Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 118, No. 2, March 19, 1938

I

I was lower than the well-known snake’s abdomen and the day’s take from the machines wasn’t making me feel any better. Counting up in Luigi’s, my last stop, I found I had about two hundred bucks in nickels and while that’s a lot of nickels to lift it isn’t such a hell of a lot to spend. Not that I had the spending of the whole two hundred. My cut was only ten per cent. Twenty bucks, I thought. A lousy twenty bucks is all I’ve got to show for two months in the racket. Eight or nine weeks at a daily average of twenty-five to thirty dollars and all I’ve got is twenty bucks. I wished I was back driving a truck.

It was around nine o’clock. Luigi’s was crowded, as it usually was at that time of night. The bar was lined three deep and the tables around the postage stamp dance floor were full up. The slot machines and pin-ball games were red hot and the suckers playing them had been real indignant when I horned in to make the collection. I ought to be ashamed, interrupting their fun like that. If the damn fools had only known it they might just as well have dropped their nickels directly into my bag instead of putting ’em in the machines first. It just made a lot of unnecessary work. You couldn’t tell the that, though.

Luigi tipped me the wink and we went down along the length of the bar to his cubbyhole of an office. He signed the receipt for his cut and got out a bottle. “You weel have the leetla dreenk weeth Luigi, no?”

“And how!” I said. “In fact, I wouldn’t mind having six little drinks with Luigi. Or maybe eight.” I watched him pour the Scotch. He was a round, paunchy little guy with very small hands and feet and neatly parted, slicked-down hair. His smile was so white it reminded you of the dental ads, and he had soft, velvety brown eyes, like a setter dog’s; wise and intelligent and friendly, yet watchful, too. I rather liked Luigi.

He said, lifting his glass and smiling at me over the rim, “You better lay off too moch from thees stoff, hah, Jerry?”

I set my glass down, empty. “Oh,” I said, “like that, huh? Okay, my fraan, I’ll buy my own from now on.” I picked up my bag of nickels and started out the door.

He laid a hand on my arm. “You theenk Luigi, heesa tight weeth hees liquor, hah?”

“Well, what would you think?”

“A smart boy,” he said, “a smart guy might theenk mebbe Luigi heesa like you, Jerry? Mebbe heesa try saving you more trobble as you already got, hah?”

I just stood there looking at him, not saying anything for a minute because all of a sudden my tonsils felt funny; kind of all knotted up, if you know what I mean. The little guy was telling me he liked me too, and that most of the jams I’d got myself in were on account of red-eye. He didn’t know about the worst one, of course. Nobody did except Big Ed Harmon, the guy I worked for, and a couple more of his boys who’d been in the room at the time. And oh, yes, I’d spilled to Cora, my wife. Luigi and apparently everybody else in town knew about Cora. Just thinking about the little tramp made me see red all over again and I shook Luigi off and went outside to the bar.

The mob had shifted a little so that there was a cleared space about a foot wide. I squeezed in, ordered a rye. Somebody grabbed my elbow as I picked up the drink and I thought it was Luigi again and pulled the old Olsen & Johnson gag. The one that goes: “Get away from me, boys, you bother me.” It turned out to be my wife instead of Luigi and she didn’t think the gag was as funny as Olsen & Johnson did.

She said, “So I bother you, do I?” She was a little tight and her lip rouge was smeared. I wondered who’d been kissing her now. She gave me a baby-faced stare. “Okay, so I bother you. Well, for fifty bucks I won’t bother you any more. Not tonight, anyway.” She smiled then, a mean smile.

The guy next to me said, “Hello, sugar. If your boy friend ain’t got the fifty, see me. See li’l ol’ Georgie.”

No, I didn’t hit him. I’d practically worn out my right fist on other guys’ jaws trying to put an end to cracks like that. It just wasn’t any use. Maybe I was a little tight too; maybe I was just seeing her for the first time. Really seeing her, I mean. Seeing behind her big violet eyes and her cornsilk hair and all the rest of her; seeing the thing that made cracks like this mug’s possible. For a while I’d thought she was just a fool, but now I knew different.

I reached down in the leather bag and got out ten rolls of nickels. Twenty bucks. “Here’s twenty,” I said. “All I’ve got in the world. I wish it was twenty grand and you’d use it to buy a one way ticket.”

She looked at the loaded bag. “What’s the matter, Terry — afraid of Big Ed?”

“No,” I said. My lips felt tight across my teeth. “No, Ed wouldn’t care if I gave you the whole works, only I won’t.” I dumped the ten rolls of nickels in her hands. “Now scram.”

Her voice got shrill. “You heel! What am I going to do with four hundred nickels?”

I said I didn’t care what she did with them. I didn’t, either. All I wanted was to get away from her before I killed somebody. I tossed a quarter on the bar, started toward the front door. Her voice topped the slam of the music against my ears. She was calling the bartender names because he wouldn’t change the nickels into bills.

It was raining again; not hard, just a sort of discouraged drizzle. I stood there on the sidewalk for a minute, letting the rain hit my face. It felt good. A couple of guys came out, looked at me, giggled as they went by. I knew they were laughing at me and I faded back into the shadows. Cora came out. She was laughing too. She was with the guy that had made the crack. I went back inside and hoisted a couple of quick ones.

The bartender looked at me as though he’d never seen me before; the crowd was working hard at having its fun again. Not even a ripple, I thought. Something can happen to you right in plain sight of a couple of hundred people; something that tears the heart out of you and makes you want to get your hands on somebody’s throat and squeeze and squeeze — I looked around to see if I was wrong; see if somebody in that mob wasn’t reading my mind. And then I got the shakes. Read my mind? Was I actually planning on doing it? No, I thought; no, it isn’t me, it’s the liquor. And then I got more scared than ever. If I kept on like this I might get cocked some time and...

The bartender came back with a fresh bottle. He set it down in front of me, started away. I said, “Hey, wait a minute! I want you to see my latest trick.” He looked bored, but waited, leaning his elbows on the bar and watching me. I poured a stiff drink as if it were a very difficult feat. It wasn’t so easy at that. My hands were shaking so that some of the rye slopped over on the bar. I lifted the glass and held it to the light; then, very deliberately, I inverted it and dumped the lousy stuff into a gobboon. I gave him a tight grin. “That,” I said, “is the trick. It’s supposed to be the picture of a guy’s last drink. Pretty good, huh?”

He looked doubtful. He said, “Well, if you pay for it I guess I can’t stop you doin’ what you want with it.” He took the bottle away with him, though. Somebody touched my shoulder and I whirled nervously. It was Slats McKenna.

McKenna said, “I heard that, Jerry. Sounded okay to me.”

Slats McKenna was a dick; a hell of a good one, according to the papers. I wasn’t thinking of him as a dick, though; not even after the tap on the shoulder, exactly the way I’d been expecting it for quite a while now. You see, Slats and I and Big Ed Harmon had all grown up together south of the tracks. Just the three of us for a while. Then big-eyed, skinny-legged Fran had moved into our block. She was Mrs. Ed Harmon now. Funny how things turn out, huh? Big Ed had shouldered his way to the top of the rackets, picking up Frances on the way. Slats McKenna was a dick. And what was I? Well, you’ve got me there. Just a bum, I guess.

McKenna said, “Let’s go outside, Jerry. I want to talk to you. Seeing you dump that slug of rye makes it easier.” He was a tall rangy guy with a pronounced stoop and a dark serious face. He hadn’t changed much in the last ten years. Marriage and a couple of kids on a cop’s pay had given him the stoop, I guessed. The serious look had always been there.

