The Long Night (19 page)

But neither an executive nor a clerk wears a shoulder holster to spoil the hang of his coat. Nor do they ask business callers if they're armed, like this guy was asking me.

“I've got a gun in my inside pocket,” I said.

In an expressionless voice, he said, “ Turn around and hand it to Miss Armitage—slowly and butt first. She'll take care of it until you leave . . . O.K.?”

“O.K.” I said. Miss Armitage was close beside me. I turned to face her and brought out my Smith & Wessen slowly like I'd been told. She didn't look too happy at the idea but she took the automatic from me and backed away carefully until she was out of my reach. Then she said, “You don't want me for anything else, Philip . . . do you?” She sounded breathless like she'd have been glad to loosen something.

The guy with the shoulder holster said, “No . . . I'll bring Mister—Wylie down to your office when he's ready to go. . . .”

She went downstairs with the .38 held close to her one-piece chest. At the foot of the stairs, she glanced back. I stood listening to the sound of her tight skirt going she-she-she-she along the corridor that soaked up her footsteps in the thick-pile carpet.

Behind me, Philip said, “Hold it like that, Mr. Wylie, for just——” His hands patted me around the waist and over
the rump and flitted down my legs. “Thanks. You can turn round now. I was only making sure.”

When I faced him, I said, “Your boss must be badly scared of somebody. Is it all right to ask who's gunning for him?”

“Sure it's all right,” Philip said. “Maybe he'll tell you, too.” He stepped back and then stopped. With a worried look in his eyes, he said, “Don't I know you?”

I said, “Do you?”

He put his head back and studied me from several angles while he chewed at his lip and pushed one eyebrow up towards his neatly-parted hair. After a few seconds, he said, “Haven't you seen me before?”

“Where should I have seen you?”

“The Woodkirk Hotel in Bridgeport. Mr. Warner owns it.”

“Yes?”

“Yes,” Philip said. “I'm the house dick there.”

“Until there's trouble,” I said, “house dicks should be neither seen nor heard. And I never get into trouble. Furthermore, I've never been inside the Woodkirk Hotel. So I haven't see you before. Satisfied?”

“For the moment. But I've still got an idea. . . .” He shrugged. “If I'm right, it'll come back to me later. Mean time——” he beckoned me to go ahead of him “—I'll take you to the boss.”

We walked along another corridor like the one on the floor below—Philip just a long pace behind me. Where the corridor intersected a narrower passage, a guy who could've been Philip's brother was balancing a wooden chair on its hind legs and resting his shoulders against the wall. When we got nearer, he let the chair down on to its four legs and stood up. He was wearing a shoulder holster, too.

With his eyes dismantling me and poking among the pieces, he said, “Have you frisked him?” The way he said it made me feel like I wasn't there.

Philip said, “His name is Wylie unless he's a liar. I think he's a liar. He was carrying a Smith & Wessen. 38 and he checked it with Miss Armitage without making any fuss. I'd say he's a widehead who thinks he knows all the answers. Watch him.”

The other guy made big eyes at me and grinned like he was using somebody else's face. He said, “Clasp your hands behind your head, Mr. Wylie, and forgive me taking liberties with you . . . but sometimes Philip isn't too strong on details . . . and there's . . . an old saying . . . that it's better. . . .” His voice ran on while he searched me in all the places Philip had searched and a few more besides, “. . . to be safe . . . than sorry . . . thanks.” Then he stepped back and nodded. “O.K. You're clean.”

I said, “Any more guys with familiar fingers between here and the inner shrine?”

“Don't act smart,” Philip said. “You might fall down the stairs on your way out. . . . Nat will take you to Mr. Warner and bring you back here to me. Be seeing you.” He talked like a man using one half of his mind while the other half tried to recall something elusive. I hoped he wouldn't remember what it was too soon.

Nat kept step with me along the narrow passage. We passed a couple of rooms that were too quiet to be anything but unoccupied. At the end of the passage there were two more doors facing each other. Behind one, a noiseless typewriter made a string of rapid dum-dum sounds interspersed with the slap of the carriage return and the ping of the bell.

