The Long Night (10 page)

Still, getting morbid over it wouldn't help. So I went in like I was in a hurry and I never even looked back once at the Brown and White. If its passenger didn't know that I knew he'd been following me, he'd be less likely to anticipate what I meant to do.

The lobby was dark except for an inadequate lamp at the foot of the stairs. Inside the doorway there was room for me to squeeze myself out of sight of anyone looking in from the
street . . . if he didn't look too closely. I took care of my part. I squeezed. And I hoped. And I waited.

It wasn't a long wait. The tall guy in the raincoat and the pulled-down fedora mustn't have wanted to give me time to get upstairs. I had just got set when there he was—all two hundred and ten pounds of him, right hand in his pocket and left hand fending off the door. From the size of him alone, he didn't need what he was cuddling in his pocket.

And he was fast on his feet. He was weaving away from me as I threw my opening punch at him. It caught him on the point of the jaw where cheek meets ear and it had plenty on the ball. He dipped like he'd turned an ankle and he went down on one knee. I hit him again.

He partly rode than one. As he flopped on to the floor he managed to get the gun out.

If he hadn't been rolling over when the muzzle came up, I'd have taken a faceful of hot slug and that would've been that. But there isn't a guy who can snap-shoot that good. Especially when the target is moving like I was moving. But fast.

I was in mid-air when the gun went off. The noise buffeted from wall to wall in the tiny lobby and an echo like distant thunder rumbled back down the shaft of the staircase. Instead of his face, I could see nothing but the blinding flash spreading out in rings of light and darkness. I didn't even know that he had missed.

Then I landed. Both feet struck his gun arm together and I heard a bone snap like a piece of dry kindling. Deep down in his chest he made a sound that might've been the beginnings of a scream. His left arm came up and over. Something that felt like the thick end of a baseball bat slammed against the side of my head. I pitched on to the floor beyond where he lay.

For a guy with a busted fin, he didn't make out too bad. I
took a blow behind the ear, another that skidded off the top of my head, and a wicked kidney punch that nearly paralysed me. All from one fist. If he'd had two. . . .

He was climbing to his feet as I made like a crab and came up to meet him. The swing he threw at me was wild. I ducked in close and let him have a nice one-two that shook him up if it didn't put him down. Nothing short of a steam hammer could've put that big gorilla down. He didn't care two hoots that he could only use one arm and that the other one must've been giving him hell.

But he didn't like me; he didn't like me one little bit. When I hit him again, smack on his broad snoot, he tucked in his head and showed me his bald patch and bored in like he was a buffalo.

That was a mistake. And I told him so. I told him with the hard edge of my palm in a rabbit punch that would've killed any normal guy. Lucky for him he'd been sired by a bull ape.

Still, it knocked most of the tar out of him. He seemed to forget where he had been going and what he'd intended to do when he got there. I stepped aside and he blundered on with his buffalo act. When he turned towards me again, his hair was over his eyes and his mouth was hanging open stupidly. He was three-quarters out on his feet. What kept him going was guts.

I hit him there, too—twice. He went back a couple of steps and pawed the air a few times. Very dimly, he seemed to realise that the battle wasn't going in his favour. As I stepped in for the kill, he shielded his chin with his good arm and back-pedalled into the door. Like a blinded animal, he went through without caring where he was going so long as it was somewhere else.

The return swing of the door caught me on my way after him. By the time I reached the sidewalk, he had almost reached the Brown and White. Maybe I could've caught up with him; maybe not. I didn't try. There was no knowing who else might've been in the cab waiting for him. And I'd had enough. I'd had plenty without inviting any more.

The gun was lying where he'd dropped it. I put it in my pocket and I went upstairs. Between the blow behind the ear
and the clout in the kidneys. I felt like a very old man. I'd had to put up with a lot in the past eighteen hours.

My hands were hurting. I'd skinned the knuckles of the right one and I had to use my left to unlock the door and put on the light. When I'd turned the key, I sat myself down in my swivel chair very gently and I pulled open the bottom drawer of the desk without stooping too much. Stooping was another thing that hurt.

