“I still don’t get it,” I said. “Why did you kill her? Was she tied up in the dope business, too?”
“Warmer,” she said; “You’re getting warmer.”
“Not Kay Randall,” I said. “You’ll never sell me the idea, Jordice. The way I see it, Kay wanted out. You had her tied up in narcotics through Paul Graham, her dead husband.”
“Clever,” she said, licking her lips on my stab. She was sucking the scene for personal enjoyment, relishing my thrusts at the jigsaw puzzle of crime she had created. “You guessed the deal?”
“It wasn’t too tough to figure. You set it up in Paris, didn’t you? Dumarette arranged the embalming?”
“Dumarette knows the best embalmers in gay Paree.”
“So you filled the corpse with heroin? You loaded the stiff with a fortune in narcotics? It was a perfect pitch for passing the stuff through customs, especially since you had the purser, Foley, on your side. You offered Kay a fat hunk of dough for letting you use her husband’s body. Kay agreed. But she changed her mind at the last minute. That was why she called me in. She was afraid one of you might rub her out.”
She ate the details like a hungry cat gnawing on a pot of canaries. She fed on them as though every word I spoke was a tribute to her cleverness.
“Go to the head of the class, lover boy.” She waggled the gun at me. “I’ll see that you get a gold star on your tombstone.”
She meant it. Every word. She came around the coffin and kicked the lid shut. It fell with a flat clap in the soft silence. She closed in on me, itching for action, her eyes bright with a maniac purpose. In the tense moment, I struggled for a trick to disarm her. She would be wise in the ways of such emergencies. There was only one way left to me. I might raise my hands and move for the light cord, hanging above the coffin. Now, while she stepped toward me.
But I never had the chance to carry out my plan.
Even as the idea hit me, I felt the cold nose of another gun, behind my head, low on my neck.
CHAPTER 19
Jordice addressed the gun. “It’s about time you got here, Foley. Johnny and I were running out of conversation.”
Foley stepped around in front of me. “Well, well,” he said. “The eager beaver I met in Merrick.”
“It’s a small world,” I said. “A small world full of rats.”
Foley dug the gun in on my right cheek as if he wanted to drill a hole with the muzzle. He backed me against the wall of crates and took pleasure in my squirming. “What’ll we do with the big bad dick, Jordice?” he asked.
“We’re not taking him to a cocktail party.” Jordice laughed and I could read the purpose in her black brain, clicking out the final chapter in my life’s story. The solution brought a wicked glint to her eyes. “We’re taking him to the cleaners, Foley.”
“The river?” Foley licked his lip on it.
“You forget that trash floats. He’ll bounce up too soon. “I know a way. In a barrel. With concrete.”
“Why make it tough?” She was talking to herself, the conclusion already ripe in her scheming mind. “Get Horsh.”
Foley went to the window and yelled Horsh’s name. A burst of noise filled the big room, the echoes of the shout—Horsh … Horsh … Horsh … Horsh—diminishing in volume until the sound died in some distant corner of the warehouse. And then, from the hallway, as weak as the squeal of a frightened kid, Horsh’s answer: “I’m coming.”
He patted up the stairs, the sound of his steps an index to his fright and anxiety, a quick shuffle to the landing and then the noise of his heavy shoes pounding down at us from between the rows of cargo. He arrived breathlessly, his face sweating and oily, as if he had just sprinted from the steam room in a Turkish bath. He eyed me in befuddlement, as scared and tremulous as a bad boy caught in the cookie jar. He didn’t like what he saw: the guns, the coffin and me. But especially me.
“Where did he come from?” Horsh whispered.
“I just found another corpse for your funeral parlor,” Jordice smiled.
“What are you talking about?” Horsh asked. He knew damned well what she meant. He waddled out of the shadows and stood shaking before her. “You don’t mean—”
“You guessed it, Horsh. Here’s our second stiff. Mr. John Amsterdam, private investigator.”
