Even if I hadn’t met him across a gun — and across a man he’d already killed — the mere sight of him would have thrown a jolt into me. His expression was the epitome of viciousness. You didn’t have to wonder if he’d shoot, you only had to wonder when he would. His face was a mirror: it showed me my own imminent death about to take place. He hadn’t had to step out and show himself, he could have let me get away without seeing who he was. The mere fact that he had stepped out, showed I wasn’t going to be let get away alive.
Suddenly he made a move and I thought for a minute the bullet had found me. But he’d only hitched his head at me, ordering me to come closer.
I couldn’t; my feet wouldn’t have done it even if I’d wanted them to. “No, don’t,” I moaned sickly.
“You’re not getting out of here to pin this on me,” he slurred. His lips parted and white showed through. But it wasn’t a grin, it was just a baring of teeth. “I want the dough he was coming into tonight, see? I got a line on that, never mind how. Now come on, where is it?”
“I have—” I panted. I couldn’t go ahead. I pointed to the still form lying between us on the floor.
Did you ever hear a hungry hyena howl against the moon? That was the inflection of his voice. “Come a-a-a-ahn, what’d you do with it?” Then his jaws snapped shut — still like a hyena’s on a hunk of food. “All right, I don’t have to ask for it. I can just reach for it!” But he didn’t mean with his fingers, he meant with a bullet. “You’ve seen me up here now. That’s your tough luck.” And he said again what he had in the beginning: “You’re not pinning this on me.”
The gun twitched warningly, getting ready to recoil against the flat hollow of his indrawn stomach, and this was my last minute.
Then instead of going bam! it went gra-a-aack! Like those little flat paddles on sticks that kids swing around to make noise with. And instead of coming from in front of him, it came from behind him, up on the wall of the bed-alcove somewhere. My knees dipped to let me down, and then stiffened and went on holding me up some more.
It startled the two of us alike. But I was able to recover quicker, because I knew instantly what it was, and he didn’t. It threw him for a complete loss. It was one of those sounds that are so indefinite as to cause, and yet it was so close by, so harshly menacing. It was simply that taxidriver downstairs reminding me my ten minutes were up.
He swung first to one side, then to the other, then all the way around, half-crouched, and the gun went off me completely. I pulled at the doorknob, whisked out, and went down the stairs like a gold streak.
He came out after me just as I reached the first turn. There was a window there and it was open a little both at the top and bottom, in order to ventilate the stairs and halls during the night. He shot down the stairs at me, on a descending line of fire, just as I flashed around the turn and got out of it. It didn’t hit me, but it should have hit the window and shattered it or it should have hit the plaster of the wall and ploughed into it. It didn’t hit anywhere.
Later, long afterwards, it came back to me that it must have, through some freak of downward slanting, neatly gone out through that slender inches-wide lower opening without hitting anything. I didn’t think of that then. I didn’t think of anything then except getting down the rest of those stairs and out to the street.
He didn’t fire after me a second time. He couldn’t aim at me from where he was any more. The underside of the stairs over me protected me now. His only chance of hitting me would have been to run down after me and overtake me on the same section of stairs. He still could have done that if he’d tried. Any man is quicker than any woman, particularly a woman in rumba-clogs. But he was afraid of whoever it was that he imagined to be coming up from below, and he was afraid of rousing the house.
I heard his feet go scuffling up the other way, higher still, toward the roof.
The entryway was empty when I got down to it. The hackman must have gone right back to his machine after dutifully giving me the summons I’d asked for. He’d even missed hearing the shot. I could tell that by the cheerful matter-of-factness of his opening remark when I streaked out and burrowed into the back of his machine. “Well, I sure brought you down fast, didn’t I, lady?” he asked.
“T-take me back uptown,” I said.
The guardian milk-bottle was still standing there by our door when I got out my latchkey for the second time that night.
I let myself in and crept down the hall toward the bedroom. I opened the door and stopped short with my hand on the light-switch. Jimmy had come back, and was in there ahead of me, asleep already. I could hear the soft purr of his snoring in the darkness. He evidently hadn’t been surprised by my continued absence. He must have thought I was still at the night club with the Perrys. His breathing was so rhythmic, so regular, it almost sounded studied.
I crawled into my own bed in the dark and just lay there. I hadn’t got the earring back. That was almost a minor matter by now. I kept seeing that face before me, viciously contorted, mirroring death to come. As sure as anything he was going to track me down, find me, and kill me. My life was forfeit to a murderer’s self-preservation. I was the only one who knew he had been up there. I was the only one who knew who had killed Carpenter. He had to get rid of me; his own safety demanded that.
Somewhere, sometime, when I least expected it, death was going to strike out at me. I was on borrowed time.
He would surely get me, unless — I got him first.
The lieutenant’s name was Weill, I think. I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure of anything, only that I was striking first, protecting my own life in the only way I knew how.
“I am asking that this interview be treated in strictest confidence.”
He looked at me patronizingly; I suppose he thought I was going to accuse someone of poisoning someone else’s pet pekingese. “You can rely on us.”
“I am here to offer you a proposition. I am in a position to give you information which I think you will find not only timely but exceedingly helpful. In return for this, you must not use my name in any shape, form or manner. It means the destruction of my happiness if you do, and I won’t risk it. Who I am, who told you this, must not appear on any of your documents or reports or files.”
He was still very condescending. “That’s a tall order. Are you sure it’s something we’d be interested in?”
“You’re a lieutenant of the Homicide Squad? I’m very sure, lieutenant.”
He gave me a more alert look. “Very well, I accept your terms.”
“You do. Yes, but how do I know it won’t pass beyond your control? It’s a matter that you will have to take others into your confidence about.”
“Nothing passes beyond my control in this division, if I don’t care to have it do so. If, as you say, others have to be taken into my confidence, I can either pledge them, as you are pledging me, or keep you altogether anonymous, as ‘Mrs. X.’ or ‘an unknown woman.’ Does that satisfy you? I give you my word as a police officer.”
I wasn’t altogether sure of that, I didn’t know enough about them. “I also want your word of honor as a man.”
He eyed me with increased respect. “That,” he admitted, “is a whole lot more dependable. I give you both.”
I didn’t hold back anything, didn’t try to cover myself in any way. I told him about the letters, about Carpenter’s contacting me, about my first visit there and the payment of the ten thousand cash. “...I also took a gun, to make sure the situation wouldn’t pass beyond my control. Here it is here. You can examine it if you want to make sure it wasn’t I who did it.” I passed it to him.