Act of Faith

The police called the death of Rose Alyce, the gorgeous nightclub showgirl, suicide. But despite the evidence—the gun by her side, the powder burns on her temple, the despairing, unfinished note—Father Shanley refused to believe that Rose had killed herself. Rose had been one of his parishioners and a good Catholic and the young priest knew she would never have committed the big sin.

Convincing tough young Detective-sergeant Samuel Golden was another matter. The case was officially closed and certain important figures in the city government wanted it to stay that way. But Father Shanley was determined—and persuasive. And Sergeant Golden found himself disobeying orders and investigating on his own—hunted by his fellow cops and threatened by a hired killer.

He also found enough evidence to convince him that the priest was right when he called Rose’s death murder. And in the end Father Shanley’s “act of faith” proves to be a powerful explosive that blows the lid off a whole corrupt city administration.

“Plenty of action, common sense, and a brotherhood of man angle that is quite wonderful.”—Boston Globe

The
Big Sin

by
JACK WEBB

a division of F+W Media, Inc.

For N. E. W., my wife

HEAT LAY OVER THE CITY like a living thing, as tangible and malleable as the amoeba in a stagnant pool. Clinging and cloying, it drew the life of the city into shirt sleeves and thin summer dresses, into a slower tempo and a shorter temper. Unseasonably and unreasonably, summer gave no quarter to autumn in southern California.

Through the suffering crowds on the sidewalks of Broadway moved a Catholic priest. He was as oblivious to the heat of the day as he was to the face of Mayor John Gough who stared at him from lamppost and billboard and demanded re-election.

The priest was a young man in his early thirties, broad of shoulder and erect. The lines graven at the corners of his lips and fine blue eyes were saved from severity only by the touch of humor that turned the toes of the crow’s feet up and gave his face a slightly quizzical expression when it was in repose.

This sweltering afternoon, his determined stride was as much an affront to the awful heat as was his somber suiting. At the tall white mausoleum with steel-grilled windows on the top floor which served the city for a police department, the priest left the sidewalk and entered the building.

From a graying sergeant at the desk he inquired, “Can you direct me to Homicide?”

“Sure, Father,” said the sergeant, and his brogue was as thick as the soles of his service oxfords. “Up the stairs and to your left. Though all you’ll find up there at this hour is the heathen they’ve left at the desk.”

“Heathen?”

“Detective-sergeant Samuel Golden,” the officer informed him as though he were speaking of something lower than the Irish.

The young priest grinned, slow and easy, with Killarney devils dancing for an instant in his blue eyes. “You must be Sergeant Flannigan.”

“Flannery,” the officer corrected, “with James Patrick on the handle of it. And you, Father?”

“Joseph Shanley.” The young man’s grin broadened into a smile. “Though the fact of our names doesn’t make us quite divine.”

“And where would you be getting that propaganda?” asked Sergeant Flannery.

Father Shanley turned and went up the stairs, the laughter going out of his face with hard memory of his mission. At a glass-windowed door gilt with HOMICIDE DIVISION, he knocked and waited.

“Come in,” a voice rasped through the door.

The priest turned the knob. Across a broad yellow desk scalloped about the edges with cigarette burns, he met the black-eyed, intent glance of a stocky young man in shirt sleeves. Crossing the room, he held out his hand. “You must be Sergeant Golden,” he said. “I’m Father Shanley.”

Rising, the detective accepted the outstretched hand as though he were reluctant to do so, as though he were not certain of the proper courtesy with a priest and not certain that it should make any difference.

“Have a seat,” Sergeant Golden said, settling back into his own chair, watching the priest through narrowed eyes.

Father Shanley, drawing a chair up opposite the desk, thought, He wears his toughness like a mask.

The detective reached a crumpled package of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and shook one out. On an obviously second thought, he gestured with the pack toward the priest.

Father Shanley shook his head. “I’ll have my pipe.” And pulling a charred briar from his pocket, he began to stuff it from an oilskin pouch as he asked, “Were you on the investigation of the death of Rosa Mendez?”

“Mendez, Mendez?” Sammy Golden blew twin streams of smoke through his nostrils and considered the blue cloud that hung motionless in the humid air between them. “Rose Alyce,” he said suddenly. “Show girl. Suicide in Nick Sandoe’s office at La Marimba.”

The priest got his pipe alight. “Were you there?”

“Sure I was.” The detective studied the calendar on the wall behind the priest’s head. “Last Friday night. I planned to have the week off. I was packing a suitcase. It’s still packed.”

Father Joseph leaned forward. “All I’ve seen are the papers. Are the police absolutely certain it was suicide?”

“Sure, clear case. No doubt about it.”

The priest shook his head. “And you, Sergeant. Are you absolutely certain?”

The detective’s eyes hardened. “What are you trying to say, Father?”

Father Shanley raised his head until his eyes were leveled upon Sergeant Golden’s. “That Rosa Mendez did not commit suicide. She couldn’t have.”

“Yeah? And just what evidence did the department overlook?”

“Faith,” Father Shanley said quietly; “‘the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.’”

The detective crushed out his half-finished cigarette and leaned across the desk. “Look, Father, we each have our own business. You have souls. I, and all the guys in this department, we investigate crimes. In the case of homicide, we’re specialists in violent death. We know our business maybe even better than you know yours. We see murders that look like suicides, and suicides that look like murders. This was neither. This looked like a suicide and it was a suicide. That’s not me speaking for Sammy Golden, that’s me speaking for Homicide and the medical examiner and the crime laboratory. A quarter of a million dollars’ worth of science and training and technique so that when we want a crime solved we don’t have to go to church!”

