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I
stopped. It wasn’t any use. If they had got sore or tried to
cut me off, I would have let them have it with both barrels. But both
of them just sat looking at me rather sadly. I suppose they didn’t
like it any better than I did, but they liked to hold onto their
jobs.

After
a silence Woodfinch spoke to his pipe. “I’d move on Moon
in a minute if I had something I could make stick. The bag might give
me it.”

It
was a merry-go-round. Words were only bringing us back to the same
place.

“
All
right,” I said, “assume that I’m a murderer and
have the bag and think more of what’s in it than I do of my
daughter. My daughter is still entitled to police protection.”

“
That’s
not Homicide business, but we’ll see that she gets it.”

Scavuzzo
slid off the desk and came to the side of my chair. “I’ll
tell you what you’ll get, Mr. Breen. Your house will be watched
day and night. Your daughter will be taken to school and called for.
When she plays in the street, a plain-clothes man will hang around.
Maybe Moon will get her even then; cops are only human. Or he’ll
decide to snatch your wife instead while we’re guarding your
daughter. Or he’ll just wait. I told you about the Cantor boy.
They had him guarded for six weeks, and two days after the guards
were pulled off the boy was gone.”

“
God!”
I said and leaned toward Woodfinch’s desk. “Suppose I
send both my wife and daughter away? I have a sister in Newark.”

“
It
would take Moon an hour to find out where they are,” Woodfinch
told me. “And remember, it’s not just Moon. He has an
organization.”

For
the first time in my grown years I wanted to put my face in my hands
and weep.

“
I
haven’t got it,” I said, and my voice sounded piteous in
my ears.

Woodfinch
shrugged. “We’ll do what we can. But if I were in your
place — “ He waved his pipe and restored it to his mouth.

I
put on my hat.

They
didn’t say anything. I walked to the door.

“
Don’t
be a damn fool, Breen,” Lieutenant Woodfinch said to my back.

Without
looking back at him and Scavuzzo, I went out.

CHAPTER
NINE

I
walked toward home through quiet, dim streets, and considered how I
could kill George Moon. There was no need to try to be clever; no
matter how I worked it, Lieutenant Woodfinch would know at once that
I had done it. George Moon had to die. The way to see to it that he
did was to get a gun and shoot him.

I
had a gun — a Germany Army Luger I’d brought home from
Europe. Tomorrow I would buy cartridges for it. I would find out
where he lived and wait outside his house. I had never seen him, but
he would be the only man five or six inches taller than myself going
in or out of that house. To make absolutely certain, I would step up
to him and say: “George Moon?” And when he admitted that
he was, I would take the Luger out of my pocket and put a bullet —

A
terrific weight fell on me. I clawed air and fell to my hands and
knees. I looked for what had hit me and saw only a long, dark
furniture warehouse on my left. I started to rise, and the toe of a
shoe flashed out and kicked me in the face. It knocked me down on one
shoulder.

My
eyes rolled frantically in their sockets, and I saw him standing over
me. Light flowed obliquely from across the street and touched his
squat, solid torso and the thick, short object dangling from his
hand.

“
I’ve
plenty to pay you back for, sport,” he said.

I
knew his voice. I lifted my head a little and looked up at Larry’s
broad face hideous in the shadows. Anger gave me sudden strength. I
put my palms flat on the sidewalk and started to lift myself. Once I
had knocked him cold in the cramped space of a car. I could do it
again if I could get up to my feet.

Larry
kicked me again in the face. I fell on my side.

“
Let’s
see how tough you are, sport,” he said. “Let’s see
how much you can take.”

I
saw his foot go back. My head was too heavy to lift. I pushed a
forearm in front of my face, but the rest of my body was open to his
foot. There was nothing I could do about it.

All
at once Larry was running away.

I
heard a voice shout, “Hey!” and then somebody was bending
over me. “You get into a fight, Mr. Breen?”

The
face of the detective named Perc was inches above my own.

“
That’s
Larry!” I said thickly.

“
Who?”

“
Vital’s
partner. For God’s sake, get him!”

It
took a couple of seconds for the information to work through the
detective’s skull. Then he said, “That guy!” and
leaped to his feet.

I
turned my head a little. The detective was pulling out his gun as he
ran, but by that time Larry had disappeared around the corner. I
tried to sit up. My stomach churned, my head spun, the whole left
side of my face was numb. I lay on the sidewalk with one arm propping
me up and breathed noisily through the mouth. I remained alone in the
heart of Brooklyn at a still early hour of the night.

Then
I realized why no other person had come by, why no heads were stuck
out of windows. There were no dwellings within a hundred feet of
where I lay. The warehouse covered half the block on this side, and
across the street there was a closed garage. Larry had picked his
spot. And the time that had passed since he had hit me over the head
could still be measured in seconds. The detective had been shadowing
me and so couldn’t have been far behind. It does not take long
to slug a man and kick him in the face.

A
car approached, swept by. I was unnoticed or ignored as a drunk. From
the opposite direction a second pair of headlights crawled toward me.
This car stopped at the curb. A woman got out.

“
Adam
Breen!” she cried and bent over me.

She
was again wearing that short, belted blue coat, and the wide blue
ribbon around her long bobbed hair. She got an arm under my shoulders
and helped me to sit up.

“
Your
face!” Molly Crane said. “Who did it?”

“
A
guy who lay in wait for me,” I told her. “He slugged me.”

“
But
why?”

It
was her job to ask questions of people who were dying or sick or hurt
and then write about them in the paper. It was too much effort for me
to make pointless conversation, so I didn’t.

The
detective was coming back. He was alone. I sat with my head against
Molly Crane’s hip and watched the man’s quick nervous
strides.

