“You can afford it.”
Hammond’s eyes darted quickly at him. “What would you know about that?”
“You don’t work for anyone, Pike. Most everyone works for you. That’s the word from St. Louis.”
Hammond shrugged, lifted his left foot and toed Barada’s body as if it were garbage. “So long, welsher,” he said tautly. “See you in the hot place.”
Paula had fainted. Novak untied the cords, carried her to the sofa, laid her gently down. When he looked around Hammond was bending over touching Al’s jugular vein. He shook his head slowly. “Fair shooting, Novak. Even if it took two.” He straightened up and went to the sofa. For a long time he studied Paula’s face and then he turned to Novak. Almost reverently he said, “I never saw her before, just heard about her. She’s as lovely as they said. Maybe she won’t like my killing Big Ben.”
“She could get over it,” Novak said in a strained voice. “Take her on a long trip, Pike.”
His lips pursed. “I could ask her,” he said in a distant voice. Then one eyebrow lifted. “Unless you staked out a claim?”
Novak swallowed. “I couldn’t keep her in perfume,” he said dully, turned and searched for the two ejected shells until he found them. By then Paula’s eyes were open. She was staring up at Pike Hammond who was seated beside her. Novak heard her say, “I don’t know you.”
Novak dropped the empty shells in his pocket, blew into the pistol barrel. “Meet Pike Hammond from St. Louis. Owner and proprietor of the Stallion Club. The guy who banks what the suckers lose.”
Hammond pulled off his tweed hat. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Norton,” he said gravely. “We ought not stay around here too long.”
Novak said, “What happened to the guy who was supposed to come through the doorway?”
Hammond turned slightly, and a smile played over his lips. “He faded early. How long he’ll sleep is anyone’s guess.”
Paula extended one arm, and Hammond helped her sit upright. She closed her eyes, swayed and opened her eyes again. “I had some bags,” she said quietly. “In the other room, I think.”
Hammond nodded. One hand went inside his coat pocket, pulled out the ostrich wallet and the gloved thumb riffled a deck of crisp bills. Nothing under a hundred. He said, “You’ve earned something. Name it.”
Novak’s mouth twisted. “You shot Barada, not me. I ought to be paying you.”
“I mean it,” Hammond said levelly.
“So do I. Anyway, it’s crook money.”
Hammond’s face darkened. The wallet disappeared inside his coat. His dark eyes held Novak’s. Hammond said, “We’ll let that one pass. Money’s money. It has no race, sex or politics. Money isn’t right or wrong. Not by itself. For a peeper you’ve got too damn much pride.”
“That’s why I stay a peeper.”
Hammond turned and spoke to Paula. “My car’s a couple of blocks away. Shall we get going?”
Her eyes were larger than he had ever seen them before. She walked to Novak and laid her arms on his shoulders. Her fingers laced behind his neck. “Just like that,” she said bitterly, “you’d let me walk away.”
His stomach was achingly hollow, his arms leaden as he drew her against him. “I’ve got a walk-up flat,” he said in a voice that wavered, “a TV set and an electric toaster. Sometimes there’s hot water and sometimes not. I keep long hours, and when I get back to the flat I’m usually too tired to do more than mix a drink and stagger off to bed. That’s no life for you, beautiful. It’s no life for anyone.” He bent his head and caressed the bruised lips gently. “Thanks for thinking of me, beautiful. Buy me a drink next time you breeze through town.”
“I’ll have money,” she whispered. “Half of Chalmers’ fortune.”
He shook his head slowly. “After you told me about the call I checked the switchboard operators. No longdistance calls had gone to your room. It was a fake. Tags or Al impersonated the lawyer. To get you out of the hotel. Sorry, beautiful.”
Her head drew back, her face was dazed. Her eyes stared at him unbelievingly.
Hammond cleared his throat. “Let’s shove off. No telling who heard the shooting.” He picked up Paula’s bags.
The gray eyes had misted. Novak drew her arms apart and kissed the side of one cheek. Shakily she turned and began pulling on her coat.
Hammond said, “Need my gun for a prop?”
“Registered?”
Hammond nodded.
“No good then. I’ll set enough of a scene to satisfy cops who don’t get feverish over hood killings.”
“Any time you get to St. Louis, look me up,” Hammond said as he moved past Novak. “The Stallion Club. Ask any cabbie.”
“Sure. You’ll stand me a drink. We’ll have a cigarette and chat for half an hour trying to remember what the hell it was all about.” He lifted his hat, ran one hand through his hair and saw Paula turn and breathe a kiss. Her cheeks were moist. The amber light plated them with burnished gold.
He heard their footsteps going along the passageway to the kitchen. The screen door opened, closed softly, and then there was silence.
Novak got out a cigarette with unsteady fingers, lighted it and heard a cracked voice saying, “Take good care of her, Pike.” He felt terribly alone. He drew one hand across the side of his face, shook himself and went over beside the writing table. He gathered his pen from the floor, crumpled the sheet of paper he had written on and shoved it in his pocket. His eyes searched the wall until he found the hole drilled by Barada’s derringer. A small hole, .22 maybe. And a close miss. The derringer was for under-the-table work, not a gunfight. Barada had learned the lesson too late.
Novak took the two empty shells from his pocket, wiped them and dropped them near Barada’s body. There was a big red hole staining the back of Barada’s yellow shirt. Colt .45. Nice shooting, Pike.
He wiped the chrome-plated pistol and laid it in Barada’s upturned palm. He pressed the slack fingers around it, remembering to touch the index to the trigger, and then he placed the pistol a foot from Barada’s hand and picked up the derringer. Carrying it over to Al’s body he wiped it and repeated the process, leaving the little gun a yard from Al’s arm. One of his shots had torn through Al’s jaw. The other had entered the throat. There was no exit hole.
His lips were as dry as brick. Moistening them he flicked ash from the cigarette and stared around the room. Nothing else to do. The setting wouldn’t fool a moron.
In the distance he heard a car engine start. The car backed, turned and ground away. As he listened his throat tightened again. He swallowed hard, turned and went through the passageway into the kitchen. Covering the doorknob with his handkerchief he pulled it open, closed it and walked down the steps.
He almost stumbled over Tags’ body beside the car. There was a steady heartbeat and muffled sounds came from the gauze-stuffed snout. Novak opened the car door, slid across the seat and found the ignition keys.
Without turning on the lights he started the engine and backed the car out of the driveway.
The moon was a tuft of dirty cotton, clouds rafted the starless sky, the air had the heavy taste of rain.
As he drove he tried not to think about the last half hour on Melrose Street but his nostrils still held the bitter scent of gunsmoke. The cigarette tasted like smoldering straw but it was better than the reek of cordite. In his mind he saw two dead bodies lying on the floor of a dusty room; but for a little luck they would have been his and Paula’s. He thought of Morely and wondered if Bikel had returned to the Tilden. He thought of a wasted little woman on a chipped iron bed. He thought of a fat woman in an expensive suite, staring at the ragged moon and waiting.
His body was spent, his mind numb. He found his head nodding, attention drifting from the road. For a while he fought fatigue, and then he stopped at a diner and gulped two cups of black coffee. When he crawled behind the wheel again he knew he could last another couple of hours.
Movie houses were disgorging people from the early show. Taverns were doing a normal Thursday night business. Shopping center lots were jammed with cars. He wondered whose car he was driving. Not a rental car, probably stolen. Time to start it on the way back to its owner.
At Q Street he turned and drove down Kingman Place to a dark curb under a low tree. He cut the motor, dropped the keys on the floor and got out. Wiping his prints from the door handle he jogged back to Vermont and