Detective Sammy Golden stopped talking, not because he had run out of breath, but because he had run out of all the polite ways he knew to tell the guy who wore his collar backward to mind his own business. Then, without quite knowing why, he was sorry he had shot his mouth off. And perhaps because the priest was studying him with a curious expression, because the priest hadn’t said a word, Sammy apologized, “Look, Father, I’m sorry I blew my top. Maybe it’s the heat. Yeah, that’s it. It’s the heat. And when you came in I was thinking about a shower. A long cold shower. Maybe a couple of tons of cold water pouring down my back, and then lying on the bed in my shorts and drinking a quart of beer. Beer so cold there’d be beads on the bottle.”

Father Shanley grinned at the detective, still not speaking.

Sergeant Golden continued, “But take it from me that Rosa Mendez, or Rose Alyce, whatever you want to call her, committed suicide. I was there. I was there maybe ten minutes after it happened, twenty at the most. I saw the gun lying beside her. I saw the powder burn at her temple. I saw the note she left on Nick Sandoe’s desk addressed to that toothpaste ad of a band leader who had double-crossed her by running off to Las Vegas with his blonde vocalist.”

The priest said suddenly, “As I recall the account in the newspaper, that note was neither completed nor signed.”

“That’s right, Father. So what? It was in her handwriting. We’ve had experts tell us that. It began, ‘My darling, darling Matty, how could you do this thing? Over and over again, I’ve asked myself how could you do it? …’ That’s the way it began. She was writing in desperation. And writing it down like that, it hit her all of a sudden why he’d run out on her, and that’s what gave her the guts to pull the trigger.”

“What hit her, Sergeant?”

The detective stared at his blunt fingers folded together on the desktop and then raised his eyes to meet the priest’s. “I’ll tell you what, Father. Now this time, maybe I’m guessing. It’s not like the gun, or the position of her body, or the powder burns, or the direction of the bullet’s course, or her fingerprints, or the cordite test of her right hand. It’s not like those things. But it’s something I know because I’m a Jew. Because, like her, I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks.

“That hundred-carat gold-plated heel, Matty Moline, ran out on Rosa Mendez because she had a family over in Royal Heights; a father who’s been thirty years with Western Electric Railways, a section hand all that time; a mother who’s as big as a house and who doesn’t speak English very well; and eight brothers and sisters who look like stairsteps when they’re standing next to each other. She was writing this letter to Matty Moline, the nice bright college boy who waves a stick at the orchestra, and all at once it hit her. She wasn’t Rose Alyce like it said on the theatrical signs. She was Rosa Mendez. And she was all the things that went with Rosa Mendez, and all of a sudden, she couldn’t take it. I know, Father. Not because it’s in the report of the crime, but because it’s in me. In Samuel Elijah Golden whose family runs a delicatessen store, God bless them for it!”

“Have you seen Rosa’s family since it happened?” Father Shanley asked gently.

“I’ve never seen them.” Golden shook his head. “I was lucky. I wasn’t the guy detailed to break the news or talk to them. But I’ve seen the report that was turned in. I’ve talked to the guy that made it, and I’ve seen the address where her parents live. I used to patrol that district in a radio car.”

Father Shanley tapped the bowl of his pipe into an ashtray thoughtfully. “I’ve listened to you, Sergeant. Now, will you listen to me?”

Sergeant Golden leaned back in his chair and nodded.

“Do you know what it means to be a good Roman Catholic?”

The detective shook his head grinning wryly. “I’m not even very good at being a Jew when it comes to that.”

“None of us is good enough,” the priest shrugged. “But will you take my word for it, Rosa Mendez was a good Catholic. Oh, not without her transgressions. But her sins came from the job she had to do, the place she had to work. Not things, you understand, that came from the faith.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“Good.” Father Shanley stared at his finger tips. “Now, I have to tell you what suicide means in our faith. All I can give you are words. But try to surround them with the unutterable hell that Rosa would have felt before she pulled the trigger.

“Suicide is an attempt against the domain and rightful ownership of the Creator. It’s an absolute contradiction to everything the Christian religion teaches us as an end and object of life. It’s weakness and cowardice. And whatever else Rosa Mendez was, she was neither weak nor a coward.

“This is a dreadful thing to say, but I say it sincerely. It would have been more likely for Rosa to murder this Matty Moline than it would have been for her to take her own life.

“As her father confessor, Sergeant, I knew Rosa Mendez better, perhaps, than even she knew herself.”

“That all, Father?” Detective Golden asked not unkindly.

“All?” The priest shot a surprised glance at the detective. “No indeed, Golden. So far I’ve spoken only of Rosa Mendez. Actually, what Rosa did, or what was done to her, lies between the girl and her God. It’s what’s left here on earth that brought me up the stairs to your office.

“I don’t know whether you know it or not, but the remains of a suicide are denied Christian burial. She cannot be buried in sacred ground. Nor can services be held for her in the Church of Saint Anne.”

“Rough,” Golden said gruffly. “But, so what?”

Father Shanley stood up, leaned across the desk with his hands flat upon the top of it and his eyes blazing. “So that great grand family of Rosa’s are suffering as you’ve never seen people suffer, Sergeant. They are making their own hell here on earth. A hell for which there may be no need. A hell that could be removed with one clean sweep if it could be proved that Rosa did not take her own life!”

Sammy Golden’s face was a mask again. Even his eyes were tough. He said, “Sorry, Father. The case is closed. That girl pulled the trigger herself. Take my word for it. Or I’ll get the file up here and let you look it over yourself.”

The priest retreated a step from the desk. “I’m sorry to have imposed upon you. Thank you for your time.” He turned and started for the door, squaring his shoulders against the fatigue that had come into his body with the sense of defeat.

At the door he turned abruptly and stared across the room into the opaque eyes of Detective Golden. “Would you do me a favor, Sergeant?”

“Depends,” the sergeant said cautiously.

“Give me one hour of your time. Be at the Church of St. Anne at nine o’clock tonight.”

“Why?” A flat word with no expression in it.

“I’m holding a special service for the Mendez family. We are praying together that God in his infinite wisdom may see fit to reveal to the world the innocence of Rosa Mendez.”