We went out and sat in his car at the curb. The rain was coming down a little harder now. The sound of it on the turret top; that and being with a guy like Slats did something to me; made me feel a little better, somehow.

Slats said quietly, “I’ve been watching you, boy. Ever since you got crocked and married that little Cora tramp. She’s bad medicine, Jerry.”

Well, you wouldn’t think a guy would let another guy talk that way about his wife, would you? I did. In the first place, McKenna was my friend and he wasn’t trying to be funny. In the second place, there was no argument about Cora being a tramp. All I said was a lop-sided, “You’re telling me!”

After a while Slats said, not looking at me, just staring out through the streaming windshield, “Why not try reversing the English for a change, kid? I mean, when Fran gave you the air you got crocked and joined the navy. That was smart.”

“Well,” I said, grinning, “I learned a trade, anyway.”

“I’m coming to that presently, Jerry. You learned a trade but you lost Frances for good. The hitch in the navy kept you out of circulation for quite a spell if you remember. When you finally did get out, and found Big Ed had copped Frances, what did you do? You got crocked again and woke up married to Cora. Smart, huh?”

Well, putting it like that, it didn’t look very smart, did it? Being married you’re supposed to support the gal and so I’d signed on as radio op on a Standard Oil tanker. Yep, that’s the trade they’d taught me in the navy. Only it kept me away from home too much. I’d get back from a three weeks’ trip and find Cora hadn’t been exactly lonesome, if you know what I mean. Not that I was in love with her; not like I’d been with Fran. But still and all she was my wife and a guy likes to carry his head up.

Slats went on as though I’d been talking out loud. “There weren’t any radio jobs ashore and all you could get was the chance to nurse a truck around all day. Only thing was, you weren’t making enough dough to please cutie. She kept nagging you about how you’d grown up with Big Ed, and why didn’t you get him to do something for you.”

I gave him a surprised look. “How did you know that?”

“I’ve got eyes,” he said, and his profile looked older, more tired. Somehow I couldn’t get sore at him. He was using No. 4 sandpaper on me and still I couldn’t get sore. He said, “You’re working for Ed, aren’t you?” Explaining quite simply that one and one added up to two. “Working for Big Ed is also bad medicine, Jerry.”

I said stubbornly, “It pays some real dough. And what I’m doing is on the up and up as far as the law’s concerned. If the D.A. says the machines are games of skill who am I to tell the suckers different?”

He reached forward, wiped fog off the inside of the glass. “All right, what you’re doing now is maybe not so bad. But how do you know it’ll stop there? Once you’re in, boy, you’re in.”

“Nuts,” I scoffed. “Ed would be the first one to mitt me if I got out of the racket. The only reason he gave me the job at all was because of old times. Show me a real job and I’ll get out.”

He turned then, grinned at me. “Okay, keed, that’s a promise. I was talking to Kramer up at C.B.S. I told him how good you were and he said if you were that good—”

“You mean a technician’s berth at C.B.S.?”

“Maybe chief. They’re having a sort of shakeup. Maybe you could talk yourself up better than I did.”

I couldn’t say anything for a minute. I mean, this guy beside me was real people. Ed was okay too, of course, but I’d been thinking about what I’d do if he ever asked me to step over the line. This way, I wouldn’t have to find out. I could take a brace and maybe pay Cora off some way and... I didn’t go any farther than that. The reason I didn’t was that Slats had gotten tired of waiting for me to say thanks and was talking again. About something else. “I can’t get a line on the lug,” he was complaining. “You wouldn’t happen to know him, would you, Jerry? Guy by the name of Heinie Ziegler?”

I felt as though he’d just clouted me behind the ear. This guy Ziegler was going to be pretty hard to find — I hoped. He was the mug I’d killed a month or so back. Thirty-seven days, to be exact. You don’t forget the date of things like that. I got a cigarette out, scratched the match, but somehow I couldn’t get the two together. Then I noticed that my hands were shaking. “Ziegler?” I coughed. “No, I don’t think I know him.”

Slats reached over, held the match steady for me. “I’m glad you’re off the stuff, keed. Another week and you’d be in the D.T. ward out at the County.” His eyes burned me. I flipped the match out the window as an excuse to turn away so he couldn’t read the fear that must have been plastered all over my face.

He didn’t seem to notice.

“Funny you don’t know him,” he said musingly. “He used to be one of Big Ed’s punks. I went up to see Ed and he said the guy had gone to Chicago, but I think he was lying.”

The cigarette fell out of my mouth. I just couldn’t help it. Slats McKenna wasn’t my friend any more. He was a dick and I was a murderer. He leaned down and got the cig where it was burning a hole in the floor mat, took a couple of quick drags, threw it away. It reminded me of how we used to share snipes when we were kids south of the tracks. For a second I almost broke down and told him the whole works. Then I took a gander at his face and knew I couldn’t. He was not only a tough cop; he was an honest cop. He’d crucify me if he knew.

I twisted the door handle. “Well, thanks a million, Slats. I’ll go up and see Kramer tomorrow.”

“Better make it tonight, Jerry. These things don’t wait. I told Kramer I’d have you on deck if I could find you.”

“Okay, tonight, then.” I was out on the sidewalk now, in a hurry. I had to get to Big Ed and find out what was happening. “I’ll go down and check in and then I’ll go see Kramer.”

“Swell,” Slats said. “A shower will snap you out of it, Jerry. Better take something for that breath, though.”

I told him I’d do that too, and then I was slogging toward my own car, lugging the sack of nickels. That damned sack was beginning to remind me of an anchor, something I couldn’t get away from. I laughed at that. Of course I could get away. Just as I could from Big Ed Harmon. All I had to do was drop them both. Getting in my car I was surprised to note that it was raining. Then I remembered that it had been raining all evening. I reached in the door pocket for the spare bottle that I usually carried, had the cap off and the neck rattling against my teeth before I remembered; remembered what fat little Luigi had said, and Slats. I hurled the bottle through the window. It smashed on the sidewalk and little rivulets of liquor ran down to the curb. Somewhere down the street, back of me, a horn tooted twice. That would be Slats, I thought, applauding me for busting the bottle. I didn’t feel very heroic. I felt like hell.

II

The Title Guarantee Building was all lit up like a church when I got there. Usually at that time of night it was pretty quiet, but it must have been tax time or something because everybody connected with the real estate racket, title searchers and all, were working late. I’d always gotten a kick out of Big Ed having his headquarters in a building like that. Of course, Ed was the first big shot I’d ever known personally, but nearly every one I remembered reading about transacted his business from a more or less swanky night club. It seemed to be the thing to do. Big Ed was different. He had over half of the seventh floor of the Title Guarantee and the doors that weren’t marked “Private” were labeled “The Harmon Amusement Enterprises, Inc.” As far as I knew he didn’t have any hideaways, or cafés, or any of the usual clap-trap. Maybe he had ’em, but I didn’t know about ’em. I didn’t want to know about them.

I rode up in the elevator with four or five clerks who’d been out for a snack. A couple worked for Ed, and they looked at my leather grip and grinned. I might have been a collector for the telephone company, even including the gun in my shoulder clip.

Only I wasn’t.

I checked in with the cashier, went through a couple semi-private offices and knocked on Ed’s door. There were a couple gorillas sitting there in the anteroom, coats off and rods exposed, but they didn’t pay me a bit of attention. Believe it or not, they were playing checkers. After a minute Ed himself opened the door.

