The Long Night

by Hartley Howard

  For maybe ten seconds, Gilmore didn’t move. He looked like he’d just had a nasty shock. Then his face came alive. He said, “Oh, he did . . . did he? When did your friend say he was thinking of repeating the performance?”

  “He didn’t say. And he isn’t a friend of mine. . . .” I was wondering what chance I had of jumping Tad while both of them had something new on their minds. If it weren’t now, it might be never. I couldn’t go on filibustering indefinitely. . . . “You know him better than I do,” I added.

  “Yeah? Now, that is interesting.” Something passed between Gilmore and his gorilla that put a little prickle up and down my spine. He began moving towards me as he asked, “Who is this guy, anyway?”

  I said, “What’s in it for me? I’m prepared to trade——” Then I threw a long left at his face, spun away from him, and made a grab for the .38 Tad was holding.

  It was a good idea. If the breaks had been coming my way, I’d have brought it off. But I didn’t. Tad happened to have a better idea. For a big hulk he was darn fast—too darn fast for me.

  He let me get my hand on the gun and then he tugged. I held on—just long enough to ride straight into Tad’s notion of what a left to the face should be.

  That punch had everything: weight, speed, and direction. It caught me one helluva slam on the ridge of the jaw and flung me backwards and sideways like I’d stepped on to a spinning turntable wearing roller-skates. I forgot about the gun and clutched at the air instead to keep my feet on the floor. All the brains I’d ever had were rattling around inside my skull.

  But not for long. As I went back, he brought his right arm up and over in a short arc with the vicious power of his shoulder behind it. Through a revolving chaos of light and movement and dizzy pain, I saw the muzzle of the gun wink above me like a shooting star: a star that flamed into my head and split me in two.

  I was still conscious when I hit the carpet. I knew it was Gilmore who was kicking me although I couldn’t see his face. I couldn’t feel the blows, either. From a long, long way off, I watched myself lying on the floor in a beautifully-furnished penthouse where a moron in a hundred dollar tuxedo was kicking the guts out of me. It didn’t seem to matter.

  I guess I passed out soon after that. Next thing, I was choking over something red-hot that filled my mouth and stung the place on my jaw where Tad had clipped me. It was Tad’s face looming above me that I saw when I managed to get my eyes open.

  Somewhere farther away, Gilmore was saying “. . . wake him up. It’s getting late and I don’t want Warner——”

  Tad said, “He’s woke up.” A hand like a river dredge gripped me by the shirt-front and pulled me up from the carpet. Through a shifting mist, I could see King Gilmore. There was blood at the corner of his mouth.

  Without knowing how I’d got it, I found I was holding a bottle. And Tad had released me. I shut my eyes again and took a generous drink.

  Gradually, the mist cleared and I became conscious of a lot of things my worst enemy should never know of. Such as a belt of hot pain in the region of my lower ribs and a feeling like I’d broken my jaw, coupled with the sensation that the top of my head had been operated on with a butcher’s chopper.

  Gilmore had taken Tad’s place. Soon’s he saw I could see straight, he said, “We were talking about a certain party who fired two shots at me the other night . . . do I get his name or do we go to work on you again?”

  “His name is Clive Van Buren,” I said. “I thought you might’ve guessed. They let him out a couple of days before Judith stopped breathing.”

  “If you’re trying to kid me. . . .”

  “I’m not kidding you. Where would it get me? You can always check up for yourself.”

  He looked through me while he thought about it. Then he said, “Don’t think I won’t. But first——” he put his hand in his pocket and brought out a single sheet of paper folded once “—you got a phone call to make—to Mister Lloyd Warner. I’ve written down what you’re to say . . . read it.”

  I read it. There wasn’t much to read. I said, “Warner will be a damn’ fool if he agrees to meet me in a crummy hotel. What if he asks me why I can’t go to his home to talk?”

  “It’s your business to convince him you can’t. And be sure you do convince him. You’re going to be good and sorry if you don’t. Because Warner’s holding the one guy who can put me out of business. It’s my neck—or yours.”

  “You’re crazy if you think he’ll come.”

