The Long Night

by Hartley Howard

  But he didn’t like me; he didn’t like me one little bit. When I hit him again, smack on his broad snoot, he tucked in his head and showed me his bald patch and bored in like he was a buffalo.

  That was a mistake. And I told him so. I told him with the hard edge of my palm in a rabbit punch that would’ve killed any normal guy. Lucky for him he’d been sired by a bull ape.

  Still, it knocked most of the tar out of him. He seemed to forget where he had been going and what he’d intended to do when he got there. I stepped aside and he blundered on with his buffalo act. When he turned towards me again, his hair was over his eyes and his mouth was hanging open stupidly. He was three-quarters out on his feet. What kept him going was guts.

  I hit him there, too—twice. He went back a couple of steps and pawed the air a few times. Very dimly, he seemed to realise that the battle wasn’t going in his favour. As I stepped in for the kill, he shielded his chin with his good arm and back-pedalled into the door. Like a blinded animal, he went through without caring where he was going so long as it was somewhere else.

  The return swing of the door caught me on my way after him. By the time I reached the sidewalk, he had almost reached the Brown and White. Maybe I could’ve caught up with him; maybe not. I didn’t try. There was no knowing who else might’ve been in the cab waiting for him. And I’d had enough. I’d had plenty without inviting any more.

  The gun was lying where he’d dropped it. I put it in my pocket and I went upstairs. Between the blow behind the ear and the clout in the kidneys. I felt like a very old man. I’d had to put up with a lot in the past eighteen hours.

  My hands were hurting. I’d skinned the knuckles of the right one and I had to use my left to unlock the door and put on the light. When I’d turned the key, I sat myself down in my swivel chair very gently and I pulled open the bottom drawer of the desk without stooping too much. Stooping was another thing that hurt.

  There was one long, slow bourbon left in the Q bottle. I didn’t bother with a glass. And I sat cuddling the dead marine for a long time while warmth spread gently through me and the pain in my back dulled to a small ache and my hands didn’t feel so bad.

  I could’ve used another drink but I got by without it. Maybe it would’ve put me to sleep, anyway. I didn’t want to sleep. Not yet. Not in an office with a frosted-glass door in a deserted building on a dirty night when two hundred and ten pound gorillas were running around loose. Not until I was on the right side of my apartment door with a loaded .38 automatic under my pillow and the top rail of a chair under the door-knob.

  . . . Pillow . . . nice word . . . nice word all wrapped up in nice soothing thoughts . . . thoughts of a world beyond a world . . . where a guy isn’t wakened in the middle of the night to go sleep-walking through the rain on a date with murder . . . and you don’t taste blood on your lips. . . .

  The blood was from the back of my hand. I’d been resting my head on it while I licked my wounds and felt sorry for myself. I must’ve fallen asleep still holding on to the empty bottle . . . another drink would’ve been fine . . . help to keep me awake . . . I couldn’t be sure I was awake . . . maybe I’d dreamt the whole thing . . . Judith Walker . . . she’d been clawed after she was dead because the scratches hadn’t done any bleeding . . . and Carole Van Buren . . . she was the kind of dame a million guys dream about every night . . . she could’ve been a projection from my subconscious . . . the stuff that dreams are made of. . . .

  I was dozing off again in a dream within a dream. Nothing was real any more. The voices and faces, the aches and pains were all in my mind. It was better that way. Judith was too nice looking to die with a belt round her neck. And even a tramp like Pauline Gordon——

  That roused me as nothing else could’ve done. The big animal who’d followed me must’ve sat on my tail from the time I left the spot where Pauline had been killed by the hit-and-run car. He’d waited for me outside the men’s washroom . . . and he was real. He’d left me something that was no figment of my imagination.

  The gun was an army issue .45, fairly new and fully loaded except for one round. On the base of the butt somebody’d scratched Lew Riley, “B” Combat Team. I had better than an idea that the gink with the concrete fists didn’t call himself Lew Riley. When you belong to a disposal squad working for King Gilmore, you don’t leave calling cards.

