Masters of Noir: Volume 3

1.

Ron Jordan saw the relief man coming across Berkeley Street and knew something was up. Jordan was standing in the gore on the Trimount Avenue side, letting the traffic flow by on both sides of him. At three o’clock the traffic was full but not bad. The sun was behaving for June, and Ron Jordan was standing there letting it flow and looking at the girls going away from him in the crosswalk. Then this relief, an old traffic fixture named Dennehy, walked out and gave him a funny look.

“You’re wanted at the station,” said Dennehy.

“What for?”

Dennehy’s face, with its puckered round mouth, had a knowing and maybe pleased shape to it. He shot a veiled glance up at Jordan’s cap, which sat at a jaunty angle like a flying colonel’s; he let his eyes travel slowly down Jordan’s trimness and thought the gesture was explanation enough. “I don’t know,” he said.

“You know. Give, my friend, give.”

“I said I don’t. But the sergeant was talking to the inspectors’ bureau before he sent me to relieve you. When he hung up he said, ‘Send Lover Boy back here, and tell him to hump it.’ “ The relief gave Jordan a sidelong glance. “So maybe you know.”

A girl in the crosswalk crowd said, “Hi, Ron.” She was a chick from the office building on Berkeley below Trimount. Ron said, “Hi, honey,” and answered her smile, and absently watched her tick-tock gait as she walked away from him. At the curb she looked back and smiled again.

Jordan put his whistle in his pocket. “It’s all yours.”

At the station, Sergeant Gillchrist said, “Get down to the inspectors’ bureau. Report to Captain Sline, and hightail it.”

“What for?” Jordan asked, again.

The sergeant put his lips against his teeth and sucked in air. It was a gesture; it meant suction — pull, influence. Gillchrist thought Jordan was finagling a transfer to the bureau. Rookies under a year in the department didn’t get into the bureau, even as clerks. Not without pull. The sergeant thought it was pull, the relief thought Jordan was in trouble over a girl. So neither of them really knew anything.

The inspectors’ bureau was high in the chopped-up warren atop the City Hall building. It was strange territory.

Jordan knew the two men in the captain’s office because they were who they were. He had never seen either up close before. Captain Sline, the broad one, sat behind his desk, his back more rigid than the clerk’s had been. The other one, the little one with the quick, burning, black eyes and the hat on, was Shorty Eglin. Chief Inspector Bernard Eglin of the homicide detail. They said he didn’t like the Shorty and he didn’t like the Bernard; so everybody called him Ben Eglin. He sat slumped and loose as a sleeping child, so very loose that Jordan knew he was doing it because he was even more taut inside than the other man. They were talking when Jordan came in. They looked at him and then at each other, leaving some question suspended in the air between them.

“I’m Jordan. You wanted me?”

“You took your sweet time,” Eglin said.

Jordan looked at him. The pressure was infecting Jordan, too, making him sore at the relief with his puckered mouth, sore at Gillchrist who wasn’t going any higher and so found pull in the promotion of every other cop. Ron was sore at this little man with the raspy voice, the hot eyes and sardonic lips. Jordan said to himself, You’re an ugly runt with a reputation and so you shove rookies around. I ought to call you Shorty to your face. Aloud he said, “I came as soon as I was told to.”

Eglin grunted and looked at the captain. The question was between them again. Jordan wondered if he should have talked hack to the inspector. Eglin had no say-so in traffic and couldn’t touch him. Maybe Captain Sline could, though. Jordan said to himself, Remember your own rules. Keep your nose clean.

Sline turned to the rookie. “So you’re a lady’s man,” he said.

“He don’t look it,” said Eglin. “What’s he got?”

The relief guessed right, then. Jordan was in trouble over some girl. But it didn’t add up. There wasn’t any girl down on him. There wasn’t any girl who had cause to be down on him. He didn’t fool around with the kind that hollered; they were no good for anybody.

Sline said, “Know a girl named Elsa Berkey? Name mean anything?”

“No,” said Jordan quickly. Maybe too quickly, but it was the truth.

“A man named Bart Berkey?”

“No.”

“A man named Joe Crider?”

“If it’s the cigar-store guy, I know who he is. I don’t know him.”

The silence between the two men at the desk started again. Ease worked through Jordan. No one was accusing him. Joe Crider was in jail for investigation of murder. The murder of a cop — Bob Garfield, a young beat patrolman. Joe Crider was the owner of the biggest cigar-store chain in town. Garfield had been found in an alley alongside of one of Crider’s cigar stores not a half-dozen blocks from the City Hall. There’d been a hole in his chest and a .32 slug in his spine.

For two days the papers had been full of it. Station talk centered around it. One drop of blood had put Joe Crider behind bars. One drop of the dead officer’s blood, dripped on the sidewalk an inch beyond the sill of the alley entrance to Crider’s cigar store. Everybody said Garfield must have been killed in the store and carried out that entrance and dumped in the alley.

Now that the captain had brought up Crider’s name, the names of the other two fell in place. Elsa and Bart Berkey, sister and brother, clerked for Crider. They were in jail, too.

The captain said slowly to Eglin. “If it went wrong I’d take the fall, not you.”

“Name another way,” challenged Eglin.

“A little faster footwork out of you and your boys might’ve helped. It might even have uncovered some blood inside that store.”

Eglin’s expression said that didn’t deserve an answer. Jordan wondered about Sline’s statement. No blood in the store? They hadn’t heard about any of this in Traffic.

“Suppose we flub it,” Sline went on. “We flub it and Crider — or somebody — kills young Berkey. We lose our only witness against Crider, unless the girl does know something — and I doubt it.”

“Name another way,” repeated Eglin inexorably. “And if Jordan here is as cute as he thinks he is, he’ll get something out of the dame that’ll be of some value to us. Let the three of them free to roam around. If we’re going to get something on any of them, it’s got to be under cover.”

Jordan didn’t get much of it. But the piece Eglin just recited was plain enough. It didn’t smell good. They needed a cop who was fast with women, and they thought Jordan was their man. They wanted him to con some dame; to be bait for the hook.

It was cheap stuff. Jordan liked women too much for that. It was no go. When they gave him a chance, he’d tell them so.

Eglin looked impatiently at his wrist watch. “Time’s running out,” he said. “Dammit, Frank, we settled this once.”

“I still don’t like it,” the captain said. “Young Berkey knows something and as soon as he walks out of here, his life’s in danger.”

“We gave him his chance to talk. What are we going to do? What do you want us to do, Sline? Tuck him in every night?”

“If there was any other way I wouldn’t touch it. Maybe, if it was anybody but a cop that was killed, I wouldn’t touch it. I don’t know...” His voice trailed off, then came back strong. “Let’s run ’em through. The girl first.”

Eglin shot out of his chair and through a door behind him, yelling somebody’s name as he went. Sline fired up a stubby pipe and looked at the wall, lost in thought. Time was running him to earth; a year, maybe two, and there would be a little retirement ceremony in the chief’s office and Captain Sline would be all done. When it’s that close, big decisions can come hard.

“Somebody’s got me wrong,” Jordan said. “I don’t cuddle tramps.”

“Keep your shirt on,” said the captain.

In a minute Eglin was back. The tension was out of him.

“I still can’t figure what women see in you,” he said to Jordan.

“Maybe he’s the quiet type,” said Sline. “The kind that slips up on their blind side.”

“Maybe he just talks a good game,” said Eglin.

“Maybe,” said Jordan, “you can go to hell.”

The captain looked up thoughtfully. Ben Eglin grinned.

A cop in plain clothes came through the door Eglin had used. He was about ten years older than Jordan; thirty-six, say. Well dressed, round-faced, with that cold expression all the others had.

Eglin spoke to him. “Tague, this is Jordan. He’s the one we picked for the girl.”

Tague seemed to know what was expected of him. He had Jordan follow him into the adjoining room.

Eglin called after Jordan, “Get yourself a good look.”

Tague held the door until Jordan came through, then moved over to its hinged side. He pulled the door toward him until a crack opened between door and jamb on the hinged side.

“This is your box seat,” he said.

