by Otto Penzler
I jumped. A car door opened outside. There were steps.
I brought the gun around from behind my body. Slade’s face convulsed and his hand snatched for the Luger that lay in front of him, fumbled at the butt.
I said: “Don’t touch it!”
He came to his feet rigid, leaning over, his hand on the gun, but the gun not in his hand. I dodged past him into the hallway and turned as two men came into the room.
One had short red hair, a white, lined face, unsteady eyes. The other was an obvious pug; a good-looking boy except for a flattened nose and one ear as thick as a club steak.
Neither of the newcomers had a gun in sight. They stopped, stared.
I stood behind Slade in the doorway. Slade leaned over the desk in front of me, didn’t stir.
The pug’s mouth opened in a wide snarl, showing sharp, white teeth. The redhead looked shaky and scared.
Slade had plenty of guts. In a smooth, low, but very clear voice he said:
“This heel gunned Steiner, boys. Take him!”
The redhead took hold of his lower lip with his teeth and snatched for something under his left arm. He didn’t get it. I was all set and braced. I shot him through the right shoulder, hating to do it. The gun made a lot of noise in the closed room. It seemed to me that it would be heard all over the city. The redhead went down on the floor and writhed and threshed about as if I had shot him in the belly.
The pug didn’t move. He probably knew there wasn’t enough speed in his arm. Slade grabbed his Luger up and started to whirl. I took a step and slammed him behind the ear. He sprawled forward over the desk and the Luger shot against a row of books.
Slade didn’t hear me say: “I hate to hit a one-armed man from behind, Slade. And I’m not crazy about the show-off. You made me do it.”
The pug grinned at me and said: “Okay, pal. What next?”
“I’d like to get out of here, if I can do it without any more shooting. Or I can stick around for some law. It’s all one to me.”
He thought it over calmly. The redhead was making moaning noises on the floor. Slade was very still.
The pug put his hands up slowly and clasped them behind his neck. He said coolly:
“I don’t know what it’s all about, but I don’t give a gooddamn where you go or what you do when you get there. And this ain’t my idea of a spot for a lead party. Drift!”
“Wise boy. You’ve more sense than your boss.”
I edged around the desk, edged over towards the open door. The pug turned slowly, facing me, keeping his hands behind his neck. There was a wry but almost good-natured grin on his face.
I skinned through the door and made a fast break through the gap in the hedge and up the hill, half expecting lead to fly after me. None came.
I jumped into the Chrysler and chased it up over the brow of the hill and away from that neighborhood.
X
It was after five when I stopped opposite the apartment house on Randall Place. A few windows were lit up already and radios bleated discordantly on different programs. I rode the automatic elevator to the fourth floor. Apartment 405 was at the end of a long hall that was carpeted in green and paneled in ivory. A cool breeze blew through the hall from open doors to the fire escape.
There was a small ivory push-button beside the door marked “405.” I pushed it.
After a long time a man opened the door a foot or so. He was a long-legged, thin man with dark brown eyes in a very brown face. Wiry hair grew far back on his head, giving him a great deal of domed brown forehead. His brown eyes probed at me impersonally.
I said: “Steiner?”
Nothing in the man’s face changed. He brought a cigarette from behind the door and put it slowly between tight brown lips. A puff of smoke came towards me, and behind it words in a cool, unhurried voice, without inflection. “You said what?”
“Steiner. Harold Hardwicke Steiner. The guy that has the books.”
The man nodded. He considered my remark without haste. He glanced at the tip of his cigarette, said:
“I think I know him. But he doesn’t visit here. Who sent you?”
I smiled. He didn’t like that. I said:
“You’re Marty?”
The brown face got harder. “So what? Got a grift—or just amusin’ yourself?”
I moved my left foot casually, enough so that he couldn’t slam the door.
“You got the books,” I said. “I got the sucker list. How’s to talk it over?”
