The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps

by Penzler, Otto

  The boy tendered it to him, then showed an inclination to hang around and watch.

  “You don’t need to wait, I’ll take care of everything.”

  He didn’t go back into his own room again. He stayed there outside that other door, just as he was, in undershirt and stocking feet, in a position of half-crouched intentness, passkey ready at hand.

  The transom was imperfectly closed, and he could hear him moving around in there, occasionally striking against some piece of furniture. He could hear it every time the bottle told off against the rim of the glass. Almost he was able to detect the constantly-ascending angle at which it was tilted, as its contents became less.

  Pretty soon now. And in between, footsteps faltering back and forth, weaving aimlessly around, like those of someone trying to find his way out of a trap.

  Suddenly the bottle hit the carpet with a discarded thud. No more in it.

  Any minute now.

  A rambling, disconnected phrase or two became audible, as the tempo of the trapped footsteps accelerated, this way and that, and all around, in blundering search of a way out. “I’ll fool him! I’ll show him! There’s one place he can’t—come after me—”

  There was the sound of a window going up.

  Now!

  Rogers plunged the passkey in, swept the door aside, and dove across the room.

  He had both feet up on the windowsill already, ready to go out and over and down. All the way down to the bottom. The only thing still keeping him there was he had to lower his head and shoulders first, to get them clear of the upper pane. That gave Rogers time enough to get across to him.

  His arms scissored open for him, closed again, like a pair of pliers. He caught him around the waist, pulled him back, and the two of them fell to the floor together in a mingled heap.

  He extricated himself and regained his feet before the other had. He went over, closed and securely latched-down the window, drew the shade. Then he went back to where the other still lay soddenly inert, stood over him.

  “Get up!” he ordered roughly.

  Blake had his downward-turned face buried in the crook of one arm. Rogers gave him a nudge with his foot that was just short of a kick.

  Blake drew himself slowly together, crawled back to his feet by ascending stages, using the seat of a chair, then the top of a table next to it, until finally he was erect.

  They faced one another.

  “You won’t let me live, and you won’t even let me die!” Blake’s voice rose almost to a full-pitched scream. “Then whaddya after? Whad-dya want?”

  “Nothing.” Rogers’ low-keyed response was almost inaudible coming after the other’s strident hysteria. “I told you that many times, didn’t I? Is there any harm in going around where you go, being around where you are? There’s plenty of room for two, isn’t there?” He pushed him back on the bed, and Blake lay there sprawled full-length, without attempting to rise again. Rogers took a towel and drenched it in cold water, then wound it around itself into a rope. He laced it across his face a couple of times, with a heavy, sluggish swing of the arm, trailing a fine curtain of spray through the air after it. Then he flung it down.

  When he spoke again his voice had slowed still further, to a sluggard drawl. “Take it easy. What’s there to get all steamed-up about? Here, look this over.”

  He reached into his rear trouser-pocket, took out a billfold, extracted a worn letter and spread it open, holding it reversed for the other to see. It was old, he’d been carrying it around with him for months. It was an acknowledgment, on a Police Department letterhead, of his resignation. He held it a long time, to let it sink in. Then he finally put it away again.

  Blake quit snivelling after awhile, and was carried off on the tide of alcohol in him into oblivion.

  Rogers made no move to leave the room. He gave the latched window a glance. Then he scuffed over a chair and sat down beside the bed. He lit a cigarette, and just sat there watching him. Like a male nurse on duty at the bedside of a patient.

  He wanted him alive and he wanted him in his right mind.

  Hatred cannot remain at white heat indefinitely. Neither can fear. The human system would not be able to support them at that pitch, without burning itself out. But nature is great at providing safety-valves. What happens next is one of two things: either the conditions creating that hatred or fear are removed, thus doing away with them automatically. Or else custom, familiarity, creeps in, by un-noticeable degrees, tempering them, blurring them. Pretty soon the hatred is just a dull red glow. Then it is gone entirely. The subject has become used to the object that once aroused hatred or fear; it can’t do so any more. You can lock a man up in a room even with such a thing as a king cobra, and, always provided he isn’t struck dead in the meantime, at the end of a week he would probably he moving about unhampered, with just the elementary precaution of watching where he puts his feet.

