“Yes?” he said. That was how Joey answered, with polite suspicion.
“Joey?” The voice was a whisper. The man who owned it was either scared or unable to talk any louder because there were people around.
“Yeah, this is Joey,” Stevie said. He put his hand in his pocket and jingled some loose change to complete the illusion. “Who’s that?”
A silence, a faint cough, then the whisper again, “You all closed up?”
“Yeah. Must be the weather,” Stevie said. “Who’s speaking?”
“I want to talk to Mamie Rosen. Is she there?”
“Why, yes,” Stevie said. “Why, of course, Mr. Murillo. Your friend is here. She says all is forgiven, come home to momma.”
The whisper grew into a voice. “So it’s you, Jordan, you wise little bastard.”
“You come over here and say that,” Stevie said, “and leave your knife at home. We’ll talk this over like little gentlemen.”
The dial tone began to buzz. Stevie hung up slowly. His hand was shaking and crazy little sentences teetered back and forth in his head: Trace that call. Herman the patrol car. Get Murillo. Calling car three six. Is there a policeman in the house?
“Hell,” he said. “Holy hell.”
So Mr. Murillo was alive and well and in town and mad. Some day he’d come slinking out of an alley with his black fedora pulled down over his eyes, and his mouth thin and sharp as a blade.
He wiped the sweat off his forehead. I’d better tell Sands, he thought. I’d better get it all off my chest and tell him about the other time too, when I saw Murillo coming out of Child’s. With Johnny Heath beside him. Murillo looked quite respectable that day. You’d never have thought the two of them had been planning and working it all out.
“Yes?” Sands said into the phone.
“Mr. Sands.”
“Mr. Jordan,” Sands said dryly.
“Yes,” Stevie said. He liked Sands very much then, he liked the way he’d said “Mr. Jordan,” without surprise or interest. Silly to think you couldn’t trust Sands. You could trust him because he didn’t give a damn. “I’m in Joey’s office. I just had a phone call from Murillo. Thought you’d like to know.”
“Thanks. What did he want?”
“Mamie Rosen. And listen...”
There was a pause. Sands could hear the squeak of a chair before Stevie put his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone. He didn’t hold his hand tight enough and Sands heard him say something in a muffled whisper.
The hand was removed then, and Stevie said, “Excuse me, Mr. Sands. I thought I’d better tell you I saw Murillo...”
“Who’s in that office with you?” Sands said urgently. “Jordan...”
“Who...?” Stevie said.
Someone whispered, “Stevie,” and the chair squeaked again just once before the shot. There was a sigh and a thud, then a crash as the telephone fell from the desk.
Sands said, “Jordan!”
For ten seconds there was no answer. Then he heard the faint sound of footsteps. The telephone must have fallen so that the mouthpiece was against the floor and picked up the footsteps.
Sands counted. Five footsteps. And then nothing.
“Jesus Christ!” Joey said.
He stood in the doorway and watched Stevie bleeding all over his desk, and thought how hard it was going to be to wash the blood off. Maybe he’d have to buy a new desk.
“Slaughter me for a pig,” he said. “Move off there, you souse. What’s the matter with you?” He edged closer to the desk and then he saw that Jordan was unable to answer, having a bullet in his stomach.
He moved back to the doorway and began to bellow names and obscenities, strangely mixed.
“Jesus Christ! Come here! Hey, Jim, Jesus Christ, police police, Jim!”
The doorman and Sergeant Stem arrived together. They had both heard the shot and had come into the club, leaving the front door unwatched.
Stern went over to the desk. He didn’t recognize Stevie because Stevie’s head was down on the desk, as if he’d gotten tired and decided to sleep there.
“Who is he?”
“Jordan,” Joey said. “He works for me. Jesus Christ.”
“Call an ambulance,” Stem said. “Not that phone! Use another. Make it snappy.”
Joey bounced out of the room, still swearing but feeling better now because an ambulance meant Jordan wasn’t dead. He wouldn’t want Jordan to die, for a number of reasons.
The doorman simply stood, dazed, and looked at Stevie, and shifted his weight from one foot to another. His mouth moved slightly as if he were practising an after-dinner speech.
He found a voice finally, and said, “A good guy, Stevie,” but the voice wasn’t his. It was too high and small and he discarded it hastily like a man who’d been given the wrong hat from a checkroom.
“What’d you say?” Stern asked.
The doorman coughed. “Nothing.”
“You said he was a good guy.”
“Well, he was.”
“Well, why’d you say you said nothing?” Stern said, angry at himself, and the doorman and Stevie and even Sands. He thought of the razzing he’d have to take when the rest of them found out that the man he was supposed to follow got himself shot about fifty yards away.
The ambulance clanged up the street and shrieked to a stop.
“The ambulance,” said the doorman.
“Yeah,” said Sergeant Stern.
They parted forever on this note.
Joey’s phone call to the hospital had been so vivid that the ambulance was equipped with an experienced doctor in addition to the usual interne and orderlies. They came prepared to give a transfusion, and they did it there, right in Joey’s office. While Joey stood outside the door wringing his hands and swearing and wondering if he’d have to buy a new desk.
Sands himself arrived just after the ambulance clanged back to the hospital. He found Joey and Sergeant Stern glaring at each other across the bloody desk.
“Dead?” he said sharply to Stern.
“No, sir,” Stern said. “This guy wants to wash off the desk and I said he couldn’t.”
Sands said to Joey, “That’s right, you can’t.”
“Well, for Christ’s sake,” Joey said, sounding as if he wanted to cry. “He’s still living, isn’t he? It’s not a murder, is it?”
Sands didn’t answer. He was walking slowly around the room, not touching anything. It was a very small room. He stood in front of the desk, then turned and walked to the door, stealthily. Three steps, possibly four, if you tiptoed. But there had been five.
“You try it,” he said to Joey.
“Try what?”
“Go to the desk and then walk to the door.”
Joey made it in four steps, Sergeant Stern three.
“The gun wasn’t very big,” Stern volunteered. “Maybe a .32. I heard the shot.”
“So did I,” Sands said softly. “I was talking to him on the telephone.”
“Talking to him?” Joey said, and began to swear again, almost absently.
“Powder burns?” Sands said to Stem.
“Yes sir.”
“Fix up the telephone before an operator starts buzzing,” Sands said. “Where’s another phone?”
“Checkroom,” Joey said.
“I’ll find it. Stay here.”
In the checkroom he dialed a number. It was a full minute before a man’s voice, sleepy and angry, said “Hello.”
“Miss Mamie Rosen live there?”
“Who wants to know?” the man said. “What’s the idea waking people up in the...?”
“Police-Inspector Sands speaking,” Sands said. “Call Miss Rosen to the phone please.”
The man said, “All right, keep your shirt on,” and went away. Sands could hear his slippers flapping along the floor.
“She ain’t come in yet.”
“All right, thanks.”