One Lonely Night (18 page)

I could feel my teeth grinding together. A hot wave of hate, so violent that it shook me from top to bottom, swept through my body. Who the hell were they supposed to be? Did they expect to come in and find me with my back to the door? Was I supposed to be another sap ... the kind of guy who’d give people like them the old fighting chance ... a gesture of sportsmanship? I should take a chance on dying like that?

They went in the room then, softly, but not so softly that my ears couldn’t follow every step they took. I could hear their breathing coming hard, the scuffle of leather against wood. I even heard the catch of the flashlight when it snapped on.

Very slowly I jacked the hammer of the .45 back. My hand told Velda to stay there. Just stay there and shut up. I bent down and unlaced my shoes, stepped out of them and into the hall. I lay on my stomach looking into the room, the .45 propped on my forearm. The light of the flash made a circuit of the wall then stopped on the draperies that covered up the opening to the other room. Trench Coat who didn’t have a flash stepped forward to pull the drapes down.

And Velda was in there waiting for me.

I said, “Looking for me, Martin?” The sudden shift of the flash and the lance of flame that spit from his gun came at the same time. I heard the bullets smack the wall over my head. He fired at the door where my belly should have been, mouthing guttural, obscene curses.

Then I shot him. I aimed a little below and inside the red eye of his gun barrel and over the blast of the .45 I heard his breath leave him in a wheezing shriek that died in a bubble of blood that came to his mouth. His rod went off once, a bullet ripped into the floor, and Trench Coat dropped.

The other one didn’t stay in the room. I heard cloth rip, feet stumble and a heavy body slam against the wood. The other killer had gone into the room with Velda!

I was on my feet trying to decide. I had to decide! Good God, I had to get him before he saw her. If I went in through either door he’d get me and I had to go! I could feel him waiting for me, the darkness screening him completely. He knew I’d come and he knew he’d get me.

I walked toward the door. I didn’t bother trying to be quiet.

I stepped into the doorway.

The crack of the gun was a flat noise that echoed once and was gone. There was no steak of flame, only that sudden, sharp sound and a peculiar hiss that seemed out of place. I felt no shock, no pain, only a sudden tensing of the muscles and a stillness that was nearly audible.

I must have caught it, I thought. It wasn’t like this before. The last time it hurt. I tried to raise my hand and it came up slowly, effortlessly. In the room a gun clattered on the bare planking and was followed immediately by a soft thunk.

She seemed far away, so far away. “Mike?”

I couldn’t get the breath out of my lungs at first. “You ... all right, Velda?”

“I killed him, Mike.”

Dear God, what was there to say? I reached for her and folded her against my chest feeling her sob softly. I grabbed her flash and threw it on Trench Coat. Martin Romberg lay on his face with a hole in his back. She must have held it right against his spine when she pulled the trigger. That’s why I didn’t see the flash.

I straightened Velda up and pulled her toward the door. “Come on. We can’t stay here.” I found my shoes and yanked them on without bothering to tie them.

It was easier going out. It always is. The fog was still there, rolling in over the walls, sifting down between the buildings. Our eyes, so long in the dark, could see things that were hidden before and we raced down that back alley heading for that narrow slit a block away from the house.

The curious had already started their pilgrimage toward the sound of the shooting. A police car whined through the night, its light a blinking eye that cleared the way. We lost ourselves in the throng, came out of it and found the car. Two more police cars passed us as we started to cut back to the land of the living on the other side of town.

Velda sat stiff and straight staring out the window. When I looked down she still held the gun in her hand. I took it away from her and laid it on the seat. “You can file another notch on it, kid. That makes two.”

I gave it to her brutally hoping it might snap her out of it. She turned her head and I saw that her mouth had taken on a smile. She picked up that nasty little .32 automatic and dropped it in her handbag. The snap catch made the same metallic sound that I had heard back there in the room. “My conscience doesn’t hurt me, Mike,” she said softly.

I patted her hand.

“I was afraid I wouldn’t be quick enough. He never saw me. He stood in the center of the room covering both entrances and I knew what he was waiting for and I knew you’d come after him. He would have killed you, Mike.”

