McDell was waiting for me, leaning out the window. “Anything you want me to do?”
“You’ve done enough. Stay out of it for now. If there’s a story I get it to you.”
“Watch yourself, Regan. Glad I could help.”
“Thanks,” I said. The cabbie was still standing by and I got in his hack. “Take me there,” I instructed him. “Cut down the street they took. I want to look it over.”
His nod was eager and he didn’t bother putting the flag down. This ride was on the house, one of the things he had wanted to do all his life. If he had known all the details he might not have been so eager. The place they had left the cab was only seven minutes away. He pointed out the building, then turned left up the street he had seen them entering. Both sides of the block were flanked by structures housing small industries and businesses that couldn’t stand high overhead.
Three times I had him stop when I got out and asked a few loiterers grabbing a smoke in the rain if they had seen the two of them. All I got was a negative. We kept on going, crossed the next intersection and I tried a newsstand that was behind dirty, fly-specked windows. The fat little guy behind the counter said no; until five o’clock when the factories let out nobody ever came by the place after the one o’clock lunch hour, specially on a day like that.
I was going to leave until the sallow-faced kid leafing through the comic books near the entrance muttered, “One guy came in,” he muttered. “Bought cigars.”
“That was this morning,” the counterman said, annoyed. “Put them damn books down if you ain’t gonna buy none.”
Absently, I said, “Who?”
He tossed the books back and shrugged. “That guy with the bum hand. Got it bandaged. He got cigars.”
I should have remembered. It was one of the things I hadn’t had time to check before the stuff was stolen from me. Leo Marcus had used a building somewhere in this neighborhood for a drop when he was running the protection racket. “Big fat guy?” I asked him.
“Something like that. He was a baldie.”
“What was with the hand?”
The kid looked up at me curiously. “He had it all wrapped up like it was broke or something.”
“Ah, don’t pay any attention to him,” the counterman said. “He talks off the top of his head.”
I took out a buck and passed it to the kid. “Buy those comic books. You earned them.”
Outside, night had closed in all around us. The rain was a driving thing with clawing fingers that bit right through you, but I didn’t mind a bit. The cabbie was reluctant to go until I told him to find a phone and call in my location, then he took off down the street and turned right at the corner. I walked north, looking at each building as I passed, knowing that when I saw the number it would register. The pattern was clear now. Argenio was in and he was going to use all the forces at his command to get out. He couldn’t do it alone any more, knowing damn well how the department would work. Every known avenue would be cut off if he tried it alone and he wasn’t up to dying slowly on the long walk to the hot seat. He had another organization with their resources to use now. Marcus could provide a way out, knowing Al had the finger that would hang a murder charge on him. One thing Al didn’t know. The finger wasn’t where he had left it. Later he’d try to pick it up. He might even have made it if a little professional crook like Walter hadn’t known the right places to look.
I kept walking.
A couple of faces peered out the windows at me curiously. Trucks rumbled past, the drivers intent on getting through the rain.
A wino was sprawled in a doorway, sleeping, oblivious to the wet.
The sky laughed deep in its belly and spewed another mouthful on the city.
And I saw the number 1717 and knew I was there.
It was an old dilapidated building with the front windows boarded up. No lights showed in the upper stories and the front door was locked. I went through the front door of the ornamental ironworks place next to it and an obliging guy in a canvas apron let me out the back. There was a communal area there filled with trash, a path through it leading to the electric meters on the outside of the wall. The one on the 1717 was buzzing and when I checked the rotor inside by the light of a match it was turning slowly. The place wasn’t empty as it looked. Somebody was using power up there.
Above me I could barely see the vague outline of the rusted fire escape. It was within reach, but I knew the noise it would make if I tried to pull it down. Rather than try it I felt my way along the wall, found the framework of the back door and felt for the knob. It turned easily, but an interior bolt held it fast. The place was buttoned down tight, but it was to be expected. If Marcus had arranged for the place to be a hideout he wouldn’t take a single chance at all. Any means of entry was probably guarded with an alarm system and probably up there he had another escape exit ready if he had to use it.
One window shone dully in the light close by. Time was ticking off too fast, and I couldn’t go probing for other ways of getting in. I stood there trying to decide what to do and the sky was ripped apart by a brilliant streak of lightning. Then I knew what I was going to do.
When the thunder came with a shocking crack of sound I rammed my elbow through the pane and no fall of glass could be heard above the reverberation of nature at all. I picked the shards out of the frame, and when there was room to get through, felt for the wires of the signal system, located them and slid inside.
Leo Marcus should have updated his alarm setup. It was the old style dependent upon the raising of the window to activate it. I stood inside getting used to the deeper darkness, the.45 cocked in my hand. Little by little I felt my way across the room and into another, careful where I placed my feet so that a stray sound would carry upstairs.
One room opened into another filled with stored furniture I had to edge around. Once I had to hold a stack of chairs that nearly toppled, then I got them balanced again and circled to the door. I pulled it open slowly, tuning the squeaking of the hinges to the rumble of traffic from the street. Enough light came in the front windows to outline the hallway and the staircase that led to the floors above.
I stayed close to the wall where there would be less chance of hitting a creaking board, taking every other step, diminishing the chances of touching one wired to the alarm circuit. My hand felt for trip wires, found one and I stepped over it, grinning silently in the darkness. Other people knew the tricks too.
I looked into one room on the second floor where all the desks were, the windows painted black, then didn’t bother with that floor at all. I went up the next flight, ran into a duplication of the trip wires down below and got over them. Once a board creaked ominously and I paused, waiting to see if there would be a reaction.
None came and I knew why it didn’t.
From someplace on the next floor came the muffled sound of a woman’s screams and it covered any sound I made getting to the top. She screamed again and I located the sound behind a steel door studded with rivets, a barricade only a dynamite charge could break down.
My mouth muttered impotent curses and I didn’t give a damn any more. I struck a match, saw another door at the end and ran down to it. Behind the steel she screamed again and somebody laughed. I recognized Argenio’s voice.
This door wasn’t steel. The tongue of the lock on the inside ripped loose from the dry rotted wood when I threw enough pressure against it and I shoved it open, then closed it behind me. Another match reflected off a black painted window and guided me to it. I found the alarm switch at the top of the frame, threw it into the off position, unlocked the catch and pried the window up.
Under the window a four-inch ledge ran the length of the building. Not wide enough to walk, but enough to give me one vital step that would put my hands within catching distance of the fire escape that was outside the other room.