Benny Cyrano was shaped like two eggs, a little one that was his head on top of a big one that was his body. His small dapper legs and feet in patent-leather shoes were pushed into the kneehole of a dark sheenless desk. He held a corner of a handkerchief tightly between his teeth and pulled against it with his left hand and held his right hand out pudgily in front of him, pushing against the air. He was saying in a voice muffled by the handkerchief: “Now wait a minute, boys. Now wait a minute.”
There was a striped builtin sofa in one corner of the office, and Duke Targo sat in the middle of it, between two Headquarters dicks. He had a dark bruise over one cheekbone, his thick blond hair was tousled and his black satin shirt looked as if somebody had tried to swing him by it.
One of the dicks, the grayhaired one, had a split lip. The young one with hair as blond as Targo’s had a black eye. They both looked mad, but the blond one looked madder.
Carmady straddled a chair against the wall and looked sleepily at Jean Adrian, near him in a leather rocker. She was twisting a handkerchief in her hands, rubbing her palms with it. She had been doing this for a long time, as if she had forgotten she was doing it. Her small firm mouth was angry.
Gus Neishacker leaned against the closed door smoking. “Now wait a minute, boys,” Cyrano said. “If you didn’t get tough with him, he wouldn’t fight back. He’s a good boy—the best I ever had. Give him a break.”
Blood dribbled from one corner of Targo’s mouth, in a fine thread down to his jutting chin. It gathered there and glistened. His face was empty, expressionless.
Carmady said coldly: “You wouldn’t want the boys to stop playing blackjack pinochle, would you, Benny?”
The blond dick snarled: “You still got that private-dick license, Carmady?”
“It’s lying around somewhere, I guess,” Carmady said. “Maybe we could take it away from you,” the blond dick snarled.
“Maybe you could do a fan dance, copper. You might be all kinds of a smart guy for all I’d know.”
The blond dick started to get up. The older one said: “Leave him be. Give him six feet. If he steps over that, we’ll take the screws out of him.”
Carmady and Gus Neishacker grinned at each other. Cyrano made helpless gestures in the air. The girl looked at Carmady under her lashes. Targo opened his mouth and spat blood straight before him on the blue carpet.
Something pushed against the door and Neishacker stepped to one side, opened it a crack, then opened it wide. McChesney came in.
McChesney was a lieutenant of detectives, tall, sandyhaired, fortyish, with pale eyes and a narrow suspicious face. He shut the door and turned the key in it, went slowly over and stood in front of Targo.
“Plenty dead,” he said. “One under the heart, one in it. Nice snap shooting. In any league.”
“When you’ve got to deliver you’ve got to deliver,” Targo said dully.
“Make him?” the grayhaired dick asked his partner, moving away along the sofa.
McChesney nodded. “Torchy Plant. A gun for hire. I haven’t seen him round for all of two years. Tough as an ingrowing toenail with his right load. A bindle punk.”
“He’d have to be that to throw his party in here,” the grayhaired dick said.
McChesney’s long face was serious, not hard. “Got a permit for the gun, Targo?”
Targo said: “Yes. Benny got me one two weeks ago. I been getting a lot of threats.”
“Listen, Lieutenant,” Cyrano chirped, “some gamblers try to scare him into a dive, see? He wins nine straight fights by knockouts so they get a swell price. I told him he should take one at that maybe.”
“I almost did,” Targo said sullenly.
“So they sent the redhot to him,” Cyrano said.
McChesney said: “I wouldn’t say no. How’d you beat his draw, Targo? Where was your gun?”
“On my hip.”
“Show me.”
Targo put his hand back into his right hip pocket and jerked a handkerchief out quickly, stuck his finger through it like a gun barrel.
“That handkerchief in the pocket?” McChesney asked. “With the gun?”
Targo’s big reddish face clouded a little. He nodded. McChesney leaned forward casually and twitched the handkerchief from his hand. He sniffed at it, unwrapped it, sniffed at it again, folded it and put it away in his own pocket. His face said nothing.
“What did he say, Targo?”
“He said: ‘I got a message for you, punk, and this is it.’ Then he went for the gat and it stuck a little in the clip. I got mine out first.”
McChesney smiled faintly and leaned far back, teetering on his heels. His faint smile seemed to slide off the end of his long nose. He looked Targo up and down.
“Yeah,” he said softly. “I’d call it damn nice shooting with a twenty-two. But you’re fast for a big guy … Who got these threats?”
“I did,” Targo said. “Over the phone.”
“Know the voice?”
“It might have been this same guy. I’m not just positive.”
McChesney walked stiff-legged to the other end of the office, stood a moment looking at a hand-tinted sporting print. He came back slowly, drifted over to the door.
“A guy like that don’t mean a lot,” he said quietly, “but we got to do our job. The two of you will have to come downtown and make statements. Let’s go.”