  My knuckles were still oozing blood. I ran them under the cold faucet and wrapped my handkerchief around them. Then I sat down again and smoked two thoughtful cigarettes.

  It was nearly nine o’clock. At a quarter after nine, I broke out my own piece of artillery, checked it and loaded it and stuck it in the waistband of my pants. Mister Riley’s revolver I locked in the desk.

  At nine-twenty, I put out the light. Through the rain-streaked window, I studied the street below. Wind and rain and sidewalks shining in pools under the street lamps . . . the sodden wall of the warehouse opposite . . . doorways like caverns of pale darkness shrinking from the light . . . the splash and gurgle of water flooding from a broken roof-gutter.

  No one was keeping tabs on my front door. In the lights of an occasional passing car I could see a whole stretch of the street, the empty doorways, the hurrying passer-by with his head buried in his coat collar and rain dripping from his hat. I watched from the window for a long time—long enough to make quite, quite sure that the guy with the busted wing wasn’t still flying around. Nor had he left one of his pals to finish the job he’d half-started.

  What might give down in the lobby was a different proposition. There I had to take a chance. But this time I was carrying a comforting little something that was keeping my umbilicus warm.

  I went out and I locked the office door and I walked very cautiously along the hallway. With my hand snuggling inside the front of my coat, I went down the stairs. Where the stairs became lobby and my shadow was a tapering giant across the floor, I stood close to the wall and listened.

  Out back, a door creaked to and fro in the wind. In the alley at the rear, the lid of an ashcan clattered with every booming gust. The sound of the rain was like surf on an open shore.

  No one was lying in wait for me. A faint smell of cordite still lingered in the air but that was all. There was no car parked anywhere on the whole length of rainswept street.

  Picking up a cab was only a little easier than getting McCarthy elected to the Praesidium of the U.S.S.R. But I did at last find me one and I went home and bathed my sundry injuries and took me to bed.

  I was dead on my feet before I lay down. My eyes wouldn’t stay open. That is, until there was no longer any need for me to remain awake. Then I hunted sleep for at least an hour, over and under and around a hundred obstacles that came between us. I couldn’t get rid of the look of vague surprise on Judith’s lovely face when I’d first seen her asleep on the rye-soaked bed. I kept hearing her voice. I remembered every word of the crazy conversation on the phone when she’d roused me to talk suicide and drugs and girls who get headaches when they realise too late what they’ve got themselves into.

  The dim shape of the phone was the last thing I saw when at last I drifted off. It remained with me when all else had gone.

  Guess I must’ve anticipated the bell almost before it rang. In the depths of my sleep, I found myself holding the cold receiver and listening to a cold voice repeating, “Is that Glenn Bowman?”

  It wasn’t Judith’s voice; it wasn’t any voice I’d ever heard. Somehow, I had a sense of disappointment.

  I said, “This is Bowman. Who is that?”

  He said, “My apologies for disturbing you at this hour, Mr. Bowman. You seem fated these days to have your night’s rest broken by one thing or another . . . but I won’t detain you long.”

  “You won’t detain me at all,” I told him, “unless you come out from behind your apologies and let me have a look at you.”

  “I hope you don’t mean that.” His smooth, chill tone hadn’t altered. There was just the very faintest trace of impatien
ce behind it when he went on, “Twenty-four hours ago, you were much more agreeable. Of course——” he cleared his throat unnecessarily “—after your recent experience, perhaps you’re allergic to phone calls at two o’clock in the morning. But, believe me, I didn’t waken you at this hour from choice.”

  “Look,” I said. “Quit stalling. Your name without any more horsing around or I hang up on you.”

  “It’ll cost you five thousand dollars if you do,” he said. “And probably something much more valuable than that—later.” Now he didn’t sound quite so smooth.

  “That’s different,” I said. “For the time being I’ll call you Five Grand. Now, take it from there . . . without apologies, threats, or fancy talk. I’m a tired boy and I want to get back to sleep.”

  “O.K. Whatever you wish.” He coughed again. “I’ll make it short. You had a little trouble this evening . . . didn’t you?”

