«Suppose I yell,» I said.
«Yeah, suppose you yell. Go ahead and yell,» he said with his killer’s smile.
She didn’t go near the door. She was right behind him.
«Well — here’s where I yell,» I said.
As if that was the cue, she jabbed the little gun hard into his short ribs, without a single sound.
He had to react. It was like a knee reflex. His mouth snapped open and both his arms jumped out from his sides and he arched his back just a little. The gun was pointing at my right eye.
I sank and kneed him with all my strength, in the groin.
His chin came down and I hit it. I hit it as if I was driving the last spike on the first transcontinental railroad. I can still feel it when I flex my knuckles.
His gun raked the side of my face but it didn’t go off. He was already limp. He writhed down gasping, his left side against the floor. I kicked his right shoulder — hard. The gun jumped away from him, skidded on the carpet, under a chair. I heard the chessmen tinkling on the floor behind me somewhere.
The girl stood over him, looking down. Then her wide dark horrified eyes came up and fastened on mine.
«That buys me,» I said. «Anything I have is yours — now and forever.»
She didn’t hear me. Her eyes were strained open so hard that the whites showed under the vivid blue iris. She backed quickly to the door with her little gun up, felt behind her for the knob and twisted it. She pulled the door open and slipped out.
The door shut.
She was bareheaded and without her bolero jacket.
She had only the gun, and the safety catch on that was still set so that she couldn’t fire it.
It was silent in the room then, in spite of the wind. Then I heard him gasping on the floor. His face had a greenish pallor. I moved behind him and pawed him for more guns, and didn’t find any. I got a pair of store cuffs out of my desk and pulled his arms in front of him and snapped them on his wrists. They would hold if he didn’t shake them too hard.
His eyes measured me for a coffin, in spite of their suffering. He lay in the middle of the floor, still on his left side, a twisted, wizened, bald-headed little guy with drawn-back lips and teeth spotted with cheap silver fillings. His mouth looked like a black pit and his breath came in little waves, choked, stopped, came on again, limping.
I went into the dressing room and opened the drawer of the chest. Her hat and jacket lay there on my shirts. I put them underneath, at the back, and smoothed the shirts over them. Then I went out to the kitchenette and poured a stiff jolt of whiskey and put it down and stood a moment listening to the hot wind howl against the window glass. A garage door banged, and a power-line wire with too much play between the insulators thumped the side of the building with a sound like somebody beating a carpet.
The drink worked on me. I went back into the living room and opened a window. The guy on the floor hadn’t smelled her sandalwood, but somebody else might.
I shut the window again, wiped the palms of my hands and used the phone to dial Headquarters.
Copernik was still there. His smart-aleck voice said: «Yeah? Marlowe? Don’t tell me. I bet you got an idea.»
«Make that killer yet?»
«We’re not saying, Marlowe. Sorry as all hell and so on. You know how it is.»
«O.K., I don’t care who he is. Just come and get him off the floor of my apartment.»
«Holy Christ!» Then his voice hushed and went down low. «Wait a minute, now. Wait a minute.» A long way off I seemed to hear a door shut. Then his voice again. «Shoot,» he said softly.
«Handcuffed,» I said. «All yours. I had to knee him, but he’ll be all right. He came here to eliminate a witness.»
Another pause. The voice was full of honey. «Now listen, boy, who else is in this with you?»
«Who else? Nobody. Just me.»
«Keep it that way, boy. All quiet. O.K.?»
«Think I want all the bums in the neighborhood in here sightseeing?»
«Take it easy, boy. Easy. Just sit tight and sit still. I’m prac tically there. No touch nothing. Get me?»
«Yeah.» I gave him the address and apartment number again to save him time.
I could see his big bony face glisten. I got the .22 target gun from under the chair and sat holding it until feet hit the hallway outside my door and knuckles did a quiet tattoo on the door panel.
Copernik was alone. He filled the doorway quickly, pushed me back into the room with a tight grin and shut the door. He stood with his back to it, his hand under the left side of his coat. A big hard bony man with flat cruel eyes.
He lowered them slowly and looked at the man on the floor. The man’s neck was twitching a little. His eyes moved in short stabs — sick eyes.
«Sure it’s the guy?» Copernik’s voice was hoarse.
«Positive. Where’s Ybarra?»
«Oh, he was busy.» He didn’t look at me when he said that. «Those your cuffs?»
«Yeah.»
«Key.»
I tossed it to him. He went down swiftly on one knee beside the killer and took my cuffs off his wrists, tossed them to one side. He got his own off his hip, twisted the bald man’s hands behind him and snapped the cuffs on.
«All right, you bastard,» the killer said tonelessly.
Copernik grinned and balled his fist and hit the handcuffed man in the mouth a terrific blow. His head snapped back almost enough to break his neck. Blood dribbled from the lower corner of his mouth.
«Get a towel,» Copernik ordered.
I got a hand towel and gave it to him. He stuffed it between the handcuffed man’s teeth, viciously, stood up and rubbed his bony fingers through his ratty blond hair.
«All right. Tell it.»
I told it — leaving the girl out completely. It sounded a little funny. Copernik watched me, said nothing. He rubbed the side of his veined nose. Then he got his comb out and worked on his hair just as he had done earlier in the evening, in the cocktail bar.
I went over and gave him the gun. He looked at it casually, dropped it into his side pocket. His eyes had something in them and his face moved in a hard bright grin.
I bent down and began picking up my chessmen and dropping them into the box. I put the box on the mantel, straightened out a leg of the card table, played around for a while. All the time Copernik watched me. I wanted him to think something out.
At last he came out with it. «This guy uses a twenty-two,» he said. «He uses it because he’s good enough to get by with that much gun. That means he’s good. He knocks at your door, pokes that gat in your belly, walks you back into the room, says he’s here to close your mouth for keeps — and yet you take him. You not having any gun. You take him alone. You’re kind of good yourself, pal.»
«Listen,» I said, and looked at the floor. I picked up another chessman and twisted it between my fingers. «I was doing a chess problem,» I said «Trying to forget things.»
«You got something on your mind, pal,» Copernik said softly. «You wouldn’t try to fool an old copper, would you, boy?»
«It’s a swell pinch and I’m giving it to you,» I said. «What the hell more do you want?»
The man on the floor made a vague sound behind the towel. His bald head glistened with sweat.
«What’s the matter, pal? You been up to something?» Copernik almost whispered.
I looked at him quickly, looked away again. «All right,» I said. «You know damn well I couldn’t take him alone. He had the gun on me and he shoots where he looks.»
Copernik closed one eye and squinted at me amiably with the other. «Go on, pal. I kind of thought of that too.»
I shuffled around a little more, to make it look good. I said, slowly: «There was a kid here who pulled a job over in Boyle Heights, a heist job. It didn’t take. A two-bit service station stick-up. I know his family. He’s not really bad. He was here trying to beg train money off me. When the knock came he sneaked in — there.»