metal hand-rail and brought the butt end of the. 45 down smartly. A link broke and the wallet came free.
“Now let’s see how much cash you’re carrying, Jake.” The diamond dealer fumbled out a smaller wallet. “One of those stones,” he said weakly, “I didn’t insure it yet. I’ll give you a better price than the fence would.”
“Sure, sure, send me a check. Let’s have the watch.” Melnick stripped off his gold wristwatch. The bandit dropped it into his side pocket. Giving no warning, he stepped in close against Melnick and slammed him in the stomach with a fist the size of a small ham. Melnick caved forward, making a sound like a popping balloon. He grabbed out at the big man to keep from falling. For an instant they were in a kind of clumsy embrace, and all Michele could see was the diamond dealer’s hands and wrists. The big man pushed him away with a vicious low- voiced obscenity and, as he fell, chopped at his head with the butt of his. 45.
Melnick pitched to the floor. The big man whirled on Michele. She shrank back.
“Any remarks, baby?” he said savagely.
“No,” she said in a weak voice, and thrust her purse toward him.
The left side of his mouth and his left eye worked in a convulsive half-wink, half-twitch. It frightened her. She could see that he was on the verge of going out of control. “I have money,” she faltered.
He ripped the purse out of her hands. She knew exactly how much she was carrying-eight hundred and three dollars, eight hundred of it in new fifties and hundreds. It put him in a better humor.
“Green,” he observed. “My favorite color.” He took her watch and a bracelet. After dropping them in his pocket with the rest of the loot, he threw the emergency switch back on and pressed the lobby button. The car continued upward. Its electronic brain had been told to take them to the twelfth floor, and it had to clear that out of its memory before it could start down. He watched the lights, his head on one side as though with the help of the hearing-aid he could listen to his own thoughts.
“You will let me get off?” she said. “Please, I am French. I go home in two days’ time. I can prove this to you. I can show you my passport. If I should talk to the police about this I would miss my plane. That is not my desire.”
The car stopped at 12. She made a slight movement and he snapped, “Stay where you are.”
The door opened and closed. She said in a small voice, “It is true, you know.”
His eyes jumped to the lights. The car was slowing for an unexpected stop at nine. He moved over into the doorway. The door slid back to show an overweight lady in an elaborate hat.
He said brusquely, “We’ve had an accident. Next car.”
Her coquettish smile vanished as she looked down. Melnick’s long legs had jackknifed under him, and he looked as though he had been flung down violently from a great height. One entire side of his face was covered with blood. The woman’s mouth came open. The bandit stabbed angrily at the Close button, and the door obeyed him.
He made a scornful noise. “Give the lady some smelling salts. Now relax. I hardly ever smack a doll with a. 45 when we haven’t been introduced. I’ve got to dump this bastard. Then I’ll tell you what I want you to do. Just do me one favor, and maybe you’ll catch your plane.”
“Yes,” she breathed.
“I may have picked up a tail. I had that feeling. Let’s not hurry walking out of here. Like we’re husband and wife and I’m taking you to dinner. We’ll walk over to Central Park West and pick up a cab. I’ll let you get out after a couple of blocks, and you can forget the whole thing.”
“All right, I shall try.”
“Do better than try, baby. That’s the best advice I can give you.”
The little giveaway muscle was jumping again in his cheek. They were passing the fourth floor. He punched for three, and when the car stopped he looked out carefully, then dragged the unconscious man to the corridor. Melnick’s arms and legs seemed totally uncoordinated, as though they were fastened to his body with cotter pins. She found herself thinking, oddly, of a line from Macbeth, a play she had studied in her last year at the lycee: “Who would have thought the old man had so much blood in him?” Melnick’s face was so bloody that it might have been flayed. His clothes were sodden. He groaned heavily as the man responsible for his wound kicked his foot out of the doorway so the door, would close.
Michele was sorry, but someone else would have to find him. As soon as she was released she meant to hide in the nearest movie, coming back only after all the excitement had died down.
As the car slowed, approaching the lobby, the big man gripped her arm above the elbow and moved her to face the door. She tried to force a smile.
“You don’t have to smile,” he told her. “We’ve been married a long time.”
“That hurts.”
“Too bad.”
The door opened and he walked her out into the lobby. She was surprised to hear the hidden musicians still picking away at the same Rodgers and Hammerstein number. All her plans had been turned upside down in the time it took a dance orchestra to play thirty-two bars. Thank God there was no one in sight. Then her breath caught. There was movement behind them and a voice called suddenly, “McQuade!”
The big man turned, keeping his hold on Michele’s arm. The man who had come out from behind the second bank of mailboxes was short and pugnacious-looking. He needed a shave and he seemed very tired. His eyes were bloodshot.
“Where’ve you been keeping yourself, Mac?” he said.
“Wrong number,” the big man said, his voice easy and unflurried. Michele felt the tension in his grip. “My name’s Carl Williams.”
“Like hell your name is Carl Williams, honey,” the short man said. “It’s been a couple of years, but I don’t forget faces that easy. I do forget what we had you down for. A payroll in Brooklyn, wasn’t it? About seventy-five G’s?”
“You are drunk!” Michele said sharply.
“I’m a little drunk,” the detective agreed. “But then I’m off duty so it’s OK. What I like to do is knock back a few and then ride the subways looking at faces. When I spot one that’s familiar I follow the guy, like I followed Mac here. It’s kind of a hobby.”
He started toward them. “And who are you, sweetheart?” he said to Michele. “Mrs. Carl Williams or Mrs. Francis X. McQuade?”
An elevator arrived behind him and let off the plump lady in the big flowered hat. Seeing the tense little tableau she stopped short. Her eyes, Michele noted incongruously, were the pale blue of souring milk. Her mouth opened and the scream she had swallowed upstairs came out, with plenty of pressure behind it. The detective looked away from McQuade for only an instant, but when he looked back the. 45 had appeared in McQuade’s big hand.
The detective congealed, both hands well forward. His tired look was gone.
“I see I made a mistake,” he said. “You don’t look anything like McQuade. And even if you did, nobody was killed in that stickup, so God bless you. Take off. Till we meet again.”
The scream from the woman at the elevators rose in pitch until it cut out abruptly as she dropped to the floor in a faint. McQuade and Michele still had fifteen or twenty feet to travel to the door, and they didn’t hurry. The detective remained fixed, as though he found himself playing the child’s game of statues, and would have to pay a forfeit if he was seen to move. But he was tense and ready. He wouldn’t have been a detective without a gun inside his coat. McQuade had pulled Michele in against him so she partially screened his body, but would the detective let that stand in his way when the shooting started? Michele knew better.
McQuade said softly in her ear, “When we get to the door I’m putting a slug in his knee. After that you’re on your own. If you ever see me again, start running.”
She was breathing in quick shuddering gulps. McQuade stopped with a muttered obscenity. Something on the other side of the front window pulled at Michele’s eye. Luck had been fairly good to her lately, but now it had turned on her with bared teeth. A uniformed policeman was making out a summons for a car too close to a fire hydrant. His horse looked in at Michele.
McQuade could handle one armed man, but hardly two. He hesitated. The momentary stitch in his concentration gave the off-duty detective his chance. He broke for a low sofa, reaching for his gun. McQuade fired. The recoil of the heavy automatic against her side almost twisted Michele out of his grasp. The detective landed on the nubbly carpet with a strange little moan, and grabbed at his thigh. McQuade took a half step toward him,
