He was a plump dark youngish man of medium height, broad through the jaws, narrow between the eyes. He wore a black derby hat, a black overcoat that fitted him very snugly, a dark suit, and black shoes, all looking as if he had bought them within the past fifteen minutes. The gun, a blunt black .38-calibre automatic, lay comfortably in his hand, not pointing at anything.
Nora was saying: “He made me let him in, Nick. He said he had to–”
“I got to talk to you,” the man with the gun said. “That’s all, but I got to do that.” His voice was low, rasping.
I had blinked myself awake by then, I looked at Nora. She was excited, but apparently not frightened: she might have been watching a horse she had a bet on coming down the stretch with a nose lead.
I said: “All right, talk, but do you mind putting the gun away? My wife doesn’t care, but I’m pregnant and I don’t want the child to be barn with-”
He smiled with his lower lip. “You don’t have to tell me you’re tough. I heard about you.” He put the pistol in his overcoat pocket. “I’m Shep Morelli.”
“I never heard about you,” I said.
He took a step into the room and began to shake his head from side to side. “I didn’t knock Julia off.”
“Maybe you didn’t, but you’re bringing the news to the wrong place. I got nothing to do with it.”
“I haven’t seen her in three months,” he said. “We were washed up.”
“Tell the police.”
“I wouldn’t have any reason to hurt her: she was always on the up and up with me.”
“That’s all swell,” I said, “only you’re peddling your fish in the wrong market.”
“Listen.” He took another step towards the bed. “Studsy Burke tells me you used to be 0. K. That’s why I’m here. Do the–”
“How is Studsy?” I asked. “I haven’t seen him since the time he went up the river in ’23 or ’24.”
“He’s all right. He’d like to see you. He’s got a joint on West Fortyninth, the Pigiron Club. But listen, what’s the law doing to me? Do they think I did it? Or is it just something else to pin on me?”
I shook my head. “I’d tell you if I knew. Don’t let newspapers fool you: I’m not in this. Ask the police.”
“That’d be very smart.” He smiled with his lower lip again. “That’d be the smartest thing I ever did. Me that a police captain’s been in a hospital three weeks on account we had an argument. The boys would like me to come in and ask ’em questions. They’d like it right down to the end of their blackjacks.” He turned a hand over, palm up. “I come to you on the level. Studsy says you’re on the level. Be on the level.”
“I’m being on the level,” I assured him. “If I knew anything I’d–”
Knuckles drummed on the corridor door, three times, sharply. Morelli’s gun was in his hand before the noise stopped. His eyes seemed to move in all directions at once. His voice was a metallic snarl deep in his chest: “Well?”
“I don’t know.” I sat up a little higher in bed and nodded at the gun in his hand. “That makes it your party.” The gun pointed very accurately at my chest. I could hear the blood in my ears, and my lips felt swollen. I said: “There’s no fire-escape.” I put my left hand out towards Nora, who was sitting on the far side of the bed.
The knuckles hit the door again, and a deep voice called: “Open up. Police.”
Morelli’s lover lip crawled up to lap the upper, and the whitr s of his eyes began to show under the irises. “You son of a bitch,” he said slowly, almost as if he were sorry for me. He moved his feet the least bit, flattening them against the floor.
A key touched the outer lock.
I hit Nora with my left hand, knocking her down across the room. The pillow I chucked with my right hand at Morelli’s gun seemed to have no weight; it drifted slow as a piece of tissue paper. No noise in the world, before or after, was ever as loud as Morelli’s gun going off. Something pushed my left side as I sprawled across the floor. I caught one of his ankles and rolled over with it, bringing him down on me, and he clubbed my back with the gun until I got a hand free and began to hit him as low in the body as I could.