“T-take me back uptown,” I said.
The guardian milk bottle was still standing there by our door when I got out my latchkey for the second time that night.
I let myself in and crept down the hall toward the bedroom. I opened the door and stopped short with my hand on the light-switch. Jimmy had come back, and was in there ahead of me, asleep already. I could hear the soft purr of his snoring in the darkness. He evidently hadn’t been surprised by my continued absence. He must have thought I was still at the night club with the Perrys. His breathing was so rhythmic, so regular, it almost sounded studied.
I crawled into my own bed in the dark and just lay there. I hadn’t got the earring back. That was almost a minor matter by now. I kept seeing that face before me, viciously contorted, mirroring death to come. As sure as anything he was going to track me down, find me, and kill me. My life was forfeit to a murderer’s self-preservation. I was the only one who knew he had been up there. I was the only one who knew who had killed Carpenter. He had to get rid of me.
Somewhere, sometime, when I least expected it, death was going to strike out at me. I was on borrowed time.
He would surely get me, unless — I got him first.
Chapter Three
Trail to Murder
The lieutenant’s name was Weill, I think. I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure of anything, only that I was striking first, protecting my own life in the only way I knew how.
“I am asking that this interview be treated in strictest confidence.”
He looked at me patronizingly; I suppose he thought I was going to accuse someone of poisoning someone else’s pet pekingese. “You can rely on us,” he said.
“I am here to offer you a proposition. I am in a position to give you information which I think you will find not only timely but exceedingly helpful. In return for this, you must not use my name in any shape, form or manner. It means the destruction of my happiness if you do, and I won’t risk it. Who I am, who told you this, must not appear on any of your documents or reports or files.”
He was still very condescending. “That’s a tall order. Are you sure it’s something we’d be interested in?”
“You’re a lieutenant of the Homicide Squad? I’m very sure, Lieutenant.”
He gave me a more alert look. “Very well, I accept your terms.”
“You do. Yes, but how do I know it won’t pass beyond your control? It’s a matter that you will have to take others into your confidence about.”
“Nothing passes beyond my control in this division, if I don’t care to have it do so. If, as you say, others have to be taken into my confidence, I can either pledge them, as you are pledging me, or keep you altogether anonymous, as ‘Mrs. X.’ or ‘an unknown woman.’ Does that satisfy you? I give you my word as a police officer.”
I wasn’t altogether sure of that, I didn’t know enough about them. “I also want your word of honor as a man.”
He eyed me with increased respect. “That,” he admitted, “is a whole lot more dependable. I give you both.” And he took my hand and wrung it once.
I didn’t hold back anything, didn’t try to cover myself in any way. I told him about the letters, about Carpenter’s contacting me, about my first visit there and the payment of the ten thousand cash. “...I also took a gun, to make sure the situation wouldn’t pass beyond my control. Here it is here. You can examine it if you want to make sure it wasn’t I who did it.” I passed it to him.
He weighed it in his hand, smiled a little. “I don’t think it’ll be necessary to do that. The slug of a forty-five was taken out of Carpenter’s body. This would be the grandson of a forty-five.” He fiddled with it, looked up. “Incidentally, did you know it wasn’t loaded?”
He could tell by the look on my face I hadn’t until then.
He fiddled some more with it. “In any case, it would have been quite a feat to fire it. Where did you get it?”
“Paris, before the war.”
I went into the second part of my story, the really pertinent part. If I hadn’t known it was that already, the change in his attitude would have told me. He forgot his role of putting a featherbrained society woman at ease, became a police-lieutenant with just an important witness before him. “You’d know this man if you saw him again?” he said sharply.
“All night I saw his face before me.”
“You say he held a gun trained on you, before this interruption saved your life. Did you get a good look at it?”
“Quite good.” I shuddered.
“Have you a good eye for proportions, for taking in measurements at a glance?”
“Fairly.”
He opened a desk drawer, took out a revolver. “This weapon is empty, so don’t be nervous. Of course, you were frightened, so maybe it’s not fair, but— This is a forty-five here. I am going to hold it just about as you say he held it. Now. Is it the same size as the one he held?”
“No, his seemed heavier, larger.”
“But this is a forty-five. Look at it again. Now what do you say?”
I cocked my head. “No. I may be mistaken, but somehow the one he held seemed to be a larger, heavier gun.”
He replaced it, looked around in the drawer, finally took out another. “How about this one, then? This is far bigger than a forty-five. This is as big as they come.”
I nodded my head affirmatively without a moment’s hesitation. “Yes. That’s the same size as the one he held.”
He put it back in the drawer. “You’re a reliable witness. The first gun was a thirty-eight. The second was the forty-five.” He got up. “I am going to ask you to try and pick him out for us.”
They were all so villainous looking. And yet none of them could approach him in viciousness. Maybe that was because I’d seen him in the flesh, in full dimension, and not just flat on paper, in black and white. There were two photos of each one, in profile and fullface. I ignored the profiles, concentrated on the fullfaces. That was the way he’d been turned toward me during those few awful moments up there the night of the murder.
I didn’t really think I was going to find him. There were so many of them. Looking through this gallery of rogues, you wondered if there could be any honest, law-abiding people left in the world. I even turned to Weill, after the first half hour or so, and asked, “Do you really think you’ve got him in here?”
“We won’t know that for sure until after you’re through.”
Once I nearly thought I saw him, but when I stopped short and looked more closely at that particular subject, recognition faded. It was just a superficial resemblance.
They felt infected by looking at so much depravity. I opened them again and went ahead.
Suddenly I got up from the chair. I put my forefinger on the photograph, but not for his benefit yet, simply for my own, to hang onto it. I closed my eyes and held them that way for a moment. Then when I had his face good and clear, burning clear, I opened them. I let them travel down the line of my arm, all the way down to the end of my finger, and the face on the police photograph blended into the one glowing in my mind, without any changes of outline.
Then I turned to Weill. “This is the face of the man I saw up there,” I said.
He said again what he’d said before, up in his office. “You’re a good, dependable witness. I liked the way you did that just then.” He bent forward above my shoulder and read from the data accompanying the photos. “That’s ‘Sonny-Boy’ Nelson. He’s already wanted for murder, three times over. We’ve wanted him for a long time past.”