“Can't, Jimmy?”
The sandy-haired man gestured irritably. “You know what I mean. Stop being difficult. Instead of fitting on the barrel as a silencer does on a revolver, because of the barrel's action on an automatic the silencer would have to go on the slide. It would be a tricky damn job, one for a craftsman. I've never seen one.”
Johnny removed the attache case from under his arm, opened it, picked up the snouted piece of metalware and tossed it to the detective. “So now you have, Jimmy.”
The sandy-haired man turned it over and over in his hands. He reached in a jacket pocket, removed Stitt's blued-steel Mauser, looked at it questioningly and shoved it back. From the opposite pocket he removed a black automatic — Tremaine's, Johnny realized-and looked at it searchingly. “Let's see,” Roger murmured, half aloud. “I come into the room-” He ran through it in his mind. He turned back to Johnny with a negative shake of his head. “Still no good. You're forgetting there was no silencer on the automatic beside Arends.”
“Get yourself in gear, Jimmy. There wasn't supposed to be. You come into the room with a silenced automatic ready to go. You pop the guy. If you've come ready with another slide, how long does it take you to break down the automatic, remove the slide with the silencer and shove in the plain one? Stick the silencer in the attache case in which you lugged the whole works in there an' put it back under your arm, drop the automatic on the floor beside the body an' holler murder?”
Jimmy Rogers' hazel eyes were slits. “Let's find out,” he said grimly. He walked to a small table and pushed aside the lamp on it. He placed Jules Tremaine's automatic and the wicked-looking silencer attached to its slide down together, slipped out of his jacket, rubbed his hands together and looked around at Johnny. “Okay. This won't work perfectly unless this is an identical gun, but it looks close. Anyway, it'll give me an idea. This is the reverse, now- silencer onto automatic, instead of off. You time me. Say when.”
Johnny waited for the second hand on his watch to creep around to straight up. “Go, man.”
The detective's slim white hands flew into action. He had the automatic broken down in what seemed no time to Johnny, but in snatching up the silencer with its slide he had to make three tries before he hit the groove. After that, the automatic with its ugly-looking silencer fairly sprang back together. Rogers laid it down, slapped his hands together and looked inquiringly at Johnny.
“I made you in a tick over seventy seconds,” Johnny announced.
“I could do it faster, with practice.” “Look at your hands, Jimmy.”
Roger looked down at his greasy, oily hands. “What did you expect? You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs.” With the tip of two fingers he fished out a handkerchief and wiped off his hands.
“You just don't plan your murders, Jimmy.” Johnny opened the case again, removed a pair of white women's gloves and tossed them to the detective. Rogers' lips tightened at the sight of the dried black grease marks on them. “She kept me from goin' back up there that night to fetch these for her when I thought she'd forgotten 'em,” Johnny said quietly. “She had a good reason. An' you talk to Tremaine now about the night I got winged in the blonde's doorway an' I'll bet you'll find she wasn't supplyin' any alibi for him that night. He was supplyin' one for her, for value received. You got to give her credit-she played the field. She used Tremaine, me, Palmer, even Stitt who had her scared half to death, an' finally Ernest here.” He grinned at the lawyer, who was standing in shocked silence. “Tremaine lost his usefulness to her when he went to pieces an' started drinkin'. Tremaine knew too much. He had to go. She put Stitt onto Tremaine's back by tellin' Stitt that Tremaine was goin' to frame him for the muscle job on Tremaine's face with his gunbutt, Ernest?”
The lawyer paled. “They-did?” he croaked. He swallowed noisily. “Stitt did?” He glared at Gloria. “You did that to Jules?” He advanced on her, his already high-pitched voice sliding shrilly up the scale. “Why I ever listened to you, you nasty bitch-” His hands clawed at her face.
Gloria Philips swung her handbag on its strap and hit the lawyer in the chest, knocking him backward. “You goddam queen!” she raged, and swung the bag again. Ducking ineffectually, Faulkner stumbled and fell. He rolled onto his back as Gloria Philips rushed at him and sank a three-inch high heel out of sight in his body as she stamped on him. Ernest Faulkner screamed and doubled up into a fetal position.
