Velda lost herself in her thoughts for a good five minutes. I stayed hunched over the wheel trying to see through the fog. 'It wasn't there, Mike. If it wasn't there then it has to be somewhere else.'
'Yeah.'
'You looked around the place right after Oscar died. It wasn't among his things. The police must have looked too. Then we looked again. Do you think it could possibly be that Oscar didn't have them?'
'What else is there to think? Either that or he hid them outside his room.'
'Doubtful, Mike. Remember one thing, if Oscar showed himself anywhere he would have been mistaken for Lee. He couldn't have done much fooling around.'
I had to grin because the girl who was wearing my ring was so smart I began to feel foolish around her. I did pretty good for myself. I picked a woman who could shoot a guy just like that and still think straight. 'Go on, Velda.'
'So maybe Oscar never got those documents. Charlie's ripped pocket just happened when he fell. If Charlie was the courier, and if the documents he was carrying are missing, then Charlie must have them tucked away somewhere. Remember what the men at the pie factory said . . . that he was dopey for certain periods of time? He was forgetful? Couldn't he have . . .'
I stopped her and took it from there myself. She had tapped it right on the nose.
'When, Mike?'
I glanced at her quickly. 'When what?'
'When do we go through his apartment?'
She was asking for more! Once in a night wasn't enough. 'Not now,' I told her. 'Tomorrow's another day. Our dead friends won't be making a report tonight and the party won't be too anxious to make any more quick moves until they figure this one out first. We have time, plenty of time.'
'No we don't.'
I convinced her that we had by talking my head off all the way up to her apartment. When I let her out I only had one more thing to say. She waited, knowing well enough what was coming. 'In case anyone asks, I was with you in your place all night, understand?'
'Can't we partially tell the truth?'
'Nope, we're engaged.'
'Oh. Now I have to wait some more.'
'Not long, kid, not too long. When this is all finished there'll be time for other things.'
'I can wait.'
'Good. Now hop upstairs and get to bed, but first, take that gun of yours and hide it somewhere. Put it where it can't be found until I tell you to take it out.'
She leaned over and kissed me, a soft, light kiss that left my mouth tingling with the thought of what lay behind this girl who could be so completely lovable and so completely deadly. There were fires burning in her eyes that nothing could ever quench, but they asked me to try . . . to try hard.
I looked at her legs as she got out of the car and decided that I'd never see enough of them. They had been there all the time, mine any time I had wanted to ask and until now I never had the sense to ask. I had been stupid, all right. I was much smarter now. I waited until she was in the door before I turned the car around and crawled back to my own place.
It was late and I was tired. There had been too much in this one night again, I thought to myself. You get wound up like a watch spring, tighter and tighter until the limit is reached and you let go with a bang that leaves you empty and gasping.
When I locked the door I went directly to the closet and took down the box of parts and shells for the gun. I laid them out on the kitchen table and took the .45 apart piece by piece, cleaning and oiling every bit of it. I unwrapped the new barrel and put it in place, throwing the rest of the gun together around it. On second thought I changed the firing pin too. A microscope could pick up a lot of details from empty shell cases.
It took a half-hour to get the gun ready to go again. I shoved the old barrel and pin in a quart beer can, stuffed in some paper to keep it from rattling and dumped the works down the incinerator.
I was feeling pretty good when I crawled into the sack. Now let's see what would happen.
The alarm was about to give up when I finally woke up. There was nothing I wanted more than staying in bed, but I forced myself into a sitting position, fought a brief battle with the sheets and got my feet on the floor. A cold shower took the sleep out of my eyes and a plate of bacon and eggs put some life into my body.
I dressed and called Velda. She wasn't at home so I tried the office. She was there. I said, 'How the devil do you do it?'
She laughed and came right back at me. 'I'm still a working girl, Mike. Office hours are from eight to five, remember?'
'Any customers?'
'Nope.'
'Any bills?'
'Nope.'
'Love me?'
'Yup. Love me?'
'Yup. What a conversation. Any calls?'
'Yup. Pat called. He wants to see you. Lee Deamer called. He wants to see you, too.'
I brightened up fast. 'If they call back, tell them I'll check in. How about the papers?'
'Headlines, Mike. Big black headlines. It seems that a couple of rival gangs met up with each other in an old building over on the East Side. They forgot to carry their dead off when the battle was finished.'
'Don't sound so smug. Did Pat mention anything about it?'
'No, but he will. He was pretty edgy with me.'
'Okay, give him my love. I'll see you shortly.' I hung up and laid out my working suit for the day. When I finished dressing I looked out the window and swore to myself. The fog was gone, but a drizzle had come in on its heels and the people on the street were bundled into coats trying to keep warm. The winter was dying a hard death.
On the way to the office I stopped off at a saloon and saw a friend of mine. I told him I wanted an unlicensed automatic of a certain make and .32 caliber, one that hadn't done anything except decorate somebody's dresser drawer since it was bought. My friend went to the phone and made two calls. He came back, told me to wait a few minutes, served a few customers at the bar, then went into the kitchen in the rear and I heard his voice arguing for a while. He came back with a package in his hand and said, 'Twenty bucks, Mike.'
I peeled off twenty, took the gun apart and removed the barrel and the pin. The rest I told my friend to dump in with his trash, thanked him and left. I stopped off at the office long enough to hand the two parts to Velda and tell her to slip them in her gun during her lunch hour. Then I went down to see Pat.
As Velda said, he wasn't happy. He said, 'Hell, Mike,' but his eyes raked me up and down. 'Sit,' he said.
I sat down and picked the paper off his desk. The headlines were big and black. There was a picture of the outside of the house with an interior shot in the middle section with white dotted lines to indicate where the bodies had been found. 'Real trouble, huh, Pat?'
'Yeah, I thought maybe you could explain some of it.'
'Don't be silly.'
'Been shooting your gun lately?'
'Yesterday, as a matter of fact. I fired one into some waste right in my own apartment to check the ejector action. Why?'
'A paraffin test is out of order then. Mind if I see your gun?'
I said no and handed it over. Pat pressed a button on his desk and one of the technicians came in. Pat handed him the gun. 'Get me a photograph of one of the slugs, Art.'
'You're assuming a lot, aren't you, Pat?'
'I think so. Want to talk about it?'
'No, wait until you get your photograph.'
