He whispered, “Keep those big feet quiet, Willie.” Then he motioned to me and started toward his office like we were creeping up on a punch-drunk guy in a ring.
The light was still on. I began to get a tight, cold feeling in the pit of my stomach. I filled my paw with the old equalizer. Smith got out his key.
I had the room pretty well covered and he got the key in the lock without making a sound.
He twisted the key and banged the door open hard. I was all set to start throwing lead.
Then the air went out of me with a fizz. I put the gun back in my pocket and me and Smith looked at each other. Then we looked at the guy standing in the middle of the office.
He was a big bruiser, taller than me and just as broad. He had on a shiny old suit and a hat that looked like he found it at a dogfight. He could be a nasty egg sometimes. He was a plainclothes dick. They called him Bedrock Hannrihan, mainly, I guess, because he always dug to bedrock on a case and he didn’t give a damn how he did the digging.
“Hello, Smith,” he said, “this is more luck than I bargained for.”
Me and Smith looked around the office. Hannrihan had been having fun. He had pulled the desk to one side, the big radio the boss loves away from the wall. He had even pulled the couch out in the middle of the room.
But the boss kept his temper. He didn’t sound mad. “What do you want, Hannrihan?”
“Does it matter?”
“It does.”
I said, “Have you got a warrant?”
I thought for a minute Hannrihan was going to bite me. “Listen, ape,” he said, “I don’t like you. You’re a smart aleck. You talk too smart. Just because you could beat a few guys’ heads off a few years ago and have a couple of Broadway dolls around, you think you are a gent.”
I took a step toward him. The boss said, “Easy, Willie.” He looked at Hannrihan. “Perhaps Willie is right. This sort of thing usually calls for a warrant.”
“Now, now, Smith. You’re not going to be that way are you?”
The boss looked at the mess Hannrihan had made. “Were you going to try the bookcase next? What the hell are you looking for anyway?”
Hannrihan smiled. “A corpse. Somebody squealed on you, Smith, said I’d find Joe Dance’s body here.”
My chin nearly hit my toes. “Joe Dance!”
Smith sort of stiffened. “Whoever called you, Hannrihan, must have recently escaped from the insane asylum. Have you checked there?”
Hannrihan said, “I’m not kidding, Smith. Now shall I get a warrant?”
“Why get a warrant now?” I said. “You’ve just about covered the place. The boss won’t mind you finishing.” I was giving him plenty of the Bronx cheer in my tone. “Why don’t you look in that closet over there, you grinning ape? Maybe we killed Dance, for no reason at all, and stuffed his body in that closet.”
Hannrihan’s face was about to gush blood. “I’ll do that, Mr. Aberstein,” he said soft-like. “I’ll look there.”
He crossed the office and I couldn’t help it; I laughed until my head roared. The big dummy yanked the closet door open. The laugh choked up in my throat. I staggered back like I’d been punched with a hard left jab.
There was a coat hanging in the closet, but I didn’t even see that. I couldn’t see anything but Joe Dance’s eyes. There were three of them, and the one in the middle of his forehead had spilled red down over his face. He’d never tell us anything about Droyster.
I couldn’t move. I had to hang to the edge of the desk. Hannrihan started to turn around. But I couldn’t do a thing about it. It took the boss to do that.
He swarmed all over the big cop. Hannrihan yelped, swung, but the boss hit him in the back of the neck with a rabbit punch.
Hannrihan went stiff, bounced up on his toes. His eyes rolled back. The boss hit him again and the floor caught the big dick.
I’d seen Smith do that before. His old man had wanted Smith to be a doctor; the boss knew every nerve center in a guy’s body. That’s what he had done to Hannrihan. I knew the big dick would be out ten or fifteen minutes until the nerves started working again.
The boss bent and looked at Dance. “Probably a thirty-eight slug, Willie,” he said. “It’s parked in the middle of Joe’s brain—if he has one.”
He closed the closet door. He took a look at me and laughed. “Feel sick?”
I nodded.
He stepped over Hannrihan. “Well, come along, Willie. We’ll snap you out of it. We’ve a very busy night ahead of us.”
“You’re telling me!” I wobbled out the door.
* * * *
On the way to Newell’s place, which is some dump, the boss relaxed in the cab like he was coming home from a picture show. Me, I opened the window and poked my head out. I kept seeing Joe Dance and the cold air helped.
“All we’ve got so far,” the boss muttered, “is Mark Droyster dead, a dog track now owned in its entirety by Al Newell, a widow who wants insurance, a bookie named Lorentz who had a fight with Droyster and made tracks, and the corpse of Joe Dance in the office of the Smith Agency.”
“Yeah, and a big bull who saw the corpse.”
The boss fired a smoke. I said, “Honest, boss, I was just making with sarcasm when I told Hannrihan to look in the closet. Cripes, I never dreamed that Joe Dance…”
“I haven’t blamed you, have I?”
“No, but still it makes me feel punk, me causing that ape to look in the closet.”
“Oh, forget it,