“Oh, it’s you, Jerry.” He was a little bigger than I was, though it wasn’t his size that got him his name. He wore good clothes as if he were used to them, always had a gardenia in his lapel, and a faint scent of soap clung to him, as though he’d just stepped out of his bath. He looked like a senior executive in a business whose stock was selling above par. I guess he was, at that.

I said, “Yeah, it’s me. Could I talk to you for a minute, Ed? Something has come up that...”

He gave me a smile, opened the door wider. I went in. He came around and sat down behind his desk. “Okay, Jerry, shoot.”

I told him first about Slats McKenna looking for Heinie Ziegler. “You sure I’m covered, Ed? Sure somebody hasn’t popped off?”

Ed looked at his nails, hike everything else about him they’d had plenty of the right kind of attention. He’d come a long way since he and I and Slats prowled the freight yards for scrap iron to sell to the junkie. Somehow I was embarrassed in front of him; not like I was with Slats. I guess it’s the same as two guys who go to college together and one of them turns out to be a success. I hadn’t gone to college, but I was the other one, just the same. I didn’t blame Fran for picking the winner.

Ed looked at me and for the first time I noticed how cold his eyes were. “You’re covered,” he said briefly. “Unless you’ve gotten drunk and belched to someone yourself. Have you?”

I thought about how I’d told Cora, my wife, the night I did it. God, I’d had to tell someone! I was half off my nut. Not that this Heinie Ziegler hadn’t had it coming; in a way it was even self defense, but there wasn’t a chance of making a jury believe that.

Ed’s voice had a little undertone of menace in it when he repeated, “Have you, Jerry?”

“Do you think I’m crazy?” I asked him. “It’s bad enough to have you and Danville and Skeeter in on it. I’m not doing any advertising, thank you. It’s just that McKenna picking me to ask — well, I got the jitters is all.”

“I see,” he said. And then, giving me a quick, level stare: “What else did you and McKenna talk about? You were with him quite a while.”

I didn’t get it for a minute. Then I did and I was sore as a boiled owl. “Having me tailed, huh? What’s the matter, afraid I’ll knock down a few of your lousy nickels?”

“Now don’t get red-headed, Jerry. One of the punks just happened to be in Luigi’s and phoned me. He thought you might be in a jam of some kind.”

“As if I’m not! And that reminds me, Ed, I’ve got a chance to go to work for C.B.S. I’m checking out on you.”

He went back to studying his nice nails. “McKenna?”

“Yes, he’s the one got me the break.”

“And will your wife think it’s a break, Jerry? They tell me that even what you’re making with me isn’t enough for Cora.”

“To hell with her. I’m through, washed up.”

He shook his head. “No, Jerry, I can’t let you do it.”

“You mean you won’t? You mean I can’t walk out if I want to? The hell with that. I’m going.”

Again he shook his head. He was smiling, but it didn’t mean a thing. His eyes were diamond hard. “Nobody walks out on me, Jerry. Maybe they’re carried out, but they don’t walk. I need good boys, Jerry; boys I can depend on. I can depend on you, can’t I, Jerry?”

You couldn’t miss what he meant. You either stuck — or you got stuck. With me, it was just a little murder rap, of course. Nothing serious. Looking at it from his angle I wondered what he had to be afraid of from me. The answer was nothing. I didn’t know a thing more than the whole town knew. He could hire a hundred guys to do the work I was doing. Well, then, why didn’t he? Why did he want to hang onto me? Sort of desperately I asked him. “I wasn’t cut out for the big time, Ed. I’m just a punk, I guess. What’s it to you?”

This time when he looked at me I actually shivered. “Punks,” he said, “are useful sometimes, Jerry. Especially with a rap hanging over them like yours. And if you ever get the bright idea that I could be clipped as an accessory, just forget it. I couldn’t.” He sat up a little straighter, touched a button on his desk. “I think we’ll be able to get along, Jerry. Now that we understand each other.”

The door opened and the two gorillas came in. I took my hand away from my gun. Yep, for a second I’d seen the well-known red. I’d been on the point of letting him have it. Sick, actually sick at my stomach, I stumbled toward the door. Ed’s voice halted me. “Better lay off the liquor, keed. It’s bad for you.”

“I know,” I said dully. “You’re about the fifth guy that’s told me tonight.” I went out and got in an elevator and dropped to the lobby. A guy looking at the building directory turned and gave me a screwy stare. “Did you speak to me?”

I guess I must have been mumbling out loud. I said, “It was two other guys, mister,” and pushed out to the street. In the car I reached for the bottle in the door pocket before I remembered that it wasn’t there any more. There didn’t seem to be anything to do except stop somewhere and get tanked to the eyes, only I couldn’t think of any place where there wouldn’t be somebody else too and I didn’t want to see even a bartender for a while. I went home hoping Cora hadn’t found that last pint. She had, though. I flopped on the davenport in the living room, too tired to even undress. After a while I went to sleep.

The ringing of the front door bell woke me. I didn’t identify it as the front door hell right off the bat. I’d been dreaming I was in a broadcast station control room, trying to get an S.O.S. through on account of an earthquake was rapidly making kindling out of our fair city. It was pretty real. I mean, I could feel the building tottering under my feet. But the most vivid of all was Big Ed Harmon holding a gun on me and telling me to lay off; that he didn’t want anybody to know there was an earthquake. I kept thinking, “They’ve gotta know. I’ve gotta tell ’em,” and then I remembered the little alarm button recessed in the floor. I put my foot on this and a dozen alarms started singing so loud it woke me up. The dozen alarms turned out to be the apartment bell. Maybe I should have been relieved at that, but I wasn’t. I just lay there for a minute, shivering, wondering if maybe Big Ed hadn’t changed his mind about me. Not about letting me go, but about making the parting permanent. Maybe I’d worried him, almost pulling my rod like that. Maybe he’d sent a couple of the boys over to see that it didn’t happen again. The bell kept ringing.

Finally I couldn’t stand the suspense any more and got up and went over to the door. Maybe, I thought, it’s just Cora. She might’ve forgotten her key. I jerked my gun out of the clip, twisted the knob and leaped back. I was so surprised I couldn’t shut my own mouth. It wasn’t Cora standing there. It wasn’t the couple of hoods I’d imagined. It was Fran. Yep, that’s right: Frances Harmon, Big Ed’s wife. She was as scared as I was. Her big eyes looked enormous in the dead white of her face, and her dark hair was all mussed up and wet from the rain. She didn’t have any coat on and her gown was sopping, what there was left of it. Somebody had been playing rough.

I grabbed her, yanked her inside before some of the other tenants could see her in case they got curious.

She started sobbing then; not noisily, but as if she’d run her heart out. I put my two arms around her, held her close for a minute, trying to kid her out of it. “It’s okay, Fran. I’m here and you know how I’ve always felt about you. Take a brace, keed. Tell papa.”

She put her hands on my chest, pushed me away a little, so that she could look up into my ugly mug. “Oh, Jerry, I’m sorry if I’m putting you on a spot. I... I just couldn’t seem to think of anybody else to go to, and I didn’t have any money, or clothes or—” She broke off and her eyes sort of rolled up in her head. “Oh, Jerry, I’m scared!”

“That makes two of us,” I said. J picked her up and carried her over to the couch. “Come on, Fran, tell me what happened and then I’ll see about getting you some dry clothes.”

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Not like a guy removing the last of the mashed potatoes, but trying to stop her lips from quivering. “Ed just shot and killed a man. I... I saw it.”

“Where? In his office?”

