Fast Buck (4 page)

At the other end of the alley was a drug store. He pushed open the door and crossed over to a row of pay booths. There was no one in the store except a young girl in a white coat, reading a paper-backed book, behind a soda fountain. She glanced up to give Baird an indifferent glance, then went on reading.

Baird shut himself in the booth and dialled Rico’s number. He had to be sure Olin was covering the house. It would be infuriating to be stampeded by some loafer waiting for his girl. He would never forgive himself if he were panicked into leaving those photographs when it would be so simple to cross the street and get them.

Rico came on the line.

‘Are they looking for me?’ Baird whispered, his lips close to the mouthpiece. He heard Rico catch his breath in a startled gasp.

‘Who’s that?’ Rico asked feverishly. ‘Who’s talking?’

‘Did Olin call on you?’ Baird said, stil keeping his voice low.

‘Yes,’ Rico said. ‘Get off the line, you fool! They may be listening in! They’re after you! Olin says he knows you did it! Don’t come near me! He’s after me too!’

‘Don’t lose your head,’ Baird said, seeing in his mind’s eye Rico’s twitching, terrified face. ‘They can’t prove anything. They’ve got to have proof…’

But he found himself speaking over a dead line. Rico had hung up.

Baird replaced the receiver. The muscle under his right eye was twitching. As he turned to leave the booth his quick, suspicious eyes spotted a movement at the drug-store entrance. He ducked down out of sight behind the panel of the booth door, his Colt jumping into his hand. He heard the drug-store door open and heavy feet walk over to the counter.

‘Police, Miss,’ a curt voice said. ‘Anyone been in here within the last few minutes?’

Baird eased back the safety catch. They must have spotted him while he was retreating down the alley. He wondered if there were any more of them outside.

He heard the girl say, ‘There was a big fel a in here about three minutes ago. He must have gone.’

‘In a brown suit?’ the detective asked. ‘A tal , broad-shouldered guy with a white, hard face?’

‘That’s right. He used the phone over there.’

‘Which way did he go?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t see him leave.’

There was a sudden sharp silence. Baird knew in a split second the detective would guess he was still in the pay booth. He didn’t hesitate. Reaching up, he took hold of the door handle, turned it gently and flung the door open.

He had a glimpse of a short, stocky man facing him, whose hand was flying to the inside of his coat.

He saw the girl in the white coat, jumping off her stool, her mouth opening, her eyes sick with terror.

The Colt boomed once as the detective got his gun out. The heavy slug smashed a hole in the detective’s face, hurling him violently back against the counter.

Baird shifted the gun to cover the girl as she screamed wildly. The fear of death wiped the pert sophistication, the undisciplined sensuality and the old-young worldliness from her face. She looked suddenly pathetically child-like as she huddled into the corner formed by the wall and the counter with no hope of escape. The rouge on her cheeks and the lipstick on her mouth brought a sharp picture into Baird’s mind of his sister when she was seven, plastering her face with a stolen lipstick, and laughing at his uneasy disapproval.

It was partly because of this sudden, bitter vision of his sister, and partly because he knew this girl mustn’t be al owed to give the police a description of him that he shot her.

He was able to watch without a qualm the girl arch her body in agony as the bullet hit her. She slithered along the wall, her eyes rolling back, her outstretched arm knocking over a row of Coke bottles that fell with a crash of breaking glass to the floor. As she disappeared behind the counter her breath came through her clenched teeth the way the breath leaves the body of a rabbit when its neck is broken.

Baird left the booth, looked swiftly around the drug store, spotted a door behind the counter, jumped over the counter and wrenched open the door.

Outside, not far away, he heard the shrill blast of a police whistle. He ran down a dimly lit passage and up more stairs. He was cold and unflurried, and his one thought was not to be seen. So long as no one saw him, Olin couldn’t pin the kil ings on him. Already his calculating brain was at work on an alibi that would fox Olin. As soon as he could safely do it, he must get rid of his gun. That, and that alone, so far, could take him into the gas-chamber.

