Part 41 (1/2)

”That's a chance I'll take. But I'm a big boy.”

She looked me up and down, the kind of look I had given her earlier. ”Yes,” she said evenly. ”You are.”

”Give me your apartment key.”

She went over to her purse and gave me a brown leather key-wallet. She started to hand it over; then she took it back and looked at it, frowning. ”This is Jackie's,” she said.

”What?”

”It happens all the time,” she said. ”We both have these things for our keys, same color, and we keep taking each other's-” She broke off and looked at me. Her eyes were bright, as though she were trying to put a smile on top of a scream. ”I keep forgetting she's dead. I talk about her as if she's still here...” She collapsed in a chair and cried. Her shoulders heaved from her sobs.

I'm no good at that sort of scene. The reality of her sister's death was first hitting home, and for the next hour or so there wasn't anything I or anybody else could do for her.

I took her dead sister's keys and said, ”Jill, I'll hurry back.”

There were three other apartments on the second floor besides the one I sought, and someone was standing in the hallway in front of one of them. I didn't want an audience when I opened Jill's door-New Yorkers are tolerant people, but there is no point in straining this inherent tolerance. I walked up to the third floor and waited. Then I went back to the second floor, emptied my pipe in a hall ashtray, and stood in front of Jill Baron's door.

I took out the key to the apartment, listened at the door, heard nothing. On a hunch I dropped to one knee and squinted myopically through the keyhole. The apartment was dark inside.

I stood up again, stuck the key in the lock, and turned. I twisted the doork.n.o.b, pushed the door open, and stepped into a black room. I was groping around for the light switch when the Empire State Building fell on my head.

It was good but not good enough. He caught me on the side of the head just above the ear and I did a little two-step and wound up on my knees. He moved in the darkness, coming in to throw the finisher. My head was rocky and my legs wouldn't behave. I managed to swerve out of the way of the blow and got to my feet, but my rubbery legs didn't want to hold me. He came at me again, a blur in the darkness, and something hard shot past my head. I ducked and swung, aiming for where his gut should be.

My aim was good but there was nothing behind the punch-the shot on the head had drained my strength. He backed away from the blow and hit me in the chest. It wasn't a hard punch but it sent me reeling.

Somehow, I got to the light switch. I flicked it on and saw him, moving toward me and blinking at the sudden burst of light. A big man, a fast man. A chin like Gibraltar and a chest like a beer barrel. Hamhock hands, and a leather-covered sap in one of them. He swung the sap. I dodged, caught it on one shoulder. My arm went numb and my fingers tingled. I tried to make my hand fish the .38 out from under my jacket, but my arm was having none of it. It wouldn't behave.

He moved at me, grinning. I doubled up a left hand and pushed it at him. He batted it out of the way casually and kept coming. I lowered my fat head and charged him like a bull, and he picked up that sap and let me have it right between the horns.

This time it worked. I caught a knee in the face on the way down but I barely felt it at all. I just noticed it, thinking, Ah, yes, I've been kneed in the face Ah, yes, I've been kneed in the face, taking note of it but not caring a h.e.l.l of a lot about it one way or the other. Then I blacked out...

FIVE.

I wasn't out long. Five minutes, ten minutes. I opened both eyes and blinked in the darkness and tried to get up, which was a mistake. I fell down again. It was as though someone had cut the tendons in my arms and legs. They just wouldn't do my bidding.

This time I stayed down for a while. I took deep breaths the way they do in the movies, and I also took inventory. My head felt like a sandlot baseball after nine innings. My shoulder was aching and my arm was numb.

I got up and, this time, stayed erect. The room was dark-apparently my ”friend” had shut off the lights before leaving-but I managed to find the light switch for the second time that night. This time, though, I was alone. I found a chair, collapsed into it, and smoked a cigarette.

There had been just the two of us, me and the man with the sap. But the room looked as if it had been the scene of a gang war. A bookcase stood empty on one wall, its contents heaped on the floor. Chair and sofa cus.h.i.+ons were scattered around. My friend had been looking for something. Whether he had found it, I couldn't tell.

I got up a little shakily and checked out the rest of the apartment. There were two bedrooms branching off a hallway, one Jackie's, the other Jill's. Each came equipped with a huge bed, which more or less figured. Each had been searched, and was a mess. I gave the rubble a quick once-over, pawing through mounds of lacy underwear that would have given a fetis.h.i.+st a quick thrill. I didn't find anything very interesting. I didn't expect to.

It was beginning to look more and more like blackmail. My man was systematic, I reasoned. He had somehow trailed Jackie to the meeting place in the park, then got close enough to her to put a gun to her forehead and shoot. Then he had doubled back to the girls' apartment for a crack at Jill. Jill wasn't there, of course, so he'd jimmied the door and rifled the rooms for the pictures or tapes or whatever it was that she was holding on him.

He might have found them and he might not-I couldn't say. But it was an odds-on bet that, if he didn't find them, they weren't around. The place had been turned upside down.

It was too late to search the place. My friend had already taken care of that. But it made sense to straighten up a little. The way things stood, anybody who stumbled into the apartment for one reason or another was going to figure out that things were not according to Hoyle. A maid or a janitor might wander in and call the cops, and that would fix up their body-identification problem for them.

The longer it took the police, the more time I had to work. So I went through the apartment like somebody's maid, putting the books back in the bookcase, fluffing up cus.h.i.+ons and placing them where they belonged, stuffing clothes into drawers and closets. I didn't go overboard. The place did not have to pa.s.s muster, just so long as it lost the aftermath-of-a-hurricane look.

There was a bottle of scotch in one of the closets. This slowed me down a little.

At which point the doorbell rang.

I sat down softly on an overstuffed chair and waited. Maybe they would go away. Maybe they would come back tomorrow. A feeble hope at best, but somehow I couldn't see myself going to the door, opening it, and saying h.e.l.lo to a couple of detectives from Homicide. They might get upset.

”Hey,” someone yelled. ”Hey, open up in there, w.i.l.l.ya?”

I got up reluctantly, walked to the door.

”Hey, Jackie,” the voice yelled again. ”Open up, Jackie. What the h.e.l.l, open the door!”

This was no cop.

”Who's there?” I said.

”It's Joe Robling, dammit, and where the h.e.l.l is Jackie?”

A customer. A drunk customer, from the sound of things. I dug my wallet out of a pocket, opened the door, flipped open the wallet, and shoved it in the man's face. He blinked and I pulled the wallet back and buried it once more in my pocket. I had given him a quick look at my driver's license but he didn't know the difference.

”Crawley, Vice Squad,” I said. ”Who the h.e.l.l are you, chum?”

His eyes clouded, then turned crafty. He was sad because Jackie was not available and scared because I was there, holding him by the arm. ”I-I made a mistake,” he stammered. ”I must have the wrong apartment.”

”You know where you are?”

”Sure.”

”This place is a cathouse, chum. You know that?”

He tried hard to look shocked. He didn't manage it at all. He looked lost and comical but I didn't laugh at him.

”Maybe I better be going,” he said.

I gave him ten minutes to disappear completely, then turned off all the lights and left the Baron girls' apartment. The hallway was clear this time. I walked down carpeted stairs, through the vestibule, and out to the street. There was no one around. I walked two blocks without spotting a tail, stepped into a hotel lobby on Central Park South, and came out on Fifth Avenue without anyone behind me.

SIX.

Jill Baron drew back when she saw me. ”You look terrible,” she said. ”What happened?”

We sat on Maddy's couch and I told her. Outside, the night was soundless. We were in a business neighborhood and the businesses had all shuttered their doors long ago.

”Did he hurt you badly, Ed?” she asked.