“Ask her who killed Bannerman.”
“Bannerman is dead?” For a moment his face lost all of its expression. For a moment he only stared at me, not seeing me but lost in the deep pit of his own confusion. He turned slowly to Lisa. “Bannerman was killed? You didn’t tell me, Lisa.”
“It was Leech’s idea,” she said. “I didn’t ask him to do it, doll. I didn’t suggest it.”
“How?” he asked himself. “But how would Leech know about such things, unless you and he—”
“He found out at The Famous Cellar, somehow. I swear it was his idea. I didn’t tell him to kill Bannerman.”
“I don’t understand.” The rift had opened between them. A widening chasm of doubt separated them. She was anxious to win him back now. “I just don’t understand,” he said.
I moved back a half step. Ruvulo’s gun was only a quick step away now.
“Ask her where Leech is now,” I said.
“Do you know, Lisa?”
“I haven’t the vaguest idea.”
“She’s lying. Can’t you see that she’s lying, Buffo?”
“I’ll kill him if you won’t.” She tried to escape the chair. There was a brief struggle between them. Buffo pushed her back unceremoniously. She had started for the little French phone table. Buffo opened the drawer and produced a gun. He stuffed it away in the pocket of his pajamas.
“He’s not ready to die,” Buffo said. “Not yet.”
“What are you waiting for?” she screamed.
“You, Lisa. Tell me about Leech. The truth.”
“There’s nothing between us. Nothing.”
“The truth, Lisa.” The little drama between them had reached its climax. Buffo would be all ears now. Buffo would waver in his attention to me. His watery eyes appraised her. The softness and gentility had gone. The love and affection had faded. He surveyed her with the calm, cold air of an inquisitor.
“The truth, Lisa.”
He would take another step her way in a moment. Lisa’s hysterics had begun to subside. She returned his stare. They were measuring each other in this climax. Their future together, their impossible partnership, hung in the balance. The strain of his burgeoning doubt added a certain stiff and uncompromising solemnity to Buffo’s figure. This was no cuckold to be trifled with, to be sloughed off in favor of such a maggot as Chester Leech. Buffo’s temperament would heat and melt and spill over into frantic temper at the thought of such a rival. Buffo would allow her to sin for money. Buffo would tolerate her selling her body to such men as Jake West and Blackburn. But Leech? The taste of the name soured Buffo. He continued to glare at her unpityingly.
And when he took a determined step her way, I moved.
I fell back toward Ruvulo’s gun.
I clutched and grabbed at it. And in the moment of my decision, the world split open. Lisa screamed. Buffo turned. I saw only the quick blur of their figures as I fell away. The earth would begin to roll in another second. Buffo shouted a vile name at me. Buffo bounced toward me. His gun spat once. I had Ruvulo’s automatic now. But there was a growing fog between me and my target. Lisa Varick stood close to me. She kicked the gun out of my hand. Her laughter rang in my ears and I rolled away, toward the stairway now. Buffo muttered another curse. This time the sound of his gun was a great clap of thunder in my ears. I slipped and fell on the stairway. I was rolling down the carpeted steps, the hall beneath me a deep and bottomless pit.
“Now!” I heard her scream. “Get him now!”
Above me, in an electric tableau, the figure of Buffo was a silhouette on the upstairs landing. His shot clapped down at me. My shoulder burned and stung with a knifing, stabbing pain. Over and over again, I rolled. The street door loomed above me. I got to my knees and opened it. A rush of early morning air kissed my face. The sound of a million footsteps rang in my ears.
“This is it,” a voice shouted. “Upstairs, boys.”
The sky, for a flickering instant of wakefulness, glowed above me. There was a patch of blue far up there. A small and cottony cloud sailed high and lonely. Then the daylight died. Then a sudden heaviness slammed down at me and the whole universe twisted and heaved.
And in the next moment I sank into darkness.
CHAPTER 24
“He’ll be all right,” somebody said.