He pulled up a chair, motioned Jordan into it and killed the light. Sitting down, Jordan found that by leaning his head to the right he could see through the crack to Sline at his desk, and Eglin beyond.

Jordan heard the captain say, “Garfield was a wrong one. He shouldn’t have been a cop.”

“But he was a cop. A cop on duty.” Eglin was unaccountably sharp.

“I know, I know,” said Sline irritably. “You’re not the only man in the department that feels it.”

Eglin grunted. Silence settled in the next room.

It gave Jordan time to think. He needed it. He was in trouble now, if he hadn’t been before. They were going to burn plenty when he told them no soap. He should have told the captain straight out. The way it sounded, Crider and the other two were going to be turned loose. And then Jordan was supposed to con the girl. If he did, he would be what Eglin and Sline thought he was, a hit-and-run guy with women.

Already, somebody else thought that. Sline’s search through the department looking for a smoothie with dames, and somebody told him Ron Jordan was his man. Well, they had him wrong. He wasn’t a chaser. He didn’t have to chase. Women liked him; he liked women. That was all, and what was wrong with that? He played with women who knew the score. The married ones, and the dewy-eyed innocents, he left strictly alone.

A door was opened in the next room. A voice said, “In here, Miss Berkey.”

He heard Captain Sline say, “Did the matron tell you this is bag and baggage for you?”

“Bag and baggage?” came Elsa Berkey’s low reply. “I don’t understand.”

There’s the tipoff on her, thought Jordan. It was her voice. Deep and husky. Not unpleasant. But that throatiness told it. He didn’t have to look at her to know she was a tramp. Gin and cigarettes did that to her voice. Mostly chain-smoking. It had put callouses on her vocal cords.

“It’s jail talk,” explained Sline. “Means you collect your things because you’re going free.”

She asked quickly, “Does that mean — are you freeing my brother, too?”

“We are,” said Sline.

Ben Eglin said, “Go on, Elsa. Ask us if Joe Crider goes out, too.” He wasn’t polite like Sline. “That’s what’s on your mind, isn’t it?”

“I wondered,” she said.

“He goes out,” said Sline. “All three of you. We can’t hold you any longer without filing a charge, and we haven’t the evidence. You knew that.”

“No,” she said. “I didn’t know that.”

She was lobbing them back quietly; there was something subdued about her that did not fit her voice. Jordan took a look. She was standing before Sline’s desk, legs together, body poised in natural balance. Long red hair that picked up a gleam from the light above her. A regular profile, with high cheekbones shadowing the hallows below, the lips compressed too tight. Something about her puzzled him.

Sline spoke again. “We never intended to file a charge against you. It’s Joe Crider we want. You could have helped us. You didn’t. We have to remember that.”

She pulled her eyes away from Sline’s and sent a quick, careful gaze about the room. Jordan got a glimpse of gray eyes. The voice and the eyes told Jordan enough. He had her pegged. The puzzling thing, the thing about her that Jordan couldn’t see though he knew he was looking right at it — what the devil was it?

“It’s not too late for you to straighten out your story,” said Eglin. “Things have a way of popping up. Suppose we find a witness who saw a woman of your height and build going into Crider’s School Street store at around ten o’clock that night. That would mean you were there when Crider shot Garfield, wouldn’t it?”

She turned a little, studying his bland and ugly face. “I was home,” she said.

Sline broke in, impatient with Eglin. “There’s another matter, Miss Berkey. We’re worried about your brother.”

Her attention came quickly back to Sline. He went on, “If Crider killed Garfield — and he did — your brother helped him. Or at least saw it. You know that. Bart was there, and admits he was there. You say you were not. That would make Bart the only eye-witness who could ever testify against Crider. Crider might want to do something about that.”

They let that soak in, giving her the fixed-stare business with it. This was what they had been leading up to, planting the fear in her.

“We don’t want a second killing,” continued Sline. “We’d like to hold Bart for his own protection. But our hands are tied. You and Bart tied ’em. Now let me give you some advice. Don’t try to leave town, because you might need friends, and we’re your friends whether you know it or not. And stop working for Joe Crider, both of you. It’d just be giving Crider more chance to knife you.”

“But I—” She stopped, then went on coolly, “May I go now?”

“Wait for your brother,” said Sline. “One of the boys will run you both home in a police car. We’re going to deliver you safe. Then you won’t be our responsibility any more.”

She turned and walked out without a word, Jordan’s gaze following her slim hips. He couldn’t tell too much about her age — she might be twenty-five, she might be thirty. And that elusive quality about her, that thing that he was so close to seeing....

In the other room Captain Sline said, “I can’t make up my mind about her.”

“I can,” said Eglin. He was venomous. “Crider’s woman.”

“I don’t know. If she was his woman she wouldn’t be putting in eight hours behind the counter at his store.”

“See here, Frank,” said Eglin. “Why don’t you come out with it?” He was suddenly, harshly explosive. “You and the chief and the commissioners think Garfield was taking. You figure Garfield was knocking down from Crider on his bookmaking. You think he tried to hike the ante and got himself killed for it. You won’t say so because you don’t want the public to hear about a crooked police officer. That’s why you’re bucking me on a cop killer. And you’re all dead wrong!”

“Nobody’s bucking you, Ben,” said Sline mildly. “You’re all steamed up because we’ve got to let Crider go.”

“It won’t wash,” Eglin went on. “You ought to know Crider better than that. He knows how we feel about a cop killer. The last guy in the world he would kill would be a cop, if he used his head.”

“He was using his head,” put in Sline dryly. “He used it so well you couldn’t make a case on him.”

“He’s using it now. But he wasn’t when he shot Garfield. And what does that mean? A cool customer like Crider — what would make him go off his rocker? The dame that just walked out of here! Maybe Garfield was taking; I don’t know. But he didn’t go too far until he tried to take Crider’s girl. Probably she made a play for him. She got Garfield killed, and I’ll bet a month’s pay she was there when it happened.”

The far door opened and a young fellow was pushed in. A kid, really. Jordan figured him to be about sixteen. He was dragging his left leg — a club foot. He came slowly up to the desk.

Sline said abruptly, “Bart, we’re turning you loose.”

“Yeah,” said Eglin. “Take good care of yourself. Lock your door nights.”

Bart Berkey looked from one to the other. He had dark, deepset eyes that turned in upon himself, high cheekbones like his sister, and a weak face. He was scared, of Eglin more than the captain. He pulled jerkily at a cigarette.

“We’re letting Crider loose, too,” said Sline. “He’ll be coming around to see you. What you going to tell him?”

“I—” Bart swallowed.

Eglin didn’t let him get any farther. “You going to tell him you almost cracked? You going to tell him you almost put the whole thing on the line for us? You’re not going to do that, are you, Bart? You know what he would do to you, don’t you?”

It was nice teamwork. The old one-two. Against the girl they couldn’t work it well. But it was working on Bart.

“I told you the truth!” Bart burst out. “I didn’t do anything. I didn’t see anything. Elsa knows I didn’t.”

Jordan saw the glisten of tears. Still, you couldn’t despise him too much. That club foot had beaten him and shaped him; he was just a kid without the stuff to overcome it. Bart hung his head. For him, there was an object of terror somewhere that was more fearful even than Ben Eglin.

Sline punched at him. “Crider is going to worry about you. You’re his soft spot. You’re the one that might let your tongue slip. He’s going to think about that, but one day he’ll make up his mind and start looking for you.”

“It’ll be too late then,” Eglin nodded. “We won’t be around to wipe your nose.” His voice changed, became brutal. “Your sister is waiting for you. Get out!”

Bart Berkey left. There was another wait, during which Sline and Eglin exchanged low-voiced growls. Jordan still had the girl on his mind.

The far door opened again and Joe Crider walked into the room. He was a trim, compact man with a good-humored mouth. A roundish face, not a line in it, matched the gray at his temples. He wore rimless glasses, the lenses cut almost square, reflecting the overhead light, blanking out his eyes, making them shiny apertures without depth. He was smiling when he turned to look across at Sline and down at Eglin. A man sure of himself, sure he had won. But his cigarette was long, newly lighted. He had fired up just outside the door and taken one deep drag to relieve the tension inside of him.

