The Negro grinned. «Not so long, pal. Not so long.»
He hit Pete Anglich again with the gun, then suddenly he jammed it into a side pocket and his two big hands shot out, clamped themselves on Pete Anglich’s throat.
«When they’s tough I likes to squeeze ’em,» he said almost softly.
Thumbs that felt as big and hard as doorknobs pressed into the arteries on Pete Anglich’s neck. The face before him and above him grew enormous, an enormous shadowy face with a wide grin in the middle of it. It waved in lessening light, an unreal, a fantastic face.
Pete Anglich hit the face, with puny blows, the blows of a toy balloon. His fists didn’t feel anything as they hit the face. The big man twisted him around and put a knee into his back, and bent him down over the knee.
There was no sound for a while except the thunder of blood threshing in Pete Anglich’s head. Then, far away, he seemed to hear a girl scream thinly. From still farther away the voice of Trimmer Waltz muttered: «Easy now, Rufe. Easy.»
A vast blackness shot with hot red filled Pete Anglich’s world. The darkness grew silent. Nothing moved in it now, not even blood.
The Negro lowered Pete Anglich’s limp body to the floor, stepped back and rubbed his hands together.
«Yeah, I likes to squeeze ’em,» he said.
FIVE
The Negro in the checked suit sat on the side of the daybed and picked languidly at a five-stringed banjo. His large face was solemn and peaceful, a little sad. He plucked the banjo strings slowly, with his bare fingers, his head on one side, a crumpled cigarette-end sticking barely past his lips at one corner of his mouth.
Low down in his throat he was making a kind of droning sound. He was singing.
A cheap electric clock on the mantel said 11:35. It was a small living room with bright, overstuffed furniture, a red floor lamp with a cluster of French dolls at its base, a gay carpet with large diamond shapes in it, two curtained windows with a mirror between them.
A door at the back was ajar. A door near it opening into the hall was shut.
Pete Anglich lay on his back on the floor, with his mouth open and his arms outflung. His breath was a thick snore. His eyes were shut, and his face in the reddish glow of the lamp looked flushed and feverish.
The Negro put the banjo down out of his immense hands, stood up and yawned and stretched. He walked across the room and looked at a calendar over the mantel.
«This ain’t August,» he said disgustedly.
He tore a leaf from the calendar, rolled it into a ball and threw it at Pete Anglich’s face. It hit the unconscious man’s cheek. He didn’t stir. The Negro spit the cigarette-end into his palm, held his palm out flat, and flicked a fingernail at it, sent it sailing in the same direction as the paper ball.
He loafed a few steps and leaned down, fingering a bruise on Pete Anglich’s temple. He pressed the bruise, grinning softly. Pete Anglich didn’t move.
The Negro straightened and kicked the unconscious man in the ribs thoughtfully, over and over again, not very hard. Pete Anglich moved a little, gurgled, and rolled his head to one side. The Negro looked pleased, left him, went back to the daybed. He carried his banjo over to the hall door and leaned it against the wall. There was a gun lying on a newspaper on a small table. He went through a partly open inner door and came back with a pint bottle of gin, half full. He rubbed the bottle over carefully with a handkerchief, set it on the mantel.
«About time now, pal,» he mused out loud. «When you wake up, maybe you don’t feel so good. Maybe need a shot … Hey, I gotta better hunch.»
He reached for the bottle again, went down on one big knee, poured gin over Pete Anglich’s mouth and chin, slopped it loosely on the front of his shirt. He stood the bottle on the floor, after wiping it off again, and flicked the glass stopper under the daybed.
«Grab it, white boy,» he said softly. «Prints don’t never hurt.»
He got the newspaper with the gun on it, slid the gun off on the carpet, and moved it with his foot until it lay just out of reach of Pete Anglich’s outflung hand.
He studied the layout carefully from the door, nodded, picked his banjo up. He opened the door, peeped out, then looked back.
«So long, pal,» he said softly. «Time for me to breeze. You ain’t got a lot of future comin’, but what you got you get sudden.»
He shut the door, went along the hallway to stairs and down the stairs. Radios made faint sound behind shut doors. The entrance lobby of the apartment house was empty. The Negro in the checked suit slipped into a pay booth in the dark corner of the lobby, dropped his nickel and dialed.
A heavy voice said: «Police department.»
The Negro put his lips close to the transmitter and got a whine into his voice.
«This the cops? Say, there’s been a shootin’ scrape in the Calliope Apartments, Two-Forty-Six East Forty-Eight, Apartment Four-B. Got it? … Well, do somethin’ about it, flatfoot!»
He hung up quickly, giggling, ran down the front steps of the apartment house and jumped into a small, dirty sedan. He kicked it to life and drove toward Central Avenue. He was a block from Central Avenue when the red eye of a prowl car swung around from Central on to East Forty-Eight Street.
The Negro in the sedan chuckled and went on his way. He was singing down in his throat when the prowl car whirred past him.
The instant the door latch clicked Pete Anglich opened his eyes halfway. He turned his head slowly, and a grin of pain came on his face and stayed on it, but he kept on turning his head until he could see the emptiness of one end of the room and the middle. He tipped his head far back on the floor, saw the rest of the room.
He rolled toward the gun and took hold of it. It was his own gun. He sat up and snapped the gate open mechanically. His face stiffened out of the grin. One shell in the gun had been fired. The barrel smelled of powder fumes.
He came to his feet and crept toward the slightly open inner door, keeping his head low. When he reached the door he bent still lower, and slowly pushed the door wide open. Nothing happened. He looked into a bedroom with twin beds, made up and covered with rose damask with a gold design in it.
Somebody lay on one of the beds. A woman. She didn’t move. The hard, tight grin came back on Pete Anglich’s face. He rose straight up and walked softly on the balls of his feet over to the side of the bed. A door beyond was open on a bathroom, but no sound came from it. Pete Anglich looked down at the colored girl on the bed.
He caught his breath and let it out slowly. The girl was dead. Her eyes were half open, uninterested, her hands lazy at her sides. Her legs were twisted a little and bare skin showed above one sheer stocking, below the short skirt. A green hat lay on the floor. She had four-and-a-half-inch French heels. There was a scent of Midnight Narcissus in the room. He remembered the girl outside the Surprise Hotel.
She was quite dead, dead long enough for the blood to have clotted over the powder-scorched hole below her left breast.
Pete Anglich went back to the living room, grabbed up the gin bottle, and emptied it without stopping or choking. He stood a moment, breathing hard, thinking. The gun hung slack in his left hand. His small, tight mouth hardly showed at all.
He worked his fingers on the glass of the gin bottle, tossed it empty on top of the daybed, slid his gun into the underarm holster, went to the door and stepped quietly into the hall.
The hall was long and dim and yawning with chill air. A single bracket light loomed yellowly at the top of the stairs. A screen door led to a balcony over the front porch of the building. There was a gray splash of cold moonlight on one corner of the screen.
Pete Anglich went softly down the stairs to the front hall, put his hand out to the knob of the glass door.