“You can’t do that,” Horsh said. “I didn’t say I would do a thing like that. To kill a man in cold blood? Oh, no. I tell you, I won’t.”
“It’s a mercy killing,” she said with stony purpose. She stepped alongside Horsh and jabbed at him with her gun like a woman testing a pullet for plumpness. She found Horsh a yielding target. She pushed him back, and back farther still, until his head cracked up against the crates and he could retreat no more. The sweat bubbled on his brow as he stared at the muzzle of her little gun. And Jordice enjoyed his squirming. She pulled the gun up and daintily placed it so that he would cross his eyes if he stared at the end of it any more.
Horsh remained mesmerized by the gun. He would stand this way until somebody pricked him to life again. Jordice did the pricking. She lowered the gun and slapped the unhappy mortician across his face. “Behave yourself, Horsh,” she said. “You’ll get an extra few hundred for burying him.”
“Mr. Horsh is too bright for the deal,” I said.
“Mr. Horsh will do as he’s told,” Jordice said, and slapped him again. He began to mutter and mumble hysterically. Foley grabbed him and jerked him to one side and said something to him, Horsh stopped gabbling and saw the light. It was a prelude to my death march, all of this. Jordice had a sense of the dramatic, and her timing was enough to make my skin crawl.
Was this the dame I had made love to not so long ago? I had literally loved myself into an early grave. She had taken me for a double ride, a trip to hell by way of the delights of the seductress. The memory of her bit deep into my intestines, loading me with a combination of disgust and growing fury. More than anything on earth I wanted to settle our account now. I yearned to grab her and slap her around and leave her where she belonged, a bloody mess on the floor for the cops to blot up. The impulse to hit out at her stifled me. My brain was stuffed with my own stupidities. I thought of Robley and how I had detoured him away from all this. I muttered an obscenity at myself.
“Take the stiff down,” Jordice said. “We’ve got to get out to Merrick.”
Foley looked at me curiously. “What about him? You want me to slug him now?”
“I’ll handle him myself.”
Foley and Horsh tugged and hauled at the casket, sliding it along the slick floor, down the corridor between the packing cases and out to the door above the landing, where they went to the left. I heard an elevator singing in the shaft, a dull and hoarse wheezing as it came up and clicked to a noisy stop. There was the further sound of a sliding door, more noise with the casket. And then silence. I was alone with Jordice again.
She held the gun loosely in her hand, enjoying my discomfort. In the close-up, she was a paradox of charm. Her figure stood outlined against the murky background. Her dress clung to her figure, accenting the parts a girl should always accent. She wore no hat and the loose swirl of her hair added a note of savage appeal to her relaxed body. I looked down at her gun and struggled for another plan.
“Don’t try it, Johnny,” she said calmly. “It means you’ll die a minute sooner.”
“You still read minds, don’t you?”
“Yours is wide open. You hate my guts, don’t you?”
“Not quite. I feel sorry for you. Nothing can touch last night on the rug.”
“Really?” She smiled appreciatively. “Did I really please you that much?”
“You know I mean it.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere.”
“Not even one last wish?”
Jordice laughed. The sound of her merriment drifted away in the void, a
sad and plaintive echo as it died. “There’s no rug in this dump, darling,” she said. “And besides, you wouldn’t enjoy it with a rod between us.” She waved the gun suggestively, “A red hot rod, ready to bark and say nasty things.”
“I’d enjoy it,” I said. “I’d enjoy it with an army at my back.”
“You’re cute as hell. Too bad you have to die.”
A crack in her armor? Her face seemed bathed in a new and wistful light. Was this a flutter of conscience? Of bodily yearning? There would be hope for me if I could appeal to her basic womanliness. I took a tentative step forward, “No dice, Johnny,” she said in a whisper. “No last wishes granted for the condemned man.”
“Not even a kiss?”