“No, at home.” Home was a penthouse out in Beverly Hills. I looked at my wristwatch. I’d been asleep two hours. It was just a little after midnight.

“Okay,” I said, “tell me about it. Fast, Fran.”

“It... it was State Senator Delgardo. He’d been waiting for Ed to come home. Ed brought another man with him, a man named Ames, I think. The three of them went into the library and I went to bed. Not long after that I heard shots. I ran to the library door, got it open and... and there was the senator on the floor. Ames was stooping over him, cursing, but it was Ed who had the gun. It... it was still smoking. I guess I must have screamed at that. They turned and Ames started cursing Ed. Then they both started for me. They caught me in one of the guest rooms and Ames insisted they kill me too. Ed said that could wait. Finally they locked me in and went back to the library, I guess.”

“How did you get away?”

She shivered. “Out the window. I crawled along a ledge till I got to a fire escape.”

I did a little shivering myself. I knew the penthouse; knew how it was built on a corner instead of in the middle of the roof. Crawling along a narrow parapet, in the rain, thirteen stories above the street — well, it was no wonder she was jittery.

I said, “Look, Fran, how much do you know of Big Ed’s business besides this kill? Who is this Ames guy?”

“I don’t know, Jerry. Somebody important, I guess. About Ed... well, I’ve heard rumors, of course. I read the papers. Lately things haven’t been going so well between us.” She gave me a direct look. “I... I guess I never loved him enough to overlook some of the things they’re saying about him. But that’s all I know; he’s never told me anything himself, except to mind my own business.”

“Okay,” I said, “I’ll get you some of Cora’s clothes.”

“That’s what you think,” Cora said. She was standing in her bedroom door, a nasty little grin on her face and not much else on her body. You could see right through the filmy nightie but somehow I didn’t get a thrill. I wondered how long she’d been there.

She told me that, too. “Long enough to get the whole picture, you heel.” Big violet eyes stared insolently at Frances. “I guess you’re the dame my husband is sorry he didn’t marry.”

Fran’s dark eyes went wide at that, but she didn’t say anything. I said, “Now look, Cora, you and I have had our differences but this gal’s in a spot. Do you give her an outfit or do I have to slap you to sleep?”

“Just try slapping somebody,” Cora said. She brought a hand around, the one she’d been holding behind her, and she had one of those small pearl-handled purse-guns in it. I’d dropped my own rod when I picked up Fran. I felt kind of foolish.

I said, “Now take it easy, Cora. We’ll work this thing out.”

“You’re damned right we will, punk. We’ll work it out so it adds up to some real money. Not the kind you’ve been handing me lately.” She got a curious, speculative look on her beautiful pan. You had to hand her that much; she certainly was beautiful. But she was as hard as nails. She grinned. “In fact, Jerry, I don’t think I’ll need you any more.”

Well, I suppose I could have jumped her gun. At another time I’d have tried it, at least. But she was all keyed up to shoot and she had everything on her side. I mean, she was my wife; it was our apartment. Fran didn’t have many clothes on either and Cora could shoot the both of us and claim we’d violated the sanctity of the home. Probably Big Ed and this Ames guy would pay her a bonus for doing the job herself instead of just fingering us. A sweet setup, huh?

I said, “Okay, baby, it’s your play.”

She came out into the room, kicked my rod under a chair. Then, gun held almost negligently, she gestured us into the coat closet in the hall. The key turned. I’d never noticed it before but that damned closet door opened in. Fran and I were liable to stay put for a long time.

The situation wasn’t funny.

III

Ora’s tinkly little laugh, brittle as glass, came to us. After that we didn’t hear any more until the outside door closed. In the dark I wrapped a spare overcoat around Fran. She was shivering with the cold.

I said, “Cheer up, kid. We’re not licked yet.”

She didn’t sound frightened. “I didn’t know women like that really existed, Jerry. Do they, or is it all just a bad dream?”

“No,” I grated, “it’s bad, but it isn’t a dream. Cora is just part of the well-known Cassidy luck. Funny, you coming here, Fran. I mean, of the million and a half people in Los Angeles you’d have to pick Jerry Cassidy and his wife.” I didn’t tell her that she’d run from one killer straight into the arms of another. There didn’t seem to be any point to making her feel worse than she did. Well, I thought, I won’t have to worry any more about taking the rap for the Heinie Ziegler kill. I’ll just disappear like he did. And like Fran will.

Frances said, “You think she will try to sell us to Ed?”

“No, I’m sure of it.” I told her to move over out of the way, grabbed the doorknob with both hands, wedged my back against the wall and put my feet up under the knob. You get a lot of leverage that way. My luck still held. The knob came off in my hands. I hit the floor at the same time the other half of the knob did, only it had the edge. It was on the outside.

Fran flopped down beside me. “Jerry, are you hurt?”

“Only my vanity,” I told her. Suddenly I chuckled. Not because that was a new name for the place that hurt, but because I’d just remembered something. Up on the shelf in that closet was a kit of car tools; the ones I’d swiped out of the old car when I traded it in. You’ve probably done that same thing yourself. It’s one of those little not-quite-honest tricks that goes under the head of good sense. You don’t get any more allowance for a car with tools than you do without, so why waste ’em? They say crime don’t pay. Well, if lifting those tools was a crime, the moralists must have slipped because they sure came in handy. We were outside in two minutes.

Fran picked out an armload of Cora’s clothes, went into the bath. I prowled through Cora’s vanity, came up with two diamond rings I’d given her and a small roll of bills. You’ll maybe get a better idea of Cora when I tell you there were two C’s in that roll. Two hundred dollars, and not three hours ago she’d nicked me for my last twenty!

Fran came out. She’d picked the more quiet things: a brown sport suit, brown hat and shoes. She looked tired, but like a million to me.

“Fran,” I said, “I’ve found a little stake. Enough to do us for a while if we’re careful and stick together. We can’t make it separately. You ready to go with a bum like me?”

She gave me her hand. “Anywhere, Jerry Cassidy. If you’re a bum, we’ll be bums together.”

I couldn’t say anything to that. I just took her arm and went out to the living room, stooping on the way to get my rod from under the chair. We went down to my car. It had stopped raining and I thought that might be a good sign.

We were about half way down the first block when I happened to look in the rear vision mirror. A car without lights had just pulled up in front of the apartment. A couple of guys got out, started inside. Then one of them half turned, looked down the street and spotted my tail-light. Anyway, I guess that’s what made him wave his arm in my direction. The car without lights got under way. That’s all I waited to see. I romped on the accelerator till the Chewy thought it was a super-charged vibrator. We raced around the first corner on two wheels, straightened out from a skid that almost smashed us against the curb, reversed at the next turn and did it all over again. We were probably making about fifty but it seemed like ninety.

Fran was on her knees, looking out the rear window and cheering me on like it was a race of high school kids at three in the afternoon. There was a little pinggg and a slug cut through the window and smashed the mirror. All right, I thought, you’re asking for it. I yelled at Fran: “Get down on the floor, nit-wit! We’re gonna play games too.”

The scenery, consisting mostly of darkened store-fronts, was going by us a mile a minute; the street was still as wet as the bottom of the ocean, only slicker. Fran was down on the floor now, saying little prayers, and I hoped the Chevvy’s body was as good as the ads said. I didn’t slam on the brakes. I was afraid to on that greasy pavement. It wasn’t necessary, anyway. From the tail of my eye I saw the emblem on the other car’s nose creep up, then part of the hood. All I did was take my foot off the throttle. You’d think we had stopped dead. I put two quick slugs in an open window as the other job leaped ahead, not knowing how many guys were inside, not caring. The big car was a full length up on us before it went into a kind of tail spin. It skidded the width of the street, bounced back to the center, started whirling. Round and round it went and I knew its brakes were locked. I was half around in a U turn by this time. Somebody in the spinning car took a shot at us, missed, then the machine he was in suddenly quit acting like a dizzy ballet dancer and went flying off at a tangent. The last I saw of it was when it crashed a light pole.

