The bride wore black (22 page)

She nodded. "Yes, he told me. I knew. He told me all but the names. He told me what would happen to him if he quit. I didn't believe him. I wasn't as familiar with violence then. I told him it was either that or me. I didn't think it was as serious as all that, I didn't believe it could be. You see, I loved him. He took a week or two to make up his mind, and then he made his choice. Me."

For the first time Julie Killeen looked directly at Wanger. She spoke quietly, as though telling him some other woman's story. "He changed his quarters. Our meetings became furtive. I suggested that we go to the poHce for protection, but he told me he was in it as deep as whoever it was he feared. He said we'd go away. We'd go away/a5/, right from the church door straight to the ship. That was another thing I insisted on, a church wedding." She smiled grimly. "You see, I killed him, in a way. That made my obligation even greater afterward." She hesitated a moment, weary, then went on.

"He said we wouldn't come back right away. Maybe we wouldn't come back for a long time after. He was right. We went away all right but not together. And we neither of us ever came back again.

"I knew I had to take him on those terms or not at all. There was never much question of a choice in it for me. I wanted him. Lord, how I wanted him. I used to lie awake

at nights breaking down the time there still was to go without him into minutes and seconds. It made it seem shorter that way. His business. ..." She shrugged. "He promised he'd give it up. That was all my conscience was strong enough to demand."

"The mistake you both made," Wanger mused almost to himself, "was in thinking that there's ever any quitting the game he was in. They'd chalked up several killings behind them in the course of business.' And then there was the question of the final division of the profits, which is always the main rub. Corey couldn't let him go. They had each other deadlocked."

The woman interrupted. There was fury in her quiet voice.

"He quit. He not only quit but made himself over. Mr. Corey, the dashing man-about-town. That's what he's become! Why couldn't he have let Nick go? Why did he have to kill him?"

For the first time in his career Wanger was answering questions instead of asking them. There was a quality of despair in Julie Killeen that carried them both outside the rules of captive and captor.

"Yes, Corey quit. But by the time he tried it there was no one left to reckon with but himself, don't forget. When Killeen tried it, there was still Corey. And the way he did it wasn't any too reassuring. Just broke the connection oflf short, put himself out of reach probably listening to your well-meant advice but with enough on Corey to send him to the chair in three or four round trips. Not to mention several thousand dollars that Corey thought was coming to him. Corey had his reasons, all right. He wouldn't have known a moment's peace from then on. There would have been an ax hanging over him every minute of his life. He went out to get Nick while the getting was good, before Killeen got him

first. The church was the only place Corey would be sure to find him. Before that, Nick evidently didn't show himself."

"He laid low, very low," she said quietly, almost indifferently.

"Nick had moved. Corey didn't know who the girl was, where she lived."

"We met in the dark in the movies, always two seats in the last row."

"But he finally thought of a way. He went around to all the churches asking questions. Somebody slipped up, and he found out where and when the wedding was going to take place. Then he rented a room that commanded the side entrance. He knew Killeen would use the side entrance. He took a gun in there with him, and a package of food, and he didn't go away from that window for forty-eight hours straight. He figured the time of the ceremony might be moved up at the last minute as a precaution."

There was silence in the room. Wanger thought of the bullet that had killed Nick Killeen, the bullet that had gone over the heads of five other men and yet had inevitably caused the death of four of them. He sighed and looked at Julie Killeen.

"You he never knew who you were from first to last. You were just that unimportant httle white doll-like figure next to his target. And he you never knew who he was either, did you the man who took you to his room one night, the man who had killed your husband?"

The woman didn't answer, didn't seem to hear.

"Afterward, he sent a wreath to the funeral, in care of the warden of the church."

The woman shivered, put up a hand as though Wanger had struck her.

He saw that he had convinced her at last.

He got up, put the manacle around her wrist, closing it almost gently, as if trying not to disturb her bitter reverie. She seemed not to notice it.

"Let's go," he said gruffly. She stood up, suddenly became conscious of the steel

that linked their wrists. She looked at Wanger and nodded gravely.

"Yes," said Julie Killeen, "it's time for me to go."

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