It wouldn’t be listed in the phone book, of course, so she didn’t even bother looking it up. Every second counted. The wheels of that death car were racing around like mad under him this very minute, and here she was stuck way up here on the edge of creation, miles from anywhere. But that bloated swine that was behind all this, he had a home somewhere, he lived somewhere in this town, there was somewhere she could reach him. Oh, it was too late by now to beg or plead for Johnny’s life — the ride had started already — and even if it hadn’t been, she knew how much good it would have done her, but at least she could put a bullet through him!
The police? Weren’t they those men in blue that directed traffic at crossings? They’d find Johnny’s body eventually — that was about where they fitted in. And even then — that Druckman case awhile back, for instance. There was only one man who could stop what was going to happen in time, and that was the man who had started it. Thank God, she knew that much at least; knew which direction the blow had come from. She had wangled the whole set-up out of Johnny weeks ago.
She darted out into the roadway, where anything on wheels would have to stop for her, and began to run crazily along. A pair of heads twinkled across from left to right at the next intersection, half a block down, and she screamed at them, brought them around in a half circle to a stop. It was a private machine with a “girl scout” in it. “Wanna lift?”
She came up panting. “Fifty-eighth Street — oh, for the love of God, get me down there!”
“Whoa! That’s not the right spirit. Y’wanna look at this thing a little more sociably. I’m not in the hacking business—” But she’d lied onward already.
She got her cab a minute later, it had turned in toward her. “The Wicked Nineties,” she strangled. “No, never mind your meter. I’ll give you twenty dollars flat, twenty-five, anything, only get me there. Cut loose!” She took out the hard-earned money that was to have gotten them to Miami, shook it at him. “It’s a matter of life and death, d’you understand?”
She took out the gun, fixed it, while they lurched down the endless lengths of St. Nicholas Avenue. Bannerman, her boss, Beefy’s “front” down there — he’d know; he’d be able to tell her where to reach him, if she had to shoot him to get it out of him.
“Good boy!” she breathed fervently as he tore into the park at 110th instead of taking Fifth. Fifth was straight and the park had curves, but he knew what he was doing; you could make any speed you wanted to in there at this dawn hour. When they came out at Fifty-ninth, the street lights had just gone out all over town. Two two-wheeled skids more and they were in front of where she worked, not a light showing outside of it any more.
“Here’s thirty,” she said, vaulting out. “Now stay there, wait — you’ve got to take me some place else yet! You’ll get all the rest of this, if you’ll only wait!”
She ran down the long carpeted foyer, past her own picture on the walls, burst into the room beyond like an avenging angel. The last customer was out, the lights low, the tables stacked, the scrubwomen down on their knees. If he’d gone already, Bannerman, if she’d missed him! His office door flew open at her push, so he was still around somewhere. He wasn’t in there; she could hear him washing his hands in his little private cubbyhole beyond. He heard her, but she beat him to the lavatory door, locked him in from the outside.
“Hey, you!” He began to pound.
She went through the desk like a cyclone, dropping papers and whole drawers around her. She couldn’t find it; it wasn’t left lying around like that. Then she saw he’d hung his coat up on a hook before he went in; it was in a little private memorandum book in the inside pocket of that. Both of them, the home address and the telephone number. Just the initials, B. B. But that was it. Way over in Brooklyn somewhere.
She grabbed up the hand-set and began to hack away at it. Dead. More grief, the club operator had gone home long ago. She picked up Bannerman’s bunch of keys, found the one to the office door, slipped out, and locked that up after her too. A minute later she heard a crash as he busted down the lavatory partition. She was already around at the main switchboard off the foyer, plugging in her call herself. Not for nothing had she once done a stretch of that.
No answer — but then it was a 5 A.M. call. “Keep it up, operator, keep it up!” She turned her head and yelled at one of the terrified scrubwomen: “Keep away from that door, you! He’s drunk as an owl in there!”
Suddenly there was a woman’s voice in her ears, sleepy, frightened too. “Hello, who — who do you want?”
“Lemme talk to Borden. Borden, quick! Got an important message for him!”
“He’s not here—”
“Well, where can I reach him! Hurry, I tell you, I’m not kidding!”
“He didn’t say where he was going — he never does — he—”
“Who is this? Speak up, can’t you, you fool! No one’s gonna bite you!”
“This is his wife. Who are you? How’d you know where he lives? No one ever rings him here—”
“I’m the girl with the dreamy eyes! And I’m coming over there and give the message myself!”
The driver was still turning the three tens over and over when she landed in back of him. “Ocean Avenue — and just as fast as ever!”
Bannerman got to the club entrance all mussed-looking just as they went into high. Breaking down two doors in succession had spoiled the part in his hair.
It was a skyscraper apartment house on Brooklyn’s Fifth Avenue, the number that had been in Bannerman’s memo book, and naturally he’d have the roof — she didn’t need the night operator to tell her that. She gave the hackman another thirty. “Now wait some more. I know you think I’m crazy, but — but maybe you once loved someone too!”
“It ain’t my business,” he said agreeably, and began thumbing his sixty lovingly.
She wasn’t coming back this time, at least she didn’t think so then, but it wouldn’t hurt to have him handy. “Certainly I’m expected,” she told the hallman. He didn’t like the hour, but he’d already made a half-turn toward the second of two elevators. “Well, just a minute until I find out.” He went over to the house phone.
It was Beefy’s private lift, no doors in the shaft up to the penthouse, and it was automatic; by keeping her thumb pressed to the starter he couldn’t reverse it and get her down again. He’d bring cops in right away; they were probably eating out of Beefy’s hand for miles around here, too.
The elevator slide let her right out into the apartment, and the hallman was already buzzing like mad from below to warn them. Borden’s young wife was heading for the instrument from the room beyond, in pattering bare feet, as Jean got there. She’d thrown a mink coat over a nightgown. She stopped dead for a minute, then went right on again under pressure.
“Don’t make me do something I don’t want to,” Jean said softly. “Just say it’s all right; that you were expecting me. Well, go on, say it!” She motioned with the little gun.
“ ’Sallright, was expecting her,” the woman slobbered into the house phone. Jean clicked it off for her.
“Now, where is he?”
“Uh-uh-uh,” the Borden woman sputtered, stalling for time.
“Come on! Can’t you tell by my face not to fool around with me?”
She didn’t know. He’d been gone since about ten that evening. He never told her anything about his business.
“Business — ha!” There was more to be leery of in her laugh than there had been in her anger. “He’s got my man in a spot — right now, this very minute — and I’m going to pay him back in his own coin! Either you help me head him off in time or you get it yourself!”