  Only the lower-voltage, slower-burning elements, like perseverance, patience, dedication to a cause, can be maintained unchanged for months and years.

  One night, at the same Chicago hotel, there was a knock at the door of Rogers’ room around six o’clock. He opened it and Blake was standing there. He was in trousers, suspenders, and col-larless shirt, and smelling strongly of shaving tonic. His own door, across the way, stood open behind him.

  “Hey,” he said, “you got a collar-button to spare, in here with you? I lost the only one I had just now. I got a dinner-date with a scorchy blonde and I don’t want to keep her waiting. By the time I send down for one—”

  “Yeah,” Rogers said matter-of-factly, “I’ve got one.”

  He brought it back, dropped it in Blake’s cupped hand.

  “Much obliged.”

  They stood looking at one another a minute. A tentative grin flickered around the edges of Blake’s mouth. Rogers answered it in kind.

  That was all. Blake turned away. Rogers closed his door. With its closing his grin sliced off as at the cut of a knife.

  A knock at the door. A collar-button. A trifle? A turning-point? The beginning of acceptance, of habit. The beginning of the end.

  “This guy’s a dick,” Blake confided jovially to the redhead on his left. “Or at least he used to be at one time. I never told you that, did I?” He said it loud enough for Rogers to hear it, and at the same time dropped an eyelid at him over her shoulder, to show him there was no offense intended, it was all in fun.

  “A dick?” she squealed with mock alarm. “Then what’s he doing around you? Aren’t you scared?”

  Blake threw back his head and laughed with hearty enjoyment at the quaintness of such a notion. “I used to be in the beginning. I’d have a hard time working up a scare about him now, I’m so used to him. I’d probably catch cold without him being around me these days.”

  Rogers swivelled his hand deprecatingly at the girl. “Don’t let him kid you. I resigned long ago. He’s talking about two years back, ancient history.”

  “What made you resign?” the other girl, the brunette, began. Then she checked herself. Blake must have stepped warningly on her toe under the table. “Let it lie,” he cautioned in an undertone, this time not meant for Rogers to hear. “He don’t like to talk about it. Probably—” And he made the secretive gesture that has always stood for graft; swinging his thumb in and out over his palm. “Good guy, though,” he concluded. Rogers was looking off the other way. He smiled to himself at something out on the dance-floor just then. Or maybe it wasn’t out on the dance-floor.

  “Let’s break it up,” Blake suggested, as one co-host to another. “This place is going stale.”

  The waiter came up with the check, and Blake cased his own billfold, down low at his side. “I’m short again,” he admitted ruefully.

  “Let’s have it, I’ll pay it for you,” Rogers, who had once been a detective, said to the man he considered a murderer. “We can straighten it out between us some other time.”

  Rogers, paring a corn with a razor-blade, look
ed up as the familiar knock came on his door. “That you, Donny?” he called out.

  “Yeah. You doing anything, Rodge?”

  They were Donny and Rodge to each other now.

  “No, come on in,” Rogers answered, giving the razor-blade a final deft fillip that did the trick.

  The door opened and Blake leaned in at an angle, from the waist up. “Fellow I used to know, guy named Bill Harkness, just dropped in to the room. Haven’t seen him in years. We been chewing the rag and now we’re fresh out of gab. Thought maybe you’d like to come on over and join us in a little three-handed game, what d’ya say?”

  “Only for half-an-hour or so,” Rogers answered, shuffling on the sock he had discarded. “I’m turning in early tonight.”

  Blake withdrew, leaving the door ajar to speed Rogers on his way in to them. He left his own that way too, opposite it.

  Rogers put out his light and got ready to go over to them. Then he stopped there on the threshold, half in, half out, yawned undecidedly, like someone else once had, one night a long time ago, on his way out to get a midnight edition of the paper.

