“Where’s home, baby?”
The girl stared at him. A half-smile moved along her full lips, died at the corners of them. The breeze picked a sheet of newspaper out of the gutter and tossed it against the man’s leg. He kicked at it savagely.
“Calliope Apartments. Four-B, Two-Forty-Six East FortyEight. How soon you be there?”
The man stepped very close to her, reached back and tapped his hip. His voice was low, chilling.
“You wait for me, baby.”
She caught her breath, nodded. “Okey, handsome. I’ll wait.”
The man went back along the cracked sidewalk, across the intersection, along to where the stencil sign hung out over the street. He went through a glass door into a narrow lobby with a row of brown wooden chairs pushed against the plaster wall. There was just space to walk past them to the desk. A baldheaded colored man lounged behind the desk, fingering a large green pin in his tie.
The Negro in the purple suit leaned across the counter and his teeth flashed in a quick, hard smile. He was very young, with a thin, sharp jaw, a narrow bony forehead, the flat brilliant eyes of the gangster. He said softly: “That pug with the husky voice still here? The guy that banked the crap game last night.”
The baldheaded clerk looked at the flies on the ceiling fixture. “Didn’t see him go out, Smiler.”
“Ain’t what I asked you, Doc.”
“Yeah. He still here.”
“Still drunk?”
“Guess so. Hasn’t been out.”
“Three-forty-nine, ain’t it?”
“You been there, ain’t you? What you wanta know for?”
“He cleaned me down to my lucky piece. I gotta make a touch.”
The baldheaded man looked nervous. The Smiler stared softly at the green stone in the man’s tie pin.
“Get rolling, Smiler. Nobody gets bent around here. We ain’t no Central Avenue flop.”
The Smiler said very softly: “He’s my pal, Doe. He’ll lend me twenty. You touch half.”
He put his hand out palm up. The clerk stared at the hand for a long moment. Then he nodded sourly, went behind a ground-glass screen, came back slowly, looking toward the street door.
His hand went out and hovered over the palm. The palm closed over a passkey, dropped inside the cheap purple suit.
The sudden flashing grin on the Smiler’s face had an icy edge to it.
“Careful, Doe—while I’m up above.”
The clerk said: “Step on it. Some of the customers get home early.” He glanced at the green electric clock on the wall. It was seven-fifteen. “And the walls ain’t any too thick,” he added.
The thin youth gave him another flashing grin, nodded, went delicately back along the lobby to the shadowy staircase. There was no elevator in the Surprise Hotel.
At one minute past seven Pete Anglich, narcotic squad undercover man, rolled over on the hard bed and looked at the cheap strap watch On his left wrist. There were heavy shadows under his eyes, a thick dark stubble on his broad chin. He swung his bare feet to the floor and stood up in cheap cotton pajamas, flexed his muscles, stretched, bent over stiff-kneed and touched the floor in front of his toes with a grunt.
He walked across to a chipped bureau, drank from a quart bottle of cheap rye whiskey, grimaced, pushed the cork into the neck of the bottle, and rammed it down hard with the heel of his hand.
“Boy, have I got a hangover,” he grumbled huskily.
He stared at his face in the bureau mirror, at the stubble on his chin, the thick white scar on his throat close to the windpipe. His voice was husky because the bullet that had made the scar had done something to his vocal chords. It was a smooth huskiness, like the voice of a blues singer.
He stripped his pajamas off and stood naked in the middle of the room, his toes fumbling the rough edge of a big rip in the carpet. His body was very broad, and that made him look a little shorter than he was. His shoulders sloped, his nose was a little thick, the skin over his cheekbones looked like leather. He had short, curly, black hair, utterly steady eyes, the small set mouth of a quick thinker.
He went into a dim, dirty bathroom, stepped into the tub and turned the shower on. The water was warmish, but not hot. He stood under it and soaped himself, rubbed his whole body over, kneaded his muscles, rinsed off.
He jerked a dirty towel off the rack and started to rub a glow into his skin.
A faint noise behind the loosely closed bathroom door stopped him. He held his breath, listened, heard the noise again, a creak of boarding, a click, a rustle of cloth. Pete Anglich reached for the door and pulled it open slowly.
The Negro in the purple suit and Panama hat stood beside the bureau, with Pete Anglich’s coat in his hand. On the bureau in front of him were two guns. One of them was Pete Anglich’s old worn Colt. The room door was shut and a key with a tag lay on the carpet near it, as though it had fallen out of the door, or been pushed out from the other side.
The Smiler let the coat fall to the floor and held a wallet in his left hand. His right hand lifted the Colt. He grinned.
“Okey, white boy. Just go on dryin’ yourself off after your shower,” he said.