  “No. No trouble at all. You must’ve been misinformed.”

  “Don’t act smart with me. You know quite well what I’m talking about. A guy tried to rub you out: a big, dumb ox who let you take his gun off him. Isn’t that so?”

  “Oh . . . that?” I could hear a thread of music weaving a broken pattern behind his voice. When it stopped, there was a distant pattering sound like an overtone to the rain. In the lesser darkness outside my bedroom window, the rain still washed in grey swathes over the roof-tops.

  I said, “Tell him next time he tries anything like that I’ll put an extra hole in his head.”

  The voice on the phone said, “If you act your age, there needn’t be any next time.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “You will. I’ve got five G’s that say you will.”

  “Must be annoying to think you could’ve saved yourself all that money by employing a more efficient killer. Guess you’re not as well organised as I’ve been given to understand.”

  He didn’t like that. In a slightly louder tone, he said, “You’re fond of opening a big mouth, Bowman. It isn’t a healthy habit.”

  “After meeting your damp squib to-night,” I said, “you don’t stand a chance of scaring me. I always look three ways before I step off the sidewalk. Now, let’s get back to this sugar you want to feed the horse.”

  “It’s yours . . . so long as you play ball.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Doing nothing . . . or nearly nothing. Ever been in Washington?’

  “Why?”

  “Nice town. Healthy climate, too. Be a pleasant change for you to work there for a week or two.”

  “ What kind of work?”

  “I’m thinking of opening a club, a country club, a few miles upstate. It’d be a pretty big investment, so I want to get off on the right foot.” He paused to let me come in.

  “Where do I feature?” I asked.

  “Your job is to check over the territory: possible opposition, suggested location, who has to be greased for a building licence, who might have to be bought out or run out . . . you know the kind of thing?”

  “Yes, I know the kind of thing. But—why me?”

  “Because you got a clean name. They tell me you’re always on the level. I need a guy I can trust.”

  “Craps!” I said. “A few hours ago you showed your trust with a slug from an army .45. Suppose we cut out the hokum. Why do you want to get me out of town?”

  “For five grand——” his voice had an edge like a rusty razor “—I don’t have to sit through a quiz. D’you want the dough or don’t you?”

  “How and when do I get the feel of it?”

  “Soon’s you check in at the Winchester Hotel. The desk clerk will hand it to you . . . well?”

  “Supposing I pick up the cash and come straight back to New York . . .?”

  “I wouldn’t do that kind of supposing. If you double-crossed me, Bowman, they’d use the money to give you a slap-up funeral. All my boys aren’t damn’ fools like Tad.”

  “Then why don’t you turn them loose on me now? Seems you’re going to a lot of trouble and expense for no reason. Or have you a reason?”

  He took quite a time to answer. When he did, he picked his words very carefully like he didn’t want me to be in any doubt. The way he spoke, I knew he wasn’t kidding. He said, “Rubbing you out now, Bowman, would be inconvenient. I never expected you’d get in my hair this way. If Tad hadn’t been a moron, he’d have left you alone. I didn’t tell him to blast you. All this wouldn’t have been necessary if he hadn’t given you a lead to me.”

  “So now,” I said, “it would be inconvenient. What about later?”

  “It won’t matter later. Take a three weeks’ vacation in Washington at my expense and you’ve nothing more to worry about.”

  “I’m not exactly neurotic right now. And what’s to stop me putting the finger on you in three weeks’ time?”

  “You couldn’t finger me for anything, Bowman. I’m clean. I’m always clean. You’ve got the wrong slant on this business.”

  The music had started again—a thin rhythm of sound overlying his voice. Somewhere far off, a woman was singing. I said, “Not me, Gilmore, not me. I haven’t got the wrong slant. I know you’re tied in with the killing of Judith Walker. And I also know you triggered off what happened to the Gordon woman. Taken all round, I know too much. Either now or in three weeks, you’ll have to do something about me . . . so don’t give me that stuff about inconvenience.”

