“Sure I am,” Lisa told him, “But I know. You think he was Penny’s friend? Like hell he was. You handed over territory to Penny he wanted for himself and he hated Penny’s guts. He got him out all right. All he had to do was wait and when Penny went for Irish with his big mouth and what he was going to do, Ernie killed him.”
The sweat was really there now and Big Step saw it too. He let his eyes slide from Ernie back to Lisa and asked, “How’d you find out?”
“Fly told me.”
Ernie stood up in a rage, his hands trembling. “A goddamn hophead tells a drunk and you listen to her? What kind of...”
“I think it makes sense, Ernie,” Big Step said. “I heard noises like that from the boys. Moe tried to tell me and so did Carl Hoover and I wouldn’t listen, but I’m listening now.” His hand moved closer to his belt when he turned back to Lisa. “How did Fly know, Lisa?”
She laughed again, never taking the gun off him. “He saw him. He was looking for him to hit him up for some H and saw him. He was saving the story until he wanted to put some real heat on Ernie for a big bundle, only now he’ll never be able to do it.” Her face changed slowly and tears ran down the side of her face. “You killed Fly like you did me and now you go, Step.”
The flat look on Big Step’s face I had seen before. It was a death look and it was aimed at Ernie South. The narcotics dealer went white as the powder he peddled and every cord in his neck stood out like fingers. “Damn you, Lisa... she’s lying... she’s...” He never finished. His hand streaked for the gun in his belt, found and fired it in a split second and doubled Lisa up in the doorway as the slug took her right in the stomach.
But the sound of it was lost in the bigger roar of Step’s rod that bucked in his hand and put a hole in Ernie South’s temple and drove him over the arm of the couch. He got up then, smiling like it was an everyday occurrence, thumbed back the hammer and walked over to me. “Too bad, Irish, but I can’t leave you here to talk, y’know?” He pointed the gun at my head and I closed my eyes.
The blast came, a sharp, flat crack and I felt the concussion on my cheeks. There was no pain, no sensation at all. I forced my eyes open, looked up, hardly able to breathe. Above me Big Step Stipetto was arching in the final dance of death, his eyes staring in disbelief, the hole that went through his neck from back to front pumping blood furiously until the torn spinal cord got its last message through to his brain and he crumpled in a heap, dead.
In back of him Lisa still held the smoking automatic in her hand, every muscle in her body wracked with pain.
I couldn’t tell her. I had to hope she could see what had to be done. And it was her still present hatred of Big Step that made her do it before she died. She had to undo anything he had done and somehow she inched across the floor until she reached me and I felt her fingers fumble the loop from my neck. With her last remaining energy she unknotted my wrists, smiled wistfully and fell back.
“Thanks, honey,” I said, and touched her face gently. I let the feeling come back in my hands and finished untying my ankles. When it was done I knelt down beside her. “Don’t move, kid, I’ll get a doctor.”
She let her eyes come open and the drunkness was gone from them now. There was a new look in its stead. “No use, Irish. It’s better this way.”
“Lisa...”
“Kiss me goodbye, Irish?” Somehow there was no smashed nose, no scars, and she looked like she must have when she was a Broadway star. Gently, I leaned down, touched my lips to hers, then her face relaxed while I watched her and she took her last curtain call.
I found the capsule where I dropped it, wrenched it apart and made sure the microfilm was still there, then put it back together and stuck it in my pocket. Outside I heard the wail of sirens and cut for the door. I had to beat the cops out or I’d be held sure as hell and the big killer was still loose. I pulled the grill back, started up the steps when the wall powdered beside me and I heard the crack of a gun from across the street. I was pinned there with no chance of breaking out and the first squad car came to a screaming halt at the curb. I took the cap out of my pocket, dropped it in the cuff of my pants and waited.
Newbolder and Schmidt didn’t want to believe me. Five corpses were in the room and I was there alive with a .45 in my belt and to them it was all cut and dried. They had me where the hair was short and were enjoying it. But it was the move with the packets of heroin that turned the trick. When I asked Newbolder who he thought mailed them in and why, he stopped Schmidt’s impatient move to get me in a squad car and said, “Keep talking, Irish.”
“Not me. There’s no time. You just get a call through on your radio.” I gave him Shaffer’s number and said, “Your office will know who it is. If you tie me up now there will be hell to pay tomorrow.”
Schmidt grabbed my arm. “Let him do his talking downtown.”
“No, wait a minute,” Newbolder said. “This whole thing’s screwy enough right now and I don’t want to go on a chopping block when we can clear it now. You keep him here.” He looked at Shaffer’s card in his fingers thoughtfully and went outside through the crowd to his car.
He took about five minutes and when he came back his face was screwed up into a puzzled mask and he was shaking his head. “How the living hell do you do it, Ryan? How the hell do you work it?”
Schmidt said, “What’s the pitch?”
“Later, I’ll tell you later. Let him go.”
“Are you nuts?”
“No, but you will be if you don’t keep your hands off. Okay, Ryan, take off. Tomorrow we’ll get a report. A personal one. I’ll want that whole agency staff present with every document of authorization they have to make this one stand up. I want to hear this from front to end and get it in writing so I can read it every time I think there’s an angle I don’t know about. Now get your tail out of here to wherever you’re going before I change my mind and take a chance of being caught in the wringer.” He handed me the gun with a look of disgust and I walked out. Before I hit the street I got the capsule back and stuck it in my pocket.
I didn’t wait for the elevator. I went up the stairs to my floor and half ran down the corridor. Then I stopped. The door stood open an inch and when I shoved it back I could see the whole interior of the room in the bright light from the overhead, bed and all.
Karen Sinclair was gone.
I walked in slowly, stood looking at the open window that led out to the fire escape, then switched off the light. The wind had changed direction and a sheet of rain came through and whipped across the floor. I peered out into the night, swearing at the blackness for the first time. They had time and they had the room. I had been delayed long enough for the snatch to be made and there was no way in the world of telling where they had taken her.
I slumped down on the bed, my face in my hands, trying to figure it out. Somehow I had left a trail in the hotel and they picked it up. But how? Damn it, I wasn’t that sloppy. I had been the route too many times. One mistake somewhere along the line. That was all it took.
How long I sat there I couldn’t tell. The floor and end of the bed was soaked, my shoes and pants legs drenched. Then the phone rang. Unconsciously, out of habit, I picked it up. “Hello.” The voice didn’t sound like my own at all.
“Good evening,” the other one said. The voice was harsh with a curious accent, the tone inviting like it was waiting to be asked to tell a huge joke.
I sat up slowly, feeling the chill run down my back. “Manos Dekker,” I said.
“You are a hard man to kill,” he told me pleasantly. I waited, not trusting my voice. “You have something I want. I have something you want. I believe a trade is in order.”