Carmady pulled the envelope towards him slowly, lifted it like a thing of weight, read the wandering scrawl of words.
«Tailed him … woptown … 28 Court Street … over garage … shot me … think I got … him … your car…»
The line trailed over the edge of the paper, became a blot there. The pen was on the floor. There was a bloody thumbprint on the envelope.
Carmady folded it meticulously to protect the print, put the envelope in his wallet. He lifted Tony’s head, turned it a little towards him. The neck was still warm; it was beginning to stiffen. Tony’s soft dark eyes were open and they held the quiet brightness of a cat’s eyes. They had that effect the eyes of the new-dead have of almost, but not quite, looking at you.
Carmady lowered the head gently on the outstretched left arm. He stood laxly, his head on one side, his eyes almost sleepy. Then his head jerked back and his eyes hardened.
He stripped off his raincoat and the suitcoat underneath, rolled his sleeves up, wet a face towel in the basin in the corner of the room and went to the door. He wiped the knobs off, bent down and wiped up the smeared blood from the floor outside.
He rinsed the towel and hung it up to dry, wiped his hands carefully, put his coat on again. He used his handkerchief to open the transom, to reverse the key and lock the door from the outside. He threw the key in over the top of the transom, heard it tinkle inside.
He went downstairs and out of the Hotel Blaine. It still rained. He walked to the corner, looked along a tree-shaded block. His car was a dozen yards from the intersection, parked carefully, the lights off, the keys in the ignition. He drew them out, felt the seat under the wheel. It was wet, sticky. Carmady wiped his hand off, ran the windows up and locked the car. He left it where it was.
Going back to the Carondelet he didn’t meet anybody. The hard slanting rain still pounded down into the empty streets.
SEVEN
There was a thin thread of light under the door of 914. Carmady knocked lightly, looking up and down the hall, moved his gloved fingers softly on the panel while he waited. He waited a long time. Then a voice spoke wearily behind the wood of the door.
«Yes? What is it?»
«Carmady, angel. I have to see you. It’s strictly business.»
The door clicked, opened. He looked at a tired white face, dark eyes that were slatelike, not violet-blue. There were smudges under them as though mascara had been rubbed into the skin. The girl’s strong little hand twitched on the edge of the door.
«You,» she said wearily. «It would be you. Yes … Well, I’ve simply got to have a shower. I smell of policemen.»
«Fifteen minutes?» Carmady asked casually, but his eyes were very sharp on her face.
She shrugged slowly, then nodded. The closing door seemed to jump at him. He went along to his own rooms, threw off his hat and coat, poured whiskey into a glass and went into the bathroom to get ice water from the small tap over the basin.
He drank slowly, looking out of the windows at the dark breadth of the boulevard. A car slid by now and then, two beams of white light attached to nothing, emanating from nowhere.
He finished the drink, stripped to the skin, went under a shower. He dressed in fresh clothes, refilled his big flask and put it in his inner pocket, took a snub-nosed automatic out of a suitcase and held it in his hand for a minute staring at it. Then he put it back in the suitcase, lit a cigarette and smoked it through.
He got a dry hat and a tweed coat and went back to 914.
The door was almost insidiously ajar. He slipped in with a light knock, shut the door, went on into the living room and looked at Jean Adrian.
She was sitting on the davenport with a freshly scrubbed look, in loose plum-colored pajamas and a Chinese coat. A tendril of damp hair drooped over one temple. Her small even features had the cameo-like clearness that tiredness gives to the very young.
Carmady said: «Drink?»
She gestured emptily. «I suppose so.»
He got glasses, mixed whiskey and ice water, went to the davenport with them.
«Are they keeping Targo on ice?»
She moved her chin an eighth of an inch, staring into her glass.
«He cut loose again, knocked two cops halfway through the wall. They love that boy.»
Carmady said: «He has a lot to learn about cops. In the morning the cameras will be all set for him. I can think of some nice headlines, such as: ‘Well-known Fighter Too Fast for Gunman.’ ‘Duke Targo Puts Crimp in Underworld Hot Rod.’»
The girl sipped her drink. «I’m tired,» she said. «And my foot itches. Let’s talk about what makes this your business.»
«Sure.» He flipped his cigarette case open, held it under her chin. Her hand fumbled at it and while it still fumbled he said: «When you light that tell me why you shot him.»
Jean Adrian put the cigarette between her lips, bent her head to the match, inhaled and threw her head back. Color awakened slowly in her eyes and a small smile curved the line of her pressed lips. She didn’t answer.
Carmady watched her for a minute, turning his glass in his hands. Then he stared at the floor, said: «It was your gun — the gun I picked up here in the afternoon. Targo said he drew it from his hip pocket, the slowest draw in the world. Yet he’s supposed to have shot twice, accurately enough to kill a man, while the man wasn’t even getting his gun loose from a shoulder holster. That’s hooey. But you, with the gun in a bag in your lap, and knowing the hood, might just have managed it. He would have been watching Targo.»
The girl said emptily: «You’re a private dick, I hear. You’re the son of a boss politician. They talked about you downtown. They act a little afraid of you, of people you might know. Who sicked you on me?»
Carmady said: «They’re not afraid of me, angel. They just talked like that to see how you’d react, if I was involved, so on. They don’t know what it’s all about.»
«They were told plainly enough what it was all about.»
Carmady shook his head. «A cop never believes what he gets without a struggle. He’s too used to cooked-up stories. I think McChesney’s wise you did the shooting. He knows by now if that handkerchief of Targo’s had been in a pocket with a gun.»
Her limp fingers discarded her cigarette half-smoked. A curtain eddied at the window and loose flakes of ash crawled around in the ash tray. She said slowly: «All right. I shot him. Do you think I’d hesitate after this afternoon?»
Carmady rubbed the lobe of his ear. «I’m playing this too light,» he said softly. «You don’t know what’s in my heart. Something has happened, something nasty. Do you think the hood meant to kill Targo?»
«I thought so — or I wouldn’t have shot a man.»
«I think maybe it was just a scare, angel. Like the other one. After all a night club is a poor place for a getaway.»
She said sharply: «They don’t do many low tackles on forty-fives. He’d have got away all right. Of course he meant to kill somebody. And of course I didn’t mean Duke to front for me. He just grabbed the gun out of my hand and slammed into his act. What did it matter? I knew it would all come out in the end.»
She poked absently at the still burning cigarette in the tray, kept her eyes down. After a moment she said, almost in a whisper: «Is that all you wanted to know?»
Carmady let his eyes crawl sidewise, without moving his head, until he could just see the firm curve of her cheek, the strong line of her throat. He said thickly: «Shenvair was in on it. The fellow I was with at Cyrano’s followed Shenvair to a hideout. Shenvair shot him. He’s dead. He’s dead, angel — just a young kid that worked here in the hotel. Tony, the bell captain. The cops don’t know that yet.»