Vengeance Is Mine

“I don’t think he heard about it. There was just those men.”

“Who else was there, Connie? Anybody that looked important?”

“Quit kidding. Everybody is important. You don’t just walk into the Bowery Inn. Either you’re pretty important or you’re with somebody who is.”

I said, “I got in and I’m a misfit.”

“Any beautiful model is better than the password,” she grinned.

“Don’t tell me they have a password.”

“Clyde used to . . . to the back rooms. A password for each room. It’s gotten so you don’t need it now. That’s what those little rooms are for between the larger rooms. They’re soundproof and they’re lined with sheet steel.”

I tightened my fingers in her hair and pulled her head back so I could look into her face. “You found out a lot in a hurry. The first time you were there was with me.”

“You told me I had brains too, Mike. Have you forgotten already? While I sat on my fanny at the bar while Ralph gambled the bartender and I had a very nice discussion. He told me all about the layout including the alarm and escape system. There are doors in the wall that go off with the alarm in case of a raid and the customers can beat it out the back. Isn’t that nice of Clyde?”

“Very thoughtful.”

I gave the hassock she was sitting on a push with my foot. “Gotta go, Sugar, gotta go.”

“Oh, Mike, not yet, please.”

“Look, I have things to do much as I’d like to sit here. Someplace in this wild, wild city, there’s a guy with a gun who’s going to use it again. I want to be around when he tries.”

She tossed her hair like an angry cat and said, “You’re mean. I had something to show you, too.”

“Yeah?”

“Will you stay long enough to see it?”

“I guess I can.”

Connie stood up, kissed me lightly on the cheek and shoved me back in the chair. “We’re doing a series for a manufacturing house. Their newest number that they’re going to advertise arrived today and I’m modeling it for a full-page, four-color spread in the slick mags. When the job is done I get to keep it.”

She walked out of the room with long-legged strides and into the bedroom. She fussed around in there long enough for me to finish a cigarette. I had just squashed it out when she called out, “Mike . . . come here.”

I pushed open the door of the bedroom and stood there feeling my skin go hot and cold then hot again. She was wearing a floor-length nightgown of the sheerest, most transparent white fabric I had ever seen. It wasn’t the way the ad would be taken. Then the lights would be in front of her. The one in the room was behind her and she didn’t have anything on under it.

When she turned the fabric floated out in a billowy cloud and she smiled into my eyes with a look that meant more than words.

The front of it was wide open.

“Like me, Mike?”

My forefinger moved, telling her to come closer. She floated across the room and stood in front of me, challenging me with her body. I said, “Take it off.”

All she did was shrug her shoulders. The gown dropped to the floor.

I looked at her, storing up a picture in my mind that I could never forget. She could have been a statue standing there, a statue molded of creamy white flesh that breathed with an irregular rhythm. A statue with dark, blazing eyes and jaunty breasts that spoke of the passion that lay within. A statue that stood in a daring pose that made you want to reach out to touch and pull so close the fire would engulf you too.

The statue had a voice that was low and desiring. “I could love you so easily, Mike.”

“Don’t,” I said.

Her lips parted, her tongue wet them. “Why?”

My voice had a rough edge to it. “I can’t take the time.”

The coals in her eyes jumped into flame that burned me. I grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her against my chest, bruising her lips against mine. Her tongue was a little spear that flicked out, stabbing me, trying to wound me enough so I wouldn’t be able to walk away.

I didn’t let it stab me deep enough. I shoved her back, tried to talk and found that my voice wasn’t there anymore.

So I walked away. I walked away and left her standing there in the doorway, standing on a white cloud stark naked, the imprints of my fingers still etched in red on her shoulders.

“You’ll get the person you’re after, Mike. Nothing can stop you. Nothing.” Her voice was still husky, but there was a laugh behind it, and a little bit of pride, too. I was closing the door when I heard her whisper, “I love you, Mike. Really and truly, I do.”

Outside, the snow had started again. There was no wind, so it drifted down lazily, sneaking up on the city to catch it by surprise. What few stragglers were left on the street stuck close to the curb and looked back over their shoulders for taxis.

I got in the car and started the wipers going, watching them kick angrily through the snow that had piled up on the windshield. At least the snow made all cars look alike. If anybody with a gun was waiting for me he’d have a fine time picking out my head from the others.

Thinking about it made me mad. One gun was in an exhibit folder at police headquarters and the other was probably hanging in a locker if it hadn’t been thrown away. It gave me an empty, uneasy feeling to be traveling without a rod slung under my arm. Sullivan Law? Hell, let me get picked up. It was all right for some harmless citizen to forget there were kill-crazy bastards loose, but one of them was looking for me.

There was a .30-caliber Luger sitting home in the bottom drawer of my dresser with a full clip of shells. It was just about the same size as a .45 too, just the right size to fit in my holster.

A plow was going by in front of my apartment house when I got there, so I figured it would be another hour at least before it would be around again and safe enough to park there.

I took the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator and didn’t bother to shuck my coat when I opened the door. I felt for the light switch, batted it up, but no light came on. I cursed the fuse system and groped for a lamp.

What is it that makes you know you’re not alone? What vague radiation emanates from the human body just strongly enough to give you one brief, minute premonition of danger that makes you act with animal reflexes? I had my hand around the base of the lamp when I felt it and I couldn’t suppress the half-scream halfsnarl that came out of my throat.

I threw that lamp as hard as I could across the wall, letting the cord rip loose from the socket as it smashed into a thousand pieces against the wall. There were two muffled snorts and a lance of flame bit into the darkness, bracketing me.

I didn’t let it happen again. I dove toward the origin of the snorts and crashed into a pair of legs that buckled with a hoarse curse and the next moment a fist was smashing against my jaw driving my head against the floor. Somehow I got out of the way of that fist and slugged out with my forearm trying to drive him off me.

My feet got tangled in the table and kicked it over. The two vases and the bar set splintered all over the room with a hellish racket and somebody in the next apartment shouted to somebody else. I got one arm under me then and grabbed a handful of coat. The guy was strong as a bull and I couldn’t hold it. That fist came back -and worked on my face some more with maniacal fury I couldn’t beat off. I was tangled in my coat and there were lights in the room now that didn’t come from the lamps.

All I knew was that I had to get up . . . had to get my feet under me and heave to get that thing off my back. Had to get up so I could use my hands on any part of him I could grab. I did it without knowing it and heard him ram into a chair and knock it on its side.

My teeth must have been bared to the gums and I screamed when I went in for the kill because I had him cold.