He went out. The two dicks stood up, with Duke Targo between them. The grayhaired one snapped: “You goin’ to act nice, bo?”
Targo sneered: “If I get to wash my face.”
They went out. The blond dick waited for Jean Adrian to pass in front of him. He swung the door, snarled back at Carmady: “As for you—nuts!”
Carmady said softly: “I like them. It’s the squirrel in me, copper.”
Gus Neishacker laughed, then shut the door and went to the desk.
“I’m shaking like Benny’s third chin,” he said. “Let’s all have a shot of cognac.”
He poured three glasses a third full, took one over to the striped sofa and spread his long legs out on it, leaned his head back and sipped the brandy.
Carmady stood up and downed his drink. He got a cigarette out and rolled it around in his fingers, staring at Cyrano’s smooth white face with an up-from-under look.
“How much would you say changed hands on that fight tonight?” he asked softly. “Bets.”
Cyrano blinked, massaged his lips with a fat hand. “A few grand. It was just a regular weekly show. It don’t listen, does it?”
Carmady put the cigarette in his mouth and leaned over the desk to strike a match. He said: “If it does, murder’s getting awfully cheap in this town.”
Cyrano didn’t say anything. Gus Neishacker sipped the last of his brandy and carefully put the empty glass down on a round cork table beside the sofa. He stared at the ceiling, silently.
After a moment Carmady nodded at the two men, crossed the room and went out, closed the door behind him. He went along a corridor off which dressing rooms opened, dark now. A curtained archway let him out at the back of the stage.
In the foyer the headwaiter was standing at the glass doors, looking out at the rain and the back of a uniformed policeman. Carmady went into the empty cloakroom, found his hat and coat, put them on, came out to stand beside the headwaiter.
He said: “I guess you didn’t notice what happened to the kid I was with?”
The headwaiter shook his head and reached forward to unlock the door.
“There was four hundred people here—and three hundred scrammed before the law checked in. I’m sorry.”
Carmady nodded and went out into the rain. The uniformed man glanced at him casually. He went along the street to where the car had been left. It wasn’t there. He looked up and down the street, stood for a few moments in the rain, then walked towards Melrose.
After a little while he found a taxi.
SIX
The ramp of the Carondelet garage curved down into semidarkness and chilled air. The dark bulks of stalled cars looked ominous against the whitewashed walls, and the single droplight in the small office had the relentless glitter of the death house.
A big Negro in stained overalls came out rubbing his eyes, then his face split in an enormous grin.
“Hello, there, Mistuh Carmady. You kinda restless tonight?” Carmady said: “I get a little wlld when it rains. I bet my heap isn’t here.”
“No, it ain’t, Mistuh Carmady. I been all around wipin’ off and yours ain’t here aytall.”
Carmady said woodenly: “I lent it to a pal. He probably wrecked it .
He flicked a half-dollar through the air and went back up the ramp to the side street. He turned towards the back of the hotel, came to an alleylike street one side of which was the rear wall of the Carondelet. The other side had two frame houses and a four-story brick building. Hotel Blaine was lettered on a round milky globe over the door.
Carmady went up three cement steps and tried the door. It was locked. He looked through the glass panel into a small dim empty lobby. He got out two passkeys; the second one moved the lock a little. He pulled the door hard towards him, tried the first one again. That snicked the bolt far enough for the loosely fitted door to open.
He went in and looked at an empty counter with a sign “Manager” beside a plunger bell. There was an oblong of empty numbered pigeonholes on the wall. Carmady went around behind the counter and fished a leather register out of a space under the top. He read names back three pages, found the boyish scrawl: “Tony Acosta,” and a room number in another writing.
He put the register away and went past the automatic elevator and upstairs to the fourth floor.
The hallway was very silent. There was weak light from a ceiling fixture. The last door but one on the left-hand side had a crack of light showing around its transom. That was the door—411. He put his hand out to knock, then withdrew it without touching the door.
The doorknob was heavily smeared with something that looked like blood.
Carmady’s eyes looked down and saw what was almost a pool of blood on the stained wood before the door, beyond the edge of the runner.
His hand suddenly felt clammy inside his glove. He took the glove off, held the hand stiff, clawlike for a moment, then shook it slowly. His eyes had a sharp strained light in them.
He got a handkerchief out, grasped the doorknob inside it, turned it slowly. The door was unlocked. He went in.
He looked across the room and said very softly: “Tony . oh, Tony.”
Then he shut the door behind him and turned a key in it, still with the handkerchief.
There was light from the bowl that hung on three brass chains from the middle of the ceiling. It shone on a made-up bed, some painted, light-colored furniture, a dull green carpet, a square writing desk of eucalyptus wood.
Tony Acosta sat at the desk. His head was slumped forward on his left arm. Under the chair on which he sat, between the legs of the chair and his feet, there was a glistening brownish pool.
