I didn't wait.
My toes gripped the edges of the brick, holding while I reached up for another grasp, then my hands performed the same duty. It was a tortuous climb, and twice I slipped, scrambling back into position to climb again. When I reached the top I lay there breathing hard a minute before going on.
In the center of the roof was a reinforced glass skylight, next to it the raised outlines of a trapdoor. The skylight didn't give, but the trapdoor did. I yanked at it with my hands and felt screws pull out of weather-rotted wood, and I was looking down a black hole that led into the Seaside Hotel.
I hung down in the darkness, swinging my feet to find something to stand on, and finding none, dropped into a welter of rubbish that clattered to the floor around me. I had a pencil flash in my pocket and threw the beam around. I was in a closet of some sort. On the side, shelves were piled with used paint cans and hard, cracked cakes of soap. Brooms lay scattered on the floor where I had knocked them. There was a door on one side, crisscrossed with spider webs, heavy with dust. I picked them off with the flash and turned the knob.
Under any other conditions the Seaside Hotel would have been a flophouse. Because it had sand around the foundations and sometimes you could smell the ocean over the hotdogs and body odors, they called it a summer hotel. The corridors were cramped and warped, the carpet on the floor worn through in spots. Doors to the rooms hung from tired hinges, eager for the final siege of dry rot, when they could fall and lie there. I went down the hallway, keeping against the wall, the flash spotting the way. To one side a flight of stairs snaked down, the dust tracked with the imprints of countless rat feet.
The front of the building was one story higher, and a sign pointed to the stairs at the other end. As I passed each room I threw the light into it, seeing only the empty bed and springs, the lone dresser and chair.
I found what I was looking for on the next floor. It was a room marked STORAGE, with an oversized padlock slung through the hasps. I held the flashlight in my teeth and reached for the set of picks I always carried in the car. The lock was big, but it was old. The third pick I inserted sent it clicking open in my hand. I laid it on the floor and opened the door.
It had been a bedroom once, but now it was a morgue of boxed sheets, mattresses, glassware and dirty utensils. A few broken chairs were still in clamps where an attempt had, been made to repair them. Against the wall in the back an assortment of luggage had been stacked; overnight bags, footlockers, an expensive Gladstone, cheap paper carriers. Each one had a tag tied to the handle with a big price marked in red.
The runner of carpet that ran the length of the room had been laid down without tacks and I turned it over to keep from putting tracks in the dust. I found what I was looking for. It was a small trunk that had Nancy Sanford stencilled on it and it opened on the first try.
With near reverence I spread the folders apart and saw what was in them. I wasn't ashamed of Nancy now, I was ashamed of myself for thinking she was after blackmail. There in the trunk was her reason for living, a complete expose of the whole racket, substantiated with pictures, documents, notes that had no meaning at the moment but would when they were studied. There were names and familiar faces. More than just aldermen. More than just manufacturers. Lots more. The lid was coming off City Hall. Park Avenue would feel the impact. But what was more important was the mechanics of the thing, neatly placed in a separate folder, enlarged pictures of books the police and the revenue men would want, definite proof of to whom those books belonged. The entire pretty set-up.
My ears picked up the sound, a faint metallic snapping. I closed the lid, locked it, then walked back my original path, taking time to fold the carpet over and study it, and satisfied that I had left no trace, closed the door and snapped the padlock in place. From the baseboard around the wall I scooped a handful of dust and blew it at the lock, restoring to it the age my hands had wiped off.
A yellow flood of light wandered up the hall, centered on the stairs and held. I stepped back into a bedroom, stuffing my watch in my pocket so the luminous face would be out of sight.
The light was poking into the rooms just as I had done. Feet sounded on the stairs, trying to be careful. Whoever stood behind that light was taking no chances, for it went down on the carpet, scanning it for tracks.
Back there in the room I grinned to myself.
The light came up the stairs, throwing the whole corridor into flickering shadows, giving off a hissing noise that meant he carried a naphtha lantern. It came onto the door of the storage room. There was a sigh. He sat the lantern on the floor, directing the beam towards the lock, and I heard him working over it with a pick.
He took longer than I did. But he got it open.
When I heard him enter the room I reached for my rod and stood with it in my hand. The racket he made dragging the trunk into the light covered the sound of my feet carrying me to the door. He was too excited to use a pick in the lock; instead he smashed it open and a low chuckle came out of his throat as he pawed through the contents.
I said, "Hullo, Mr. Berin-Grotin."
I should have shot the bastard in the back and kept quiet. He whipped around with unbelievable speed, smashing at the light and shooting at the same time. Before I could pull the trigger a slug hit my chest and spun me out of the doorway. Then another tore into my leg.
"Damn you anyway!" he screamed.
I rolled to one side, the shock of the bullet's impact numbing me all over. I lay on my face and pulled the trigger again and again, firing into the darkness.
A shot licked back at me and hit the wall over my head, but that brief spurt of flame had death in it. The lantern had overturned, spilling the naphtha over the floor, and it rose in a fierce blaze right in Berin's face. I saw his eyes, mad eyes, crazy eyes. He was on his hands and knees, shoving himself back, momentarily blinded by the light.
I had to fight to get a grip on the gun, bring it back in line. When I pulled the trigger it bucked in my hand and skittered across the floor. But it was enough. The .45 caught him in the hip and knocked him over backwards.
Everything was ablaze now, the flames licking to the bedding, running up the walls to the ceilings. A paint can and something in a bottle went up with a dull roar. It was getting hard to feel anything, even the heat. Over in the corner Berin groaned and pushed himself erect. He saw me then, lying helpless on the floor, and his hand reached out for his gun.
He was going to kill me if it was the last thing he did. He would have if the wall hadn't blossomed out into a shower of sparks and given way. One of the timbers that had lost the support of rusted nails wavered, and like a falling giant pine tree, crashed into the room and nailed the goddamn killer to the floor under it.
I laughed like a fiend, laughed and laughed, even though I knew I was going to die anyway.
"You lost, Berin, you lost! You could have gotten away, but you lost!"
He fought the heavy timber, throwing his hands against the flame of the wood to push it away and I smelt the acrid odor of burning flesh. "Get it off me, Mike! Get it off... please. You can have anything you want! Get it off me!"
"I can't... I can't even move. Maybe I would if I could, but I can't even move!"
"Mike!..."
"No good, you filthy louse. I'll die with you. I don't give a damn any more. I'll die, but you'll go, too. You never thought it would happen, did you? You had the ring and you thought you'd have time. You didn't, know I killed Feeney and got the ticket from him.