I ignored him. I said, “What were you doing in my office, Bryant?”
“You’re nuts. I don’t even know where your office is.”
“Hands Vincetti must have told you. You and Hands were up there together, only a few hours ago. Why?”
He flicked his eyes nervously at Alice V., but there was no answering flash in her dirty frown. She was brushing him off. She was signaling to him that he was on his own now, the way I expected she would. The pieces were fitting in place neatly, all my theories about her bearing fruit. Gus Bryant was struggling for direction, for the legalistic approach to this situation. He would have liked her to prime him for the scene. But Alice V. was giving him nothing. Nothing at all.
I said, “Don’t look at her, Bryant. She’s giving you the brush. She’s beginning to hate you for what you did in my office. Maybe she’s hating you for other reasons. Shall I tell you a few of them?”
“Double talk,” said Bryant.
“Is it? Why don’t we begin with Hands Vincetti? Where is your dear old pal, Hands? This is his kind of party. Why isn’t he here?”
“Who the hell knows where he is? And who gives a damn?”
“You do. And I know where he is. I left him only a little while ago. Shall I tell you where?”
“Drop dead,” Bryant said.
“I’ll tell you where Hands is. What the hell, I’ll make the locate for free, just because you paid me off so well. You’ll find Hands Vincetti in one of the dressing rooms of The Fan Club, flat on his foul kisser, as stiff as the floor he’s lying on. And do you know who flattened him? I did. Ask me why.”
He didn’t ask me, so I told him. I said, “I beat his apish face in because he killed my old friend Abe Feldman. That’s why I’m going to give you a workout soon, Bryant. Because you were with him when Abe was killed.”
Again the flick to Alice V., and this time her eyes lit up. But she wasn’t returning a signal he wanted. She was lousing him up with her baleful stare. She was as friendly as a Turk at an American tea party. He cringed and kept his face aimed the other way.
“You’ve got stones in your head,” he said, without conviction. “You can’t prove any of this tripe.”
“That’s where you made your big mistake,” I said. “Because I can prove every word of it. It all goes back to the dead blonde in my office, the girl who was stabbed and stripped.”
I dropped it and stood back to watch again. Grace Masterson was reacting now. She was quivering, out of control. Her hands were clenched and she worked them strenuously, her knotted fingers a-tremble as she struggled for calm. Something about the way she twitched in the face made me feel sorry for her. Almost. And then she stepped forward toward me.
“I don’t see that this concerns me, Steve. I wish you’d let me go home. This is upsetting, very upsetting.”
“Back,” I said. “Back where you were, actress.”
“You’re cruel. I don’t know why you’re subjecting me to this.”
“You’ll know soon enough, Sarah Bernhardt.” I turned to Alice V. “Where did you pick her up for the job? Where did you find her? I’d like to know the name of the booking agent who got her this assignment. She didn’t read her lines right, Alice. She was too amateurish for the deal, the poor kid. You needed a pro for a chore like this, somebody like Fontaine or Chatterton or Cummings, an actress who could really live the part of Frank Masterson’s wife. This kid was off the beam, from the moment she let me bounce into bed alongside her. It was the beginning of the end for your whole pitch, Alice. It bothered me, all the way down the line while I searched for Frankie. Why would his ever-loving wife let a strange dick climb on her mattress and play games? It didn’t make sense. You shouldn’t have picked a nymph for a straight role, Alice.”
Alice V. wasn’t buying any of it. But the girl who had played Grace Masterson was cracking up. She was crying her eyes out. She was emptying herself of the first burst of genuine emotion since the start of the caper. She had no courage for facing up to this kind of drama. She would be hysterical soon.
I said, “Don’t let it bother you too much, lady. Your rap will be nothing, compared to what the law will do to your friends here.”
“You’re talking nonsense,” Alice V. said. “Utter rot.”
“I’ll break it down for you, in easy stages. It all began when Frank Masterson’s wife walked into your office looking for help. She came to you because you were a woman attorney and she thought you’d be sympathetic. She told you her story—all about how her husband had robbed the Vree cluster. It must have hit you like a falling building. It must have floored you. The cute little blonde was practically asking you to help yourself to a half million in loot.”
