I heard the curious slap of lead against the bricks before I realized what it was. The sound behind it was muffled in the wind, but it could have come from only one direction. I grabbed Marta’s arm, yanked her into a run and dashed across the street and just as we reached the middle I felt her spin a little bit and let out a yell and knew she was hit. I cursed softly, got to the sidewalk and flattened up against the building there with my gun out and ready.
“Joe...”
“Where’d it get you?”
She reached up and touched the top of her shoulder. The cloth was torn and a faint tinge of red darkened the edges of it. “It... isn’t much.”
“Stay down out of sight. He’s in one of these buildings. I’m going in and if I flush him out, hold a gun on him. Think you can make it?”
“Don’t worry.” She grabbed my hand. “Should you... go in alone?”
“There isn’t time to raise anybody else. I know these damn buildings and every way in and out of them. You do what I told you to.”
Before she could answer me I ran up into the brownstone beside me, taking the steps in two leaps, shoved the door open and went up the stairs. There wasn’t an empty apartment on the block and nobody was letting a killer use his place for a firing range. Those shots came from a rooftop and somewhere the guy behind the gun was looking for an escape hatch.
I made the roof at the top of the four stories and came out into the rain from a rusted metal fire door built into the kiosk, the squeak of the hinges like a shrill scream in the darkness. I hit the pebbled surface of the roof and rolled behind the protection of a weather-eroded brick chimney, my eyes probing the black for any movement, any outline of a person.
Too many times I had played these same games on these same rooftops. I was no stranger to these parts at all and it was like old times when the bunch of us turned rooftops into rolling countrysides doing the cowboy and Indian routine or played out the cops and robbers game. I could almost feel Larry beside me, old Chief Crazy Horse, or hear René’s sharp whisper from near the cornice, and Hymie Shapiro’s nervous cough giving away our position to the ones taking the opposite role. Our guns had been cap pistols then, or rubber band gimmicks... but now they were real and the game a lethal one.
I heard him before I saw him. I heard the wrench of metal and the curse and grinned because I knew what had happened. Fire escapes twenty years out of date didn’t hold any more and the bolts were loose in the cement joints of the brick edging. It all looked good from below and provided a quick getaway... until you tried it and found out lousy contractors had never set them right, the weather had eaten them loose and too many kids wrenching at them had finished the job. Anybody trying to climb down them needed a lot of nerve.
The lightning blossomed again and I saw his outline skirting the back edge of the building at a crouching run and I fired a shot into the air. He looked back, showing the white oval of his face, triggered a shot in my direction, then he grabbed the two loops of the iron rails that hooked into the building and slithered over the top.
I ran then. I took a chance he was alone and crossed between the chimneys and the TV antennas, ducking under the clotheslines strung around the place and reached the spot where he disappeared.
Below me the night was too shadowed, the intensity of the black too deep to pick out any movement and I had to take my chances. I felt the rails under my hands, swung a leg over and felt for the rungs when I heard the scream, a startled yell that twisted into a cry of pure terror and was cut off abruptly as a body hit the concrete yard below with a sickening thud.
There was no sense trying it then. I went back the way I came, past the curious faces looking out the doors at me, ducking back when I let them see the badge in my hand to cut off their questions. I found him lying face up, dead as hell, splashed in red over the garbage and ground, the gun still in his pocket and the fright-look plain on his face. Will Fater wasn’t going anyplace any more.
But I was. I wanted to see what that talk was about he had with Al Reese and Benny Loefert in the back of Bunny’s place.
Chapter Eight
When the lab crew finished and the body was carted away I took Marta back to her apartment. The doctor had dressed the minor flesh wound, a sear across her shoulder that bothered her more because it ripped her clothes than damaged her. She showered, changed into a housedress and made us some coffee, still a little shook up from the initial experience of getting shot at.
The bell rang and Marta went to the door. Captain Oliver and Inspector Bryan walked in, faces impassive. Marta poured them some coffee and they sat down, glad to be in out of the rain. Captain Oliver said, “This is bad, Joe. The pressure’s coming in from upstairs again.”
“So we scrubbed one hood. Why the beef?”
“Voters’ complaints. This is a tight little political group. Practically everybody is registered at the polls and can be swung one way or another.”
“This is police work, not a political football,” I said.
“Maybe so, but when the papers get this it’ll be murder. They’re all hot over this upstate deal and to have it in their back yard can make us look silly. You got any idea where you’re going?”
I nodded. “In a way.”
“It better be more than that,” Bryan growled. “We’re ready to pull a house-to-house search for Gus Wilder next.”
“Try it and you’ll have every damn door slammed in your face,” I reminded him. “You’ll need a warrant to get into every apartment and by that time our boy will be gone. You think this whole neighborhood doesn’t feel what’s going on? It doesn’t take much to put two and two together. They know I’m here and nosing around. They know who I’ve been talking to and what’s been said. They can read the papers and draw a picture.”
“We’re not revealing Fater’s identity yet.”
“Just the same, they know it was me on that roof. From now on, I’m not just a cop on a date with a local girl. They’ll know I’m here on an assignment and will clam up tight. I want a couple of more days to do it my way. There’s something lousy about this whole thing. It doesn’t stick. It has a hitch in it.”
“Like what, Joe?”
“I don’t know.”
“Two days then,” Inspector Bryan reminded me.
“That’ll do it,” I said.
When they left I finished my coffee and sat looking out over the street that had been my playground. I had my feet up on the windowsill watching the rain beat against the glass and Marta came over and perched on the arm of the chair, her hand absently stroking the back of my neck.
“Thinking, Joe?”
I reached out and put my arm around her. Beneath the sheer cloth of the dress she was a warm, vibrant thing full of life. My fingers kneaded the flesh of her hip and I felt her react to my touch, involuntarily drawing closer. The dead lay outside, but inside myself that knot started again in my stomach and ran up through my shoulders into an explosion I couldn’t stop.
“Should I tell you what I’m thinking of?”
“I think I know,” she said.
She came down into my arms slowly, her mouth lovely and moist, meeting mine in a gentle touch that said hello after a long, long time and fought with the years in between and wiped them away in a violent burst of passion. Her tongue was a separate entity that spoke a new language I had never heard and always missed without realizing it