I squeezed the trigger.

  I didn’t try any fancy shooting. I didn’t try to puncture a tyre or anything like that. I just lifted the muzzle and poured the contents of the magazine into the body of the car, swinging the gun so as to traverse the interior and hoping that I’d hit warm flesh as well as cold metal.

  I was lucky.

  I heard the driver scream as hot lead explored his vitals and the big car jerked as his dying foot trod on the gas. It skidded, slewed, and rammed hard against a lamp-post. Fire blossomed from it, some of my shots must have hit the gas tank, because flames began to spread all around the wrecked vehicle.

  I dragged myself to my feet and holstered the empty gun. I twisted and managed to get the spare Browning from my left-hand pocket. Holding it, I walked towards the leaping pyre, feeling the heat of the burning gasoline warm against the skin of my face and hands.

  A man scrambled from the rear seat. A man with a snarling mouth and badly bruised face. He still held the Thompson and, as he saw me, he said something and lifted the gun.

  ‘You dirty shamus,’ screamed Lefty. ‘I’ll—’

  I shot him in the chest.

  The impact of the slug knocked him off balance, threw him backwards into the burning car, and I heard him scream as he felt the bite of the flames. He couldn’t have felt them long, though, because he only screamed the once, and then it was silent aside from the crackling of the fire.

  I watched it for a while, letting it warm me, and feeling pain and life return to my injured arm. Then I moved away.

  I felt sick, a little dizzy, and more than a little tired.

  I wanted a drink, a smoke, a bath. I wanted a week of lying in the sun, a month of good food, a year of sleep. But I had work to do and those things had to wait.

  I headed towards 354 Green Street, where a dead woman waited for me to keep her company.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The apartment was just as I’d left it. Darker, colder, a little more haunted, but that might have been my imagination.

  I let the door swing softly shut behind me then, gun in hand, I made a quick tour just in case. I found what I’d expected to find. Nothing.

  Drawing the heavy drapes I switched on the lights, made sure that the door was locked, and found the bottle of rye I’d left to keep the dead woman company. I took a quick drink straight from the bottle, took another from a glass, and then set to work to assess my damage.

  It wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. The tommy-gun slug had ripped through the fleshy part of my upper arm but had missed the bone and come out clean. I stripped off my shirt, tore off the tail, and with water from the kitchen, washed off the blood and bandaged it as well as I could. Messing around with it made it hurt even more than before, so I took time out to have some more rye before getting dressed again.

  It was when I looked at the gabardine that I realised how lucky I’d been.

  The spray of shots from the machine gun must have followed me as I rolled, and providence, or maybe a clean life, or even my Guardian Angel had been working overtime. It was full of holes, ripped, torn, and, as a garment fit for wear it was useless. Still, it was all I had and it was cold, and so I put it on and tried to forget what I must look like. I moved through the apartment doing what I had to do, setting empty bottles where they would do the most good, beneath the window, in front of the door, setting a row just below the opening to the fire escape, and putting a couple on the escape itself.

  Going back into the main room I drew up a chair, set the bedside table close to it, put the bottle on the table, and took a look round. I remembered something else, and made sure that the gun under my arm was the one with the shells in it. The other gun, the empty one, I put beside the bottle. I made a couple of telephone calls, listened to the striking of a clock somewhere in the city then, drawing back the drapes, I turned off the lights, sat down, and waited.

  It was a hell of a wait.

  I couldn’t smoke and I couldn’t move around. All I could do was to nibble at the rye and think. I did plenty of that.

  I thought of a dead woman and what she had done and what had been done to her. I imagined her alive and well, lissome and graceful, vibrant and eager, her lips ripe for kissing and her face for smiling. A woman, one of a million, and yet, to herself, the most important thing there ever was or could be. I imagined her as she was, cold, twisted, dead, gone forever.

  I sighed as I thought of the dead.

  I thought of the living, of a young man who had taken to worshiping a bottle and what its contents could do for him. Of an old man and what he had tried to do. Of a girl and the way she had looked at me. I thought of Bresholm, and Thornedyke, and Pug lying in hospital well out of it all.

  I thought of Constance, and thought of her some more.

  And I sighed as I thought of the living.

