Florio laughed. “Rick’s girl? He couldn’t stand the sight of her. He used her as a model, I guess. She fell for him. She’s a crazy kid, but he wanted no part of her. Only a couple of nights ago he told her off, right here in my place. He told her to get lost, to leave him alone.”
“What do you know about Amanda Kent and Val Kramer? Is Val one of her lovers?”
“Oh, he was gone on her. Over his head gone. He followed her around like some faithful collie dog. But she had no time for him.” Florio’s face clouded. “Funny thing. She came in here with Val yesterday — at five o’clock — when he came on the job. She stayed here all night, till he went off at midnight. She left here with him then. When they came in at five we hadn’t heard anything about the shooting. The news came over the radio a little before seven. Amanda went into a kind of hysterics, but she didn’t leave. Some of the customers sat with her, tried to console her. You want to know who they were?”
Jericho shook his head slowly.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “She had hysterics, but she waited for Val Kramer to finish his tour, some five hours after she heard the news on the radio?”
“Yeah. I suppose... well, I don’t know exactly what I suppose. Maybe she was afraid to go home. Maybe she thought Reno’s boys might be after anyone who might have been around Sheridan’s place at the time of the shooting.”
“Are you saying Amanda was around Rick’s studio at four o’clock?”
Florio shrugged. “I don’t know for sure, Mr. Jericho. When the news came on the radio she had, like I told you, hysterics. She kept saying, over and over, ‘I just saw him a little while ago!’ ”
“Did she get potted while she waited for Kramer?”
“Funny you should ask,” Florio said, “because I remember being surprised that she didn’t. She usually drank a lot. I figured she’d really go overboard when she heard about Rick Sheridan. But she didn’t. She stayed cold-sober.”
“And waited for Kramer?”
“Val would make her a perfect bodyguard,” Florio said. “He’s too stupid to be afraid of anybody or anything.”
The gray light of dawn was sifting through the city’s canyons when Jericho again knocked on the door of Amanda Kent’s Jane Street apartment. It was Val Kramer who opened the door.
“Gee, Mr. Jericho, you got some news for us?” he asked.
“Perhaps,” Jericho said. “May I come in?”
“Sure. Come in,” the childlike giant said. “Have some coffee? I just made a fresh pot of coffee.”
“I’d like that,” Jericho said, moving into the apartment. “How’s Amanda?”
“She’s fine,” Kramer said, his smile almost jubilant. “That bloodsucker really did his thing.”
“Would you believe it?” Amanda asked from the bedroom doorway. She was still wearing the see-through negligee, but the swollen and discolored eye had vanished. “That little sucker really sucked. You found out something, Mr. Jericho?”
Jericho took the mug of hot coffee Kramer brought him. “I found out who killed Rick and Paul Cordell,” he said quietly.
“Who?” they asked simultaneously.
“One of you,” Jericho said, very quietly. He took a cautious sip of the scalding-hot coffee.
The childlike giant giggled. “You gotta be kidding,” he said.
“I was never more serious in my life, Val,” Jericho said.
The room was deathly still. Kramer looked at Amanda who had suddenly braced herself against the doorframe.
“I don’t think you should say things like that, Mr. Jericho,” the girl said, her voice shaken. “Because it’s crazy!”
“Oh, it’s crazy enough,” Jericho said. “Rick had turned you down, Amanda, and he had to be killed for that. How crazy can you get? I came here to get you to turn over the gun to me, whichever one of you had it. I can’t put it off, friends. There is about to be a war on the streets in which dozens of innocent people will die. So hand it over.”
Val Kramer made a slow hesitant move toward the pocket of his canvas jacket. He produced a small pearl-handled gun that was almost hidden in his massive hand. He pointed it at Jericho, clumsily, like a man unaccustomed to handling such a weapon.
“It’s too bad you couldn’t mind your own business, Mr. Jericho,” he said.
“Amanda called me, asked me for help,” Jericho said, not moving a muscle.
“No such thing!” Amanda protested. “You were Rick’s friend. I thought you should know what happened to him.”
“Six hours after you’d heard the news? Why didn’t you call me from Florio’s bar? You were there for five hours after you heard the news.”
“I... I was hysterical. I didn’t have my head together,” Amanda said. “After I got home I began to think of friends of Rick’s who ought to be told.”
“You wanted me to nail Val, didn’t you, Amanda? Because you were afraid of him. When he found out you’d called me he hit you. You didn’t bump into any door, did you, Amanda?”
“So I killed him,” Val said, in a strange little boy’s voice. “He couldn’t get away with what he did to Manda. I went to his studio and I told him he had to pay for what he’d done to Manda, so I killed him. And I killed the guy who was there, because he could tell on me. I didn’t know it was Paul Cordell and that it would make a lot of trouble. And now I’m going to kill you, Mr. Jericho, because you can tell on me.”
He lifted the gun a little so that it was aimed at Jericho’s heart. Jericho threw the hot coffee full in the childlike giant’s face. There was a roar of pain and Kramer dropped the gun as he lifted his hands to his scalded face. Then he lunged at Jericho.
It was a matter of strength against strength and skill. Jericho sidestepped the rush, and a savage chopping blow to Kramer’s neck sent the giant crashing to the floor like a poled ox. He lay still, frighteningly still. Jericho bent down and picked up the little pearl-handled gun.
Then Amanda was clinging to him, weeping, “Oh, thank God, thank God!” she said. “I was so terrified of him!”
Jericho’s fingers bit into her arms and held her away from him. “You scum,” he said. It was more like a statement of fact than an angry expletive. “That poor guy would do anything on earth for you, including taking the rap for a murder you committed. Followed you around like a faithful collie dog, I was told. Followed you to Rick’s studio yesterday afternoon. It was a habit with him — the faithful collie dog.
“He was too late to stop your killing a man who simply wasn’t interested in what your body had to offer. ‘Hell hath no fury—’ He couldn’t stop your killing, but he helped you get away. He took you to Florio’s where he had to work. You stayed there for seven long hours. Why? Because you needed a bodyguard? Because you were grateful? No, because he had you cold and you knew you were going to have to do whatever he told you to do.”
“No! No!” It was only a whisper.
“But you knew how to handle him, and you had to wait till it was possible. You knew that if you gave yourself to him he was yours forever, to handle as you pleased. You knew he would take the blame for you if the going got tough, no matter what. You waited for him all those hours in Florio’s because until you could pretend that you cared for him he had you trapped. You took him home here and you offered him something he’d never really dreamed of having.”
“I... I had no choice,” Amanda said. “He killed Rick just like he said. I—”
“He hit you in the eye in some kind of struggle with you,” Jericho said. “And because he really loves you, in his simple-minded and faithful way, he went out to find a piece of beef to put on your eye and when he saw there was no butcher shop open he found you that leech. While he was gone, you called me. You were already thinking of a way out. You would have fed me bits and pieces if I hadn’t discovered them for myself. Unfortunately for you I found the right pieces and not the phony ones you’d have fed me.”