“Well, Inspector,” he said. His words came flat and soft. “Is this good-bye?”

Sline gave the reply. “You go out,” he said. “But don’t go far. We’re not through with you.”

“So?” said Crider. “I get ridden, eh? You make it a bad job and you’re sore, so you ride Joe Crider. How long?”

“It was a cop you killed,” Eglin snapped.

Crider took the hand from his pocket and raised it, palm up. “Why? Why should I want to kill Bob Garfield?”

“Bart Berkey knows,” said Eglin. “And we’ll know when Bart figures out he’s being a chump. He’ll come crawling back to tell us the rest of it. That’s why we ride you, Crider. And if something happens to Berkey, we’re not going to sit on our behinds, we’re going to pin it on you. Just you bear that in mind.”

Ron Jordan got the full force of it, then. Eglin had been systematically setting them all on edge, pitting them one against the other, as a means of making something happen that would break the Garfield killing. And ladies-man Jordan had a noble part to play. He was to be the observer — the buzzard flying overhead. He must con the girl to stay close inside, be in a position to report whatever happened. Jordan saw it all now.

Ben Eglin stared at Crider and played out his perfidy, that might mean the life of Bart Berkey. Crider turned his head to examine the half-open door; the glare on his glasses gave Jordan the queer impression that opaque, depthless eyes were fixed on him. Slowly Crider brought his attention around to Sline, studying him, then to Eglin.

“Let’s stop horsing each other,” he said. “Bart’s a kid. He couldn’t stand up to you. If he had known anything, you’d have got it out of him. Now tell me, why with the cop-pressure off, should he suddenly start talking?”

“That’s right,” said Eglin, ignoring Crider’s question. “He couldn’t stand up to me. You should have seen him cry like a baby and call for his sister when I hammered at him about a woman being in your joint that night.”

Eglin dropped it there, left it to Crider to figure what might have been added but wasn’t. Bart Berkey had almost broken. Eglin didn’t have long enough to work on him. Eglin couldn’t hold him any longer without filing a charge, and Bart didn’t confess enough to make a charge stick. That was what Crider was supposed to think. It was clear, without Eglin coming out and saying it, that Bart was so weak his silence couldn’t be depended on and that he was the kind of a kid who might crack at any time.

Captain Sline stood up. “All right, Crider,” he said. “You can go, now.”

Before the door closed on Crider, he looked back, smiling. The last little trick was his. And maybe all tricks. Jordan couldn’t for the life of him figure out under which one of the three Sline and Eglin had set the keg of dynamite.

This was the time for Jordan to count himself out. They couldn’t touch him for it. There was nothing in the manual that said a traffic cop could be ordered to do a job on a woman.

Crossing toward Sline he said, “I tried to tell you, Captain—”

“Tell it later, Jordan,” broke in Eglin. “Go change to a suit and pack a bag. Then come back to homicide. I’ll be there. You’re moving in across the hall from her tonight.”

Jordan came on. He told himself, Don’t look at Ben Eglin. Don’t look in those eyes or he’s got you. He looked down at Sline’s desk. The ash tray there had two stubs in it. One butt was Bart Berkey’s, the other was Crider’s. If Elsa Berkey were a chain smoker she would have needed a smoke when Eglin was working her over. But she hadn’t smoked. That was the thing that didn’t fit. Her throaty voice was natural.

Sline spoke. “What did you try to tell me, Jordan?”

“Nothing. Only — only you didn’t ask me if I would.”

Eglin came around the corner of the desk. “How long have you been in the department, Jordan?”

“A bit over a year.”

“That’s long enough. You should know when a police officer is murdered, a chunk of you dies, too. You should know if a cop killer ever got away with it, it would be open season on the department for every cheap gunman in town. You should know when a police officer is murdered, the wives of every one of us don’t sleep nights, wondering if their man is next. You wouldn’t think about the wives, would you? You don’t know that kind of women.” The voice sank, mimicking Jordan with a world of contempt, “ ‘You didn’t ask me if I would.’ Godamighty!”

Ben Eglin spun on his heel and stalked out.

In the silence that followed, Captain Sline said, “You’d better run along now and pack.”

2.

Ron Jordan stood in the middle of the strange living room. The couch’s velour was a dirty brown, its nap slicked by time. The wood pieces bore the scars of conflict with a hundred tenants.

He said to himself, How did you get here and what do you do next?

He hadn’t kept his nose clean. That was how he got here. He had got himself tagged at headquarters as a lady killer, and now Ben Eglin was using him. He had to warm up the girl across the hall. That’s what he had to do next. The world was full of floozies who didn’t smoke.

In homicide, an hour ago, Ben Eglin had said, “We shook down the Berkey apartment while we had them here. Found nothing. The one across the hall was empty and we grabbed it. The landlady knows who you are. We’ll have a phone in there by morning. There’s no time tonight to fill you in on background. Come back here in the morning; get it then.”

Jordan had got to the door with his bag when Eglin’s voice reached for him again. “The games you play with that dame are police business, Jordan. You’re going up there to get information out of her. Don’t forget it.”

Odd, how this little runt of a man could make Jordan forget the rule book. Jordan had snarled, “You’re funny. When I want to have fun with a girl, she’ll be one I pick.”

This living room looked down three stories to the street. In front of him, as he stood, was a kitchenette-dinette. On his right, a bedroom. Then a bath. Then another bedroom. Two bedrooms. That might need explaining. Why would he need two bedrooms? He could tell her he had to find an apartment quick, and this was all he could find. Or he could work up a leer and let it answer for him.

He stepped into the kitchenette. He opened the refrigerator aimlessly, seeing the heavy coat of frost around the coils, arriving slowly at an idea. The freezer control was a knob that turned in a half circle from “off” through numerals to five. He worked on the knob for several minutes, and it came off in his hand. He dropped it into a drawer, then went across the hall, smiling.

He rapped four times at her door, trying to make his knuckles talk briskly rather than alarmingly. “Who is it?”

“Your new neighbor,” he said.

Silence again. After a time she repeated, “Who?”

He caught on. It was his voice she was studying. She wanted to hear it again, make sure whether she knew it.

He said quite loudly, “My name is Ron Jordan. I just moved in across the hall and I can’t figure out how to defrost my refrigerator.”

The door opened three inches; a night chain caught it there. Her face was wary and hostile.

“Sorry.” He smiled. “It is kind of late, isn’t it? But I thought maybe you had the same kind of refrigerator as mine and could show me what gadget to turn. I’ve been fooling with it for ten minutes and it’s got me whipped.”

She studied him coldly. He kept his smile, feeling a stiffness in his lips. The great lover — yeah! She was going to close the door in his face.

“Bart,” she called. Then to Jordan, “Just a minute.”

He heard the murmur of voices, then the chain dropped and the door came open. Bart stood behind her, his mouth sullen.

“I’m Ron Jordan,” Jordan repeated, catching her guarded glance down the hall.

“I’m Elsa Berkey. This is my brother Bart. Why didn’t you call the landlady?”

“You know how it is. You start griping the first day you’re in, and you get tabbed as a complaining tenant.” He grinned. “I always wait ’til the second day.”

Still unsmiling, she said, “Come on, Bart.” She closed her door carefully. The night latch clicked again. They crossed and entered behind Jordan.

She took one look in the refrigerator, said, “No wonder. The knob’s gone,” and began rummaging in the drawers. In a moment she came up with it, stuck it on its spindle and turned the control to the “off” position. “There,” she said. “Leave it off ’til morning.”

He said in genuine surprise, “How did you know where it was?”

“Any woman would know.” She had resumed her study of him in this stronger light. Her eyes were gray, under quite dark eyebrows. A hard gray, and suspicious. She said, “You just moved in?”

“Just tonight. I took it yesterday, but didn’t have time to get my stuff over from the hotel. The company transferred me from St. Louis last week. I sell.”

“Sell what?”

“Exterminator chemicals. You know. Terminate the termites. Roust the rats.”

It was moderately safe ground with him. Once he had worked six months for a pest-control company. And it got a small smile out of her.

She said, “Your wife coming out later after you get settled?”

“No wife. No kids. No nothing.”

