Steve said: «Who lives in Two-eleven?»
The big man leaned forward a little from the waist and snapped his suspenders. Nothing changed in his eyes. The skin along his big jaw may have tightened a little. «A dame,» he said.
«Alone?»
«Go on — ask me,» the big man said. He stuck his hand out and lifted a cigar off the edge of a stained-wood table. The cigar was burning unevenly and it smelled as if somebody had set fire to the doormat. He pushed it into his mouth with a hard, thrusting motion, as if he expected his mouth wouldn’t want it to go in.
«I’m asking you,» Steve said.
«Ask me out in the kitchen,» the big man drawled.
He turned and held the door open. Steve went past him.
The big man kicked the door shut against the squeak of the rocking chair, opened up the icebox and got out two cans of beer. He opened them and handed one to Steve.
«Dick?»
Steve drank some of the beer, put the can down on the sink, got a brand-new card out of his wallet — a business card printed that morning. He handed it to the man.
The man read it, put it down on the sink, picked it up and read it again. «One of them guys,» he growled over his beer. «What’s she pulled this time?»
Steve shrugged and said: «I guess it’s the usual. The torn-pajama act. Only there’s a kickback this time.»
«How come? You handling it, huh? Must be a nice cozy one.»
Steve nodded. The big man blew smoke from his mouth. «Go ahead and handle it,» he said.
«You don’t mind a pinch here?»
The big man laughed heartily. «Nuts to you, brother,» he said pleasantly enough. «You’re a private dick. So it’s a hush. O.K. Go out and hush it. And if it was a pinch — that bothers me like a quart of milk. Go into your act. Take all the room you want. Cops don’t bother Jake Stoyanoff.»
Steve stared at the man. He didn’t say anything. The big man talked it up some more, seemed to get more interested. «Besides,» he went on, making motions with the cigar, «I’m softhearted. I never turn up a dame. I never put a frill in the middle.» He finished his beer and threw the can in a basket under the sink, and pushed his hand out in front of him, revolving the large thumb slowly against the next two fingers. «Unless there’s some of that,» he added.
Steve said softly: «You’ve got big hands. You could have done it.»
«Huh?» His small brown leathery eyes got silent and stared. Steve said: «Yeah. You might be clean. But with those hands the cops’d go round and round with you just the same.»
The big man moved a little to his left, away from the sink. He let his right hand hang down at his side, loosely. His mouth got so tight that the cigar almost touched his nose.
«What’s the beef, huh?» he barked. «What you shovin’ at me, guy? What —»
«Cut it,» Steve drawled. «She’s been croaked. Strangled. Upstairs, on the floor under her bed. About midmorning, I’d say. Big hands did it — hands like yours.»
The big man did a nice job of getting the gun off his hip. It arrived so suddenly that it seemed to have grown in his hand and been there all the time.
Steve frowned at the gun and didn’t move. The big man looked him over. «You’re tough,» he said. «I been in the ring long enough to size up a guy’s meat. You’re plenty hard, boy. But you ain’t as hard as lead. Talk it up fast.»
«I knocked at her door. No answer. The lock was a pushover. I went in. I almost missed her because the bed was pulled down and she had been sitting on it, reading a magazine. There was no sign of struggle. I lifted the bed just before I left — and there she was. Very dead, Mr. Stoyanoff. Put the gat away. Cops don’t bother you, you said a minute ago.»
The big man whispered: «Yes and no. They don’t make me happy neither. I get a bump once’n a while. Mostly a Dutch. You said something about my hands, mister.»
Steve shook his head. «That was a gag,» he said. «Her neck has nail marks. You bite your nails down close. You’re clean.»
The big man didn’t look at his fingers. He was very pale. There was sweat on his lower lips, in the black stubble of his beard. He was still leaning forward, still motionless, when there was a knocking beyond the kitchen door, the door from the living room to the hallway. The creaking chair stopped and the woman’s sharp voice screamed: «Hi, Jake! Company!»
The big man cocked his head. «That old slut wouldn’t climb off’n her fanny if the house caught fire,» he said thickly.
He stepped to the door and slipped through it, locking it behind him.
Steve ranged the kitchen swiftly with his eyes. There was a small high window beyond the sink, a trap low down for a garbage pail and parcels, but no other door. He reached for his card Stoyanoff had left lying on the drainboard and slipped it back into his pocket. Then he took a short-barreled Detective Special out of his left breast pocket where he wore it nose down, as in a holster.
He had got that far when the shots roared beyond the wall — muffled a little, but still loud — four of them blended in a blast of sound.
Steve stepped back and hit the kitchen door with his leg out straight. It held and jarred him to the top of his head and in his hip joint. He swore, took the whole width of the kitchen and slammed into it with his left shoulder. It gave this time. He pitched into the living room. The mud-faced woman sat leaning forward in her rocker, her head to one side and a lock of mousy hair smeared down over her bony forehead.
«Backfire, huh?» she said stupidly. «Sounded kinda close. Musta been in the alley.»
Steve jumped across the room, yanked the outer door open and plunged out into the hall.
The big man was still on his feet, a dozen feet down the hallway, in the direction of a screen door that opened flush on an alley. He was clawing at the wall. His gun lay at his feet. His left knee buckled and he went down on it.
A door was flung open and a hard-looking woman peered out, and instantly slammed her door shut again. A radio suddenly gained in volume beyond her door.
The big man got up off his left knee and the leg shook violently inside his trousers. He went down on both knees and got the gun into his hand and began to crawl towards the screen door. Then, suddenly he went down flat on his face and tried to crawl that way, grinding his face into the narrow hall runner.
Then he stopped crawling and stopped moving altogether. His body went limp and the hand holding the gun opened and the gun rolled out of it.
Steve hit the screen door and was out in the alley. A gray sedan was speeding towards the far end of it. He stopped, steadied himself and brought his gun up level, and the sedan whisked out of sight around the corner.
A man boiled out of another apartment house across the alley. Steve ran on, gesticulating back at him and pointing ahead. As he ran he slipped the gun back into his pocket. When he reached the end of the alley, the gray sedan was out of sight. Steve skidded around the wall onto the sidewalk, slowed to a walk and then stopped.
Half a block down a man finished parking a car, got out and went across the sidewalk to a lunchroom. Steve watched him go in, then straightened his hat and walked along the wall to the lunchroom.
He went in, sat at the counter and ordered coffee. In a little while there were sirens.
Steve drank his coffee, asked for another cup and drank that. He lit a cigarette and walked down the long hill to Fifth, across to Hill, back to the foot of the Angel’s Flight, and got his convertible out of a parking lot.
He drove out west, beyond Vermont, to the small hotel where he had taken a room that morning.
FOUR
Bill Dockery, floor manager of the Club Shalotte, teetered on his heels and yawned in the unlighted entrance to the dining room. It was a dead hour for business, late cocktail time, too early for dinner, and much too early for the real business of the club, which was high-class gambling.