He landed badly, trying to start running too soon, and went down on his left fist, in which he still gripped the knife. When he lurched to his feet he was staggering. His crippled right hand dangled at his side. Wiping his eyes with the back of his left hand, he reeled along the delivery alley to 19th Avenue, where he stood for a moment, outlined in the light of a street lamp at the corner of 19th and 28th Street. Then he disappeared.
Other lights came on in Kitty’s building. Shayne turned to go back up the half-flight to the open window, and then Brad backed into the light at the end of the alley.
A voice shouted. He turned and started across the street at a shambling half-run, clutching his stomach. The shout was repeated. It was followed by a single shot.
Brad went down in a heap. A man walked into the light, his gun ready. He stopped warily a few steps from the crumpled figure. A moment later he was joined by a second man, also holding a gun. When the old man didn’t move they approached him together and looked down at him for a moment before putting away their guns.
Shayne hesitated, thinking.
Then he hobbled back to the sixth floor and swung in through the window. He forgot the saucepans. He kicked them out of the way angrily, snapped on the light and limped into the living room.
“Kitty?”
There was no answer.
“It’s O.K.,” he said. “He lost.”
When there was still no answer he went into the bedroom and turned on the light there. The room was a shambles. He looked in the bathroom, in the closet. Then he got down on hands and knees and looked under the bed, afraid she had been hit by one of Brad’s random shots. After that he checked the coat closet in the living room and returned to the kitchen.
At that point he accepted the fact that she was gone.
chapter 7
Shayne dropped onto the sofa, where he uncorked the gin bottle and took a long drink, after which he rolled up his pant leg to look at the damage.
It wasn’t as bad as he had feared. He went to the bathroom, where he found nothing more elaborate than band-aids in the medicine cabinet. He tore up a sheet, washed the cut as well as he could without being able to see it, and was binding it up when he heard a tapping at the outer door.
He unlocked it without bothering to use the peephole. It was Kitty, wearing Shayne’s jacket, which came down nearly to her knees. She looked lost inside it.
“I locked myself out,” she said faintly. “I went up to the roof.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re hurt!” she exclaimed, seeing the trailing bandage.
“It’s not too bad. It’s just a hell of a place to get to.”
“I’ll do it.”
They returned to the bathroom. Kitty pushed back the long sleeves, took Shayne’s clumsy bandage apart and put on a better one, which stopped the bleeding. Using a wet towel, she sponged off his back and shoulder. Her touch was deft and sure.
“You can use a few stitches, Mike. In your leg, mainly. These cuts up here can take care of themselves.”
Using cotton at the end of a short stick, she sponged the cuts carefully with antiseptic. He was straddling a chair while she worked on him from behind.
“If I’d known what I was getting you into!” she said. “First I all but drown you. Then I win your money and more or less force you to make love to me. And right in the middle of that I get you involved in a knife fight with a crazy old man.” She gave a light nervous laugh. “I was so scared! I couldn’t make out what happened at the end. Was that a policeman who shot him?”
“Yeah. Sometimes they’re around when you need them. Not often, but sometimes.”
“He was staggering.”
“He had to jump from the fire escape,” Shayne explained. “I think he fell on his knife. All the emergency switches were turned on by then, and when the cops told him to hold still and explain the knife, all he could do was run. Now I want you to hold still, Kitty. I need an explanation of a couple of things.”
Her hand stopped on his back. “Yes. About me and Cal. You want to know if what Brad said was true. Yes, Mike. More or less.” She sighed. “It lasted for-oh, about half a year. I got in the habit of denying it, and that’s one subject it’s too easy to lie about. I wasn’t ashamed of it at the time. I am now, a little. I don’t need to be told it was the wrong thing to do. I’ve tried to understand why it happened, but you’d have to know Cal. He made me feel so-important, Mike. I thought it was love. There were other things mixed up in it.”
Her voice was dry and flat. “And that’s why I don’t want to let those zombies sell the Key! They didn’t give a damn for Cal when he was alive. Now all they care about is how much money they can squeeze out of the one thing that ever really mattered to him. Mike? Say something. You can see why I didn’t tell you.”
“People don’t usually tell me the truth the first time they talk to me,” Shayne said dryly. “Did you go to see Ev Tuttle the night he burned to death?”
She answered quietly. “Yes. He lost his only income when Cal died. I gave him money sometimes when I had it. He phoned me from a bar that night and I met him there, a seedy little bar on the other side of the river. I gave him a few dollars and he used it to get drunk So indirectly perhaps I’m responsible for what happened. If he hadn’t been drunk, he wouldn’t have fallen asleep with a cigarette in his mouth.”
“Did you go to his room with him?”
“Certainly not. He lived in a terrible hotel. I wouldn’t have dreamed of it.”
“I need the truth this time, Kitty.”
“That is the truth,” she said. “I don’t know what Brad meant about a witness. As far as I know there was never any question that it was an accident.”
“He started to say something about gold. I couldn’t catch it.”
“I don’t know what that was all about. Unless he thinks he’s located that Spanish treasure ship. But what connection could it have with the sale to Florida-American? It’s beyond me.”
Shayne stood up and looked at his watch. “I think you’d better stay with Natalie the rest of the night.”
“Mike”-she hesitated-“I know you have to go to the doctor, but won’t you come back?”
He didn’t reply. He was looking around at the chaos in the bedroom. “What the hell was the point of these dirty playing cards?”
He picked up several of the cards which Brad had flung on the bed. They were dog-eared and grubby. The pictures on the backs were the usual black-and-white photographs of naked men and women practicing various perversions, without seeming to be enjoying themselves. The quality of the photography was extremely poor.
Seeing something else amid the litter, he picked up a cheap pocket comb, gummy with hair grease, the tines partially clogged with dandruff. Several long black hairs adhered to the grease. He sniffed it and made a face.
“It’s a mean one, Kitty,” he said. “These are all props for a sex killing. You can see how he wanted it to look. The killer wouldn’t be some anonymous creep who was looking for a door he could force. Your door wasn’t forced. To the cops that would mean it had to be somebody you brought home yourself. The comb was the kicker. They’d look for a youth with black hair. Probably a Cuban.”
She put her arms around him from behind. “Mike, Mike, I wish-” She paused. “One of the things I wish is that I’d come in your bedroom half an hour sooner. I know we can’t do anything about it now, everything’s so horrible. But I wish you’d come back. Please. I’ll clean up this mess and make the place look halfway habitable, and the hell with everybody! I don’t see how they can hurt me now.”
He turned and took her by the shoulders. “Neither do I. But I want to make sure. There are three of you left. You, Shanahan, Cal’s daughter Barbara. Brad knew you’re planning to leave town in the morning. Barbara must have called him right after you called her. While she was telling him that, did she also tell him to give you a final chance to sell, and to kill you if you refused? Someone was watching the building earlier tonight from across the street. That means it was underway before your phone call to Barbara. These are all things we need to know, Kitty. I have to talk to Barbara about it, and it won’t work unless I do it tonight.”
