“If that's all you want, come on over an' ask me,” Johnny said agreeably. “Or send him.” He looked at Savino, smiled, bit off a short Italian phrase, and spat on the floor.
Angry dark blood flooded the slim man's features. “Well, make him talk!” he yelled at Daddario. “What the hell are you waiting for?”
“Sure, make me talk,” Johnny said. “Can't you see your killer's gettin' nervous? He'll be foamin' at the mouth in a minute if you're not careful. You want-” He fell silent as a key clicked in the door lock. Rudy stepped inside and closed the door behind him. “Hey, Rudy!” Johnny addressed him. “Where's my thousand bucks Riley left for me?”
“He didn't call me to release it,” Rudy said before he thought. As the sound of his words hung in the air he cut his eyes to Daddario staring at him.
“I'm gettin' goddamned tired of-” Savino began.
“Shut up.” Daddario walked over and confronted an unhappy-looking Rudy. “What the hell is this about Riley and a thousand dollars?”
“If you don't know I don't,” Rudy retorted with a matching asperity. “He put up a thousand in cash for me to release to this big bastard when he called me.”
“For doing what?” Daddario bellowed.
“How the hell do I know?” Rudy bellowed right back. In a rage, Daddario swung a right-hand punch. In a matching rage, Rudy stepped inside it and drilled a short left that sat the politician down abruptly. He looked around, dazed, as Savino started up from his chair.
“Cut that out, damn you!” he shouted at the gambler. He took three or four steps in Rudy's direction as that worthy turned warily to face him.
On his stool Johnny stood up and pulled off a shoe. With not an eye in the room on him he threw the shoe and hit the long fluorescent tube that ran the length of the room dead center.
There was a flash and a puff, and total darkness descended upon the room. The tinkling noise of small, falling glass particles was the only sound as the room seemed to hold its breath.
Johnny had already slid under his blackjack table and was crawling soundlessly in the direction in which he had marked Tommy Savino in the pitch black when Dick Lowell's voice raised quaveringly. “Don't anyone s-shoot!”
A scrambling sound to his right failed to distract Johnny. He wanted to reach Savino before the only man in the room with a gun had time to react. Instinct warned him of a presence immediately in front of him and he slowed. Was it the right man?
“Strike a match, someone!” Jim Daddario's voice ordered suddenly from a corner.
“Strike your own damn match,” Rudy said sourly from the left. With those two placed Johnny took a deep breath and grabbed hard at the thighs of the man before him. There was a startled grunt as he lifted him and catapulted him hard to the floor. Johnny knew he had guessed right when he heard the thud of a metal object hitting the floor and skidding off until it brought up against a wall. He closed tightly with the thrashing body beneath his, knowing he had to immobilize Savino's hands before he could get his knife from his sleeve holster.
“Who's that?” Jim Daddario inquired anxiously. “Dick? Savino? Is that you?”
Johnny's weight dropped amidships prevented more than a coughed grunt in return. He felt teeth in his wrist as he secured an arm with his left knee, and he backhanded the teeth briskly. Savino's head hit the floor with a hollow thump but he fought on desperately. Johnny caught the other flailing arm and forced it backward. “How d'you like it, you woman-beater?” he growled, and Savino shrieked as Johnny applied more pressure. Deliberately he levered himself up and over the suddenly silent figure.
A droplight over a card table came on in a dazzling flare in the blackness. Silhouetted against it, Jim Daddario stood poised with the recovered automatic. “You,” he said hoarsely to Johnny, and aimed the gun. “Get up.”
Johnny got to his feet slowly. Tommy Savino did not. The dark man lay quiet, oddly crumpled. Mayor Richard Lowell crawled from beneath a nearby table, his eyes bulging. Johnny looked in vain for Rudy. The gambler had made it to the door in the dark and must have let himself out in the first burst of light.
“Good God!” Dick Lowell said in a horrified tone, and turned his eyes away. He was shaking as with a chill.
“What's the matter, Richard?” Johnny asked him. “Carl Thompson didn't bother you.”
The white-haired man looked as though he were going to be sick. “Thompson-different-” he got out finally.
“The only thing different was that he got it with a knife. Where'd you get the knife, Dick?”
“It was his knife-” Richard Lowell began, and stopped. The silence built up in the room. Jim Daddario's arm dropped slowly to his side as he stared from the white-faced Lowell to Johnny.
“What the hell are you blathering about?” he demanded harshly. “Are you accusing him now? A minute ago it was-” His eyes flickered to the body on the floor with its neck awry.
“That's when I wanted you chewin' at each other's asses,” Johnny said softly. “We knew better, didn't we, Your Honor?” Richard Lowell swallowed visibly but stood mute. “It all fell into place twenty minutes ago when I heard he was in New York that day. After what you did to Thompson up here who in your crowd could get close enough to him to get a knife in his back? Only the man who had set him up here as the bagman before you muscled him out.”
“But him-” Daddario jerked a thumb at Lowell ”-a killer?” He snorted derisively. “Don't make me laugh. I've cut off his water by inches in this town and all he's done is whimper.”
“You tried to talk Thompson out of coming back up here, right?” Johnny prodded Dick Lowell.
The leonine features under the white hair had suddenly aged. “I told him he could do no good,” he said woodenly. “I told him he'd ruin us all. I offered to take care of him. He wouldn't listen. He was wild. He threatened me.” He swallowed again, hard. “He'd been cleaning tar from the sole of his shoe with the knife when he let me in. He paced up and down the room making all kinds of crazy plans. I stood there and saw everything I'd ever hoped for going down the drain with that-that fanatic. He charged up and shoved his face into mine and slavered spittle in his ranting-he turned to pace again-I grabbed up the knife-you'd have done the same thing, Jim!” He flung out a hand in appeal. “He was insane!”
“Somebody was insane,” Jim Daddario said bleakly. “And here I was trying to hold the lid down on a volcano like this. Jigger told me he-” his eyes went to the floor ”-had done it because he had your-“ the eyes returned to Johnny ”- thousand. I was ready to turn him in if worse came to worst.” His still partly unbelieving gaze returned to Richard Lowell. “By God, I remember now I tried to call you up here from the New York hotel suite and nobody knew where you were.” He shook his head. “I never dreamed he'd go down there himself as a result of his brother's call.”
“That's only half of it.” Johnny moved a cautious step nearer to Jim Daddario. “He had company when he went. Jack Riley.”
Dark blood rushed into Daddario's face. “Riley? My own man? Doublecrossing me?”
“Not right that minute. He was still your man. I imagine he went along to keep an eye on things, not knowing what else to do. But he knew where Lowell had been, and when he found out what happened to Thompson he thought he saw a chance to move up to Number One. With Lowell in his pocket, if he could dump you he figured he'd inherit the payoff here. Lowell and he didn't know what Thompson had told me, so Riley hired himself some local talent in a hurry to take care of me an' then he hustled Lowell out of town before he could be seen by any of your crowd.”
Johnny leveled a finger at the furious-looking politician. “But they'd been seen together by Micheline Thompson, before her husband was killed. Riley didn't know it an' Lowell didn't tell him till they got back up here. They both wanted me to find her. Riley so that he could hold her as a witness over the mayor's head.” He changed the direction of the pointing finger. “What would you have done if I'd found her for you, Lowell?”