She looked at Bart through a long, thoughtful silence. When she turned back to Jordan she gave him a smile. “I think we should welcome the new neighbor with a drink.”

The Berkey apartment was identical with his, laid out in reverse. But different. The living room was freshly painted, a soft chartreuse that fought the gloom. Wall to wall carpeting — a dark green. A gay slip cover hid the ugliness of the couch. The one big chair, too. She guided him toward it, saying, “You don’t mind bourbon?”

“Does a fish mind water?”

He couldn’t have been more trite. But she laughed. Her smile said, “You’re handsome and witty and I think I’m going to like you a lot.” He couldn’t figure it. She hadn’t looked this easy to him. Too bad this was strictly police business. She was a trim little schooner, and he liked her jib, too.

Bart Berkey was bothered. He had slumped down at one end of the couch. His eyes were puzzled as they followed his sister.

Jordan said to him, “What do you do?”

“Nothin’ right now.” He spoke resentfully. He didn’t like Jordan’s presence here. Jordan barely noticed. He was thinking. So they took the advice. They’re not working for Crider any more.

Elsa returned with three glasses in her hands. One was a different color; it looked like tomato juice. She handed it to Bart.

Jordan stood up and took his.

She took a sip, smiled at him, and moved around behind his chair to the front window. Jordan started to sit down. But he couldn’t very well sit with his hack to her. He joined her as she raised the window blind.

“Why, it’s raining!” she said.

It wasn’t actually, he saw. The night sky was depositing something less than a shower, something more than a fog. It was enough to make the streets gleam darkly, and to blur the outline of cars a block away. In this apartment-house district there was never enough garage space. He could see at least a dozen cars parked for the night. Ben Eglin might have a couple of men in one of them. They might be watching this window, seeing him, at this moment. Well, they could report to Eglin that he had made the grade.

Working on his bourbon, he wondered if Ben Eglin gave all his men that Fourth of July oration about cop killers? Remembering it, remembering Eglin’s intensity, Jordan felt again a tingling in his nerve ganglia, and resented it. It was like some high-school halfback being hopped up by his coach. If Bob Garfield was taking, he was a crook like any other crook. The department would snare his killer, sure. But they didn’t have to pull a man off traffic to do it.

Bart interrupted his thoughts. He said, “I’m going to bed.”

“Sleep tight, Bart,” said Elsa.

Jordan massaged his chin, thoughtfully. A man’s afraid of an attack, he doesn’t go merrily off to bed. It’d be especially true in the case of a nervous kid like Bart. You’d expect him to be at the window, furtively peeking out, not being able to pull himself away.

Bart stopped at the door of the bedroom nearest the kitchen and sent his sister a questioning look. Jordan saw it, saw the puzzlement that remained on his face as he dragged his foot through and closed the door. Something had Bart scared. But if it wasn’t Crider, what was it? Elsa’s tone with her brother made Jordan smile. Her throaty voice held the gentle reassurance a grownup uses with a small child. He hadn’t seen her give Bart the high sign to get out of the living room. But he knew she had done it.

“Do you know our town?” she asked.

“I’ve been here before,” he said.

“I hate it!” she said vehemently.

“Hate it? Why?”

She brought her gaze around to him, a little off balance, a little confused. “I didn’t intend to say that.” She smiled. That slow, cozy smile again. “You know how it is. Some nights you feel jumpy and restless.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said. He knew some other things, too. All of a sudden he knew. Why she was giving him the business. Why she drew him to the window. Why she held him there with small talk. She thought Joe Crider might be down there on the street. The cops had instilled a strong fear of Crider in her. She wanted Crider to see, if he was down there, that she had a man with her. She had protection for Bart.

It was a laugh. Who was conning who? Jordan hadn’t done anything. He hadn’t had a chance. Not even for an opening pass at her. If he had had two heads, it would have been the same. Protection for Bart. For all he knew, Bart might have gone off to bed because he and Crider had been in on the killing together, and it wasn’t Crider at all who was troubling him.

He left the window and dropped to the couch. Now that he knew all the ground rules, he could relax. He drained his glass as she came across and held it out. “Same size, same color, hm?”

He didn’t get up when she came back with it. “When you get caught up with your chores you can come over and fix up my living room like this.”

“There’s nothing to it,” she said. “Bart did the painting. I bought the slip covers. My kid brother’s awfully handy.”

He reached up with his right hand and after the briefest of hesitations she came down beside him.

“Gray eyes and red hair,” he said. “I’m a sucker for ’em.”

“You are? I like blue eyes in a man. Really dark blue. Yours are dark blue, aren’t they?”

He reached across her shoulders and pulled her to him. Eglin, you picked the right man. He put his mouth on hers. You sure did, Eglin. Then he was thinking, I ought to bite your lips until that cold blood of yours came and made them really red. That blood so cold you think of using your sex to pull in a perfect stranger and put him between a killer’s gun and your punk of a brother.

There was a quick knock at the door.

Elsa broke away and jumped to her feet. Jordan came up, too. The knock was repeated. Bart came out of his bedroom in pajamas and no robe, stood there looking scared.

“Elsa!”

That was a woman’s voice, coming distantly through the door.

“Oh,” said Elsa. She turned toward Jordan, giving a little laugh of nervous relief. She came to him, her handkerchief in her hand, and wiped her lipstick from his mouth. Bart shot a look of pure hatred at Jordan.

Elsa went to the door, calling through it, “Gloria, is that you?”

“Yes, it’s me.”

“Are you alone?”

“I sure am, honey.”

As the door opened, a small, rounded figure burst in. “Oh, Elsa, I came just as soon as I heard they’d turned you—” She saw Jordan and stopped abruptly, her look of compassion turning to a bright, questioning smile.

“Miss Hume,” said Elsa. “Mr. Ron Jordan, our new neighbor.”

“Why, hello there,” said Gloria. She came to him and held up her hand for him to take. She was the cuddly type, curvy at bosom and hip. Brown eyes that were soft and round and innocent didn’t go at all with her opal earrings in their intricate gold setting. She saw Bart and said, “Oh, Bart, did I get you up? I’m awfully sorry.”

“Naw, I was awake,” said Bart.

He didn’t like Gloria, and didn’t mind showing it. Jordan thought, He hates everybody but his sister and himself.

Bart limped back into his bedroom slowly.

Elsa said hurriedly, “Ron just moved in today. He’s from St. Louis.”

“Today? Then he — does he—” Gloria stopped.

Elsa said, again quickly, “Let me get you a drink.”

“No, honey. I can only stay a minute. I just ran in to say hello and to hear about—” She stopped again, making heavy going of it, shooting quick little glances at Jordan. She tried a new direction, “Have you seen Joe since—”

“No,” said Elsa.

“But you’re going to, aren’t you? I mean, honey, you’ve got your job and all. You can’t let something like this get you down. Why, hundreds of innocent people have been locked up and pushed around by policemen! You’re not the—” She stopped and put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, Elsa,” she wailed. “Me and my big mouth.”

She was as deliberate about it, thought Jordan, as a cabbie jumping a signal light. And pretty good at acting, too. The eyes she showed Jordan swam with contrition and self-accusation, all but hiding the sharp curiosity behind them.

Elsa was watching him, too. She said to him defiantly, “A policeman was killed near the cigar store where my brother and I worked. Bart and I were arrested and — and put in jail for two days. They let us go this afternoon.”

Jordan tried for the casual touch. “It happens every day in St. Louis.”

“Let’s not talk about it,” said Elsa.

“That’s what she came for — to talk about it!”

It was Bart. He stood again at his bedroom door, a robe over his pajamas.

“Bard” said Elsa.

“I don’t care, Sis. Why did she have to come? She knows she’s got no business coming here.” His voice rose, riding out of control. “I didn’t tell them anything! I didn’t know anything! That’s what she came for. To find out for him! To find out what I told them.”

Elsa reached him just as his face twisted and the tears came. He backed away from her into his bedroom, pointing at Jordan. “Why is he here, too? Why does he have to be here?”

Elsa followed and closed the bedroom door behind them.

“Poor kid,” said Gloria. “Whatever did the police do to him?”