I straightened out in the opposite direction and began fanning the air in earnest. The main reason was a prowl car’s siren. I didn’t want to meet any cops till I’d had time to stash Frances in a safe place. Maybe not even then. What with Big Ed being on familiar terms with State Senators and one thing and another, I had no assurance I’d be any safer in jail. This guy Ames had me kind of worried too. I mean, I thought his name had a familiar sound to it, but I couldn’t seem to place it. Fran had said he’d cursed Ed. Anybody big enough to curse Ed must be no small potatoes. Maybe he’s lieutenant-governor or something, I thought. Anyway, between the two of them, they were pretty sure to swing a mean drag politically; enough to see that a punk named Jerry Cassidy didn’t talk to the wrong cops...

I left the car in an alley and Fran and I walked the two blocks to the Hotel Mercer. It was a good middle-class house, not too gaudy, not too cheap. The clerk lifted an eyebrow at our lack of baggage.

“Fire,” I explained. “Practically ruined our flat, and what the fire missed the smoke-eaters took care of. We left it as is for the adjusters to worry over.”

He accepted that at face value. I thought it was pretty good myself. I peeled a twenty off Cora’s roll, asked for a suite, or at least two rooms with connecting bath. We got the two rooms, registering as John Jones and Frances Jones, brother and sister. Not that I expected Big Ed or Cora to ever use the register in a divorce action.

A hop took us up to the third, opened all the windows in both rooms, put them down again when I yelled at him, finally went away with a dollar and a request for some cigarettes. I gave Fran the old grin.

“Well, kid, here we are. Not so bad, huh?”

She nodded. “Pretty swell, Jerry. You, I mean.”

I said, “Nuts. You want something to eat? Drink?”

She said she didn’t. She took off her hat and the suit coat. “Mind if I stay in here with you for a while, Jerry?”

I saw she was getting the jeebies all over again. Well, who wouldn’t? I wasn’t feeling any too good myself. But it wasn’t sympathy that made me say, “Baby, you can stay with me the rest of our lives if you want to.”

Her nice mouth quirked a little at that. “The rest of our lives,” she said. “That may not be very long, Jerry.” I let that ride because there was no use kidding her. After a while she said, “Jerry, would you mind kissing me? Just once?”

It wasn’t any chore. I kissed her, then straightened and stood looking down at her. “Why did you want me to do that?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I just thought it might be a good idea.” She got up, took her — or rather Cora’s — hat and coat and went to the connecting door. “I’m going to lie down for a while, Jerry.”

“But look,” I said, “hey, you just claimed you wanted to stay in here with me!”

“I know,” she nodded. And then, “We gals are funny, Jerry. You’ll find that out some day.” The door closed behind her.

I just stood there.

Somebody knocked on the hall door and I thought it was the hop coming back with the cigarettes. “Come on in,” I said. The door opened quietly and there was Detective-Sergeant Slats McKenna, as big as life and just about as unpleasant.

To give you some idea of how unpleasant he really intended to be, he had his gun out in plain sight. His lean dark face was drawn, tired-looking, and the down-drooping mouth was more than just tired; it was cynical. His eyes looked like two burned holes in a navy blanket. He shut the door quietly behind him, stood leaning against it.

“Well, Jerry,” he said, “we do find out things about people, don’t we? Why’d you do it? I mean, why did you have to do it that way?”

“Why did I do what?” I sparred. I knew, of course. Somehow the guy had found out about the Heinie Ziegler kill. “And what do you mean by that way? What difference does it make?”

He gave me a screwy look. “So you do know what I’m talking about! I’d sort of hoped you wouldn’t.”

Well, I’d certainly left myself open on that one. That’s the trouble with cops and a guilty conscience. They ask you two questions at once and you’re so busy trying to evade one that you trip on the other.

He said, “All right, Jerry, turn around. Slowly, now. I don’t want to have to hurt you.”

“No,” I said, “I can see that. All you want to do is have my neck stretched about a yard.” I turned around, though, and he came up behind me, reached around and got my gun. He was sniffing it when I looked at him again. Like a bloodhound. I couldn’t quite figure this out. I mean, it had been thirty-seven days since I’d blasted Ziegler and even a punk as dumb as me wouldn’t be expected to carry a dirty gun all that time. Besides, it wasn’t the same gun. Big Ed had gotten me a new one. Then I remembered that I’d just got through using the rod on the hoods that were chasing us. Maybe, I thought, he don’t know about Ziegler. Maybe I’m being picked up for this other thing.

I said, “Now wait a minute, Slats. Maybe I can explain.”

“You don’t have to,” he said tiredly. “It’s all quite clear. Cora caught you cheating with this other dame and you let her have it.” He dropped my heater in his pocket. He could have made it vanish in thin air and I wouldn’t have been surprised. I was numb from head to foot already. I was supposed to have killed my wife!

Funny, huh? I’d really killed Ziegler. I’d more than likely killed a hood or two in that car. But was I wanted for either of those things? No, indeed. No, I was being arrested for murdering Cora. It was to laugh — if you felt like laughing. Me, I didn’t. My brain suddenly unlocked. Slats was saying: “I knew you hated her, Jerry. Everybody knew it. And you had plenty cause. But to do it over another woman — to just toss her out in the gutter like that... well, you never seemed like that kind of a guy, is all. Who is this dame posing as your sister?”

I tried not to look at Fran’s door. It was closed a little while ago, I knew. I hoped it still was; hoped she wasn’t getting a load of this. Oh, I know; it all looks quite simple on the surface. All I had to do was get Fran to tell Slats it couldn’t have been me who let Cora have it. She’d say, “Why, Big Ed did it, of course! Right after he got through killing Senator Delgardo!”

Only thing was, Slats wouldn’t believe it. There was the old record of Fran and I going together back in the days when we were all kids. There was my known hatred for Cora, and my hot gun. Ballistics, of course, could prove that it wasn’t the gun that had done for Cora, but at the moment I was all out of ballistics experts. Slats would naturally think Fran was trying to cover me and not doing a very good job of it. He’d say, “Okay, you can come along too, Fran.” Suppose he did that. Suppose we all went down to Headquarters. By this time Big Ed and the Ames party would thoughtfully have gotten rid of Delgardo’s body. There wouldn’t be any proof. They’d think Fran was lying, and let Big Ed spring her. Once sprung, it didn’t take a very vivid imagination to picture what would happen to her.

I wet my lips. “Look, Slats, how come you found me?”

He gave me a sour grin. “They found Cora first. After that there was a general alarm out for you. A prowl car located your car in an alley near here and it had a bullet hole in it — you must have missed Cora with that one — and so they sent me out because I could describe you better than most. Funny, huh?” He wasn’t liking this much better than I was.

I said yes, it certainly was very funny. All the time I kept wondering what to do about Fran. If I didn’t drag her into it, let Slats think she’d lammed, then what? Why, then he’d grab me and she’d be left alone. With a general alarm out, he couldn’t keep the pinch quiet. Big Ed, knowing Fran had been with me, would send a batch of hoods after her.

