The lanky man’s duck became a slide and the slide degenerated into a fall. He spread himself out on the bare carpet in a leisurely sort of way. He lay quite still, one half-open eye apparently looking at Macdonald. The thin woman opened her mouth wide, but no sound came out of it.
Macdonald put his other hand up to the door-frame, leaned forward and began to cough. Bright red blood came out on his chin. His hands came down the door-frame slowly. Then his shoulder twitched forward, he rolled like a swimmer in a breaking wave, and crashed. He crashed on his face, his hat still on his head, the mouse-colored hair at the nape of his neck showing below it in an untidy curl.
Mallory said: «Two down,» and looked at Landrey with a disgusted expression. Landrey looked down at his big automatic and put it away out of sight, in the side pocket of his thin dark overcoat.
Mallory stooped over Macdonald, put a finger to his temple. There was no heartbeat. He tried the jugular vein with the same result. Macdonald was dead, and he still smelled violently of whiskey.
There was a faint trace of smoke under the light bulb, an acrid fume of powder. The thin woman bent forward at the waist and scrambled towards the door. Mallory jerked a hard hand against her chest and threw her back.
«You’re fine where you are, sister,» he snapped.
Atkinson took his hands off his knees and rubbed them together as if all the feeling had gone out of them. Landrey went over to the bed, put his gloved hand down and touched Rhonda Farr’s hair.
«Hello, baby,» he said lightly. «Long time no see.» He went out of the room, saying: «I’ll get the car over on this side of the street.»
Mallory looked at Atkinson. He said casually: «Who has the letters, Atkinson? The letters belonging to Rhonda Farr?»
Atkinson lifted his blank face slowly, squinted as though the light hurt his eyes. He spoke in a vague, far-off sort of voice.
«I—I don’t know. Costello, maybe. I never saw them.»
Mallory let out a short harsh laugh which made no change in the hard cold lines of his face. «Wouldn’t it be funny as hell if that’s true!» he said jerkily.
He stooped over the bed in the corner and wrapped the brown blanket closely around Rhonda Farr. When he lifted her she stopped snoring, but she did not wake.
SIX
A WINDOW or two in the front of the apartment house showed light. Mallory held his wrist up and looked at the curved watch on the inside of it. The faintly glowing hands were at half-past three. He spoke back into the car:
«Give me ten minutes or so. Then come on up. I’ll fix the doors.»
The street entrance to the apartment house was locked. Mallory unlocked it with a loose key, put it on the latch. There was a little light in the lobby, from one bulb in a floor lamp and from a hooded light above the switchboard. A wizened, white-haired little man was asleep in a chair by the switchboard, with his mouth open and his breath coming in long, wailing snores, like the sounds of an animal in pain.
Mallory walked up one flight of carpeted steps. On the second floor he pushed the button for the automatic elevator. When it came rumbling down from above he got in and pushed the button marked «7.» He yawned. His eyes were dulled with fatigue.
The elevator lurched to a stop, and Mallory went down the bright, silent corridor. He stopped at a gray olive wood door and put his ear to the panel. Then he fitted the loose key slowly into the lock, turned it slowly, moved the door back an inch or two. He listened again, went in.
There was light from a lamp with a red shade that stood beside an easy chair. A man was sprawled in the chair and the light splashed on his face. He was bound at the wrists and ankles with strips of wide adhesive tape. There was a strip of adhesive across his mouth.
Mallory fixed the door latch and shut the door. He went across the room with quick silent steps. The man in the chair was Costello. His face was a purplish color above the white adhesive that plastered his lips together. His chest moved in jerks and his breath made a snorting noise in his big nose.
Mallory yanked the tape off Costello’s mouth, put the heel of one hand on the man’s chin, forced his mouth wide open. The cadence of the breathing changed a bit. Costello’s chest stopped jerking, and the purplish color of his face faded to pallor. He stirred, made a groaning sound.
Mallory took an unopened pint bottle of rye off the mantel and tore the metal strip from the cap with his teeth. He pushed Costello’s head far back, poured some whiskey into his open mouth, slapped his face hard. Costello choked, swallowed convulsively. Some of the whiskey ran out of his nostrils. He opened his eyes, focused them slowly. He mumbled something confused.
Mallory went through velour curtains that hung across a doorway at the inner end of the room, into a short hall. The first door led into a bedroom with twin beds. A light burned, and a man was lying bound on each of the beds.
Jim, the gray-haired cop, was asleep or still unconscious. The side of his head was stiff with congealed blood. The skin of his face was a dirty gray.
The eyes of the red-haired man were wide open, diamond bright, angry. His mouth worked under the tape, trying to chew it. He had rolled over on his side and almost off the bed. Mallory pushed him back towards the middle, said:
«Sorry, punk. It’s all in the game.»
He went back to the living-room and switched on more light. Costello had struggled up in the easy chair. Mallory took out a pocket knife and reached behind him, sawed the tape that bound his wrists. Costello jerked his hands apart, grunted, and rubbed the backs of his wrists together where the tape had pulled hairs out. Then he bent over and tore tape off his ankles. He said:
«That didn’t do me any good. I’m a mouth breather.» His voice was loose, flat and without cadence.
He got to his feet and poured two inches of rye into a glass, drank it at a gulp, sat down again and leaned his head against the high back of the chair. Life came into his face; glitter came into his washed-out eyes.
He said: «What’s new?»
Mallory spooned at a bowl of water that had been ice, frowned and drank some whiskey straight. He rubbed the left side of his head gently with his finger tips and winced. Then he sat down and lit a cigarette.
He said: «Several things. Rhonda Farr is home. Macdonald and Slippy Morgan got gunned. But that’s not important. I’m after some letters you were trying to peddle to Rhonda Farr. Dig ’em up.»
Costello lifted his head and grunted. He said: «I don’t have the letters.»
Mallory said: «Get the letters, Costello. Now.» He sprinkled cigarette ash carefully in the middle of a green and yellow diamond in the carpet design.
Costello made an impatient movement. «I don’t have them,» he insisted. «Straight goods. I never saw them.»
Mallory’s eyes were slate-gray, very cold, and his voice was brittle. He said: «What you heels don’t know about your racket is just pitiful… I’m tired, Costello. I don’t feel like an argument. You’d look lousy with that big beezer smashed over on one side of your face with a gun barrel.»
Costello put his bony hand up and rubbed the reddened skin around his mouth where the tape had chafed it. He glanced down the room. There was a slight movement of the velour curtains across the end door, as though a breeze had stirred them. But there was no breeze. Mallory was staring down at the carpet.
Costello stood up from the chair, slowly. He said: «I’ve got a wall safe. I’ll open it up.»
He went across the room to the wall in which the outside door was, lifted down a picture and worked the dial of a small inset circular safe. He swung the little round door open and thrust his arm into the safe.