“Worked him over, I guess. Tough on his sister. We’d better go.”

“Uh-hm,” said Gloria absently, staring at the bedroom door. She took Jordan’s drink from his hand, downed a gulp and handed it back to him. “Say, you walked into something, didn’t you?”

“It beats killing rats.”

That startled her. She said, “Huh?”

Elsa came out. She looked suddenly spent. Yet an expression close to tenderness was on her face fleetingly before she closed Bart’s door behind her. Damn the woman! She wasn’t simple enough.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “He’s—”

“Forget it, kid,” said Gloria. “Your friend Jordan and I will run along.”

Jordan asked, “Is there a night drug store close? I need tooth paste.” It was true. He needed a brush and a razor, too. Always he forgot to pack things.

“The next block down on your right,” said Elsa. She threw a quick glance at Gloria. It was accusing. Hostile, even. She thought Gloria made a fast steal while she was in the bedroom with Bart.

Gloria got it, too. Jordan caught another under-the-eyelids appraisal from her. If it wasn’t in her mind before, it was now. But she said definitely, speaking of herself in the third person and to both of them, “Gloria needs her sleep. Gloria’s headed straight for bed.”

Jordan let Gloria make her goodbye small talk and go out ahead of him. From the hall she said to Elsa, “See you at work tomorrow.”

Elsa Berkey shook her head vaguely. It wasn’t quite no, and it wasn’t yes.

As Jordan passed Elsa he said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

“No.” She hesitated, fixing her gaze on the knot of his tie. “Ron... I’m not...” She stopped, started again, “Come to dinner tomorrow night, will you?”

“Sure. I’ll bring steaks. Three filets,” he said, and smiled.

Walking down the hall he thought, You poor fish, what got into you? She would spend her last dime for the finest steaks in town just to get you back. All she was thinking of was little boy Bart’s future protection.

Gloria was waiting in front of the automatic elevator. It clanked up as Jordan arrived. They entered and he pushed the down button.

She said, “What did you mean by that rat-killing crack?”

“That’s the business I’m in, baby. Not human rats — the things that crawl. You got any you want killed?” He put a finger under her chin, lifting her face. “Pretty baby,” he said, and kissed her. All in line of duty, he thought, while his lips stayed on hers. Eglin wouldn’t mind. He’d okay his conning Gloria.

The elevator came to a stop. She said, “I’m not that easy.”

That was it. That was what Elsa had started to say just as he was leaving, then didn’t. She didn’t because she knew he wouldn’t swallow it. She had kissed him back. And Gloria had kissed him back. And Bart thought Joe Crider had sent Gloria. Things were whirling merrily.

Gloria left him at the drug store. And as Jordan made his purchases, he thought of the razor ads in which sexy gals ran their hands ecstatically over the freshly shaven faces of men. This assignment did require that he look his best, he told himself, and then felt annoyance that he should feel the need for this justification. The thought came and he couldn’t dismiss it, that dead men were shaved and lotioned before being deposited in their coffins.

3.

Ben Eglin had a long, narrow cubbyhole off the homicide detail room.

“They’re both in the apartment,” said Jordan, “or were when I left this morning. And some salesman or other came.”

Eglin nodded. “Who was the other girl you mentioned?”

“Name’s Gloria Hume. Bart thought Crider sent her. I do, too. Last night everybody was conning everybody. It was great.”

Eglin wrote down the name. He pushed across an open folder file. It was almost two inches thick. “Read it,” he said. “Take it out in the detail room.”

Jordan picked up the file. He felt Eglin’s eyes on him steadily. It was a somehow different stare, not pushing or demanding. Jordan stared back resentfully. To his surprise Eglin dropped his gaze.

Looking down at the desk, Eglin said, “How did you manage it so fast with the Berkey girl?”

Jordan grinned at Eglin’s male curiosity. “Trade secret,” he said.

In the detail room he took the first empty desk he found. There were a half-dozen men around, some on the telephone, some writing. Eglin’s detail. They knew who he was and what he was doing. And they seemed contemptuous of him.

He opened the folder and riffled through the file. This was his first look at a murder file. Report of the coroner’s deputies. The autopsy surgeon’s report. Photographs. Measurements on the position of Bob Garfield’s body. A question and answer statement of the citizen who looked down the alley by chance and first saw the body. Maps. Measurements on the interior of Crider’s cigar store. Ballistics on a .32 calibre bullet. A pathologist’s finding on submitted samples. Reports by Inspectors Tague, Barry, Furlong, Maloof; there were others. And statements. A great sheaf of question and answer statements, free and voluntary, by Crider, Elsa Berkey, Bart Berkey and somebody named James Lombard. All taken by Bernard Eglin, chief homicide inspector.

At the end of an hour Jordan was only half finished but he had, for the first time, a physical picture of the murder scene in his mind. And he began to understand a little of Ben Eglin’s rage.

Crider called it Store No. 1 because he started there. It fronted on School. Alongside it ran Romar Terrace, which was an alley dignified by a name. The store had two rooms. The front was typical — cigars, cigarettes, candy and gum racks, magazine racks, three pinball machines, a claw machine, shaving gear, paper back novels. The other room was directly behind. Shelves for storage. A desk in a corner that Crider sometimes used. A long table. And five telephones. A side door opened from this back room onto the alley. You stepped directly out to the narrow sidewalk. There, in the gutter opposite the door, Bob Garfield’s body lay. And there, on the sidewalk an inch beyond the sill, the one drop of Garfield’s blood was found.

Garfield lay on his back, stretched at length. His cap was a foot from his head. His service revolver was holstered and unfired. Blood stained his blouse around the single chest wound. But there was no blood beneath him. No blood around him. No blood anywhere except that single drop. Garfield had not died there at all.

There was no blood in the store, anywhere — floors, walls, furniture or stock — according to the pathologist. Jordan could see in the reports the mounting fury of Eglin as he sent his men back to search again and again. No blood — and without it no proof, beyond that single drop, that Garfield had been killed in the store and his body carried out to the alley.

Jordan turned to the question and answer statements. Crider first. They had found him in bed at two that morning. His statement was taken at three. He was cool and seemingly frank. No, he owned no gun. Yes, he was there that night. He made it a habit to drop around to his stores just before closing time. Bart Berkey was just shutting up shop when Crider reached Store No. 1. Crider checked the cash register. They turned off the lights and said good night at the door. That was all. A quiet night. He didn’t see Bob Garfield. Or anyone else.

Those five telephones were his bookie business — he wouldn’t try to kid Inspector Eglin. His clerks took horse bets at every store except No. 1. They passed them along by phone to the back room of Store No. 1. James Lombard took them there. No, Lombard was not there that night. He left at seven.

Pay ice to Bob Garfield? Inspector Eglin should know better than that. The clerks were paid to take their chances. Sometimes they got knocked over by the department. Look at the arrest records; they prove it. The business wasn’t worth protection money. Garfield was clean, and a friend. Was Garfield interested in Elsa Berkey? Maybe. Who wouldn’t be? She was a good-looking red-head. Me? No, thanks — a smart man never fools around with his own women employees.

That was the meat of Crider’s first statement. Underneath it was another, and another. And yet another. Eglin wouldn’t give up. But Crider’s fourth story didn’t vary from his first.

Next, Elsa Berkey. She was more terse than Crider. She volunteered nothing. She answered carefully. Started working for Crider two years ago. Before that a singer in a night club. That throaty voice should do all right with a blues song. Six months ago she got Bart a job with Crider. She opened Store No. 1 in the morning, Bart closed it at night.

She knew Bob Garfield. She had gone out with him. How many times? Three, perhaps four. They were just friends. Did he mention the telephones in the back room? No. Positive, Miss Berkey? Of course. No, there was nothing between her and Crider. There never had been. He was her employer.

Come now, Miss Berkey. The facts are against you. You admit you got Bart his job. Bart isn’t what you’d call good material for a cigar-store clerk. Crider would never have hired him if there hadn’t been something in it for Crider.