I almost went down on my knees to the guy. “Slats,” I jittered, “I didn’t kill Cora. She had it coming, and I admit I’m not so awfully sorry, but I didn’t kill her. I swear it.”

His dark eyes said I was a snivelling heel. “Who else would want to, punk?”

Well, I’d look cute telling him Big Ed had done it. I wasn’t even sure he had. He’d probably ordered it done and had an unbreakable alibi. Maybe I wasn’t thinking straight; maybe you can figure what I should have done. All I’m telling you is what I did. I took a chance on McKenna’s gun, came out of a sort of half crouch and hung a hard right on his lantern jaw. His head snapped back against the hall door. After that he just kind of folded up in sections, a little at a time, till he was sprawled out flat. All but his head. That still leaned against the door. I wondered if I’d broken his neck, got down on my knees beside him. His neck was all right. He was just out.

Fran’s door opened and she popped in, gave a little screech. “Oh, Jerry, is he dead?”

“No,” I said. “Better get your coat and hat, Fran. We’ve gotta go places before your dear husband hears where we are.” I was going through Slats’ pockets now, after my gun. Believe it or not, the guy had a big hole in the pocket he’d dropped my rod in. The damn thing had slid way down into the lining. I let it go, grabbed his own gun, clipped it under my arm as Fran came back. Together we went out and caught a down elevator. The lobby of the Mercer was L-shaped, the elevator bank around the turn from the desk. Fran and I got to the turn just as the night clerk glanced in that direction. I saw his mouth flop open, saw the movement of his body as his toe reached for the alarm button under the desk. He didn’t step on it, just waited to see if Slats McKenna was behind us.

I grabbed Fran’s arm, pulled her back out of sight. My left hand located the roll of dough, pressed it into her fist. The elevator operator was watching us now. I said, “Here, kid, don’t stop to argue. You’ve got clothes now, and money. Beat it out the back way, go down the alley and snag a cab on Fifth. Go to the Palais in Hollywood and wait for me.”

She shook her head. “Jerry, I can’t leave you like this. You’re in trouble of some kind. Besides me, I mean. I... I heard part of what Slats said. I can clear you.”

“You might,” I agreed. “If you lived long enough.” I put on the old act here. “It’s really for my sake, Fran. It sounds like Ed and this guy Ames might swing a lotta weight. I don’t want you picked up by either Ed or the cops till I know just where we stand. In other words you’ll do me more good at present if nobody knows where you are.” A fat house dick waddled around the ell, looking important. I gave Fran a shove toward the service entrance, tripped the fat guy as he went by. He started yelling bloody murder. So did the kid in the elevator. I took it on the lam out past the desk. The clerk had a gun. He shut his eyes as he pulled the trigger and naturally you can’t expect to hit much with your eyes closed. All he hit was one of the big plate-glass windows and this went out with a booming crash just as I made the sidewalk. Slats McKenna’s police job was at the curb; there was not a cab in sight. I scrambled into Slats’ car. The well-known Cassidy luck was still with me. Slats had taken his keys with him.

The clerk and the operator and the fat house dick were all stuck in the revolving door. I crawled out the far side of the car just as another car swung into the street. Two men got out, slanted toward me, not running, just a couple of jay walkers headed for the hotel. The car came on. I swiveled, ran smack into a second car. This one was without lights, coming from the other direction. I hadn’t even heard it. As I went to my hands and knees from the impact, the brakes locked. Two guns started a sort of rhythmic one-two, one-two blasting and from the sound of falling glass I guessed they were shooting at the revolving door of the Mercer. I had Slats’ rod out when the car nudged me again, not hard, just enough to knock me sprawling without exactly running over me. Somebody stepped on my hand. Somebody else kicked me in the head. Then both somebodies reached down and hauled me to my feet.

“Going some place, Cassidy? We’ll give you a lift.” This polite offer was followed by a swing that practically jerked my head right off and I was only vaguely conscious of being shoved into a car. Motor sound drummed in my ears. Presently that too faded out.

IV

By and by I got the idea that somebody was shaking me, and opening my eyes I discovered that this was the first Jerry Cassidy idea that had panned out all evening. The guy really was shaking me. I was still in the car, in the back seat, and the guy working me over had an assistant. I was sandwiched between them.

Up front, under the wheel, was a third guy who was paying strict attention to his driving. We must have been miles away from the Mercer Hotel. I hoped Frances was too. The guy shaking me found out that I was awake and rapped his knuckles against my teeth.

The other one said, “Hey, cut that out. You been working for ten minutes tryin’ to get him awake and the minute you do you wanna slap him back to sleep. Where’s the percentage?”

“My pal,” I thanked him.

“Oh, yeah?” he said, and smacked me himself. He was nothing but a hypocrite, that guy. He took out a knife and flipped open a four inch blade and tested the edge on his thumb. I watched that knife with a great deal of interest, wondering which part of me he was going to try it on first. First my stomach got goose pimples, then my throat. He fooled me. He jabbed the point into my knee. “Where’s the dame?” he wanted to know.

“What dame?”

Jab went the knife again. This time in my ribs. He must have measured off the exact distance because it didn’t go past the ribs. He pretended it was a corkscrew, taking it out. The other guy had an arm under my chin. That’s all that kept me from yelling.

The guy with the knife wiped the blade fastidiously on the back of the front seat. “All right, Percy, leave him talk.” He had a face like a wedge. Percy took his arm away and I began to talk. You learn a lot of nice words in the navy. I gave them the whole works in one breath. Percy got hold of one of my flailing arms, shoved it up between my shoulder blades. “Shut up, punk.”

I shut up. The guy with the knife licked his lips. He reminded me more and more of a hyena I’d seen in the zoo when I was a kid. This hyena had been watching a keeper with a chunk of meat, and it was a toss-up which he wanted most: the keeper or the meat. Hatchet-face made up his mind on the exact spot he was going to carve next. He turned a little more in the seat, got my right ear between a thumb and finger and sliced off a little piece of the lobe. I let him have my right fist in the kidney. Percy snapped my left arm. I passed out.

I have no recollection of being taken out of the car or going up in the elevator or anything. The first I remember was waking up in a chair in front of a big desk, and on the other side of the desk was Big Ed Harmon. My broken left arm was swollen tight inside my coat sleeve and shooting flaming arrows of pain clear out the top of my head. Ed’s face would loom up big as a house for a minute, then fade out till you couldn’t see anything but the eyes.

Percy and Hatchet-face were telling him all about it. I gathered that they’d left a couple of their pals behind to find Frances, but that they couldn’t wait themselves because the blasting had brought down a wagon load of cops. Big Ed told them off as good as I could have done it myself. Not loudly, though. His voice sounded dead level, perfectly controlled.

“You damned fools, you knew there were cops in the neighborhood. We expected that when we heard about them finding the punk’s car in the alley. Why’d you have to start blasting?”

Percy cleared his throat. “We never started it. It was the punk himself. He had three-four mugs chasin’ him outa the lobby and we hadda stop ’em, didn’t we?”

A new voice said, “But you didn’t have to half kill Cassidy.”

Big Ed said, “I’ll take care of this, Ames.”

I turned my head a little and looked at this Ames party. Not until then had I associated the name with the man himself. The reason, of course, was that probably there weren’t more than a half dozen people in the whole town who called him Ames. He was A. H. Hutchins to the papers and the public at large. He owned the Title Guarantee Building; the one where Big Ed had his offices. He was chairman of the State Central Committee, on the boards of most of the banks, an honorary police commissioner and a lot of other things I was too busy to think of. He had nice curly white hair and one of those skins you love to touch. Boy, would I have loved to touch it! The fingers of my right hand started jerking I wanted to get at him so bad. My left hand didn’t do much of anything except hurt like hell.