Marty didn’t shift his eyes from my face. His right hand went behind the panel of the door again, and his shoulder had a look as if he was making motions with a hand. There was a faint sound in the room behind him—very faint. A curtain ring clicked lightly on a rod.
Then he opened the door wide. “Why not? If you think you’ve got something,” he said coolly.
I went past him into the room. It was a cheerful room, with good furniture and not too much of it. French windows in the end wall looked across a stone porch at the foothills, already getting purple in the dusk. Near the windows a door was shut. Another door in the same wall at the near end of the room had curtains drawn across it, on a brass rod below the lintel.
I sat down on a davenport against the wall in which there were no doors. Marty shut the door and walked sideways to a tall oak writing-desk studded with square nails. A cedarwood cigar box with gilt hinges rested on the lowered leaf of the desk. Marty picked it up without taking his eyes off me, carried it to a low table beside an easy chair. He sat down in the easy chair.
I put my hat beside me and opened the top button of my coat and smiled at Marty.
“Well—I’m listening,” he said.
He stubbed his cigarette out, lifted the lid of the cigar box and took out a couple of fat cigars.
“Cigar?” he suggested casually, and tossed one at me.
I reached for it and that made me a sap. Marty dropped the other cigar back into the box and came up very swiftly with a gun.
I looked at the gun politely. It was a black police Colt, a .38.1 had no argument against it at the moment.
“Stand up a minute,” Marty said. “Come forward just about two yards. You might grab a little air while you’re doing that.” His voice was elaborately casual.
I was mad inside, but I grinned at him. I said:
“You’re the second guy I’ve met today that thinks a gun in the hand means the world by the tail. Put it away, and let’s talk.”
Marty’s eyebrows came together and he pushed his chin forward a little. His brown eyes were vaguely troubled.
We stared at each other. I didn’t look at the pointed black slipper that showed under the curtains across the doorway to my left.
Marty was wearing a dark blue suit, a blue shirt and a black tie. His brown face looked somber above the dark colors. He said softly, in a lingering voice:
“Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a tough guy— just careful. I don’t know hell’s first thing about you. You might be a life-taker for all I know.”
“You’re not careful enough,” I said. “The play with the books was lousy.”
He drew a long breath and let it out silently. Then he leaned back and crossed his long legs and rested the Colt on his knee.
“Don’t kid yourself I won’t use this, if I have to. What’s your story?”
“Tell your friend with the pointed shoes to come on in,” I said. “She gets tired holding her breath.”
Without turning his head Marty called out:
“Come on in, Agnes.”
The curtains over the door swung aside and the green-eyed blonde from Steiner’s store joined us in the room. I wasn’t very much surprised to see her there. She looked at me bitterly.
“I knew damn’ well you were trouble,” she told me angrily. “I told Joe to watch his step.”
“Save it,” Marty snapped. “Joe’s watchin’ his step plenty. Put some light on so I can see to pop this guy, if it works out that way.”
&nbs
p; The blonde lit a large floor lamp with a square red shade. She sat down under it, in a big velours chair and held a fixed painful smile on her face. She was scared to the point of exhaustion.
I remembered the cigar I was holding and put it in my mouth. Marty’s Colt was very steady on me while I got matches out and lit it.
I puffed smoke and said through the smoke: “The sucker list I spoke of is in code. So I can’t read the names yet, but there’s about five hundred of them. You got twelve boxes of books, say three hundred. There’ll be that many more out on loan. Say five hundred altogether, just to be conservative. If it’s a good active list and you could run it around all the books, that would be a quarter of a million rentals. Put the average rental low—say a dollar. That’s too low, but say a dollar. That’s a lot of money these days. Enough to spot a guy for.”
The blonde yelped sharply: “You’re crazy, if you—”
“Shut up!” Marty swore at her.
The blonde subsided and put her head back against the back of her chair. Her face was tortured with strain.