Without waiting for a reply, Father Shanley swung through the door and went down the steps. He nodded curtly to the grizzled Sergeant Flannery at the receiving desk and went out into the hot slanting light of the late afternoon sun. It struck through the black broadcloth of his coat and found the weakness that had come with defeat, and he felt a complaint rising in him even against the heat of the dying day.

For a long time, Detective-sergeant Sammy Golden sat at the desk with his feet hooked up over the edge of it and his hands clasped behind his head. Then stretching his body awkwardly, he reached the phone from its cradle.

“Give me the Department of Records.” While he waited, he whistled tunelessly. And then, “Roarity? This is Golden up in Homicide. Will you dig out the file on Mendez, Rosa, alias Alyce, Rose, suicide, and send it up to me? … Sure, I know it’s closed.”

He dropped the phone, unhooked his legs from the corner of the desk and stood up. Shoving his hands deep in his pockets, he strolled to the window, still whistling tunelessly.

He stared out the window across the street at the huge election poster hanging on the face of Hotel Fairland. The eyes of John Gough, enlarged to the size of saucers, were staring back at him.

“‘The substance of things hoped for,’” he said to the face, “‘the evidence of things not seen.’ … Ever do anything on faith, John?” Sergeant Golden suddenly asked the poster. He laughed.

The detective turned his back on the election poster and returned to the desk. The corners of his lips were set in a tight grin. And he had put on a tougher expression than even Father Shanley had seen.

Two floors below him in the basement, a weasel-faced little man named Roarity found the Mendez file. He handed it to a clerk with instructions to deliver it to Sergeant Golden in Homicide.

Then, tapping nervously with a pencil on the corner of his immaculate desk, he picked up the phone and said, “Give me an outside line.”

Hearing the steady hum in the earpiece, he glanced suspiciously around the catacombs of files behind him, and then dialed a number.

When he spoke, his voice was guarded. “This is Roarity, Department of Records. Thought somebody would be interested in hearing that Homicide has asked for the file on that dame who bumped herself off in Nick Sandoe’s club last week.

“Yeah. A detective-sergeant, Golden…. Sure, I’ll forget it…. Just remember that it was Francis P. Roarity who passed the word along…. Yes, sir. Thank you…. You bet!”

He cradled the phone, settling back in his chair and crossing his skinny legs. He rubbed his moist palms together with satisfaction.

Sergeant Golden followed the clerk to the door of the office, closed the door behind him and returned to his desk. Opening the Mendez file, he spilled a half dozen glossy photographs. Strictly for cheesecake, they displayed a minimum of costume and a maximum of Rosa Mendez. With appreciative eyes, Sammy arranged the photographs side by side. Then, selecting one in which not enough feathers to satisfy a bantam rooster separated Rosa from her public, he shuffled the remaining photographs together and turned them face down on the desk.

Reaching in the top drawer, he secured a pair of scissors and attacked the picture. After a moment’s work, he crumpled a large part of the photograph and dropped it into the wastebasket. What he kept in his hand was snap-shot size and contained the head and shoulders of the girl.

He held it up before him, his expression changing as the dark, bright eyes in the photograph met his own. “What do you know,” he murmured aloud, “this chick also had a face.”

Slipping the fragment of photograph into the pocket of the coat on the back of his chair, he turned his attention to the folder on the desk and bent his head over the report of the crime. Occasionally-his lips moved as they formed words he wanted to impress upon his mind. From time to time, he paused to copy a name and address onto a scratch-pad before him.

The phone interrupted.

Automatically, Sammy scooped it to his ear. “Golden, Homicide,” he said as he rocked the swivel chair backward, at the same time fishing with his left hand to find a cigarette.

“Lieutenant Cantrell,” the phone informed him.

“Yeah, Lieutenant, what’s on your mind?” Sammy got the cigarette alight.

“You were planning to take some time off last Friday?”

“That’s right.”

“And I called you in on the show out at La Marimba. What was the girl’s name?”

“Mendez,” Sammy told him.

“Yeah, well, that’s on ice. Why don’t you go ahead and take your vacation? Lord knows you got it coming?”

“You mean tomorrow?”

“I mean tonight. I’ve taken the liberty of calling Johnston. He’s coming in to take over for you. No reason you can’t be on your way to Ensenada or wherever you were going and be out of this heat in a couple of hours.”

“You feeling all right?” Sammy inquired solicitously.

“Sure I’m feeling all right!” Cantrell snapped. And then more lightly, “Bend a couple elbows for me. You know, Golden, the tall cool ones with a head on. You’re a lucky stiff to be getting out of town this week.”

“Yeah, Lieutenant. Sure!” The surprise gone from Sammy’s face, his eyes narrowed thoughtfully as he cradled the phone.

He stared at the report on the desk before him, unconsciously beginning his tuneless whistle again.

There was a knock on the door. The detective slid the list he had been making under the blotter. “Come in!”

Francis P. Roarity entered the office. His pale eyes darted ferretlike to the desk. “I’m closing the department for the night,” he announced, “and I was wondering about the file on Mendez.”

Sammy’s voice was bland as he gestured at the desk-top. “Take it along.”

Roarity minced over to the desk and gathered up the folder. Picking up the pile of photographs, he turned them over to slip them into the folder. He whistled thinly. “How about dating something like that?”

“You can dream, can’t you?” Sammy asked.

Roarity was grinning as he nodded and closed the door after him.

Sammy Golden pushed back the chair and stood. Reaching the scratch-pad from under the blotter, he tore off the top sheet on which he had noted names and addresses. He carried the page with him to the window.

For a long moment he stared at the election poster on the Fairland Hotel. The enormous eyes of John Gough seemed to move as a desultory breeze flicked the edge of the canvas.

“You sure get around in a hurry, John,” Sammy said to the poster. He took the notes he had made on the Mendez case between his strong, stubby fingers and tore them to bits. The handful of confetti he tossed out the window and watched it snow toward the street below.

