“Who's that?” Jim Daddario inquired anxiously. “Dick? Savino? Is that you?”
Johnny's weight dropped amidships prevented more than a coughed grunt in return. He felt teeth in his wrist as he secured an arm with his left knee, and he backhanded the teeth briskly. Savino's head hit the floor with a hollow thump but he fought on desperately. Johnny caught the other flailing arm and forced it backward. “How d'you like it, you woman-beater?” he growled, and Savino shrieked as Johnny applied more pressure. Deliberately he levered himself up and over the suddenly silent figure.
A droplight over a card table came on in a dazzling flare in the blackness. Silhouetted against it, Jim Daddario stood poised with the recovered automatic. “You,” he said hoarsely to Johnny, and aimed the gun. “Get up.”
Johnny got to his feet slowly. Tommy Savino did not. The dark man lay quiet, oddly crumpled. Mayor Richard Lowell crawled from beneath a nearby table, his eyes bulging. Johnny looked in vain for Rudy. The gambler had made it to the door in the dark and must have let himself out in the first burst of light.
“Good God!” Dick Lowell said in a horrified tone, and turned his eyes away. He was shaking as with a chill.
“What's the matter, Richard?” Johnny asked him. “Carl Thompson didn't bother you.”
The white-haired man looked as though he were going to be sick. “Thompson-different-” he got out finally.
“The only thing different was that he got it with a knife. Where'd you get the knife, Dick?”
“It was his knife-” Richard Lowell began, and stopped. The silence built up in the room. Jim Daddario's arm dropped slowly to his side as he stared from the white-faced Lowell to Johnny.
“What the hell are you blathering about?” he demanded harshly. “Are you accusing him now? A minute ago it was-” His eyes flickered to the body on the floor with its neck awry.
“That's when I wanted you chewin' at each other's asses,” Johnny said softly. “We knew better, didn't we, Your Honor?” Richard Lowell swallowed visibly but stood mute. “It all fell into place twenty minutes ago when I heard he was in New York that day. After what you did to Thompson up here who in your crowd could get close enough to him to get a knife in his back? Only the man who had set him up here as the bagman before you muscled him out.”
“But him-” Daddario jerked a thumb at Lowell ”-a killer?” He snorted derisively. “Don't make me laugh. I've cut off his water by inches in this town and all he's done is whimper.”
“You tried to talk Thompson out of coming back up here, right?” Johnny prodded Dick Lowell.
The leonine features under the white hair had suddenly aged. “I told him he could do no good,” he said woodenly. “I told him he'd ruin us all. I offered to take care of him. He wouldn't listen. He was wild. He threatened me.” He swallowed again, hard. “He'd been cleaning tar from the sole of his shoe with the knife when he let me in. He paced up and down the room making all kinds of crazy plans. I stood there and saw everything I'd ever hoped for going down the drain with that-that fanatic. He charged up and shoved his face into mine and slavered spittle in his ranting-he turned to pace again-I grabbed up the knife-you'd have done the same thing, Jim!” He flung out a hand in appeal. “He was insane!”
“Somebody was insane,” Jim Daddario said bleakly. “And here I was trying to hold the lid down on a volcano like this. Jigger told me he-” his eyes went to the floor ”-had done it because he had your-“ the eyes returned to Johnny ”- thousand. I was ready to turn him in if worse came to worst.” His still partly unbelieving gaze returned to Richard Lowell. “By God, I remember now I tried to call you up here from the New York hotel suite and nobody knew where you were.” He shook his head. “I never dreamed he'd go down there himself as a result of his brother's call.”
“That's only half of it.” Johnny moved a cautious step nearer to Jim Daddario. “He had company when he went. Jack Riley.”
Dark blood rushed into Daddario's face. “Riley? My own man? Doublecrossing me?”
“Not right that minute. He was still your man. I imagine he went along to keep an eye on things, not knowing what else to do. But he knew where Lowell had been, and when he found out what happened to Thompson he thought he saw a chance to move up to Number One. With Lowell in his pocket, if he could dump you he figured he'd inherit the payoff here. Lowell and he didn't know what Thompson had told me, so Riley hired himself some local talent in a hurry to take care of me an' then he hustled Lowell out of town before he could be seen by any of your crowd.”