  I reached for the bottle and tried to keep warm. Far away the same clock struck and struck again and then again. Around me the apartment grew as frigid as an icebox, and the odour of the dead mingled with the stale scent of dust and the raw scent of the rye. I waited, and my nerves grew taut and as brittle as glass.

  The shrill of the doorbell almost made me jump out of my skin.

  I sat there, breathing through my open mouth, one hand resting on the switch of the table-lamp, the other gripping the butt of my gun. I didn’t move.

  The buzzer sounded again, throbbing through the night like a call for help, shrilling with quick, short bursts as though whoever it was was getting tired and impatient and wanted in. It stopped and I could hear the sound of heavy breathing from outside the door The buzzer sounded again, quick and sharp, and then came the knocking, hard, violent, making the door tremble in its frame.

  I rose from the chair, walked across to it, tucked my gun beneath my left arm, and with my right hand, twisted the knob. As it opened I stepped to one side, the Browning heavy in my fist.

  Stephan looked at me, one hand still raised as though to knock again, and the hall-light streaming over his shoulder revealed my face and the gun in my hand. I jerked the weapon.

  ‘Come inside.’

  He nodded and I shut the door behind him. I switched on the lights and stared at him.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Where is she?’ He looked at the apartment, his face all eyes.

  ‘Don’t you know?’ I leaned against the wall, the gun back in its resting place, and slipped a cigarette between my lips. I lit it, dragging gratefully at the blue smoke, watching him as he moved around the dirty room. I watched him as he stared towards the folded-back bed, then he saw the bottle and he reached for it, tilted it, and put it down again almost empty.

  ‘You know where she is, don’t you, Stephan?’ I didn’t make it a question.

  ‘I thought you said that you did.’

  ‘I didn’t tell you this address. I didn’t tell you anything but that I’d found her. You filled in the rest. You knew where to come because you’ve been here before.’ I stepped close to him and stared into his eyes.

  ‘Well, Stephan? Why don’t you make sure?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ He was trembling now and his hand shook as he reached for the bottle. I knocked it away.

  ‘Don’t you, Stephan?’ I pushed him and he staggered back against the wall. ‘I’ll show you what I mean.’

  The catch twisted easily in my hand and the bed made a soft, sighing sound as it swung from the wall. I didn’t look towards the bed. I didn’t have to. I’d seen it before. I looked at Stephan’s face, at his expression as he stared at what I’d revealed.

  ‘God!’ It was a prayer the way he said it. ‘She’s dead!’

  ‘Yeah.’ I sucked at my cigarette. ‘Surprised?’

  ‘You think that I killed her?’ He looked at me with a kind of desperate frenzy. ‘You fool! I couldn’t have killed her. I loved her! Understand? I was crazy about her.’

  ‘“Each man kills the thing he loves”,’ I quoted, and even to me the words sounded trite. ‘You were in love with her. but she chose to marry your father. You knew that she was here. You maybe argued with her but, being what she was, she wouldn’t chance losing a certain fortune for a drunken sot. You couldn’t have her, so you killed her.’ I blew smoke towards him. ‘Finished. Case solved. You burn at midnight.’

  ‘No.’ He wiped his face with the flat of his hand and turned away from the bed. This time when he reached for the bottle I didn’t stop him. ‘I didn’t kill her, Lantry. I loved her, yes. I wanted her to run away with me, yes. But I didn’t kill her.’

  I shrugged and concentrated on my cigarette.

  ‘I didn’t kill her,’ he repeated. ‘I couldn’t have done.’

  ‘Why not?’ I was deliberately cynical. ‘Your old man grabbed her away from you and they both enjoyed the joke. You were probably drunk and had a fight. You thought it smart to shut her up in the bed. Maybe you didn’t know she was still alive or maybe you did, but she didn’t stay that way long. She was upside down, trapped, without enough air to breath. So she died the hard way all alone in her temporary coffin.’ I looked at him. ‘Or did you think to cop a plea of unintentional murder?’

  ‘For God’s sake, Lantry!’ He hid his face between his hands and I saw his shoulders heave. I didn’t give him any pity.

