Dave Padway dropped the empty matchbox. He sighed and leaned over, slapping Channing lightly on the cheek. Channing opened his eyes.
“You going to talk, Chan?”
Channing’s head moved, not much, from right to left.
Jack Flavin swore. “Dave, the guy’s crazy afraid of fire. If he’d had anything to tell he’d have told it.” His shirt was open, the space around his feet littered with cigarette ends. His harsh terrier face had no laughter in it now. He watched Padway obliquely, his lids hooded.
“Maybe,” said Padway. “Maybe not. We got a big deal on tonight, Jack. It’s our first step toward the top. Channing read your receipt, remember. He knows about that. He knows a lot of people out here. Maybe he has a deal on, and maybe it isn’t with the cops. Maybe it isn’t supposed to break until tonight. Maybe it’ll break us when it does.”
Channing laughed, a dry husky mockery.
Flavin got up, scraping his chair angrily. “Listen, Dave, you getting chicken or something? Looks to me like you’ve got a fixation on this bird.”
“Look to me, Jack, like nobody ever taught you manners.”
The room became perfectly still. The men at the table put their cards down slowly, like men playing cards in a dream. Marge Krist rose silently and moved toward the cot.
Channing whispered, “Take it easy, boys. There’s no percentage in a shroud.” He watched them, his eyes holding a deep, cruel glint. It was something new, something born within the last quarter of an hour. It changed, subtly, his whole face, the lines of it, the shape of it. “You’ve got a business here, a going concern. Or maybe you haven’t. Maybe you’re bait for the meat wagon. I talked, boys, oh yes, I talked. Give me Hank’s killer, and I’ll tell you who.”
Flavin said, “Can’t you forget that? The guy jumped.”
Channing shook his head.
Padway said softly, “Suppose you’re right, Chan. Suppose you get the killer. What good does that do you?”
“I’m not a cop anymore. I don’t care how much booze you run. All I want is the guy that killed Hank.”
Jack Flavin laughed. It was not a nice sound.
“Dave knows I keep a promise. Besides, you can always shoot me in the back.”
Flavin said, “This is crazy. You haven’t really hurt the guy, Dave. Put it to him. He’ll talk.”
“His heart would quit first.” Padway smiled almost fondly at Channing. “He’s got his guts back in. That’s good to know, huh, Chan?”
“Yeah.”
“But bad, too. For both of us.”
“Go ahead and kill me, Dave, if you think it would help any.”
Flavin said, with elaborate patience, “Dave, the man is crazy. Maybe he wants publicity. Maybe he’s trying to chisel himself back on the force. Maybe he’s a masochist. But he’s nuts. I don’t believe he talked to anybody. Either make him talk, or shoot him. Or I will.”
“Will you, now?” Padway asked.
Channing said, “What are you so scared of, Flavin?”
Flavin snarled and swung his hand. Padway caught it, pulling Flavin around. He said, “Seems to me whoever killed Hank has made us all a lot of trouble. He’s maybe busted us wide open. I’d kind of like to know who did it, and why. We were working together then, Jack, remember? And nobody told me about any cop named Channing.”
Flavin shook him off. “The kid committed suicide. And don’t try manhandling me, Dave. It was my racket, remember. I let you in.”
“Why,” said Padway mildly, “that’s so, ain’t it?” He hit Flavin in the mouth so quickly that his fist made a blur in the air. Flavin fell, clawing automatically at his armpit. Padway’s men rose from the table and covered him. Flavin dropped his hand. He lay still, his eyes slitted and deadly.
Marge Krist slid down silently beside Channing’s cot. She might have been fainting, leaning forward against it, her hands out of sight. She was not fainting. Channing felt her working at his wrists.
Flavin said, “Rudy. Come here.”
Rudy Krist came into the circle of lamplight. He looked like a small boy dreaming a nightmare and knowing he can’t wake up.
Flavin said, “All right, Dave. You’re boss. Go ahead and give Channing his killer.” He looked at Rudy, and everybody else looked, too, except the men covering Flavin.
Rudy Krist’s eyes widened, until white showed all around the green. He stopped, staring at the hard, impassive faces turned toward him.
Flavin said contemptuously, “He turned you soft, Rudy. You spilled over and then you didn’t have the nerve to go through with it. You knew what would happen to you. So you shoved Hank off the pier to save your own hide.”
Rudy made a stifled, catlike noise. He leaped suddenly down onto Flavin. Padway motioned to his boys to hold it. Channing cried out desperately, “Don’t do anything. Wait! Dave, drag him off.”
Rudy had Flavin by the throat. He was frothing slightly. Flavin writhed, jerking his heels against the floor. Suddenly there was a sharp slamming noise from underneath Rudy’s body. Rudy bent his back, as though he were trying to double over backwards. He let go of Flavin. He relaxed, his head falling sleepily against Flavin’s shoulder.
Channing rolled off the cot, scrambling toward Flavin.
Flavin fired again, twice, so rapidly the shots sounded like one. One of Padway’s boys knelt down and bowed forward over his knees like a praying Jap. Another of Padway’s men fell. The second shot clipped Padway, tearing the shoulder pad of his suit.
Channing grabbed Flavin’s wrist from behind.
“Okay,” said Padway grimly. “Hold it, everybody.”
Before he got the words out a small sharp crack came from behind the cot. Flavin relaxed. He lay looking up into Channing’s face with an expression of great surprise, as though the third eye just opened in his forehead gave him a completely new perspective.
Marge Krist stood green-eyed and deadly with a little pearl-handled revolver smoking in her hand.
Padway turned toward her slowly. Channing’s mouth twitched dourly. He hardly glanced at the girl, but rolled the boy’s body over carefully.
Channing said, “Did you kill Hank?”
Rudy whispered, “Honest to God, no.”
“Did Flavin kill him?”
“I don’t know …” Tears came in Rudy’s eyes. “Hank,” he whispered, “I wish …” The tears kept running out of his eyes for several seconds after he was dead.
By that time the police had come into the room, from the dark disused doorways, from behind the stacked liquor. Max Gandara said, “Everybody hold still.”
Dave Padway put his hands up slowly, his eyes at first wide with surprise and then narrow and ice-hard. His gunboy did the same, first dropping his rod with a heavy clatter on the bare floor.
Padway said, “They’ve been here all the time.”
Channing sat up stiffly. “I hope they were. I didn’t know whether Max would play with me or not.”
“You dirty double-crossing louse.”
“I feel bad, crossing up an ape like you, Dave. You treated me so square, up there by Hyperion.” Channing raised his voice. “Max, look out for the boy with the chopper.”
Gandara said, “I had three men up there. They took him when he went up, real quiet.”
Marge Krist had come like a sleepwalker around the cot. She was close to Padway. Quite suddenly she fainted. Padway caught her, so that she shielded his body, and his gun snapped into his hand.
Max Gandara said, “Don’t shoot. Don’t anybody shoot.”
“That’s sensible,” said Padway softly.
Channing’s hand, on the floor, slid over the gun Flavin wasn’t using anymore. Then, very quickly, he threw himself forward into the table with the lamp on it.
A bullet slammed into the wood, through it, and past his ear, and then Channing fired twice, deliberately, through the flames.