“It’s no racket for bums,” I went on telling them. “You’ve got to get confidence and keep it. Personally I think the blackmail angles are a mistake. I’m for shedding all that.”
Marty’s dark brown stare held coldly on my face. “You’re a funny guy,” he drawled smoothly. “Who’s got this lovely racket?”
“You have,” I said. “Almost.”
Marty didn’t say anything.
“You shot Steiner to get it,” I said. “Last night in the rain. It was good shooting weather. The trouble is, he wasn’t alone when it happened. Either you didn’t see that, or you got scared. You ran out. But you had nerve enough to come back and hide the body somewhere—so you could tidy up on the books before the case broke.”
The blonde made one strangled sound and then turned her face and stared at the wall. Her silvered fingernails dug into her palms. Her teeth bit her lip tightly.
Marty didn’t bat an eye. He didn’t move and the Colt didn’t move in his hand. His brown face was as hard as a piece of carved wood.
“Boy, you take chances,” he said softly, at last. “It’s lucky as all hell for you I didn’t kill Steiner.”
I grinned at him, without much cheer. “You might step off for it just the same,” I said.
Marty’s voice was a dry rustle of sound. “Think you’ve got me framed for it?”
“Positive.”
“How come?”
“There’s somebody who’ll tell it that way.”
Marty swore then. “That—damned little ——! She would—just that—damn her!”
I didn’t say anything. I let him chew on it. His face cleared slowly, and he put the Colt down on the table, kept his hand near it.
“You don’t sound like chisel as I know chisel,” he said slowly, his eyes a tight shine between dark narrowed lids. “And I don’t see any coppers here. What’s your angle?”
I drew on my cigar and watched his gun hand. “The plate that was in Steiner’s camera. All the prints that have been made. Right here and right now. You’ve got it—because that’s the only way you could have known who was there last night.”
Marty turned his head slightly to look at Agnes. Her face was still to the wall and her fingernails were still spearing her palms. Marty looked back at me.
“You’re cold as a night watchman’s feet on that one, guy,” he told me.
I shook my head. “No. You’re a sap to stall, Marty. You can be pegged for the kill easy. It’s a natural. If the girl has to tell her story, the pictures won’t matter. But she don’t want to tell it.”
“You a shamus?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“How’d you get to me?”
“I was working on Steiner. He’s been workin’ on Dravec. Dravec leaks money. You had some of it. I tailed the books here from Steiner’s store. The rest was easy when I had the girl’s story.”
“She say I gunned Steiner?”
I nodded. “But she could be mistaken.”
Marty sighed. “She hates my guts,” he said. “I gave her the gate. I got paid to do it, but I’d have done it anyway. She’s too screwy for me.”
I said: “Get the pictures, Marty.”
He stood up slowly, looked down at the Colt, put it in his side-pocket. His hand moved slowly up to his breast-pocket.
Somebody rang the door buzzer and kept on ringing it.
XI
Marty didn’t like that. His lower lip went in under his teeth and his eyebrows drew down at the corners. His whole face got mean.
The buzzer kept on buzzing.
The blonde stood up quickly. Nerve tension made her face old and ugly.
Watching me, Marty jerked a small drawer open in the tall desk and got a small, white-handled automatic out of it. He held it out to the blonde. She went to him and took it gingerly, not liking it.
“Sit down next to the shamus,” he rasped. “Hold the gun on him. If he gets funny, feed him a few.”
The blonde sat down on the davenport about three feet from me, on the side away from the door. She lined the gun on my leg. I didn’t like the jerky look in her green eyes.
The door buzzer stopped and somebody started a quick, light, impatient rapping on the panel. Marty went across and opened the door. He slid his right hand into his coat pocket and opened the door with his left hand, threw it open quickly.
Carmen Dravec pushed him back into the room with the muzzle of a small revolver against his brown face.
Marty backed away from her smoothly, lightly. His mouth was open and an expression of panic was on his face. He knew Carmen pretty well.
