I awoke in the gray morning, too excited to doze any longer. I lay there in the dampness, my eyes closed; my brain half asleep, still bound to the present by the immediate memories of that last battle, the break through, the hot moment of the advance when the cacophony of the distant guns came to us in muffled roars from over the hill. It was when the first shell burst alongside us that I saw Harvey go down. He rolled over twice, clutching at his leg, and then lay still, and when I looked back at him from the hilltop two medics had him in tow, on a stretcher, headed back to the village behind us. I learned later that he had been wounded in the ankle, transferred to a relief hospital nearby to await healing. And in the barn, as I thought of him, the sound of a truck motor roared close and there were voices in the dawn and after the voices, the steps, across the board floor of the barn, muffled at first and then sharper, closer, and when I opened my eyes he was walking toward me, limping slightly …
All this in a tick of time, and then the voice upstairs, dull and muffled through the walls. There was a hurried exchange of words, a silence, and then more speech, sharp and yet low. You would recognize it because you knew the ring of it. Up close, it might be different, its accents crisper, the resonance behind the tongue identifying it, labeling it, tagging it for you. But you knew it at this range, too. You could remember hearing it this way, through office partitions, across the reception room and through a closed door, and long before that through barrack walls …
The phone clacked on the receiver, a dull tick, and then the footsteps moved across the room above, hurried now, to the door and through the door and outside on the stairs, heavy and light, heavy and light. The bright pain of my anxiety stabbed through me now. I listened and watched and soon the steps were down and down and to the bottom.
He walked into the room boldly, a black shadow. He stood there for a moment, waiting. And then he snapped on his cigarette lighter and his face was etched in yellow light and I saw that he was smiling, his usual cocky smile, and he had a knife in his right hand and was moving slowly toward the couch.
“That’s far enough, Harv,” I said.
He fell back a step, blinded by my light, the arm down now, the knife creeping backward toward his pocket.
“Steve,” he said. “You scared the guts out of me. You shouldn’t have come here.”
“And you?”
“Checking,” he said blandly. “Just checking on our friend Sisley.”
“With a knife?”
“I was afraid of him,” he said. “I haven’t got you in the clear yet. I figured it was time for some talk from Sisley. We were dead wrong about Barker. You found that out, didn’t you?” He didn’t wait for my answer. He was selling now. “This Sisley character—I’ve been thinking about him. He’s got everything—place and time and possibly motive. He’s as hot as an iron, Steve. That’s why I came down here armed. I figured he might try to break and run. Even if he isn’t the murderer, he knows plenty.”
“More than plenty,” I said. “He knows you.”
He was skittering his eyes at my gun. He took a step my way. “Don’t be a sap, Steve. Talk sense.”
“Back,” I said. “Back, or I’ll unload into you. I’m burning with the yen to lay a few shots into you, just for the hell of it. I’d like to kick your face in the way you massaged Frugi’s.”
“You’re talking nonsense,” he said easily. “Tripe.”
“Am I? You can tell that to Sisley when he wakes up. He saw you in the yard. You knew that he saw you, that he might put the finger on you. You played it slick and sweet, didn’t you? You walked in on Gwen after I left the house. After that, you riffled Frugi’s apartment. What were you looking for—your I.O.U.s?”
He was seated now, smiling at me tolerantly. “Still the same straight-line thinker, aren’t you? Tell me more.”
“I’ll tell you plenty. Gwen called you this morning, didn’t she? She probably phoned to say that she was finished with you, that she was going away with Frugi—her true love.”
“Frugi?” he asked himself. “An unfamiliar name.”
“You got yourself into a stew about Frugi, didn’t you? You didn’t like the idea of losing Gwen after all these years. Your trick head began to buzz. You figured you had to see her, immediately, before she walked out. So you followed me home.”
“And how did I accomplish that miracle?”
“You’ve done it before. You’re an old hand at tailing. You gave me a lead to the subway and then hung back to watch. You were behind me on Bleecker Street, you followed me into the hall and stood there listening. You must have heard the whole deal.”