He raised his eyes to the eyes of the poster. “That satisfy you, John, you and your pals?”

Before he turned his back on the window and the face of John Gough, the detective measured the distance carefully and spit over the sill.

Over the cash register and between the two long blue mirrors of the Rialto Bar on South Serrano Street, the clock folded its hands at seventeen minutes until nine.

Detective Sammy Golden stared into the blue mirror and at the image of the lush blonde beside him. Her hair was the color of wheat straw washed by the rain, dried by the sun. She wore a pale blue sweater. It made quite a picture.

He said, “So help me, Nell, I’m on my vacation. Want to make something of it?”

“Could,” said the girl. She served the single word like a waffle drowned in molasses.

Sammy frowned. “Meaning,” he decided, “there’d be some accounts to settle when I go on duty again and me owing you a favor.”

Nell’s shiny blue eyes laughed at him. “Go ahead,” she said, “make your choice, Sammy Boy. Wrestle with your conscience or get broad minded.” The humor went out of her glance, and she caressed the detective’s sleeve. “You’re a nice guy, Sammy. You and I, we could get along. You could get along with a lot of people.”

“Why not?” the detective asked. “Sure I could make friends and influence people.”

“Easier than you think,” Nell told him seriously.

“Easy as going blind now and then, deaf here and there, and forgetting around and about.” Sammy fished for a cigarette. “Sounds like the refrain of a Hit Parade tune.” He stuck the cigarette between his lips.

Unfolding the match packet on the bar, he discovered it was empty. He started through his coat pockets. His right hand found a fold of heavy paper. He pulled it out, glanced at it, dropped it on the bar, and went back to hunting.

Nell smoothed out the fragment of photograph. “Rose Alyce,” she exclaimed. Her blue eyes became flat and expressionless. “This one’s out of circulation, Sammy Boy. She always has been, for that matter, Are you carrying a torch?”

“Sure,” Sammy said. He wasn’t listening. He was staring at the clock over the bar. Its minute hand was at five until the hour. “What the hell?” he demanded of himself. “Why the hell not?” He turned to the girl. “Look, Nell, I’ve got an appointment.” Deftly, he slipped the fragment of photograph from her fingers and dropped it back into his pocket as he slid from the bar stool.

“Thought you were on vacation.”

He grinned at the blonde girl. “Maybe that’s why I decided to keep the appointment. See you around,” he said.

It took twenty minutes to drive to Royal Heights. And another five to find the Church of St. Anne. Sammy parked the coupe beside the church and walked around the building.

At first it seemed to him as though the church were in darkness. As though he had come too late, or in vain. Yet if that was true, the figures in the stained-glass window were burning with a light of their own, faintly luminous and moving. And Samuel Elijah Golden was not one to believe in miracles.

The church, itself, was of white stucco, humble and simple. But dark green cypress grew before it, trim and tall like sentinels, guarding the bells in their shadowy tower, guarding the cross lonely against the night sky.

On the front steps, Sammy paused, his hand upon the door. He was uneasy. And he heard his father’s voice saying to him as it had in those faraway days when he had been familiar with the voice of Moses: Lord Thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. He took a deep breath, and opened the door and entered through it.

The church was dimly lighted. Indeed except for the bank of candles on each side of the altar, and the eternal lamp before the Blessed Sacrament, the church was in darkness.

Detective Golden slipped into the last row of pews, bumping his shins on the unfamiliar rail before him in the darkness, and remembered belatedly that men should remove their hats. He was unaccountably nervous here, nervous below the last Station of the Cross; nervous in the holy, shadowy silence which seemed only to be magnified by the distant murmur of the priest.

As his eyes accustomed themselves to the darkness, he counted nine heads bowed before the communion rail. Like stairsteps, he had described them to Father Shanley. And something nagged at his mind until he remembered there should have been ten heads bowed in that far row before him. There were the father and mother and seven of the brothers and sister bound together in their grief for Rosa Mendez. For that leggy, svelte dancer from La Marimba Club who lay now in a drawer at the morgue with an identification tag tied to her big toe.

The litany meant nothing to Sammy Golden. He was a stranger in a strange land, an explorer, as it were, beholding the work of a witch doctor. But it was affecting him deeply for all of that; and he had a feeling of impermanence that he could not shake off, a feeling of inadequacy, as if his own two feet were not enough to stand on, his own two fists not enough to fight with, his own tough mind not enough to rely upon. And he wondered if he would not feel the same were he to enter a synagogue again.

Then the service was over and the children were coming into the aisle and kneeling one by one as they made the sign of the cross.

Sammy slipped from the church and stood on the steps, an unlighted cigarette between his lips; still disturbed inside, still wondering what he could say to Father Shanley.

Six of the children came out of the church and went down the steps past him to wait on the walk. They ranged in age from ten or eleven to sixteen or seventeen. Four of them were girls and two were boys. Silently and curiously, they stared at the detective. Their eyes were large and dark and damply shining, and Sammy was reminded suddenly of the eyes in the fragment of photograph in his coat pocket.

Father Shanley came from the church holding out his hand. “I’m glad to see you, Sergeant. Were you inside?”

Sammy accepted the priest’s hand. “In the back of the church,” he answered. “I came in late, after the service had begun.”

The priest nodded and then gestured at the children. “Aren’t they a grand family?” He named them, smiling gently. “Marta, the littlest of all, and sometimes my favorite, I think.”

The youngest girl returned the smile shyly, forgetting for a moment the tears behind her eyes. She was a thin, tiny waif with only her great dark eyes giving hint of the spectacular beauty which had been her oldest sister’s.

“And Mercedes,” the priest continued, “who is perhaps my favorite when Marta has forgotten her catechism.”

The smile slipped from Marta’s face and onto Mercedes’.

“And this is Alfredo, most promising shortstop our Boys’ Club has ever had. You should see him scoop up a hot one.”

