That had come out of nowhere, and sounded like a line he’d worked up for the newspapers.
I asked, “Is it shelved now, the project?”
“Temporarily. But I have Johnny Mercer on board for the music, and I’ve got Larry Gelbart on the hook for the book — he wrote A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.”
“I saw that. Some good laughs. Lots of pretty girls. Do that again.”
He chuckled. “I’ll try. I can guarantee you one thing.”
“Which is?”
He sipped his Scotch. “We’ll have a hell of a fantastic leading lady.”
As promised, Gwen was there in her silly red puffy hat and nicely snug jeans, waiting to see me back out. She and Borensen shared a quick kiss before he disappeared back into the study. Then she batted the big blue eyes at me as she took my arm.
“So, Mike. What do you think of my man?”
“He’s well-preserved.”
She smiled smirkily. “You don’t approve of a girl in her twenties marrying a man in his fifties?”
“Maybe you should consider a younger man. I’m in my thirties, for example. And will be for another month.”
That got a musical laugh from her.
Soon we were down the wide endless corridor and through the marble-floored foyer and at the door.
“Seriously,” she said, “what’s your impression of Leif? I imagine, in your business, you have to be a really good judge of character.”
“I liked him fine,” I said. “And I just love his retainer.”
Outside the apartment building, I flagged a Yellow Cab and opened the back door, leaning in. I gave the cabbie the address of the Blue Ribbon, where I was meeting Velda and Hy in half an hour for a post-game report. My driver was a friendly black guy who automatically craned around to give me a smile.
I was half-way through my sentence when dampness spattered my face and tiny stinging shards flecked my cheeks while something metallic hit my chest, not enough to break the skin, just a thump.
As the rifle’s crack reached my ears, I had a flash of the bloody irregular hole the size of a quarter in the cabbie’s forehead before he fell back over the seat onto the rider’s side, the smile still there.
My face was splashed with blood and my cheeks nicked by skull fragments and my chest hurting just a little from the thump of a slowed-down bullet, its velocity cut into harmlessness by travelling through all that bone.
Scrambling, I backed out of the cab crouching onto the sidewalk, the vehicle between me and the shooter, if he was still in position, and I yanked the .45 from under my arm and clicked off the safety. The sidewalks weren’t crowded in a high-class neighborhood like this, but an old gal walking two poodles started screaming and a few other pedestrians did, too. Whether they’d heard the shot and were reacting to that or just saw my scarlet splattered face, I had no idea.
I did know who the target was here, and it wasn’t the smiling cabbie. Somebody with a rifle had propped himself behind and on the edge of the Central Park wall opposite and taken a tricky shot that would have hit home if that friendly cabbie hadn’t suddenly turned to make human contact with me.
I duck-walked around the cab and into the street, the snout of the .45 angled up. Traffic was unaware of the gunshot and kept moving, and was fairly light anyway and not fast either, so I was able to stay low and weave between cars, getting some wide eyes and a few squealing brakes from drivers when they saw a wild-eyed bloody-faced guy in a well-tailored business suit on the prowl with a big automatic in his mitt.
I could already see that no shooter was in place now along the thick stone wall with its touches of green in crevices and overhanging trees spotted along.
Hell — could he have taken his shot from one of these trees?
No, that was stupid. But unless he was a giant, he’d used something to get up over the five-foot high, foot-thick barrier, and take his shot.
I was across the pavement now, still staying low, and onto the wide, tree-shaded brick walkway. What few pedestrians had been around were gone now. Very little impresses New Yorkers, but gunfire gets their attention and summons respect.
I cut left to jump up and grab a low-hanging branch and pulled myself up and over the wall, skirting its pyramidal top, dropping to the grass, landing fairly light, and again keeping low. To my right as I faced the park was a bench against the wall, either a providential aid for my would-be assassin or something he’d moved into place, likely ahead of time. A spent cartridge winked sunlight at me from the grass. I didn’t take time to pick it up.
No one suspicious-looking or otherwise was in sight near that bench, but to my left a man was walking very quickly away — a man wearing a gray topcoat unnecessary on this unseasonably balmy day. No one seemed to be in this part of the park right now, possibly because Manhattanites out strolling through it knew a gunshot when they heard it. They were tucked behind trees or had hit the dirt behind bushes.
The man in the topcoat was likely heading toward the exit/entrance at Fifth Avenue at Sixtieth. I felt confident this was my would-be assassin, but maybe not confident enough to shoot him.
That kind of mistake was hard to live down.
And anyway, I needed him alive for a conversation. That friendly cabbie deserved better, but I needed not to shoot this prick. Somebody had hired him and I would find out who. Gun in hand, upright, I ran hard now, cutting the distance quickly.
When I was within fifty feet of him, I yelled, “Stop or I’ll shoot!”
He kept moving, glancing back at me. He wore sunglasses, the orange tactical variety, on a bland oval face. He was the shooter, all right. White guy, medium height, in that gray topcoat, hatless, short black hair, another face in the crowd like my late pal Woodcock.
I fired a shot into the ground — fire it in the air and a slug might come down and clip somebody — and the roar of it was like a lion was loose from the park zoo.
“I changed my mind!” I yelled. And I stopped running. I aimed the .45 in a two-handed grip, my feet apart, firing-range style. “Please don’t stop!”
But he did stop, swinging around and dropping to one knee — he, too, was in a firing-range stance — bringing the rifle out and up from under the topcoat and aiming.
That was as far as he got.
My .45 slug hit him at the bridge of his nose and split his skull like an ax and he toppled onto his side with blood and brains leaking out like he’d done a Humpty Dumpty off the nearby wall. And all the king’s horses couldn’t do a goddamn thing for this bastard. King’s men, either.
People were yelling now, and I heard a police whistle as I approached the corpse.
Something told me conversation with this guy was out.
Chapter Five
I got to the office at eight the next morning and found Velda already there, with the coffee going and some Danish waiting. She was in a pale yellow silk blouse and a brown skirt whose above-the-knee length was her only concession to changing fashions. She didn’t work in heels — she was damn near as tall as me without them.
I’d never made it to my meeting with Hy Gardner and Velda at the Blue Ribbon yesterday afternoon, and had to phone there to call it off from the lobby of Gwen Foster’s apartment building. The doorman had let me use the lobby restroom as well, to wash the cabbie’s blood off my face.
Wordlessly Velda and I got ourselves cups of coffee and paper napkins for our pastry and went to her desk, where she got behind and sat, and I sat opposite, like a client.