“The old straight line,” said Harvey calmly. “I’d be a fool to set myself up in your hallway, Steve, and you know it.”
“All right—then you didn’t come that far. You waited until Frugi and I left, that was it. You gave us a good start and then went in by way of the yard. It was you that Ken saw in the yard, all togged out in glasses, for the proper effect. You got in through the kitchen window easily. Then you killed her with a kitchen knife.”
“A breadknife,” said Harvey.
“You had me in a perfect spot for a frame, and you knew it as you built it up. You had no worries. The Connecticut business made it a set-up for you. But you must have been worried when Linda made the locate on you up in Connecticut. It was the beginning of the end, wasn’t it? You had to come down to help me.”
“Loyalty,” said Harvey. “One of my prime virtues.”
“I ought to push your face in for that one,” I said. “I ought to kill you for the job you tried to fix for me. You’re smart, but you’re not smart enough. I began to worry about you when you sent me up to Wagner’s, and then tipped the cops. You showed your hand with that one.”
“Did I? Weren’t they even close?”
“You expected Linda to be nabbed, too, on Seventy-eighth Street. Then you would have had clear sailing. You could have knocked off Sisley with ease. But how did you feel when you got up to Linda’s flat and found Mr. Sisley gone?”
Harvey sighed. “Frustrated. Mighty let down.”
“I wouldn’t blame you. With Ken alive you’d be perpetually on the spot. He could identify you. You should have listened to me when you phoned at Barker’s. I was ready to spill where Ken lay.”
I had hit home finally. His face clouded for a moment before he regained his clammy composure. “How stupid of me, Steve. I should have heard you out.”
“That would have done it,” I said. “But you had to throw your weight around, didn’t you? You were all fouled up with your own figuring. Why did you kill Gwen?”
“She bothered me,” he said.
I could have throttled him then for his coolness, for his scornful smile. “She was finished with you, too, is that it? She was all set to leave with Frugi, the man with the big money.”
“Your wife was fond of money. She never seemed to have enough of it.” He chuckled at some secret joke. “You should investigate her holdings, Steve. She must have left plenty of dough. Jake Frugi allowed her many a big win at his Jersey roulette wheels. He wasn’t quite so kind to me. I dropped almost everything I had last week over there. Including the legacy from Uncle Jonas, do you understand? It didn’t sit well with me, somehow. Your little woman was supposed to have arranged a table for me, so that we could clean up and move out, just the two of us. Like a fool, I trusted her—up until the night of my big loss. She changed, suddenly. She cooled off. Especially when I wanted her to ask Frugi for my I.O.U.’s.”
“You were searching Consuelo’s for them?”
“I got around.”
“You still haven’t answered my question,” I said. “Why did you kill Gwen?”
“Maybe I thought she should have been faithful,” he answered. “That’s a hot one, isn’t it—coming from me?”
“You’re lying,” I said. “You killed her beca
use she wouldn’t get that I.O.U. for you. You lost your head and stabbed her, and after that you were forced to move quickly after Frugi and the I.O.U. If the police had found your I.O.U. on him, you were a dead duck. So you hightailed it over to his apartment and got it, finally.”
“Solid deduction,” he nodded. “After Consuelo’s place proved a dead end.”
“You tipped off the police, too so that I couldn’t return to the apartment—isn’t that so?”
“You know all the answers,” he said.
“I know the big ones. The important ones.”
“They won’t stand up,” he said, easily, and reached for the ashtray.
And then he dove. He was on me and over me before I knew it. He had measured me for the jump and guessed right. The gun and flashlight fell away from me and I lashed out at him and caught him high in the stomach. Too high. Harvey knew all the tricks. I cursed him for his efficiency, his lithe strength, his agile cunning. I cursed him for the memory of Gwen, the four years behind me, the masterful deception he had wrought. I found myself screaming at him, lashed with frenzy, damning him for his cockiness, his brain, his fluent tongue, his smug and smiling face. The memory of my years with him whipped me into blind rage.
