The black-haired man put my card in the casual outer pocket of his dinner jacket. He pushed his chair back and stood up.
«You know how it is,» he said. «So —»
The girl cackled and threw her drink in his face.
The dark man stepped back jarringly and swept a crisp white handkerchief from his pocket. He mopped his face swiftly, shaking his head. When he lowered the handkerchief there was a big soaked spot on his shirt, limp above the black pearl stud. His collar was a ruin.
«So sorry,» the girl said. «Thought you were a spittoon.»
He dropped his hand and his teeth glinted edgily. «Get her out,» he purred. «Get her out fast.»
He turned and walked off very quickly among the tables, holding his handkerchief against his mouth. Two waiters in mess jackets came up close and stood looking at us. Everybody in the place was looking at us.
«Round one,» the girl said. «A little slow. Both fighters were cautious.»
«I’d hate to be with you when you’d take a chance,» I said.
Her head jerked. In that queer purple light the extreme whiteness of hen face seemed to leap at me. Even her rouged lips had a drained look. Her hand went up to her mouth, stiff and clawlike. She coughed dryly like a consumptive and reached for my glass. She gulped the bacardi and grenadine down in bubbling swallows. Then she began to shake. She reached for her bag and pushed it over the edge of the table to the floor. It fell open and some stuff came out. A gilt-metal cigarette case slid under my chair. I had to get up and move the chair to reach it. One of the waiters was behind me.
«Can I help?» he asked suavely.
I was stooped over when the glass the girl had drunk from rolled over the edge of the table and hit the floor beside my hand. I picked up the cigarette case, looked at it casually, and saw that a hand-tinted photo of a big-boned, dark man decorated the front of it. I put it back in her bag and took hold of the girl’s arm and the waiter who had spoken to me slid around and took her other arm. She looked at us blankly, moving her head from side to side as if trying to limber up a stiff neck.
«Mama’s about to pass out,» she croaked, and we started down the room with her. She put hen feet out crazily, threw her weight from one side to the other as if trying to upset us. The waiter swore steadily to himself in a monotonous whisper. We came out of the purple light into the bright lobby.
«Ladies’ Room,» the waiter grunted, and pointed with his chin at a door which looked like the side entrance to the Taj Mahal. «There’s a colored heavyweight in there can handle anything.»
«Nuts to the Ladies’ Room,» the girl said nastily. «And leggo of my arm, steward. Boy friend’s all the transportation I need.»
«He’s not your boy friend, madam. He don’t even know you.»
«Beat it, wop. You’re either too polite or not polite enough. Beat it before I lose my culture and bong you.»
«Okay,» I told him. «I’ll set her out to cool. She come in alone?»
«I couldn’t think of any reason why not,» he said, and stepped away. The captain of waiters came halfway down his gangplank and stood glowering, and the vision at the checkroom looked as bored as the referee of a four-round opener.
I pushed my new friend out into the cold, misty air, walked hen along the colonnade and felt her body come controlled and steady on my arm.
«You’re a nice guy,» she said dully. «I played that about as smooth as a handful of tacks. You’re a nice guy, mister. I didn’t think I’d ever get out of there alive.»
«Why?»
«I had a wrong idea about making some money. Forget it. Let it lay with all the other wrong ideas I’ve been having all my life. Do I get a ride? I came in a cab.»
«Sure. Do I get told your name?»
«Helen Matson,» she said.
I didn’t get any kick out of that now. I had guessed it long ago.
She still leaned on me a little as we walked down the strip of paved road past the parked cans. When we came to mine I unlocked it and held the door for hen and she climbed in and fell back in the corner with her head on the cushion.
I shut the door and then I opened it again and said: «Would you tell me something else? Who’s that mug on the cigarette case you carry? Seems to me I’ve seen him somewhere.»
She opened her eyes. «An old sweet,» she said, «that wore out. He —» Her eyes widened and hen mouth snapped open and I barely heard the faint rustle behind me as something hard dug into my back and a muffled voice said: «Hold it, buddy. This is a heist.»
Then a naval gun went off in my ear and my head was a large pink firework exploding into the vault of the sky and scattering and falling slow and pale, and then dank, into the waves. Blackness ate me up.
FIVE
MY DEAD NEIGHBOR
I smelled of gin. Not just casually, as if I had taken a few drinks, but as if the Pacific Ocean was pure gin and I had been swimming in it with my clothes on. The gin was on my hair, on my eyebrows, on my face and under my chin on my shirt. My coat was off and I was lying flat on somebody’s carpet and I was looking up at a framed photograph on the end of a plaster mantel. The frame was some kind of grained wood and the photo was intended to be arty, with a highlight on a long, thin, unhappy face, but all the highlight did was make the face look just that — long and thin and unhappy under some kind of flat, pale hair that might have been paint on a dried skull. There was writing across the corner of the photo behind the glass, but I couldn’t read that.
I reached up and pressed the side of my head and I could feel a shoot of pain clear to the soles of my feet. I groaned and made a grunt out of the groan, from professional pride, and then I rolled over slowly and carefully and looked at the foot of a pulled-down twin wall bed. The other twin was still up in the wall with a flourish of design painted on the enameled wood. When I rolled, a gin bottle rolled off my chest and hit the floor. It was water-white, empty. I thought there couldn’t have been that much gin in just one bottle.
I got my knees under me and stayed on all fours for a while, sniffing like a dog who can’t finish his dinner and yet hates to leave it. I moved my head around on my neck. It hurt. I moved it some more and it still hurt, so I got up on my feet and discovered that I didn’t have any shoes on.
It seemed like a nice apartment, not too cheap and not too expensive — the usual furniture, the usual drum lamp, the usual durable carpet. On the bed, which was down, a girl was lying, clothed in a pair of tan silk stockings. There were deep scratches that had bled and there was a thick bath towel across her middle, wadded up almost into a roll. Her eyes were open. The red hair that had been parted and strained back as if she hated it was still that way. But she didn’t hate it any more.
She was dead.
Above and inside hen left breast there was a scorched place the size of the palm of a man’s hand, and in the middle of that there was a thimbleful of blazed blood. Blood had run down her side, but it had dried now.
I saw clothes on a davenport, mostly hers, but including my coat. There were shoes on the floor — mine and hers. I went over, stepping on the balls of my feet as though on very thin ice, and picked up my coat and felt through the pockets. They still held everything I could remember having put in them. The holster that was still strapped around my body was empty, of course. I put my shoes and coat on, pushed the empty holster around under my arm and went over to the bed and lifted the heavy bath towel. A gun fell out of it — my gun. I wiped some blood off the barrel, sniffed the muzzle for no reason at all, and quietly put the gun back under my arm.