“If it’s okay with the doc, why should you mind? Thanks, nurse. Just hang the coat over my shoulder.” The night lights were on in the corridor of the emergency ward.
“We went out there, as you know,” Lowery said.
“Thanks.”
“Skip the sarcasm. We went out and put the clamp on Joseph. There’s a charge against you for trying to kidnap Ledecker, and for stealing the car. They wanted to make it murder, but we found the slug and shot it down to the lab along with Joseph’s gun. It matched. But, genius, no girl. No girl at all. Was there ever a girl, or were you just wishing hard?”
“Check with Dr. Morrison, who has his office across the street from where I live. He saw her. Check with Gruber, my building superintendent.”
“So there was a girl. I yanked in Walch and Antonelli and told them some hunks of your story. They laughed until they held on to their sides. Jerry Norma is on a business trip, they think. Ledecker would know, and he’s dead. They told me I was getting soft in the head listening to newspaper people. So what do we do now, genius?”
“Can I go along for the ride?”
“To where?”
“We go to the warehouse and we take some lab boys along. Suppose it turns out that there was a girl and that something has happened to her? How about Walch and Antonelli and the rest of the organization?”
Lowery gave the impression of wanting to spit on his hands. “Brother, we get our chance to smack down on the whole outfit. But good.”
They parked the two police sedans outside the warehouse. The warrant was in order. The lights were clicked on. Bright lights.
Max said to the lab men, “This grease spot looks like the car was parked here. Norma drove it right in. He got out. He was probably headed that way. See if you can find out if he was shot down.”
In a few moments one man reported a well-scrubbed place on the floor. They unstrapped the chemical kit and went to work, testing reagents. Finally one of them said, “Captain, there was blood here. Not too long ago. Maybe human. Can’t tell yet.”
Lowery himself found a bullet scar on the concrete. By lining it up with the scrubbed place, estimating the degree of ricochet, searching for fifteen laborious minutes, they found the slug half buried in the edge of a two-by-four that supported one shelf of a supply bin.
Lowery said, with a shade less contempt, “Now, genius, you’re beginning to click. We’ll accept the assumption that Norma was gunned right here and the girl saw it happen. Where to now?”
“They got her out of Valley Farms fast. With the big mess over Ledecker, and with my getting away, they’d be stupid to kill her. They’d hold her for a while to see what happens.”
“And where would they do that?”
“Ledecker mentioned an apartment on Primrose.”
“Nice neighborhood,” Lowery said dryly. “Let’s roll. This one is legwork.”
It was ten o’clock before they had the right building, the right apartment. Lowery dispersed his men to cover all possible means of exit, including two in the courtyard manning the portable spotlight, armed with gas grenades.
At the end of the stairs, Lowery whispered, “Stay right here, Raffidy. This is business.”
Max shrugged. It was good to lean against the wall. His shoulder throbbed heavily and incessantly. But when Lowery and his two men went down the hallway to the door, he moved up into the corridor and inched his way down toward the door.
“Open up,” Lowery called.
“Who’s out there?”
“Police. Open wide and come out with your hands in the air,” Lowery ordered.
A different voice, a soft mild voice, said, “Thank you. No.”
Lowery let go with the whistle and Max saw the bright thread of light under the edge of the door as the men out in the court turned the spotlight on the window.
Lowery said, “You’re covered all the way around. Better come out the easy way or we get you the hard way.”
Again the soft voice. “There’s a girl in here, Officer.”
“That we know!”
“I’m coming out with the girl in front of me. What then?” Max saw Lowery wipe his forehead with the back of his hand. There was a long period of silence.
Lowery said, “You won’t make it.”
The voice said, “I’ll take my chance. Order your men to stand back.”
Lowery moved away from the door. He lifted the .38 special in his hands, looked hard at it as though he’d never seen it before. He whispered to the two men with him. They walked heavily down to the end of the hall. Lowery motioned to Max. Max went with them.
Lowery said, “Okay. You’re holding the cards. We’ll be out of your way. But the moment you get two feet away from that girl—”
“Stop talking,” the voice said.
Lowery went twenty feet from the doorway, flattened with his back against the wall, his right arm extended, the special aimed down at the doorway.
The hallway was still. Max heard the creak as the door opened inward. More silence. Then he saw her white face, the long, blond hair, the lightweight suit. She came out, one dragging step after another. He saw the fat pink hand that held her arm, the muzzle of the gun aimed at her head, the other fat hand holding the gun. Then the cheery, round, rosy-cheeked face of the fat little man. As the man’s small bright eyes swiveled toward Lowery, Lowery’s gun spoke with heavy authority.
The fat little man did not waver. He dropped as suddenly and completely and thoroughly as though he had fallen from a ten-foot height.
Marylen swayed. She turned, like a sleepwalker, and she saw Max. She came down toward him, walking slowly at first, and then running into Max’s open arms.
Lowery leaned against the wall. The other man, a replica of Joseph, came out with his hands in the air. Lowery said, half to himself, “It had to be just right. A head shot and the reflex makes him pull the trigger. I had to get him in one spot the size of a dime, where the slug would sever the spinal column.”
Max said angrily, “Why not let him go? Why take the chance?”
“Why, you poor damn fool, he’d have killed the girl as soon as he got clear.”
Marylen, her face against Max’s lapel, said, “I saw him kill Jerry. I remember.”
Lowery, his temporary reaction over, said, “And now, Mr. Raffidy, where do we find Jerry Norma’s body?”
“They’re doing a hell of a lot of cement work at Valley Farms, Captain...”
It was pale, gray dawn and the sounds of the city hadn’t yet begun. Lowery, his well-fed face showing the dragging lines of weariness, hung up the phone. He said, “They got him. They’d slapped him in the face with a spadeful of concrete.”
“How about Antonelli and Walch?”
“Walch is beginning to crack. When he does, we can use the stuff he gives us to crack Antonelli. The little fat man’s name was Stan Norton, Ledecker’s blackmailer.”
Max said slowly, “And now, Captain, may I phone in everything I know?”
“Hell, are you working?”
“With an exclusive like this? I’ve been working ever since I phoned in the eyewitness description of Ledecker’s death from the hospital.”
Lowery sighed. “Can I stop you? I’m going home and get some sleep.”
“So am I. I’m going to stop in at Memorial on the way and check on the girl. As soon as she’s well, I’ll ship her home.”
Lowery stood heavily at the doorway. “In some things, Raffidy,” he said, “you almost achieve brilliance. However, with women, you’re on the dull side.”
Max said angrily, “What should I do? Keep her as a good-luck charm?”
But he was talking to the closed door. He managed the difficult feat of lighting a cigarette. He laid the receiver down and started to dial the newspaper number. By now the waiting wolves from the other papers would be plaguing Lowery.