Ahead of him he saw a glass panelled door that led to the roof of the building. As he opened it, he heard a sudden clamour of police sirens outside the building. He ran to the edge of the roof, and peered cautiously over it into the street below. It was alive with running police. Prowl cars were skidding to a standstill, and from them poured more police, guns in hand. Rushing around the corner came a truck, carrying a searchlight which went on before the truck came to a standstill. The great white beam of light flashed up the side of the building and lit up the roof with blinding intensity.

Baird didn’t hesitate. He swung up his Colt and fired down the long beam. There was a crash of glass and the light went out. The darkness that followed was as blinding as the previous intense light.

Someone down below let off with a sub-machine-gun, but Baird was already running across the roof to the shelter of some chimney stacks. He ducked behind them, looked right and left, decided to go for a higher roof, and bending double, ran swiftly to a steel ladder, swarmed up it and reached fresh shelter as the first of the police came bursting on to the lower roof.

Still unruffled, Baird made his way silently across the roof, keeping the chimney stacks between himself and the police. He could hear them whispering together, unwilling to show themselves, not sure if he was waiting for them or getting away.

‘Wel , get on with it!’ a voice bawled up from the street.

Looking down, Baird spotted Olin standing up in the middle of the street, gun in hand. He was glaring up at where his men were sheltering.

Baird was tempted to shoot Olin as he stood there, but realising his chance of escape depended on keeping the police foxed as to where he was, he resisted the temptation, and made his way across the roof to look below on the far side of the building.

Another roof, fifteen feet or so below him, stretched out in a gentle slope, terminating in a low wall.

There was no escape that way. He looked to his left. A higher roof seemed more inviting, and he could see a ladder that would take him up there.

Bending double he ran towards the ladder. Half-way up it, he heard running footsteps, and looking back over his shoulder he caught a glimpse of the silhouette of a policeman’s flat cap against the night sky. The policeman was going to the lower roof, and apparently hadn’t seen Baird on the ladder.

Baird swarmed up the remaining rungs of the ladder. In his haste to get under cover, he forgot to keep low, and for a second or so he was outlined against the sky as he reached the top of the ladder.

From the opposite roof came a crack of a rifle. Baird felt a violent blow against his right side a split second before he heard the shot. He staggered, went down on one knee, got up again, and swerving to right and left, ran blindly across the roof to the shelter of more chimney stacks.

The rifle cracked again, and he heard the slug whine past his head.

‘He’s up on the upper roof,’ a voice bawled from the opposite building. ‘I’ve winged him.’

Baird felt blood running down his leg, inside his trousers. Jagged wires of pain bit into his side as he moved unsteadily across the roof to the far edge. Below was a flat roof with a skylight.

He swung his legs over the edge, dropped heavily on the lower roof. He caught his breath in a gasp as the pain in his side grabbed at him.

He put his hand to his side, feeling the wet stickiness of his bleeding. He was losing a lot of blood, and he began to be worried.

They were close behind him. He couldn’t go on like this, running from roof to roof. If he didn’t stop the bleeding he was going to pass out.

He went over to the skylight, hooked his fingers under it and pulled. It came up soundlessly, and he peered down into a dimly lit passage.

He lowered himself awkwardly down into the passage. It was as much as he could do to reach up and close the skylight. Sweat was running down his face. He leaned against the wall, the .45 heavy in his hand, while he struggled against the feeling of faintness that gripped him.

Making the effort, he began to move slowly along the passage, aware he was leaving a trail of blood behind him. It came to him with a sour bitterness that this was the end of him. Even if he hid somewhere in this building, they’d search him out. They knew they had winged him, and the blood would give him away. He would be cornered and shot down like a mad dog.

Well, he wouldn’t go alone, he told himself. If only he could stop this damned bleeding, he might still give an account of himself. He wasn’t afraid; only bit er at the thought of ending it this way. He wouldn’t have cared if he hadn’t been wounded. If he could have shot it out with them, knowing his aim was straight and he was taking some of them with him, he would have rather glorified in such an end.

But as it was, his gun was now growing so heavy it was as much as he could do to keep it level, let alone shoot with it.

He approached a door. His hand, creeping along the face of the wall, guiding and supporting him, touched the door which swung open.

He paused, drawing back his lips off his teeth as a bright light came from the roof into the passage.

