After a long silence thick with breathing De Spain said: «Try again.» He spoke casually, as if he were talking to a man playing a pinball game.
Big Chin’s face was a mass of blood. I couldn’t see it as red, but I had put the flash on it a time or two and I knew it was there. His hands were free and what the kick in the groin had done to him was long ago, on the far side of oceans of pain. He made a croaking noise and turned his left hip suddenly against De Spain and went down on his right knee and lunged for the gun.
De Spain kicked him in the face.
Big Chin rolled back on the gravel and clawed at his face with both hands and a wailing sound came through his fingers. De Spain stepped over and kicked him on the ankle. Big Chin howled. De Spain stepped back to his original position beyond the coat and the holstered gun. Big Chin rolled a little and came up on his knees and shook his head. Big dank drops fell from his face to the gravelly ground. He got up to his feet slowly and stayed hunched over a little.
De Spain said: «Come on up. You’re a tough guy. You got Vance Conned behind you and he’s got the syndicate behind him. You maybe got Chief Anders behind you. I’m a lousy flatfoot with a ticket to nowhere in my pants. Come up. Let’s put on a show.»
Big Chin shot out in a diving lunge for the gun. His hand touched the butt but only slewed it around. De Spain came down hard on the hand with his heel and screwed his heel. Big Chin yelled. De Spain jumped back and said wearily: «You ain’t overmatched, are you, sweetheart?»
I said thickly: «For God’s sake, why don’t you let him talk?»
«He don’t want to talk,» De Spain said. «He ain’t the talking kind. He’s a tough guy.»
«Well, let’s shoot the poor devil then.»
«Not a chance. I’m not that kind of cop. Hey, Moss, this guy thinks I’m just one of those sadistic cops that has to smack a head with a piece of lead pipe every so often to keep from getting nervous indigestion. You ain’t going to let him think that, arc you? This is a square fight. You got mc shaded twenty pounds and look where the gun is.»
Big Chin mumbled: «Suppose I got it. Your pal would blast me.»
«Not a chance. Come on, big boy. Just once more. You got a lot of stuff left.»
Big Chin got up on his feet again. He got up so slowly that he seemed like a man climbing up a wall. He swayed and wiped blood off his face with his hand. My head ached. I felt sick at my stomach.
Big Chin swung his right foot very suddenly. It looked like something for a fraction of a second, then De Spain picked the foot out of the air and stepped back, pulled on it. He held the leg taut and the big bruiser swayed on his other foot trying to hold his balance.
De Spain said conversationally: «That was okay when I did it because you had plenty of gun in your mitt and I didn’t have any gun and you didn’t figure on mc taking a chance like that. Now you see how wrong the play is in this spot.»
He twisted the foot quickly, with both hands. Big Chin’s body seemed to leap into the air and dive sideways, and his shoulder and face smashed into the ground, but De Spain held on to the foot. He kept on turning it. Big Chin began to thresh around on the ground and make harsh animal sounds, half stifled in the gravel. De Spain gave the foot a sudden hard wrench. Big Chin screamed like a dozen sheets tearing.
De Spain lunged forward and stepped on the ankle of Big Chin’s other foot. He put his weight against the foot he held in his hands and spread Big Chin’s legs. Big Chin tried to gasp and yell at the same time and made a sound something like a very large and very old dog banking.
De Spain said: «Guys get paid money for what I’m doing. Not nickels — neal dough. I oughta look into it.»
Big Chin yelled: «Lemme up! I’ll talk! I’ll talk!»
De Spain spread the legs some more. He did something to the foot and Big Chin suddenly went limp. It was like a sea lion fainting. It staggered De Spain and he reeled to one side as the leg smacked the ground. Then he reached a handkerchief out of his pocket and slowly mopped his face and hands.
«Soft,» he said. «Too much beer. The guy looked healthy. Maybe it’s always having his fanny under a wheel.»
«And his hand under a gun,» I said.
«That’s an idea,» De Spain said. «We don’t want to lose him his self-respect.»
He stepped oven and kicked Big Chin in the ribs. After the third kick there was a grunt and a glistening where the blankness of Big Chin’s eyelids had been.
«Get up,» De Spain said. «I ain’t goin’ to hurt you no more.»
Big Chin got up. It took him a whole minute to get up. His mouth — what was left of it — was strained wide open. It made me think of another man’s mouth and I stopped having pity for him. He pawed the air with his hands, looking for something to lean against.
De Spain said: «My pal here says you’re soft without a gun in your hand. I wouldn’t want a strong guy like you to be soft. Help yourself to my gat.» He kicked the holster lightly so that it slid off the coat and close to Big Chin’s foot. Big Chin bowed his shoulders to look down at it. He couldn’t bend his neck any more.
«I’ll talk,» he grunted.
«Nobody asked you to talk. I asked you to get that gun in your hand. Don’t make me cave you in again to make you do it. See — the gun in your hand.»
Big Chin staggered down to his knees and his hand folded slowly over the butt of the gun. De Spain watched without moving a muscle.
«Attaboy. Now you got a gun. Now you’re tough again. Now you can bump off some more women. Pull it outa the clip.»
Very slowly, with what seemed to be enormous effort, Big Chin drew the gun out of the holster and knelt there with it dangling down between his legs.
«What, ain’t you going to bump anybody off?» De Spain taunted hini.
Big Chin dropped the gun out of his hand and sobbed.
«Hey, you!» De Spain banked. «Put that gun back where you got it, I want that gun clean, like I always keep it myself.»
Big Chin’s hand fumbled for the gun and got hold of it and slowly pushed it home in the leather sheath. The effort took all his remaining strength. He fell flat on his face oven the holster.
De Spain lifted him by an arm and rolled him over on his back and picked the holster up off the ground. He rubbed the butt of the gun with his hand and strapped the holster around his chest. Then he picked up his coat and put it on.
«Now we’ll let him spill his guts,» he said. «I don’t believe in makin’ a guy talk when he don’t want to talk. Got a cigarette?»
I reached a pack out of my pocket with my left hand and shook a cigarette loose and held the pack out. I clicked the big flash on and held it on the projecting cigarette and on his big fingers as they came forward to take it.
«I don’t need that,» he said. He fumbled for a match and struck it and drew smoke slowly into his lungs. I doused the flash again. De Spain looked down the hill towards the sea and the curve of the shore and the lighted piers. «Kind of nice up here,» he added.
«Cold,» I said. «Even in summer. I could use a drink.»
«Me too,» De Spain said. «Only I can’t work on the stuff.»
EIGHT
NEEDLE-PUSHER
De Spain stopped the car in front of the Physicians and Surgeons Building and looked up at a lighted window on the sixth floor. The building was designed in a series of radiating wings so that all the offices had an outside exposure.
«Good grief,» De Spain said. «He’s up there right now. That guy don’t never sleep at all, I guess. Take a look at that heap down the line.»
I got up and walked down in front of the dark drugstore that flanked the lobby entrance of the building on one side. There was a long black sedan parked diagonally and correctly in one of the ruled spaces, as though it had been high noon instead of almost three in the morning. The sedan had a doctor’s emblem beside the front license plate, the staff of Hippocrates and the serpents twisted around it. I put my flash into the car and read part of the name on the license holder and snapped the light off again. I went back to De Spain.