The key was red hot in the palm of my hand, under my thumb. “I don’t know anything about any recordings. Recordings of what?”
He drew his shoulders forward, his eyes impersonal. “Who knows? Who cares? We’re supposed to get the tape and deliver it, that’s all. You willing to talk now?”
I looked blank and stayed quiet. After a minute he reached down, and helped me out of the booth. One of the other two did the same for Richert’s widow.
We all went out together. On the way, I brushed the table of the booth in which Kitty was drinking her beer with a display of serenity that was, under the circumstances, somewhat annoying. My right hand, hanging at my side, extended just below the top of the table. I let the key slip down my palm into my fingers, and flipped it off toward Kitty’s lap.
Kitty lifted her beer and drank. She looked as if she were enjoying it…
CHAPTER FOUR
Fitting the Puzzle Together
We went up from a narrow alley on rickety stairs into a large room that looked like it used to be a place to lay a bet. There was a flat top desk, with an undisturbed coating of dust. On the wall behind the desk, was an old slate blackboard with some faint chalk marks still on it.
The young gorilla who looked like a rah-rah boy pushed his hat onto the back of his head and said politely, “Ladies first.”
The bigger of the other two grinned and smashed the platinum blond across the mouth with the back of his hand. The blow cracked like a rifle shot, and she cringed away with a squeal and a whimper, pressing one hand to her injured mouth.
“Where’s the tape?” Tan Eyes said. Before she could answer, the big guy backhanded her again, and a wet sob gurgled in her throat. Her eyes flared with hate and fear, and all the other hellish emotions that a woman like her can feel for a guy who belts her in the face.
“Where’s the tape?” Tan Eyes said.
The big guy drew his arm up and back again, so that his chin was fitted into the interior angle of his elbow, but before he could slash it out and down, I said, “It’s in a locker at Union Station.”
Tan Eyes turned to me, smiling. “A gentleman. A real, damned gentleman. Can’t stand to see a dame knocked around. I thought you’d be soft.”
The big guy came over to me and grabbed me by the lapels with his left hand. He brought the heel of his right hand down in a short chopping motion on my bandage.
I could fed the cut pull apart, and blood welled out from under the bandage and ran down my face.
“That’s for not saying it sooner,” he said.
Tan Eyes held out a hand, palm up.
“You got a key?”
“No.”
The big guy hit me across the eyes with the edge of his hand, it was like getting hit with a tomahawk.
“Where’s the key?” Tan Eyes said.
I was blind. I had lost my vision in an intense flare of brilliant light that died instantly to total darkness. Now the darkness was diluted slowly by a gray infiltration, and objects and faces reappeared with a strange effect of coming down a line of perspective from a great distance. The big executioner had his chopper drawn back for a repeat, and Tan Eyes had his extended, as before, with the palm up.
I guess I could have taken more, if I’d had to. But I was glad I didn’t have to. Kitty had the key. She’d had at least twenty minutes to function, and Kitty was a smart gal. By this time, she was certainly in possession of the tape and the player.
“I dropped it in the coin slot in the juke box control,” I said.
The tan eyes faded to a cold and wary yellow. The lips below them barely moved.
“Don’t play fancy, counselor. If you say it, it better be true.”
“It’s true,” I said, and when the big one moved in for another cut, I added quickly, “The number’s six hundred and eight.”
Tan Eyes swung an arm out gently against the other’s chest. “To hell with the key,” he said. “A public locker’s no problem.”
The third guy had been standing against the door watching, just as he’d done in my office. It could be that he just went along for kicks, or that he was the coach. The guy who really called the plays and did the thinking when thinking was needed. He was the one who did it now, at any rate, even though it came a little late.
“The tape’s not in the locker,” he said.
Tan Eyes turned slowly. “No? You thinking of a better place?”
Number three, the Thinker, moved lazily against the door, lifting his shoulders slightly. “The tape’s not in the locker,” he said. “The key’s not in the slot. The dame’s got it.”
“Dame? This one?”
“No. The blond. The one drinking beer. I just remembered where I’ve seen her before. It’s been bothering me.”
The tan eyes were very still, fading again, masking the activity of the brain behind. “The secretary, his secretary!”
The Thinker’s lips curled. He nodded agreement. “Sure. I’m betting he passed the key off when he brushed the booth. One will get you ten if the tape’s not in his office right now, or on the way there.”
The executioner moved in again. His lips were twisted back off his teeth, and his hand was raised to chop. At the door, the Thinker straightened and said, “Later. We owe him something, but save it for later. Right now we’ve got no time.” He gave the disappointed executioner a placating smile, as one might smile at an unhappy child, promising future pleasure. “You stay here with the dame. She might get lonesome if we left her by herself.”
Tan Eves took my arm like an old friend,
