"Come back here, Ray."
I threw off my hat, shrugged my coat to the floor. The other guy was about my size and maybe I could get away with it.
Just in time I smartened up and dropped to my hands and knees and went around the corner. The guy was standing there pointing a gun where my belly would have been.
My pal's name wasn't Ray and I answered to it.
He saw me at the same time and a tongue of flame licked out in my direction with a noise that was almost a "plop," but I was rolling before he pulled the trigger and slug thudded into the wall.
Somehow I got my feet under me and squeezed the .45 into a roar that shook the room. I wasn't waiting for any return fire. I saw that shadow of a chair and dived for it, hearing the other guy going for cover only a few feet away.
From where I was, the darkness made it impossible to tell whether or not I was exposed, and I lay there, forcing myself to breathe silently when I wanted to pant like a dog. The other guy wasn't so good at it. He gasped, then moved quickly, afraid that he might have been heard. I let him sweat. I knew where he was now, but I didn't fire. He moved again, deliberately, wondering if his first blast had caught me. My leg began to tighten up in a cramp, and there was a tremor in my arm from leaning on it. I wasn't going to be able to hold the tableau much longer.
The guy was getting up his nerve, but carefully. I fixed my eyes a little to one side of where I thought he'd show and waited, scanning the area, not focusing my gaze on any one spot. I tried to remember what they taught us in basic training. It worked in the jungle. Damn it, it had to work now.
I saw his head then. Barely enough light came through the curtained windows to give the background a deeper shade, and against it his face was just a spot of motion. He was creeping right into the line of my rod.
My fingers were starting to squeeze when the boy in the hallway came back to life. His feet slammed the wall and his nails scratched the floor. He must have lain there a second, remembered where he was and what had happened, and then he let out a choked-off curse and scrambled to the door.
It pulled the stop on the tension. The guy behind the chair jerked, his breath coming out in a long wheeze and he sprang out of his crouch into a chair that tipped over on me just as the .45 went off.
He screamed, tripped and fell, then got up and hit the wall before he made the door. I fought the chair and the gun went off into an empty room because I heard the other guy falling down a flight of stairs. By the time I was on my feet an engine roared outside and a car ripped into gear and was gone up the street.
There was no use chasing them. I lit a match, found the light switch and turned it on. It only took one look to see what they had been doing. Along one side of the wall was a bookcase with half the books lying on the floor. Some had closed shut, but at least fifty of them were lying there opened and discarded.
I stuck the gun back under my arm and picked up where they left off, yanking the books down and flipping through them. With the light on I made better time, and was half-way across the next to last shelf when one book opened and another fell out of the well that had been cut into the pages.
Somebody was yelling on the street and a door slammed in the apartment below me. I shoved the book under my belt at the small of my back, ran out to the corridor long enough to grab my hat and coat and made a mad dash down the stairs. When I came to the landing the door started to open but banged shut and a bolt clicked into a hasp.
The open front door was a welcome invitation, even with the rain still coming down outside. I took that last flight two at a time, hit the bottom running and felt my head explode into a whirlwind of spinning lights and crazy sounds as something crashed into the side of my neck.
My body wasn't a part of me at all. It collapsed in a limp heap and my head cracked the floor, but there was no pain, just a numbness that was lit by another light, a brighter red this time, and there was a pressure on my chest, and in that final moment of recollection I knew that I had walked into a trap and somebody had pumped a bullet into me point-blank.
How long I lay there I couldn't tell. There are times when the body has recuperative powers beyond belief. A sound penetrated, a high wailing sound of a siren, and I climbed to my feet, grasping at the banister for support. Unconsciously I got my coat and hat back in my hands, staggered towards the door and came out. There was a crowd down the street pointing in my direction, but if they saw me they didn't show it. I was glad of the rain and the night then, the shadows that wrapped themselves around me as I lurched across the street, looking for my car.
When I found it I half fell across the seat, dragging the door shut behind me. My chest felt crushed and my skull was a throbbing thing that sent tongues of fire lacing down my body. All sensation had been torn loose from my neck, and although I felt nothing there, it hurt to breathe, and hurt even worse to make a sound.
I heard the police car screech to a stop, heard the pounding of feet, the shouts, the excited murmur of a crowd that expanded every minute. I couldn't stay on the seat any longer. The hell with them! The hell with everything! I let my eyes close and my arms relaxed without warning, and I dropped forward on the floor boards, gasping into a puddle of dirt.
I was cold, colder than I had ever been before. I was wet and shivering and I didn't want to raise my head because the Japs were only twenty yards away waiting for me. Some place back of the lines a chow wagon had been rolled up and I could smell hot coffee and stew, hearing the guys line up for chow. I wanted to call for them to come and get me, lay down an artillery barrage so I could get the hell out of the foxhole, but if I yelled the Japs would spot my position and lob a grenade in on top of me. Just to make it worse it started raining harder.
Fighting to get my eyes open was a job in itself. The rain was coming in the open window and I was drenched. I could smell the coffee again, coming from some window. With my hands propped under me I pushed myself back to the seat and got behind the wheel.
The crowd was gone, the police were gone and the street was normal again. Just rain, black squares of windows, a drunk that weaved up the sidewalk. I knew how he felt. My mind was unfogging, bringing with it the throb in my head and chest. I put my hand inside my jacket, felt the tear in the cloth half fearfully, then eased the .45 out. A slug had smashed into the top of the slide mechanism tearing it loose, embedding itself in the blued metal, looking like some nasty amoeba cast in lead. My chest hurt like hell from the impact, but the skin wasn't even broken.
And some place somebody was thinking I was a dead duck.
I reached in back of my belt, feeling for the book. It was still there. I couldn't see what it was so I tossed it in the glove compartment until later.
It was another ten minutes before I felt right enough to drive or strong enough to hold the wheel. I kicked over the motor and turned on my lights.
Right away I got it. The redhead's ring didn't wink back at me in the frosty gleam of the dashboard light. It was gone.
On my little finger was a long pink scratch where it had been yanked off in a hurry. They came back sooner than I expected.
Things were looking up. If they looked higher they'd see the pretty angels.
Chapter Ten
Time wasn't important to Lola. She said she'd wait and she did. Hers was the only light in the apartment building, and I saw her shadow pass the drawn curtains twice, then recede back into the room. I didn't forget that other parking ticket; this time I found a spot that wasn't on an express street and pulled to the curb.
I had to take it easy walking back, wishing the sidewalks were carpeted to ease the shock of my heels pounding the concrete. Every step jarred the balloon of pain that was my head, and when I lit a butt to try to forget it the smoke sent cramps into my lungs that caught and held like a thousand knives digging into my rib cage.