  ‘You knew where she was without my telling you. You had the motive, the opportunity, and her death would have put money in your pocket. It’s no good, Stephan. You’re all washed up. Why don’t you confess and get it over with?’

  ‘No.’ He stared at me and his eyes reminded me of an animal I’d once seen at the Bronx Zoo. Trapped, helpless, asking for mercy, and not finding it anywhere.

  ‘You’ve got it all wrong.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I’ve been here before, not inside the apartment, but to the door. She didn’t know that, she thought that I was downstairs, but I’d followed her and—’

  ‘Take it from the beginning.’ I suggested.

  ‘Yes. Well, it was this way. She came to me and asked me to help her. She knew how I felt about her, but there was nothing like you suggest. She wanted me to drive her here and I did. I followed her up the stairs and saw her enter this apartment. Someone let her in, a man, I think, but I wasn’t sure. I waited. I waited a long time but she never came out. So I drove back home.’

  ‘That was on the night she vanished?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me all this before?’

  ‘I didn’t think that she’d like it?’ He looked at me defiantly and I let it pass.

  ‘Was she in any trouble at home? Money or anything like that?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘Yes, you would,’ I snapped. ‘You were in love with her and she must have had some feeling for you. You used to run around together, remember? Did she ever ask you for any money?’

  I read my answer in his eyes.

  ‘So she did.’ I glared at him. ‘If you’d have told me all this before— Hell! What’s the use? You’re still the patsy though. You’re the only one who, on your own admission, could have killed her.’

  ‘But I didn’t.’ His face altered as he thought about it. ‘Wait a minute! There’s someone else!’ He stared hopefully at me. ‘She said something coming down in the car. I never thought about it at the time but—’

  I got to him just in time. The glass warned me, the bottles I’d spread around for just this emergency, and as I heard one topple over with a dull thud, I was already moving. I knocked Stephan to the floor and dived after him just as a gun sent lead whining towards us.

  It hammered again, and I felt splinters from the floor rip my cheek. Then I had the Browning in my hand and was triggering lead towards the kitchen.

  Someone yelled, glass splintered in a thousand crystalline tinklings, and silence replaced the roar of exploding cartridges. Stephan moaned, blood oozing from a scalp wound and I spared him a second to make sure that he was still alive. He was and I headed towards the kitchen.

  Bottles fell away from beneath my feet. I tripped and grabbed at the window-sill to save myself and felt glass cut my palm. I ignored it, eeling through the window and out on to the rusty fire-escape.

  Fire winked at me from halfway down and lead whined as it bounced off the metal just above my head. I snapped a shot towards it without any real hope of hitting anything, then, sweating with the pain from my wrenched arm, I started down the stairs as if all the dogs of Hell were snapping at my heels.

  He was waiting for me at the bottom.

  I guessed it and hung back, letting my eyes probe the darkness and shadows as I crouched back against the wall. The area was dimly lighted by the reflected light of the street lamps, and pools of thick shadow lay everywhere. From somewhere in the distance the sirens of a police car moved rapidly towards us. Cops called by some scared neighbour. The sound frightened the man in the shadows and I heard him curse from a dimly seen corner.

  I triggered three shots in that direction and got two back in exchange. Neither of them did any harm, but I let out a yell and jumped the last ten feet to the floor, hitting hard and rolling to one side, coming up with my gun at the ready. He could have got me then. He could have remained cool and blasted me as I landed, before I’d got my balance or could see what was going on. But he didn’t. Maybe he thought that he’d hit me. Maybe he was scared of the noise of the sirens. But fear had closed around him and panic had him by the throat.

  He ran.

  I ran after him, watching his silhouette against the brightly lit street. I watched him, taking my time, and when I lifted the Browning it was just as though I was shooting clay-pipes at a carnival range.

  I didn’t kill him. That would have been too easy, too merciful, too generous a gesture for all that he’d done. Anyway, I’d promised to deliver him ready for the electric chair. So I shot his legs out from under him and sent him rolling into the gutter where he belonged.

  He screamed as he fell, twisting to bring his own gun into play, so I had to smash his shoulder in sheer self-defence before walking up to stare down into his face.

  He snarled at me, no longer neat, no longer well-groomed, and his eyes filled with hate as they focused on me.

