“I never see you in the Point.”
“I work the whole coast,” I said impatiently. “You want to know my history, send me a questionnaire.”
“Hard up for it?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.”
“All right, take it easy. I like to know who I’m dealing with, that’s natural, isn’t it? You want to use my needle or you snuff it?”
“The needle,” I said.
He crossed the room to a chest of drawers in the corner, and opened the top drawer. Mosquito wasted no money on front. The room stood as he had found it: bare discolored walls, broken-backed iron bed, cracked green blind over the single window, the rug on the floor marked with a threadbare path from the bed to the door of the bathroom. He could move at a minute’s notice into any one of ten thousand similar rooms in the city.
He set an alcohol lamp on top of the chest of drawers and lit it with a silver cigarette-lighter. A new-looking needle gleamed in his other hand. “You want the forty, or the sixty-five main-liner?” he asked me over his shoulder.
“Sixty-five. Your prices are high.”
“Yeah, aren’t they? I like to see the money first, old man.”
I showed him money.
“Bring it over here.”
He was melting some yellowish-white powder in a spoon. I counted sixty-five dollars down beside the hissing lamp.
Water began to run behind the bathroom door. Somebody coughed. “Who’s in there?” I asked him.
“Only a friend of mine, don’t get your wind up. Better take off your coat, or do you take it in the thigh?”
“I want to see who’s in there. I’m loaded. I can’t take chances.”
“It’s only a girl, old man.” His voice soothing. “There ain’t the teensiest danger. Take off your coat and lie down like a good boy now.”
He dipped the needle in the spoon and charged it, turning to me. I slapped it out of his hand.
Mosquito’s face turned purplish red. The loose flesh under his tiny chin shook like a turkey’s wattles. His hand was in and out of the open drawer before I could hold him, and the blade of a spring-knife jumped up under my nose. “You dirty filthy beast, don’t you dare touch me.” He backed against the wall and crouched with the knife advanced, its doubleedged blade pointing at the ceiling. “I’ll cut you if you lay a finger on me.”
I brought the revolver out of my jacket pocket. “Put it away, Mosquito.”
His small black eyes watched me uncertainly, looked down at the knife and crossed slightly, focused on its point. I swung the gun on him, cutting the wrist of his knife hand with the muzzle. The knife dropped to the floor. I stepped on it and moved in closer to Mosquito. He tried to scratch my face. Since it was necessary to hit him, I hit him: a short right hook under the ear. He slid down the wall like a rag doll.
I crunched the hypodermic needle into the carpet with my heel, stooped for the knife, which I closed and dropped into my pocket. Mosquito was out, quick adenoidal breathing his only sign of life, his eyeballs under the heavy lids as blank-white as a statue’s. His head was jammed against the wall, and I lifted him away from it so he wouldn’t choke. His narrow black suede shoes pointed to opposite corners of the ceiling.
The bathroom door clicked behind me. I straightened up quickly and turned. The door creaked inward slowly, opening on darkness. It was the girl Ruth who emerged from the darkness, moving like a sleepwalker. She had on pajamas that were much too big for her, yellow nylon piped with red. Thin soft hanging folds obscured her lines and enhanced the dreaminess of her walk. Her eyes were dark craters in her smooth blanched face.
“Hello hello hello,” she said. “Hello hello.” She noticed the gun in my hand, without fear or curiosity: “Don’t shoot, cowboy, I give up.” Her hands jerked upward in a token gesture of surrender, then hung limp from her wrists again. “I absolutely give up.” She stood swaying.
I put the gun away and took her by the elbow. Her face didn’t change. I identified its look of frozen expectancy. I had seen it on the face of a man who had just been struck by a bullet, mortally.
“Unhand me villain,” she said without rancor; pulled away from me and crossed to the end of the bed where she sat down. She didn’t notice Mosquito until then, though he was lying practically at her feet. She nudged his leg with a red-tipped toe: “What happened to the nasty little man?”
“He fell and hurt himself. Too bad.”
“Too bad,” she echoed. “Too bad he isn’t dead. He’s still breathing. Look, he bit me.” She pulled the pajama collar to one side to show me the red tooth-marks on her shoulder. “He couldn’t hurt me, though. I was a thousand miles away. Ten thousand miles away. A hundred thousand miles away.” She was chanting.
I cut in: “Where were you, Ruth?”
“On my island, the island I go to. My little white island in the deep dark blue ocean.”
“All alone?”
“All alone.” She smiled. “I shut the door and lock it with a key and bar the door and fasten the chains and sit in my chair and no one can touch me. No one. I sit and listen to the water on the beach and never open the door until my father comes. Then we go down to the water and look for shells. We find the prettiest shells, pink and red and purple, great big ones. I keep them in my house, in a special room. Nobody knows where it is, I’m the only one that knows.” Her voice trailed off. She drew her knees up to her chin and sat with her eyes closed, rocking gently back and forth on a remote inward surge.
The breathing of the man on the floor had changed for the better, easing and slowing down. His eyes were closed now. I went to the bathroom for a glass of water: Ruth’s clothes were scattered on the bathroom floor: and poured the water over Mosquito’s face. The little eyes snapped open. He gasped and sputtered.
“Upsadaisy,” I said, and dragged him to a sitting position against the walls. His head hung sideways but he was conscious, his eyes pointed with malice. “You won’t get away with this, old man,” he whispered.
I disregarded him, turned to the girl on the bed: “Have you seen Speed?”
“Speed?” she repeated from a great distance. Her face was closed and smooth as a shell listening to its own murmurings.
Mosquito struggled up onto his knees: “Don’t tell him anything, he’s a heister.” Which told me that Mosquito had something to tell.
I bunched his tie and shirt-collar in both hands and lifted him against the wall. He hung limp, afraid to resist.
“You tell me where Speed is, then.”
He twisted his wet head back against the plaster, his eyes watching me from their corners. “Never heard of him.” His voice was thin, almost a rodent squeak.
“Take your dirty hands – off me.” His face was purpling again, and the breath piped in his throat.
“There’s no way out of this one.” I loosened the pressure of my fingers slightly. “I want Speed.”
He tried to spit in my face. The bubbly white saliva ran down his chin. I tightened the pressure, carefully. He invited death, like a soft and loathsome insect.
He struggled feebly, gasping. “Turn me loose.”
I released him. He dropped onto his hands and knees, coughing and shaking his head from side to side.
“Where is Speed?” I said.
“I don’t know.” He crouched like a dog at my feet.
“Listen to me, Mosquito. I don’t like you. I don’t like your business. Just give me a slight excuse, and I’ll give you the beating of your life. Then I’ll call the feds to cart you away. You won’t be back for a long time if I do.”
He looked up at me through a rat’s nest of hair. “You’re talking big for a hood.”
“No. It’s what I’m going to do if you don’t take me to Speed.” I showed him my Special Deputy’s badge to clinch it.