Michael Collins - Walk a Black Wind

Beyond the wall he began to pace. “She’d been strange a while up in Dresden. Sort of keyed up. When she broke off, she said I was just another big fake. I was mad, so was Uncle Joel-all his big plans for getting in with the Mayor. He got drunk, had a fight with Fran. It was the last I saw of her.”

Keefer stopped pacing, and there was no sound or movement on the other side of the wall. Until Celia Bazer spoke.

“Let’s go home, Frank. Get out of this city.”

He didn’t answer, but I pictured him nodding, and he picked up the telephone. He asked for a bellhop. I left room 411, and went down to the lobby to wait.

They came out of the elevator with an ancient bellman who struggled with three bags. Frank Keefer carried the other two bags-Celia Bazer was his woman again. While he paid, I went out ahead of them, and ran to the corner to try for a taxi. The first three were taken. I looked back and saw Keefer loading the bags into a flashy red Buick convertible. I saw something else, too.

As an empty cab stopped for me, a man in a camel’s hair topcoat walked past and got into a green Cadillac parked behind me. The same Caddy I had seen before going into the hotel. All at once I knew he was tailing me. I could find the girl and Keefer in Dresden. I wanted to talk to my tail.

I gave the cabbie my office address. The Cadillac came behind us, far enough back to make me know he didn’t want to be noticed. The taxi dropped me at my building. I went up.

My corridor was as dark and empty as usual. That was fine now. I ran into my office, turned on the light, and got my big old pistol. There was a janitor’s closet near the stairs. I made it, left the door open a crack, as footsteps came up.

He passed like a shadow. I saw good shoulders, but he was two inches shorter than me. I slid out behind him. Sometimes I forget I have only one arm, but this time I had my gun for a club, at least. He heard me, and turned.

I had a glimpse of a high coat collar, a low hat brim, two dark eyes, and some very white teeth-and no more. He lunged at me without hesitation. I swung my heavy pistol for his skull-and hit nothing at all.

He was there, and then he wasn’t. Something hit me in the belly. A hard fist in my face. I hit the wall with my back, swung my pistol at him again, and missed again. Two fists hit one-two in my belly, another landed solid on my jaw. He had three arms, at least. I thought how unfair that was as my chin was hit and I landed on the corridor floor on my face.

He turned me over. I saw a face that was broad and olive-skinned. A gray homburg, gray coat-No! A camel coat…

“Fortune?”

He grew smaller and smaller like a mirage fading down a tunnel. His head became as small as a pin, and his thick body stretched up and up to touch the ceiling.

“Fortune?” he said. “It’s John Andera. You okay?”

He slipped into focus, became normal size, and I saw that he was standing over me where I lay on the floor of the corridor. John Andera, not the man who had hit me-unless?

“A man tailed me,” I said, my jaw stiff and heavy. “A little shorter than you, not as broad. Brown eyes, camel’s hair topcoat. Know him?”

“No,” John Andera said. “What did he want with you?”

“I was going to find that out by ambushing him.”

Some ambush. I wondered if I was ever going to learn that even with two arms I’d never have been a fighter. My “victim” had been a fighter, maybe a real one, the way he had moved.

“Did Francesca know any ex-professional fighters?”

“I don’t know,” Andera said. “I came for a report.”

I sat up. My left eye was puffed, my face hurt, and my belly ached. But it was all bruises-too fast to have done much damage. I had gone down, stunned, but not really out. I stood up. It could only have been minutes or less.

“You didn’t see anyone coming out of here?” I said.

“No, no one,” Andera said.

“Come on.”

I went down the stairs as fast as I could on stiff legs with John Andera behind me. In the gray noon only a few people walked along my street. Andera stood beside me, and I saw the green Cadillac. It was double-parked across the street with its motor running.

“There!” I said to Andera.

I heard the three heavy shots as something slammed into my head and the street went black.

A pale green ceiling, and a chemical smell. The ceiling was supposed to be a dirty ivory, my corridor. Why did my corridor smell of chemicals? I was on the floor of my corridor, I’d been knocked there. I… but why was the corridor so soft, my hand sinking in when I pressed?

I was on the floor outside my office. I had to be, of course. The man in the green Cadillac had…

What slammed into my head?

Shots. I’d been shot!

The shadow bent over me, close. A face.

“Did you see anything, Dan? Who shot you?”

Captain Gazzo not John Andera looked down at me, very close, and he was standing up, so I was high off the floor. How could a man float off the floor on a soft cloud if he was still alive and…

“Dan? Did you get a look at who shot you?”

“No,” my own voice said from somewhere.

“A guess?” Gazzo said.

“No.”

The pale green ceiling was a hospital room. The antiseptic smell. A soft, high bed. Now I knew that, so some time must have passed. A lot of time, or a little?

“How bad am I?” I said to the ceiling.

A face appeared over me. Captain Gazzo-again or still?

“That was this morning,” Gazzo said.

I must have asked him out loud. I hadn’t thought I had.

“You’re okay,” Gazzo said. “One shot creased your skull good. Probably a forty-five. We found you out cold on the sidewalk. You’ve got a nice groove on your head, and a fair concussion. No real harm, you’re full of dope. You were alone, Dan? You didn’t see who shot?”

I hadn’t seen who shot. The Cadillac, yes, but there were other green Cadillacs, and I hadn’t seen where the shots had come from. Had I been alone? No, but yes. For now.

“I didn’t see,” I said. “I was alone.”

“You’re bruised up from something else, too.”

“I was hit,” I said. “Earlier. Small man, didn’t know him. He hit good. I’m tired, Captain.”

It was dark outside when I sat up. They told me it was still Saturday. Still? Then I’d lost Friday already. I managed to eat. John Andera came to see me after dinner. He was nervous and different. His face was neutral. The shock was gone, the stunned look, as if my shooting had steadied him. Or maybe it was only the way he reacted to action and real danger he could come to grips with.

“How are you?” he asked.

“Not bad. You weren’t hit?”

“No. I didn’t see who shot, I was down on the sidewalk.”

“What about the green Cadillac?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t notice a Cadillac. There wasn’t one when I got up, when the police came.”

I said, “Someone is scared of me. It means that Francesca wasn’t killed by chance, or in some robbery. She was killed for a reason someone wants to stay hidden.”

“But you don’t know who,” Andera said, “or what he wants to hide, so it’s no use to me. What else did you find?”

I told him about Mayor Crawford and his political fights, what Celia Bazer had said about Francesca and men, and about the blond, Frank Keefer. “Keefer threw Celia Bazer over for Francesca in Dresden, then she threw him over. I don’t think he’d have liked that. Did Francesca ever mention him?”

“No,” Andera said. “She mentioned no one.”

“She seems to have been pretty isolated down here,” I said. “What did she talk about on your dates?”

“Us.”

“Where did you meet her for your dates?”