“A kiss?” she asked herself. A hidden spark grew in her eyes. She seemed to like the idea. She ran her tongue over her lip and showed me her starched white smile. Her body quivered a bit, moved by some secret twitch of excitement. She half closed her eyes and breathed deep, as if she needed more air for this last wish of mine. “A romantic notion,” she whispered.
“I’m a romantic guy.”
She eased up slightly, shifting her weight to the other leg. Every movement was important to me. Every gesture. There would be a moment when I might move in. She was calling to me now, not with her lips, but with the gun, waving it in a half circle.
“Lean forward, Johnny,” she whispered, the gun stiff again, pointed at my heart. “Lean forward carefully.”
I put my face close to hers. The gun jabbed into me, high on the right side. Death was a flick of her finger. Death was the reflex in the muscles of her hand.
“That’s close enough, Johnny,” she whispered. “Now kiss me.”
She opened her rich, ripe mouth and touched her lips to mine. For a flickering instant I felt her tongue wandering, exploring. Deep, and still deeper her kiss sank into me. But at no time did she release the pressure against me with the gun. She pulled away at last, breathing heavily.
She spoke to the black air behind me.
“All right, Foley,” she said. “You can hit him now.”
I tried to turn. Something metallic clipped me. It was a sneak shot, high above my ear, where I had been hit before. It was a dirty crack, a mean and paralyzing lump of mayhem. A screeching sting yowled in my brain, followed by the thump of a falling body.
My body.
CHAPTER 20
I was in a small black boat, drifting over a large black ocean. I was on a black horse, galloping off a high tor into a bottomless canyon, I was on a black train, careening through an endless tunnel. But I was failing fast in all three fantasies, and I landed with a bounce, right into the world of reality.
My body shifted and rolled with the movement of the thing that was hauling me. At first the sensation resembled rocking and rolling. I opened my eyes and stared into the blackness around me. The pocket of ebony in which I rode seemed small and tight. My initial impulse commanded me to close my eyes again, because I had gained nothing by opening them. I saw nothing except what my groping hands telegraphed to my brain.
Even the blackness under me was a mystery. It was hard and unyielding. My face pressed against it. Then I knew it was something wooden, a floor of slickly finished wood. My ears picked up a strange and sibilant hissing through the floor. Tires? The sucking, sighing noise of automobile tires? Or was it the wash of the ocean, from somewhere far off in the distance?
My head burned and ached. I felt for the tortured part of my cranium. My fingers came away sticky. There was blood on my neck and above my ear and on the right side of my face. The blood was medium thick. That meant I had stopped bleeding, but not too long ago.
I thought: That bastard Foley hit me with all the strength he had.
Then I became aware of another sensation. Or lack of it. I seemed to be breathing used air. I seemed to be sucking at great cottony wads of atmosphere. The thickness of the air around me made it tough to inhale. I struggled to move my body up forward and away from where I lay. Something hard and big blocked my way. My fingers rubbed it, felt it, stroked it. The edges were sharp and of a metallic quality. It was the coffin.
And at that moment I realized that this was Horsh’s hearse, the big black job he had brought to the dock to haul away the body of Kay’s husband. This, then, was my last free ride. I was on my way out to Merrick. I was attending my own funeral.
The realization shook me. I could guess the speed of the hearse easily. From the rhythmic hiss of the tires, from the occasional quiet stops and pauses, from the way we seemed to be rolling at a reasonable speed, I knew that we were still within city limits. Horsh would not dare to step on the gas. Not now. Not while a passing police cruiser might pick him up for breaking the speed laws. Horsh would be cautious, all the way out to the empty roads on Long Island. But how long would that be?
