but that proved to be too much to ask of a sorely tried soul.
I thought I heard the creak of stairs. I moved to the stairwell and leaned over. I couldn’t see anything. The lightning chose that moment to penetrate the house with a crack of light, and my eyes caught a shadow on the stairs.
“Far enough,” I said. “I’ve got a gun.”
The answer to my threat was a pinging near my head. The shot had missed me by what seemed not at all. I pulled out my.38 and aimed down the stairs.
It was a good time to break my record of never having shot anyone. I leaned forward, took aim, and fired. Something moved out of the room behind me, and I turned to meet it. Whatever it was jostled me, and I tried to keep from tumbling head first over the railing and down the stairs. I could hear the figure who bumped into me scrambling for a dark hole, and I could feel the gun fly out of my hand while I desperately grabbed for something to hold onto. The stairway had been narrow enough so my hand caught the far side, and I pushed myself back. My.38 hit the wooden stairs and thumped six or seven steps.
Silence. I was breathing hard and licking sweat from my upper lip, trying to see below, to see whether I had a chance at my gun before whoever was coming up and shooting at me got to it first. I didn’t even worry about who or what had been behind me.
There was no lightning, and I could see no gun below, but I could hear the footsteps coming slowly, carefully upward. In a few seconds, maybe thirty or forty at most, whoever was on the way up would probably find my gun and know I was unarmed. Even if they didn’t find it, they’d figure out that I had stopped firing back. What I needed was a weapon. Since this was Sam Billings’s house, I doubted that I’d even find a heavy crucifix to throw, but what choice did I have? Don’t bother to answer. It’s always easier to find options when the knife is at someone else’s throat. I slipped off my shoes and carried them into the first room. There was a table in the corner and something that looked like a bench. I groped my way to the table, and my hand touched something erect and smooth. It was a candle. I moved to the wall, running my hand across it. Nothing. Below me the footsteps were moving upward. I hadn’t counted the steps, but I knew they weren’t infinite. A chair could be a weapon, but that would be a last resort against someone with a gun. The footsteps were moving up rapidly. It was time for last resorts. I grabbed a chair, almost losing it in my sweating hands, and placed my shoes on the table. I moved behind the door and waited and waited and waited. The stairs creaked, and the wind blew, and the rain fell, and I thought I was going to be sick. The trick would be to swing the chair just when the person with the gun stepped in. The chair was getting heavy and I was fighting an almost uncontrollable urge to giggle in fright.
My sensitivity shell was alive with nerves. I could hear a thousand aches and sighs in the building. My brain tried to sort them out, determine which was the right one. I thought I caught a creak on the floor outside and tried to tighten my grip, but I didn’t want to make noise. Now, I thought, but another voice inside said, wait. I waited, waited, waited, and when I couldn’t take another surge of my pulse, I stepped out and swung the chair. I hit something and heard a pained “Urrgg.”
Dropping the chair, I took a step into the hall to throw a kick, which would not have been devastating in my bare feet, but it beat trying to run or hide. The barrel of a gun jabbed my chest, and I stopped suddenly. My stockinged feet slid, and I was on my back in the room, which saved me from getting the bullet in the chest. I rolled back and kicked the door closed, but another bullet came through the wood close enough to make my right ear ring.
What could I do? I backed away. The door opened slowly, and I could see enough to know that I was in a room with the murderer I had been looking for. My idea had been to set the scene, but the murderer had decided not to wait.
The gun picked me out but didn’t fire. I watched while the murderer kept me in sight and groped to the table. I was motioned away by the dark outline, and I moved away. The sounds told me that there was something being pulled out of a pocket, and the striking of a match told me what it was. The murderer lit the candle and turned to face me.
CHAPTER TEN
The light from the single candle revealed a small room. I was near the door. To my right was a blank wall with three old glass-covered oval photographs on it, all of women about fifty. The wall to my left was covered from ceiling to floor with heavy, blood-red drapes. I had seen curtains like this before, in the basement of the theater a few dozen yards away where the Dark Knights had met. That seemed a long time ago. But it had been only five days. On the wall opposite me was a single window, small, dirty, and crying with rain. There were a few chairs, and the one table with a cloth. On the table was a statue of some kind with a bunch of arms. Oh, in front of the table stood Jerry Vernoff, aiming a gun in my general direction.
“I know we were supposed to meet at my place later,” he said, leaning back against the table. He was dripping with rain and his yellow hair was plastered forward on his brow. “But I started to think that you had no reason to see me and maybe, just maybe you were putting things together. I can tell by your eyes that you’re not surprised to see me, so I can also conclude that I was right. Pretty good, huh?”
“Third rate,” I said, slumped back against the wall. His face sagged, and his grip tightened on the gun. I had hit home. He wanted to shoot, but he wanted to hear more. I hoped I had read this whole thing and him right and that Vernoff would want to talk about it.
“Third rate?” he said irritably. “Come on. The plotting was…”
“… too complicated.” I finished. He reached over and threw me my shoes. I figured he wouldn’t shoot until I got them on, and by that time we’d be deep in debate, and I might get to do something. He was about ten feet away, so there wasn’t much chance to go for him. My best bet would probably be to catch him off guard in the middle of a sentence and try to go out the door and down the stairs. I didn’t know how well my knee would do with that option, and a fleeting sense of morbid satisfaction took me. If Vernoff shot me in the back before I made it down the stairs, it would be Phil’s fault for mashing my knee. Then he wouldn’t be singing, “I’ll be glad when you’re dead, you rascal you.”
“What do you mean, too complicated?” Vernoff pressed.
I stood up and looked around as if I had the duration of the war to while away.
“The Shatzkin murder,” I said. “Why not just shoot him and say a burglar did it? That’s what started me thinking about you. Each murder, Shatzkin’s, Newcomb’s, Haliburton’s, had a gimmick, a B-movie plot gimmick, your specialty.”
Vernoff was hurting, and my words were giving him head troubles.
“We handed the police a wrapped-up murderer for Shatzkin,” Vernoff said.
“We? You mean you and Mrs. Shatzkin? How about Newcomb and Haliburton?”
“Camile and I and Newcomb, but not Haliburton,” Vernoff explained. “He never knew what was going on. He was just a big puppy dog who found out too much.” “A very active puppy dog,” I said. Vernoff flared with jealousy.
“What do you mean?”
“Come on, Jerry,” I said. “You’ve got the plot in your files. Good-looking hulk like Haliburton. You think your roving Camile never dallied in the garden?”
“She was just stringing him along, using him,” Vernoff explained.
“You’re giving me B dialogue again, Jerry,” I said.
“And I can blow a hole right through…” he stopped.
“More B dialogue,” I said, pointing out what he had already noticed. “That’s your problem.”
“I can write,” Vernoff said. “Now that Camile and I are going to have money, control of a big agency, I’ll get the ins, the breaks. That’s all you need, good connections. Talent isn’t enough.”
“I think Warner Baxter said that in 42nd Street,” I pushed.
“That’s enough, Peters,” he shouted, and I could see it was enough. I went in another direction. “You met Camile Shatzkin while you were her husband’s client?”
“Right,” he said, calming down a bit. “A party at his place. I talked to her for a while. She was interested in my work, my career. One thing led to another, and she said she wanted to read some of my material. I invited her
