The Long Night (26 page)

King Gilmore's first shot was a wild shot and it missed. He never took a second.

As if someone else's finger had pulled the trigger, I saw the flash of the Smith & Wesson in front of my face, and then a double flash. I didn't hear the noise of the gun at all. And I didn't see Gilmore go down. I was blinded by three spinning wheels of light that shrank and expanded and shrank again with whirling colours merging into each other.

But I knew I had done all there was to do when a light shone down from the platform outside the french window and I saw Gilmore lying on the steps just above me. His head was resting on one arm. As I watched him, he twitched and his trailing legs slid down alongside me. When he was still again, his face was almost level with mine. As the light broadened around us, I saw that his eyes were wide open.

He was smiling at me like he was glad to see me. With blood running out of his mouth, he said, “Don't let them kid you this is the hard way, shamus. I don't feel a thing . . . lot better than ninety-nine years . . . remember?” His eyes went dead the way a lamp dies when it's switched off. Only his voice lived on. In little jerky words, he mumbled, “Wonder—if I'll—be—seeing you—in hell . . . I'm glad—that Tad got—away.”

“Tad didn't get away,” I said. “He took a dive over the rail. Somebody's scraping him off the sidewalk right now.” Footsteps were coming down towards us. Now the light was bright enough for me to see the grey cast spreading over Gilmore's face.

“Tough break,” he said. “And all—because of a—dumb broad . . . never—trust—a dame. . . .” His features screwed
up like he was going to cry and the breath bubbled in his throat. “Now—it hurts—not much—but it—hurts. . . .”

His time was running short. And so was mine. Somebody was stooping over us and hands were pawing at me. In. another few seconds it was going to be too late.

I said, “For the sake of the record, King, you may as well admit it was you who killed Judith Walker. You worked a double-cross so's to get her out of your hair and put Lloyd Warner in dutch at the same time. You wanted me to find him with her body . . . didn't you? But the scheme misfired when he wouldn't take a drink of that doped rye. That was the set-up, wasn't it?”

For one brief moment, life returned to his eyes. They climbed up slowly and painfully and stared beyond the light. Even as he fought for breath, he was trying to smile. And the smile was almost there when he murmured, “Clever boy—isn't he? . . . I'll—go along with—that . . . guess it—won't—spoil—my—my—reputation . . . so I'll go—I'll go——”

His jaw dropped and his eyes became two empty holes in his face. The blood stopped trickling out of his mouth. The smile widened and settled like a mask.

Above me, Lieutenant Cooke said, “Three of us heard that, Bowman, so it's good enough . . . and thanks for what you did for Mrs. Cooke's favourite son. I might not . . . I might not . . . I might not . . . I might not. . . .”

A hive of bees poured in through my ears and swarmed on my mind with a gigantic buzzing that drowned out his voice. Deep beneath the swarm, he went on saying “. . . I might not . . . I might not . . .” as if the repetition itself would give the words some meaning.

I didn't care. I don't know yet what he said or what it meant. I had followed Tad down into the chasm. But my chasm was deeper than his. If there was a bottom to it, it must've been of cotton wool.

My aches and pains left me, and so did the terror of those moments when my hands refused to do their work. But one thing remained. I could still hear King Gilmore saying “. . .
Clever boy—isn't he?
. . .” Now and again, I can hear him yet.

For best part of a week, I lay in bed in a cream-enamelled room on the top floor of the Brooklyn General Hospital, thinking a lot of private thoughts and watching the rain streaming down the tall window that faced the door. Beyond the window, I had a restricted view of glistening rooftops jumbled under a grey, miserable sky.

Not that I felt miserable. I liked it in bed. When a guy wouldn't be able to get up and walk even if the place was on fire, he's got to like it in bed.

They said I had a mild concussion and, for the first couple of days, they kept the shades drawn. I didn't mind that; it eased the headache I woke up with the morning after I'd put three slugs in King Gilmore's back. Taken all round, I didn't mind anything very much. My main preoccupation was to find some way of lying that was comfortable. That half-hour in Gilmore's penthouse had left me a mass of contusions and abrasions from attic to cellar.

By the middle of the week, I could sit up and take nourishment. The following day they let me have visitors. I got the idea they'd decided I'd live.

Cooke sat on the edge of the one and only chair and smiled at me the way a guy does when he's embarrassed. He was newly-shaved and pink and shining and his blue eyes were without guile. He'd brought me the largest bunch of black grapes I've ever seen.

After he'd asked me how I felt and when I expected to leave hospital, and I'd told him I was fine and maybe the end of the week would see me back in circulation, he twiddled his hat and cleared his throat a couple of times. Then he said, “I'm darn sorry I arrived too late to stop you taking such a working-over . . . although part of the fault is your own. If you'd let me know you weren't the man who was knifed in Washington, it would've saved me a lot of running around.”

“I thought I'd be better playing it solo,” I said. “Who tipped you off I was back in town?”

“You were seen calling on Lloyd Warner. I had a tick-tack stationed in the vestibule and he got a message to me. When you came away from his office, two of my boys followed you——” Cooke stared into his hat and coughed again “—and the young lady who picked you up. Everything would've been O.K. only the damn' fools lost you.”

“So that's who the guy was who was playing living statues . . . and he had two of his buddies waiting outside. . . .” I had a sudden crazy idea and I'd have laughed if laughing hadn't been too painful. “Would you know if they were riding a Buick that day?”

“Possibly. Why?”

“Nothing. It isn't important. What did you do when they reported they'd been shaken off?”

“They were told to check your apartment. There one of your neighbours called Schwartz mentioned that he'd seen you leave in company with a big behemoth who wore his arm in a sling. That sounded too much like Gilmore's pet to be a coincidence. But it all took time.”

. . . If I hadn't kidded Deborah that we were being tailed . . . if she hadn't put her arms around me . . . if she had left me a little sooner. . . . Cooke would've called King Gilmore too late. So many ifs. And I had no wish to regret the past. To alter one tiny incident was to alter everything. . . .

I said, “I wondered when you'd connect the killing of Judith Walker with Gilmore and from there to Warner and his Citizens' Committee. What are you going to do about Lloyd Warner?”

“Not a thing,” Cooke said. He stood up and put on his hat and gave me a pink-and-white smile of innocence. “What Warner did that night in the Walker apartment wasn't criminal . . . unless——” he buttoned his coat without taking his eyes off me “—you feel inclined to bring suit against him for assault . . . m-m-m?”

“I'll think about it,” I said.

Deborah brought flowers—enough flowers to fill a vase on my table and another on the window ledge and a tall urn beside the window. When the nurse had gone, she kissed me.
And her hands were very tender. A battered face doesn't feel half so bad when a beautiful girl holds it with cool, soft fingers and tells you to get well soon.

After a while, we talked. She told me her father wanted me to call on him when I was fit again and I could look to him to meet my hospital expenses and any others. I said King Gilmore had taken care of that in advance and, in any case, a certain Miss Warner owed me ten grand for having disposed of Mister Richard Gilmore according to contract.

She shuddered at that and kissed me again. Which was nice for me any way you looked at it. Only thing was her kisses didn't quite taste the same as they'd done that day in my apartment. They were still clinging and very sweet—maybe too sweet. They didn't demand any more; they just gave. That's the way a wife kisses her husband. Brooding on marriage isn't how a guy like me should spend his convalescence.

I didn't ask about sister Susie. Showing a special interest in members of her family can be misconstrued by a dame who looks at you with the expression Deborah was wearing as she fussed with my pillow and the fold-over of the blankets. Apart from which, I was thinking about Carole Van Buren and wondering what she was thinking right then.

When Deborah left, I went on wondering . . . and hating: hating Ivor Kovak. Deborah had as much as any woman could ask, but it was not enough. Carole Van Buren had everything. And none of it could be for me. There would always be Kovak; whatever she said and whatever we did, there would always be Kovak.

If I wanted, I could have her for the taking. That was something I knew beyond all doubt. If I wanted. . . . But the alibi she'd given Kovak was a phoney—it had to be a phoney. That meant she was tied to Ivor Kovak: tied body and soul.

It must've been Kovak who had started it. The man always sets the wheels turning . . . when he's a married man. But he couldn't have known that the machine would run away, that it would destroy Judith Walker in its headlong course. . . . Funny thing that soft, pulpy Ivor Kovak had started
something which had engulfed the great King Gilmore and swept him to destruction.

With murder struggling for birth, nobody else had counted—except Judith. Only Judith had held the key. I wondered what Carole would say when I told her.

The day I was discharged from the Brooklyn General, I was still wondering. But now I didn't know whether I ought to tell her or not. It was all over. Gilmore had confessed before witnesses. He hadn't been guilty of Judith Walker's murder, but he had confessed. One killing more or less made no difference. He had ordered the death of so many . . . and there had been Pauline Gordon . . . and Cartwright. . . .

Now, I think it was the thought of Cartwright that made up my mind for me when Carole opened the door. He, at least, hadn't needed to die. It Carole hadn't lied, Cartwright wouldn't have been stabbed to death on the seventh floor of the Winchester Hotel. She had never met the guy but, in a roundabout way, it had been Carole Van Buren who had killed him.

But she couldn't read my thoughts when she stood in the doorway and smiled so her teeth showed milk-white against the crimson of her mouth. She said, “Hallo . . . ! How nice to see you! The people at the hospital didn't tell me you'd be leaving so soon . . . come on in.”

I went in and she took my hat and patted a chair in invitation. Then she stood back and linked her fingers and studied me with her head on a side. “You look like you could use a vacation. And why are you staring at me that way?”

“I'm wondering why you called the hospital,” I said.

“To inquire about you. Was that very wrong of me?” She put her feet together and admired the smooth lines of her ankles and the clinging caress of her skirt. The pale light from the window behind her turned her sleek hair into a halo of shining gold. In the depths of her deep grey eyes, something was telling me to forget Ivor Kovak: to let the past consume itself in the glow of her inner light.

“Not wrong,” I said. “Just unexpected. But I appreciate it.”

She made a pouting mouth and her face became solemn.
Deep down inside, she was laughing at me. And she wanted me to share in the joke. When I kept a dead pan, she said, “Much more formal than I'd come to expect from you. Why look so serious? Everything's all right now . . . isn't it?”

“Sure. All your troubles were buried with King Gilmore. And so were your brother's. From your point of view, the only pity is that I wasn't eliminated at the same time.”

“From my point of view . . .?” Her eyes darkened and she lost sight of the joke she'd been hugging. “I don't know what you're talking about. Why should I have wanted you to be killed? You promised you wouldn't tell Mrs. Kovak about—that night, and you've kept your promise. I like you for that. I'm trying to show you——” she dropped her hands and stood up straight and came slowly towards me “—just how much I do like you.”

It was asking a lot of a guy like me. I was never made to resist peaches-and-cream and golden hair and smoky grey eyes that melted all my resolve. I couldn't think about Judith Walker and Kovak and the promise underlying Carole's voice all at the same time.

So I dropped my hat on the floor and I got out of the chair to meet her. Judith meant nothing to me any longer and Kovak meant even less. I had almost forgotten Deborah, too. I knew that Carole was no good for me; I knew this was crazy. But this was how things had to be. From the moment I'd seen her framed against the green drapes, glowing and beautiful as no other woman was beautiful, I'd had no chance. Something had happened to me that day. That had been the beginning; this was the only possible end . . . for both of us.

She stood quite still when I cupped her chin in my hand and tilted up her face to look into mine. In an inverted way, I was about to make a fool of myself—the greatest fool I had ever been. I said, “Trying to show me isn't enough. It's what you're prepared to do that'll count with me.”

“What do you want me to do?” Her voice was cool cider again: it seeped into my bones and gave me the heady feeling of one drink too many.

“Something tangible,” I said. “Something to prove your gratitude to me for saving Clive from the chair.”

I felt her swallow twice before she said, “Clive didn't do anything. It was that man Gilmore who killed Judith. He
confessed. . . .” The light within her had gone dim. She was as remote as she had been the day we first met.