of the .22. I had the .38 in my coat pocket, and I didn’t figure I’d need two guns, so I dropped
the 22 into the suitcase. Then I put the case into the safe and shut the door.
Twenty minutes later I was on my way to 3945, Apartment 4, Franklin Boulevard.
I hummed under my breath as I drove. For the first time since the suitcase had come into
my possession I was relaxed and at ease. The money was safe. Neither Ricca nor Benno nor
Pepi could possibly get their hands on it.
A mile or so along Franklin Boulevard I spotted the house: a big place set in its own
grounds: a little run to seed, unpretentious and far from gaudy. I kept straight on.
At the next intersection I saw a filling-station. I swung the car into the circular drive-in and
pulled up.
An attendant came over.
“Okay for me to leave this heap for a while?”
“As long as you like.”
I walked back along the boulevard and paused at the double gates of 3945. There was a
short drive leading directly to the house. No one appeared to be watching at the windows or
hiding in the shrubbery, I knew I was taking a risk coming here, but if I could get into the
apartment I was hoping I’d find something that would jog my memory to life again. There
might be letters, a photograph or even a diary. I figured it was worth the risk.
I walked up the steps into the lobby. The stairs faced me. On the fourth floor I found
Apartment 4.
I pulled out the .38 and held it down by my side, then sank my thumb into the bell-push.
There was a long silence. I stood waiting, not expecting anyone to answer the door, but
ready if they did. I rang again. I could hear the bell. Then I heard something else that brought
me to a stiff, alert attention. I heard the sound of footsteps on the other side of the door.
I waited, the gun ready. The door opened.
A girl stood in the doorway: a girl with thick, short hair like burnished copper, whose big,
85
startled eyes were as blue as the sky on a hot summer’s day.
It was Ginny!
I stood there, transfixed, staring at her. The sight of her ripped away the blanket of fog that
had hung over my mind. It was like a blind man suddenly being able to see.
“Oh, Johnny,” she cried. “You’ve come back!”
Then everything seemed to happen at once. Terror jumped into her eyes. Her mouth opened
to scream. I heard the swish of a descending cosh, and then a dazzling white light exploded
inside my head. I groped wildly for her as I began to fall, but she was no longer there. I went
on falling, down and down, out of the present into the past.
86
PART THREE
FLASH-BACK
I
A WOMAN screamed, but it wasn’t Ginny.
I lifted a hand that felt as heavy as lead and groped into space, but found nothing. I tried to
sit up, but the effort was too much for me.
The woman suddenly stopped screaming. The only sound I now heard was my own
breathing. Each breath came very lightly as if it were going to be the last.
“Johnny!”
I knew that voice: a voice out of the past; Della’s voice.
My mind groped to remember. I felt again the crushing punch the Kid had given me. I saw
Della again, her black eyes twin explosions as she screamed: “Get up and fight, you quitter!”
Somehow I got my eyes open. The darkness bothered me. There should have been blazing
lights coming down on me from the stadium batteries. I found myself thinking the Kid must
have hit me with a hammer; that maybe he had blinded me. I struggled up in a sitting
position.
“Johnny! Say something! Are you badly hurt?”
Della was bending over me. Beyond her I could see the outlines of trees against the night
sky. Then I remembered the car coming at us like a bat out of hell, heard again the grinding,
crunching noise as it side-swiped us, and felt again the sensation of flying through space.
“I’m all right,” I said. “Let me alone.” I put my hand to my face. It felt wet and sticky.
“What happened?”
“You must get up and help me,” she said, her voice urgent. “I think he’s dead.”
“Dead? Who?”
“Paul! Come on, Johnny, don’t just sit there. Help me!”
“Okay, okay; give me a minute.”
87
My head began to pound and ache as I struggled to my knees. I waited a moment or so,
then got to my feet. If she hadn’t steadied me I would have fallen flat on my face.
“Pull yourself together!” she exclaimed, and the hard, impatient note in her voice startled
me. “He’s lying over there. He doesn’t seem to be breathing.”
I staggered over the sandy ground. Each step I took sent a stab of pain through my head,
but I kept on until I reached him. He was lying on his side by the smashed Bentley, his head
resting on his arm, one leg drawn up almost to his chin.
I knelt by his side. It was too dark to see much of him, but when I turned him and he
flopped over on his back, his head remained on his arm. That told me his neck was broken. I
touched his hand, felt his pulse, but it was a waste of time.
She dropped down on her knees beside me, her hand on my arm. I could feel her trembling.
“He’s dead,” I told her. She didn’t say anything, but her fingers closed on my arm, her nails
digging into my flesh.
“Stay here,” I said, getting to my feet. “I’ll see if I can get someone to help us.”
“Are you sure he’s dead?” Her voice sounded hard and cold. “He’s dead all right. His
neck’s broken.”
She stood up and moved away from me and leaned against a twisted palmetto tree. Her
sleek black hair was dishevelled; there was a six-inch rip in her skirt, and one stocking was
down to her ankle. The moonlight, coming through the tangle of overhead branches, fell on
her face. There was a smear of blood down the side of her nose. Her eyes seemed to have
sunk deep into her head, and she was staring sightlessly at me as if her mind were furiously
preoccupied with some urgent decision.
“The other car’s across the road, Johnny,” she said. “See what’s happened to the driver.”
“And Pepi’s car?”
“No sign of it. Maybe they thought we were killed. But go and find out what’s happened to
the other car.”
Moving slowly, still dazed, I made my way on to the highway. Away from the palmetto
thicket the moonlight lit up the white road brilliantly, but even in that light it took me several
minutes before I found the car. It had crashed into the thicket on the other side of the road,
88
and lay on its side: a big Packard, now fit only for the scrap-heap.
I peered through the shattered window. The driver still sat behind the wheeclass="underline" a young
fellow with a set, fixed grin on his face and horror in his wide, staring eyes. The steering-column had been driven into his body like a grotesque spear: from his neck to his waist he
was pulp.
I stepped back. There was no one else in the car, and there was nothing I could do for him. I
crossed the road again and went back to the thicket where she was waiting.
“Well?” she asked, her eyes searching my face.
“He’s dead.”
“Anyone else in the car?”
“No.”
“You’re sure he’s dead?”
“Yes.”
She gave a funny little strangled gulp.
“What a marvellously lucky break!”
I stared at her. It suddenly occurred to me that the smash, the death of her husband and the
death of the other driver were utterly remote to her. She wasn’t thinking of them at all. There
was something else occupying her mind: something so urgent and important to her that even