Pete Anglich toweled himself. He rubbed himself dry, stood naked with the wet towel in his left hand.
The Smiler had the billfold empty on the bureau, was counting the money with his left hand. His right still clutched the Colt.
“Eighty-seven bucks. Nice money. Some of it’s mine from the crap game, but I’m lifting it all, pal. Take it easy. I’m friends with the management here.”
“Gimme a break, Smiler,” Pete Anglich said hoarsely. “That’s every dollar I got in the world. Leave a few bucks, huh?” He made his voice thick, coarse, heavy as though with liquor.
The Smiler gleamed his teeth, shook his narrow head. “Can’t do it, pal. Got me a date and I need the kale.”
Pete Anglich took a loose step forward and stopped, grinning sheepishly. The muzzle of his own gun had jerked at him.
The Smiler sidled over to the bottle of rye and lifted it.
“I can use this, too. My baby’s got a throat for liquor. Sure has. What’s in your pants is yours, pal. Fair enough?”
Pete Anglich jumped sideways, about four feet. The Smiler’s face convulsed. The gun jerked around and the bottle of rye slid out of his left hand, slammed down on his foot. He yelped, kicked out savagely, and his toe caught in the torn place in the carpet.
Pete Anglich flipped the wet end of the bathtowel straight at the Smiler’s eyes.
The Smiler reeled and yelled with pain. Then Pete Anglich held the Smiler’s gun wrist in his hard left hand. He twisted up, around. His hand started to slide down over the Smiler’s hand, over the gun. The gun turned inward and touched the Smiler’s side.
A hard knee kicked viciously at Pete Anglich’s abdomen. He gagged, and his finger tightened convulsively on the Smiler’s trigger finger.
The shot was dull, muffled against the purple cloth of the suit. The Smiler’s eyes rolled whitely and his narrow jaw fell slack.
Pete Anglich let him down on the floor and stood panting, bent over, his face greenish. He groped for the fallen bottle of rye, got the cork out, got some of the fiery liquid down his throat.
The greenish look went away from his face. His breathing slowed. He wiped sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.
He felt the Smiler’s pulse. The Smiler didn’t have any pulse. He was dead. Pete Anglich loosened the gun from his hand, went over to the door and glanced out into the hallway. Empty. There was a passkey in the outside of the lock. He removed it, locked the door from the inside.
He put his underclothes and socks and shoes on, his worn blue serge suit, knotted a black tie around the crumpled shirt collar, went back to the dead man and took a roll of bills from his pocket. He packed a few odds and ends of clothes and toilet articles in a cheap fiber suitcase, stood it by the door.
He pushed a torn scrap of sheet through his revolver barrel with a pencil, replaced the used cartridge, crushed the empty shell with his heel on the bathroom floor and then flushed it down the toilet.
He locked the door from the outside and walked down the stairs to the lobby.
The baldheaded clerk’s eyes jumped at him, then dropped. The skin of his face turned gray. Pete Anglich leaned on the counter and opened his hand to let two keys tinkle on the scarred wood. The clerk stared at the keys, shuddered.
Pete Anglich said in his slow, husky voice: “Hear any funny noises?”
The clerk shook his head, gulped.
“Creep joint, eh?” Pete Anglich said.
The clerk moved his head painfully, twisted his neck in his collar. His bald head winked darkly under the ceiling light.
“Too bad,” Pete Anglich said. “What name did I register under last night?”
“You ain’t registered,” the clerk whispered.
“Maybe I wasn’t here even,” Pete Anglich said softly.
“Never saw you before, mister.”
“You’re not seeing me now. You never will see me—to know me—will you, Doe?”
The clerk moved his neck and tried to smile.
Pete Anglich drew his wallet out and shook three dollar bills from it.
“I’m a guy that likes to pay his way,” he said slowly. “This pays for Room 349—till way in the morning, kind of late. The lad you gave the passkey to looks like a heavy sleeper.” He paused, steadied his cool eyes on the clerk’s face, added thoughtfully: “Unless, of course, he’s got friends who would like to move him out.”
Bubbles showed on the clerk’s lips. He stuttered: “He ain’t—ain’t—”
“Yeah,” Pete Anglich said. “What would you expect?”
He went across to the street door, carrying his suitcase, stepped out under the stencil sign, stood a moment looking toward the hard white glare of Central Avenue.
Then he walked the other way. The street was very dark, very quiet. There were four blocks of frame houses before he came to Noon Street. It was all a Negro quarter.
He met only one person on the way, a brown girl in a green hat, very sheer stockings, and four-and-a-half-inch heels, who smoked a cigarette under a dusty palm tree and stared back toward the Surprise Hotel.