Johnny's backhanded slap knocked her away from the lawyer before she could repeat the performance. “Grab her, Jimmy, and keep her hands out of that handbag!” he said sharply. He bent down over Faulkner, and saw that the lawyer was out cold. Johnny sighed, picked up the slender man and started for the bathroom with him. “I'll bring him around. You better get on the phone an' put the wheels in motion, Jimmy.”
In the bathroom he eased the limp body down onto the tile. Ernest Faulkner's weak features were bloodless. Johnny hurriedly soaked towels one after the other and knelt down to apply them to the lawyer's forehead. He looked up at a scuffling noise in the bathroom doorway to see Jimmy Rogers backing in, a silly grin frozen into a grimace on his face, Gloria Philips' handbag in one hand. Right behind him came the redhead, herding him with a small, pearl-handled gun competently aimed at his middle.
“Thigh holster,” the detective said over his shoulder as if he still couldn't believe it. His body was between Johnny and the redhead, but Johnny could see her face. “Thigh-”
“Watch it, Jimmy!” Johnny punched the sandy-haired man hard behind the right knee. The detective went down in a spiraling spin just as Gloria Philips fired. The bullet thudded into the wall behind the detective and Johnny a second before Jimmy Rogers' head hit the wash basin heavily and he pitched sideways, unconscious.
“Well, isn't that nice,” the redhead said tightly. “I always knew you'd be good for something one of these days. Love and kisses, sweetheart.” She shot Johnny in the chest as he surged up from his knees. He was still stumbling backward from the smashing blow when she ran out the bathroom door and slammed it.
Too high to mean anything, Johnny told himself, and tried to rock himself forward into motion. Too high. His legs didn't believe it. He stepped on both Faulkner and Rogers getting to the door. He couldn't help it. Each time it almost threw him.
He had a terrible struggle with the door before he got it open. His hands wouldn't co-ordinate. He shuffled through the apartment, swaying from side to side. He wasted seconds at the door into the corridor before he remembered it opened inward.
In the corridor he could see her in front of the elevator shaft, punching furiously at the button. He lumbered toward her, his legs like two shafts of pig iron. She turned at the sound and incredulity gave way to panic. Her hand darted to her bag.
They both heard the sound of the ascending elevator. She raised the gun deliberately when he was still yards away. She looked at him, looked at the elevator indicator, turned to run, turned back, screamed despairingly, raised the gun again and, as the elevator doors opened, shot herself in the head.
Still six feet away and unable to check his lead-footed progress, Johnny catapulted heavily over her falling body. The last thing he remembered was the pop-eyed stare of the uniform-trousered brunette operator, her jaws still working rhythmically on her gum as she bent down over him.
CHAPTER XIV
Johnny lay back in his half-cranked-up hospital bed and grinned at Cardinal Lucian Alerini at its foot. “Imagine a li'l ol' twenty-eight caliber job puttin' me down like that, Kiki?”
A snort from the side of the bed directed attention to the sandy-haired Detective Rogers. He addressed the cardinal. “After he climbed over two bodies on a bathroom floor, after he wrestled two doors open and got out of the apartment, and after he covered thirty-five yards of hotel corridor- then it put him down.”
“That is the man I know,” the cardinal said soberly.
Rogers turned to Johnny. “We found the thing in Faulkner's safe, like you said.”
“Hindsight,” Johnny said bitterly. “Beautiful hindsight. When you see everything else, you see that, too. The cable is signed E. McPartland? The dragon over in Faulkner's office is Miss McPartland? No connection. No connection at all, till I get hit in the head with it.” He looked at the cardinal. “How you gonna make out, Kiki?”
The big, beaming smile appeared on the moon face. “Let's say that at the moment the jurisdiction is unsatisfactory to all three claimants, but that I have every confidence right will triumph.”
“Which freely translated means foxy grandpa is yankin' hawsers all over town?” The cardinal maintained a discreet silence, the smile still on his florid features. “You gonna be around, Kiki?”
“I'm not, Johnny, and I'm sorry. I feel guilty leaving you here when I return home day after tomorrow.”