It was a man’s voice, blurred but familiar. He wakened me out of a deep sleep, dreamless and black. He opened my eyes to reality, in a way that none of my fictional heroes had ever been roused. Usually, after a vicious slugging, the detective strong man drops into a colorful void, into a world of deep dreams involving women and clouds and other prosy phantasmagorias. Not so with me. I awoke on my back. In the first moment of awakening, I felt the touch of a cool hand. And the smell? Was it perfume?
“Leave him with me,” another voice said. “I’ll take care of him.”
“Nancy,” I said.
“Take it easy, hero.”
“Maybe he wants a drink,” the man’s voice said. It was MacGruder, of course, busying himself with a bottle on the other side of the room. “He looks as though he could use a quart of this stuff.” He handed me the drink, his quiet face smiling at me. He watched me down it. “Want another one, Dave?”
“I’m all right, Sam.”
“A real hero type,” Nancy said. “Rallying in the last chapter, as usual.”
“What happened to Buffo?” I asked.
“My boys took him away,” said MacGruder. “Him and his lady friend.”
“And Seff?”
“You almost killed him, Dave.”
“Sorry I missed.”
“Impulsive,” said Sam MacGruder, almost to himself. “I told you not to rush, didn’t I? I told you not to knock yourself out, especially with Seff. He’s a dangerous man. You didn’t have to tangle with him.”
“I couldn’t resist him,” I said.
“Why don’t you admit you were jealous?” Nancy said.
“We would have grabbed him, sooner or later,” MacGruder said quietly. “Because of Leech.”
“How did you know about Leech?” I asked.
“Gordon Fennisong is a friend of mine.”
“He told you?”
“Of course he told me,” said Sam MacGruder with a chuckle. “He also gave me everything else you spilled to him. You should have expected him to share his information with us, Dave. You know very well that all private investigators work hand in glove with the police. Gordon Fennisong and I have no secrets. He came to me just as soon as he accepted the assignment from Blackburn.”
“Where did you grab Leech?”
“Chicago. But that was easy. We checked the planes leaving LaGuardia at that hour. I had a couple of Chicago men waiting for Chester when he got off that plane out there.”
“Has he spilled yet?”
“Not yet, but soon.” MacGruder looked at his watch. “They’ll be bringing him downtown in a half hour. Want to come down and watch us sweat him?”
I tried to sit up. A sharp knife dug me in the right shoulder. They must have had a doctor for me. The bandaging job was professional. My head hammered with a dull clanging resonance when I sat. I decided to relax when I felt the gentle hand on my neck.
“Don’t move, hero,” Nancy said.
“I’ll be getting along,” MacGruder said. “Come out to Mineola when you feel better, Dave.”
He went out. I heard the downstairs door slam. Then there was the sound of a car moving away. Through the big picture window, the daylight poured in and lit the rug. Nancy got up and pulled the Venetian blinds. The haze felt better. I watched her cross the room to me. She was smiling when she returned to my side.
“I should go with Sam,” I said. “I should see the end of this thing.”
“You can dream up the rest. You’re a writer.”
“T
he end of a tale is sometimes the toughest.”
“Not for you, it isn’t.”
“You have an uncommon confidence in my ability.”
“You have an uncommon ability,” Nancy said. “I’ll bet ten to one you can guess what’s on my mind this very minute.”
“You should stop betting, Nancy.”
“Even when I’ve got a sure thing?”
“Nothing,” I said, “is ever sure.”
“This is.”
Then she leaned down and kissed me. And she was right, of course. I knew it from the moment her lips met mine.
About the Author
Lawrence Lariar (1908–1981) was an American novelist, cartoonist and cartoon editor, known for his Best Cartoons of the Year series of cartoon collections. He wrote crime novels, sometimes using the pseudonyms Michael Stark, Adam Knight and Marston la France.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1953, 1981 by Lawrence Lariar
This authorized edition copyright © 2018 by the estate of Lawrence Lariar and The Mysterious Press
Cover design by Ian Koviak
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5647-2
This 2019 edition published by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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LAWRENCE LARIAR
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