One Lonely Night Read online

  I never really gave him a chance. All I moved was my arm and before he had his gun out I had my .45 in my fist with the safety off and the trigger back. I only gave him a second to realize what it was like to die then I blew the expression clean off his face.

  He never figured the hero would have a gun, too.

  Before I could get it back in the holster the girl gave a lunge and backed up against the railing. Her eyes were clear now. They darted to the mess on the ground, the gun in my hand and the tight lines that made a mask of kill-lust of my face.

  She screamed. Good God, how she screamed. She screamed as if I were a monster that had come up out of the pit! She screamed and made words that sounded like, “You ... one of them ... no more!”

  I saw what she was going to do and tried to grab her, but the brief respite she had was enough to give her the strength she needed. She twisted and slithered over the top of the rail and I felt part of her coat come away in my hand as she tumbled headlong into the white void below the bridge.

  Lord, Lord, what happened? My fingers closed over the handrail and I stared down after her. Three hundred feet to the river. The little fool didn’t have to do that! She was safe! Nothing could have hurt her, didn’t she realize that? I was shouting it at the top of my lungs with nobody but a dead man to hear me. When I pulled away from the rail I was shaking like a leaf.

  All because of that fat little bastard stretched out in the snow. I pulled back my foot and kicked what was left of him until he rolled over on his face.

  I did it again, I killed somebody else! Now I could stand in the courtroom in front of the man with the white hair and the voice of the Avenging Angel and let him drag my soul out where everybody could see it and slap it with another coat of black paint.

  Peace and quiet, it was great! I ought to have my head examined. Or the guy should maybe; his had a hell of a hole in it. The dirty son-of-a-bitch for trying to get away with that. The fat little slob walks right up to me with a rod in his hand figuring to get away with it. The way he strutted you’d think he didn’t have a care in the world, yet just like that he was going to kill two people without batting an eye. He got part of what he wanted anyway. The girl was dead. He was the kind of a rat who would have gotten a big laugh out of the papers tomorrow. Maybe he was supposed to be the rain of purity that was going to wash me down the gutter into the sewer with the rest of the scum. Brother, would that have been a laugh.

  Okay, if he wanted a laugh, he’d get it. If his ghost could laugh I’d make it real funny for him. It would be so funny that his ghost would be the laughingstock of hell and when mine got there it’d have something to laugh at too. I’m nothing but a stinking no-good killer but I get there first, Judge. I get there first and live to do it again because I have eyes that see and a hand that works without being told and I don’t give a damn what you do to my soul because it’s so far gone nothing can be done for it! Go to hell yourself, Judge! Get a real belly laugh!

  I tore his pockets inside out and stuffed his keys and wallet in my coat. I ripped out every label on his clothes right down to the laundry marks then I kicked the snow off the pavement and rubbed his fingertips against the cold concrete until there weren’t any fingertips left. When I was finished he looked like the remains of a scarecrow that had been up too many seasons. I grabbed an arm and a leg and heaved him over the rail, and when I heard a faint splash many seconds later my mouth split into a grin. I kicked the pieces of the cloth and his gun under the rail and let them get lost in the obscurity of the night and the river. I didn’t even have to worry about the bullet. It was lying right there in the snow, all flattened out and glistening wetly.

  I kicked that over the side too.

  Now let them find him. Let them learn who it was and how it happened. Let everybody have a laugh while you’re at it!

  It was done and I lit a cigarette. The snow still coming down put a new layer over the tracks and the dark stain. It almost covered up the patch of cloth that had come from the girl’s coat, but I picked that up and stuck it in with the rest of the stuff.

  Now my footsteps were the only sound along the ramp. I walked back to the city telling myself that it was all right, it had to happen that way. I was me and I couldn’t have been anything else even if there had been no war. I was all right, the world was wrong. A police car moaned through the pay station and passed me as its siren was dying down to a low whine. I didn’t even give it a second thought. They weren’t going anywhere, certainly not to the top of the hump because not one car had passed during those few minutes it had happened. Nobody saw me, nobody cared. If they did the hell with ’em.

