«You said something about a husband,» I grunted. «Where is he?»
«He’s at a meeting.»
«Oh, a meeting,» I said, nastily.
«My husband’s a very important man. He has lots of meetings. He’s a hydroelectric engineer. He’s been all over the world. I’d have you know —»
«Skip it,» I said. «I’ll take him to lunch some day and have him tell me himself. Whatever Joseph had on you is dead stock now. Like Joseph.»
«He’s really dead?» she whispered. «Really?»
«He’s dead,» I said. «Dead, dead, dead. Lady, he’s dead.»
She believed it at last. I hadn’t thought she ever would somehow. In the silence, the elevator stopped at my floor.
I heard steps coming down the hall. We all have hunches. I put my finger to my lips. She didn’t move now. Her face had a frozen look. Her big blue eyes were as black as the shadows below them. The hot wind boomed against the shut windows. Windows have to be shut when a Santa Ana blows, heat or no heat.
The steps that came down the hall were the casual ordinary steps of one man. But they stopped outside my door, and somebody knocked.
I pointed to the dressing room behind the wall bed. She stood up without a sound, her bag clenched against her side. I pointed again, to her glass. She lifted it swiftly, slid across the carpet, through the door, drew the door quietly shut after her.
I didn’t know just what I was going to all this trouble for.
The knocking sounded again. The backs of my hands were wet. I creaked my chair and stood up and made a loud yawning sound. Then I went over and opened the door — without a gun. That was a mistake.
THREE
I didn’t know him at first. Perhaps for the opposite reason Waldo hadn’t seemed to know him. He’d had a hat on all the time over at the cocktail bar and he didn’t have one on now. His hair ended completely and exactly where his hat would start. Above that line was hard white sweatless skin almost as glaring as scar tissue. He wasn’t just twenty years older. He was a different man.
But I knew the gun he was holding, the .22 target automatic with the big front sight. And I knew his eyes. Bright, brittle, shallow eyes like the eyes of a lizard.
He was alone. He put the gun against my face very lightly and said between his teeth: «Yeah, me. Let’s go on in.»
I backed in just far enough and stopped. Just the way he would want me to, so he could shut the door without moving much. I knew from his eyes that he would want me to do just that.
I wasn’t scared. I was paralyzed.
When he had the door shut he backed me some more, slowly, until there was something against the back of my legs. His eyes looked into mine.
«That’s a card table,» he said. «Some goon here plays chess. You?»
I swallowed. «I don’t exactly play it. I just fool around.»
«That means two,» he said with a kind of hoarse softness, as if some cop had hit him across the windpipe with a blackjack once, in a third-degree session.
«It’s a problem,» I said. «Not a game. Look at the pieces.»
«I wouldn’t know.»
«Well, I’m alone,» I said, and my voice shook just enough.
«It don’t make any difference,» he said. «I’m washed up anyway. Some nose puts the bulls on me tomorrow, next week, what the hell? I just didn’t like your map, pal. And that smugfaced pansy in the bar coat that played left tackle for Fordham or something. To hell with guys like you guys.»
I didn’t speak or move. The big front sight raked my cheek lightly almost caressingly. The man smiled.
«It’s kind of good business too,» he said. «Just in case. An old con like me don’t make good prints, all I got against me is two witnesses. The hell with it.»
«What did Waldo do to you?» I tried to make it sound as if I wanted to know, instead of just not wanting to shake too hard.
«Stooled on a bank job in Michigan and got me four years. Got himself a nolle prosse. Four years in Michigan ain’t no summer cruise. They make you be good in them lifer states.»
«How’d you know he’d come in there?» I croaked.
«I didn’t. Oh yeah, I was lookin’ for him. I was wanting to see him all right. I got a flash of him on the street night before last but I lost him. Up to then I wasn’t lookin’ for him. Then I was. A cute guy, Waldo. How is he?»
«Dead,» I said.
«I’m still good,» he chuckled. «Drunk or sober. Well, that don’t make no doughnuts for me now. They make me downtown yet?»
I didn’t answer him quick enough. He jabbed the gun into my throat and I choked and almost grabbed for it by instinct.
«Naw,» he cautioned me softly. «Naw. You ain’t that dumb.»
I put my hands back, down at my sides, open, the palms towards him. He would want them that way. He hadn’t touched me, except with the gun. He didn’t seem to care whether I might have one too. He wouldn’t — if he just meant the one thing.
He didn’t seem to care very much about anything, coming back on that block. Perhaps the hot wind did something to him. It was booming against my shut windows like the surf under a pier.
«They got prints,» I said. «I don’t know how good.»
«They’ll be good enough — but not for teletype work. Take ’em airmail time to Washington and back to check ’em right. Tell me why I came here, pal.»
«You heard the kid and me talking in the bar. I told him my name, where I lived.»
«That’s how, pal. I said why.» He smiled at me. It was a lousy smile to be the last one you might see.
«Skip it,» I said. «The hangman won’t ask you to guess why he’s there.»
«Say, you’re tough at that. After you, I visit that kid. I tailed him home from Headquarters, but I figure you’re the guy to put the bee on first. I tail him home from the city hall, in the rent car Waldo had. From Headquarters, pal. Them funny dicks. You can sit in their laps and they don’t know you. Start runnin’ for a streetcar and they open up with machine guns and bump two pedestrians, a hacker asleep in his cab, and an old scrubwoman on the second floor workin’ a mop. And they miss the guy they’re after. Them funny lousy dicks.»
He twisted the gun muzzle in my neck. His eyes looked madder than before.
«I got time,» he said. «Waldo’s rent car don’t get a report right away. And they don’t make Waldo very soon. I know Waldo. Smart he was. A smooth boy, Waldo.»
«I’m going to vomit,» I said, «if you don’t take that gun out of my throat.»
He smiled and moved the gun down to my heart. «This about right? Say when.»
I must have spoken louder than I meant to. The door of the dressing-room by the wall bed showed a crack of darkness. Then an inch. Then four inches. I saw eyes, but didn’t look at them. I stared hard into the bald-headed man’s eyes. Very hard. I didn’t want him to take his eyes off mine.
«Scared?» he asked softly.
I leaned against his gun and began to shake. I thought he would enjoy seeing me shake. The girl came out through the door. She had her gun in her hand again. I was sorry as hell for her. She’d try to make the door — or scream. Either way it would be curtains — for both of us.
«Well, don’t take all night about it,» I bleated. My voice sounded far away, like a voice on a radio on the other side of a street.
«I like this, pal,» he smiled. «I’m like that.»
The girl floated in the air, somewhere behind him. Nothing was ever more soundless than the way she moved. It wouldn’t do any good though. He wouldn’t fool around with her at all. I had known him all my life but I had been looking into his eyes for only five minutes.