So Nude, So Dead Page 16

  He sensed Ray’s presence, lifted his bent head to look up into his face.

  Ray’s pulse quickened, and his fingers tightened involuntarily on the banister.

  He remembered the deserted farmhouse in Connecticut, and the devastating power of the .45 that had lashed into his face. The muscles alongside his mouth quivered with silent rage mixed with fear.

  Through tight lips, he whispered, “Hello, Hank.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Hank’s brows pulled together, and puzzlement clouded his brown, heavily lidded eyes. Then recognition crossed his face with the delicate slowness of a skulking cat. A grin tilted the corners of his mouth, ludicrously awry beneath his twisted nose.

  “If it ain’t the junkie,” he said.

  He stood at the bottom of the steps, looking up at Ray, his long arms hanging at his sides, his fingers widespread and loose. Ray stood on the third step, his eyes alert, one hand still clutching the banister.

  “Visiting?” Ray asked.

  Hank didn’t answer. His eyes raked over the bruises on Ray’s face. “You don’t look half bad,” he said, “considering.”

  “You tried,” Ray said, his voice humorless. “You sure as hell tried.”

  “Yeah,” Hank said dryly. His eyes blinked, and Ray saw the sudden flick of his wrist as his hand started up toward the holster under his left armpit. Warning screamed inside Ray’s head. He tensed himself and leaped off the steps.

  He clamped his fingers around Hank’s right wrist as the .45 swung free of the holster. They stood body to body now, Hank’s hand tight around the grip of the .45, Ray’s fingers tight around the gun wrist. Hank swung his hand high over his head, trying to shake the fingers off. The fingers wouldn’t budge. Ray clung tenaciously, remembering the metallic bite of the .45, knowing too that it carried another bite, a bite that could put holes in a man’s head.

  They danced backward in a grotesque embrace, Hank swinging his arm wildly, Ray clinging to the wrist, keeping the gun pointed away from him. With a sickening thud, they slammed into the door. Hank braced himself and shoved, and Ray felt his fingers slide off the wrist. He clutched at skin, pulled at the cuff of Hank’s jacket, but his grip was gone. He saw the deadly muzzle of the gun level off and point at his stomach.

  Hank grinned, and his breath came rushing out of his mouth in heavy gasps.

  “Well— Looks like—you didn’t—learn—last time,” he said.

  Ray didn’t answer. He kept his eyes on the gun.

  “We’ll have to—do a better job—this time.”

  He moved closer, and Ray realized with sudden clarity that he had to make his play now or never. He swung out with his right hand, smashing his balled fist against the inside of Hank’s wrist. His left hand went back simultaneously, uncocked almost instantly with a vicious forward blow.

  His fist caught Hank just below the shoulder, spinning him back against the wall. The gun hand swung around as Ray brought his knee up into Hank’s groin.

  Hank screamed in pain, and his fingers opened wide as he grabbed for his crotch. The .45 clattered to the floor, and Ray made a leap for it, clasping it tightly in a sweating hand.

  He gestured impatiently with the gun. “Get up. Come on, get up.”

  Hank was doubled over in pain, his face a ghastly white. “You son of a bitch,” he said.

  “Get up!” Ray shouted. “Get up or I’ll put a hole in your head.”

  There was something in his voice that Hank recognized. He staggered to his feet, one hand pressed tight against his stomach.

  “Move,” Ray said. “The back of the hall. Hurry up.”

  He gestured with the gun, and Hank moved past the stairwell toward the far end of the lobby.

  “Behind the stairs,” Ray said.

  “Listen, pal—”

  “Don’t pal me, you bastard. Get behind those stairs. We’re going to have a little chat.”

  Hank stood up, his back against the wall. The stairway angled down overhead. Hank’s face had lost all its color. His lips trembled a little as he stared at the .45.

  “Look, pal, let’s—let’s just—”

  “Let’s nothing! Let’s shut up and listen. This time I’m asking the questions, Hank-boy, and the answers better be the right ones.”

  “Now look—”

  “What’s Sanders got to do with all this?”