Carmady walked across the room so rigidly that his ankles ached after the second step. He reached the desk, touched Tony Acosta’s shoulder.
“Tony,” he said thickly, in a low, meaningless voice. “My God, Tony!”
Tony didn’t move. Carmady went around to his side. A blood-soaked bath towel glared against the boy’s stomach, across his pressed-together thighs. His right hand was crouched against the front edge of the desk, as if he was trying to push himself up. Almost under his face there was a scrawled envelope.
Carmady pulled the envelope towards him slowly, lifted it like a thing of weight, read the wandering scrawl of words.
“Tailed him … woptown … 28 Court Street … over garage … shot me … think I got … him … your car .
The line trailed over the edge of the paper, became a blot there. The pen was on the floor. There was a bloody thumbprint on the envelope.
Carmady folded it meticulously to protect the print, put the envelope in his wallet. He lifted Tony’s head, turned it a little towards him. The neck was still warm; it was beginning to stiffen. Tony’s soft dark eyes were open and they held the quiet brightness of a cat’s eyes. They had that effect the eyes of the new-dead have of almost, but not quite, looking at you.
Carmady lowered the head gently on the outstretched left arm. He stood laxly, his head on one side, his eyes almost sleepy. Then his head jerked back and his eyes hardened.
He stripped off his raincoat and the suitcoat underneath, rolled his sleeves up, wet a face towel in the basin in the corner of the room and went to the door. He wiped the knobs off, bent down and wiped up the smeared blood from the floor outside.
He rinsed the towel and hung it up to dry, wiped his hands carefully, put his coat on again. He used his handkerchief to open the transom, to reverse the key and lock the door from the outside. He threw the key in over the top of the transom, heard it tinkle inside.
He went downstairs and out of the Hotel Blame. It still rained. He walked to the corner, looked along a treeshaded block. His car was a dozen yards from the intersection, parked carefully, the lights off, the keys in the ignition. He drew them out, felt the seat under the wheel. It was wet, sticky. Carmady wiped his hand off, ran the windows up and locked the car. He left it where it was.
Going back to the Carondelet he didn’t meet anybody. The hard slanting rain still pounded down into the empty streets.
SEVEN
There was a thin thread of light under the door of 914. Carmady knocked lightly, looking up and down the hall, moved his gloved fingers softly on the panel while he waited. He waited a long time. Then a voice spoke wearily behind the wood of the door.
“Yes? What is it?”
“Carmady, angel. I have to see you. It’s strictly business.”
The door clicked, opened. He looked at a tired white face, dark eyes that were slatelike, not violet-blue. There were smudges under them as though mascara had been rubbed into the skin. The girl’s strong little hand twitched on the edge of the door.
“You,” she said wearily. “It would be you. Yes … Well, I’ve simply got to have a shower. I smell of policemen.”
“Fifteen minutes?” Carmady asked casually, but his eyes were very sharp on her face.
She shrugged slowly, then nodded. The closing door seemed to jump at him. He went along to his own rooms, threw off his hat and coat, poured whiskey into a glass and went into the bathroom to get ice water from the small tap over the basin.
He drank slowly, looking out of the windows at the dark breadth of the boulevard. A car slid by now and then, two beams of white light attached to nothing, emanating from nowhere.
He finished the drink, stripped to the skin, went under a shower. He dressed in fresh clothes, refilled his big flask and put it in his inner pocket, took a snubnosed automatic out of a suitcase and held it in his hand for a minute staring at it. Then he put it back in the suitcase, lit a cigarette and smoked it through.
He got a dry hat and a tweed coat and went back to 914.
The door was almost insidiously ajar. He slipped in with a light knock, shut the door, went on into the living room and looked at Jean Adrian.
She was sitting on the davenport with a freshly scrubbed look, in loose plum-colored pajamas and a Chinese coat. A tendril of damp hair drooped over one temple. Her small even features had the cameo-like clearness that tiredness gives to the very young.
Carmady said: “Drink?”
She gestured emptily. “I suppose so.”
He got glasses, mixed whiskey and ice water, went to the davenport with them.
“Are they keeping Targo on ice?”
She moved her chin an eighth of an inch, staring into her glass.
“He cut loose again, knocked two cops halfway through the wall. They love that boy.’,
Carmady said: “He has a lot to learn about cops. In the morning the cameras will be all set for him. I can think of some nice headlines, such as: “Well-known Fighter Too Fast for Gunman.” “Duke Targo Puts Crimp in Underworld Hot Rod.”
The girl sipped her drink. “I’m tired,” she said. “And my foot itches. Let’s talk about what makes this your business.”
“Sure.” He flipped his cigarette case open, held it under her chin. Her hand fumbled at it and while it still fumbled he said: “When you light that tell me why you shot him.”