Johnny leveled a finger at the furious-looking politician. “But they'd been seen together by Micheline Thompson, before her husband was killed. Riley didn't know it an' Lowell didn't tell him till they got back up here. They both wanted me to find her. Riley so that he could hold her as a witness over the mayor's head.” He changed the direction of the pointing finger. “What would you have done if I'd found her for you, Lowell?”
“I'd have-I'd have convinced her she'd been in error in thinking she'd seen me,” Richard Lowell said faintly.
“The same way you convinced Thompson?” Daddario broke in. “Goddammit, what a mess! All I wanted was to keep the lid on the situation here and now you've-” He paused in disgust, thinking hard, then made a gesture of finality. “You're done, Dick. I can't save you. Nobody could. I don't know if I can save myself.”
“You'll save me,” Dick Lowell said irritably. “You'll do it or I'll swear you engineered the whole thing. This is my town and I'm not leaving it to you or any other jackal, understand?” His voice had risen childishly and cracked at the last word.
Johnny could see the hardening of Daddario's features and the almost imperceptible swing of his gun hand. “Lowell, I've had enough of your vanity. When it's compounded with murder-”
A thunderous knocking at the locked door interrupted him, a prolonged furious drumming on the wood. “Open up in there!” a bull-elephant voice blared.
Johnny had been estimating the distance between himself and Jim Daddario's gun hand. At the sudden outbreak of sound Richard Lowell started violently. He backed away tugging at a jacket pocket. “You're not selling me out!” he screamed. “You sent Rudy out to get someone to help you! I'll show you — ” His right hand emerged with the largest revolver Johnny had ever seen. Johnny went floorward as the wild-eyed man pulled the trigger five times, the large-caliber gun in the inexperienced hand jerking Lowell's arm up convulsively at each shot. In the enclosed space the. 45 sounded like a miniature cannon.
The wooden door went down with a tired screech of metal hinges as Jim Daddario doubled over with his arms wrapped around himself. Richard Lowell took one ashen-faced look at the broken down door and raised the revolver to his head and pulled the trigger. He was on his back on the floor before Jim Daddario finally lost his equilibrium and plunged forward on his face.
Johnny edged cautiously to his feet as a tall, skeleton-thin man in civilian clothes pushed through the uniformed men in the doorway. The tall man knelt swiftly beside Richard Lowell, feeling for a pulse. Almost at once he eased the wrist he had taken down to the floor again. “Dick,” he said gently, his sharp, homely features tight with concern. “Dick, you poor fool. It wasn't worth it.”
Johnny approached, but remained silent while the kneeling man struggled for self-possession. He spoke finally into the quiet. “Sorry, Toby. I thought I had it under control.” Toby Lowell looked up and nodded, his lined face tired. “How'd you get here?” Johnny asked.
“The young lady tracked me down at Lowell House.” Johnny looked and saw Micheline Thompson in the rear of the uniformed group. From its center Jack Riley's beefy figure emerged and strode up to join them. “From what she said, reinforcements seemed in order. I stopped for them.”
“We'll take care of everything here, sir,” Chief Riley said quickly. He didn't look at Johnny. He turned and started to beckon to the doorway.
“Just a goddamn minute.” Johnny caught the arm and spun the bulky-bodied chief about. His hand closed on the chief's gold badge and he ripped it from Riley's chest. It came free with half a yard of uniform attached. Johnny stripped off the cloth, centered the badge in his hands, and bore down. As they had in the hotel room that other day his hands crept down between his knees. They came up with the badge in two jagged pieces. Johnny slapped one of them into Jack Riley's nerveless hand. “There's your thirty pieces of silver, Jack.” He turned to Toby Lowell. “He's resignin'.” He swung around to the red-faced chief. “Tell him, Riley.”
“I'm-resigning.” Jack Riley spoke with difficulty.
“You'll have to put the pieces together again around here, Toby,” Johnny told him. “The merry-go-round broke down. In the cleanup you'll run across the name Burger. Don't bear down too hard.”
Toby Lowell nodded. “I'll have to take some leave.” He spoke as if he had a bad taste in his mouth.