  “Who’s Sanders?”

  Ray’s eyes snapped with anger. “Look, you bastard, I want straight answers. I know how to use this gun, either end.”

  “I don’t know any Sanders,” Hank said.

  “What are you doing in this building?”

  “Nothing. It’s windy outside. I stopped in the lobby to light a cigarette.”

  Ray flipped the .45 to his left hand, cocked his right fist and brought it across his body in a blow that caught Hank on the side of his cheek.

  “Let’s hear the story,” he whispered.

  “There ain’t no story,” Hank insisted.

  Ray’s voice was so low it was almost inaudible. “You want to die, don’t you? You want, to die with a hole in your head.”

  “If there’s nothing to tell, how can I—”

  Ray jammed the muzzle of the .45 into Hank’s navel. Hank backed tighter against the wall, his face screwing up in pain.

  “I’m sore,” Ray shouted, his face close to Hank’s. “I’m good and sore. I’ve never been so sore in all my life. I’ve been chased by every son of a bitch in New York for the past three days. It’s getting me, Hank. It’s beginning to eat at me like a cancer. If you don’t start talking soon, I’m going to split wide open. I’m going to squeeze the trigger of this cannon, and I’m going to keep squeezing until it’s empty. They’ll scrape you off the wall, you son of a bitch, and it won’t bother me one bit. I can still remember Connecticut, Hank, I can remember it fine, and the more I remember it, and the more you stall, the sorer I get. I’m getting so sore that I’m liable to ram this gun clear through you, squeezing the trigger all the way. You understand, Hank? You understand?”

  “Look, Stone, take it—”

  “I don’t want to hear wasted talk, Hank. If you talk, you say something. I’m not interested in anything else.”

  “Well—”

  Ray’s voice was tight and strained. He struggled to keep it from shaking, but the trembling was all through his body now and the gun was hot and heavy in his hand, “Hank, I’m not kidding, Hank. I’m going to put a tunnel in you in about three—”

  “All right,” Hank said. A fine sheen of sweat was on his forehead, and fear was etched plainly against his ashen features.

  “I’m listening.”

  “I was coming to see Sanders.”

  “Why?”

  “He—he’s still looking for the stuff.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Hank.”

  “That’s the truth, so help me.”

  “Did he have me beat up?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did he know where to find me? How’d you know where to look?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Hank—”

  “I don’t know. He told me you’d be on Seventy-third. That’s where we looked. That’s where we found you.”

  “All right. All right.” Ray’s mind was working frantically. The pieces were falling together now, fitting snugly. He backed away from Hank, his eyes narrowed, his mouth thin. With one sudden movement, he brought the .45 up in a swinging arc, the metal colliding against the side of Hank’s head. Hank looked surprised for an instant, and then his eyes went blank and he flopped against the wall, sliding gently to the floor.

  Ray ran to the stairway and took the steps up two at a time. He stopped outside Sanders’s door, rapped on it with the muzzle of the big gun. The door opened a crack and Ray shoved it all the way open, the .45 out in front of him. Sanders looked at the gun; then his eyes wandered up to meet Ray’s.

  “Expecting someone else, weren’t you?” Ray asked. His back was against th
e door, and he kept the .45 trained on Sanders’s stomach.

  “No, I—”

  “He’s downstairs, behind the staircase. He’s got a big lump on the side of his head. I put it there.”

  “Look, friend, I don’t know what you’re—”

  “You can drop the ‘friend’ routine,” Ray snapped.

  “All right, Stone, what’s on your mind?”

  “A lot of things, Sanders. And they all stink. I told you I was close. Well, I’m not close any more. I’m there. It’s all here inside my head, Sanders. All the facts. They add up to you.”

  “Are you still harping on your pet theory? Do you still think I killed—”

  “I don’t think it, I know it. There was one thing that threw me, but that’s all figured out now.”

  “That’s fine,” Sanders said. A bored look had come onto his face again. He looked at Ray with mild disinterest.

