‘A switch!’ She stared at me, the cigarette burning forgotten in her hand. ‘But would it be possible?’

  ‘Why not? You want to get married but you have a husband somewhere. You also have a friend who isn’t and hasn’t been married. You take her name, birthplace, identity. You marry under that name and with her birth certificate. Who’s to know?’

  ‘The friend?’

  ‘Sure. But money can stop a mouth, and enough money can stop it for good. Or perhaps she didn’t even know about the switch. This is a big country, Constance, and a lot of things can happen in it.’

  She thought about it for a while, smoking, letting the smoke trickle from between her lips and coil around her head. She had a nicely shaped head. She shook it.

  ‘No soap. You’ve forgotten something. The husband.’

  I shrugged. ‘I’m only guessing.’

  ‘Unless—?’ She shook her head. ‘No. It’s too dirty.’

  ‘For ten million dollars a man will stand a lot of dirt,’ I said. I glanced at my watch and levered myself off my chair. ‘I’ve got to be moving. You on duty tonight?’

  ‘No, but I could be.’ She stared at me. ‘Something due to break?’

  ‘What gives you that idea?’ I grinned at her and gave her the okay sign. ‘I’ve got your number.’

  ‘I’ll be waiting. Photog?’

  ‘He can keep you company,’ I said. ‘At home or here?’

  ‘Here. I’ll get in a poker session to occupy my mind.’ She stepped towards me, put hands on my shoulders and stared into my eyes. She didn’t have to tilt her head very far to do it either. ‘I’ll be waiting, Mike. Take care of yourself.’

  ‘Don’t bank on anything,’ I warned. ‘But keep your fingers crossed.’

  She held them up to me as I pushed my way through the doors.

  They were already crossed.

  Outside the Tribune building I headed for a bar and a telephone. I collected some nickels and shut myself in a booth. I phoned Wendle. I had a lot of trouble getting him, but finally I unlevered him from a confab of his business partners and heard him snap as he took the phone:

  ‘Yes? What is it?’

  ‘Lantry here, Mr. Wendle. Who handles the payoff?’

  He was no fool and cottoned on fast. I heard the sound of footsteps and the slamming of a door. Then he was back, breathing heavily into the receiver.

  ‘You’ve found her?’

  ‘Yes.’ I let silence grow between us while he gave it some thought.

  ‘Can I speak to her?’

  ‘Not yet.’ I stared into one of the little mirrors they put inside telephone booths and winked at my own reflection. ‘She’s kind of busy right now.’

  ‘You mean that she’s alive?’

  ‘Of course, why not?’ I winked at myself again. ‘When can I collect?’

  He didn’t like that one, lawyers never do. He hedged.

  ‘Surely that would be up to the Colonel. He hired you, not I.’

  ‘That’s right. I’d forgotten. Sorry.’

  ‘Not at all.’ He hesitated. ‘Where will you be if I want to find you?’

  ‘Protecting my investment.’ I snapped and hung up. I pushed another coin into the machine and spun the dial again.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Lantry here. Is the Colonel at home?’

  ‘How should I know?’ From the slurred voice and the heavy breathing I guessed who was at the other end of the line.

  ‘Tell him I called, Stephan. Tell him that I’ve found his Norma. Tell him that I expect ten thousand dollars for finding her. Right?’

  ‘Wait a minute.’ Something seemed to have sobered him. ‘What’s that you say? You’ve found her?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Where she’s been all along.’

  ‘Is she—?’ He hesitated. ‘Is she all right?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t she be?’

  ‘I—’ The silence which followed began to build up into something not quite nice. I cut it short.

  ‘Just let the Colonel know, will you, Steve? I’m going back now.’

  I slammed the receiver down and frowned at myself in the tiny mirror. Then I went out and caught a cab.

  Though dark, it was still fairly early and the streets were full of people hurrying to get out of the cold. Underfoot the sidewalk was slippery with slush, already freezing, and I was glad to get inside the comparative warmth of police headquarters. I asked the desk sergeant where Captain Bresholm might be and he jerked a thumb towards his office. I knocked on the door and entered just in time to see him put down the phone. He grinned at me and waved me to a chair.

