Лоуренс Блок - One Night Stands and Lost Weekends

I knew the killer now. I had his picture and his first name. The rest would take some finding, but the police were the ones who could pull it off.

“I have to make a phone call, Ed,” Jill said. “My answering service. And I want to use the little girl’s room.” She started to leave, then called back. “Ed, I could use a drink now. Will you order me a highball?”

She scooped up her purse and left the table. I sat there with an insurance policy, a roll of bills, and a stack of dirty pictures. I looked at the pics again — solely for investigational purposes, of course — and put them in their envelope and tucked the envelope into my jacket pocket. I put the policy in its envelope and pocketed the roll of bills. Then I went to the bar and got myself a fresh brandy and a rye and ginger ale for Jill.

When she came back to the table, she sipped her drink and smiled at me. We talked some more until we finished our drinks. Then we rose to leave. I gave her the insurance policy and the money. She didn’t ask for the pictures.

“What are you going to do now?”

“Call the police.”

“Why?”

“Why not? They can run down Ralph a lot faster than we can. And the sooner we level with them, the easier it will go. Do you know how many laws we’ve broken in the past twenty hours?”

“I’m used to breaking laws,” she said.

So was I, but I never felt too secure about it.

“Ed, wouldn’t it be better if we could give them Ralph’s full name? Wouldn’t that make it simpler all around?”

“Sure it would.”

“Jackie had a little black book,” she said. “It’s one of the tools of the trade, along with a bottle of Enovid and a strong stomach. I know where she kept hers.”

“Where?”

“In the apartment, and in a place where Ralph probably couldn’t find it.”

“Would his name be in it?”

“Of course. And if I could go there—”

“We could go to the police first,” I said. “Then we could hunt down the little black book.”

Jill made a face. “Let’s do this my way,” she said. “Please, Ed? Please?”

The cab stopped outside her building. Her key opened the outer door. Then she turned toward me and said, “Wait here for me, Ed. I’ll be down in a minute.”

“I’ll come up with you.”

“No. Wait here. If the police are there, Ed, it’s sensible for me to come walking in; it’s my home. But if you’re with me and they find out you’re a private detective, they’ll start asking a lot of questions we can’t answer.”

She had a point, but I said, “What about our friend Ralph?”

“He’s already been here and searched the place,” she said. “Why would he come back?”

I shrugged. “All right.”

Her feet led her hurriedly up the flight of carpeted stairs. I stayed in the hallway at the foot of the stairs, poised to ward off imaginary intruders. No intruders appeared. I reached for a pipe and listened as her key entered the lock upstairs and the door opened. I hauled out a pouch of tobacco and her door swung shut. I opened the pouch and started to fill the pipe and Jill screamed, “Ed...”

The scream was shrill and brittle. I dropped the pipe and the tobacco and dug my .38 out of the shoulder rig, simultaneously charging up the staircase. I was halfway up when a gun went off. The apartment had thick walls and a heavy door but that shot echoed loud and long through the building, and another scream followed its shattering concussion.

Her door was locked. I put the mouth of the .38 to the lock and shot it to hell and gone, gave the door a kick, and watched it fly open.

Jill was standing in the center of the room. She had a little gun in her little hand. Her dress was torn, her hair messed up. She was through screaming and she stood staring downward with wild and stricken eyes.

He was on the floor. Ralph, the mystery man, he of the bulldog jaw and the descending blackjack. He was on his back with his legs tangled awkwardly under him and his hands clutching out at nothing and a fountain of blood still gushing from the raw red wound in his throat.

She turned, saw me. I went to her and the gun spilled from her fingers and clattered on the floor. She put her head against my chest and wailed. I held her and her wailing stopped. After a while, she pushed me away, sucking in gulps of air. She looked ready to keel over. I led her to a chair and she sagged into it.

She said, “I should have... I should have let you... come with me. I didn’t think—”

“He was waiting for you.”

She managed to nod. “I came in. I closed the door... turned around and... he was pointing a gun at me. I tried to grab it and he grabbed at me and he tore my dress and—”

“Take it easy.”

“I can’t take it easy. I killed him. Good God, I killed him!”

I calmed her down. A cigarette helped. She smoked it greedily. Then I asked her how it had happened.

“I fought with him, I didn’t even fully realize what was happening. I just knew he was trying to shoot me, and I screamed. I must have deflected the gun... It went off and—”

Ralph lay dead, a bullet wound in his throat. I looked at Jill. The intruder had torn her dress and her bra in the struggle. Her body was visible to the beltline. She pulled the dress together in unnecessary modesty.

“It’s over now,” I said. I crossed the room and picked up the phone.

“I thought you were a friend of mine,” Jerry sneered.

“I am.”

“You should have called me when you found the girl in the park. You should have called me when the sister showed up at your apartment. You should have called me when you ran up against Traynor the first time. You should have—”

The dead man was Ralph Traynor. It said so in Jackie’s address book and on a batch of cards and papers in his wallet. He lived somewhere in Brooklyn.

“You should know better, Ed.”

I gave Jerry my side of it. I told him that my first aim was to keep the girl free and clear and save her from publicity and the killer. “You would have spotlighted her,” I said.

“I would have stuck her in a cell.”

“And we never would have gotten anywhere. You know that and I know it, dammit. My way worked.”

“It did?”

“Yes, Jerry. You have the killer. He’s dead, but he would have been just as dead in a year after a trial and a batch of appeals. The state comes out a few dollars ahead and the case is closed out that much faster.” I took a breath, smiled. “I know I played it cute. Maybe I was wrong. My reasons seemed good at the time.”

He sighed, then punched me in the arm to show that we were still friends. I took Jill by the arm and went down the stairs behind Gunther. A police car was parked in front alongside a fire hydrant. Jerry’s uniformed driver was at the wheel.

Jerry got in next to the driver and Jill and I sat in the back. The driver didn’t use the siren. We drove moderately across town, then went down to Centre Street on the East Side Drive.

It took time for them to get our statements. I gave them mine as quickly as possible in a little room with Gunther and a police stenographer. I took it from the top, starting with the first phone call the day before and concluding with the arrival of the law. I left out little things like the interlude with Jill at Maddy Parson’s apartment. Certain facts don’t belong in a police report.

Jill took a little longer with her statement. The stenographer typed them both up and we signed them.

“You can both go now,” Jerry said. “We’ll be getting a report from ballistics and a run-down on Traynor pretty soon. So far everything checks out.”

Jill nodded. She got to her feet and turned to me. “Are you coming, Ed?”