  “Tony Sanders, millionaire playboy. Always hopping off to another corner of the world. The hundred-percent American traveler abroad. Sure, very sweet. A very sweet setup.”

  “Nothing wrong with traveling, Stone.”

  “Nothing at all. Unless you pick up odds and ends of narcotics on your little trips. Then it becomes a crime.”

  “Another of your theories, Stone?”

  “I’ve got more, Sanders. Just lend an ear. It was hard to tie up Massine’s death with Eileen’s, until your boyfriend downstairs told me who’d ordered my beating. I knew who wanted the heroin then, and it was pretty simple to figure that you were the boy who was importing the stuff. But it wouldn’t do to have Tony Sanders pushing the junk. Hell, no. Sanders is a respected citizen with a lust for travel. Sanders couldn’t push it. But Massine could. Massine could keep your lily-white hands clean.”

  Sanders reached over to the cigarette box, lifted the lid, seemed to discover it empty. Ray watched him as he crossed the room in search of a cigarette.

  “All right,” Ray said, “Massine was pushing it for you. The supplier and the pusher, a very neat setup. And the best part was that no one would ever suspect a tie-up.”

  “That’s quite possible,” Sanders said, reaching for a second cigarette box on top of one of the low bookcases. “In fact, you’ve just about hit the nail on the head.”

  “I’ve got more, Sanders. Funny how it all fell into place all of a sudden. I should have known from the very—”

  He saw Sanders’s arm whip back, saw the heavy metal cigarette box arc across the room. He tried to dodge it, but he was too late, and Sanders had already thrown his heavy body into a forward tackle. The box slammed against his hand, and almost immediately afterward, he felt Sanders’s arms tighten around his knees. He tried to keep his balance against the momentum of Sanders’s flying leap, but felt his knees give.

  Sanders was pounding Ray’s gun hand against the floor with savage intensity. He tried to struggle free, but Sanders’s grip was a strong one. Ray felt the gun slipping from his grasp, and suddenly Sanders was standing over him with the gun pointed down at his head.

  “Let’s hear the rest of your story, Stone. I’m curious. It doesn’t matter because I’m going to shoot you and then call the police. But I’m curious.”

  “You’d never get away with it. You think another murder will help you?”

  “This will be my first murder, Stone. I didn’t kill Eileen or Charlie, and I rather resent your insisting on it.”

  “Hank then. What’s the difference? You ordered both killings. It’s the same thing.”

  “I think we can stop playing with each other, Stone. I know you killed Eileen, and I know you stole that tin of heroin. We’ve been waiting for you to lead us to it.” He grinned crookedly. “You’ve got a strong constitution.”

  “You were buying the stuff then? On your trips?”

  “Sure. Mexico, Italy, Spain, France. Who suspects a playboy? Playboys are supposed to be fun-loving dolts, not businessmen.”

  “And Charlie was pushing it for you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then why’d you kill him?”

  “Don’t say that again, Stone,” Sanders warned.

  “You shot Eileen to get back the heroin she’d stolen from you, isn’t that it?”

  “You’re guessing, Stone.”

  “Sure, I’m guessing. Eileen came up to see you after she visited the doctor. She found something she hadn’t bargained for, though. Sixteen ounces of pure heroin done up in a candy tin. She swiped it and later you discovered it and came after her.”

  “I didn’t know the heroin was missing until I read of Eileen’s death in the papers,” Sanders said.

  “You killed her,” Ray insisted. “You took the horse and pumped the slugs into her belly. You left me for the patsy.”

  It felt wrong. He knew it was wrong even as he said it, but he went on anyway. Something was missing. Something big. He didn’t know what, though, and so he kept talking.

  “After you killed Eileen, you realized that Charlie would know immediately who’d done it. Charlie was in on the whole setup, and he’d know you killed her for the heroin.”

  But Charlie had been surprised when Ray told him about the sixteen ounces. Something was wrong. Damn it, something was wrong.

  “So you had to kill Charlie too, just to make sure you’d be safe.”