  ‘Mike, it’s good to see you. Smoke?’

  ‘I’ll use my own.’ I lit a cigarette. ‘Look, Bresholm, will you do something for me?’

  ‘Sure, what is it?’

  I told him.

  He didn’t like it, but he didn’t shove the fact down my throat either. He thought about it, smoking his cigar and staring at me through the smoke. Finally, when I couldn’t stand it much longer, he nodded.

  ‘You think that it will work?’

  ‘I don’t know. There’s a lot I don’t know yet behind all this. Pug might be able to help us, but he’s out of circulation. I’ll have to do it the hard way and I’d like your co-operation.’

  ‘If it was anyone else,’ he said slowly, then shrugged. ‘Hell, why not? If we can tie it up in a neat bundle, all the better. You sure that it will work?’

  ‘No,’ I said tiredly. ‘I’m not sure. I only wish I was, but one thing I’m sure of. If there’s a bunch of bulls stamping around, we’ll get nowhere fast. I’d like to play it my way but I also want to stay in business, and I’m no hero. I’ve done my job, and I suppose that I could collect and forget it. I’d rather finish the thing right through.’

  He didn’t ask me why. If he had, I couldn’t have told him. It was just one of those things, a clean finish and a clean start. No loose ends, nothing to worry about, no more dirt than necessary. And I had nothing to lose.

  ‘Is Thornedyke mixed up in it?’

  ‘I don’t know but I think that he must be.’ I looked at him. ‘Why?’

  ‘You tell me,’ he said, and on one cheek a muscle began to twitch. I knew the signs and I knew that someone had been riding him. Politics, when coupled with the civil service, such as appointing the police commissioner, doesn’t make for an efficient force. I leaned over the desk.

  ‘Why don’t you go in there and smash it up, Bresholm? Why let a dirty grafter like Thornedyke make a monkey out of you and the entire department? You could do it if you wanted to, you could grab his trigger-boys and put him where he’ll give no more orders. Damn it, Bresholm, you shouldn’t need me to tell you what needs doing.’

  ‘I don’t,’ he said curtly.

  ‘Then—’

  ‘Cut it!’ he snapped. ‘Don’t you think I know what you’re getting at? You think I like things the way they are? But don’t let this tin badge fool you, Lantry, I can be broken as easily as the rawest rookie on a beat. I know it and I daren’t forget it.’

  ‘Sorry.’ I said it and I meant it. I was tired, run ragged, or I would never have needled him that way. He couldn’t help it if he thought more of his wife and kids than a thing called ‘honour.’ And he could do more good where he was than pounding a beat.

  I thought of something.

  ‘Can I use your phone?’

  ‘Sure, help yourself.’

  ‘Can you tap the wire, record what’s said?’

  ‘Yes.’ He looked surprised. ‘You want me to?’

  ‘Please.’ I scribbled down a number. ‘While you’re doing it, find out where this is. Okay?’

  He nodded and I dialled.

  I could hear the phone ringing, one—two—three—then someone lifted the receiver and I waited for someone to speak. No one did so I did it for them.

  ‘Hello? Is that Georgette?’

  I heard a muffled sound as if someone was talking with a hand held over the receiver and not too well at that. Then a woman’s voice echoed faintly in my ear.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Mike, here. Mike Lantry.’ I chuckled. ‘I tried to contact you a while ago at the Purple Orchid, but they wouldn’t connect us.’

  ‘So you’re John Weston.’ She sounded relieved. ‘I wondered who it could be.’

  ‘That was me. Well, Georgette, did you get anything?’

  She hesitated and I thought I heard someone say something.

  ‘Hello, is anyone with you?’

  ‘No.’ She hesitated. ‘Look, Mike, I can’t talk now. Tell you what I’ll do. Meet me at the corner of Tenth and Vine. There’s a drugstore there; if you have to wait, wait inside. Got it?’

  ‘Sure, what time?’

  ‘In a couple of hours, okay?’

  ‘Sorry.’ I listened to her intake of breath. ‘I’m pretty busy. Can you make it an hour?’

