The Long Night (25 page)

Out of a far distance, Gilmore said, “You know the number and you know what to say: get on with it!”

I managed to get my head back so I could look up at him. He was a handsome guy—louse or not, he was a handsome guy. The corner of his mouth where I'd hit him was still bleeding but it didn't spoil his looks. Maybe a man can be too good-looking. Unless he's got something to go with it, he gets vain and his vanity makes him think he has the right——

Tad said, “Are you deaf? We ain't gonna wait all night, you know.”

There was only one thought left in my mind. It was useless to me then but I held on to it just for the sheer hell of the thing. And it gave me a big kick to know it was Tad who'd provided the answer. Inside my head his voice was saying again “. . .
If the party who killed Judith knew so much, he'd have known Warner was going to be in the apartment
. . .
picking that night was the dumbest thing
. . . .”

And Gilmore had told him “. . .
he'd have learned that you'd be outside the apartment block
. . . .”

One thing they hadn't mentioned; they hadn't known about it. They hadn't known that Judith wouldn't have died if she hadn't been doped with doctored rye. But someone else knew. And the someone else had expected it was King Gilmore who was going to call on Judith at two o'clock in the morning. It was Gilmore the police had been meant to find with Judith's body. Sending him to the chair would've completed a double pay-off.

I looked at Tad and then I looked at Gilmore. I had a foolish desire to laugh. But it hurt my mouth even to talk. I said, “Guess what? I know who murdered Judith Walker.”

Gilmore said, “The hell with that! Are you going to call Warner or are you not?”

“No,” I said. “You can bring on your circus. And I hope the Grand Jury sticks you behind the gridiron for ninetynine years.”

“You're sure that's how you want it to be?”

“What I want doesn't enter into it,” I said. “From here on in, the choice is all yours.”

A hand that could only have belonged to Tad fastened itself in my coat collar and lifted me out of the chair like it was the grab of a crane. Tad said, “I been waiting for this. The next part of the programme is all ready. I'm gonna kiss you good-bye with this gun of yours, then I'm gonna dress you in a set of new pyjamas and carry you up to the roof. Soon's we're far enough away from here——” he had my gun in his hand again and he was holding it by the barrel “—over you go. If you can fly, you'll be O.K. If not, there'll be nothing much of you to identify after you've splashed on the sidewalk 'way down there.”

I said, “Why tell me? Trying to give your boss the willies?”

Gilmore was standing back studying me. The expression on his face conveyed nothing. His voice betrayed nothing either, when he said, “No guy could be that stupid. I'll give you one last chance—and only one . . . well?”

Weariness swept over me and a wave of vertigo made the room shimmer. I was too tired to go on arguing, to go on clinging to the scrap of life they would still grant me. For me there was no way out. To reason with either of them was a waste of time, a postponement of the inevitable. I felt too sick to care any longer.

Tad was hefting the gun and grinning at me in anticipation. Just one smack on the head would be enough . . . I wouldn't feel a thing after that . . . not a thing. . . . I said, “Phooey!”

Gilmore said, “He's asked for it . . . give it to him!”

Before I could move—if I'd had the strength to move—he was behind me and he had my arms pinned at my back. The butt of the Smith & Wesson swung up above my head. I shut my eyes and called it a day.

It didn't hurt. I felt nothing at all. Vaguely, I wondered about that. Mostly I wondered why somebody didn't answer the phone.

Then my arms were free again. And the bell stopped ringing . . . and a voice that sounded like Gilmore's was saying “. . . Hallo . . .? Who is this?”

Thin and scratchy but very clear another voice said, “Lieutenant Cooke, Homicide Bureau. I want to speak with Richard Gilmore.”

I opened my eyes again as Gilmore said, “Gilmore speaking. What do you want, Lieutenant?”

The tiny voice on the phone said, “You have a man in your apartment called Bowman. I want him, Gilmore. If anything happens to him, it's going to be just too bad for you.'

Above the mouthpiece, Gilmore stared at me and shook his head. He said, “You're mistaken, Lieutenant. Nobody of that name is here.”

