Copernik was alone. He filled the doorway quickly, pushed me back into the room with a tight grin and shut the door. He stood with his back to it, his hand under the left side of his coat. A big hard bony man with flat cruel eyes.
He lowered them slowly and looked at the man on the floor. The man’s neck was twitching a little. His eyes moved in short stabs — sick eyes.
«Sure it’s the guy?» Copernik’s voice was hoarse.
«Positive. Where’s Ybarra?»
«Oh, he was busy.» He didn’t look at me when he said that. «Those your cuffs?»
«Yeah.»
«Key.»
I tossed it to him. He went down swiftly on one knee beside the killer and took my cuffs off his wrists, tossed them to one side. He got his own off his hip, twisted the bald man’s hands behind him and snapped the cuffs on.
«All right, you bastard,» the killer said tonelessly.
Copernik grinned and balled his fist and hit the handcuffed man in the mouth a terrific blow. His head snapped back almost enough to break his neck. Blood dribbled from the lower corner of his mouth.
«Get a towel,» Copernik ordered.
I got a hand towel and gave it to him. He stuffed it between the handcuffed man’s teeth, viciously, stood up and rubbed his bony fingers through his ratty blond hair.
«All right. Tell it.»
I told it — leaving the girl out completely. It sounded a little funny. Copernik watched me, said nothing. He rubbed the side of his veined nose. Then he got his comb out and worked on his hair just as he had done earlier in the evening, in the cocktail bar.
I went over and gave him the gun. He looked at it casually, dropped it into his side pocket. His eyes had something in them and his face moved in a hard bright grin.
I bent down and began picking up my chessmen and dropping them into the box. I put the box on the mantel, straightened out a leg of the card table, played around for a while. All the time Copernik watched me. I wanted him to think something out.
At last he came out with it. «This guy uses a twenty-two,» he said. «He uses it because he’s good enough to get by with that much gun. That means he’s good. He knocks at your door, pokes that gat in your belly, walks you back into the room, says he’s here to close your mouth for keeps — and yet you take him. You not having any gun. You take him alone. You’re kind of good yourself, pal.»
«Listen,» I said, and looked at the floor. I picked up another chessman and twisted it between my fingers. «I was doing a chess problem,» I said «Trying to forget things.»
«You got something on your mind, pal,» Copernik said softly. «You wouldn’t try to fool an old copper, would you, boy?»
«It’s a swell pinch and I’m giving it to you,» I said. «What the hell more do you want?»
The man on the floor made a vague sound behind the towel. His bald head glistened with sweat.
«What’s the matter, pal? You been up to something?» Copernik almost whispered.
I looked at him quickly, looked away again. «All right,» I said. «You know damn well I couldn’t take him alone. He had the gun on me and he shoots where he looks.»
Copernik closed one eye and squinted at me amiably with the other. «Go on, pal. I kind of thought of that too.»
I shuffled around a little more, to make it look good. I said, slowly: «There was a kid here who pulled a job over in Boyle Heights, a heist job. It didn’t take. A two-bit service station stick-up. I know his family. He’s not really bad. He was here trying to beg train money off me. When the knock came he sneaked in — there.»
I pointed at the wall bed and the door beside. Copernik’s head swiveled slowly, swiveled back. His eyes winked again. «And this kid had a gun,» he said.
I nodded. «And he got behind him. That takes guts, Copernik. You’ve got to give the kid a break. You’ve got to let him stay out of it.»
«Tag out for this kid?» Copernik asked softly.
«Not yet, he says. He’s scared there will be.»
Copernik smiled. «I’m a homicide man,» he said. «I wouldn’t know — or care.»
I pointed down at the gagged and handcuffed man on the floor. «You took him, didn’t you?» I said gently.
Copernik kept on smiling. A big whitish tongue came out and massaged his thick lower lip. «How’d I do it?» he whispered.
«Get the slugs out of Waldo?»
«Sure. Long twenty-two’s. One smashed a rib, one good.»
«You’re a careful guy. You don’t miss any angles. You know anything about me? You dropped in on me to see what guns I had.»
Copernik got up and went down on one knee again beside the killer. «Can you hear me, guy?» he asked with his face close to the face of the man on the floor.
The man made some vague sound. Copernik stood up and yawned. «Who the hell cares what he says? Go on, pal.»
«You wouldn’t expect to find I had anything, but you wanted to look around my place. And while you were mousing around in there» — I pointed to the dressing room —«and me not saying anything, being a little sore, maybe, a knock came on the door. So he came in. So after a while you sneaked out and took him.»
«Ah,» Copernik grinned widely, with as many teeth as a horse. «You’re on, pal. I socked him and I kneed him and I took him. You didn’t have no gun and the guy swiveled on me pretty sharp and Ileft-hooked him down the backstairs. O.K.?»
«O.K.,» I said.
«You’ll tell it like that downtown?»
«Yeah,» I said.
«I’ll protect you, pal. Treat me right and I’ll always play ball. Forget about that kid. Let me know if he needs a break.»
He came over and held out his hand. I shook it. It was as clammy as a dead fish. Clammy hands and the people who own them make me sick.
«There’s just one thing,» I said. «This partner of yours — Ybarra. Won’t he be a bit sore you didn’t bring him along on this?»
Copernik tousled his hair and wiped his hatband with a large yellowish silk handkerchief.
«That guinea?» he sneered. «To hell with him!» He came close to me and breathed in my face. «No mistakes, pal — about that story of ours.»
His breath was bad. It would be.
FOUR
There were just five of us in the chief-of-detective’s office when Copernik laid it before them. A stenographer, the chief, Copernik, myself, Ybarra. Ybarra sat on a chair tilted against the side wall. His hat was down over his eyes but their softness loomed underneath, and the small still smile hung at the corners of the clean-cut Latin lips. He didn’t look directly at Copernik. Copernik didn’t look at him at all.
Outside in the corridor there had been photos of Copernik shaking hands with me, Copernik with his hat on straight and his gun in his hand and a stern, purposeful look on his face.
They said they knew who Waldo was, but they wouldn’t tell me. I didn’t believe they knew, because the chief-of-detectives had a morgue photo of Waldo on his desk. A beautiful job, his hair combed, his tie straight, the light hitting his eyes just right to make them glisten. Nobody would have known it was a photo of a dead man with two bullet holes in his heart. He looked like a dance-hall sheik making up his mind whether to take the blonde or the redhead.
It was about midnight when I got home. The apartment door was locked and while I was fumbling for my keys a low voice spoke to me out of the darkness.
All it said was: «Please!» but I knew it. I turned and looked at a dark Cadillac coupe parked just off the loading zone. It had no lights. Light from the street touched the brightness of a woman’s eyes.
I went over there. «You’re a darn fool,» I said.
She said: «Get in.»
I climbed in and she started the car and drove it a block and a half along Franklin and turned down Kingsley Drive. The hot wind still burned and blustered. A radio lilted from an open, sheltered side window of an apartment house. There were a lot of parked cars but she found a vacant space behind a small brand-new Packard cabriolet that had the dealer’s sticker on the windshield glass. After she’d jockeyed us up to the curb she leaned back in the corner with her gloved hands on the wheel.