We stopped outside the other door. Nat tapped lightly with the tips of his fingers and watched me from under his brows. After a moment, he tapped again.

A pleasant voice said, “Come in,” and a chair creaked as Nat turned the knob and pushed the door open. With a cold, warning light in his eyes, he murmured, “I'll be right here all the time you're in there . . . keep your nose clean——Mister Wylie.”

Lloyd Warner was a thick-set man crowding fifty, with a big head and iron-grey hair and fleshy, determined features. He looked like he'd been accustomed to getting his own way that long it had got to be a habit. He also looked like he was keeping late hours.

When the door closed behind me, he got out of his chair and came round the desk and held out his hand to me. He said, “Glad to know you, Mr. Wylie. I don't think we've met before . . . have we?”

I said, “No, we haven't. But I've been hearing a lot about you.”

He smiled uncertainly and loosened my hand. After he'd prospected me from north to south and east to west and come up with no yield, he said, “I've been trying to think why I haven't heard Deborah talk about you.” He made it sound like a question.

“You can stop trying,” I said. “Your daughter couldn't have done much talking about me even if she'd wanted to; she only met me once. And that was less than a week ago.”

“But I was given to understand——” His face still retained a remnant of his smile in case he'd need it again, but he was looking at me now the way the others had done.

“All I told Miss Armitage,” I said, “was that I knew your daughter. She assumed the rest. That suited me fine. So long as I could get this close to you, anything suited me.”

He went back round the desk and sat down and helped himself to a cigarette from a big silver box with his initials engraved on the lid. The box was half-empty and an ashtray alongside it was overflowing with stubs. It looked like Mister Warner was sleeping too little and smoking too much.

With the cigarette bobbing between his lips, he said, “What was it you wanted?” I couldn't see his legs but I'd have laid three-to-one his knee was resting against the button of a call-bell that would've let his watchdogs off the leash.

“Go easy with your alarm,” I said. “You've no reason to be afraid of me. I'm a member of your payroll—once removed.”

“Say that another way,” he said. Low down in his cheek, a little nerve was twitching.

“Miss Deborah has hired me to do a job you'll probably approve of,” I said. “That's if you didn't actually inspire it yourself.”

“What job?”

“A very simple one—although she thought it was worth ten thousand dollars.”

“What job?” His voice started down in his shoes and grew claws on the way up.

“She wants me to kill Richard Gilmore,” I said.

As though I had poked him in the diaphragm, Warner's mouth opened and his eyes tried to crawl inside his head. In
a thick tone like his throat had closed up on him, he said, “My God! Why should she . . .?” Smoke caught his breath and he choked over the rest.

Behind me, the door opened and Nat said, “I thought I heard. . . .” Then he waited for someone to tell him what he had thought he heard.

Warner got his breath back and said, “When I want you, I'll ring for you . . . get out!” The door closed.

He wiped his mouth with a handkerchief, blew his nose noisily, and swallowed the frog in his throat. Then he said, “I don't know what the game is, Wylie, but you're lying.”

I said, “You've got a phone at your elbow: call your daughter and see if I'm lying.”

“Why should she want to kill Gilmore?”

“That's another thing you can ask her at the same time.”

“Didn't she tell you?”

“Only by implication. She mentioned that Gilmore was after your hide, and I was expected to believe that his death would save your life. She hasn't a very high opinion of my intelligence,” I added.

It took Warner quite a time to think it over. He sat sucking at his cigarette and flicking little up-from-under glances at me while he did his thinking. Eventually, he said, “Why are you telling me this?”

“I thought we might do a deal.”

“What kind of deal?”

“The papers would lap up a story like that,” I said.

With smoke dribbling out of his mouth, Warner said, “Oh-h-h . . . I see. The idea is blackmail . . . eh? What if I don't play ball?”

“You know your own business best,” I said.

“Have you considered that I could hand you over to the two boys outside?”