Carmen shut the door, then bored ahead with her little gun. She didn’t look at anyone but Marty, didn’t seem to see anything but Marty. Her face had a dopey look.
The blonde shivered the full length of her body and swung the white-handled automatic up and towards Carmen. I shot my hand out and grabbed her hand, closed my fingers down over it quickly, thumbed the safety to the on position, and held it there. There was a short tussle, which neither Marty nor Carmen paid any attention to. Then I had the gun.
The blonde breathed deeply and stared at Carmen Dravec. Carmen looked at Marty with doped eyes and said:
“I want my pictures.”
Marty swallowed and tried to smile at her. He said: “Sure, kid, sure,” in a small, flat voice that wasn’t like the voice he had used in talking to me.
Carmen looked almost as crazy as she had looked in Steiner’s chair. But she had control of her voice and muscles this time. She said:
“You shot Hal Steiner.”
“Wait a minute, Carmen!” I yelped.
Carmen didn’t turn her head. The blonde came to life with a rush, ducked her head at me as if she was going to butt me, and sank her teeth in my right hand, the one that had her gun in it.
I yelped some more. Nobody minded that either.
Marty said: “Listen, kid, I didn’t—”
The blonde took her teeth out of my hand and spat my own blood at me. Then she threw herself at my leg and tried to bite that. I cracked her lightly on the head with the barrel of the gun and tried to stand up. She rolled down my legs and wrapped her arms around my ankles. I fell back on the davenport again. The blonde was strong with the madness of fear.
Marty grabbed for Carmen’s gun with his left hand, missed. The little revolver made a dull, heavy sound that was not loud. A bullet missed Marty and broke glass in one of the folded-back French windows.
Marty stood perfectly still again. He looked as if all his muscles had gone back on him.
“Duck and knock her off her feet, you damn’ fool!” I yelled at him.
Then I hit the blonde on the side of the head again, much harder, and she rolled off my feet. I got loose and slid away from her.
Marty and Carmen were still facing each other like a couple of images.
Something very large and heavy hit the outside of the door and
the panel split diagonally from top to bottom.
That brought Marty to life. He jerked the Colt out of his pocket and jumped back. I snapped a shot at his right shoulder and missed, not wanting to hurt him much. The heavy thing hit the door again with a crash that seemed to shake the whole building.
I dropped the little automatic and got my own gun loose as Dravec came in with the smashed door.
He was wild-eyed, raging drunk, beserk. His big arms were flailing. His eyes were glaring and bloodshot and there was froth on his lips.
He hit me very hard on the side of the head without even looking at me. I fell against the wall, between the end of the davenport and the broken door.
I was shaking my head and trying to get level again when Marty began to shoot.
Something lifted Dravec’s coat away from his body behind, as if a slug had gone clean through him. He stumbled, straightened immediately, charged like a bull.
I lined my gun and shot Marty through the body. It shook him, but the Colt in his hand continued to leap and roar. Then Dravec was between us and Carmen was knocked out of the way like a dead leaf and there was nothing more that anybody could do about it.
Marty’s bullets couldn’t stop Dravec. Nothing could. If he had been dead, he would still have got Marty.
He got him by the throat as Marty threw his empty gun in the big man’s face. It bounced off like a rubber ball. Marty yelled shrilly, and Dravec took him by the throat and lifted him clean off his feet.
For an instant Marty’s brown hands fought for a hold on the big man’s wrists. Something cracked sharply, and Marty’s hands fell away limply. There was another, duller crack. Just before Dravec let go of Marty’s neck I saw that Marty’s face was a purple-black color. I remembered, almost casually, that men whose necks are broken sometimes swallow their tongues before they die.
Then Marty fell down in the corner and Dravec started to back away from him. He backed like a man losing his balance, not able to keep his feet under his center of gravity. He took four clumsy backward steps like that. Then his big body tipped over backwards and he fell on his back on the floor with his arms flung out wide.