  I reached the streets of the city and turned back for another look at the steel forest that climbed into the sky. No, nobody ever walked across the bridge on a night like this.

  Hardly nobody.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I DIDN’T GO HOME that night. I went to my office and sat in the big leather-covered chair behind the desk and drank without getting drunk. I held the .45 in my lap, cleaned and reloaded, watching it, feeling in it an extension of myself. How many people had it sent on the long road? My mind blocked off the thought of the past and I put the gun back in the sling under my arm and slept. I dreamt that the judge with the white hair and eyes like two berries on a bush was pointing at me, ordering me to take the long road myself, and I had the .45 in my hand and my finger worked the trigger. It clicked and wouldn’t go off, and with every sharp click a host of devilish voices would take up a dirge of laughter and I threw the gun at him, but it wouldn’t leave my hand. It was part of me and it stuck fast.

  The key turning in the lock awakened me. Throughout that dream of violent action I hadn’t moved an inch, so that when I brought my head up I was looking straight at Velda. She didn’t know I was there until she tossed the day’s mail on the desk. For a second she froze with startled surprise, then relaxed into a grin.

  “You scared the whosis out of me, Mike.” She paused and bit her lip. “Aren’t you here early?”

  “I didn’t go home, kid.”

  “Oh. I thought you might call me. I stayed up pretty late.”

  “I didn’t get drunk, either.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  Velda frowned again. She wanted to say something, but during office hours she respected my position. I was the boss and she was my secretary. Very beautiful, of course. I loved her like hell, but she didn’t know how much and she was still part of the pay roll. She decided to brighten the office with a smile instead, sorted the things on my desk, and started back to the reception room.

  “Velda ...”

  She stopped, her hand on the knob and looked over her shoulder. “Yes, Mike?”

  “Come here.” I stood up and sat on the edge of the desk tapping a Lucky against my thumbnail. “What kind of a guy am I, kitten?”

  Her eyes probed into my brain and touched the discontent. For a moment her smile turned into an animal look I had seen only once before. “Mike ... that judge was a bastard. You’re an all-right guy.”

  “How do you know?” I stuck the butt between my lips and lit it.

  She stood there spraddle-legged with her hands low on her hips like a man, her breasts rising and falling faster than they should, fighting the wispy thinness of the dress. “I could love you a little or I could love you a lot, Mike. Sometimes it’s both ways but mostly it’s a lot. If you weren’t all right I couldn’t love you at all. Is that what you wanted me to say?”

  “No.” I blew out a stream of smoke and looked at the ceiling. “Tell me about myself. Tell me what other people say.”

  “Why? You know it as well as I do. You read the papers. When you’re right you’re a hero. When you’re wrong you’re kill-happy. Why don’t you ask the people who count, the ones who really know you? Ask Pat. He thinks you’re a good cop. Ask all the worms in the holes, the ones who have reason to stay out of your way. They’ll tell you too ... if you can catch them.”

  I
chucked the butt into the metal basket. “Sure, the worms’ll tell me. You know why I can’t catch them, Velda? Do you know why they’re scared to death to tangle with me? I’ll tell you why. They know damn well I’m as bad as they are ... worse, and I operate legally.”

  She reached out a hand and ran it over my hair. “Mike, you’re too damn big and tough to give a hang what people say. They’re only little people with little minds, so forget it.”

  “There’s an awful lot of it.”

  “Forget it.”

  “Make me,” I said.

  She came into my arms with a rush and I held her to me to get warm and let the moist softness of her lips make me forget. I had to push to get her away and I stood there holding her arms, breathing in a picture of what a man’s woman should look like. It was a long time before I could manage a grin, but she brought it out of me. There’s something a woman does without words that makes a man feel like a man and forget about the things he’s been told.

  “Did you bring in the paper?”