There was a bargain, but not that kind. A pretty girl helped business in a store where the customers were men. She knew hundreds of them by their first names. They bought there because of her. Bart had a good mind. But he was — well, he lived in a shell. She knew she had to make him break out of it. She had to make him meet people, deal with people. She asked Crider to put him to work. Crider refused. She quit. She thought that would make Crider give Bart a job. It did. Bart got the job on the condition that she come back.

Jordan stopped reading. She used her sex, all right, to get Bart a job. But it was the way she said, not the way Eglin said. It was just like last night, he thought, when she used her sex on me in an attempt to protect Bart. Everything she does is for Bart.

Then he knew what had happened to him. He had started believing her. Why? Maybe it was the cool, honest way she used her sex, without pretense or hypocrisy. He went back to the file, reading rapidly. There wasn’t much more. She was in bed when Bart came home that night. She heard him but she did not look at the clock.

Ban Berkey’s fear came through the very first words of his first statement. The stenographer taking it down had asked him to speak louder. Eglin had been reassuring. Eglin told him he had nothing to fear.

Ban was telling Crider’s story — the exact same story. Eglin had turned harsh. A fourth statement had been taken that night. A fifth at nine the next morning. Eglin was pitiless. A sixth and last had been taken yesterday. The time was just one hour before the old relief, Dennehy, had walked out into the intersection at Berkeley and Trimount and told Jordan he was wanted at the station.

As Jordan dug into this last statement the cold words took on tension and the scene came alive. He could see Eglin leaning forward, pinning the frightened Bart to the chair with those eyes.

Q: Your sister’s no good, Berkey. She messes up men. You going to let her go on getting you in trouble all your life?

A: You’ve got no right to say that.

Q: No right. Then let’s say she’s not. Let’s say she is a good girl but she was just having a little fun. But it got a man killed. Do you go to church, Bart?

A: Sometimes.

Q: Do you think a man has a right to lie about murder even to protect his own sister?

A: It wasn’t... She didn’t, Mr. Eglin. Oh, why don’t you leave me alone!

Q: I’ll leave you alone when I get the truth. Let’s start all over. You were there. Bob Garfield was there—

A: No.

Q: Bob Garfield was there. And your sister was there. Garfield and your sister were in that back room together. Crider came in and caught ’em in a clinch and shot Garfield.

A: Elsa wasn’t there!

Q: But Garfield was there, wasn’t he?

A: I didn’t say that!

Q: All right, Bart. Let’s leave your sister out of it. Let’s forget your sister. Let’s say she wasn’t there. That takes away your only excuse for not telling the truth.

A: I don’t know what you mean.

Q: I mean I’m giving you one last chance to tell the truth. I’m putting it up to you in a way that you don’t have a reason in the world for not coming clean. And if you don’t I’m going to send you to the penitentiary as an accessory when I do get the facts, so help me! Now then. You were there. Garfield was there. A woman was there—

A: No!

Q: A woman was there. You don’t have to give her a name, Bart. Elsa was home in bed, remember. A woman was there. Let’s say for now she was a woman you never saw before and couldn’t recognize in court—

A: No! I can’t! I can’t!

Q: The truth, Bart. Quickly now, the truth. A woman was there—

A: I can’t! You don’t know what it would mean. Elsa! I want my sister!

Jordan closed the file. A cold lump seemed to be revolving slowly in his stomach. A woman had been there.

He walked in and laid the file on Eglin’s desk. The chief inspector looked up.

“Gloria Hume,” said Eglin. “Here’s the dope on her. Clerk in Crider’s store at Avery and Mason. Been with him a year. Works from two in the afternoon till ten-thirty. Lives in an apartment five blocks from the Berkey’s. What do you make of it?”

“Avery and Mason. That’s a block south and a block east of the No. 1 store. Was it on Garfield’s beat?”

“It was.”

“Then she was the one.” Eagerness filled Jordan. The cold lump began to dissolve. “She was at Store No. 1 that night. She got Garfield killed.”

“Possible. But not likely.”

“Why not? How often has Crider been seen going in her apartment? Has he bought her any jewelry and stuff? Has she ever been seen with Garfield?”

“Are you beginning to fancy yourself a detective, Jordan? We’ll check those things as a matter of routine... No. You’ve let yourself forget the main fact. Bart wouldn’t lie if his sister was in the clear.”

“Maybe he didn’t lie. How about last night? Crider sent Gloria up there as sure as you sent me.”

“Probably. Could be he just wanted to know if the Berkeys were coming back to work. So he sent someone who knew them. Why are you suddenly so interested in clearing Elsa?”

“I just feel that you’re dead wrong, Inspector,” said Jordan. He spoke slowly. It was almost as though he were talking to himself, arriving at a final judgment he had long delayed. “She’s no better than she ought to he, but still she’s honest and — Well, I’ve never met a girl like her.”

Eglin gave him a long, thoughtful look. “That’s the way it is? First Garfield. Now you. One dead cop isn’t enough. Suppose you go back to your traffic corner.”

“No.” He spoke without thinking. That was what he had wanted once, but not now. “You assigned me to get the low-down on her. And I did. So?”

“Young cops,” said Eglin. He spoke bitterly. “The Lord save the public from young cops.”

Jordan felt annoyed. “Don’t you want an honest report?”

Eglin said, “Where do you carry your gun?”

Jordan tapped his left armpit, looked puzzled.

Eglin nodded. “If you have to get it out, keep the Berkey woman in front of it. As a favor to me, Jordan.”

4.

The steaks were nicely broiled. The meal was a man’s meal, and relaxing. Even Bart’s presence didn’t spoil it. Elsa had probably done some talking to her brother since last night, told him that Ron Jordan from St. Louis might stand between him and a bullet.

During dessert abruptly Bart got up and started limping around the room. Something had him scared. It was working on him now.

“Bart, listen—” began Jordan. He stopped short, aware he had almost given himself away. He had almost told Bart to stop worrying.

He blurted, “You wash the dishes, Bart, and I’ll dry. We’ll show Elsa we appreciate good cooking, huh?”

“I’ll do them,” said Bart shortly.

Elsa sent Jordan a warning glance: Let Bart do them. It’s something to occupy his time. He needs that.

She cleared the table, then came and sat beside Jordan on the couch. He took her hand; she pulled it away.

So that was the way it was going to be. He decided not to waste any time. “You’re not what?” he said.

“I don’t understand?”

“Last night as I was leaving, you were anxious to tell me that you were not something or other.”

She answered quietly, “I’m not a kindergarten teacher any more. But I was once — for a year.”

“Why did you quit?”

“Do you know what a school teacher’s salary is?” She looked steadily into his eyes. “I’m no sweet and innocent young thing, Ron. You saw that last night.”

He said, with a gentleness that surprised himself, “I want to hear it.”

“The starting salary for a probationary teacher wasn’t enough for two. I made more as a nightclub singer, but not enough more. So I found a job where I waited on men and — used my looks to make selling easy and profitable. Until—” She dropped it there, smiling. “You see?”

“I see,” he said. He looked at her eyes and marveled that he had ever thought them hard. He saw that the maternal instinct in her held the quality of fierceness: Bart was the kindergarten class that was denied her by whoever determined the low salaries paid to teachers.

She expected him to walk out now. It was plainly there in her expression.

Elsa said, “Ron?”

“Yes?”

“That trouble I told you about — the policeman who was murdered. It’s not over. Bart knows something he hasn’t told.”

She was confiding in him, and he thought of Eglin’s crack about young cops. “What?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Bart won’t tell me what it is. He’s terrified and — and I am, too.”

“Why don’t you go to the police?”

“I would but the man who was killed — I went out with him a few times. Bart is — well, you’ve seen. He’s dependent upon me, and jealous. He didn’t like this man, just as he doesn’t like you. What if...” Her mouth trembled. “He couldn’t have. He’s just a lonely and wretched boy without anyone to turn to but me. There are dark places in his mind but not that kind. I know he couldn’t have helped...”

The whisper dropped away to nothing. She did not need to finish. Jordan knew the rest of it. Did Bart help Joe Crider kill Garfield? That was what Eglin believed. That was what Elsa feared. He wondered if Bart had done the job himself. That would explain why he was not afraid of being attacked last night, his present troubled conscience.