“Clever boy,” said Alice V., starting for the bar. “Tell me more.”
“Stand where you are.”
“I only wanted another drink.”
“Back,” I said. “Back with your playmates.”
She shrugged and moved over with the others. “A glass of Scotch would have helped, detective. Your fairy tale is boring.”
“It gets better as I go along. After the blonde told you her yarn, you phoned Gus Bryant immediately. You were aware of his part in the heist down in Florida, because Gus is an old buddy of yours. So you decided to substitute an actress for the real Mrs. Masterson—and have the original bumped off in my office. It was a simple deal, because she practically asked for it. She wanted a detective. You gave her my name and sent her up after closing time. But instead of seeing me, Hands Vincetti was waiting for her. And he was waiting with a knife!”
They were frozen now, all of them. The expressions on their faces were graven out of the same mold, in varying degrees of tension. I was reaching them, jabbing the needle where it hurt. But Gus Bryant registered the most pain. He had developed a tic, suddenly, a quick ripple of the muscles around his mouth, the prelude to complete breakdown. On him it looked good. I went over to him and slapped out at it and my open hand caught the side of his jaw and brought some crimson to his lips.
I said, “Or were you with him, Bryant? Maybe it was you who killed the blonde?”
He spat at me, a gob of blood that almost made my shoe. I hit him again, this time with my fist.
“Let’s say that it was Hands who did the job,” I continued. “It would have to be Hands, because of the business with the dead girl’s ring. Hands was instructed to strip her clean. He was told to deliver the duds to Alice V. How do I know it was Alice who examined the personal effects? Because somebody noticed that the blonde had been wearing a ring. I assume that only a woman would observe a detail of that type. I also assume that Alice did not find that ring among the blonde’s personal effects. Alice became alarmed and told you about it, Bryant. And you confronted Hands with the problem. Vincetti, of course, denied that there had been a ring. How could he admit that he had violated your instructions and given the ring to Patty Price? He couldn’t. So he convinced you that the two of you had better go back to my office and search for the ring. It was too important to remain lost. And when you went up to my place to make the search, you found Abe Feldman there and you beat him to death.”
I was talking fast and loud, overpowered by the heat of my memories. My emotional upheaval sharpened my tongue, so that I mouthed my phrases in a crescendo of mounting anger. I stood over Gus Bryant, leveling my wrath at him, my hand on his collar, so that I could jerk him around, so that I could louse him up because he was the only foil for my muscles. Slapping women around was never my forte. And I thought all the others were women at this brawl. Because I forgot about Ashforth. I concentrated on shaking Bryant as I talked, holding the gun close to his eyes until he closed them and shuddered with each sentence. And the words poured out of me, aimed into his ear. And I forgot the rest of my audience. I lost my head.
But Ashforth found it.
Ashforth hit me with a pudgy fist.
<
br /> He was behind me when the blow came and I swung at him, bringing the gun around as I turned. But it was too late. He had me where he wanted me. And he wanted me cold.
I fell down and away, hit for the second time by something harder than a fist. He had moved behind me skillfully, grabbing for a weapon as he came. He must have found a convenient ton of lead.
Because that’s what it felt like as I fell to the floor.
CHAPTER 19
Someone was slapping me awake with a wet rag. He was using it in the way you slap at a fly, sharp flat smacks against my jaw. He brought his hand back in a great arc and let the rag swing out at me, a towel, rough surfaced and heavy with the weight of the water it held. He hit me again, across the eyes, so that the balls of light in my brain turned vivid crimson. The pain was driving me nuts. So I opened my eyes.
He hit me again.
Then there was a woman’s voice, and Alice V. said, “That’s enough, Gus. You’ll put him away if you keep that up. We can’t use him cold.”
“The son of a bitch!” Gus Bryant said.
And he hit me again.