The boy bobbed his crew-cut hair, hiding a grin.

“And Roberto who painted the scenes for our Christmas play.”

The thin lad nodded grave acknowledgment.

“And Ynez who has far too many beaux to be entirely fair.”

There was nothing shy in the sixteen-year-old’s smile as it divided the smooth tawny skin of her face with a pair of dimples.

“And Dolores,” Father Shanley concluded with an odd tenderness touching in his voice, “who hopes to come to us in the church.”

She was a tall, serious child, and she wore the kerchief upon her head as though it were the veil of a nun.

The warmth of the relationship between the children and Father Shanley was giving Sammy Golden more trouble than he cared to admit. He had come to tell the priest he was on his way out of town. That, as the priest himself had said, the matter of Rosa Mendez was, after all, an affair between her and her God. That it better should remain so.

But he couldn’t say it before these children, so he asked, “Aren’t there a couple more around somewhere?”

Father Shanley nodded. “Barbara is inside with her mother and father. Carlos could not come tonight.” A shadow crossed his face. “I do not understand that. Carlos is a good boy. He wouldn’t willingly hurt his mother.”

The Mendez parents came through the door of the church. Barbara and her father each had an arm about the mother. Mama Mendez was truly an enormous woman. And dressed from head to foot in black, it was as if a mountain were moving. She wore her grief as a passion and walked blindly between her husband and daughter.

Papa Mendez was dwarfed beside her; a little man in a shiny black suit with eyes like a frightened animal’s. Only his great bristling mustache still was as proud as befitted the father of such a family.

As they passed the priest, Father Shanley called softly, “Vayan con Dios.” And when they had reached the sidewalk, “Dolores, niña, go and help your mother and ask Barbara to come back with me.”

Barbara released her mother’s arm to her sister and returned up the steps to the priest.

“Barbara,” Father Shanley said, “I want you to meet Detective-sergeant Golden.”

The girl gravely extended her hand, and Sammy took it and had the strange feeling he had seen her before until Father Shanley said, “This is the way Rosa looked five years ago.”

“But Rosa was a very beautiful girl,” Barbara said sadly.

“And so, my child, are you.” The priest put a friendly hand on each of their shoulders and continued, “I want you to walk with Sergeant Golden and tell him about Rosa while I change.”

“Yes, Father.”

“Look, Father—” Sammy began.

“It won’t take long,” Father Shanley interrupted, overlooking the refusal that had been in the detective’s voice. “There’s a park not a block from here. It is small but charming. I shall join you there.”

The priest moved away from them, crossing the steps diagonally in the direction of the parish house.

At the foot of the steps, Barbara said, “It is around the block to the park, Sergeant Golden.” She walked gracefully beside the detective. She removed the black fragment of lace from her hair and folded it into her hand.

Sammy walked with his hands in his pockets, trying not to notice the faint fragrance that came to him as she shook her long dark hair loose, or the handful of jewels the street light threw into it. A grin touched the corners of his lips and he put it away instantly. Father Shanley had called her “my child”; maybe wearing your collar backward did that to you.

They continued in silence until Barbara asked, “What did you wish to ask about my sister?”

The detective shrugged, “What should I ask?”

The girl paused and stared up at him. “You’re a funny policeman.”

“Funny.”

Barbara nodded and smiled shyly. “Most policemen are full of questions.”

They came to the corner and the park was across the street. One small city block with a fountain in the center and many benches along the wheel-spoke paths in the manner of a plaza.

As they paused before stepping from the curb, Sammy was conscious of the girl’s eyes studying him. Uneasily, he sensed a hopefulness, an expectancy that didn’t quite believe that a cop could come to help.

Moving down one of the paths toward the fountain in the center, they could hear music and the path was filigreed with light. In the vacant lot beyond, a carnival was in progress with a Ferris wheel and a carousel and booths for a shooting gallery and a fortune teller, another for the sale of sugar cotton candy and apples on a stick, and a small ring for a pony ride. Couples moved past them arm in arm. Sammy felt a pang of envy.

They came to sit at last on the edge of the fountain. Sammy asked, “Was Rosa like you when she went to work for Nick Sandoe?”

Barbara shook her head. “Oh no, Rosa was very full of life.” She held up her hands. “Clear to her finger tips. Clear to her toes. Do you hear that music?”

Sammy cocked an ear. The music from the carousel was a fast paso doble.

“Do you think Rosa could have sat still beside you with music like that in her ears?”

Impulsively, Barbara rose. Her feet began to move to the fast, catchy rhythm. She made a pirouette, her black skirt flashing, her heels clicking out the rhythm, her lips moving a little as she hummed the tune.

Detective Golden watched her, an unlit cigarette forgotten between his fingers. The merry-go-round across the block came to a blaring halt. Barbara sat beside him, her dark eyes luminous as they gazed up into his.

“I—I shouldn’t have done that. But I wanted you to see Rosa for a moment. Only Rosa was different. Rosa was like a dream. As though she had music in her blood. All the time she was dancing, even when we were little girls. And when we were grown up, when Rosa was a dancer with her name and picture out in front of La Marimba, she could not hear music without wanting to dance, without changing the rhythm in her step. And we made a joke about it. But it really was not a joke. It was only because we, all the rest of us, walked on the ground, and Rosa walked on air.”

Sammy found his cigarette and got it alight. The fingers that were holding the match trembled. He flipped the match away from him savagely. He stood up and faced the girl, his cigarette wigwagging from the corner of his lips as he spoke, his hands shoved into his pockets.

“Your sister killed herself,” he said angrily. And then, “I’m sorry, kid, but you know it, don’t you?”

Barbara’s face darkened. Her soft lips came together tightly, and the corners of her eyes glistened as she shook her head stubbornly. “No,” she whispered.

