A flight of rickety steps led to the first floor. The door was locked, but a steady push with my shoulder snapped the lock and sent the door slamming open against the wall with a noise that would have gotten anyone alerted.
But it didn’t. It was drowned in the resonating blast of gunfire from the floor above that rolled through the building with punctuated hammering that was sharper than the echoes they made. They came too fast to identify the caliber, but at least three were going, then two, one, and all that was left was the sharp smell of cordite and a dull reverberation that bounced from the walls until it died out in the yells of the neighbors and the sound of a woman screaming for the police somewhere outside.
I stayed close to the wall, took the stairs two at a time, nearly fell over a body and in stumbling saved my neck. A shot from above snapped down, missing me by an inch, powdering plaster and wood chips into my face. Above me, feet went up the staircases, paused, went up again and stopped.
There were too many times when a cop had things taken out of his hands. I had to get him. I took each landing with the .38 ready to reach out for a target, went up the stairs waiting to catch one myself and damn near eager for the opportunity to swap one for the other, but none came my way. The door to the roof was open and without thinking about it I went through into the rain and dove for the shelter of the parapet.
No bullet sought me out. No feet ran from me. There was just that deathly stillness and the sensation that I was all alone. I got up and walked along the edge, peering down into the alleyway. A garbage can rattled, then a board creaked from the fence and the silhouette of a man showed briefly as he slithered over it. I got off a quick shot, even though I knew the range was too long and the light too bad, then went back down the stairs.
Steve Lutz was dead on the steps near the landing, half his head splattered over the wall. Beamish lay face down near the door of Paula Lees’ apartment, his blood puddled all over the floor from a hole in his throat. I kicked the door open not knowing what I was going to find. The light was on in the kitchen and directly under it half sprawled in a chair, was the fat lump of what was left of Al Reese. The bullet that had torn into his chest had left a fist-sized hole in his back and if the signs were right it had been deliberately placed by somebody who had stood in the doorway leading to the bedroom.
She lay on the bed, eyes wide and staring, her body twisted in the agony of torture applied by an expert in the art of taking pleasure from someone else’s pain. She should have been dead. I thought she was. Apparently the other person thought she was too. The motion of her chest was barely perceptible, a minor spasmodic movement that was involuntary on her part, an effort of a human body hanging on to life.
When her lips moved I bent over and said, “Paula... it’s Joe Scanlon.”
She moved her mouth in an effort to repeat my name.
“Paula... who was it?”
Her voice was a weak whisper I could hardly hear. I bent my head closer and heard her say, “Al... was going to... let me... work. He... he said so. He wanted a... favor.”
“What favor, Paula?”
“Meet... somebody here,” she finally got out.
“Who, Paula, who?”
Instead of answering she said, “Al... was supposed to... come first. But... he did.” Her breathing came in a series of short gasps and she had trouble speaking. “He was... terrible. He did...” Whatever she was remembering stopped the flow of words.
After a few seconds her mouth moved again. “Al... came in. He... sat down. I tried to scream... then... then he hit me with something.”
Quietly, I asked again, “Who, Paula?”
Her eyes came back from the limbo they had been looking into. The glassy look vanished momentarily and they moved to focus on mine. I reached out to touch her and she drew back, the blood suddenly spurting from the ugly gash in her temple and her mouth opened to scream. The sound never came out. She died with her face contorted, mouth twisted in terror and in her eyes a hopeless look of staring into death itself.
The first squad car pulled to the curb outside and I heard heavy feet on the stairs. They came in and photographed the scene, took my statement, carted out the bodies past the group on the sidewalk who braved the rain to satisfy their morbidity, then Oliver and Bryan took me aside and it was like the first night when I was called in to look at the remains of Doug Kitchen lying on the sidewalk.
Captain Oliver said, “We can’t let this one ride, Joe. It’s wide open now. We’re going to have our heads handed to us and yours comes in on a silver platter.”
“Screw it.”
“You were there,” Inspector Bryan told me bleakly.
“Sure, too late. I had no choice. I told you I saw somebody across the street. Let’s say it was Beamish and Loefert. Al Reese set up a date with our killer and had them along for insurance. Only trouble was, the killer was wise, popped Reese and waited for Beamish and Loefert and got them too.”
Bryan nodded. “We’ll have to wait for ballistics to run a test, but the bullets in Beamish and Loefert are the same calibre as the one that went into the wall over your head. We haven’t found the one that went through Reese yet. None of them came from those hoods’ guns.”
We stood there in the rain with nothing much to say until Captain Oliver coughed and without looking at me, said, “You’ll have to come off it, Joe. We can’t take the heat that’s going to come.”
“You gave me two days, remember?”
“We’ll have to take it back. If the Lees dame had talked maybe we could have had something, but we’re still up in the ah-.”
“Let me have tonight then.”
“No more,” Bryan said abruptly. “It won’t do any good, but you have that much. Now let’s get the hell out of this rain.”
Chapter Nine
I had to walk it out. I could never go back to where I left her waiting for me until it was finished. I circled the perimeter of the place that had given me birth and raised me with the smell of it in my nose and the feel of it in my fingers and thought about what had happened and tugged at the string that led to the end, and all I could do was unravel an unending ball of confusion.
At the corner I stopped and opened the call box, rousted Mack Brissom from the coffee he was having over his late reports and gave him the details of the night. He said, “Tough, Joe.”
“That’s the way it goes, Mack. We checked out your inquiry about Gus Wilder and...”
“Forget it” he said, “Wilder’s out.”
“What?”
“His body turned up three hours ago. He knocked himself off with a.22 target pistol the same day he was supposed to appear for trial. I got a Coroner’s report right here on my desk. He’s been dead all this time.”
“Damn,” I said. I hung up and shut the door on the call box and went back down the street
The knots were in the string now and it was pulled tight. It was a different string, and the knots were tied in an odd direction, but they made the shape of a noose and were a terrible thing to look at.
I knew where I was going now. It was the only place I could go. No, Paula Lees hadn’t talked, but had said something without a word that was more important than anyone else. She had told me the same thing Papa Jones had told me that I didn’t want to hear and deliberately let it pass.