He leaned against the doorway, staring into a bright but sparsely furnished room. His eyes took in the divan bed, the threadbare rug on the stained boards, a sagging armchair covered with a cheap but gay chintz, the cream-painted walls and the screen that probably hid the toilet basin.

He wedged his shoulder against the doorway, trying to give his buckling knees support. The shaded electric lamp hanging from the ceiling was beginning to spin around. He felt his fingers opened against his will, and heard a far away thud of the Colt as it dropped on the floor.

This was how they would find him, he thought savagely. Helpless and unable to hit back. They would drag him down the stairs, handcuffed, into the street for the crowd to gape at: there was nothing now he could do about it.

As he began to fall into the black chasm of unconsciousness, he had a vague idea that a hand came out of the darkness and caught hold of his arm.

IV

As he poured whisky into a glass, Preston Kile noticed his hand was unsteady, and he frowned. He shouldn’t be drinking this, he told himself. He was drinking too much these days. But what else could he do? A man must keep himself going somehow. He wasn’t sleeping well. There was a woolliness in his brain that alarmed him. He had felt it coming on slowly like a deadly, creeping paralysis over the past year. It was blunting his mind. It made thought an effort. At one time he had been able to make lightning decisions, and the right decisions at that. He had also been willing to take any risk, no matter how dangerous it had seemed. He had had a shrewd recklessness, if you could put it that way, that had carried him from a poorly paid desk job in a bank to a position that had made him the most feared man on the Stock Market. But that was two years ago. He had gone to pieces. He wasn’t the same man. His confidence had gone. He had lost his guts for a fight. Risks frightened him now. He found himself putting off making a decision until it was too late. And now, to worry him still more, there was this fantastic Rajah business.

He drank the whisky greedily, drained the glass and immediately refilled it. His heavy, bloodshot eyes moved to the mirror over the dressing-table, and he stared at himself.

Well, at least he looked as strong, handsome and ruthless as he had ten years ago when he was at the height of his career. Of course his hair was grey at the temples now, and he was getting a little thick around the middle, but his figure wasn’t bad for a man of his age. What was he thinking of? Age? Why, damn it, he wasn’t fifty-six yet! But at this moment he felt like an old, feeble man instead of a man in his prime. There was this dull ache under his heart. That worried him. He was afraid to consult a doctor: no news was good news. If his heart was bad, he didn’t want to know it. Probably indigestion, he told himself, his hand touching the smooth face of his evening dress shirt.

He took out a cigar-case from his inside pocket, hesitated, then put it back. Perhaps not just now. He was smoking too much. He would wait until Eve came out of the bathroom. What an interminable time she spent in the bath!

He sat down amid the confusion of her clothes. She had thrown them off, leaving them scattered on the bed and floor, saying she wanted to think, and she thought best in a bath. A beautiful woman like her had no right to think!

He picked up the sheer silk stockings and pulled them slowly through his fingers, thinking of Eve.

He had known her for two months. At first, he had thought of her merely as a woman to amuse him in his leisure moments. He had got rid of that dark girl — he had to think a moment to remember her name

– Cora Hennessey.

Eve had moved into the apartment five days later. He was glad to be rid of Cora. She had demanded so much of him. He supposed she was too young for him, and he frowned uneasily at finding himself admitting such a thing. But how she had tired him! A week of her, and his nights became something to dread. There had been no satisfying her.

She hadn’t been easy to get rid of, and it cost him much more than he could afford. She had gone eventually, taking his gold and diamond cuff-links, his cigar cutter, and the little jade statue of a naked boy he had bought in a San Francisco brothel, an amusingly obscene bit of carving, and which he valued. He wanted these things back, but it would mean going to the police, and just now he was particularly anxious not to attract the attention of the police.

His mind shied away from this unpleasant channel, and he began to worry about Eve. What an extraordinary girl! How completely mistaken he had been about her! He had imagined she was an empty-headed little beauty whose only asset was her body. For the first six weeks he had no reason to believe otherwise. Then suddenly he realised she had been lulling him into a position of false security while she had been digging into his private affairs. Her apparently innocent questions about his past and present mode of life hadn’t been, as he had thought, the idle chat er of an empty-headed blonde. She had been building up a picture of him until she knew him almost as well as he knew himself. She had managed to find out about his financial position. How she had got the information he couldn’t imagine.