This Hutchins guy was the first to notice I was awake. He said, “Get rid of these — these men.” Meaning Percy and Hatchet-face. Ed told them to get the hell out. I got the impression that they didn’t really know what it was all about. All they’d been told was to get me and the gal that was with me. The short wave had given Ed the general locality of where I might have holed up and he’d sent out a couple of cars to patrol the neighborhood. Even the cops didn’t know the gal was Big Ed’s wife, though.

He got up as soon as the two mugs were gone, came around the desk and held a glass to my lips. I drank. The room stopped going round and round. Ed sat on the edge of the desk, one foot on the floor, the other swinging. I remember he was wearing spats.

“Where is she, Jerry?”

I gave him a grin. “In China, I hope.”

He reached down, quite casually, got hold of my broken arm and twisted it. You could hear the bones grating. I went off my nut for a minute, tried to kick him. It was then I discovered that my ankles were tied to the front legs of the chair I was in. “Where is she, Jerry?”

I screamed then. I couldn’t help it. But screaming or not I stuck to my story. “She’s in China!” I yelled. “In China, China, China, you hear?”

Hutchins said, “Stop it, Harmon! I can’t stand it!” As if Big Ed had hold of his arm. I wanted to laugh at that, but somehow all I could do was sob. And here I’d been thinking I was a tough guy.

Ed let go my arm, held the glass to my mouth again. I slobbered all over it. Then I remembered I had two arms and tried to paste him one with the right. He just pushed it down as if I was a baby. “Did you tell Slats McKenna anything?”

So he knew about Slats being there too. I choked on the last swallow. “Sure,” I gasped. “Fran and I told him the whole works. He oughta be along most any minute now.”

Mr. Hutchins said, “Great Scott!”

Ed just laughed at him. “Imagine me working for you all these years. Why, you’re a weak sister, Ames, and I thought you were a big shot. I might have guessed when you went haywire and shot Delgardo. Well, we’ll have a show-down after we get this thing straightened out. Maybe you’ll be working for me.”

Mr. Hutchins groaned.

Ed said, “Don’t worry, the punk didn’t tell McKenna anything. He bopped the dick and lammed. All we’ve got to do is find Frances and then we can wash the whole thing up.”

The telephone rang. Ed swung around, answered it. “Okay,” he said, “bring her right up.” I almost passed out. Something told me the “her” they were bringing up was Frances. Desperately I got the kinks out of my neck and really looked around. We were in the living room of the Beverly Hills penthouse. I hadn’t known it before.

The door opened and two guys carried Frances in. They must have brought her up in the freight elevator. Even the dumbest clerk on earth wouldn’t have passed them like that. Her feet and hands were taped very neatly and there were two strips of adhesive crossed over her lips. X marking the spot, I thought. The spot where Ed will kick her teeth in. He didn’t do it right away, though. He just jerked his big, good-looking head toward a fireside divan and the two lugs dumped her on it. Her eyes met mine with a sort of horrified surprise. I guess I didn’t make a very pretty picture. I could feel the smear of dried blood on my cheek where the guy had operated on my ear.

The two guys looked kind of like the ones that had got out of the car, there in front of the Mercer. I couldn’t be sure because it had been pretty dark in the street at the time and I’d had one or two other things on my mind. I couldn’t see that it made much difference anyway. Neither Frances nor I were going to do any identifying.

Ed said quietly, “You have any trouble?”

“A little,” one guy admitted. “She’d already gotten a cab and was on her way by the time we found out all the angles. We had to wait for the cab to come back. Then it was duck soup. The Palais is a nice dump,” he added.

“I’ll make a note of that,” Ed said, and Mr. Hutchins, over by the windows, cursed him irritably. “Let’s get this over with, Harmon!”

Ed said, “Sure, Ames, sure. You want to take care of it personally?”

Mr. Hutchins turned green and looked like he was going to be sick. “Hell, man, no! How can you be so callous?”

“Well,” Ed said, “after all, it wasn’t I who killed—” He broke off as Mr. Hutchins lifted a shaking hand. Then, smiling a little as at some secret joke, he said, “Excuse it, please,” and told the two mugs to scram. They went out. That left only him and Mr. Hutchins and Fran and me.

Hutchins said accusingly, “See here, Harmon, it’s true I shot Senator Delgardo, but it was in a moment of panic. I’m not a cold-blooded murderer.”

“No? Then what would you suggest we do with this pair of tramps — give ’em our blessing and turn ’em loose?”

“Couldn’t... couldn’t you have your men...”

Ed gave him a hard little laugh. “Listen, lame-brain, you and I are in this together. It doesn’t make any difference to the police who actually pulled the trigger on Delgardo. It was my gun and it’s my penthouse. Nobody but the four of us here even knows the senator is dead. We’ll just keep it that way, and after a while there’ll only be two who know. You and I will take care of it.”

The telephone buzzed again. This seemed to be Big Ed’s busy night. He picked it up, listened a moment and for the first time I actually saw emotion register on his face. He looked scared. Then he slammed the phone down, whirled on Mr. Hutchins. “Okay, punk, we’ll have to make this fast. A flatfoot named McKenna is on his way up.”

“Can’t... can’t you have him stopped downstairs?”

“Sure,” Ed said. “Sure I can but I’m not going to. Now don’t go off your nut. Just give me a lift with the punk’s chair.”

They lifted me, chair and all, and carried me over to what looked like a solid-paneled wall. I couldn’t see how Ed worked it but the wall opened up and there was a cute little room behind it. It was already occupied. Yep, that’s right. Senator Delgardo was lying on a leather couch with a very pretty Afghan pulled up to his chin and a look of utter peace on his face. Somebody had very thoughtfully closed his eyes for him. I wondered if I’d look that nice — afterward.

Ed had a roll of adhesive. He slapped a strip of it around my right arm, pinning it to the chair. I tried to bite him when he tackled my mouth but it was no go. That got taped too. He went back and got Fran and tossed her carelessly on the floor beside the senator’s couch.

Then, appraisingly, he looked at Mr. Hutchins. “You’d better stay in here too, baby. You’re too hysterical for McKenna. You’d make him nervous.”

“I want a gun,” the old man babbled. “I want a gun in case anything happens. I won’t be taken alive, I tell you.”

“If you don’t shut up,” Ed said, “I’ll take you myself.” He went back into the big room and got a gun though. He tossed this through the panel, like a bone to a whining pup. The panel closed.

The little room wasn’t soundproof. You could hear Ed moving around out there, straightening things. It seemed like an awfully long time before somebody opened the hall door and said, “Lieutenant McKenna, sir.”

Ed said, “Hello, Slats,” in a careless voice and there was a faint rustle of papers. I could imagine him sitting at his desk, very preoccupied with his work. “What’s new with you?”

“Same old sixes and sevens,” Slats said. “Nothing startling except I want that heel Cassidy. You knew he murdered his wife, didn’t you?”

Ed said yes, he’d heard about it over the radio. “Too bad about Jerry. I kept telling him to lay off the liquor, but you know how some of these guys are. Have a slug yourself, Slats?” There was a tinkle of glass.

Slats said, “No. No, thanks, I’ve got a bad liver and I have to watch it.” I could picture him walking around nervously while Ed drank. Slats never could stay still very long. Presently he went off at a tangent. “What time did Senator Delgardo go home?”