  “He’ll come. You can be a persuasive sort of guy when you like.” He held out his hand for the bottle and grinned at me coldly. “Those threats you made on the phone almost had me scared . . . and I haven’t forgotten it, either.” For one fleeting second, he couldn’t hide the black promise in his eyes.

  “Supposing I do persuade him . . . how do I know you won’t have both of us bumped off once you’ve got the information you want?”

  “I’ll give you a written guarantee,” Gilmore said. He thought that was funny—so funny that it made him laugh. While he was laughing, he struck me in the face with the bottle.

  That made Tad laugh. It looked like everybody was having a whale of a time but me. All I wanted was to lie down and die. And the way things were shaping, I guessed I’d be getting my wish without even having to lie down.

  I threw a clumsy punch at Gilmore and nearly fell over my own feet when he rode away from it. Then Tad came behind me and let me have another smack with the Smith & Wesson in the tender spot on the top of my head. I went down on my knees.

  Time ceased to exist after that. The whole world became a nightmare of pain that gradually hurt less and less . . . until I didn’t care any more . . . until nothing hurt me at all. What was me became shrivelled up somewhere inside, looking out dimly through two holes that kept closing but never quite shut me in.

  Then I tasted liquor again and they were half-carrying me into a room where there was a telephone. They let me sit looking at it for what seemed a long time. Slowly my mind came back to me; slowly the decision that had been there from the start took shape and hardened. It didn’t need courage: King Gilmore had made the decision for me.

  Maybe I didn’t owe any debt to Lloyd Warner. Maybe I’d stand a chance of making a break for it when we met in the hotel bedroom and the gunman had to watch both of us . . . maybe. But Warner wouldn’t have that chance. And I couldn’t set him up as a sitting target. I had nobody. He had a wife—and Deborah.

  My thoughts drifted sluggishly and I wondered how long it had been since she’d put her arms around me and lifted up her face to be kissed . . . was it an hour? . . . or a week? . . . How would she feel about not seeing me again? I’d promised to call her . . . now I’d never make that call . . . and she wouldn’t know I’d acted the tin hero because of a few crazy moments when she’d been soft and warm with a desire that came too swiftly to be resisted. She wouldn’t know. . . .

  Out of a far distance, Gilmore said, “You know the number and you know what to say: get on with it!”

  I managed to get my head back so I could look up at him. He was a handsome guy—louse or not, he was a handsome guy. The corner of his mouth where I’d hit him was still bleeding but it didn’t spoil his looks. Maybe a man can be too good-looking. Unless he’s got something to go with it, he gets vain and his vanity makes him think he has the right——

  Tad said, “Are you deaf? We ain’t gonna wait all night, you know.”

  There was only one thought left in my mind. It was useless to me then but I held on to it just for the sheer hell of the thing. And it gave me a big kick to know it was Tad who’d provided the answer. Inside my head his voice was saying again “. . . If the party who killed Judith knew so much, he’d have known Warner was going to be in the apartment. . . picking that night was the dumbest thing. . . .”

  And Gilmore had told him “. . . he’d have learned that you’d be outside the apartment block. . . .”

  One thing they hadn’t mentioned; they hadn’t known a
bout it. They hadn’t known that Judith wouldn’t have died if she hadn’t been doped with doctored rye. But someone else knew. And the someone else had expected it was King Gilmore who was going to call on Judith at two o’clock in the morning. It was Gilmore the police had been meant to find with Judith’s body. Sending him to the chair would’ve completed a double pay-off.

  I looked at Tad and then I looked at Gilmore. I had a foolish desire to laugh. But it hurt my mouth even to talk. I said, “Guess what? I know who murdered Judith Walker.”

  Gilmore said, “The hell with that! Are you going to call Warner or are you not?”

  “No,” I said. “You can bring on your circus. And I hope the Grand Jury sticks you behind the gridiron for ninetynine years.”

  “You’re sure that’s how you want it to be?”

  “What I want doesn’t enter into it,” I said. “From here on in, the choice is all yours.”