  He didn’t have to be right at his elbow every night, did he? He could let it ride for one night, couldn’t he, out of so many hundreds of them? He’d be right across the hall from them, he could leave his door slightly ajar—He was tired, and that bed looked awfully good. He was a human being, not a machine. He had his moments of letdown, and this was one of them. Nothing was ever going to happen. All he’d managed to accomplish was play the parole-officer to Blake, keep him straight. And that wasn’t what he’d been after.

  He was about to change his mind, go back inside again.

  But they’d seen him from where they were, and Blake waved him on. “Coming, Rodge? What’re you standing there thinking about?”

  That swung the balance. He closed his own door, crossed over, and went in there with them.

  They were sitting there at the table waiting for him to join them. This Harkness struck him as being engaged in some shady line of business. But then that was an easy guess, anyone on Blake’s acquaintance-list was bound to be from the other side of the fence anyway.

  “Pleased to meet you.”

  “Likewise.”

  He shook hands with him without demur. That was a thing he’d learned to do since he’d been around Blake, shake hands with all manner of crooks.

  Blake, to put them at their ease together, trotted out that same worn theme he was so fond of harping on. “Harkness don’t wanna believe you used to be a dick. Tell him yourself.” He told it to everyone he knew, at every opportunity. He seemed to take a perverse pride in it, as though it reflected a sort of distinction on him. A detective had once been after him, and he’d tamed him into harmlessness.

  “Don’t you ever get tired of that?” was all Rogers grunted, disgustedly. He took up his cards, shot a covert glance at Blake’s friend. “No folding money, only nickels and dimes.”

  Blake took it in good part. “Ain’t that some guy for you?”

  The game wore on desultorily. The night wore on desultorily along with it. Just three people at a table, killing time.

  Harkness seemed to have a fidgety habit of continually worrying at the cuff of his coat-sleeve.

  “I thought they quit hiding them up there years ago,” Blake finally remarked with a grin. “We’re not playing for stakes, anyway.”

  “No, you don’t get it, there’s a busted button on my sleeve, and it keeps hooking onto everything every time I reach my arm out.”

  Only half of it was left, adhering to the thread, sharp-pointed and annoying as only such trivial things are apt to be. He tried to wrench it off bodily and it defeated him because there wasn’t enough of it left to get a good grip on. All he succeeded in doing was lacerating the edges of his fingers. He swore softly and licked at them.

  “Why don’t you take the blame coat off altogether? You don’t need it,” Blake suggested, without evincing any real interest.

  Harkness did, and draped it over the back of his chair.

  The game wore on again. The night wore on. Rogers’ original half-hour was gone long ago. It had quadrupled itself by now. Finally the game wore out, seemed to quit of its own momentum.

  They sat there, half-comatose, around the table a moment or two longer. Rogers’ head was actually beginning to nod. Harkness was the first one to speak. “Look at it, one o’clock. Guess I’ll shove off.” He stood up and got back into his coat. Then he felt at the mangled thatch the game had left in its wake. “Got a comb I can borry before I go.”

  Blake, mechanically continuing to shuffle cards without dealing them any more, said: “In that top drawer over there,” without looking around. “And wipe it off after you use it, I’m particular.”

  The drawer slid out. There was a moment of silence, then they heard Harkness remark, “Old Faithful.”

  Rogers opened his heavy-lidded eyes and Blake turned his head. He’d found Blake’s gun in the drawer, had taken it out and was looking it over. “Ain’t you afraid of him knowing you’ve got this?” he grinned at Blake.

  “Aw, he’s known I’ve had it for years. He knows I’m licensed for it, too.” Then he added sharply, “Quit monkeying around with it, put it back where it belongs.”

  “Okay, okay,” Harkness consented urbanely. He laid it down on the bureau-scarf, reached for the comb instead.