“There isn’t much time for indoor sports,” Alice V. was saying. Her voice was low pitched and hoarse now, suddenly strange, the voice of another woman. She was almost a mile away from me, through the fog of mist that screened me from the world of reality. And she was saying, “Put down the towel, you idiot!”
I saw them again, cleaner now, the violent face of Gus Bryant so close that I could feel his breathing. And behind him, Alice V., only her head and shoulders, leaning forward and scowling at me. In the middle distance, as though set there by a skillful stage director, was Ashforth, his whole body visible because he stood at the wall, against the pale yellow décor, a monument of menace, grinning at me with an unhealthy interest. I wondered vaguely where the actress was.
‘Where is Masterson?” Gus Bryant said.
I said, “I need a drink.”
And he hit me again. The room spun out and away from me, the walls rubbered and willowy, the lights drizzly and diffused with a strange and elusive quality, blobs of pale yellow and white. There was movement in the miasma, a confusion of shapes scurrying back and forth. There was sound, too, a woman’s voice again, low and then high and then low. Through the scattered shadows, Alice V. came into focus. She was handing a tall glass to Gus Bryant. He was holding it. And throwing it at me, a wall of liquid that splashed into my eyes and dripped and ran down my cheeks—a shower of Scotch, a wave of alcohol. A high thread of noise came at me and it was seconds before I caught the timbre of it and recognized Alice V.’s husky-throated accents.
“Leave him alone, you goddamned idiot!” she shouted. “You can kill him later, after we get Masterson and that pendant.”
“I’d like to break his cute little head,” Gus Bryant said.
“Save it. He’ll talk.”
She had another glass of liquor now and was holding it to my mouth. I slurped at it hungrily, feeling the stiff dose of Scotch burn down into my gut, tasting the weight of it behind my ears. Because I was beginning to think clearly, I was searching for an out, praying for a small opening out of the moment at hand. She was shaking me now, gently but firmly. She was waiting for me to open my eyes so that she could ask me again where Masterson was. I weighed the advantages of sitting here and having my head bashed in. I toyed with the immediate future, juggling the possibilities for release from Gus Bryant. But the situation was his. In this room, I would be forever powerless against him.
I said, “I’ll take you there.”
“To hell with that,” Gus Bryant said. “Tell us where it is. We don’t need you.”
“You’ll never find it without me.”
“You want me to slap you around some more?”
“I’ve had enough.”
“Then talk!” He had me by the throat and was squeezing. I began to cough. He was digging his nails in my neck.
“Let him take you,” Alice V. said. “I’m sick of looking at him.”
He pulled me to my feet and the blood started down my legs as Ashforth pushed me forward. I was rocky and weak, my legs as rubbery as licorice sticks. Somebody slapped my hat on my head and I was moving down the stairs into the foyer and through the door to the street. The black roadster was warming up and Gus Bryant sat behind the wheel. Ashforth pushed me again, into the rear seat. He eased his fat frame alongside me and shoved a gun in my ribs.
And said, “No tricks now, Conacher.”
“The girls are going to be shocked when they hear about you,” I said. “You’re frightening, Ashforth. You’re a big bad brute.”
“Which way?” Gus Bryant asked.
“Over the Brooklyn Bridge,” I said.
I chose the long way. The tires hummed and sang as we raced downtown through the deserted streets. The city still slept soundly, enjoying the deepest slumber, the short hour just before dawn. They must have revived me quickly after Ashforth put me out. They must have slapped me plenty with the towel. Because it was still only faintly light in the east, not yet rosy with the promise of solid sunlight. We sailed down through lower Fourth Avenue and entered the thin traffic of Canal Street, the trickle of trucks and vans that heralded the confusion soon to come through the Holland Tunnel. Gus Bryant drove well. He gauged the traffic lights with skill and made good time over the bridge. He was doing an even forty down Flatbush Avenue and I prayed for a fly cop to slide out and after us from some side street. But the fly cops were all home in bed. I was taking a ride to the cemetery, a one-way jaunt to a coffin.