“I know, honey.”

“He was standing close enough so I could reach out and put my gun right against him.” Her lips tightened. “Is this how ... you feel, Mike? Is it all right for me to feel like this? Not having a sensation of guilt?”

“I feel happy.”

“So do I. Perhaps I shouldn’t, Mike. Maybe I should feel ashamed and sinful, but I don’t. I’m glad I shot him. I’m glad I had the chance to do it and not you. I wanted to, do you understand that?”

“I understand completely. I know how you feel because it’s how I feel. There’s no shame or sin in killing a killer. David did it when he knocked off Goliath. Saul did it when he slew his tens of thousands. There’s no shame to killing an evil thing. As long as you have to live with the fact you might as well enjoy it.”

This time Velda laughed easily. My mind turned to the judge and I could picture his face, disappointed and angry that my time still hadn’t come. And we had the best alibi in the world. Self-defense. We had a gun license and they didn’t. If it reached us we were still clear.

Velda said, “They were there after the same thing, weren’t they?”

“What?”

She repeated it. I slammed the wheel with my hand and said something I shouldn’t have. Velda looked at me, her forehead furrowed. “They were ... weren’t they?”

I shook my head in disgust at myself. “What a sap I am. Of course they were! I thought they were after me again and they were searching for those damn documents!”

“Mike! But how would they know? The papers never carried any news of Charlie Moffit’s murder. They reported it, but that was all. How could they know?”

“The same way the public knew the documents were stolen. Look, it’s been a good time since he was knocked off. Just about long enough for somebody to get a loose tongue and spill something. That’s how they knew ... there was a leak. Somebody said something they shouldn’t have!”

“The witnessess. They’d be the ones. Didn’t Pat say they were warned to keep quiet about it?”

“ ‘Advised’ is the word,” I said. “That doesn’t make them liable to any official action. Damn it, why can’t people keep their big mouths shut!”

Velda fidgeted in her seat. “It was too big to keep, Mike. You don’t witness a murder and just forget about it.”

“Ah, maybe you’re right. Maybe I give people credit for having more sense than they actually have. Hell, the leak could just as well have come out of police headquarters too. It’s too late now to worry about it. The damage is done.”

Velda lost herself in her thoughts for a good five minutes. I stayed hunched over the wheel trying to see through the fog. “It wasn’t there, Mike. If it wasn’t there then it has to be somewhere else.”

“Yeah.”

“You looked around the place right after Oscar died. It wasn’t among his things. The police must have looked too. Then we looked again. Do you think it could possibly be that Oscar didn’t have them?”

“What else is there to think? Either that or he hid them outside his room.”

“Doubtful, Mike. Remember one thing, if Oscar showed himself anywhere he would have been mistaken for Lee. He couldn’t have done much fooling around.”

I had to grin because the girl who was wearing my ring was so smart I began to feel foolish around her. I did pretty good for myself. I picked a woman who could shoot a guy just like that and still think straight. “Go on, Velda.”

“So maybe Oscar never got those documents. Charlie’s ripped pocket just happened when he fell. If Charlie was the courier, and if the documents he was carrying are missing, then Charlie must have them tucked away somewhere. Remember what the men at the pie factory said ... that he was dopey for certain periods of time? He was forgetful? Couldn’t he have. ...”

I stopped her and took it from there myself. She had tapped it right on the nose.

“When, Mike?”

I glanced at her quickly. “When what?”

“When do we go trough his apartment?”

She was asking for more! Once in a night wasn’t enough. “Not now,” I told her. “Tomorrow’s another day. Our dead friends won’t be making a report tonight and the party won’t be too anxious to make any more quick moves until they figure this one out first. We have time, plenty of time.”

“No we don’t.”

I convinced her that we had by talking my head off all the way up to her apartment. When I let her out I only had one more thing to say. She waited, knowing well enough what was coming. “In case anyone asks, I was with you in your place all night, understand?”

“Can’t we partially tell the truth?”

