He couldn't count the sharp explosions; in the small space the noise was deafening. Blue flame pierced the window shade, which jumped crazily in the blur of shots. Johnny found himself on his knees as he listened to the slugs tearing up his mattress, and then his ears tingled with the quiet. On his belly he snaked across the floor; he reached up and grabbed the bottom edge of the smoldering shade and yanked it completely off the window. He tightened against another fusillade, but there was silence. He could smell the shade burning at the edges of the bullet holes, and he ground out the creeping edges of fire with his palms.
He rose cautiously and angled a look out at the fire escape. There was no movement in the night; he leaned forward by slow degrees, and verified that the fire escape was empty. A flutter caught his eye; he strained to make out the object-paper? — which stirred lightly in the after-sundown breeze as it appeared to be caught on the iron handrail.
His eyes swam from the intensity of his stare, but he could see no details on the flapping material. In stockinged feet he went lightly to the closet and fumbled out two coat hangers. Back at the partially raised window he listened to the silence in the outside world. It was not silent in the hotel; already he could hear noises in the corridor. He had to move and move quickly.
He set himself, and in one quick lunge reached out the few feet with the extended coat hangers, trapped the lightweight material on the handrail between them, and pulled it back into the room. His fingers told him it was cloth; in the darkness he could make out no details, and he wanted no light in that room. Hurriedly he put on his shoes, shoving the cloth in his pocket. He opened his room door carefully and eased out into the corridor. Once out he ran for the fire door, paying no attention to the curious heads in the open doorways.
On the first landing he stopped and pulled the piece of cloth from his pocket; he looked down for an instant at a patch-pocket, apparently torn from a black-and-white checked jacket, and jammed it back in his pocket. He raced down five flights of stairs, caroming off walls on the sharp turns. He burst down off the mezzanine through the lobby, and in the foyer he saw them, between the inner and outer glass doors.
Mike Larsen whirled as Johnny rushed in, his lips a dark gash in his white face. His staring eyes were locked blindly upon Johnny's face; at his elbow Lorraine Barnes' hypnotized glare was fixed rigidly on the ugly, black automatic in Mike Larsen's right hand.
CHAPTER 15
“GLAD you got the gun away from her, Mike,” Johnny-said casually to the little tableau.
Mike Larsen's voice was harsh. “We've gone a little bit beyond that foolishness, Johnny. A little bit beyond.” He looked at Lorraine Barnes, and Johnny looked, too. For the first time since he had known her the iron facade was cracked; her eyes were enormous. She swallowed, hard, and her voice was breathless.
“He said… Mike said-”
She swallowed again, and Johnny anticipated her. “That he'd killed me? His intentions were fine.” He looked carefully at Mike Larsen, who moved back two paces, the negligently held gun equidistant between Johnny and Lorraine. Johnny wondered how long they could stand there a dozen feet from the street without interruption.
Mike must have wondered, too. He glanced out to the sidewalk; he's made up his mind, Johnny thought suddenly. He's over most of the shock; he's going to play the hand out. Mike's voice confirmed this in the next breath; he spoke almost normally. “Outside. My car's across the street. Be careful. Both of you.”
Like an automaton Lorraine Barnes pushed through the outer glass doors. With the unwinking eye of the gun upon him Johnny followed and, on the sidewalk, breathed in the summer night's dry heat.
“Over there,” Mike Larsen said quickly. He stood with his right hand thrust under his left armpit. “Second in line.”
Second in line was not the MG; Johnny half turned in inquiry before his eyes caught the dull silvered spot on the dark sedan second in line where once there had been a door handle. He followed the sleepwalking Lorraine to the sedan, now just one more of a number of things all pointing in the same direction.
Mike tossed the car keys to Lorraine; he looked up and down the thinly peopled street. He watched Lorraine, but never so closely that a good measure of his attention wandered from Johnny. “Open it up and get under the wheel.” He waited for her to comply; his voice was tight, and there was a sheen on his forehead as he addressed Johnny. “You now. Delicately.” He smiled, almost pleasantly. “In my mind you're already dead, you know.”
