I looked over slowly, an angle creeping into the corner of my mind. 'I'm not going to bite. Maybe you can't say things back there in front of the others, but sometimes I'm not like them. I can understand problems. I have plenty of my own.'
'But you . . . you're . . .'
'I'm what?'
'You know.' She bit into her lip, looking at me obliquely. I nodded as if I did.
'Will you be here long?'
'Maybe,' I shrugged. 'Why?'
The fear came back. 'Really, I wasn't asking pointed questions. Honest I wasn't. I just meant . . . I meant with the . . . other being killed and all, well . . .'
Damn it, she let her sentence trail off as if I was supposed to know everything that went on. What the hell did they take me for anyway? It was the same thing all night!
'I'll be here,' I said.
We went over the bridge and picked a path through the late traffic in Manhattan. I went north to Times Square and pulled into the curb. 'This is as far as I go, sugar. Thanks for the ride. I'll probably be seeing you again.'
Her eyes went wide again. Brother, she could sure do things with those eyes. She gasped, 'Seeing me?'
'Sure, why not?'
'But . . . you aren't . . . I never supposed . . .'
'That I might have a personal interest in a woman?' I finished.
'Well, yes.'
'I like women, sugar. I always have and always will.'
For the first time she smiled a smile she meant. She said, 'You aren't a bit like I thought you'd be. Really. I like you. The other . . . agent . . . he was so cold that he scared me.'
'I don't scare you?'
'You could . . . but you don't.'
I opened the door. 'Good night, Ethel.'
'Good night.' She slid over under the wheel and gunned the motor. I got one last quick smile before she pulled away.
What the hell. That's all I could think of. What the hell. All right, just what the hell was going on? I walked right into a nest of Commies because I flashed a green card and they didn't say a word, not one word. They played damn fool kids' games with me that any jerk could have caught, and bowed and scraped like I was king.
Not once did anyone ask my name.
Read the papers today. See what it says about the Red Menace. See how they play up their sneaking, conniving ways. They're supposed to be clever, bright as hell. They were dumb as horse manure as far as I was concerned. They were a pack of bugs thinking they could outsmart a world. Great. That coffee-urn trick was just great.
I walked down the street to a restaurant that was still open and ordered a plate of ham and eggs.
It was almost two o'clock when I got home. The rain had stopped long ago, but it was still up there, hanging low around the buildings, reluctant to let the city alone. I walked up to my apartment and shoved the key in the lock. My mind kept going back to Gladow, trying to make sense of his words, trying to fit them into a puzzle that had no other parts.
I could remember his speaking about somebody's untimely death. Evidently I was the substitute sent on in his place. But whose death? That sketch in the paper was a lousy one. Fat boy didn't look a bit like that sketch. All right then, who? There was only one other guy with a green card who was dead, the guy Lee Deamer was supposed to have killed.
Him. He's the one, I thought. I was his replacement. But what was I supposed to be?
There was just too much to think about; I was too tired to put my mind to it. You don't kill a fat man and see a girl die because of the look on your face and get involved with a Commie organization all in two days without feeling your mind sink into a soggy ooze that drew it down deeper and deeper until it relaxed of its own accord and you were asleep.
I sat slumped in the chair, the cigarette that had dropped from my fingers had burned a path through the rug at right angles with another. The bell shrilled and shrilled until I thought it would never stop. My arm going out to the phone was an involuntary movement, my voice just happened to be there.
I said hello.
It was Pat and he had to yell at me a half-dozen times before I snapped out of it. I grunted an answer and he said, 'Too late for you, Mike?'
'It's four o'clock in the morning. Are you just getting up or just going to bed?'
'Neither. I've been working.'
'At this hour?'
'Since six this evening. How's the vacation?'
'I called it off.'
'Really now. Just couldn't bear to leave the city, could you? By the way, did you find any more green cards with the ends snipped off?'
The palms of my hands got wet all of a sudden. 'No.'
'Are you interested in them at all?'
'Cut the comedy, Pat. What're you driving at? It's too damn late for riddles.'
'Get over here, Mike,' his voice was terse. 'My apartment, and make it as fast as you can.'
I came awake all at once, shaking the fatigue from my brain. 'Okay, Pat,' I said, 'give me fifteen minutes.' I hung up and slipped into my coat.
It was easier to grab a cab than wheel my car out of the garage. I shook the cabbie's shoulder and gave him Pat's address, then settled back against the cushions while we tore across town. We made it with about ten seconds to spare and I gave the cabbie a fin for his trouble.
I looked up at the sky before I went in. The clouds had broken up and let the stars come through. Maybe tomorrow will be nice, I thought. Maybe it will be a nice normal day without all the filth being raked to the top. Maybe. I pushed Pat's bell and the door buzzed almost immediately.
He was waiting outside his apartment when I got off the elevator. 'You made it fast, Mike.'
'You said to, didn't you?'
'Come on in.'
Pat had drinks in a shaker and three glasses on the coffee table. Only one had been used so far. 'Expecting company?' I asked him.
'Big company, Mike. Sit down and pour yourself a drink.'
I shucked my coat and hat and stuck a Lucky in my mouth. Pat wasn't acting right. You don't go around entertaining anybody at this hour, not even your best friends. Something had etched lines into his face and put a smudge of darkness under each eye. He looked tight as a drumhead. I sat there with a drink in my hand watching Pat trying to figure out what to say.
It came halfway through my drink. 'You were right the first time,' he said.
I put the glass down and stared at him. 'Do it over. I don't get it.'
'Twins.'
'What?'
'Twins,' Pat repeated. 'Lee Deamer had a twin brother.' He stood there swirling the mixture around in his glass.
'Why tell me? I'm not in the picture.'
Pat had his back to me, staring at nothing. I could barely hear his voice. 'Don't ask me that, Mike. I don't know why I'm telling you when it's official business, but I am. In one way we're both alike. We're cops. Sometimes I find myself waiting to know what you'd do in a situation before I do it myself. Screwy, isn't it?'
'Pretty screwy.'
'I told you once before that you have a feeling for things that I haven't got. You don't have a hundred bosses and a lot of sidelines to mess you up once you get started on a case. You're a ruthless bastard and sometimes it