  Blake turned back again to his repetitious card-shuffling. Rogers, who was facing that way, suddenly split his eyes back to full-size at something he saw. The blurred sleepiness left his voice. “Hey, that busted button of yours is tangled in the fringe of the scarf, I can see it from here, and the gun’s right on the edge. Move it over, you’re going to—”

  The warning had precisely a reverse effect. It brought on what he’d been trying to avoid instead of averting it. Harkness jerked up his forearm, to look and see for himself; anyone’s instinctive reflex in the same situation. The scarf gave a hitch along its entire length, and the gun slid off into space.

  Harkness made a quick stabbing dive for it, to try to catch it before it hit the floor. He made it. His mind was quick enough, and so was his muscular coordination. He got it on the drop, in mid-air, in the relatively short distance between bureau-top and floor. But he got it the wrong way, caught at it in the wrong place.

  A spark jumped out of his hand and there was a heavy-throated boom.

  Then for a minute more nothing happened. None of them moved, not even he. He remained bent over like that, frozen just as he’d grabbed for it. Rogers remained seated at the table, staring across it. Blake continued to clutch the cards he’d been shuffling, while his head slowly came around. Rogers, at least, had been a witness to what had happened; Blake had even missed seeing that much.

  Harkness was moving again. He folded slowly over, until his face was resting on the floor, while he remained arched upward in the middle like a croquet-wicket. Then he flattened out along there too, and made just a straight line, and lay quiet, as though he was tired.

  Rogers jumped up and over to him, got down by him, turned him over. “Help me carry him over onto the bed,” he said, “It musta hit him—” Then he stopped again.

  Blake was still stupidly clutching the deck of cards.

  “He’s gone,” Rogers said, in an oddly-blank voice. “It musta got him instantly.” He straightened up, still puzzled by the suddenness with which the thing had occurred. “I never saw such a freaky—” Then he saw the gun. He stooped for it. “What did you leave it lying around like that for?” he demanded irritably. “Here, take it!” He thrust it at its owner, and the latter’s hand closed around it almost unconsciously.

  Blake was finally starting to get it. “A fine mess!” he lamented. He went over to the door, listened. Then he even opened it cautiously, looked out into the hall. The shot apparently hadn’t been heard through the thick walls and doors of the venerable place they were in. He closed it, came back again. He was starting to perspire profusely. Then, as
another thought struck him belatedly, he took out a handkerchief and began to mop at himself with something akin to relief. “Hey, it’s a good thing you were right in here with the two of us, saw it for yourself. Otherwise you might have thought—”

  Rogers kept staring down at the still figure, he couldn’t seem to come out of his preoccupation.

  Blake came over and touched him in anxious supplication on the arm, to attract his attention. “Hey, Rodge, maybe you better be the one to report it. It’ll look better coming from you, you used to be on the force yourself—”

  “All right, I’ll handle it,” Rogers said with sudden new-found incisiveness. “Let’s have the gun.” He lined his hand with a folded handkerchief before closing it on it.

  Blake relinquished it only too willingly, went ahead mopping his face, like someone who has just had the narrowest of narrow escapes.

  Rogers had asked for his old precinct number. “Give me Lieutenant Colton.” There was a moment’s wait. He balanced the instrument on one shoulder, delved into his pockets, rid himself of all the paper currency he had on him. He discarded this by flinging it at the table, for some reason best known to himself.

  In the moment’s wait, Blake said again, mostly for his own benefit: “Boy, it’s the luckiest thing I ever did to ask you in here with us to—”

  Rogers straightened slightly. Three years rolled off him. “Eric Rogers reporting back, lieutenant, after an extended leave of absence without pay. I’m in room Seven-ten at the Hotel Lancaster, here in the city. I’ve just been a witness to a murder. Donny Blake has shot to death, with his own gun, a man named William Harkness. Under my own eyes, that’s right. Orders, lieutenant? Very well, I’ll hold him until you get here, sir.” He hung up.

  Blake’s face was a white bubble. It swelled and swelled with dismay, until it had exploded into all the abysmal fright there is in the world. “I wasn’t near him! I wasn’t touching it! I wasn’t even looking! I was turned the other way, with my back to— You know that! Rogers, you know it!”