  A hand that could only have belonged to Tad fastened itself in my coat collar and lifted me out of the chair like it was the grab of a crane. Tad said, “I been waiting for this. The next part of the programme is all ready. I’m gonna kiss you good-bye with this gun of yours, then I’m gonna dress you in a set of new pyjamas and carry you up to the roof. Soon’s we’re far enough away from here——” he had my gun in his hand again and he was holding it by the barrel “—over you go. If you can fly, you’ll be O.K. If not, there’ll be nothing much of you to identify after you’ve splashed on the sidewalk ’way down there.”

  I said, “Why tell me? Trying to give your boss the willies?”

  Gilmore was standing back studying me. The expression on his face conveyed nothing. His voice betrayed nothing either, when he said, “No guy could be that stupid. I’ll give you one last chance—and only one . . . well?”

  Weariness swept over me and a wave of vertigo made the room shimmer. I was too tired to go on arguing, to go on clinging to the scrap of life they would still grant me. For me there was no way out. To reason with either of them was a waste of time, a postponement of the inevitable. I felt too sick to care any longer.

  Tad was hefting the gun and grinning at me in anticipation. Just one smack on the head would be enough . . . I wouldn’t feel a thing after that . . . not a thing. . . . I said, “Phooey!”

  Gilmore said, “He’s asked for it . . . give it to him!”

  Before I could move—if I’d had the strength to move—he was behind me and he had my arms pinned at my back. The butt of the Smith & Wesson swung up above my head. I shut my eyes and called it a day.

  It didn’t hurt. I felt nothing at all. Vaguely, I wondered about that. Mostly I wondered why somebody didn’t answer the phone.

  Then my arms were free again. And the bell stopped ringing . . . and a voice that sounded like Gilmore’s was saying “. . . Hallo . . .? Who is this?”

  Thin and scratchy but very clear another voice said, “Lieutenant Cooke, Homicide Bureau. I want to speak with Richard Gilmore.”

  I opened my eyes again as Gilmore said, “Gilmore speaking. What do you want, Lieutenant?”

  The tiny voice on the phone said, “You have a man in your apartment called Bowman. I want him, Gilmore. If anything happens to him, it’s going to be just too bad for you.’

  Above the mouthpiece, Gilmore stared at me and shook his head. He said, “You’re mistaken, Lieutenant. Nobody of that name is here.”

  “Mind if I come up and see for myself?”

  “Are you calling me a liar, Lieutenant?”

  Cooke said, “If you prefer it that way—yes. I’ve had two men outside your apartment since Bowman went in. He hasn’t come out yet. Is that good enough?”

  “You’re still mistaken,” Gilmore said. “But I guess you won’t be satisfied until you find he isn’t here. Come on up.” He cradled the receiver and looked at Tad. “Get him out before that copper arrives. Use the fire-escape . . . and don’t give him the chance to let out a squawk.”

  The power to move came back to me all at once. But it came back too late. As I wrenched free of Tad’s grip, he slapped the gun down on my head in a glancing blow that ended all resistance.

  I knew I was being carried . . . I could feel cold night air . . . there was rain on my face . . . we began to go down. . . .

  Chapter XXIII

  “See you in Hell . . .”

  May be my eyes remained open all the time; maybe the sense of height is a primitive instinct which functions even when the mind is no longer capable of conscious thought. If I knew nothing else, I knew I was swaying head down over an abyss that seemed to have been carved deep in the earth—a bottomless pit hewn out of the darkness.

  Far below there would be lights I couldn’t see. Far below there would be life and movement and people. I didn’t belong among people any more: I was dead. I had been stabbed to death on the seventh floor of the Winchester Hotel in Washington. And a dead man can’t feel a jolting shoulder press into his stomach, step by step on the way down into the place where the long dead patiently wait—without sight or hearing or any sense of time.

  Neither can a dead man smell the acid tang of sweat like I could smell the bulging flesh my face kept hitting, nor hear the clang of heels on iron steps. . . .

  Nor see a light that needed no eyes, that burned into the mind and aroused it to life—a flaming eye probing through tissue and nerve and bone and rupturing the blackness like a knife slits open an enveloping bag.