She said quietly, “I’ve been using you, Ron. When you were a stranger I could do it and it didn’t bother me much. Now I know you and I can’t any more. You must leave. There’s danger here.”

He told himself that maybe she wasn’t really trying to get rid of him. Maybe this was a more subtle play for his aid. She had adroitly taken the sex out of the situation; now she was appealing to his manhood. Angrily, he pushed away the thought. He was getting as bad as Ben Eglin.

“What kind of danger?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “But the man we worked for—”

She stopped when Bart came out of the kitchen.

“What is it, Bart?” asked Elsa.

“Nothing,” he said defiantly.

“Bart, I’ve got an idea,” said his sister. It was astonishing how soothing that husky voice could be. “Tomorrow you can start painting my room.”

Bart straightened up. Animation came into his face. “Can I, Sis?” he said. He suddenly seemed a lot younger than he actually was. “Swell! I’ll paint it that celadon green you like. I’ll need a—” He stopped, his face unaccountably stricken.

Jordan caught Bart’s tortured expression, wondered what Bart could possibly need that would affect him in this way.

Elsa hadn’t noticed. She explained to Jordan, “Bart loves house-painting. He’s good, too.” Her pride was very apparent. “The owner of the store where we worked bought him some supplies and was going to let him paint the entire store. But then the — the trouble came up.”

Jordan sat quite still, on the verge of discovery. Bart had been about to paint the store. Crider had bought him the supplies; they should have been in the store that night. But there was no word of painting supplies in those reports in the murder file. No listing of paint, or brushes... What else would a painter need? A ladder, a canvas to spread on the floor — That was it! A waterproofed canvas.

Elsa, Jordan saw, had not finished her speech extolling Bart. Bart was always making or fixing something. That cedar flower box, he’d put it together just out of scraps. By laying the living room carpet, he’d saved them the thirty-six dollars that the carpet men wanted to charge for the job. Just yesterday he was puttering with the carpet, hammering some nails in, though he’d finished with that job sometime ago. And there was a lamp shade that never—

Jordan got up, forcing himself to be casual as he took Elsa’s hand again and led her to the door.

“I’ll be back,” he said. “Won’t be long. Just a little while.”

He felt sorry for her because of Bart. He felt sorry for himself because of what his knowledge would now compel him to do to her and her brother. He could not leave her like this. He leaned forward to kiss her, but she turned her head aside.

“You don’t have to do that,” she said.

To do a complete Judas job, he thought bitterly, the kiss was called for. “We’ll save that for later then,” he said, knowing that there would be no later.

He closed the door and stood there until he heard both night lock and chain slip into place. In his own apartment he flicked on the light and strode to the front window. He beat a path between the window and the telephone, trying to decide what to do. He knew he had no choice. He must pass on to Eglin, at once, the discovery that he had made. Eglin would want to send men searching for a house painter’s drop cloth stained with the blood of Bob Garfield.

Jordan started back toward the telephone. What if Crider had burned the canvas? But that would not have been so easy. Anyway, if he had, the burning would have left traces — ash or smell — that Eglin’s men would never have missed. No, the canvas was hidden somewhere. If they could find it—

“Hello, Ron,” said Gloria Hume. She stood in the doorway, smiling. She walked on in. “Nobody answers at Elsa’s, but the lights were on when I came up the street. Do you know what’s the matter?”

“Hi, baby!” Jordan had to get her out and make his phone call. He took her arm and turned her around. “They’re home. Go knock again.”

She let him lead her only a couple of steps. “Am I getting the bum’s rush?”

“No, baby. I’ve got to talk on the telephone. Private talk.”

“You’re a strange one, Ron.” Her full, red, over-painted lips pouted. “I wouldn’t have come in, but I thought—”

She said the rest of it with her eyes. She said she thought he would like having a pretty girl walk into his apartment without knocking. She said something else with her eyes, too, that she didn’t intend him to see. She said she wouldn’t stand for a man not to rise to the lure she offered.

Standing there studying Gloria Hume, Jordan remembered how Eglin had ridden him, accusing him of trying to play detective. All he was in Eglin’s eyes was a lady killer with merely enough brains to be a traffic cop. If he told Eglin to pick Crider up again on the basis of what he knew, he’d really ride him.

“Didn’t I tell you that you were a pretty doll?” Ron put one arm around Gloria and pulled her to him. The pressure of her lips were not eager. “What’s this? Suddenly, you’re a marble statue.”

“Go on to your old telephone,” she said. “I’ll go and shut the door behind me.”

“Baby!” He drew it out so that it expressed hurt and pleading and had an underpinning of schmaltz. And at once he started nuzzling at her fleshy, powdered throat. “Who said anything about a phone?” He had to find that paint canvas on his own. No better starting place than with chubby, cuddly Gloria. “Am I forgiven? How about a drink?”

A smile came to her lips, seeped into them. She wriggled coyly. “You hurt my feelings, you did.”

“Like they say, you always hurt the one you love.”

She gave him a wet peck on the cheek for that. Before leaving her for the bottle he still had in his suitcase, he gave her a squeeze. If you’re playing the part of a lover boy, he told himself, you play it. He brought the drinks from the kitchen to the couch, where she sat waiting, obviously for more than a drink... The smooching and the hand-roaming was interspersed with tugs at the scotch. He tried to keep her drinking steadily, gambling that she had less tolerance for the scotch than he had.

Gloria cuddled to him. “St. Looie man,” she said.

“Rat killer.”

“No. You’re too damn sweet for that.”

“Let me freshen your drink.” He bent for the bottle on the floor in front of them, but her arms were around his neck. “Hey, baby, let me get to that bottle. Come on—”

She shook her head. She put her lips to his. Suction lips, Jordan thought. And he wondered how in the hell he was ever going to get any information out of her. Judging by the progress he was making, as a detective, he deserved to be in traffic.

“What’s between you and this Bart across the hall?” he asked. Pulling it cold out of the hat. “That young kid’s got it bad for you.”

She laughed; the soprano trill let him know she was flattered.

“Elsa told me. Said he tossed in his sleep. Gloria. Gloria. All through the night — out of his sleep — he keeps calling your name.”

“Men all over town do that,” Gloria said, making a wide, drunken gesture with her arm.

“He’s young, but he’s a handy man. You know. He can make anything. But you’re the one exception, baby.”

Gloria giggled.

“And he paints. Houses. Anything. Wants to paint a room for his sister, but he needs this big canvas thing that you put down on the floor—”

She reacted to that. A shot of electricity wouldn’t have had more of an effect. She sat poker-straight, her arms came from around Jordan’s neck. Alert, no longer drunk.

“What’s the matter, baby?” said Jordan.

She didn’t answer, didn’t move, sat glaring at him.

“Seems Bart lost this canvas,” he gripped Gloria’s wrist hard, thinking to hell with subtlety. “And he needs it now. Would you know where—?”

The hard jerk of her arm didn’t free her wrist. “Who are you?”

If the canvas was destroyed, Jordan thought, she wouldn’t be taking on so. And out of nowhere he remembered something — remembered Elsa saying that Bart had been fussing with their living room carpet, though he’d put that carpet down some time ago.

“You’re a cop!” Her accusation was venomous. With an abrupt, savage threshing of her arm, she freed herself from Jordan’s grip.

Jordan’s hand groped to recover its hold, but Gloria had sprung back from the couch and stood facing him. Her heavy breasts rose and fell with her hard breathing. The cleavage accentuated their flaccid heaviness. From her bosom, she drew a small automatic, as Jordan arose slowly from the couch.

All the time that canvas was under the carpet, he thought, right across the hall.

“I knew you was a cop! I knew you was a filthy cop right along!”

She moved carefully to the phone. She kept her eyes on Jordan as she dialed...

5.

Crider moved across to Gloria as soon as he came into the room and took the automatic from her. As the depthless stare of the man’s square lenses fixed on him, Jordan told himself that Ben Eglin would be furious with him. He’d flubbed it. That was the word Captain Sline had used that day.

“Hand over the gun, Crider,” Jordan said. “You’re all done.”

“You know me?” The blank eyes studied him. “You are a cop.”

“I told you!” Gloria wailed.