  ‘Sure.’ I thought she sounded relieved. ‘One hour from now, then. Corner of Tenth and Vine. Right?’

  ‘Right. I’ll be there.’

  ‘Be seeing you.’ She hesitated. ‘Goodbye, shamus.’ The phone went dead and I smiled at it, a long, slow smile.

  Things were getting warm.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I arrived twenty minutes early and holed up in a doorway while I looked the place over. Tenth and Vine was in the slum area, not five blocks from where a dead woman stared from glassy eyes, and the general atmosphere was the same. The drugstore Georgette had mentioned threw bright light over the snow on the sidewalk. The other three corners were occupied by a junk shop, a second-hand clothing store, and a Chinese laundry. All had their windows covered by heavy shutters.

  I let five minutes trickle into the great unknown, and then made up my mind. Standing out here would only get me cold feet, so I lit a cigarette, took a sharp walk around the block, and came towards the rendezvous from another direction. I walked past it, took another turn around the block, and walked back down a street, which gave me a clear view of both sides of the building. It was almost time now and Georgette, unless she were late, should be waiting inside the drugstore.

  I slowed up as I neared the corner.

  A light showed from the doorway of the junk shop, the red tip of a cigarette, and its glow threw into view a glimpse of sharp features, stooped shoulders, and a thin mouth. I crossed the street and went up to the doorway.

  ‘Got a light, bud?’

  He grunted and something gleamed in his hand. He stared at me, but my face was in shadow, the brim of my fedora pulled down over my eyes and my collar turned high around my neck. He hesitated for a second, then decided to give me what I’d asked for, holding out his cigarette for me to fire my own from its tip.

  I laid the barrel of the Browning against the side of his head.

  He grunted, sagging against the wall, and I caught him as he fell. I let him down lightly, hiding what I did with the bulk of my own body. He’d dropped the gun he’d been holding and I picked it up, broke it, and spilled out the shells. Then I dropped it into his lap and threw the bullets into the snow. Guns are heavy things, and I had enough to do carrying my own.

  Then I crossed the street and entered the drugstore.

  It was warm inside, with a sticky, unhealthy combination of smoke and cheap perfume, frying oil and burnt fat, onions and popcorn. A row of stools lined a long counter, a juke box thudded out something supposed to be music, and, if that wasn’t noise enough, a pint-sized radio was turned on almost full blast.

  The dispense counter held the usual assortment of tired toilet articles, household supplies, and dog-eared magazines. A phone booth stood in one corner, and the doors of the rest rooms stared at me like a couple of blind eyes.

  I took a look at the people.

  A bunch of adolescents jived to the tune of the juke box, stamping their feet and snapping their fingers like a gang of doped-up hepsters. A red-haired female, looking twice her age, giggled at a youthful escort and tried to pretend that she wasn’t still attending school. An elderly man, his face a map of worry, dipped a sinker into his coffee and nibbled at the doughnut as if he hated the taste. Two men, well-dressed and poker-faced, stared into the back-mirror and let their coffee grow cold before them. A housewife, loaded with shopping, her false teeth making little clicking noises as she ate, gnawed at a sandwich.

  No Georgette.

  The soda jerk, a pockmarked man with a soiled apron and a heavy stubble on his receding chin, wiped his hands on a greasy apron and stepped forward to take my order.

  ‘Coffee.’ I dropped a nickel on the counter and reached for my cigarettes. Two people also reached for theirs, but I produced mine first. I snapped my lighter, lit the cigarette, then put the lighter into the left hand pocket of my gabardine. I left it there, hand and all, smoking and stirring my coffee with my right.

  The two well-dressed men took no notice.

  Five minutes trickled past, the door opened a couple of times, once to let the housewife out, and once to let a young girl in. Each time six eyes swivelled to the door and back to the mirror again.

  No Georgette.

  I crushed out my butt and rose from the stool. One of the poker-faced men stared at me, fumbled in his pocket and came up with a cigarette dangling from his lips.

  ‘Light, mister?’

  I jerked my head towards the counter.

  ‘They sell matches. Buy some.’