  ‘Good-evening, Mr. Wendle,’ I said. And laughed as he tried to spit in my face.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The police had arrived, and the ambulance had come, and gone and the newspapermen had flashed their cameras and grabbed what they could. I sat in a police car, shivering, my arm burning, and generally felt like all hell. Bresholm came out of the building, nodded to a photog, then slipped into the car with me. He passed me a bottle and I sniffed at it. Scotch, the best, and I thanked him with my eyes as I warmed my interior.

  ‘Well?’ he said quietly. ‘It almost went wrong, didn’t it?’

  ‘It did.’ I grinned as Constance, her face flushed and her eyes eager, crowded into the car with us. She helped herself to a drink, lit two cigarettes, and stuck one in my mouth.

  ‘A scoop,’ she said happily. ‘Mike, I could kiss you!’

  ‘Don’t let me stop you,’ said Bresholm. ‘But can’t you leave it till later?’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said dryly, and consoled myself with more of the Scotch.

  ‘Spill it, Mike,’ he said evenly. ‘All of it. What happened?’

  ‘Our little trap almost blew up in my face,’ I said. ‘Wendle killed Mrs. Geeson. I thought it had to be someone close to her, but I didn’t think of the lawyer. Now that I know he did it, the rest all fits in.’

  ‘Blackmail?’ Bresholm raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Right in one, but a little more involved than that. As I suspected, Mrs. Geeson hadn’t been born Mona Hartridge. She was originally known as Rhoda Fleming and, while using that name, met and married a man. We can soon find out who it was, but my guess is that she married Thornedyke.’

  ‘The gambler?’ Constance didn’t seem to want to believe it. ‘But Mike, he wouldn’t let her commit bigamy.’

  ‘For ten million dollars, Thornedyke would do anything,’ I said bitterly ‘He’s that kind of a rat.’ I looked at Bresholm. ‘Did you clear up the mess?’

  ‘Yes. The man you only wounded is ready to talk. Thornedyke hired him, of course, and the phone message came from the Purple Orchid. Thornedyke himself doesn’t enter into it, but we can get him just the same. Conspiring to commit a felony,’ he explained. ‘The dame Georgette is ready to talk. Her testimony and that of the gunsel should persuade the District Attorney that he’s got a case. At least,’ Bresholm said grimly, ‘it had better.’

  ‘If it doesn’t the Tribune will flay him,’ said Constance happily. ‘Thanks for phoning. Mike, we got pics and everything and I’ll get a bonus.’

  ‘Forget it.’ I winced as I moved my damaged wing. ‘When Thornedyke found out that Norma was running around with Stephan, he didn’t like it and I guess that it was about then he tied the nuptial knot. The Colonel didn’t know that and, to save his son from making a fool of himself, he offered the girl his heart and hand and fortune. Naturally, he had her checked and that is where Wendle got his bright idea.

  ‘He learned that she was married but, at the same time, he saw a way to make an easy dollar. He persuaded her to fake her identification—in fact, she merely took Georgette’s original name—and go through the ceremony. Thornedyke, her legal husband, had his own ideas. He was playing for the jackpot, the entire works, and my guess is that it was only a matter of time before he bumped off the Colonel, let Norma collect, and then stepped in to claim the booty.’ I sucked down some smoke to kill the taste in my mouth.

  ‘A nice, neat, fool-proof scheme. Only it didn’t work out just the way he wanted it to.’

  ‘I still can’t understand how any man would let his wife do that,’ complained Constance. ‘He must have had some feeling for her.’

  ‘Not in the way you’re thinking,’ I said. ‘Thornedyke and Norma were man and wife only on paper. I doubt if they had ever really lived together. I’m guessing, don’t forget, maybe it wasn’t Thornedyke at all, maybe it was some heel who she’d fallen for years ago and who had walked out on her. The point is that Thornedyke knew about it and wouldn’t let her divorce whoever it was until it was too late. She’d married the Colonel by then and while he could hold her bigamy over her head, she had to play it his way. Add Wendle to the mess and you get a nice, sweet set-up. Sweet that is, for them; Norma didn’t think it so hot.’