I thought Mr. Hutchins was going to faint. His eyes rolled up in his head and he leaned weakly against the panel, gasping. If it hadn’t been for that damned chair I’d have tackled him then. Even bound I could have made something happen.

Ed, taking his time, answered the question. “About eleven, I think. Why?”

“I just wondered. Did he take his chair with him? There’s one missing. I can see the leg marks in the rug and there don’t seem to be another chair in the room that would fit. Maybe you made him a present of it?”

There was a hell of a long pause this time. Finally Big Ed said with a trace of irritation: “What’s on your mind, McKenna? I paid for the chair. What I did with it is none of your business though I don’t mind telling you somebody burned a hole in the fabric and I had it taken out.”

“Well,” Slats said, “I hope there wasn’t somebody tied in it at the time. I mean the hole might have been burned in the party first, huh?”

It was very quiet for a minute; so quiet I thought Slats might have gone and I got jittery. Trying to get out of the chair I overturned it instead and fell on my face, skidding smack into Hutchins. Well, he’d heard everything I had and was pretty jittery to start with. He fell down on top of me and the gun went boom-boom-boom right in my ear. Like an echo another gun blasted out in the living room, only this one did it just once. That was like a signal touching off a whole string of cannon crackers down in Chinatown. Maybe it was because I had my ear to the floor that it sounded so plain; the shooting wasn’t going on in the living room. It was farther away than that. I tried to scrooge around to see what Mr. Hutchins was doing all this time, and then the wall panel opened and Slats came in.

He bent down and took the gun out of Mr. Hutchins’ fist. Mr. Hutchins didn’t seem to mind a bit. He didn’t look quite as peaceful as State Senator Delgardo but he was just as dead. The last of those three slugs he’d fired had gone in his mouth. Maybe he’d done it on purpose.

Slats still didn’t say anything. He righted my chair, went over and untied Frances. There was a lot of noise out in the living room now. Sounded like the marines had landed. A harness bull with a sergeant’s stripes came to the panel and said, “All clear, Lieutenant. Big Ed’s awake if you want to talk to him.”

Slats nodded gloomily. His lantern jaw needed a shave and his dark eyes had pouches under them. Fran got stiffly to her knees, clumped over to my side. “Oh, Jerry, what have they been doing to you?” She fumbled at the adhesive on my mouth. It hurt so bad coming off I forgot about my busted arm for a minute. Slats seemed to come to some kind of a decision and helped Fran get me out of the chair. When I tried to stand up I fell flat on my face again. A couple of cops came in at that and picked me up and carried me out to the divan by the fireplace.

Slats looked down at me threateningly. “You wanna drink?”

I did. But all I did was give him a grin that he mistook for a sneer and say, “Nuts, I’m off it.”

He sneered right back at me. “Oh, yeah?” He turned away to answer somebody’s question, turned back after a minute and said carelessly, “By the way, you didn’t kill your wife with that gun. We checked.”

Frances, kneeling beside me, gave him an indignant, “Of course he didn’t! I could have told you that!”

Slats said, “He did a pretty good job on Heinie Ziegler, though.”

I nearly passed out. Well, I’d been expecting it and here it was. I said weakly, “How... how did you know?”

“Your gun, sappo, your gun. When they brought Ziegler’s body in we checked that too. The slugs matched.”

“But they couldn’t have!” I yelled. “Hell, it wasn’t the same gun! And besides, Ziegler’s been dead for... for thirty-seven—”

“Not even that many hours, kid. You killed him when he was chasing you in that car. I didn’t know about it when I collared you in the Mercer; didn’t know the gal was Fran, but give a case enough cops and they’re bound to fit some of the pieces eventually. Even dumb cops.”

I don’t know. Maybe it was the news that I wasn’t a murderer. Maybe it was just looking at his face, and at Fran; maybe it was my broken arm that made my vision get kind of fuzzy all of a sudden. Somehow I got a handkerchief out and blew my nose and it sounded just like a foghorn at sea. Everybody in the room turned to stare at me resentfully. Even Big Ed Harmon who was cuffed to his chair and submitting to an interne’s cursed instructions. Apparently all that was wrong with Big Ed was a creased scalp.

Slats said, keeping his voice low, “If you hadn’t been such a punk you’d have smelled the frame, Jerry. It’s the old gag, pinning a trick kill on a new recruit so he won’t squawk when he’s really told to do something. Only sometimes it’s a real kill and that’s what I was afraid of. That’s why I wanted you to break out of the racket before it was too late.” He reached down, touched Fran’s head lightly. “I’ve got him a job, kid. Not much dough in it, but it’s the right kind.”

I couldn’t see why he was explaining this to her. They seemed to have something in common that I didn’t know about. I said, “Okay, okay, I’m a punk and I don’t know which end is up. So maybe you’ll tell me how you got wise to so much.”

“Sure,” he said. “I was up here earlier in the evening looking for Big Ed to ask him about Heinie Ziegler. We got a pick-up order from St. Louis on Heinie. An old rap. Well, Ed was still at the office but I saw Senator Delgardo who was waiting. That’s how I knew he’d been here.

“Then we found your wife, and trying to find you we found where somebody had busted out of your hall closet. I figured that might have been Cora at first. Later on the boys bring in a wrecked car and a dead guy named Ziegler who I knew used to work for Big Ed. You were also working for Big Ed. And when I finally woke up after you bopped me there in the hotel — well, I got curious about this sister of yours and got a pretty fair description of Frances, Ed’s wife. It all seemed to tie into Ed, see?”

“Kind of,” I admitted. The interne was working on my busted arm now and I wasn’t feeling so hot.

“Well,” Slats went on, “Ballistics reported that your slug hadn’t killed your wife, but that it had done for Heinie Ziegler. I couldn’t, of course, know that it was Heinie you thought you’d killed before. I just figured it was a similar frame on account of you hadn’t gone to see Kramer at C.B.S. like you promised. Again it sounded like Big Ed’s work.

“Then there was the battle in front of the Mercer. The clerk and the house dick said you’d been snatched. I wondered what had happened to Fran — if it was Fran. It stood to reason that both of you knew something big; something Big Ed didn’t want to spread, and that reminded me of Senator Delgardo who I’d seen here. Anyway, it was a fair guess that somebody would make a try for the gal, so I just waited around till a couple of guys started asking questions of a cabby. Then I followed the two guys out to the Palais and there you are.”

“Like hell I am!” I snorted. “Who did kill Cora, and why’d you let those mugs grab Fran?”

“We’ve got the boys that killed Cora,” he said quietly. “She came to Big Ed with the news that she had you locked up in that closet. She wanted money. He paid her off by sending her back with Heinie Ziegler’s crew and they just dumped her on the way. About Fran: I didn’t have a damn thing but guesses so far. I figured the two mugs would take Fran to where you were, and if I couldn’t do any better I’d hand Big Ed a kidnap rap.”

I grunted. “Well,” I said, “I guess I helped some. I sort of helped wreck Mr. Hutchins anyway.”

“If he didn’t commit suicide,” Slats sneered. “The only thing I can think of you’re good for is for really tough guys to practice on. Just a punk at heart.”

Fran said indignantly, “He is no such thing!”

Slats grinned then, shook his head. “Well, you’re entitled to your opinion. When you’re finally free of Big Ed maybe you can explain the answers to the punk. You’ll probably have to.”

I saw a hot flush creep up around Fran’s eyes and it made me sore. I said, “Hey, you big lug, whadda you mean by that crack?”

“You wouldn’t know,” he said. “You’d never guess — punk.”