The detective’s voice was hard. “That’s what Father Shanley told you. That’s not what you really believe. Your sister was emotional. She must have been. That’s what you’ve just showed me. That’s what you’ve told me. She was different because her emotions ran her. Maybe that was what made her an artist, a dancer. And that being the case, why couldn’t she kill herself for love?”

Again Barbara shook her head. “What do you know about love, Sergeant?” Her voice was tight with anger, her eyes flashing.

Sammy discovered he was chewing the end of his cigarette. He pulled it from his lips and threw it into the fountain.

“You should arrest yourself for that,” Barbara snapped.

Sammy sat down beside her. “Oh hell!” he muttered.

The girl laughed at him. The laugh was almost hysterical.

The detective swung toward her. “Get hold of yourself!”

Then before he knew how it had happened, the girl was in his arms, her head buried in his shoulder, and her whole body shaking with sobs. Sammy glanced around frantically. A uniformed policeman was ambling down the path toward them, a night stick swinging idly in his right hand.

Detective Golden shuddered.

“Break it up, you two!” the officer called. “You at the fountain, break it up and get a move on! There’s a church down the block if you want to get married.”

The girl raised her head from Sammy’s shoulder. Her hair came away from his cheek and chin as she turned her tearstained face toward the very young policeman.

“This fellow mistreating you, Miss?” the patrolman demanded. He got a clear look at Sammy. “Say,” he began suspiciously, “your face is familiar!”

“You’re damned right it is,” Sammy told him grimly. “I’m Sergeant Golden, Homicide.” He palmed his badge and showed it to the young officer.

“Sorry I didn’t recognize you, Sergeant. Thought you were a couple of neckers.” He closed his mouth abruptly, turned on his heel, and walked away fast.

Barbara dabbed at her tears with the black fragment of lace. Sammy found a clean handkerchief and passed it to her. “Blow your nose, kid.” He took his arm from about her shoulders.

“I’m—I’m sorry,” Barbara stammered.

“Blow,” Sammy repeated gruffly.

He heard Father Shanley speak a word of greeting to the patrolman, and then watched the priest come down the path to them walking with an almost jaunty stride.

Father Shanley glanced sharply at the two of them.

Barbara raised her eyes. “I’ve cried, Father. For the first time. It, I think it helped.”

“Then perhaps you can take some good news for a change.” Father Shanley smiled. “I’ve talked to the bishop. He’s said, go ahead. The Rosary will be tomorrow evening, and the funeral at nine the following morning.”

“Father Joseph!” Impulsively, Barbara went to one knee; she grasped the priest’s hand and kissed it. Gently, Father Shanley took her by her shoulders and raised her to her feet.

“I’m the one to be grateful, niña. It’s your family and Sergeant Golden, here, who have given me the courage of my convictions.”

Sammy came to his feet, his expression puzzled. “But you told me this afternoon that suicide—” he glanced at Barbara and then continued determinedly—”that a suicide couldn’t have service in the church.”

Father Joseph nodded. “Exactly. And now the Church is going to announce to the world that Rosa Mendez did not commit suicide.”

“And just where did I come in on all this?” the detective demanded suspiciously.

Father Shanley’s blue eyes met Sammy’s black ones squarely. “You came tonight. You came to have a look at my evidence. Faith, Sergeant, the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen!”

“Look,” Sammy began, “if you mean that my coming here says Rosa didn’t pull the trigger herself …” He broke his speech off as he saw the clouding in the radiant eyes beside him. “Sorry, kid.” He took Barbara’s hand awkwardly. “I’m still a cop.”

The girl met his gaze, and her dark eyes changed. “That’s all right, Sergeant.”

Sammy Golden flinched, for there was something in the way she forgave him which said also, I am sorry for you.

“How selfish we are,” Father Shanley said suddenly. “Keeping this to ourselves when it is your mother who needs the news so badly.”

“Can I drive you anyplace?” Sammy asked.

“Of course,” Father Shanley told him.

They started out of the park, the priest between the girl and the detective. As he walked, Sammy scowled unconsciously.

He was caught in something he couldn’t understand. Put up or shut up; that was what he believed. And because they had nothing to put up, he had denied two people. He had denied them with the evidence of things seen, with tangible, concrete, scientific evidence. He had denied them with the tools of his life work, and they had told him that was not enough. And now he doubted his own denials. Why?

A cheap, leggy show girl lay dead in the city morgue. He amended cheap. No one was cheap who danced on air while others walked on the ground. He could amend that. But he could not amend the evidence. Suicide. Count the votes on it. Homicide Division, the medical examiner, the crime laboratory, the coroner’s office.

What could be put against all that? Faith? Sammy snorted.

Barbara started to speak.

Father Shanley touched her arm, smiled gently, and shook his head.

At the curbing, Sammy held open the door of his coupe. When the priest and the girl were inside, he closed the door and walked around the car.

“Straight ahead for two blocks,” Father Shanley directed, “then left.”

Sammy drove through a boulevard stop without seeing it. He made the left-hand turn automatically.

“Where the porch light is on,” Barbara said.

Sammy guided the car into the curb. As he came around it to open the door, he became aware of a figure proceeding up the sidewalk toward them with a curiously uneven gait.

He opened the door, keeping an eye on the drunk.

The man lurched across the sidewalk and grasped a picket fence, dropping a small canvas bag he carried. He folded over the fence as his knees buckled. In the dark yard a terrier began to yap hysterically.

Sammy let go of the door handle and started swiftly down the street. Here, at least, was something he could understand, something he could deal with. He went forward with a feeling of almost brutal pleasure.

Then the girl, Barbara, was past him, her heels flashing. And it was she who bent over the figure doubled over the fence, crying, “Carlos, Carlos mio!” She turned frantic eyes on the detective.

Sammy got his hands under the arms of the slim figure doubled over the fence and lifted him erect. There was no odor of cheap alcohol here. But as the young man’s head swung limply into the lights from Sammy’s coupe, bandages became apparent; tightly adhesived across his brows, across the bridge of his swollen nose as though to hold it onto his face, along the point of his chin.

