«Dead,» I said.
«I’m still good,» he chuckled. «Drunk or sober. Well, that don’t make no doughnuts for me now. They make me downtown yet?»
I didn’t answer him quick enough. He jabbed the gun into my throat and I choked and almost grabbed for it by instinct.
«Naw,» he cautioned me softly. «Naw. You ain’t that dumb.»
I put my hands back, down at my sides, open, the palms towards him. He would want them that way. He hadn’t touched me, except with the gun. He didn’t seem to care whether I might have one too. He wouldn’t — if he just meant the one thing.
He didn’t seem to care very much about anything, coming back on that block. Perhaps the hot wind did something to him. It was booming against my shut windows like the surf under a pier.
«They got prints,» I said. «I don’t know how good.»
«They’ll be good enough — but not for teletype work. Take ’em airmail time to Washington and back to check ’em right. Tell me why I came here, pal.»
«You heard the kid and me talking in the bar. I told him my name, where I lived.»
«That’s how, pal. I said why.» He smiled at me. It was a lousy smile to be the last one you might see.
«Skip it,» I said. «The hangman won’t ask you to guess why he’s there.»
«Say, you’re tough at that. After you, I visit that kid. I tailed him home from Headquarters, but I figure you’re the guy to put the bee on first. I tail him home from the city hall, in the rent car Waldo had. From Headquarters, pal. Them funny dicks. You can sit in their laps and they don’t know you. Start runnin’ for a streetcar and they open up with machine guns and bump two pedestrians, a hacker asleep in his cab, and an old scrubwoman on the second floor workin’ a mop. And they miss the guy they’re after. Them funny lousy dicks.»
He twisted the gun muzzle in my neck. His eyes looked madder than before.
«I got time,» he said. «Waldo’s rent car don’t get a report right away. And they don’t make Waldo very soon. I know Waldo. Smart he was. A smooth boy, Waldo.»
«I’m going to vomit,» I said, «if you don’t take that gun out of my throat.»
He smiled and moved the gun down to my heart. «This about right? Say when.»
I must have spoken louder than I meant to. The door of the dressing-room by the wall bed showed a crack of darkness. Then an inch. Then four inches. I saw eyes, but didn’t look at them. I stared hard into the bald-headed man’s eyes. Very hard. I didn’t want him to take his eyes off mine.
«Scared?» he asked softly.
I leaned against his gun and began to shake. I thought he would enjoy seeing me shake. The girl came out through the door. She had her gun in her hand again. I was sorry as hell for her. She’d try to make the door — or scream. Either way it would be curtains — for both of us.
«Well, don’t take all night about it,» I bleated. My voice sounded far away, like a voice on a radio on the other side of a street.
«I like this, pal,» he smiled. «I’m like that.»
The girl floated in the air, somewhere behind him. Nothing was ever more soundless than the way she moved. It wouldn’t do any good though. He wouldn’t fool around with her at all. I had known him all my life but I had been looking into his eyes for only five minutes.
«Suppose I yell,» I said.
«Yeah, suppose you yell. Go ahead and yell,» he said with his killer’s smile.
She didn’t go near the door. She was right behind him.
«Well — here’s where I yell,» I said.
As if that was the cue, she jabbed the little gun hard into his short ribs, without a single sound.
He had to react. It was like a knee reflex. His mouth snapped open and both his arms jumped out from his sides and he arched his back just a little. The gun was pointing at my right eye.
I sank and kneed him with all my strength, in the groin.
His chin came down and I hit it. I hit it as if I was driving the last spike on the first transcontinental railroad. I can still feel it when I flex my knuckles.
His gun raked the side of my face but it didn’t go off. He was already limp. He writhed down gasping, his left side against the floor. I kicked his right shoulder — hard. The gun jumped away from him, skidded on the carpet, under a chair. I heard the chessmen tinkling on the floor behind me somewhere.
The girl stood over him, looking down. Then her wide dark horrified eyes came up and fastened on mine.
«That buys me,» I said. «Anything I have is yours — now and forever.»
She didn’t hear me. Her eyes were strained open so hard that the whites showed under the vivid blue iris. She backed quickly to the door with her little gun up, felt behind her for the knob and twisted it. She pulled the door open and slipped out.
The door shut.
She was bareheaded and without her bolero jacket.
She had only the gun, and the safety catch on that was still set so that she couldn’t fire it.
It was silent in the room then, in spite of the wind. Then I heard him gasping on the floor. His face had a greenish pallor. I moved behind him and pawed him for more guns, and didn’t find any. I got a pair of store cuffs out of my desk and pulled his arms in front of him and snapped them on his wrists. They would hold if he didn’t shake them too hard.
His eyes measured me for a coffin, in spite of their suffering. He lay in the middle of the floor, still on his left side, a twisted, wizened, bald-headed little guy with drawn-back lips and teeth spotted with cheap silver fillings. His mouth looked like a black pit and his breath came in little waves, choked, stopped, came on again, limping.
I went into the dressing room and opened the drawer of the chest. Her hat and jacket lay there on my shirts. I put them underneath, at the back, and smoothed the shirts over them. Then I went out to the kitchenette and poured a stiff jolt of whiskey and put it down and stood a moment listening to the hot wind howl against the window glass. A garage door banged, and a power-line wire with too much play between the insulators thumped the side of the building with a sound like somebody beating a carpet.
The drink worked on me. I went back into the living room and opened a window. The guy on the floor hadn’t smelled her sandalwood, but somebody else might.
I shut the window again, wiped the palms of my hands and used the phone to dial Headquarters.
Copernik was still there. His smart-aleck voice said: «Yeah? Marlowe? Don’t tell me. I bet you got an idea.»
«Make that killer yet?»
«We’re not saying, Marlowe. Sorry as all hell and so on. You know how it is.»
«O.K., I don’t care who he is. Just come and get him off the floor of my apartment.»
«Holy Christ!» Then his voice hushed and went down low. «Wait a minute, now. Wait a minute.» A long way off I seemed to hear a door shut. Then his voice again. «Shoot,» he said softly.
«Handcuffed,» I said. «All yours. I had to knee him, but he’ll be all right. He came here to eliminate a witness.»
Another pause. The voice was full of honey. «Now listen, boy, who else is in this with you?»
«Who else? Nobody. Just me.»
«Keep it that way, boy. All quiet. O.K.?»
«Think I want all the bums in the neighborhood in here sightseeing?»
«Take it easy, boy. Easy. Just sit tight and sit still. I’m prac tically there. No touch nothing. Get me?»
«Yeah.» I gave him the address and apartment number again to save him time.
I could see his big bony face glisten. I got the .22 target gun from under the chair and sat holding it until feet hit the hallway outside my door and knuckles did a quiet tattoo on the door panel.