flashing red light which had turned into the end of the block.
“Come on.” Johnny took Lorraine's arm and walked her back through the gate. She hobbled along beside him in a one-shoe-on-and-one-shoe-off gait until she retrieved the lost pump at the upper end of the walk. She pulled back to look at Johnny doubtfully as she slipped it back on her foot.
“He said you needed stitches, Johnny-”
“He been right about anything yet? Let's get upstairs.”
Upstairs, she took charge briskly. “Lie down on the sofa,” she told him as she picked up the phone in the hall. “I'll be right in with towels.”
He pulled off the shredded, blood-streaked shirt and stretched out carefully. His ribs were throbbing. There was a gaping rent in the thigh of his slacks; he probed at it, but the damage seemed to be external. He tried to regulate his breathing to minimize rib pressure and listened to the cool voice on the telephone.
“-rush, Terry. I want the strongest non-prescription external coagulant that you have, material enough for a couple of cold compresses, a little extra gauze and s‹#ne thin tape. You'll hurry it, please? Thank you.”
She came in almost at once from the bathroom with a wet and a dry towel. “Now let's have a look.” She swabbed delicately at the right side of his face, cleansing the cut area, and leaned down to examine it critically. “Just above the brow. More of a deep bruise than a cut, although it is split. It undoubtedly should have a stitch or two. It could scar without it.”
“It could scar with it, too.” He looked up at her curiously. “You a nurse?”
“I was.” She turned his head to one side. “You're bleeding under the other ear, and there's a lump.”
“That's from my friend on the fence.” He straightened his head to look up at her again. “Forget the stitches. Slap a little tape on it.”
She looked doubtful. “If I can stop the bleeding. The boy should be here any second now; the drug store's just up at the corner.” She rose at a knock on the door. “There he is.”
It was Detective Rogers who walked into the room when she opened the door, but the delivery boy was right on his heels. The sandy-haired man stood silently as Lorraine Barnes opened the package, made one quick trip for an antiseptic and cuticle scissors and deftly worked the coagulant into the split brow. She tidied up the bruised edges of flesh, cut thin strips of gauze for a pad, and overlaid it with a professional-looking application of tape. She stood up and brushed off her skirt. “I'll make a compress for that lump under your ear.”
She went back into the bathroom, and Jimmy Rogers stared after her an instant before he looked down at Johnny. “Acts like she knows what she's doing. Put a knife in your teeth now and you'd be ready for the photographer.” His voice turned official. “What started this fracas?”
“You said you saw it.”
“I know what started it downstairs. How about before that?”
Johnny's voice was unpleasant. “If you hadn't stuck your beak in so damn quick I'd have found out.”
“They'll talk,” the detective said, but there was no conviction in his tone.
“They'd have talked to me. Another forty-five seconds and I'd've had his life history.”
“Another forty-five seconds and I'd have been taking you in for manslaughter,” Jimmy Rogers said sharply. “People become deceased when you bust them all up.” He stared moodily downward from his height. “I begin to see what the lieutenant's been talking about all these years. What makes you tick? By God, I thought I'd seen a few tidal waves-”
He broke off as Lorraine Barnes returned with the compress and adjusted it along the jawline and under the ear. Johnny grinned up at her as she straightened and wiped her hands on a piece of gauze. “Call Gus at the hotel for me, huh? Tell him to run up to my room and get me a change of clothes from the skin out and shoot it over here in a cab.”
She nodded, and went back out to the phone. When she re-entered the room her lips were curved upward in a smile. “He wanted to know how badly you were hurt this time.”
“Sounds as if he knows Johnny,” Detective Rogers said dryly. He adjusted the set of his shoulder holster inside his jacket and looked down at Johnny on the sofa. “I'll be running along. Be a little careful where you get your exercise.”
“What did he mean by that?” Lorraine asked curiously when the door had closed behind the slender man.
Johnny stretched carefully. “That's just his way of tellin' me not to go lookin' for the guy that sent the muscle. He's warning me not to let him catch me jumpin' on someone's foot.” He fingered the lump under his ear. “He thinks I need to look.”
“And you don't?”
“You're damned right I don't. I racked this boy Russo up the other day, so here he is, in spades. This time I'll braid his tail for real, only it's got to be a little private, with Jimmy watching from the sidelines.” He looked at her appraisingly. “You happen to wonder how come he was outside where he had a ringside seat for the corrida?”
“Why, no-” Her eyes narrowed. “He was watching me?”
“Or me. Could've followed me over here. Maybe it's seeing us together gives him an itch. Jimmy's a good boy. Don't underestimate him.” He made his voice casual. “Which brings us back to why it'd be a good idea for you to unbutton a little about what happened the night-”
“That's enough, Johnny.” She cut him off. “We've been all through that before, and the answer is no.”
“I could get tired of workin' a one-way street,” he told her softly. “I've told you things you'd have had trouble findin' out. I'm closer to things than you're likely to be. You're Vic's wife; I'd like to steer you right on this-”
He stopped when he saw her expression; he knew that he had said the wrong thing again. “You're not here because I'm Vic's wife,” she said flatly. “You're here because you think I have information that you want. Whether I do or not is problematical, but I've told you before and I'll tell you now for the final time. I'm not about to let you pull the house down around my ears because of your own personal involvement!”
The heat in her tone fanned his own fire; for an instant he balanced on the razor edge of forcing the issue to a showdown, before belated common sense came to the fore. She knows, Killain, and you don't. She may not know the murderer, but she knows more than you do. You cut yourself off from the possibility of learning what she knows, and you've bitten off your nose to spite your face. This is a strong-willed, determined woman. He spoke abruptly. “How about me takin' a shower?”
“If you keep your head dry. I'll get you towels.” Under the steaming hot water he soaked the mounting ache in his bones, and in the mirror he inspected the brass-knuckle-raised purple welts under his ribs. He dried himself carefully.
Lorraine tapped on the bathroom door. “The cab driver brought your clothes,” she called. “I put them in the bedroom.”
He felt better after the shower. In the bedroom he dressed hurriedly; he wanted to get back to the hotel. He transferred money, keys and wallet to the fresh slacks and made a little bundle of the fragments he had removed in the bathroom. “New man,” he announced upon re-entering the living room.
Her eyes were speculative. “From personal observation I don't believe there was very much the matter with the old one.” She continued before he could take advantage of the opening. “You know you're going to have a head like a gourd in the morning?”
“Maybe I should take a little something to justify it?”
“I wouldn't recommend it.” Her inspection of him was deliberate. “If you're mad I hope you don't stay mad. I do need your access to information.”
“Well then, why-”
“Because the situation almost certainly calls for halfway measures, and you don't know how to use them. As you just proved out on the street.”
Johnny boiled out the door without even saying good-by; he simmered down a little during the cab ride back to the hotel, but he was still under a driving head of steam when he entered the lobby and approached the bell captain's desk. “Thanks, Gus.” He raised his eyes aloft. “Russo around?” Gus crooked a finger across the lobby. “In the bar.” The dark-eyed glance lingered on the patch over Johnny's eye. “You and Russo?”
“Not yet.” Johnny crossed the lobby rapidly and felt a sense of release at the sight of Ed Russo in the third booth from the door, sitting across from a big man in a light-colored, wide-brimmed panama. He walked down to the booth; anticipation was so strong he could taste it. The semi-public nature of the scene concerned him not at all; here was the man. He placed both hands on the table edge, leaned forward slightly, and waited.