“Mind if I come up and see for myself?”

“Are you calling me a liar, Lieutenant?”

Cooke said, “If you prefer it that way—yes. I've had two men outside your apartment since Bowman went in. He hasn't come out yet. Is that good enough?”

“You're still mistaken,” Gilmore said. “But I guess you won't be satisfied until you find he isn't here. Come on up.” He cradled the receiver and looked at Tad. “Get him out before that copper arrives. Use the fire-escape . . . and don't give him the chance to let out a squawk.”

The power to move came back to me all at once. But it came back too late. As I wrenched free of Tad's grip, he slapped the gun down on my head in a glancing blow that ended all resistance.

I knew I was being carried . . . I could feel cold night air . . . there was rain on my face . . . we began to go down. . . .

May be my eyes remained open all the time; maybe the sense of height is a primitive instinct which functions even when the mind is no longer capable of conscious thought. If I knew nothing else, I knew I was swaying head down over an abyss that seemed to have been carved deep in the earth—a bottomless pit hewn out of the darkness.

Far below there would be lights I couldn't see. Far below there would be life and movement and people. I didn't belong among people any more: I was dead. I had been stabbed to death on the seventh floor of the Winchester Hotel in Washington. And a dead man can't feel a jolting shoulder press into his stomach, step by step on the way down into the place where the long dead patiently wait—without sight or hearing or any sense of time.

Neither can a dead man smell the acid tang of sweat like I could smell the bulging flesh my face kept hitting, nor hear the clang of heels on iron steps. . . .

Nor see a light that needed no eyes, that burned into the mind and aroused it to life—a flaming eye probing through tissue and nerve and bone and rupturing the blackness like a knife slits open an enveloping bag.

Out of the light a voice was calling without words . . . and the jolting became rapid and violent . . . and the voice was a blast of sound from the darkness above . . . and then I was falling. . . . As if the noise had wakened me, I knew where I was and why. In that moment, I was grateful to Lieutenant Cooke like I'd never been grateful to any guy before.

I landed heavily and rolled over once and lay still on my back. The blinding light had blinked out. Where the edge of the roof etched itself against a starless sky, there was nothing but the voice calling “. . . better throw down your gun . . . you can't make it . . . you'll only run into the crew
of a patrol car down there . . . throw down your gun . . . throw down your gun. . . .”

Then the beam of a powerful flashlamp swept over me and steadied. Below it, light spilled from an open french window and lost itself in the emptiness beyond the rail of the fire-escape. Inside the apartment, someone was pounding on a door and shouting.

I couldn't hear Tad's footsteps any more. He had dropped me when the voice on the roof challenged him and he'd gone clattering down the steps until the gun above had opened up on him. Now he was quiet as if he were waiting for something to happen.

The beam left me and travelled on, moving slowly and cautiously like it was feeling its way. From up above, another voice said, “Careful you don't hit that other guy . . . shine your light nearer the wall . . . that's it! A little bit more to the——”

A shot splintered the darkness on the next floor level and the bright eye on the roof winked shut. I eased myself over on to my stomach and began to pull myself up the steps by my hands.

That was when I discovered the gun—my gun. Tad had hit me with it . . . Tad had lost it when he let me fall . . . it was lying on the step where my head had rested . . . I could feel the familiar scars on the butt . . . all I had to do was wait for Tad to fire again . . . if my fingers would do as they were told.

In Gilmore's penthouse, the banging on the door and the shouting had stopped. Someone on the roof was making little sounds of pain. Below me, feet scuffed on the metal treads. A shadow passed through the light from the french window and travelled out into the dark.

I lay with the .38 sweating in my hand and watched King Gilmore's shadow shrink smaller and smaller as he drew nearer the window. I had no strength in my arm and my eyes were playing tricks. To hold the gun upright was a greater effort than I had ever had to make.

It was hard to keep the shadow in focus. Things kept dissolving into double outlines that shifted. It didn't matter that my mind was crystal clear, that I could think with a tremendous
clarity. To think was not the same as to do. And my body had passed out of my control.

