .?” Her face was very near to mine and she was looking at me the way Lady Guinevere must've looked at Sir Lancelot.

Inside me, the half that'd had its head buried in the sand came up for air and liked the look of the scenery. Her lips were slightly parted and her eyes were shining with those will-o'-the-wisp lights that lure a guy like me to destruction. I said, “Sure I will.”

And that was it. As though I'd taken the marriage vow, she closed her eyes and put her hands on my shoulders and offered me her mouth. I could do no less than put my arms around her. If that sounds like an excuse, I don't need one. She smelled nice and her breasts were soft against me and her lips were sweet fire. That would be enough excuse—if I needed one.

When she had gone, I took a shower and changed my clothes and wandered around the apartment for a while to put my ideas in order. The way I saw it, I had reached the parting of the ways.

Nobody had a motive for the murder of Judith Walker. By a very long stretch of imagination, Susan Warner could've done it out of jealousy. But that was straining credulity a lot. She would've been more likely to put the bee on King Gilmore.

Yet, a dame isn't bumped off for no reason at all. But there wasn't any reason. Gilmore wanted her alive and everybody else had too much to lose to make her otherwise. Which left me describing ever-reducing circles like the goofah bird.

Unless I wrote the whole thing off as no business of mine . . . and it certainly wasn't my business. But King Gilmore was still very much concerned in the tangle. The situation might be different as and when he wriggled out of the rap Lloyd Warner had arranged for him, but he had no guarantee of that, yet. Warner had slipped the frame. As matters stood, King had every reason to be a badly worried man.

No guy in his position keeps worry to himself. Until the day came when the law put him away, he'd spread his worry around—including a share for me . . . if he learned about the stand-in who'd taken the knife for me at the Winchester Hotel . . . the only way I might stop him finding out would be if I emigrated . . . and I like it here in the I.O.U.S.A.

I wondered if Lieutenant Cooke had asked him those questions I'd suggested in the message I'd left . . . and if Cooke had got round to using me as the link between Gilmore and Judith Walker . . . and when the lieutenant would begin to associate Lloyd Warner with Mister Gilmore's recent activities.

In a vague kind of way, I thought it would be nice if I could fasten King's frame round his own neck and pin Judith's murder good and tight on him. The more I
thought about it, the more possible it seemed. Or it would seem to the Homicide Bureau.

Judith was his popsy-wopsy . . . Judith liked a different guy once in a while . . . one night she invites a gink called Glenn Bowman to be the different guy . . . having smelled two rats, King hides himself in the bathroom and bops Mister Bowman . . . then he gives popsy-wopsy the pay-off. . . .

Which would've made me several kinds of liar but no kind of killer. And Lieutenant Cooke wouldn't want my scalp when he could have Gilmore's. Although scalp wasn't the end the law would go to work on when they stuck Gilmore in the hot squat. Furthermore, he deserved to burn for what either he or his hired shiv merchant had done to Cartwright.

Taken all round, I fancied that as the solution to my difficulties. The only problem was to get Gilmore's co-operation; he wouldn't fancy it. Big-time racketeers don't pay five grand for the pleasure of being rail-roaded to the death-house for a killing they haven't done.

With that thought in mind, I put on my coat and switched off the light and opened the door.

And the big guy who was standing outside in the hallway stepped in close and prodded me with something wrapped in a handkerchief. It felt like a gun. When I saw who was carrying it, I guessed it was a gun. I said, “How's the arm, Tad?”

He grinned like an ape and his little simian eyes almost disappeared under his brows. They were thick, black bushy brows and they met in a fuzz on the bridge of his spatulate nose. If you could call it a bridge . . . or a nose.

With his breath hot on my face, he said, “I still got it in plaster and most of the time I keep it in a sling but I can use it now.” The gun was nearly boring a hole in me. “Handy thing to wear these slings. You can carry around all sorts of gimmicks without making your pockets bulge.”

I said, “So I see. But a knife doesn't make a bulge or a noise. Why didn't King send your pal who operated on that poor guy in Washington?”

“Because this is just an invitation—unless you act awkward.”

“What kind of invitation?”

“To pay a little visit.” The grin on Tad's lumpy face became more animal than ever. “King wants to meet the character who can play the corpse in Washington and the stool-pigeon in New York.”

“Supposing I refuse to go?”

“Then you'll play a new part. You'll be the corpse that died. And one thing you can be sure of, brother——” he rammed the muzzle hard into me “—this time you'll stay dead . . . which way d'you want it?”

“You've talked me into it,” I said. “Let's go see Mister Richard Gilmore.”

He told me to shut the apartment door and lock it. Then he said, “Go on down the stairs. I'll be right behind you. And I've got the gun inside my sling so I can get it out again fast enough to drill one helluva big hole through the back of your head. As you can bet your bottom dollar I will if you try to start something. Now make with the feet.”

We went along the hallway and down one flight of stairs. As we reached the first floor, the door of the Schwartzes apartment opened and Mendel came out. It was my chance to take a chance but I skipped it. You don't take chances with another guy's life when he's got a wife and six kids.

Mendel gaped at me so wide his top set dropped and he had to make gagging noises until he pushed them up again. Then he wiped his hand across his mouth and came under the light in the ceiling to see me better. He said, “Oi, vey! What heart's clappinish I got. The police were here and they told us you'd been killed in Washington . . . you were dead . . . with my own ears I heard them say they'd put you in the morgue so someone . . .”

“They had to let me go,” I said. “They couldn't prove it.”

In a rumbling voice, Tad said, “Maybe soon they'll have better luck . . . let's go.”

Mendel was still yammering incoherently as we went down to the lobby and out into the street. The car that looked like a Brown and White was waiting at the kerb. I never saw the driver's face. Tad and I got in.