There was one long, slow bourbon left in the Q bottle. I didn't bother with a glass. And I sat cuddling the dead marine for a long time while warmth spread gently through me and the pain in my back dulled to a small ache and my hands didn't feel so bad.

I could've used another drink but I got by without it. Maybe it would've put me to sleep, anyway. I didn't want to sleep. Not yet. Not in an office with a frosted-glass door in a deserted building on a dirty night when two hundred and ten pound gorillas were running around loose. Not until I was on the right side of my apartment door with a loaded .38 automatic under my pillow and the top rail of a chair under the door-knob.

. . . Pillow . . . nice word . . . nice word all wrapped up in nice soothing thoughts . . . thoughts of a world beyond a world . . . where a guy isn't wakened in the middle of the night to go sleep-walking through the rain on a date with murder . . . and you don't taste blood on your lips. . . .

The blood was from the back of my hand. I'd been resting my head on it while I licked my wounds and felt sorry for myself. I must've fallen asleep still holding on to the empty bottle . . . another drink would've been fine . . . help to keep me awake . . . I couldn't be sure I was awake . . . maybe I'd dreamt the whole thing . . . Judith Walker . . . she'd been clawed after she was dead because the scratches hadn't done any bleeding . . . and Carole Van Buren . . . she was the kind of dame a million guys dream about every night . . . she could've been a projection from my subconscious . . . the stuff that dreams are made of. . . .

I was dozing off again in a dream within a dream. Nothing was real any more. The voices and faces, the aches and pains were all in my mind. It was better that way. Judith was
too nice looking to die with a belt round her neck. And even a tramp like Pauline Gordon——

That roused me as nothing else could've done. The big animal who'd followed me must've sat on my tail from the time I left the spot where Pauline had been killed by the hit-and-run car. He'd waited for me outside the men's washroom . . . and he was real. He'd left me something that was no figment of my imagination.

The gun was an army issue .45, fairly new and fully loaded except for one round. On the base of the butt somebody'd scratched
Lew Riley, “B” Combat Team.
I had better than an idea that the gink with the concrete fists didn't call himself Lew Riley. When you belong to a disposal squad working for King Gilmore, you don't leave calling cards.

My knuckles were still oozing blood. I ran them under the cold faucet and wrapped my handkerchief around them. Then I sat down again and smoked two thoughtful cigarettes.

It was nearly nine o'clock. At a quarter after nine, I broke out my own piece of artillery, checked it and loaded it and stuck it in the waistband of my pants. Mister Riley's revolver I locked in the desk.

At nine-twenty, I put out the light. Through the rain-streaked window, I studied the street below. Wind and rain and sidewalks shining in pools under the street lamps . . . the sodden wall of the warehouse opposite . . . doorways like caverns of pale darkness shrinking from the light . . . the splash and gurgle of water flooding from a broken roof-gutter.

No one was keeping tabs on my front door. In the lights of an occasional passing car I could see a whole stretch of the street, the empty doorways, the hurrying passer-by with his head buried in his coat collar and rain dripping from his hat. I watched from the window for a long time—long enough to make quite, quite sure that the guy with the busted wing wasn't still flying around. Nor had he left one of his pals to finish the job he'd half-started.

What might give down in the lobby was a different proposition. There I had to take a chance. But this time I was carrying a comforting little something that was keeping my umbilicus warm.

I went out and I locked the office door and I walked very cautiously along the hallway. With my hand snuggling inside
the front of my coat, I went down the stairs. Where the stairs became lobby and my shadow was a tapering giant across the floor, I stood close to the wall and listened.

Out back, a door creaked to and fro in the wind. In the alley at the rear, the lid of an ashcan clattered with every booming gust. The sound of the rain was like surf on an open shore.

No one was lying in wait for me. A faint smell of cordite still lingered in the air but that was all. There was no car parked anywhere on the whole length of rainswept street.