  He hadn’t expected that. He stared at me, his eyes drifting from my scarred cheek to the notch in my ear, then he nodded.

  I jumped all of five feet in a rearward direction.

  The second man had left his stool and stood next to where I had been. He looked startled, even a little foolish, though there was nothing funny about the gun in his hand.

  I shot him in the stomach using the Browning in my left-hand pocket.

  He squealed and doubled up, the gun falling from his hand and making a clatter as it hit the floor. The other man said something, and took off in a movement which carried him behind the juke box and the gang of jivers. Fire spat towards me from the Luger he’d dragged from under his arm.

  I ducked, letting my right hand do its work, and tried for a clear shot. He didn’t worry about waiting for that, and the roar of the Luger mingled with the screams and yells of the customers as they fought their way out of the drugstore and into the street.

  I rolled as lead chipped fragments from the terrazzo floor, and magazines cascaded around me as I bumped into the magazine stand. I triggered three times, sending lead into the red and chromium shape of the juke box, and it fell silent with a tinny rattle. The gunsel ducked. I clawed my way free from the hampering papers and structure of the magazine stand, sent three more shots towards where the gunner waited to kill me, and took a flying leap over the counter.

  The soda-jerk gibbered at me, the carving knife in his hand trembling as he tried to stick it into my side. I knocked it from his hand, ran the full length of the counter, and peered around the far end.

  I saw a man’s back, the heel of a shoe and a tense face as he guessed what was happening and turned to face me. I saw the Luger in his hand rise and level itself, but I didn’t give him time to blow me apart. I squeezed the trigger once.

  Once was enough.

  I rose and stared down at him, at the small, neat, black-edged hole between his eyes. I didn’t want to see the back of his head, but I could guess what it was like. A 9mm. slug is no toy and it plays for keeps.

  I put my left hand on the counter, vaulted over it, and took a quick look round.

  The place was a mess.

  Glass and plastic had spilled from the ruined juke box. The floor was covered with magazines from the rack, and smashed crockery littered the floor. The blood didn’t help either.

  The soda-jerk peeped over the counter, saw my gun, and turned white. I grinned at him and put it away. It made him feel a little better, not much, but a little, and he lost some of his green tinge.

  I didn’t say anything and he, after two false starts, decided to follow my example. The wounded man whimpered as he clutched at his perforated stomach, writhing like a half-squashed insect as he stared up at me with pain-glazed eyes. I looked down at him, feeling no pity, no remorse, no nothing. He would have killed me if I hadn’t got him first.

  It was as simple as that.

  Outside the night air seemed fresh and clean after the assorted smells of the drugstore. A few men hung around the edge of light thrown from the windows, staring with wide eyes and thrilling to the near-touch of danger. None of them said anything to me, and I didn’t want to talk to them. I ignored them, feeling safe now that I had got the two goons inside, and knowing that I’d already settled the outside man, the one who would have got me had the other two failed.

  It had been a nice, neat, well-laid trap.

  I didn’t realise just how well-laid.

  I sent my legs in long strides over the frozen slush, glancing at my watch and trying to make up for lost time. From a long way away, somewhere behind me, the shrill note of a siren began to torture the air as the cops came to the scene of the fray.

  I shrugged, putting distance between myself and them, letting others worry about the immediate explanations.

  I never even heard the car.

  It came like a long, black ghost, its engine cut and its own momentum carrying it along the street as it swept up behind me. Frozen snow crunched beneath the wheels making a small, forlorn little sound, and attracted by that sound, I turned just in time.

  A face peered at me from the rear seat. A snarling, swollen face, ugly and with sticking plaster pasted over the nose. Below the face snouted the squat muzzle of a Thompson.

  I flung myself down as the sub-machine gun chattered a rasping invitation to hell, rolling as lead stabbed towards me, feeling the cold chill of the snow against my face and feeling the burn as something drilled into my left arm.

  Desperately I tugged at the holstered Browning, jerking it free as I rolled towards the centre of the road, the frozen slush clawing at my face. The engine of the car roared into life and the back wheels spun, showering me with ice-spray and almost blinding me.