Lawrence Block - Masters of Noir - Volume 1

I nodded. “And she lied about how long she was in the car with Ambler because she was covering up for Burnett. So it was either one of them.”

The Skipper was a cautious guy. “Not necessarily, but it’s worth thinking about.”

“Either one,” I said, drawing smoke into my lungs.

In spite of my badge, they refused to give me a free ticket at the box office of the Empire Theater, so I had to buy one, charging it to expenses. I wasn’t stingy with the city’s money; I got me a seat in the third row orchestra.

Before the curtain rose, somebody came out and announced that Bill Burnett’s part would be played by an understudy. He didn’t mention that Burnett couldn’t show up because he was in jail.

The play was one of these grim dramas about people suffering from the weather and each other in New England. Holly Laird had her golden hair piled up on top of her head and wore a gingham dress that was cut so as not to hide her figure — the figure I’d seen a lot of this morning. And she could act. I wasn’t much for the theater, but I could tell an actress when I saw one. She was so good and, along with her talent, so easy to look at, that she wouldn’t need an angel to persuade a director to give her leading roles.

I began to have a doubt, but only a small one.

I knew she wasn’t going to be in the last scene, which was the third scene of the second act. Just before the second scene ended, I went backstage. My badge was good for something after all; it got me past the doorman.

I caught Holly Laird as she was on the way to the iron stairs running up to the dressing rooms. “Just a minute, miss,” I said.

If ever a girl looked hate at a man, she did. So what? Why should I care what a golden-haired bitch felt about me?

“We know you were sitting in the car with Ambler for half an hour or more,” I told her.

She took time to think it over, trying to make up her mind if she could get away with denying it. “We were talking,” she said.

“That’s not what you said yesterday and this morning.”

“I didn’t think it was important. We were discussing plays to do later in the season. He was interested in Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion , and I became quite excited at the prospect of playing Eliza Doolittle.”

“You sure that’s what excited you, miss?” I drawled, striking a match.

She took a step backward and gripped the banister of the iron stairs. “Why are you persecuting us?” she said.

“I’ve got a job to do, miss. I do it.”

Behind me a voice said, “My God, the demon detective again!” George Hoge came up to us, intense eyes and dangling cigaret and all. “Haven’t you done enough damage, depriving me of my male lead?”

“Get used to it,” I said. “Maybe you’ll be losing your female lead too.”

Holly uttered a cry and dashed up the stairs.

“Cops!” Hoge said, spitting the word.

There was nothing to be gained by answering him. I went outside.

The parking lot back of the theater was empty of people. The play wasn’t over yet; they were still inside. I moved between two rows of cars toward mine at the far end, and I didn’t see him or hear him. My first warning was a terrific weight slamming down on the back of my neck, and then it was too late to do anything about it.

My legs buckled. I clawed air and fell forward and my hands came to rest on the cindered ground. On hands and knees I started to twist around. The light was dim there at the fringe of the parking field floodlights; I glimpsed a shape, a pair of pants, a foot leaving the ground. I tried to pull away from that oncoming foot, but the blow on the head had made me sluggish. The toe of the shoe caught me in the temple and knocked me over on my side.

Before I could get my gun out from under my shoulder, he kicked me again, this time flush in the face. Then he faded into the night.

After a while I heard people coming out of the theater and heading toward their cars. I roused myself. I climbed up off the cinders and staggered to my car and threw myself in.

Nothing was broken in my face, though I could feel the swelling over my left cheek. Blood trickled down the back of my neck. I sopped it up with my handkerchief. The punk hadn’t done a very good job on me.

But he was in jail, so how could he have done it?

The cars rolled out of the parking lot. By the time most of them were gone, I felt strong enough to drive. I drove to the city jail.

Ernie Crull was the turnkey on duty. He grinned at my swollen cheek and discolored temple. “I’d like to see the other guy,” he said. “Where is he — in the hospital?”

“Not yet,” I said. “How’s Bill Burnett keeping?”

“Left our bed and board an hour ago when his bail was paid.”

“Bail this late at night?”

“You got influence, you can get a judge to work all hours. He had influence. None other than Mrs. John Ambler. She also put up the bail money.”

I fingered my swollen cheek.

Home was a couple of furnished rooms at a second-rate hotel. I’d lived there for seven years, and it had never stopped being a lonesome place.

The alarm clock on the dresser said one-thirty when I let myself in. I looked at myself in the mirror. In addition to the marks from the two kicks, there were now scratches on my face. The knuckles of both my hands were split open.

I couldn’t remember it clearly, that last hour. I couldn’t even remember driving from the city jail to that street, but there I’d been, standing in the shadow of the building in front of which John Ambler had been murdered, and after a while Martha had come up the street, light from a lamppost catching the gold of her hair, and she was hanging onto the arm of her lover, the skinny accountant.

Was I going nuts? That hadn’t been Martha, of course. I’d never see her again. It had been Holly Laird being taken home by Bill Burnett.

And I’d taught the punk that he couldn’t slug and kick me, Gus Taylor, the hard cop, and get away with it.

Nobody else had been on the street at that late hour. But pretty soon lights went on in windows and people were sticking their heads out because Holly Laird was screaming. She clawed at my face and screamed while Burnett was trying to get up from the sidewalk where I’d knocked him. I brushed her aside and helped him get up and pounded him with both fists till he went down again.

Then a harness bull had been there, a young squirt I knew but whose name I couldn’t think of, and who knew me, and he was saying over and over, “What the hell, Taylor! What the hell!”

“Get your paws off me,” I said and squirmed away from the harness bull. But I didn’t go after Burnett again.

It had become quiet on the street, though some people had come out of the houses and others had their heads poked out of windows. Holly Laird sat sobbing on the sidewalk with her boy friend’s head on her lap.

I heard myself say to the harness bull, “Look at my face. The punk slugged me and kicked me in the Empire Theater parking lot.”

Burnett’s battered head stirred on the girl’s lap. “He’s crazy!” he said thickly. “I haven’t seen him since” — he swallowed blood — “since early this afternoon.”

“He hates us, officer,” Holly said to the harness bull. “I don’t know why.”

I had walked away from them then, my feet shuffling, my shoulders heavier than I could carry. I had gone a block past my car before I had remembered it and turned back for it, and now here I was in the loneliest home a man had ever had.

I slumped in my armchair, sucking my cracked knuckles.

Burnett said he hadn’t slugged me in the parking field. I believed him. Because if he had slugged me, wouldn’t he have admitted it? Lying battered by my fists on the sidewalk and hating my guts, wouldn’t he have boasted of it? Would he have denied it after what I’d done to him, and more than that, to the girl he loved?