He had me again, I knew, even in this moment, even now when the odds were with me. He worked against me with his usual coolness, goading me with his smile, laying over me with calculated moves, sure of himself, and sure of me. We had graduated from the same school. He had beaten me before, many times, at exhibitions before the judo class. He was an expert infighter. And I had forgotten all the rules, the antidotes, the training tricks.
He thumbed me and blinded me. I kicked out at him desperately. I bit and strained. I found his groin with my left foot. He grunted and rolled me over and then he was on me, his hands at my throat, thumbs in, hard and deep, vise tight, until the breath sucked at my teeth and my tongue was choking me. I began to sink, fighting for air. I saw his face above me, dimly, the hard lines of his mouth, his eyes bugged out in maniacal pleasure, his cheeks puffing and blowing. He curved his lips in a smile and I squirmed to pull his mouth away from his face. But the black curtain was beginning to drop over my eyes. I fell away from him. I saw my hands come down and grope for the hem of the black curtain and find the curtain—and I held on as I dropped, dropped …
CHAPTER 14
The lights blinded me when I awoke.
The crowd hemmed me in. I awoke to a hum of noise, low pitched and undefined: one voice, two voices; the sound of feet moving in an uneven shuffle. The curtain came away from my eyes, slowly. There were too many people in the room. There was the bulk of men, blue-coated, blurred and vague at first, broad-shouldered and faceless and then coming into focus, three cops and two men in raincoats. And Harvey.
The lean man in the blue raincoat aimed his cold eyes at me. He had a dead face, gray and dull. He held his mouth firm and spoke in a quick, short guttural.
The lean man said, “How long ago?”
Harvey answered, “A few minutes before you came in, officer.”
“Where were you?”
“Upstairs. I heard him come in. I figured he’d be down here soon.”
“You were waiting for him?”
“I didn’t want to see him make it any worse for himself.”
“Your friend?”
“He worked for me.”
“You getting this, Lester?” the lean man asked.
Lester said, “I got it.”
“Is the other one awake yet?”
Lester gave me a sip of water. He handled me gently. He held my chin in a hand and shook it. My tongue was frozen. The scene had no solidity. He had almost killed me.
“He’s coming out,” Lester said.
I pointed a shaking finger at Harvey. “He’s lying,” I said.
The lean man did not hear me. I was talking to myself. The lean man was facing Harvey now. He was lighting a cigarette. He held the match for Harvey. Harvey puffed, keeping his head tilted away from me.
“Is that his knife?” the lean man asked.
“I wouldn’t know,” Harvey said.
“Why did he stab the other guy?”
“Witness,” said Harvey. “Sisley probably saw what happened to Frugi. Ask him.”
Lester shook me. I said, “He’s lying. Wake the man on the couch.”
“You didn’t knife the guy on the couch?”
It hit me then. He had stepped away, to the side. I saw the couch. I saw Ken. He was a bloody mess. His shirt showed crimson, high on the torso. In the nightmare moment, the blood glistened under the lamp light. I shuddered. I pulled away from Lester, struggling to free myself.
Lester said, “Take it easy, bub.”
I got away, on my feet. The lean man put up his palms and pushed me back, gently. It was enough to fog mv head. I leaned on my knees and sobbed. In the square of carpet below my eyes the design floated up to meet me. On the right end of the square lay the knife. It was an army knife, a German field knife, the sort of souvenir every soldier takes home with him. There was blood on the blade.
A siren screamed outside, far, far away, beyond the wall of buildings, then suddenly closer, closer until it filled the room. There was the sound of tires outside and then the slough of feet, up the stone steps and in the door and into the room, finally. I caught the flash of white. Two ambulance men bent over Ken Sisley.
The lean man came my way. He ground out his cigarette on the rug. He stood over me. “Why a knife, sucker?”
“He’s lying,” I said, still whispering, still without a tongue.
“About Frugi, too? And your wife?”