  But why would he? Charlie was his partner, his pusher. Without Charlie, Sanders would have been helpless. Besides, why should Charlie care about the death of a junkie?

  “You’ve got a wonderful imagination,” Sanders said. “You’re wrong, though. Dead wrong.”

  He knew. He knew he was wrong, but he didn’t know where. Charlie. How could Sanders have killed Charlie when—

  Ray shook his head. He had to get out of here. Fast.

  “What are you going to do with me?” he asked.

  “I’m going to put one hole in the middle of your forehead. I’m then going to call the police and tell them I’ve got the murderer. I’ll tell them you threatened me with a gun, that I disarmed you, and was forced to shoot you.”

  Ray’s eyes shifted to the gun. A chance. A slim chance. He began chuckling, softly at first, and then a little louder. The chuckling came hard because his stomach was tied into knots, and he certainly didn’t feel like laughing. Still, it might work, it just might work.

  “You expect to shoot me with that gun?” he asked. He was laughing out loud now. He sat at Sanders’s feet, and Sanders looked down at him in puzzlement.

  “It’s not loaded,” he roared. “The damned thing is empty!”

  There was just an instant of indecision, a bare instant during which Sanders took his eyes from Ray and shifted them to the gun. The gun came up a fraction of an inch, moving away from Ray. Sanders realized it was a trick then, but he was too late. Ray kicked out with his heel, felt the smack of his shoe against Sanders’s shin. He leaped to his feet. His fist lashed out with all the power of his arm and shoulder behind it.

  Sanders was reaching for his shin when Ray’s fist collided with the point of his jaw. He straightened abruptly as the shock of contact raced up Ray’s arm, singing into his shoulder.

  Sanders’s eyes glazed. He folded gently, the .45 dropping from his lax fingers. He was slow falling, and Ray slugged him again, catching him under the jaw as he toppled forward.

  He collapsed like a wet rag, his eyes wide and glassy.

  Ray understood it all now, every bit of it. It was simple. He should have known it all along because it had stared him right in the face for a long time.

  He left quickly.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Ray wondered if he were too late. Perhaps the apartment was empty. He stood outside the door and pressed the push button, rattling the knob with his other hand.

  “Open up,” he shouted.

  “Just a minute.”

  He waited patiently, his heart loud in his ears. The peephole didn’t open, and he surmised that his voice had been recognized.

  The door swung wide
, and he caught his breath at the sight of her.

  Her black hair was swept to one side of her head, leaving a free, sweeping line on the other side, exposing the flawless curve of her face and neck. Her lips were heavily rouged, parted to show white teeth. Her lashes were dark and sooty around her eyes; the hollow of her throat deep.

  She wore white.

  The gown was skin-tight, following every line of her body, sweeping over her wide hips, hugging her thighs.

  “You’re back,” she said. Her voice was cold, distant.

  “Yes, Babs, I’m back.”

  “Come in.” It was not an invitation. It was resignation to an inescapable fact. He stepped into the apartment and she closed the door gently behind him. “You’re wasting your time, Ray,” she said. “It’s all over.”

  “I know,” he said softly. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “To pick up the pieces?”

  “Something like that. Yes, to pick up the pieces.”

  “There’s nothing to pick up.” She speared a cigarette from a container on the coffee table, put it between her lips. He leaned over for the silver lighter and put flame to it.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “You’re a funny gal,” he said, putting the lighter back on the table.

  “Ray, I haven’t got time for idle talk. I’m due at the club by nine.”

  “The club can wait,” he said harshly.

  “If you came here to make a scene, I—”

  “I came here to make a scene, Babs. I came here to make a damned big scene.”

  “We’re finished, Ray. Over and done with. I don’t like to share my men, especially with Chinese sluts who—”

  “I know. I should have had the answer when you went into your jealous fit a little while back.”

  “Stop talking riddles.” She blew out smoke in a furious stream, cupped her elbow in her other hand.

  “You liked Sanders, didn’t you?”

  Babs stared at him silently, a crafty look coming into her eyes. “What’s this all about?” she asked.