Ashforth said nothing, eyeing me with the restrained good humor of a chaperon surveying a sub-deb on her first date. He came alive only when we were racing down Surf Avenue, entering the main street of Coney Island.
“Fun,” he said. “I’ve always dreamed of visiting Coney. This is my maiden trip.”
“You should visit it in season, when the freaks are here.”
Gus Bryant said, “What part of Coney Island, Conacher?”
“Gino’s,” I said. “A spaghetti dump.”
“He’s in there?”
“He’s in that neighborhood.”
He slowed the car, studying me in the mirror. He said, “I know Gino’s. It’s about three blocks from here. This is close enough.”
He swung into a side street and parked near the corner. Ashforth prodded me with his automatic and I stepped out and looked around. The air was heavy with an early morning fog, a salted pall that was blowing in from the ocean. The sky was a dark and dirty gray, carrying the promise of the day to come, dismal and clouded. I shivered with the cold and the dampness. Or it could have been Ashforth’s insistent gun that raised the sandpaper on my shanks.
“Walk,” said Bryant. “And no tricks.”
We crossed the street. They had me step ahead of them, leading the small idiotic parade. Bryant was flourishing his gun now, holding it brazenly because we were marching through a skein of gloom, invisible to anybody outside the radius of a six-foot circle. The thick fog swirled round us as I led them through the alley and into the heart of the amusement section. From somewhere in the unmeasured distance, a buoy sang out a lonely note, rising and falling in the thick silence. We emerged from the alley and I stopped them there. The big wheel lay straight ahead of us.
I said, “This is it.”
“Where?” Bryant asked.
“Straight ahead. The wheel.”
“In the house, you mean?”
“The wheel,” I said. “He’s on the wheel.”
“How did he get up there?”
“There was a man in that house last night. He let Masterson up.”
“You saw it?”
“I saw it.”
Gus Bryant squinted up into the gloom, making up his mind about me. The upper edges of the circle were invisible, bathed in the higher reaches of
the encircling mist. The perimeter of the wheel faded and died into nothingness up there, above the middle of the fretwork. It was as though somebody had erased the top of the circle completely. Bryant pushed himself close to me and I felt the extra gun in my right side.
“What do you think, Ashforth?” he asked
“It sounds positively fantastic,” Ashforth whispered.
Bryant pressed me forward again. We stepped into the area beyond the fence and approached the house. There was no light inside and the door was locked. Bryant opened a window and let us in. It was a barren room, a simple layout, big enough to hold a cot, a table and two chairs. Bryant had a small flashlight and he swung it around the room. There was a big switchbox on the far wall. He flipped the lid and studied the line-up of mechanical gimmicks.
“How do we know this bastard isn’t lying?” Bryant said,
“Where will it get him?” Ashforth laughed. “We can check easily enough. Let’s turn the wheel.”
“You’re out of your mind. Masterson has a gun. He’ll kill anybody he sees down here, once that wheel starts moving.”
“Exactly,” said Ashforth. “But why not let him shoot at Conacher? Why not have Conacher wait for him at the landing over there? Then, while Masterson is busy with Conacher, you can approach from the other side of the wheel and control the situation.”
“Clever boy,” I said.
“Jesus, you’ve got something, Ashforth,” Bryant said. “We can’t miss doing it that way.”
“Get him outside,” said Ashforth, beaming at me. “I’m going to enjoy seeing him cut down. He’s too precious to live, really. Goodbye, dear boy.”
I had nothing to say to him. My mind was alive with a confusion of ideas. But they were small and insignificant in the growing pressure of the immediate present. My feet were in motion, propelling me toward the door of the shack, and the hard muzzle of Gus Bryant’s gun stabbed into my back. I was moving into a dead end. I was headed for the last quick moment of breath and life. He would stand me before the landing platform, the spot where the little houses on the wheel came to rest to unload their passengers. And the wheel would spin and Masterson would awaken up there. He would reach for his gun and wait for the iron wheel to swing him down. They would slip slowly around through the fog and then Lisa would see me and scream her alarm. And Masterson would shoot. And he wouldn’t miss.
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