“Ay Dios!” the girl exclaimed compassionately. “What have they done to you?”

Father Shanley was helping the detective hold the boy up.

One of Carlos’s eyes managed to open. “Is Mamacita asleep yet?”

“We’ve got to get him where he can lie down and we can have a look at him,” Sammy snapped.

“Is Mamacita asleep yet?” the boy repeated feebly.

Sammy glanced at the other two for enlightenment.

“He promised his mother he would stop fighting. Professionally,” Father Shanley said. “Apparently his broken promise means more to him than his wounds.”

“We can’t stay here all night,” Sammy said. “Which is your house, Barbara?”

“No!” Carlos shook his head. He tried to shake free of the two men and stumbled. They caught him and held him up.

Sammy turned to the priest. “This kid’s got to see a doctor anyway. I’ll take him to one, and to a hospital if necessary. If not, I’ll take him to my place for the night. You two go to the family. They need you. Tell them you’ve seen Carlos. Tell them he’s staying with friends. Then maybe Mama can sleep.”

“That’s best,” Father Shanley decided quickly. “Then, if there’s anything I can do, anything we should know, you can call me at the parish house.”

He bent, got one arm under Carlos’s legs and came erect cradling the body of the semiconscious boy. There was more strength in those black broadcloth shoulders than met the eye, Sammy decided. He picked up the zippered bag where it had fallen on the sidewalk and followed the priest toward his coupe.

Barbara’s slender fingers caught around his arm. “Thank you, Sergeant,” she whispered. And her eyes were luminous for a moment the way they had been in the park. “Father Joseph is right,” she declared, “you’re good inside.”

Sammy gave her a brief smile, soft and unfamiliar to him because there was no toughness in it. “To tell you the truth, niña,” he said, borrowing the priest’s word, “I’m mixed up as hell. But don’t worry about your brother, I’ll take good care of him.”

There was a doctor who owed Sammy a favor, a very expensive, highly successful doctor who had been an unwilling witness to a murder. It had happened right after he’d been released from the service and was in the midst of re-establishing his fashionable practice. Detective Golden had been able to give him a break. Maybe because each of them wore a ruptured duck on his lapel.

The doctor’s name was Jamison. His home was four blocks away from the Mendez bungalow. It was the same distance from Athens to Olympus.

Sammy rang the doorbell with a sardonic grin tight across his lips. That was fate for you, that this damned Mendez case was sending him scurrying to ask a return for services rendered.

Dr. Jamison answered the door himself. He was wearing a dinner jacket. “Oh, it’s you, Sergeant.” He hid his annoyance well.

“There’s a kid out in my car I want you to have a look at. Unofficial.”

“I have guests,” the doctor began.

“It won’t take long,” Sammy interrupted. “On your say-so, I’ll shoot him to a hospital. I’d rather not.”

“Messy?” The doctor arched an eloquent eyebrow.

“He’s pretty well bandaged up. He won’t bleed on anything if that’s what you mean.”

“Take him into the library, then. First door on your left. I’ll be with you in a moment.”

Sammy returned down the drive and lifted Carlos from the car. In the brightly lighted library, he laid him on the leather sofa and stepped back to study the young man.

His face the way it was certainly wasn’t anything to look at. But with the bandages removed and the swelling down, there was a chance he’d be handsome in a masculine version of his sisters, Barbara and Rosa. His slim body was good, tapering as it did from broad shoulders, and his jet black, crisply trimmed hair was tightly curled. Sammy had the idea he was the Greek-god type of fighter the fans liked to see ripped to hell. Well, the fans had had their money’s worth tonight.

Carlos groaned and turned slightly, but he did not open his swollen eyes.

The doctor entered the library carrying a black bag of handsome, tooled leather. “Unbutton his shirt, Sergeant, and get his trousers undone.”

Sammy did as he was bid while the doctor slipped out of his jacket and rolled up his sleeves.

His examination was swift, complete and expert.

Then he was rolling down his white sleeves with the stiffly starched cuffs and fitting the gold and sapphire links into them.

“He’ll live. Apparently the thing that got to him was a foul blow on the abdomen. He’s in fine condition, though, and I doubt there’ll be complications. I can’t tell a thing about his face, of course, but those bandages look professional. Right now, I’d guess he’s totally exhausted. However, if he doesn’t feel like being up and around by day after tomorrow, give me a ring and I’ll find the time to come and have a look at him.”

Sammy thanked him.

Dr. Jamison said in a friendlier tone than he had used previously, “This youngster was hurt in a professional fight?”

Sammy nodded.

“A friend of yours, I presume,” and then without waiting for an answer: “I’m grateful, Golden, that you brought me nothing illegal. I was worried by the manner in which you came to me.”

“This’ll cause you no trouble,” Sammy assured him.

Sammy put the kid to bed in his apartment. It was a parlor, bedroom, bath and kitchen at the top of three flights walk-up. He was sweating profusely at the end of the job.

Carrying Carlos’s wallet from the bedroom, Sammy found a bottle of beer in the kitchen before he returned to the parlor and sank into the one comfortable chair, a secondhand overstuffed that had come to sag in the same shape as Sammy.

Holding the bottle of beer to his lips, he swallowed steadily until it was half empty. Then setting the bottle on the floor, he turned his attention to the wallet.

There were two ten-dollar bills in the currency pocket. A fifty-dollar fight, Sammy guessed, with twenty to the loser. That sounded like the Inter-City Arena. Mayor John Gough was on the board of that crowd. To keep the sport clean, he pointed out to fight fans and critics alike; and a sporting mayor did get to the voters with good red American blood in their veins. Sammy snorted. Nick Sandoe was on the board of Inter-City, too. Sammy could feel the stickiness of the web he was getting into, a tenuous, uneven web that poked into all the dark corners of the city, and the spider at the back of it was like a black widow.

