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.
A red spot hit the front of the door. It sifted a hard red glare through the glass and the sleazy curtain that masked it.
Pete Anglich slid down the door, below the panel, hunched along the wall to the side. His eyes ranged the place swiftly, held on the dark telephone booth.
«Man trap,» he said softly, and dodged over to the booth, into it. He crouched and almost shut the door.
Steps slammed on the porch and the front door squeaked open. The steps hammered into the hallway, stopped.
A heavy voice said: «All quiet, huh? Maybe a phony.»
Another voice said: «Four-B. Let’s give it the dust, anyway.»
The steps went along the lower hail, came back. They sounded on the stairs going up. They drummed in the upper hall.
Pete Anglich pushed the door of the booth back, slid over to the front door, crouched and squinted against the red glare.
The prowl car at the curb was a dark bulk. Its headlights burned along the cracked sidewalk. He couldn’t see into it. He sighed, opened the door and walked quickly, but not too quickly, down the wooden steps from the porch.
The prowl car was empty, with both front doors hanging open. Shadowy forms were converging cautiously from across the street. Pete Anglich marched straight to the prowl car and got into it. He shut the doors quietly, stepped on the starter, threw the car in gear.
He drove off past the gathering crowd of neighbors. At the first corner he turned and switched off the red spot. Then he drove fast, wound in and out of blocks, away from Central, after a while turned back toward it.
When he was near its lights and chatter and traffic he pulled over to the side of the dusty tree-lined street, left the prowl car standing.
He walked towards Central.
SIX
Trimmer Waltz cradled the phone with his left hand. He put his right index finger along the edge of his upper lip, pushed the lip out of the way, and rubbed his finger slowly along his teeth and gums. His shallow, colorless eyes looked across the desk at the big Negro in the checked suit.
«Lovely,» he said in a dead voice. «Lovely. He got away before the law jumped him. A very swell job, Rufe.»
The Negro took a cigar stub out of his mouth and crushed it between a huge flat thumb and a huge flat forefinger.
«Hell, he was out cold,» he snarled. «The prowlies passed me before I got to Central. Hell, he can’t get away.»
«That was him talking,» Waltz said lifelessly. He opened the top drawer of his desk and laid his heavy Savage in front of him.
The Negro looked at the Savage. His eyes got dull and lightless, like obsidian. His lips puckered and gouged at each other.