Picking up a cab was only a little easier than getting McCarthy elected to the Praesidium of the U.S.S.R. But I did at last find me one and I went home and bathed my sundry injuries and took me to bed.

I was dead on my feet before I lay down. My eyes wouldn't stay open. That is, until there was no longer any need for me to remain awake. Then I hunted sleep for at least an hour, over and under and around a hundred obstacles that came between us. I couldn't get rid of the look of vague surprise on Judith's lovely face when I'd first seen her asleep on the rye-soaked bed. I kept hearing her voice. I remembered every word of the crazy conversation on the phone when she'd roused me to talk suicide and drugs and girls who get headaches when they realise too late what they've got themselves into.

The dim shape of the phone was the last thing I saw when at last I drifted off. It remained with me when all else had gone.

Guess I must've anticipated the bell almost before it rang. In the depths of my sleep, I found myself holding the cold receiver and listening to a cold voice repeating, “Is that Glenn Bowman?”

It wasn't Judith's voice; it wasn't any voice I'd ever heard. Somehow, I had a sense of disappointment.

I said, “This is Bowman. Who is that?”

He said, “My apologies for disturbing you at this hour, Mr. Bowman. You seem fated these days to have your night's rest broken by one thing or another . . . but I won't detain you long.”

“You won't detain me at all,” I told him, “unless you
come out from behind your apologies and let me have a look at you.”

“I hope you don't mean that.” His smooth, chill tone hadn't altered. There was just the very faintest trace of impatience behind it when he went on, “Twenty-four hours ago, you were much more agreeable. Of course——” he cleared his throat unnecessarily “—after your recent experience, perhaps you're allergic to phone calls at two o'clock in the morning. But, believe me, I didn't waken you at this hour from choice.”

“Look,” I said. “Quit stalling. Your name without any more horsing around or I hang up on you.”

“It'll cost you five thousand dollars if you do,” he said. “And probably something much more valuable than that—later.” Now he didn't sound quite so smooth.

“That's different,” I said. “For the time being I'll call you Five Grand. Now, take it from there . . . without apologies, threats, or fancy talk. I'm a tired boy and I want to get back to sleep.”

“O.K. Whatever you wish.” He coughed again. “I'll make it short. You had a little trouble this evening . . . didn't you?”

“No. No trouble at all. You must've been misinformed.”

“Don't act smart with me. You know quite well what I'm talking about. A guy tried to rub you out: a big, dumb ox who let you take his gun off him. Isn't that so?”

“Oh . . . that?” I could hear a thread of music weaving a broken pattern behind his voice. When it stopped, there was a distant pattering sound like an overtone to the rain. In the lesser darkness outside my bedroom window, the rain still washed in grey swathes over the roof-tops.

I said, “Tell him next time he tries anything like that I'll put an extra hole in his head.”

The voice on the phone said, “If you act your age, there needn't be any next time.”

“And if I don't?”

“You will. I've got five G's that say you will.”

“Must be annoying to think you could've saved yourself all that money by employing a more efficient killer. Guess you're not as well organised as I've been given to understand.”

He didn't like that. In a slightly louder tone, he said, “You're fond of opening a big mouth, Bowman. It isn't a healthy habit.”

“After meeting your damp squib to-night,” I said, “you don't stand a chance of scaring me. I always look three ways before I step off the sidewalk. Now, let's get back to this sugar you want to feed the horse.”

“It's yours . . . so long as you play ball.”

“Doing what?”

“Doing nothing . . . or nearly nothing. Ever been in Washington?'

“Why?”

“Nice town. Healthy climate, too. Be a pleasant change for you to work there for a week or two.”

“ What kind of work?”

“I'm thinking of opening a club, a country club, a few miles upstate. It'd be a pretty big investment, so I want to get off on the right foot.” He paused to let me come in.

“Where do I feature?” I asked.

“Your job is to check over the territory: possible opposition, suggested location, who has to be greased for a building licence, who might have to be bought out or run out . . . you know the kind of thing?”