“Why, no.”
“Well, then—any apartments empty right now, that you know off?”
“No. I don’t think so.” She blew a smoke ring. “Didn’t you check with the janitor?”
I gave her my best suave smile. “Maybe I’d rather talk to you.”
Ronald Colman had nothing to worry about, but she bought it just the same, a sultry smirk making the cigarette in her lips erect.
“I’ve been here over a year, cowboy, and nobody’s moved in or out in all that time.”
I thought about that. Then I took out the circular and folded it so that all she could see was Bernice Rogers’s picture.
“Know her?”
“Sure,” she said. “That’s Bernice Smith. She lives upstairs in 4-B.”
The one buzzer without a name.
“She got a kid?”
“Yes.”
“Baby?”
She thought I was calling her “baby” for a second. Then she figured it out and said, “Uh, yes—year-and-a-half old or so.”
“What color is the baby’s hair?”
“Blond, I think.”
“And Bernice?”
“Well, like that picture—brunette.”
Interesting.
“If you’re looking for her,” she said, exhaling blue smoke, “I don’t think she’s around.”
“Yeah?”
“She’s on vacation. Over a month already. Her brother’s staying in her place while she’s gone.”
“Thank you, miss,” I said, tucking the circular away.
“My name’s Marie.”
“Thanks, Marie.”
“Got a name, cowboy?”
“Nate,” I said.
Her cupid lips formed a kiss of a smile. “Careful, Nate.”
She liked me. On the other hand, I had a feeling all that was required out of me was a pulse. And five dollars.
I nodded and went on up; halfway up the stairs, I heard her close the door. I unbuttoned my topcoat as I climbed. Then I unbuttoned my suit coat and got the automatic out from its shoulder holster. I’d had both my suits tailored on Maxwell Street to hide the Browning. I slipped my right hand with the gun in it in my topcoat pocket.
And now I was on the fourth landing, looking at 4-B.
I stared at the door, at the brass number and letter. I had no backup. I was trembling a little, my body mixing a fear and adrenaline cocktail. Should I wait? Should I kick the door in, or knock?
I knocked.
The door cracked open. The harsh, pockmarked pretty face glared at me suspiciously.
“What do you want?”
I showed her the badge, and said—nothing. She pushed the door shut before I could.
Inside, she was yelling, “Coppers!”
Gun-in-hand still in my topcoat pocket, I lifted my foot and kicked that fucking door. It sprung open first try.
I rushed in to see two boys in shoulder holsters, white shirts, suspenders, loosened bow ties and unshaven faces standing up hastily from a round table where a gin rummy game had been in progress. Both were smoking cigarettes and a blue haze hung in the room like bad weather. One boy was razor thin with a razor-thin mustache and slicked-back Valentino hair. He wore a revolver in a shoulder holster. The other was big and fat and sloppy and a half-eaten sandwich and several bottles of beer were before him at the table, and so was a revolver, which he went for, and I shot him twice. Once in the chest, once in the head. Shot right through my damn coat. Damn!
The woman began to scream. She was standing in a doorway to what appeared to be the kitchen. The child was not in sight.
The razor-thin guy overturned the table and began to fire at me from behind it. I ducked back out in the hall, to put a wall between us, while his slugs flew through the open door and chewed the wood of the door across the way.
