“Don't you worry about leavin' me here. I'm about to cut outta here any day now. The night supervisor changed my night nurse last night, so there's not much point in my hangin' around any longer.” Johnny winked at Jimmy Rogers, who colored. “An' when I do take off outta here, maybe I'll take a little vacation. Haven't taken one in a couple years.”
The cardinal advanced around the end of the bed and held out his hand, which Johnny took. “At least I can hope that some day a vacation will take you to places that we knew together?”
“One of these days,” Johnny promised. “One of these days, for sure. Take care, Kiki. Stay off those ropes.”
The cardinal smiled, raised a hand, nodded to Rogers and left the hospital room, his dark, flowing robes brushing the doorway on either side as he passed through.
“There's a mighty big man,” Rogers said, looking after him thoughtfully.
“In more ways 'n one,” Johnny said lightly. He hitched his shoulders slightly to change his position in the bed. “You finished scratchin' over the gravel, Jimmy?”
“Most of it.” Detective Rogers stared at the bandaging on Johnny's chest. “Thanks to you, I come out of it alive plus a few departmental gold stars. I can still feel that bullet parting my hair after I was part way down from that whack behind the knee.”
“I had to get you of there,” Johnny said with great seriousness. “If I'd let her stick that slug into your hundred 'n five pounds, it'd have gone right on through into me, anyway, an' no doubt infected me with your undernourished blood. I couldn't take the risk.” He tapped his bandaged chest. “Imagine a twenty-eight caliber stoppin' me! Man, I'm gettin' old.”
“You sure are,” Rogers agreed. “The least I'd have expected is for you to have caught it in your teeth and spit it back at her.” He pulled a chair up to the side of the bed and sat down. “When did you think it was her?”
“About thirty seconds before I heard your dulcet tones askin' 'em what they were doin' there. I'd just busted open that damn attache case.” Johnny ran a hand over his chin. “Twice before that I'd taken a good hard look at her, but never in connection with Arends. Before she realized Tremaine didn't have the weight for the job she hoped to get out of him, she was tryin' to steer me away from him. She gave me a long story about Madeleine Winters cookin' up a scheme that Stitt an' Dechant used an' didn't cut her in on, so she blew the whistle on 'em an' a big shipment got grabbed. That was supposed to be why Stitt tried to kill the blonde. If I substituted Gloria Philips every time for Madeleine Winters in the story, though, I had a different picture. I knew she'd gone to Stitt with a proposition to sell him, an', bein' the kind he was, he'd laughed at her an' beat it out of her tail. Gloria had contacts, an' when she knew they were tryin' to bring it off, she went to Dechant for her end. It would be right in character for that weasel to tell her she'd have to make her arrangements with Stitt. Since Stitt's arrangements had already had her in bed for five days, she got mad an' turned 'em in, an' when she knew Dechant was due back from the trip she mailed him the newspaper clippin' to rub it in.”
Johnny drew a long breath. “Wish I had a cigarette.” He glanced at Rogers, who made no move. “What Gloria didn't realize was that Jack Arends had damn good contacts of his own with the customs people, and he found out who gave 'em the tip. Arends threatened to tell Stitt, which panicked Gloria. The night that I first met Madeleine an' we went up to her apartment, when Gloria learned Arends was goin' to be there she went back up to her office and came down with the attache case.”
“Which she had very conveniently loaded with a very complicated piece of mechanism,” Rogers said ironically.
“You can bet me that the setup originally had been intended for the blonde,” Johnny said, grinning. “Gloria only went into action against Arends because she felt she had to. That slick silencer deal was meant for Madeleine at the first opportunity. They hated each other.”
“Why did they hate each other?” the detective asked practically.
“The blonde had somethin' the redhead wanted-Harry Palmer. Gloria wanted to run her hot little hands in Harry's money. Madeleine suspected it. She half said as much to me that very first night. As for Harry, all of a sudden he saw a chance to get rid of a long-time drain an' at the same time acquire Gloria's beautiful white body. He liked the idea. The silencer gimmick an' havin' it made was his contribution. When Gloria used up his idea on Arends, Harry was on the hook. He couldn't disown her. He started peddlin' Tremaine as the killer, but then he made a mistake.”
“The assault on the blonde?”
“Right. I don't know whether Tiny chickened out on what was supposed to be a fatal beating, or if Palmer figured makin' her mental was enough. Anyway, he an' Gloria set up Tremaine as the fall guy. Gloria was supposed to send Tremaine off on an errand that would leave him with no alibi for the time of the assault, but Tremaine was just drunk enough to break up the pattern. I took a gun away from Palmer outside Tremaine's door the next mornin'. Whether he'd actually have had the nerve to gun him right then an' there I don't know, but before we got out of there Harry had new problems. Jules had told me in front of Palmer about the blonde's blackmailin' him. That an' the attempt to frame Tremaine had all of a sudden given me the Gloria-Harry axis, an' Palmer knew it. He had his goon Tiny try to shut me up right quick. When Tiny missed, the roof was down on them, an' Palmer knew it. He blew, but Gloria wouldn't quit.”
Detective Rogers sat in silence for several seconds. Finally he shook his head. “She surely played the hand out. The way she went after Faulkner-”
“That must have been the final frustration for her, I guess,” Johnny said thoughtfully. “She'd figured out that Ernest had the thing, which I never did, an' I'll never know why. Well, if Ernest had been one of the boys an' she'd been able to roll over in bed for him she'd never have needed any of the rest of us she was foolin' around with. But Ernest was wired on a different trolley, an' he was suspicious of her. I imagine the cable was a joint venture of theirs, but Gloria was never able to get Ernest under her thumb. Oh, she wanted Palmer's money bad enough to cut him in on that deal, too, but she wouldn't have been at all bashful about pullin' it off herself. Ernest was a real problem to her. She never knew when Ernest was goin' to run to Tremaine, another reason Tremaine was at the head of her list.”
Detective Rogers rose, panama in hand. “You still think it was her that shot you that night?”
“Had to be. Palmer must've about gone out of his mind when I threw him an' Tiny out of the blonde's apartment. They had it all set up, an' he couldn't stop it. He couldn't reach Gloria to let her know Madeleine wasn't alone as they'd planned. The hell of it was that, even with me there, if Madeleine'd opened the door they'd probably have gotten away with it. How's she doin'?”
“They're making her a new face. In time they seem to feel she'll recover from the shock.” The sandy-haired man raised the panama in a brief salute. “I'll give your regards to Dameron.”
“You do that,” Johnny grinned. “Take care, Jimmy. Preserve that law an' order.”
Detective Rogers nodded and left the room. Johnny eased himself onto his side and stretched his legs gratefully. A little lower down in the thorax, Killain-ahh, he told himself impatiently, a little higher up would have been a clean miss.
He stared at the white wall. Had to hand it to the redhead in one-way: she'd given it a hell of a riffle. Better man than any oft them. Love and kisses, sweetheart. Bang. And a hell of a woman in bed. Too bad. Too bad…
His eyes closed, and he slept.
