I was still on my knees, body twisted, pain obvious in my left hand now, and the quiet, the stillness seemed slowly to become like a pressure against my eardrums, and the darkness, a solid black, was like a wall around me. I got my feet under me, stood up. Cannon wouldn’t have a gun; Cannon—
My hand touched the light switch. I slid the glasses up off my eyes, looked toward the spot where the two men lay on the floor, flipped on the light. I was staring to my right as brilliant light blazed in the room and looking there was what damn near got me killed.
It was the grunt that saved me, the fact that Cannon always grunted before he swung that roundhouse cannonball of his, and when I heard the sound close by me on my left I didn’t even stop to turn my head. I just let my knees go slack, dropping my body and turning as I fell, then tensed the muscles in my legs and let them start springing me up again as an arm that looked two yards long whistled over my skull.
And I guess Cannon must have been surprised, because always before when he’d swung at me it had been so very simple to hit my head, and he was all splayed out in the air with his thick belly floating where I wanted it.
I just kept on going up, my right fist already balled and traveling in the right direction, and I let it go and felt it smash into his belly, heard the breath spurt from his mouth. I swung a little farther around, then pivoted, cocking my left fist and launching it at him. I knew I had him. He was bent over gasping, the whole side of his long bony face bare and unprotected.
My left clipped his chin, the pain almost killing me, and he spun halfway around, dropping to one knee. He was down a long way less than my size now, and I took half a step toward him, my right hand stretching for the ceiling, and when I slammed its edge down on the base of his skull it was easy for me to kick him in the face when he hit the floor and rolled over on his back. So I kicked him in the face. His jaw jerked far to the side, as if his face were made of rubber, then sagged and hung at an angle that was not normal at all.
I just stood there and looked at them all for a long minute. I noticed that Tinkle’s oddly humped body was sprawled over the light he’d been holding, blotting out its beam, and I noticed that all of the men were dressed entirely in black; but it didn’t mean anything to me. I could have noticed that they had purple horns growing out of their heads and it wouldn’t have meant anything to me. I wasn’t in very good shape at the moment. That was all right. The rest of these guys were in terrible condition.
Finally it occurred to me that there must be a phone around here somewhere. I started looking.
It was four o’clock in the morning before I’d passed through Homicide, Burglary, and Scientific Investigation. I was standing on the Main Street steps of City Hall, blinking as a final flash bulb went off in my face. One of the reporters — Bruce Ladd of the Examiner — said, “Infra-red, huh? Make quite a story. That was Payne’s contribution?”
“Yeah,” I said wearily. “That part was The Professor’s idea; Cannon was top man, the muscle; Tinkle cased the spots and unlocked and locked the doors.”
“How about that Tinkle?” another asked. “He gonna croak?”
“Slugs in his chest and stomach, but they think he’ll live. He might as well croak; Cannon broke that attorney’s neck, but Drake hadn’t kicked off when Tinkle’s bullet killed him.”
“The loot?”
“Got most of it. They were holding most of the rocks till they cooled, but that part got rumbled tonight along with the rest of it. You’ll have to see Captain Masterson to find out what stuff his boys picked up.”
There were a few more questions from the reporters. I answered them, practically swaying on my feet. It seemed that I hadn’t slept for a month. But I could sleep now; Cannon had been willing to tell the whole story, but if he moved his jaw a half inch there was a chance it would fall off, so he wrote it all down. That was nice, because it gave the boys upstairs a handwritten confession — including the fact that Cannon had rounded up Tinkle and Artie last night, after he’d left Lois and before they stole my Cad, then picked up little foe and worked him over before their “hit-and-run” finished him.
The reporters finally had all they needed. I knew most of them, nice enough guys. The other stories about me had simply been part of their jobs, just as this tonight had been part of mine. And when one of them finally said, “Anything to add, Scott?” I nodded.
“Yeah, boys. One thing. Be sure you make it clear about Joseph Raspberry.” Then they took off. They knew what I meant; they’d take care of it.
My hand was bandaged, and though I damn near lost a thumb, I’d keep the thumb, the hand, and a fat scar. All I needed was three days sleep. And I wanted everything cleared up before I hit the sack, because I was going to lock the door and jerk the phone out of the wall. So I found a phone and called Diane, to get the whole thing wrapped up and off my mind.
Her voice was sleepy. “’Lo?”
“Diane? Shell — Scotty, to you.”
“O-oh, Scotty. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. You’ll get your stuff back; just wanted to let you know. It all got settled tonight.”
“You darling, I knew you’d get my pretties. Are you going to bring them to me?”
Her voice didn’t sound sleepy any more. Funny thing, I didn’t feel quite so sleepy myself. I said, “Well... I don’t know. Cops'll have them for a while.”
“You bring them to me. I want you to.”
“I suppose.”
“Scotty. Are you going to sneak in like they did, and put them on my dresser?”
For a moment I thought fiendishly that maybe I should do just that: clap on my glasses, click on my monstrous red flashlight and tiptoe into her bedroom crying “Where are you-ou? Diane, where are you?” eyeballing her frantically all the while. But I said, “We’ll... we’ll see. But the stuff will be tied up for a while.”
“Well, when it gets untied, you just bring it right out here to me.”
“O.K. Good night, Diane. Let Osborne know about it. He owes me some money.”
“I will. ’Bye, Daddy.”
I was clear back in the Cad and rolling down Sunset before I realized what she’d called me, but I kept the car under control. That made me think about Lois. I figured she’d be # in bed, too, but probably I should call her. She might be worried — and anyway, I knew now she’d never conned me, had gone along with me all the way. I pulled into a gas station and gave her a ring. She answered in five seconds.
“Hi,” I said. After a little chatter I gave her a fast rundown on the night’s developments then said, “I didn’t know if you’d still be up.”
“I’ve been awake all night. Waiting for you to call. You said you’d see me.” I started to tell her that I was falling asleep in the booth, but she said, “You promised, you know. Can’t you come up for one little drink?”
“I’m pretty beat—”
“I thought you’d want to come up for a nightcap, at least, so I bought us something lovely. Can’t you come up for just one little drink?”
“You and your drinks,” I said. “What color is it this time?”