  Out of the light a voice was calling without words . . . and the jolting became rapid and violent . . . and the voice was a blast of sound from the darkness above . . . and then I was falling. . . . As if the noise had wakened me, I knew where I was and why. In that moment, I was grateful to Lieutenant Cooke like I’d never been grateful to any guy before.

  I landed heavily and rolled over once and lay still on my back. The blinding light had blinked out. Where the edge of the roof etched itself against a starless sky, there was nothing but the voice calling “. . . better throw down your gun . . . you can’t make it . . . you’ll only run into the crew of a patrol car down there . . . throw down your gun . . . throw down your gun. . . .”

  Then the beam of a powerful flashlamp swept over me and steadied. Below it, light spilled from an open french window and lost itself in the emptiness beyond the rail of the fire-escape. Inside the apartment, someone was pounding on a door and shouting.

  I couldn’t hear Tad’s footsteps any more. He had dropped me when the voice on the roof challenged him and he’d gone clattering down the steps until the gun above had opened up on him. Now he was quiet as if he were waiting for something to happen.

  The beam left me and travelled on, moving slowly and cautiously like it was feeling its way. From up above, another voice said, “Careful you don’t hit that other guy . . . shine your light nearer the wall . . . that’s it! A little bit more to the——”

  A shot splintered the darkness on the next floor level and the bright eye on the roof winked shut. I eased myself over on to my stomach and began to pull myself up the steps by my hands.

  That was when I discovered the gun—my gun. Tad had hit me with it . . . Tad had lost it when he let me fall . . . it was lying on the step where my head had rested . . . I could feel the familiar scars on the butt . . . all I had to do was wait for Tad to fire again . . . if my fingers would do as they were told.

  In Gilmore’s penthouse, the banging on the door and the shouting had stopped. Someone on the roof was making little sounds of pain. Below me, feet scuffed on the metal treads. A shadow passed through the light from the french window and travelled out into the dark.

  I lay with the .38 sweating in my hand and watched King Gilmore’s shadow shrink smaller and smaller as he drew nearer the window. I had no strength in my arm and my eyes were playing tricks. To hold the gun upright was a greater effort than I had ever had to make.

  It was hard to keep the shadow in focus. Things kept dissolving into double outlines that shifted. It didn’t matter that my mind was cr
ystal clear, that I could think with a tremendous clarity. To think was not the same as to do. And my body had passed out of my control.

  The man on the roof was moaning intermittently . . . Tad was a few steps closer . . . against the lighter blackness of the sky, I could see a head and shoulders growing out of the edge of the roof . . . Gilmore was backing cautiously through the window . . . far below, the sound of climbing feet was becoming louder. . . .

  As in a recurring dream sequence from which there is no awakening, nothing changed for a long time. There was no time . . . these were the things that belonged to an endless night . . . Gilmore had always been the heart of a shadow . . . like Tad had always been . . and the copper on the roof searching the darkness . . . and Cooke waiting outside the door of the apartment . . . waiting in silence.

  I wondered what he waited for and what chance King Gilmore had of making a getaway and if he knew that it was Judith who had destroyed his empire. I was still wondering when the dazzling beam of light blazed down again as Tad climbed level with me.

  He was pinned on the lighted fire-escape like a specimen in a glass tube. This time he had no chance to use his gun and duck for cover; this time the law had him dead to rights.

  All it took was one shot—a single shot that travelled down the path of the beam almost as the light came on. He stumbled and let out a grunt and his foot struck my leg as he slipped off the step. In the same moment, he pulled the trigger twice.

  The shots went nowhere. There was no answering fire from the roof. I could hear Tad scrabbling to regain his balance before he blundered against my feet and pitched over the handrail.

  And then he screamed: a thin, dwindling ribbon of sound coiling out of his open mouth and linking him to me as he went rushing down into the light-speckled darkness of the street far below. It was a scream that had no end. It came back out of the depths long after his hurtling body must’ve smashed out its life on the pavement.

  Yet death came to him swiftly. There would’ve been time only to count three slowly from the moment the flashlamp pin-pointed him until the memory of his terror came echoing up from below. And his scream was an automatic release that tripped off a burst of fire beyond the door of the apartment.