He slid the cards out of their compartment. The driver’s license told him that Carlos was eighteen. Then he found a business card that curled his lips downward. He held it before him while he tilted the bottle and finished the beer:

1429 HARKNESS BLDG.

Ph. Al. 793-27

He. 442-91

JASON CRAWFORD

PRIVATE INQUIRIES                       CONFIDENTIAL INVESTIGATIONS

Jason Crawford was a smart operator. The twenty bucks in the kid’s billfold wouldn’t get a hell of a lot of investigation. But Jason was never one to overlook the small change.

It added up to a pretty good reason for Carlos to be fighting again in spite of his promise to Mama Mendez. It made the best reason Sammy could think of. He put the wallet together and returned it to the bedroom, scowling.

Back in the living room, Sammy dug his bankbook from the desk and opened it. He grinned wryly at the balance of four hundred and thirty-two dollars. It would be a long, hard winter if he took up the Mendez case on a personal basis.

And why the hell should he? Put the priest out of your mind, and that sweetheart of a sister. Look at things straight. You didn’t need faith with an election coming up. Just use your head!

The doorbell rang.

It was probably Father Shanley.

It wasn’t.

It was Nell Wharton. She had changed into a white linen suit with red leather pumps, belt and purse. Framed in the doorway she made the kind of picture that takes men on lost weekends.

Sammy said, “For the love of Mike!”

She advanced across the room to the chair Sammy had left. There was a lot of class in her walk and a lot of assurance. Settled in the overstuffed chair, she crossed a pair of perfect legs, and a slim, golden slave bracelet gleamed dully under sheer nylon. Her blue eyes were friendly and amused as she went to work removing a pair of red kid gloves.

“I called Bill Johnston at Homicide,” she said. “His wife’s sore as hell because he’s working nights for a week.”

“Yeah?” Sammy fumbled for a cigarette for want of something better to do.

“So you really are on your vacation.”

The detective forgot the lighted match between his fingers.

Smiling, Nell opened her purse, found a blank white envelope and handed it to Sammy. She leaned her head against the back of the chair and regarded him with her lazy blue eyes.

Snapping out the match, Sammy Golden flipped it in the direction of a metal wastebasket. He got a nail under the flap of the envelope and ripped it open. The envelope contained a thin sheaf of crisp bills, ten in all, and each for a hundred dollars.

Nell drawled, “Take yourself a real vacation.”

Oddly, the first thing that flicked across Sammy’s astonished mind was that the kid in the bedroom had had the hell knocked out of him for a pair of lousy tens.

He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again and said, “Never look a gift horse in the mouth.”

Nell’s smile broadened. Her teeth were perfect and ivory white. “You’re learning, Sammy Boy. But I’ll tell you this much; it’s a gift from a mutual friend.”

The detective moved over to the couch and sank onto it. He shuffled the bills between his fingers as though he couldn’t believe them. Nell turned her head so that she could watch him through half shut eyes.

“In case you’re wondering about me, I’m the girl with ideas, the girl who knows where the money tree grows and how hard you can shake it.”

Raising his head, Sammy studied the blonde speculatively. Then he grinned. “I’m packed to camp on the beach and fish in the surf.”

“Go camp at Guaymas,” Nell told him, “in a fat, shiny hotel. Bait your hook with a silver spoon.”

Sammy stared at her curiously. “Want a drink?” he demanded suddenly.

The girl shook her head. “With you, I don’t have to drink.” Her smile was slow. “That’s one of the reasons I’m here.”

“We’ll have a couple of beers,” Sammy decided.

“That’s a friendly drink,” Nell said. She caught the heel of an immaculate red pump with the toe of the other and slipped it off her heel. She swung the loose slipper idly, wriggling her toes. “Sammy Boy,” she called lazily in the direction of the kitchen, “I’m awfully glad I came.”

Sammy was standing in the middle of the kitchen floor with the necks of two open bottles caught in the fingers of one hand and two tumblers in the other. The expression on his face was totally perplexed.

He had known Nell Wharton for a year and a half. He knew the contacts she had, and could guess at the money she made, gifts, of course, as she did the errands she had to do, delivering envelopes like the one that had come to Sammy, clean white envelopes with not a mark upon them and crisp new bills inside of equal anonymity: a cop on a particular beat whose wife needed an operation; a public servant who couldn’t meet last month’s car payment; an unappreciated young lawyer in the district attorney’s office; an older man on the board of equalization too tired of being honest. These were her chores, these, and forgetting whence she had come and where she was going. Still, he had treated her pretty well because she looked like a million dollars, and because he knew that beneath her trim good looks and her soft, lazy manners was a mind that was both smart and honest.

She had come into his parlor of her own choice. She had said so, and he believed her. Yet, since she had seen the photograph of Rosa Mendez he had carried unwittingly into the Rialto Bar, she had contacted Nick Sandoe. Not only that, but she had collected a grand in pay-off money.

Pay-off for what? Sammy grinned. A grand was a lot of money to pay for what he had; a glance at the file of a closed suicide case, a fragment of a photograph of a show girl with the best part removed.

He carried the beer into the parlor and was pouring a glass for the girl, tilting the glass and pouring slowly to control the head on it, when the phone rang.

“Hello…. Yes, Father…. I meant to give you a ring…. No, he’ll be all right. Whoever he was fighting fouled him in the belly…. Yeah. I brought him back to my place. He’s sleeping it off here….”

Nell Wharton leaned forward and removed the other pump. Then on stocking feet, she went quietly into the bedroom. She snapped on the light.

Sammy frowned after her as he continued, “Tell you the truth, Father, I don’t know whether I’ll be here in the morning or not. You can drop in and have a look at him. I’ll leave the key with the manager. First floor, rear. Tell the kid to stick around as long as he likes…. Yeah, I’ll tell him if he’s awake when I leave. