The Long Night (3 page)

But I wasn't any one of them. And Judith wouldn't have carried things quite so far even in the interests of an artistic badger game. . . .

That was when I got a cold feeling right under my belt. Supposing she died . . . and a copper walked in and found me with her . . . and I told him how I came to be there. . . . Yeh, supposing. As an explanation it would smell as high as the Empire State.

The little voice inside me said the best thing I could do would be to get the hell out of it and put in a call to the local precinct from a pay-station not too near. And after that I should mind my own business and go home to my own bed and let Judith do the explaining—if she ever woke up again.

If she didn't. . . . I wiped my prints off the glass and tried to forget the jockey who'd said it was a lousy night. Maybe he'd be able to give the bulls a working description . . . if they ever caught up with me, they'd want to know why I'd ducked out . . . if I were innocent . . . if I were innocent . . . if I were innocent. . . .

In the next couple of minutes, I concentrated so much on looking at it from their angle that I could almost have believed I was guilty at that. Judith had the looks and I had the reputation. It's happened before. So long as there's a dame with what it takes and a guy who wants to take it, it'll go on happening.

All of which didn't help me one Chinese damn. The choice was clear: I could either call the police and stick around, or take it on the lam and call them from somewhere else. Unless there was any chance of reviving Judith without outside help . . . then nobody need know . . . and she might tell me the score . . . when she woke up . . . if she woke up.

And that would depend on whether or not she had any salt on the premises. Mustard would serve the same purpose . . . if all else failed, I could feed her lots of hot water until she threw up and rid herself of the dope . . . then she'd need coffee . . . and the quicker I got started, the better her chances.

I stopped worrying about the fingerprints I might've left
around. When I'd reassured myself she was still breathing, I left her.

The first of the other two doors leading off the living-room opened on to a bathroom. The door alongside it must've been the kitchen door. But I never found out for sure. I never saw what was on the other side of that other door.

Because the bathroom was in darkness . . . and I went in and fumbled for the light switch . . . and two things happened simultaneously like they were both controlled by the same button.

I think the light came on although it didn't have much time to register. And I think I heard the sound of a swift movement before the darkness vanished. What I don't have any doubt about is the smack on the biscuit someone handed me.

For one blinding moment I felt like an explosive charge had been set off inside my head. There was a light greater than all the million lights of Broadway and it was right behind my eyes. Noise poured in on me—the noise of a rending dissolution. Pain tore me apart.

It lasted for only a tiny fragment of time. I know that now. But right then it seemed that a year went by before someone knocked the four walls away and the ceiling fell in on me.

Maybe I was struck twice on the same spot. I wouldn't know. All I do know is that I went out like a birthday candle.

In the course of my thirty-seven years I've had more than a few unhappy awakenings. When a guy makes a habit of going on the jag, he's entitled to wake up now and again mourning after the night before.

But this was different. This was plain, undiluted hell. This was the screaming meemies and the whoofits and the jim-jams. This was the works.

For a long, long time, I felt real bad. And when at last I managed to sort out my individual symptoms, I discovered I was cuddling a noggin that seemed as big as Cinderella's pumpkin. I knew if I didn't hold on to it tight it would fly apart.

To get that kind of a head generally costs a small fortune. And I couldn't remember where I'd been celebrating . . . or why. After a short communion with myself, I found I couldn't remember anything. To make things harder, a little guy inside me began singing “. . .
and when I die, don't bury me at all, just steep my bones in alcohol
. . . .” His voice had the same effect on me as a pneumatic drill. With every note, another piece of my skull shattered.

When he'd sung the same darn words over and over again like he was never going to stop, it got so's I couldn't take it any more. So I took a tighter grip on my head and I said, “Shut up . . . for Pete's sake, shut up. You're driving me crazy.”

He did shut up, too. But a different voice said, “The sleeper awakes. And it dishes out orders. Let's see what else it can say . . . eh?”

Something that felt like a slab of dry salt-cod flip-flapped me on both sides of the face and a vice fastened itself to my shoulder and hauled me upright. Another voice said, “Pour yourself back in the bottle, stew, and pay a bit of attention. You got company.”

I hated that guy. There wasn't anything I wouldn't have
done to that guy. But I was in no condition even to tell him what I'd have loved to do. All my energy was being used to get my eyes open.

They didn't want to open. I found out why when they yielded at last.

The bright light in the ceiling was the nearest thing to torture that I've ever met. It bored into my eyes and through my scrambled brains and out the back of my head like it was a couple of white-hot drills. I put both hands over my face and took time out to groan.

If I'd expected sympathy, I didn't get any. A second vice took a grip on my hair and yanked my head back. Somebody said, “Don't start getting sorry for yourself too soon, bud. You ain't seen nothing yet. These are just warming-up exercises. I'm gonna get a great big kick out of giving you the working-over of your lifetime.”

His grasp tightened wickedly. I felt like I was being scalped. With a tremendous effort, I took my hands away from my eyes and flung a wild swing in the direction his voice came from.

That was a mistake. It was one of those nights when everything I did turned out to be a mistake. He kept hold of my hair but he let go of my shoulder. Or else he had three hands . . . because one of them gave me a double flip-flap across the face that hurt worse than the first dose.

Through a maze of pain I had a watery picture of him—a hunched-up guy with crude features that included a nose which was all nostrils, a crooked mouth, and little deep-set eyes full of mordant cruelty. I didn't know him. But I knew what he was without having to inspect the badge in his pocket.

And I'd met his side-kick once or twice. Cooke wasn't a bad guy as coppers go. He was honest and he wasn't mean when it came to handing out a break. He was also plenty tough, although you'd never have thought it looking at his baby-blue eyes and his pink cheeks and his half-shy smile.

Like onions go with hamburger, Cooke went with Sullivan. They'd been in twin harness since way back when. And Sullivan was known as a bastard.

He knew I'd placed him soon's he saw I recognised Cooke. He said, “Feeling better, Dicky? Think you're well enough
to talk—without persuasion?” His hand released my hair and he tapped a rolled-up bunch of fingers on his palm. Judging by his grin, he was ready to enjoy himself.

I pushed myself upright and waited for the walls to stop in one place. Then I took a good look at my surroundings.

I was sprawled in the chair on which Judith's underwear had been scattered. The door to the bathroom was open. I could see part of a bath and an airing closet and a mirror-fronted cabinet on one wall. What I couldn't see was any sign of the gink who had slugged me as I felt for the light switch.

Now I remembered everything. And my memories weren't happy ones. I had better than a hunch that my real troubles were just starting. Something told me I'd been right when I'd suspected I might've been chosen as the fall guy.

What reinforced the something was the smell of rye that lay all around me. It was an overpowering reek like I'd been having a bath in the stuff with my clothes on. It reminded me of Judith with liquor on her shoulders and arms and nightdress . . . and on the bedspread . . . and the table. . . .

I was in a worse state than she'd been. The rest of the bottle must've been poured into my mouth and allowed to slosh over my collar and shirt and the whole front of my coat. I was a sodden mess of sticky clothing from neck to waist. I stank like a distillery.

When I realised that much, I felt the tender ridge at the back of my head while I belched some of the fumes that wouldn't stop down. Creeping into my mind was an awareness that I'd either have to box clever . . . or else.

Sullivan said, “. . . Manners. . . . Did you hear me talking to you?” He was still grinning like he didn't think I could see the joke.

“Yes,” I said, “I heard you. What's the idea of slapping me around?”

He pulled down the corners of his mouth and glanced sideways at Cooke and made big eyes at him. He said, “Mister Bowman is asking what the idea is. Now, ain't that funny?”

Cooke didn't say anything. He just went on staring at me with a faraway look on his schoolboy face.

Somebody was moving here and there behind me. I could hear a lot of quiet little movements coupled with the brush
of feet on the carpet and the occasional yielding of a bed-spring. Whoever he was he must've been fond of Tchaikovsky. The whole time he was there he hummed bits from
Swan Lake
ballet very softly under his breath.

I said, “What's so funny? I came here to try and talk a crazy dame out of committing suicide and some sonovabitch slugged me when I went into the bathroom.”

In a hard, mechanical voice, Sullivan repeated, “You came here to try and talk a crazy dame out of . . .” He drew a long breath and let it out again while his tongue bulged in his cheek. Then he said, “Gee, that's cute . . . real cute. I often wonder what they'll think up next.” His deep, cold eyes flitted momentarily to Cooke and he added, “Don't you?”

Cooke said woodenly, “Who fed her the goofballs?”

Both of them were staring at me the way coppers do when they're going to call you a liar whatever you say. So I said, “I don't know. If it hadn't been for me getting slugged, I'd have said she took them herself.”

Sullivan nodded two or three times like his neck was a long, soft spring. His grin slowly widened. He said, “That's cute, too. You get better as you go on. Let's hear some more. I think you're fascinating.” His bunched-up fingers began rotating in the palm of his other hand.

The third member of the team still remained out of sight. I hadn't seen him since I woke up. When I came to think of it, I hadn't been able to get a look at the bed, either. They'd turned the chair so it had its back to where the invisible guy was working. That intrigued me.

I said, “O.K. So I'm a liar.”

Sullivan said, “Now you're beginning to talk sense.” He chewed his tongue and leaned forward. In a conversational tone, he asked, “Why'd you do it?”

“Why did I do what?”

His fist whipped up and caught me a sharp clip on the side of the jaw. It wasn't a hard blow but it set my head ringing again. My eyes seemed to be swivelling in sockets lined with coarse sand. While I was trying to focus them on him and get out of the chair at the same time, he poked me back with a cast-iron finger in the chest. He said, “Skip acting innocent. Why'd you do it?”

“All I've done,” I said, “is call on a dame who'd told me she intended to push herself over the edge. I found her lying on the bed out cold when I arrived and I went into the bathroom to mix a salt water emetic. Somebody was waiting for me behind the door and I got sapped as I put on the light. Next thing I knew, you were giving me a scalp massage.”

Cooke said, “How long have you known her?”

“I've never seen her in my life before. To-night's the first time I've even heard her name.”

“Yet she called you to threaten she was going to commit suicide?”

“That's right. I know it sounds screwy but that's just what she did.”

“What time was this?”

“Around two o'clock.”

“And you got out of bed in the middle of the night and came across town to act the good Samaritan to a dame you didn't know . . . is that what you want us to believe?” He wasn't being sarcastic; he wasn't trying to stampede me. He was just asking.

“Yes,” I said. Keeping your answers short is safety play when you're dealing with a cynical copper. The less you say, the less risk you run of making a damn' fool of yourself.

Then Sullivan took over. Out of the corner of his mouth, he said, “Why?”

“Because I was sorry for her,” I said.

His eyes darkened. The grin drained out of his face like his skin was blotting paper. Without any inflection, he said, “No other reason?”

“I guess I was curious, too,” I told him.

“Curious about what?”

“About why she had picked on me out of all the guys in New York.”

“Yeh . . . that's a point.” He sucked at his teeth and pretended to ponder. In the same tone, he said, “How many drinks did you have together?”

“There wasn't any drinking together. She'd passed out before I got here.”

“You're still sticking to that story?”

“Sure,” I said. “Any time I change it, you'll know I'm lying.”

From my other side, Cooke said, “How was she dressed?”

“She wasn't. She was ready for bed.”

“Who let you in?”

“The door wasn't locked.”

“Do you always make yourself free with a dame's apartment?”

“Not always. But the circumstances in this case were unusual.”

Very tightly, Sullivan said, “If anyone asked me, I'd say we were getting nowhere very fast. This son of a B will go on stalling till the cows come home.” Like he was catching flies, his hand caught up my lapels and he pulled me half out of the chair. “I'll tell you something for free,” he said. “The circumstances in this case ain't the least bit unusual. Me and Cooke have seen it all before, lots and lots of times. You ain't the first guy to get hot pants over a dame. And you ain't the first guy to act rough when she changed her mind and stood you up on your ear. Doesn't a wide-head like you know when you're behind the eight ball?”