“Apartment 20,” Sheffold said, expressionlessly. “I’m staying with friends. The Zimmermans.”
The man shot him a sharp look, stooped quickly and read the name on the mail box for apartment 20.
“Okay, mister.” His laugh was short and insincere. “Just being careful.”
He unlocked the door, let Sheffold precede him. They went upstairs together. The building seemed to breathe quietly and evenly like an old man asleep. Halfway down the second-floor hall Sheffold pulled up. “I know the way.”
“Sure... sure,” the man agreed hastily. “I live right down this way myself.”
Sheffold waited, watching him; he held the offensive now. The man was in the position of proving his own right to be there. Reluctantly he went on, stopped before a door, fumbled for a long moment for his key.
He got it into the lock and turned it just as Sheffold, moving with amazing speed and timing, stepped close behind. His great chest crowded the smaller man on into the apartment. As he heeled the door closed, Sheffold’s eyes caught the tarnished brass numerals. This was apartment 21.
Alyce Rowland, wearing a wraparound camel hair coat, appeared from a back room. She was carrying an overnight bag. There was a dark track on each side of the part in her blonde hair as if she hadn’t been to her hairdressers recently. Her pretty, mediocre face was lean with fright.
“Chick — what is it? Who—?”
“Pete Sheffold, Alyce,” Sheffold said in a quiet voice. “Were you going — or coming?”
“Pete?” Her face cleared; she was not afraid of the big and silent — therefore stupid — bouncer from Julian’s. “Late call, Pete.”
“People like us,” Sheffold observed, looking at the bag, “keep strange hours.”
Chick said nervously, “I saw him acting funny out in front. I came over to give him a pitch and he pulled a quickie on me. You know him, baby?”
“Where’s Bannerman, Alyce?” Sheffold asked.
“Bannerman?” Her acting was bad enough to keep her a hat-check girl forever. “I don’t get you.”
“He’s been under cover somewhere for ten days. A trigger named Danny Pantera has the heat on him.” Sheffold looked toward the back room. “Tell him to come on out.”
“I don’t think,” Chick said loudly, “I like the implication, mister. Alyce is my girl. Do you think she’s going to have some guy in the closet with me around?”
“It could be a business deal,” Sheffold conceded. That aspect hadn’t occurred to him before. “You don’t have to play cagey. I work for the guy’s partner.”
“Bannerman isn’t here, Pete.” Alyce’s tone was for hulking, not-too-bright people. “I haven’t seen him since I... I left Julian’s.”
“You got a lot of the hats mixed up that night,” Sheffold said remotely. “It caused a lot of confusion among the patrons. Was that to give you a few minutes cover?”
“Of course not. I quit because I—” Her words lapsed into the general silence of the room for want of a logical reason for throwing away a profitable Job. Even with a moron you had to stay logical.
“Mister,” Chick said ominously, “I think I’m going to work up a big dislike for you. Suppose you get the hell out of here.”
He had a small nickel-plated gun in his hand. His narrow, pallid face was molded in a menacing expression.
“I saw Danny Pantera’s gun tonight.” Sheffold’s voice was far away. “It was bigger than that one. And somebody else almost shot me in the head.”
He turned his back on Chick. Then, without looking, he swung backhanded. Like a steel hook his fingers locked on Chick’s frail wrist. He jerked up and back, and the smaller man emitted high, nasal squeals of pain. Sheffold turned, almost leisurely, and lifted the gun out of a grip that had gone limp.
And then Alyce hit him with the overnight bag. She couldn’t swing it as high as his head and the bag slammed against his shoulder and sprung open. Feminine underclothes spilled at his feet. Sheffold stepped carefully away from the tangle of silk. He weighed the gun in his palm thoughtfully.
Chick was clutching his wrist and flexing the fingers. He said, as if in final rebuttal, “The damn thing ain’t loaded anyway.”
Sheffold’s voice was a quiet monotone. “Bannerman, where is he? Don’t make me have to hurt somebody.”
Chick sighed. “Okay,” he said wearily. “I’m just a little guy. You can bounce me around till I have to talk. So let’s get it over with.”
“Chick—” Alyce whispered — “no!”
“It’s all right, baby. We got nothing to hide.” Chick sat on a low divan and put his hands on his knee caps. “Sure Bannerman was here — once. He drove Alyce home after work. Two weeks ago.”
“Ten days,” Sheffold said. “That’s when he dropped out of sight.”
Chick shrugged. “Look, I’m telling you the way it was. If it don’t help none, I can’t change it. Two weeks ago he gave her a lift home. Then he wanted to come up for a drink. He seemed like a nice guy and he was her boss and... well, what could she do?”
Sheffold said nothing. Alyce was beginning to unfreeze.
“Maybe you know him,” Chick went on. “The kind he was, I mean. He gave her a bad time, mister.” He looked at Alyce. “I’m sorry, baby, but it’s got to come out.”
She turned her face away. “Whatever you say, Chick.”
“We’re getting married one of these days,” Chick told Sheffold. “A guy likes having his girl pushed around! He likes that a lot. I made her tell me, and then I went looking for Mr. Harley Bannerman. I’m not a big guy like you, but I went looking. But I never laid a hand on him. Boy, did he weasel! Let’s not have trouble, he says. Maybe we can square this. How much would it take, he asks.”
Alyce was watching Chick with fascinated eyes.
“I didn’t want money. But how can you hit a guy who crawls!”
“So you shook him down.”
Chick leaned back and his face got menacing again. “I don’t like that kind of talk, mister. But if you want to call it a shakedown, okay. Sure, I set a price. I made it good — hoping he’d get sore and I could go to work on him. I told him, I says, ‘You can’t buy me off. You got nothing I want. But if a mink coat will make Alyce feel better — okay.’ ”
“I didn’t want Chick to get into trouble,” Alyce said suddenly. “I took the coat.”
“Twenty-five hundred bucks he gave me,” Chick cut in. “Cash. That was the night she quit her job. He gave me the dough and said get her out of his club, and I said, ‘Mister, that’s good enough for me.’ So I phone and tell her to drop everything.” He flexed his fingers and winced. “That’s how it reads, mister. We don’t know any more than that.”
“The night Alyce quit,” Sheffold said — that had been three days after he was last seen — “where did you meet him?”
“In a bar on Melrose.” Chick lit a cigarette and drew deeply as if it had been a trying few minutes. “He had the money for Alyce. I never saw him again after that — and I’m sure I don’t want to.”
Sheffold walked around the room; it was too small for him. The heaviness in his stomach persisted.
Alyce began to stuff her lingerie back into the overnight bag.
“Where were you going at this hour?” Sheffold asked suddenly.
Chick’s cigarette stuck to his dry lip and left a white fleck of paper there when he pulled it loose. “We were going out. I’m just a little guy, mister. I ain’t tough like you. You got the story out of me, didn’t you? Well, so will the cops if they try hard enough. And maybe they’ll make something out of that little business deal with Bannerman.”