  “It’s on my desk.”

  She followed me when I went out to get it. A tabloid and a full-sized job were there. The tab was opened to a news account of the trial that was one column wide and two inches long. They had my picture, too. The other rag gave me a good spread and a good going over and they didn’t have my picture. I could start picking my friends out of the pack now.

  Instead of digesting the absorbing piece of news, I scanned the pages for something else. Velda scowled at my concentration and hung over my shoulder. What I was looking for wasn’t there. Not a single thing about two bodies in the river.

  “Something, Mike?”

  I shook my head. “Nope. Just looking for customers.”

  She didn’t believe me. “There are some excellent prospects in the letter file if you’re interested. They’re waiting for your answer.”

  “How are we fixed, Velda?” I didn’t look at her.

  I put the paper down and reached in my pocket for a smoke.

  “We’re solvent. Two accounts paid up yesterday. The money has been banked and there’s no bills. Why?”

  “Maybe I’ll take a vacation.”

  “From what?”

  “From paid jobs. I’m tired of being an employee.”

  “Think of me.”

  “I am,” I said. “You can take a vacation too if you want to.”

  She grabbed my elbow and turned me around until I was fencing with her eyes again. “Whatever you’re thinking isn’t of fun on some beach, Mike.”

  “It isn’t?” I tried to act surprised.

  “No.” She took the cigarette from my mouth, dragged on it and stuck it back. She never moved her eyes. “Mike, don’t play with me, please. Either tell me or don’t, but quit making up excuses. What’s on your mind?”

  My mouth felt tight. “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”

  “Yes I would.” There was nothing hidden in her answer. No laughter, no scorn. Just absolute belief in me.

  “I want to find out about myself, Velda.”

  She must have known what was coming. I said it quietly, almost softly, and she believed me. “All right, Mike,” she said. “If you need me for anything you know where to find me.”

  I gave her the cigarette and went back to the office. How deep can a woman go to search a man’s mind? How can they know without being told when some trival thing can suddenly become so important? What is it that gives them that look as if they know the problem and the answer too, yet hold it back because it’s something you have to discover for yourself?

  I sat down in the swivel chair again and pulled all the junk out of my pockets; the keys, the wallet and the change. Two of the keys were for a car. One was an ordinary house key, another for a trunk or suitcase, and another for either a tumbler padlock or another house.

  If I expected to find anything in the wallet I was mistaken. There were six fives and two singles in the bill compartment, a package of three-cent stamps and a card-calendar in one pocket, and a plain green card with the edges cut off at odd angles in the other pocket. That was all.

  That was enough.

  The little fat boy didn’t have his name in print anywhere. It wasn’t a new wallet either. Fat boy didn’t want identification. I didn’t blame him. What killer would?

  Yeah, that was enough to make me sit back and look at the scuffed folder of calfskin and make me think. It would make you think too. Take a look at your own wallet and see what’s in it.

  I had the stuff spread out on the desk when I remembered the other pocket of my raincoat and pulled out the huge tweed triangle that had come from the girl’s coat. I laid it out on my lap with the night before shoved into some corner of my brain and looked at it as though it were just another puzzle, not a souvenir of death.

  The cloth had come apart easily. I must have grabbed her at the waist because the section of the coat included the right-hand and pocket and part of the lining. I rubbed the fabric through my fingers feeling the soft texture of fine wool, taking in the details of the pattern. More out of curiosity than anything else, I stuck my hand inside the pocket and came up with a crumpled pack of cigarettes.

  She didn’t even have time for a last smoke, I thought. Even a condemned man gets that. She didn’t. She took one look at me and saw my eyes and my face and whatever she saw there yanked a scream from her lungs and the strength to pull her over the rail.

  What have I got locked up inside me that comes out at times like that? What good am I alive? Why do I have to be the one to pull the trigger and have my soul torn apart afterwards?