“
He
got away,” he said, irritably. “Chances are he ran into
one of the apartment houses around the corner.” He peered down
at me. “That was Larry, you said — the one you claim was
Jasper Vitals partner?”

“
Now
will you cops believe he’s real?”

“
Well,
what I saw of him answered your description. A short, wide guy. Too
bad I didn’t know him right away. From where I was it looked
like you two started to scrap. I came to break it up. I didn’t
know you were being slugged.” The detective stooped and came up
with my hat. “Crown bashed in. You were lucky you wore a hat.
What’d he do to your face?”

Molly
Crane said angrily: “Can’t you see Mr. Breen is badly
hurt? Call an ambulance.”

“
Yeah,
and send out a prowl car alarm.” He glanced around and then at
Molly. “Will you stay with him while I phone?”

“
Of
course. But hurry. He’s bleeding.”

I
touched my numb face and then looked at my fingers. There was less
blood than I had expected. The detective was already halfway to the
corner.

“
Do
you think you can stand?” Molly Crane asked me.

I
got up to my feet with only a little help from her. My legs wobbled.
She held me with a strong, competent .arm about my waist,

“
What’s
the matter with him, lady?” A man without a collar and a woman
in a cloth coat thrown over a housecoat stood on the other side of
me.

“
He
fell and hurt himself,” Molly Crane told them. “Will you
please open that car door?”

The
man hurried around me to pull open the door. “We live down the
block,” he said. “My missus saw him laying on the
sidewalk and called me to go out and see.”

“
I
thought maybe he was hit by a car,” the woman said.

“
He
fell and hurt himself,” Molly said. “Can you get into the
car, Mr. Breen?”

“
What
about the ambulance?” I said.

Her
arm pressed me forward. “Sit and wait for it in the car.”

I
got into the coupe under my own power. I sank low in the seat and put
my head back. It felt better that way.

The
car started to move, and Molly Crane said: “Why wait for an
ambulance? You’re not hurt that badly. I know where you live.
In fact, I just came from your house.”

I
closed my eyes. For a while I was afraid that I would pass out. I
clung to consciousness and gradually my stomach stopped jumping. It
was only a three-minute ride to my house, but the car was still
moving. My sense of time must have gone haywire, like in a nightmare.
Cars swished by us in surprising numbers. That was odd because cars
didn’t go fast enough on Brooklyn residential streets to swish
and we couldn’t be near any speedway. I opened my eyes. Many
pairs of headlights bore down on us and swooped by. We were driving
between high concrete walls. I sat up too quickly and pain nearly
tore my head off.

“
Where
are we?”

“
The
Manhattan Bridge,” Molly Crane said and glanced sideways at me.

This
time I straightened up more slowly, and my head could take it. It was
the two-way lower pass over the Manhattan Bridge all right, and ahead
I could see the Canal Street end.

“
Why
didn’t you drive me home?”

“
With
you looking like that?” she said. “You’d scare your
wife to death.”

“
Then
why didn’t you wait for the ambulance?”

She
kept her eyes on the road. “I can clean up your face in my
place.”

The
car went over a bump and shook me, tightening a ring of fire around
my skull. I sank back. I was too exhausted to argue. And it wouldn’t
have done any good.

She
cut across Manhattan and then drove north and stopping the car on
West Fourth Street. She got out first and came around to my side. I
put a foot out and carefully pushed my body after it. My head was
endurable if I didn’t move it suddenly. I clung to her arm. She
led me into a tenement house which had been scrubbed, and chopped up
into small apartments. On the stairs I smelled perfume in her hair
which, unlike most women’s hair, was not lower than my nose
when I was standing.

Her
apartment was the usual thing in renovated tenements. You stepped
directly into a living room which was overcrowded by a couch and an
armchair and a table and minor stuff. The kitchenette was an alcove
with a curtain in front of it. The bedroom and bathroom led directly
from the living room.

I
sat at one end of the couch while she arranged cushions against the
other arm of it. I wondered if there was a husband.

“
Do
you live here alone?” I asked. She patted the cushions down.
“All alone.”

There
was a phone on a small stand near the entrance door.

I
was rousing myself to make the effort to stand up when I felt her
hands on me. “Here, let me help you off with your jacket.”
She stripped it off, loosened my collar and eased me down on the
cushions.

“
The
skin isn’t even broken,” she said. “There’s
only a slight bump. He must have hit you with something like a rubber
sap and your hat deadened the blow. You were lucky.”

She
was a fine nurse, quick-moving and gentle. She fed me aspirins and
washed the blood off my face and cleaned the cuts on my cheek. I
winced when her probing fingers touched the sore spot on the back of
my skull.

“
I
mean it,” she said. “You say he kicked you twice, but
there isn’t anything broken in your face. Only a nasty bruise
and a couple of cuts. I suppose you rolled with the kicks.”

“
I
don’t remember. He probably wanted to put his foot through my
face. Can I have a drink?”

“
Water
or coffee. Hard stuff won’t help your headache.”

“
Coffee,”
I said.

I
lay flat on my back with my face turned to her as she puttered in the
kitchenette. She wore a beige jersey dress which. blended with her
honey-brown hair and molded her figure. She could have got a job
anywhere for a Greek goddess or an Amazon queen.

I
shifted my eyes to the phone. I felt strong enough to go to it. I
didn’t move. I closed my eyes, and suddenly I was asleep.

CHAPTER
TEN

When
I awoke, the overhead light was out and only a subdued floorlamp
spread a soft glow from one corner of the room. Molly Crane sat in
the armchair. She held a tall, half-empty glass on her crossed knee.
Her face was as immobile and classic as marble. I thought that she
was as beautiful as any woman I had ever seen.