“Nope, we’re engaged.”

“Oh. Now I have to wait some more.”

“Not long, kid, not too long. When this is all finished there’ll be time for other things.”

“I can wait.”

“Good. Now hop upstairs and get to bed, but first, take that gun of yours and hide it somewhere. Put it where it can’t be found until I tell you to take it out.”

She leaned over and kissed me, a soft, light kiss that left my mouth tingling with the thought of what lay behind this girl who could be so completely lovable and so completely deadly. There were fires burning in her eyes that nothing could ever quench, but they asked me to try ... to try hard.

I looked at her legs as she got out of the car and decided that I’d never see enough of them. They had been there all the time, mine any time I had wanted to ask and until now I never had the sense to ask. I had been stupid, all right. I was much smarter now. I waited until she was in the door before I turned the car around and crawled back to my own place.

It was late and I was tired. There had been too much in this one night again, I thought to myself. You get wound up like a watch spring, tighter and tighter until the limit is reached and you let go with a bang that leaves you empty and gasping.

When I locked the door I went directly to the closet and took down the box of parts and shells for the gun. I laid them out on the kitchen table and took the .45 apart piece by piece, cleaning and oiling every bit of it. I unwrapped the new barrel and put it in place, throwing the rest of the gun together around it. On second thought I changed the firing pin too. A microscope could pick up a lot of details from empty shell cases.

It took a half-hour to get the gun ready to go again. I shoved the old barrel and pin in a quart beer can, stuffed in some paper to keep it from rattling and dumped the works down the incinerator.

I was feeling pretty good when I crawled into the sack. Now let’s see what would happen.

 

The alarm was about to give up when I finally woke up. There was nothing I wanted more than staying in bed, but I forced myself into a sitting position, fought a brief battle with the sheets and got my feet on the floor. A cold shower took the sleep out of my eyes and a plate of bacon and eggs put some life into my body.

I dressed and called Velda. She wasn’t at home so I tried the office. She was there. I said, “How the devil do you do it?”

She laughed and came right back at me. “I’m still a working girl, Mike. Office hours are from eight to five, remember?”

“Any customers?”

“Nope.”

“Any bills?”

“Nope.”

“Love me?”

“Yup. Love me?”

“Yup. What a conversation. Any calls?”

“Yup. Pat called. He wants to see you. Lee Deamer called. He wants to see you, too.”

I brightened up fast. “If they call back, tell them I’ll check in. How about the papers?”

“Headlines, Mike. Big black headlines. It seems that a couple of rival gangs met up with each other in an old building over on the East Side. They forgot to carry their dead off when the battle was finished.”

“Don’t sound so smug. Did Pat mention anything about it?”

“No, but he will. He was pretty edgy with me.”

“Okay, give him my love. I’ll see you shortly.” I hung up and laid out my working suit for the day. When I finished dressing I looked out the window and swore to myself. The fog was gone, but a drizzle had come in on its heels and the people on the street were bundled into coats trying to keep warm. The winter was dying a hard death.

On the way to the office I stopped off at a saloon and saw a friend of mine. I told him I wanted an unlicensed automatic of a certain make and .32 caliber, one that hadn’t done anything except decorate somebody’s dresser drawer since it was bought. My friend went to the phone and made two calls. He came back, told me to wait a few minutes, served a few customers at the bar, then went into the kitchen in the rear and I heard his voice arguing for a while. He came back with a package in his hand and said, “Twenty bucks, Mike.”

I peeled off twenty, took the gun apart and removed the barrel and the pin. The rest I told my friend to dump in with his trash, thanked him and left. I stopped off at the office long enough to hand the two parts to Velda and tell her to slip them in her gun during her lunch hour. Then I went down to see Pat.

As Velda said, he wasn’t happy. He said, “Hell, Mike,” but his eyes raked me up and down. “Sit,” he said.

I sat down and picked the paper off his desk. The headlines were big and black. There was a picture of the outside of the house with an interior shot in the middle section with white dotted lines to indicate where the bodies had been found. “Real trouble, huh, Pat?”