  The cigarettes were a mashed ball of paper in my hand, a little wad of paper, cellophane and tinfoil that smelt of tobacco and death. My teeth were locked together and when I looked down at my hand my nail ripped through the paper and I saw the green underneath.

  Between the cigarettes and the wrapper was another of those damnable green cards with the edges cut off at odd angles.

  Two murders. Two green cards.

  It was the same way backwards. Two green cards and two murders.

  Which came first, the murders or the cards?

  Green for death.

  Murder at odd angles. Two murders. Eight odd angles. Yes, two murders. The fat boy got what he was after. Because of him the girl was murdered no matter how. So I got him. I was a murderer like they said, only to me it was different. I was just a killer. I wondered what the law would say and if they’d make that fine difference now. Yeah. I could have been smart about it; I could have done what I did, called the police and let them take over then take the dirty medicine the papers and the judge and the public would have handed me. No, I had to be smart. I had to go and mix it up so much that if those bodies were found and the finger pointed at me all I could expect was a trip on that long road to nowhere.

  Was that why I did it ... because I felt smart? No, that wasn’t the reason. I didn’t feel smart. I was mad. I was kill crazy mad at the bastards the boy with the scythe pointed out to me and goddamn mad at all the screwy little minds and the screwy big minds that had the power of telling me off later. They could go to hell, the judge and the jury and all the rest of them! I was getting too sick and disgusted of fighting their battles for them anyway! The boy with the scythe could go to hell with the rest and if he didn’t like it he could come after me, personally. I’d love that. I wish there was a special agency called Death that could hear what I was thinking and make a try for me. I’d like to take that stinking black shadow and shove his own scythe down his bony throat and disjoint him with a couple of .45’s! Come on, bony boy, let’s see you do what you can! Get your white-haired judge and your good people tried and true and let’s see just how good you are! I think I’m better, see? I think I can handle any one of you, and if you get the idea I’m kidding, then come and get me.

  And if you’re afraid to come after me, then I’m going after you. Maybe I’ll know what I’m like then. Maybe I’ll find out what’s going on in my mind and
why I keep on living when fat cold-blooded killers and nice warm-blooded killers are down there shaking hands with the devil!

  I pulled the green card out of the cigarettes and matched it to the one from the wallet. They fitted—Twins. I put them in my shirt pocket, grabbed my coat and hat and slammed the door after me when I left the office.

  At a little after ten I pulled up outside the brick building that was the house of the law. Here was where the invisible processes went on that made cops out of men and murderers out of clues. The car in front of mine was an official sedan that carried the D.A.’s sticker and I smoked a butt right down to the bottom before I decided to try to reach Pat even if the fair-haired boy of the courts was around.

  I should have waited a minute longer. I had my hand on the door when he pushed through and it looked like a cold wind hit him in the face. He screwed his mouth up into a snarl, thought better of it and squeezed a smile out.

  Strictly an official smile.

  He said, “Morning.”

  I said, “Nice day.”

  He got in his car and slammed the door so hard it almost fell off. I waved when he drove by. He didn’t wave back. The old guy on the elevator took me upstairs and when I walked into Pat’s office I was grinning.

  Pat started, “Did you ...”

  I answered with a nod. “I did. We met at the gate. What got into the lad, is he sore at me?”

  “Sit down, Mike.” Pat waved his thumb at the straight-back wooden chair reserved for official offenders about to get a reprimand. “Look, pal, the District Attorney is only an elected official, but that’s a mighty big ‘only.’ You put him over a barrel not so long ago and he isn’t going to forget it. He isn’t going to forget who your friends are, either.”

  “Meaning you.”

  “Meaning me exactly. I’m a Civil Service servant, a Captain of Homicide. I have certain powers of jurisdiction, arrest and influence. He supersedes them. If the D.A. gets his hooks into you just once, you’ll have a ring through your nose and I’ll be handed the deal of whipping you around the arena just to give him a little satisfaction. Please quit antagonizing the guy for my sake if not for your own. Now what’s on your mind?”