Johnny inched in the front seat beside Lorraine, doubling up his left leg and sitting on it. He could feel the car springs settle as the rear door slammed, and Mike's voice came again strongly, the relief in it evident. “Down to Ninth, Lorraine, and turn left.”
Johnny turned his head carefully until he could see the back seat and Mike sitting with the gun in his lap. Mike looked almost jovial; he was pleased with himself. “That was my first really poor move, Johnny, upstairs just now. I panicked when you called me, because I realized that you knew. I'm glad it misfired; this gives me a chance to do the thing right.”
“You're runnin' out of chances, boy,” Johnny said softly. “Fast.” He stared at the man in the back seat. “How could I have missed it?”
“Because I was able to throw just enough sand in your eyes as we went along,” Mike replied comfortably. “I told you just enough about Connor to keep you from going to someone else.” He paused as Lorraine Barnes made the left turn onto Ninth Avenue. “Left on Forty-fourth right here.” He returned his attention to Johnny. “And I told you that Lorraine was having an affair with Sanders to forestall the possibility of your wondering if she was having an affair with me.” He leaned forward slightly. “Down to Second Avenue, Lorraine, then right to the tunnel.”
“Tunnel?” Johnny caught himself. When Mike had directed them east on Forty-fourth Johnny had assumed their destination to be the warehouse alley where Ed Russo had died in the rain. The tunnel… He looked at Mike. “We goin' out to the boat?”
“We are indeed. I realized belatedly that I can't stand the discovery of two more bullet-riddled bodies on the perimeter of our tight little circle. No… a boating accident is indicated.”
Johnny's voice was husky. “There'll be an accident all right, Mike, but it's gonna happen to you. I'll leave you out there for good.” His voice rose; he half surged up in the seat in the violence of the emotion that gripped him. “I'll leave parts of you all over Long Island Sound-” He broke off as the gun in Mike's lap rose up and considered him carefully.
“I wouldn't,” Mike said quietly. “I have remarkably little to lose.” He smiled thinly. “We'll have to put up with each other, until the boat ride.”
Johnny seethed internally. He thought of the battered pier where the boat was moored, deserted even in the daytime. Somewhere out there on the dark water he was going to find a way to turn the tables, and when he did it was going to be the end of the line for Mike Larsen.
“I was sorry about Ellen, you know,” Mike said conversationally.
“Sorry!” Johnny said gutturally.
“Sanders was just an obstacle in my way,” Mike continued, unperturbed. “Bobby Perry was a vicious little blackmailer who possessed a little dangerous knowledge. Ed Russo was getting close to adding two and two together, since he had knowledge that you didn't. I regretted none of them.” His voice rose sharply. “Nonentities, sluts, bullet-bait!” With a visible effort he brought his voice back under control. He sounded properly regretful. “Ellen, though, was the factor which jiggered my little equation all out of shape.”
The sedan veered left; Johnny looked around to see the yawning, white-mouthed tunnel entrance, and the multiplicity of signs- Queens Midtown Tunnel. Behind him Mike's voice resumed as they rolled through the winding ivory tube. “I'll never know why Ellen left the car that night. I had driven her over there myself; she was to have been my alibi for Sanders. I had previously arranged for her to deliver a kitten to Russo, and I was her transportation. A day or two later the fact of our having been in the neighborhood at the time of Sanders' death might have drawn a comment from Ellen; hardly anything more. I left her in the car for no more than five minutes; I knew I could count on Sanders, who was a methodical man. But Ellen left the car. I've wondered-”
He stopped talking as the car emerged from the whiteness of the tunnel into the night again; ahead of them the lights of the toll station loomed up. “I'd advise a little caution on the part of both of you here,” Mike said in an altered voice as they eased to a stop. The wooden-faced Lorraine handed a quarter to the toll collector, and in seconds they were in motion again.
