I went for the beer ... before it got dark.'
'So?'
'I see this car go by twice. New job with two guys in the front seat. It stopped halfway up on the other side and one got out. Then the car went up further and parked. I really didn't pay no attention to it on accounta it was raining so hard. When I came back the car was gone.'
'A late-model, black, four-door job?'
'Yeah, how'd you know?'
'It's parked up on Columbus outside the drugstore,' I said. 'You got a phone here?'
'Under the blankets on the cot there. I like to keep it muffled. Can't stand them damn bell noises.'
Pat wasn't in, but I got hold of Sergeant Corbett and told him to get a message through and gave him my location. He told me Pat had assigned an unmarked cruiser to the area earlier, but they were being pulled out in another thirty minutes. Too much was happening to restrict even one car team in a quiet zone on a quiet night and I was lucky to get the cooperation I did.
I said, 'It may not be so damn quiet in a little while, buddy.'
'Well, it won't be like the U.N. or the embassy joints. Everybody's in emergency sessions. You'll still be lucky
I hung up and tossed the covers back over the phone. The watchman was bent over the radio again with a beer in his hand, reading a comic book lying open on the floor.
My watch said Velda had left her post fifteen minutes ago. Somehow, someway, she'd find a thread, then a string, then a rope that would draw her right to this block.
I went out, closed the door and looked up the street, then started to walk slowly. On half the four-floor tenements were white square cardboard signs lettered in black notifying the world that the building was unfit for tenancy or scheduled for demolition. The windows were broken and dark, the fronts grime-caked and eroded. One building was occupied despite the sign, either by squatters with kerosene lamps or some undaunted tenant fighting City Hall. In the middle of the block was one brownstone, the basement renovated years ago into a decrepit tailor shop no wider than a big closet. A tilted sign on the door said a
forlorn open, and I would have passed it up entirely if I hadn't seen the dot of light through the crack in the drawn blind.
Sigmund Katz looked like a little gnome perched on his stool, methodically handstitching a child's coat, glasses on the end of his nose, bald head shiny under the single low-watt bulb. His eyes through the thick glasses were blue and watery, his smile weak, but friendly. An old-world accent was thick in his voice when he spoke. 'No, this man in the picture I did not see,' he told me.
'And you know everyone?'
'I have been here sixty-one years, young man.' He paused and looked up from his needlework. 'This is the only one you are looking for?' There was an expression of patient waiting on his face.
'There could be others.'
'I see. And these are ... not nice people?'
'Very bad people, Mr. Katz.'
'They did not look so bad,' he said.
'Who?'
'They were young and well dressed, but it is not in the appearance that makes a person good or bad, true?'
I didn't want to push him. 'True,' I said.
'One used the phone twice. The second time the other one stopped him before he could talk. I may not see too well, but my hearing is most good. There were violent words spoken.'
I described Carl and Sammy and he nodded.
'Yes,' he said, 'those are the two young men.'
'When they left here ... did you see where they went?'
The old man smiled, shook his head gently and continued sewing. 'No, I'm afraid I didn't. Long ago I learned never to interfere.'
I unclenched the knots my fingers were balled into and took a deep breath.
Before I could leave he added, 'However, there was Mrs. Luden for whom I am making this coat for her grandson. She thought they were salesmen, but who would try to sell in this poor neighborhood? Not well dressed young men who arrive in a shiny new car. They knock on doors and are very polite.'
I watched him, waiting, trying to stay relaxed.
'Perhaps they did find a customer. Not so long ago they went into Mrs. Stone's building across the street where the steps are broken and haven't come out.'
The tension leaked out of my muscles like rain from my hair and I grinned humorously at Mr. Katz.
His eyes peered at me over his glasses. 'Tell me, young man, you look like one thing, but you may be another. By one's appearance, you cannot tell. Are you a nice man?'
'I'm not one of
'Ah, but are you a nice man?'
'Maybe to some people,' I said.
'That is good enough. Then I tell you something else. In Mrs. Stone's building ... there are not just two men. Three went up the first time, then a few minutes ago, another two. Be careful, young man. It is not good.'
And now things were beginning to shape up!
I ran back into the rain and the night, cut across the street and found the building with the broken steps, took them two at a time on the side that still held and unsheathed the .45 and thumbed the hammer back. The front door was partially ajar and I slammed it open with the flat of my hand and tried to see into the inkwell of the vestibule. It took seconds for my eyes to adjust, then I spotted the staircase and started toward it.
And time ran out.
From a couple of floors up was a crash of splintering wood, a hoarse yell and the dull blast of heavy caliber guns in rapid fire, punctuated by the flatter pops of lighter ones. Somebody screamed in wild agony and a single curse ripped through the musty air. I didn't bother trying to be quiet. I took the steps two at a time and almost made the top when I saw the melee at the top lit momentarily in the burst of gunfire, then one figure burst through the others and came smashing down on top of me in a welter of arms and legs, gurgling wetly with those strange final sounds of death, and we both went backward down the staircase into an old cast iron radiator with sharp edges that bit into my skull in a blinding welter of pain and light.
CHAPTER 11
Velda was crying through some distant rage. I heard her say, 'Damn it, Mike, you're all right! You're all right! Mike ... answer me!'
My head felt like it was split wide open and I felt myself gag and almost threw up. The light from Velda's flash whipped into my eyes, beating at my brain like a club for a second until I pushed it away.
'Mike ...?'
'I'm not shot,' I said flatly.
'Damn you, why didn't you wait? Why didn't you call ?'
'Ease off.' I pushed to my knees and took the flash from her and turned it on the body. There was a bloody froth around the mouth and the eyes were glassy and staring. Sammy had bought his farm too.
Across the street people were shouting and a siren had started to whine. I let Velda help me up, then groped my way up the stairs to the top. The President wouldn't have to have a heart attack after this. The pictures would take care of all the gory news the public was interested in. Carl was sprawled out face down on the kitchen floor of the apartment with half his head blown away, a skinny little guy in a plaid sports coat and dirty jeans was tied to a chair with a hole in his chest big enough to throw a cat through, his toupee flopping over one ear. Like the little whore had told me, one was partially bald. Woody Ballinger was in a curiously lifelike position of being asleep with