The man on the roof was moaning intermittently . . . Tad was a few steps closer . . . against the lighter blackness of the sky, I could see a head and shoulders growing out of the edge of the roof . . . Gilmore was backing cautiously through the window . . . far below, the sound of climbing feet was becoming louder. . . .

As in a recurring dream sequence from which there is no awakening, nothing changed for a long time. There was no time . . . these were the things that belonged to an endless night . . . Gilmore had always been the heart of a shadow . . . like Tad had always been . . and the copper on the roof searching the darkness . . . and Cooke waiting outside the door of the apartment . . . waiting in silence.

I wondered what he waited for and what chance King Gilmore had of making a getaway and if he knew that it was Judith who had destroyed his empire. I was still wondering when the dazzling beam of light blazed down again as Tad climbed level with me.

He was pinned on the lighted fire-escape like a specimen in a glass tube. This time he had no chance to use his gun and duck for cover; this time the law had him dead to rights.

All it took was one shot—a single shot that travelled down the path of the beam almost as the light came on. He stumbled and let out a grunt and his foot struck my leg as he slipped off the step. In the same moment, he pulled the trigger twice.

The shots went nowhere. There was no answering fire from the roof. I could hear Tad scrabbling to regain his balance before he blundered against my feet and pitched over the handrail.

And then he screamed: a thin, dwindling ribbon of sound coiling out of his open mouth and linking him to me as he went rushing down into the light-speckled darkness of the street far below. It was a scream that had no end. It came back out of the depths long after his hurtling body must've smashed out its life on the pavement.

Yet death came to him swiftly. There would've been time only to count three slowly from the moment the flashlamp pin-pointed him until the memory of his terror came echoing
up from below. And his scream was an automatic release that tripped off a burst of fire beyond the door of the apartment.

Then something struck the door a smashing blow . . . and another . . . the noise of splintering wood seemed to thrust Gilmore through the window and on to the platform of the escape. . . . And the guy on the roof was too slow. He took one or both of the two shots Gilmore threw at him and his vague silhouette vanished like he'd been plucked out of sight. The beam of light traced a wild arc across the darkness and remained staring up into the sky.

The men who had been climbing up from the street had gone silent. Only I was there to watch King Gilmore creep backwards down the steps with the gun in his hand and his eyes fixed on the lighted french window. No one can tell me he had suddenly gone trigger happy; he must've had a getaway route mapped out and he was prepared to kill to get to it. One of the darkened windows looking out on the fire-escape on its way down past a dozen floors must've been the window of an apartment rented specially by King Gilmore for just that purpose.

I never tried to prove it. In any case, it doesn't matter now. Then, it was the only thing in the world that made me sweat and struggle in a frenzy to give strength to my fingers. A fit of trembling swept over me. The butt of the Smith & Wesson chattered on the iron step as my left hand inched towards my right . . . now I had the .38 in both hands . . . now the muzzle was lifting in a crazy, zigzag movement to a spot in the middle of Gilmore's back.

Like I was listening to the run-down sound-track of a slow-motion movie, I heard the apartment door yield with a crash that overlaid Cooke's voice. He was shouting, “Where are you, Bowman? . . . One of you find a way up from here to the roof. . . .”

If I'd been able to answer him, I'd have died out there on the cold steps of the fire-escape. Gilmore would've seen to that. But I couldn't speak. I could only fumble with the .38 and try to fight down the trembling that was shaking me from head to foot.

Gilmore seemed to take an hour to each backward step . . . a shadow was blotting out the light from the french window
. . . when Cooke came out, Gilmore would let him have it . . . he was good with a gun . . . the guy on the roof had had no second chance . . . with Cooke blocking the way, King would be able to take it on the lam without hindrance . . . unless . . . unless. . . .

Anytime I'm asked, I'll recommend Lieutenant Cooke of the Homicide Bureau as a guy with enough guts for ten. He came through that window like a cork from a bottle—head first and in a long, flying dive that took him clean across the platform.