“Shut up, Gloria,” said Crider.

“I told you, Joe,” Gloria cried again. Her mind was fixed rigidly on that one idea, clinging to it as though it absolved her from all guilt. “He said he was a rat killer. I knew he was a phony.”

Jordan ached to reach for the revolver in his armpit, but his hands down at his sides seemed a million miles away. He heard a sob from Gloria.

Crider had used her to get hold of Garfield in some fashion. Jordan was sure of it — as sure as he was that Gloria, and not Elsa, was there the night Garfield had died. She was a creature who could not tolerate indifference in any man, yet used any man she got her hands on. She had seen murder once. She thought she was going to witness it again.

Yet there was something Eglin had said: Crider was too smart to kill a cop in cold blood. Eglin was right. That was why Crider had not yet pulled the trigger. Crider was trying to figure a way out.

A warning cry came out of Gloria, mingling with the voice of Elsa. She stood at the door, with Bart behind her. “Ron!” Elsa cried.

Crider fired once — an unintended shot — as he spun; reflex pulled the trigger. The bullet thudded into the wall to Jordan’s left. Ron got his pistol half out before Crider twisted back. Jordan felt a burning sting at his shoulder and then the pain came. His gun was falling and he was falling. He was hit. Crider had fired a second time.

He heard Elsa call his name again, and a strangled cry from Bart. Bart flung himself blindly at Crider, half-jump, half-stumble, on the twisted foot. But it took Crider by surprise. Bart hit him, and they went down.

Elsa reached Jordan as he was trying to push up from the floor. Ben Eglin was there, too, flinging himself at the tangle of bodies. Jordan saw the automatic skid across the floor, saw Bart push it aside. Eglin stood, pulling Crider to his feet.

Eglin hit Crider once, hard, knocking him into the arms of the big, cold-eyed cop who had followed Eglin in. The big cop held him away and measured him, then struck. Crider slammed to the floor.

Gloria sat on the floor near the door, her hands over her face. Bart rolled over and sat up. Elsa looked with tragic face from Bart to Jordan where he stood weaving. When Bart got to his feet she came to Jordan and guided him to the couch, saying softly, “Ron. Oh, Ron.”

“Hey!” Eglin hollered to Jordan, “You’re shot!” He turned to the big cop. “Call the ambulance.”

Bart rushed to his sister. “Crider was going to kill you,” he sobbed. “If I told, he was going to kill you. Even if he went to prison and couldn’t do it, he was going to have somebody kill you for him. I couldn’t tell!”

“Well, I’ll be—” said Eglin. He walked around Elsa and Bart and began taking off Jordan’s coat, very gently. The big cop was back; he cut away Jordan’s shirt, compressed a wad of it against the small hole. “You can be glad that wasn’t a thirty-eight or a forty-five slug.”

Gloria got over on her hands and knees and crawled to the door.

“Not yet, sister,” said Eglin. He went to her and pulled her to her feet and sat her in a chair.

Jordan said, “Bart, tell me how you happened to get hold of the canvas from that back room floor?”

Bart still held onto his sister. He looked defiantly at Eglin. “I had to hang onto it. If I didn’t, it — it would end with my sister being killed.”

“Suppose you tell us about it,” said Eglin.

“I can tell you some of it,” said Jordan. “Gloria was there that night, not Elsa. And when Garfield was shot, he was standing on a canvas that Bart had put down in the back room, because he was getting ready to paint the room. That right, Bart?”

Bart nodded.

“I know you’re a smart cop, Jordan,” growled Eglin. “But you weren’t there, Bart was. I want him to tell it.”

Bart Berkey was gaining confidence. He stood away from his sister but spoke to Jordan, not Eglin. “Mr. Crider and Gloria were there first. Then Garfield came in. He had a funny sort of look on his face. I don’t think they expected him, the way they acted. They went in the back room and closed the door. I heard Gloria’s voice. And Garfield’s. He was angry. Then I heard a shot and I ran in—” Bart stopped and looked uncertainly at the unconscious Crider.

Eglin said, “Did you see the gun?”

“Mr. Crider had it. He gave it to Gloria and told her to walk a few blocks away and call a taxi and go home.”

Eglin walked over and stood in front of Gloria. “All right, Gloria,” he said. “It’s your turn.”

She looked at Crider. “He made me!”

“He made you what?”

“He made me go out with Bob. I told him it would get us all in trouble.”

“Stop sniveling. You played up to Garfield. What for?”

“To get him to leave the bookie business alone.”

“Garfield was taking from Crider and spending it on you. Was that it?”

“That’s the way you said it was.”

Eglin cut at her coldly. “You corrupted a young cop with that body of yours. Stall again with me and I’ll see that you have no chance to turn state’s evidence. You’ll go to trial right alongside Crider.”

She shrank down in the chair. “He made me, I told you.”

“Out with it now. What happened that night?”

“Bob said he was looking for us to tell us he was through. Through with Joe and — and through with me. He ordered Joe to take out all the phones. Joe accused him of trying to hike the ante and laughed at him. He knocked Joe down and started to knock him down again. That was when Joe shot him.”

“That’s enough,” said Eglin. “We’ll put the rest in writing.” He turned away from her, then came back. “One more question,” he said slowly. “Was Garfield trying to hike the ante?”

“No,” said Gloria wearily. “He wasn’t a bad guy. He was going to turn in his badge.”

“All right, Bart,” said Eglin. “Suppose you button it up for us. What happened after Gloria left?”

“Mr. Crider moved his car around into the alley by the side door. I–I tried to run then, but he caught me. He said he would kill Elsa if I didn’t tell the story he gave me. And he ordered me to get rid of the paint canvas. Then he made me help him carry the body to the car. He was going to take it — I don’t know where. We got the body out of the door and then — then I couldn’t stand it any more. I dropped the feet and ran. But I came back because of Crider’s threat. I’d seen the blood on the canvas; so I got it and the paint and stuff. I was too scared to try and get rid of the canvas, afraid I might not do a good job and Elsa’d be killed because of it. So I hid it — under our living room carpet.”

Elsa was half tearful, half angry. “Bart, you — why didn’t you tell me?”

Eglin looked at her. In any other man his expression would have been called shame. In Eglin it was sheepishness.

Crider was beginning to stir, with the big cop standing over him. There was a bit of irony here, thought Jordan. Crider had understood Bart Berkey thoroughly, had seen that a threat to kill Elsa would terrify Bart into silence where a threat to kill Bart himself would not. But that same threat in the end had done for Crider. When Jordan was shot and Elsa ran to him, she put herself in front of Crider’s gun. In that moment her brother lost all his fears and turned from a mouse into a tiger.

Eglin said, “Having Crider’s wire tapped wasn’t such a bad idea. We’d never have got here otherwise. Sometimes police routine is worth something.”

Eglin stood before Elsa. “Jordan here is supposed to be quite a terror with the women,” he said. “I sicked him on you. He was right about you and I was wrong. Not just wrong. I’ve never been so wrong about anybody in my life.”

Elsa didn’t reply right away. She gave Jordan a long, enigmatic look. When she returned her attention to Eglin she was smiling coolly. “Yes, Inspector.”

She had not quite forgiven him, Jordan thought. When a man thinks a woman is a tramp, and she finds it out, he is on the hook with her for a long, long time. But Jordan wasn’t sore at him any more. Jordan had looked down the barrel of a killer’s gun in line of duty. He understood that special hatred that Ben Eglin had for cop killers. He had it, too, now.

Two white-coated men came in, one carrying a bag, the other a collapsed stretcher. The one with the bag clucked over Jordan, the other spread the stretcher on the floor. Jordan felt good. He felt tough. He didn’t feel like a rookie. He decided he would walk out. The two men caught him as he fell.

“That’s shock,” explained the one with the bag. “Puts rubber in your legs.”

Elsa picked up his coat. “Bart, you stay with Inspector Eglin.”

She did not add that she was going with Jordan. She just walked out beside the stretcher and climbed in back of the ambulance as though it were her unquestioned place. Jordan lay back and watched the shape of her smile on him as the ambulance swayed through the streets. He had an odd feeling that his fancy-free days were over.