Whatever kind of life Richard Gilmore lived, it didn't show on him. He had a fresh complexion and clear eyes and no signs of debauchery or an uneasy conscience. Sometimes I think bastards like Gilmore are born without a conscience.

To compensate for the lack of one, he had a ritzy joint up in the clouds—carpets, furnishings, and bric-à-brac regardless. After what I'd been warned in my youth about the wages of sin, King seemed to be doing all right.

He was in the middle of dinner when Tad and I walked in on him. A waiter with stooped shoulders and a pointed head was serving the entrée. Gilmore didn't even look up.

I stood watching him and telling myself that Nature now and then works an unfunny joke on the innocents of this world. King had none of the marks of the devil on him. He looked ten years younger than the age they'd quoted in the. newspaper clippings Gerry Tate had loaned me. He had no trace of grey in his sleek hair, his face was unlined, and he wore a tuxedo with the kind of air that ought to go with good breeding. You'd hardly have known he'd started out as a louse and worked his way down.

Until the waiter left the room, he ignored me. Then he said, “Sit down, Bowman. Spent my five grand yet?”

“The guy you knifed in the Winchester Hotel got a twenty per cent cut,” I said.

“You weren't very generous . . . were you?” He dabbed his mouth with a napkin and sucked his lips while his eyes took me apart. “Teach him not to trust strangers in future, won't it? A knife in the back for him and a pretty doll for you isn't my idea of a fair split, either.”

“Let's skip the idle chatter,” I said. “What do you want?”

“A little return for my investment. So far, I've had nothing for my five thousand dollars.”

“You've had my life—by proxy. That's worth five G's.”

Tad said, “Right now, that ain't worth five cents—unless you learn to talk small.”

Gilmore smiled at me with his mouth and nodded reflectively. “He could be right you know. After all, you double-crossed me . . . didn't you?”

“There's a dead guy in Washington who'd vote that the funniest remark of the year,” I said.

“Y-e-e-s . . . maybe you got something there. Only thing is——” he took a fine gold cigarette case from his pocket and opened it and put a cigarette very fastidiously between his lips “—I've got the edge on you.” As he flicked a lighter that matched the cigarette case, he added, “What've you got?”

I could hear Tad close behind my chair. It didn't make me feel so good.

Someone tapped at the door and the waiter came in again. When he was half-way to the table with his wagon, Gilmore said, “I don't want any dessert. And you can clear away the dishes later.”

“Very good, sir. Will you be taking coffee?”

“I'll ring when I want it. Otherwise, I'm not to be disturbed.”

The waiter repeated, “Very good, sir,” like he was expressing a favourable opinion. His remote eyes drifted over me with no more interest in them than if I'd been the pattern on the chair. Then he pushed his wagon out of the room with his back stooped like a solicitous nursemaid.

When the door clicked discreetly shut, Gilmore said, “They call me King, and I've heard people say the King can do no wrong. But that doesn't go for a dime-store shamus. You took five grand for a service you didn't render. What're you going to do about it?”

“If I offered to refund your money,” I said, “that'd merely give you a great big laugh.”

“Sure. I don't want my money back. But there's another way you can even the score. Like to hear what it is?”

“Don't be so damn polite. You don't ask a guy what he likes when you have him brought in at the point of a gun.”

“No, that's true enough.” Gilmore pushed his chair back and got up and stuck his hands in his pants' pockets. With
the cigarette drooping from the corner of his mouth, he came round the end of the table and strolled towards me. The diamond studs in his shirt front flashed rainbow fire in the light. He looked nearly as prosperous as the dames in Europe imagine every G.I. is when he's at home.

Beyond the heavy drapes drawn across the window, a sudden burst of rain slashed against the glass and the drapes stirred momentarily. Far down below the midget traffic made midget noises. It was cold and wet down there. Up where we were it was warm and brightly lit and comfortable. The things money can buy don't ask you how you made the money.

Gilmore said, “I got a proposition. If you bring it off, we're all square. You'll have earned your dough and there'll be no hard feelings on either side. How's it sound?”

“This is going to be good,” I said. “What's the proposition?”

He took the cigarette from his mouth and blew ash from the end of it without removing his eyes from mine. In a distant voice, he said, “When the police came and talked to me about one or two things only you should've known, I began to think somebody had made a mistake at the Winchester . . . so I had a couple of boys keep tabs on your apartment and your office in case you showed up after a while.” He swallowed a deep drag and funnelled smoke over his shirt-front and made big eyes at me. “Like you did this afternoon,” he said.

I said, “I didn't need a crystal ball to know how Tad came to be parked outside my door. What're you leading up to?”

“Just this.” His voice changed and there was nothing but naked cruelty in his face. “You paid a call on Lloyd Warner; you spent quite some time with him. When you left his office building, you were met by Warner's daughter. She drove you to your apartment and she didn't seem in any hurry to leave. . . .”

“So?”

“Well, it looks to me like you must be on pretty good terms with the Warners . . . especially Miss Deborah Warner. Tad called me to say you were both so quiet he thought you must've gone to bed. He made me rather curious. If it's true——” Gilmore worked a scrap of tobacco to the tip of his
tongue and spat it out “—compared with her sister she must be a pushover . . . it cost me a fortune and a lot of high-pressure salesmanship before I managed——”

“Put the lid back on the sewer,' I said. “What's the proposition?”

Something that could've been a roll of linoleum caught me one helluva crack just below the crown of the head. Next thing I knew, I was digging my face in the carpet at Gilmore's feet. Out of a star-spangled haze, I dimly heard Tad say, “I've been wondering when I'd find a use for this plaster-cast . . . next time you pull any fresh cracks, I'll beat your head in. Get up!”