“We’ll get to that news later, Oliver.” He jerked out the Luger and then my wallet. Then he found the barrel and trigger-assembly of Eddie’s zip-gun.
That seemed to amuse him a little. He wheezed contemptuously through his nose and I heard the pieces fall against the seat of an upholstered chair. The.45 crowded my spine some more, so he was probably busy with my wallet. After a while that dropped to the floor.
“Big of you,” I told him. I could see that he’d left the money in it. He wasn’t interested in my paltry fifty or sixty bucks.
“Fannin,” he said. “Cop, huh? Okay, cop, it’s too early for you to be on it for any bonding company. So Bogardus spilled about the heist. What else do you know that’s interesting? Let’s have it.”
He didn’t know me from Little Black Sambo, which meant that Cathy had kept us private after all. I didn’t feel so high-spirited anymore, knowing that. Under the circumstances I suddenly felt considerably like a slob.
“Spill, cop.”
“Shove that rod against me one more time and you’ll get one goddam lot of answers,” I told him. “Back off and let me stop climbing this wall. What the hell do you need besides that howitzer to keep me in line? You want a tin whistle maybe?”
“A wit,” he said. “A real genuine wit.”
“Yeah, I know, the man who wrote Snowbound was wittier.”
A little time passed. He grunted. He could turn colors before I’d explain it to him.
He decided to be accommodating. “Drop ‘em,” he said.
“Keep your feet right where they are when you come around. Anything fishy and this thing goes off.”
I turned. He had backed out into the middle of the room. His gray sharkskin suit had shoulders as outsize as the cannon in his hand and the knot in his purple tie was big enough to moor something of Cunard’s. Cathy’s latest beau. So he hadn’t killed her. So I still wasn’t rushing off to ask permission to bunk with him next semester.
The.45 was centered on my intestines. “Okay,” he said then. “All nice and relaxed, huh? Now where is she?”
I ignored him. He could throw that one at me all night and not get anything, not while Estelle was sitting there that way. She was wearing a drab blue robe and house slippers. Her hands were locked in her lap and her lips had no blood behind them. She was staring at me helplessly and I realized it was the first time I had ever seen her without glasses. Oddly enough it made her look better than I remembered.
“Where, cop?”
“Cathy hasn’t got the money,” I told him evenly. “You don’t have to look for Cathy.”
Estelle winced when I mentioned the name. Obviously I hadn’t changed the subject by butting in on them. I changed it now.
“Where’s your mother, Estelle?”
She looked across at me vaguely and her voice was strained. “She’s in the hospital, Harry. She had an operation last weekend.”
“Oh, my busted back,” Duke said, “if that ain’t touching. How was it? I sure hope everything came out okay?”
“She’s all right,” Estelle said distractedly.
“That’s great. I’m real glad to hear that. You be sure and tell her how glad I am.” He had not taken his eyes off me. “How many times I got to ask you, cop? What’s your pitch in this?”
Estelle’s breath was audible. She was staring at me now, probably wondering the same thing. I did not want her to be putting too much of it together.
“Damn it, where is she? Where’s the broad?”
“What broad? You mean the girl Eddie says you’re nuts about? The one you’re supposed to marry?”
“Yeah, marry. That cheap double-crossing no-good skirt, I’d like to—”
I was pleased to hear how he felt about all that. I wanted a little information myself and that could be just the needle to get it for me. “I told you,” I said. “Your girl hasn’t got the money, Angelo.”
“Can that. My old lady calls me Angelo. Her and the priest. Not you, Oliver.”
I grinned at him. “What does Cathy call you?”
“Spit,” he said.
“Always happens, doesn’t it? Trust a dame and then turn your back for half an hour and she’s—”
“Half an hour, hell. Ten damned minutes. Her and all that chatter about how she’d stick it out. And then all I do is go down for a deck of butts. Not even ten minutes, because the clock in the lobby says two-sharp when I go down and it ain’t even two-ten when I come back. Faking like she’s asleep and then—”
I kept grinning at him. I couldn’t help myself. Another minute and he’d be letting me read his diary.
His face had changed. He wasn’t sure what he’d told me but he realized he’d made a boo-boo. It wasn’t much, actually, but it was all I had and I already loved it dearly. IWo o’clock. And she’d gotten to my place around three-thirty. Time for one or two stops. Adam Moss? Who else?
Duke’s lips had pulled back over his gums in a grimace of disgust. The Colt jerked up an inch or two in his hand. “Turn back to the wall, cop.”
“What’s the matter, Angelo? I thought you wanted me to answer some questions.”
“Turn around, you phony bastard. Who you trying to con anyhow? Spit, Oliver, you ain’t got anymore idea where she is than me. You come up here on what Bogardus told you and you find me so you figure it means she’s got the dough. Bright boy, trying to con me into spilling something else. Well, you been told all you’re getting, bright boy. You phony cops, for crying out loud. Eddie lets out about the loot and you come sniffing around for it like any two-bit chiseler smelling a free beer. Turn around, phony, right now, or I’ll blast that fat smirk right off your kisser.”
I took a last look at the gun. I was sure I could knock him off his feet after one shot. One. And Max Schmeling could have taken Joe Louis if he’d been awake after the first round. I knew I’d hate myself for it in the morning, but I turned around and memorized the wallpaper again.
I suppose it didn’t matter much. He still wasn’t going to do any shooting unless somebody drove him to it. All he wanted was time. Let him go looking for Cathy. The law would pick him up sooner or later on that Troy thing. Me, I wanted someone else.
“Higher, cop,” he told me. He had moved up close. I knew well enough what was coming and I tried to set myself for it.
I heard Estelle suck in her breath and begin to whimper. I hoped he would be dumb enough to switch his grip to the business end of the gun first, but he was finished with being dumb for today. And then I said the hell with it anyhow. I waited until the last second, when the shadow of his arm was lifting along the wall.
I jerked my head aside and went for him.
CHAPTER 8
I was happy. Bach might have been meant for Eddie Bogardus alone, but I had my Wagner. The Siegfried Idyll Far off, through drooping willow trees where gentle rain fell. A small wind was rising, and the rivers flowed. The rug beneath me was soft as new down, and softer daylight was breaking through the windows beyond, bathing me in its warm sweet radiance. I dreamed of fair women.
Innocent peace, melancholy contentment, what more could a man need? Let some other kid grow up to be president.
My wallet was lying three inches from my nose like a dead mouse.
A clock on a desk across the room said it had been less than fifteen minutes when I came out of it. I considered myself extremely clever to figure that out, since the clock was upside down. Curiously enough so was the rest of the furniture. I rolled slightly. Lazy clumps of dust ignored my intrusion along the floorboards.
I had caught it in the temple. Old devil-may-care Harry. Go get’im, Harry! Ha.