We stopped for a light. My ears picked up a subdued whispering from the driver’s seat. Then somebody laughed. It was a feminine giggle, low pitched and deep throated. Jordice! She was up there with Horsh and Foley. They were having a ball, the three of them, giving me a royal burial. The whisperings died away as we started off again. I squirmed slowly to the rear of the hearse. The door, I knew, would be bolted from the outside. My fingers found the knob and I applied the pressure, knowing before my strength hit the door that it would be impossible to open it. So I sat there like a damned fool, breathing in that foul air and calling myself every name in my lexicon of profanity, I was a two-bit hero, a fall guy, a booby, a patsy and a half-wit. I was the supreme nut, the damned fool who had rejected my own salvation. I had deliberately pulled Robley off my tail. I had deliberately decided to stick my neck out. The role I played was self-manufactured and as corny as a cheap movie. If I’d kept Robley with me, there would have been none of this, no fancy ride to eternity.
But Robley was not with me. I was alone, in the greatest pocket of loneliness I had ever known. It was time for clear thinking. It was time for action. Action? I felt as free and unfettered as a schizophrenic in a straitjacket. And twice as hot. I leaned against the door limply, clawing at my tie and opening my collar and gasping.
A thin flicker of light caught my eye. It went off and on and off and on again. The intervals made a pattern. We were still rolling through city streets. The flicker of light came through a small window of frosted glass, up front and on the right side of the hearse. There was a twin window on the left, but no light came through there. My brain clicked off the intervals of light. At the rate of incidence, we could be moving about thirty miles an hour, down a well-lighted street. In New York, or Brooklyn? Horsh might have taken the long way to Merrick, the path that led through Brooklyn, down Atlantic Avenue to Sunrise Highway. After Sunrise, there would be added speed. The road would lead in a straight, unbroken path to Merrick.
My mind began to percolate, goosed into fresh activity by the sudden cessation of the flickering light on the right. Something had happened to kill the light. We were going faster now. We were moving in an area of echoes. I counted the fresh rhythm of noise around us. I put my ear to the floor and listened. We were close to a new structure out there. The hearse rolled with greater speed, setting up a different disturbance, a great swishing and hissing every few seconds. I closed my eyes and took myself on a certain route to Sunrise Highway. I projected myself over this path, trying to relive the sounds I had heard here before, and often. And then, suddenly, I knew.
We were roaring along Atlantic Avenue now! In less than ten minutes we would reach Sunrise Highway. And on that highway, all hope must die for me.
I slid forward on my belly, jerked into action by the tick of time. My hands groped and clutched as I wriggled ahead. My fingers closed on a bundle of fluff and I pulled the stuff to my face and rubbed it on my face. It was the remnants of somebody’s floral decorations. It was a combination of old and withered leaves, plus the old wrappings; cellophane and tissue paper. I bega
n to rip the shirt off my back, alive with a fresh hope and purpose now.
I pulled and tugged at my shirt, ripping it slowly but carefully. I piled the old leaves and cellophane near the door and dropped my shredded shirt on the heap. I crumpled and crinkled some odd papers from my jacket pocket. The operation was slow and laborious. The sweat from my brow dropped on the invisible mound before me. I shaped it cautiously. Then, when the tinder was high enough, I ripped my undershirt off and shredded it on top. Would it burn? I lit a match and held it to the cellophane.
It began to burn.
It began to burn faster!
The dry leaves sucked at the flame and whipped it in great gusts to the cellophane. The cellophane roared and crackled, licking at the shreds of shirt and undershirt laid on top. In a minute the inside of the hearse was a billowing cloud of smoke and fire. I pressed myself against the far wall and squeezed low, sucking for fresh air, hoping for the thin thread of outside ozone that must be drawn in here through the cracks in the rear door. The flames ripped and tore at the fire-fodder. Then they began to creep slowly up the wall of the car. I could see them snake up the sides, feeding on the black cloth that lined the hearse. The impish flames became wilder and gayer. They were blossoming into a giant blaze now. The smoke rose up and struck me, as noxious and numbing as a bonfire in a closet. I coughed and spluttered, fighting to keep my lungs clear. But the more I gasped, the greater the intake of poison on the next breath.
I thought, I’ve built my own funeral pyre.
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