Lester tapped the lean man on the shoulder. He pointed a thumb to the couch. “Handsome, over there, he’s not dead.”
I began to laugh, low in my throat, cracked and hysterical. A white coat bobbed my way. An interne held my wrist. I continued to laugh, not knowing why, only feeling the surge pent-up emotion flow through me and out of me. The interne’s head came down and he stared at my throat and rubbed his thumb on my neck and I stopped laughing. I screamed. The interne called over the lean man. The lean man bent to look at me.
The interne said, “Somebody almost killed this man.”
The lean man sucked at his teeth and turned to Harvey. “You gave him a working over, big boy. You almost rubbed him out. Why?”
“He was desperate,” Harvey said with a small shrug. “I couldn’t afford to take chances.”
“Shock,” the interne said. “This man should be taken away.”
“Not yet,” said the lean man. “Not just yet. Take care of the one on the couch. We don’t want him to fade on us, understand?”
“He’ll live,” said the interne. “It was a quick stabbing—not enough time to finish the job. Just one knife wound, bad, but not even close to fatal. We’ll fix him up, chief. I’m more worried about this man’s throat.”
Lester moved in. “You ready to talk yet, bub?”
I said, “He’s lying.”
“You said that before.”
I shook my head stubbornly and the fresh movement dizzied me. The white coats were weaving a strange pattern before me. They floated in a miasma of confusion. The footsteps clacked in my ears and I bit myself to keep the scene in focus. I couldn’t pass out now. The moment was building to something. I was watching Harvey. I watched his face, but there was nothing in it for me. And then the small hinges on the back of my head gave way and my head dropped so that I had to look down, down along the floor, past the legs of the small table across the room, past the couch, along the edge of the wall to a pair of legs, a pair of shoes. Harvey’s shoes.
I gulped and pointed. “His shoes! Look at his shoes.”
“I’m looking at them,” said the lean man.
“Check them,” I whispered. “There’s blood on them.”
/> “Blood?” Lester asked. “From where?”
“From Frugi’s face,” I said.
“What do you know about Frugi’s face?” the lean man asked.
“He was kicked.”
“You saw him kicked?”
“Check them,” I shouted.
Harvey said, “He’s mad.” He shrugged a little but there was a sudden brightness in his eyes.
The lean man stared at Lester and I saw his face come alive for the first time. In the growing silence, Harvey took one step backward. Lester said, “They look clean to me, but you never know. If there’s blood, it’ll come up in a test.”
“Or hair,” the lean man said.
“He didn’t have time to change them.” I tried for a shout, and failed. “He may have wiped them, but there’ll be something on his shoes.”
The shoes moved back a step. Beyond the shoes lay Sliger’s gun, the black butt of the muzzle almost lost in the shadows. Almost, but not quite. Harvey was moving backward very fast now. He picked up the gun in a quick, easy gesture. Athletic Harvey. Smooth Harvey. Then he was in the doorway.
“Well, well, well,” said the lean man. “Old bloody shoes is leaving us.”
“You guessed it,” Harvey said.
One of the internes coughed. The lean man said, “You won’t get very far, mister.”
“I’ll kill the first man who comes after me,” Harvey said.
“Fancy that,” said the lean man. “A tough character, Lester.”
“Oh, very tough,” Lester said.
I braced myself for a try at him. I closed my eyes and leaped from my chair. I was short of the mark. But somebody else stepped up from behind Harvey. The gun fell away from him and bounced along the floor. There was a sudden movement of legs around my head and Harvey’s body went down under the rush and I saw Abe Freedman get up and brush at his knees, smiling gently, shaking his head at his ripped pants.
The lean man said, “That was a nice tackle, Abe.”
“Not too good,” said Abe. “I haven’t done it since my high school days.”
The room emptied and we were alone, just the three of us, Linda and Abe and I. She kneeled beside me and I grabbed her hand and held it tight. I might have hurt her, but she didn’t seem to mind. Abe sat on the couch and watched us, smiling like a cat, a small cat who has eaten well.
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