“You boys do all of Stark’s strong-arm work?” I asked.
The Thinker smiled lazily and said, “Button up, counselor.”
The big Caddy rolled along with a pedigreed purr, taking its time and minding the traffic signals. No one seemed to be in a hurry, which was agreeable to me, and it was probably another twenty minutes before we crawled out onto the sidewalk in front of my shingle. Going up the stairs, like meat in a sandwich between my brace of escorts, I prayed silently that Kitty had been sensible enough to take the tape someplace else. But Kitty, while clever, was given to being sensible only rarely, and this, apparently, wasn’t a rare occasion. She was sitting behind her desk, showing her teeth in a receptive smile.
“Hi, guys,” she said.
The Thinker closed the door and leaned against it, as was his habit. Tan Eyes walked over to the desk and took Kitty’s chin between thumb and fingers, tipping her head back. He let his eyes wander over her face and on down the arched stem of her neck. The eyes, she reported later, were tender.
“You’re a sweet doll,” he said. “You’re a luscious hunk of stuff. Wouldn’t it be a shame if I had to mess you up? Wouldn’t it be a crying shame?”
She kept on smiling as well as she could with the pressure on her face. Her voice was thin and strained from the tension in her throat.
“Anything you want to do, you better do quick,” she said. “My friend, Wiley Shivers of homicide, may be slow with a dame, but he can still fire his cannon allegro fortissimo. In your language, that means fast and loud as hell.”
He was like a guy in slow motion. His hand floated away from, her face, and he turned by degrees from the hips, his arm bent at the elbow and suspended outward at his side. He looked like a kid’s dream of a gunslinger. Only the gun wasn’t on his hip, it was under his arm. The suspended arm flashed up and inward as Wiley Shivers opened my private door. But Wiley’s gun was handier. It was already pointed accurately in the right direction.
Tan Eyes sat down very quietly on the floor and folded over like a supplicant. Against the hall door, the Thinker was immobile, spread on the wood in a kind of mock and frozen crucifixion. Wiley Shivers, that remarkable, fat, little guy, looked down at his victim, who was obviously dead, and his expression was precisely the same as when he’d looked at his scuffed shoe, or at the visible charms of Kitty.
“A good gunsel,” he said, after a while. “A dead one.”
Kitty came out from under her desk, and looked at me across the top. Her voice took off like a wild knuckle ball. “You’re bleeding again. Why the hell don’t you learn to protect yourself?”
I didn’t answer. I watched Wiley Shivers walk over slowly to the body of the rah-rah gorilla and nudge it with a toe. The folded body, in delicate balance, stirred and slipped over, straightening on the floor. The face under the light brown crew-cut had acquired a new softness of line. It looked rather sophomoric. Shivers’ sour gaze lifted, roamed around the wall, and down across the Thinker against the door. It came to rest on me.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Sorry? For what? This guy?”
“No. For what I thought about you. I thought you were a crook. I thought you were hand-picked by Austin Stark to pin a rap on me.”
“I don’t give a damn what you thought.”
“Thanks, anyhow.”
His mouth twisted. His eyes looked like a couple of smeary marbles. When I was a kid, we used to call them snotties.
“That’s the trouble with you smart guys,” he said. “You think in generalities. We got crooks at headquarters, so you jump to the opinion that everyone’s a crook at headquarters. See what I mean? Under all the smartness, no brains at all. I’ll tell you something to remember, counselor. Wherever you go, you’ll always find a few honest guys.”
He moved over to the door and casually flipped an automatic from under the arm of the Thinker. Without turning, he said, “I’ll take this punk in. You two stay here and sit on those tapes. I’ll send back for them. And don’t worry about the cops I send, they’ll be honest. When I send them, they’re always honest. Wagon’ll be here for the guy on the floor.”
He was moving again, when I thought of the platinum blond. “They’re holding Richert’s widow,” I said. “I just happened to remember. The Thinker there can tell you where.”
Looking back for a second over his shoulder, he struck an attitude of ludicrous, flabby coyness. He was the only guy I’ve ever known you could love and hate at once.
“Much obliged. That’s real thoughtful of you. She’ll probably be very glad you just happened to remember. Incidentally, Stark’s in custody by now. I sent a couple men after him just as soon as I’d heard the tape. We’ll be springing Decker to make room for him.” His lips moved again into that sour twist that seemed to signify hatred, for all the world and everything in it. “See you around, counselor.”
He went on out with the Thinker, and I said, “Not if I can help it. Never again.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Kitty picked her way around the body in front of her desk. “Wiley isn’t a bad guy. I knew right away he was honest. That’s why I called him to meet me here.”
“Yes? What made you so sure he was honest?”
She grinned. “That remark he made. About being too old for me. No one but an honest man could have
