There wasn’t a sound from inside.
I tried the door and the knob turned under my hand. I pushed it open, stepped inside, shut it behind me and waited there in the semi-gloom of the room. It was too still, much too still. I pulled the .45 out already cocked and held it ready, then flicked on the light.
Nothing.
It wasn’t much of a place. Something a bachelor would have. One main room with the kitchen separated from it by a bar, an open door leading to the bath and another door, cracked a little, going to the bedroom.
I walked over to that one, pushed it open the rest of the way and reached for the light switch inside the frame.
And then I found Art.
The spare pillow beside him showed powder burns and one corner had been ripped off from the bullet blast the pillow had muffled. It had caught him in the temple and without ever realizing it Art had reached the goal he had striven for.
All I could say was one word. There was nothing else. I was being hung higher all the time. Nobody knew I told Art to make a feature yarn out of the kills at my place and now the fuzz would lay this tap at my door and label it a revenge kill. Whoever coined the word shafted had me in mind.
There was a whiskey, cordite and burnt feathers smell still in the air, a smell that could hang for hours. I felt Art’s face, knew by the heat of it that death came only a short time ago. I went back to the door to see if it had been forced, but there were no marks around the lock. Art had made it easy for the killer. He had come home drunk, opened up and shut the door. The lock was a type you had to hand turn from the inside to latch and he had done what a thousand other drunks did before him. He forgot about it. He flopped in bed and that was it.
I went through his pockets carefully, tried his jacket thrown over a chair, then the clothes in the closet. There was something not quite orderly enough about the clothes in his dresser and I knew that all this had been done earlier by an expert and if there had been anything important, it was gone now.
I wiped the spots I had touched with my handkerchief and backed out of the apartment. I went upstairs and over the roof to a building near the corner and came out there in case anybody was waiting for me outside Art’s place. Two blocks further down I found a cab and gave him Carmen’s number.
The important little man remembered me from before, but even then he double-checked. He told me reluctantly that Miss Smith would see me, then huffed away, so supreme in his own importance that he never recognized me even with the paper on his desk open to my picture.
I went upstairs to where she was waiting and grinned at the worry that showed around her eyes. Then suddenly she was tight inside my arms and her mouth was a hungry thing tasting me almost painfully, her body taut with life that has been confined too long and for the first time senses a release;
Tears made glistening streaks down her cheeks and when she took her mouth from mine she kept it open, sobbing against my neck.
I said, “Easy, baby,” and held her away to look at her, but only for a second because she grabbed me again and hung on fiercely.
Very softly she repeated over and over, “You crazy hood. You crazy hood, you!”
I wiped off the tears, kissed her lightly, then took her arm and went inside. There was still a sob in her breathing and she wasn’t ready to talk to me yet. I said, “I’m not used to such pleasant receptions.”
She forced a smile, then it became real. “You crazy Irishman. Every paper, every TV newscaster, every radio broadcast has you in it. Ryan... you haven’t got a chance... you haven’t... I don’t know how to put it...”
“It’s bad, huh?”
“Why, Ryan? Why does it have to be you?”
“Why all the concern, sugar?”
She said nothing for a moment. Her eyes frowned and she took her hand from mine and folded them in her lap. “I’m not the type who should do something like this. I know better. I’ve been familiar with... wrong situations a whole lifetime. It’s never happened before. Now, for the first time I know what it’s like, having to... care for somebody who feels nothing, well, very special about you. It’s happened to others. I never thought it could possibly happen to me.” She looked up, smiled and added lightly, “And with a hood too. I’ve never been in love with a hood before.”
“You’re crazy.”
“I know,” she said.
“You’re class, baby. With me a fling could be fun. Some excitement, like playing cards, maybe. But sugar... like I’m not the kind of slob kids like you fall in love with. You’re class.”
“Irish... you’ve never had trouble getting a woman... ever. Have you?”
I squinted and shook my head. “Tomatoes, though.”
“So let me be a tomato. Or should I ask please?”
“You’re talking crazy, girl.”
“I have nothing else, Irish. I never had.”
“Hell, I could be cut down any time. You know what that means? You get connected with me and you’re done, kid. Done. Maybe it’s like you said... you’ve never been in love with a hood before, but it’s like the excitement of drawing three cards from the dealer and finding yourself with a royal flush. It’s great if the stakes are high, but when the other hands are twos and threes and go out on a small pot the big excitement is all wasted. It only seemed big. It wasn’t worth anything. Damn it, you’re crazy!”
I was tight on talk and that scar on my back began to draw up again. I had to tell her. She knew what the score was!
Carmen’s eyes were clear now. While I was talking she had made up her mind. She said, “Will you let me be a crazy tomato, Irish?”
“Kitten...”
“You don’t have to love me back at all,” she said.
I tried hard to keep it inside. I didn’t want to let it out, but it wasn’t the kind of thing you can squash into pieces and forget. “That’s the bad part, kid,” I told her. “You see... I do.”
She was there in my arms again, softly at first and hungry-mouthed again. Her fingers were velvet cat claws, kneading me gently, searching and finding. When I touched her, things seemed to melt away until there was only the warmth of flesh and a giddy sensation of being overpowered by a runaway emotion. As I lay there, time ceased to exist and as she came down on top of me she murmured little things only the mind heard and it was different. So very different.
Morning was a soft light that bathed us both, and we got up smiling, yet saying nothing. Words were no good any more. I watched her shower and dress. All the naked, all the clothed beauty of her belonged to me and nobody could take it away.
Then the luxury of sleep-drugged morning was over and I knew how stupid it was and the vomit sour taste of cold hate for all the things that had happened to me was in my mouth.
I dressed quickly and followed her into the kitchen. She had coffee ready and handed me a cup, knowing by my face that something was wrong. She didn’t ask. She waited until I was ready. I said, “I had a friend who was killed last night. I know how, I know why and I know who, but I don’t know what the killer’s face is like.”
“Can I help somehow?”
“You can but I won’t ask you. The gamble is too big.”
“You forgot, Irish?”
“What?”
“I am a gambler.”
“That kill is going to be laid at my feet and there isn’t a chance in the world for me to cut out.”
“The police...”
“Can be stalled a while. They can be stymied, but only for a while. When they concentrate all the resources of their system, they can do anything.”
“You think they will?”
“They have to, baby. Now it’s a newshawk who’s dead and the papers will hammer the brass silly. They have to shake that heat and the only way is to find me.”