“Gilmore works that way,” I said.

Warner did some more thinking. At last, he said, “How much do you want?”

“Supposing I told you money doesn't enter into it,” I said. “Firstly, because I'm not a blackmailer. And secondly, because you wouldn't pay, anyway. Only a fool pays. Your brand of folly lies in other directions.”

He stared at me for a long time with a distant fear struggling to show itself in his eyes. Whatever he said, he would have to commit himself. Yet he had to say something. Finally, he said, “What do you mean by my 'brand of folly'?”

“Could it be an apartment on Gifford Street?” I asked.

He must've been preparing himself for it; he must've known we'd get there sooner or later. But the shock still hit him hard. The skin around his mouth and nose went the colour of chalk and the nerve in his cheek jumped twice and went still. After a couple of attempts, he mumbled, “I don't know what you're talking about. Who lives at Gifford Street?”

“Right now,” I said, “nobody: nobody you know. But Judith Walker lived there—until somebody strangled her with one of her own belts. Or have you forgotten?”

“I—I don't know any Judith Walker.” He ran his fingers through his thick hair and eased his neck like it hurt. He looked a very sick man.

“Your face is making a liar of you,” I told him.

More time went by while the ferret in Warner's mind ran around trying to find a hole to creep into. When he realised it was no good, he said dryly, “Gilmour's the fool if he thinks he can make it stick . . . I'll go on fighting him until he's put away where he belongs.”

“An admirable sentiment,” I said, “and an admirable spirit. Just one thing: don't make the same mistake your daughter made. I don't work for King Gilmore. From what I've heard about him, I hate his guts.”

Warner took a long drag and funnelled smoke on to his lap. His eyes were confused. “That could be a come-on to gain my confidence.”

“You flatter yourself. The way the score stands right now, you've no option but to trust me. If you do, I might be able to help you.”

“Who says I need any help?”

I put on my hat and I buttoned my coat and I walked backwards to the door. He watched me the way a guy does when he expects something to happen and he knows the something is bound to be unpleasant. When I got to the door, he was still staring at me in silence. I said, “A man makes money and his money gives him a little power. Then he
makes more money and he finds himself with more power. Comes a time when he thinks his money can buy anything. And soon he gets to be like you: he thinks he can alter the laws of the United States. But he can't. With all his money, he can't buy his way out of that room upriver where there's a special chair for the guy who gets mixed up in first-degree murder.”

The sickness deepened in Warner's face and his skin went grey. In a thin voice, he said, “I didn't kill Judith Walker.”

“As the saying goes,” I said, “tell that to the judge.”

“If—if you come back and sit down,” Warner said, “I'll tell you. I guess I know who you are now. And I want you to know what happened the night Judith Walker died.”

I went back and I sat down.

With some characters, you can get the idea they'll sell you a bill of goods if you'll let them. So long as you eat the baloney, they'll go on slicing it.

But Warner was different. Warner told his story like it had been lying on his chest and he was glad to get rid of it. As he told it, some of his colour returned and he looked less of a zombie.

After he'd lit a fresh cigarette, he crossed his right leg over his left, then his left leg over his right, then he tucked them under his chair and rested his elbows on the desk and watched the cigarette burn out between his fingers.

He said, “I've been investigating King Gilmore and his dirty rackets ever since he had the gall to think—you heard he wanted to marry my younger daughter, Susan?”

“Yes,” I said. “I heard.”

“Gilmore threatened I'd be sorry for some of the things I'd said to him. I don't stand for one of his type threatening me, so I set an agency to work on him in the hope they'd
come up with something before the Grand Jury met in session at the beginning of next month. By a bit of luck, one of the agency operators dug out a red-hot witness who was willing to testify—if I'd promise him protection until the hearing and enough money to get out of the country afterwards.”

“And Gilmore got wind of the deal?”

“He must've done. How it got to his ears, I don't know, but the set-up I walked into must've been arranged by nobody else. A man in my position has enemies but not the kind——”