  King Gilmore said, “If you could prove anything, I wouldn’t be paying you to leave town. I’d be stopping your big snook with something more permanent than dollar bills. But you’ve got no proof; you’re just guessing. And there’s one thing you might as well know—I didn’t kill Judith.”

  “Then why the five grand?”

  “You’ve got nuisance value. You’ll go around asking too many questions. That could upset a——” he hesitated and he covered his hesitation with another cough— “a little deal I’m trying to put through. If I had you tossed in the river, that might make newspaper talk. I don’t want too much talk.”

  “What if I tell you to do something rude with your five grand?”

  “Try it. Just work some more of your gall on me and I’ll take a chance with the newspapers.” He made it sound like he meant it, too.

  I thought it over. Five thousand bucks is a lotta bucks. I said, “When do I leave?”

  Without any haste, he said, “In the morning. You can either fly or go by train. So long as you go. And so long as you stop there.”

  “You make me curious to know what comes off in this town while I’m away.”

  “Pacify your curiosity with the easiest dough you’ve ever picked up. Is it a deal?” Now he sounded like he was in a hurry.

  “It’s a deal,” I said. “I’ll leave town no later than midday.”

  Chapter X

  Gun Under the Pillow

  I have friends in many places, both high and low. Each in his time has served his purpose—without question, without thought of personal reward. That’s what friends are for.

  Gerry Tate mixes with the high and lives with the low. He does a daily column for some paper on what gives in court circles: law court circles. He knows every bookie, crook, mobster, racketeer, chiseler, and hoodlum on the East Coast and lots of points west. If it’s monkey business . . . Gerry knows the ins and the outs.

  So I called Gerry and I made a date with him to meet me at the depot half-an-hour before my train left. I told him I was curious about one Richard (King) Gilmore and did he know why Gilmore should be sensitive about events due to happen in his life during the next three weeks?

  Gerry said, “If we’re both talking about the same guy, I can answer that one. It’s in the clippings you asked me to heist from our files.”

  “What’s in the clippings?”

  “Mister Gilmore comes up before a Grand Jury in——” he made a small mouth and scratched his chin “—seventeen days’ time. With luck, they’ll blow the king’s crooked empire wide o
pen. With a lot of luck.”

  “Meaning?”

  “A couple of juries have tried it before. And so have a few good guys here and there. But they’ve never made it stick. This time, I’ll lay even money on King Gilmore. Something tells me even Lloyd Warner will take a brodie.”

  “Isn’t he chairman of the Citizens’ Committee?”

  “Same guy,” Garry said. He rolled his eyes up to the high glass roof and gnawed at his lip like he was listening to something. With no change of tone, he said, “D’you know there’s a character watching us? A dark character with a dead pan . . . don’t look round now . . . is it possible that you-know-who has detailed one of his pals to speed you on your way?”

  “It’s possible,” I said. “Tell me more about this Lloyd Warner.”

  “Public-spirited type . . . plenty of dough. Apart from a flock of investments that bring in some neat jack, he controls a couple of flour mills and a few hotels and a canning plant in Newfoundland. Yeah . . . plenty of dough.” Gerry brought his eyes down and stared distantly past my head. “The worthy Lloyd is crowding fifty, has a charming wife whose main worry is middle-aged spread, and he’s also got two daughters. From what I’ve seen of the girls, they’d get by without their old man’s money.”

  “And he’s gunning for King Gilmore?”

  “Sure. In a big way. Rumour has it that King thought the younger daughter quite a tasty dish and took her around for a while. Came the night when he popped the question that leads to a fate worse than death and Miss Susan gave him the brush-off. In a nice way, so my information goes. She’d like the idea herself—if he was prepared to make things all legal and kosher.” Gerry grinned without looking at me. “For the first time in his misbegotten life, King had a dame who was telling him he’d have to ask Papa.”

  “Did he?”

  “Yeah. And that’s where he walked right into trouble. A slick operator like King should’ve known better than to get hot pants over a dame who was way outside his class. Because Warner thinks more of his younger daughter than he does of the sun, moon, and stars.”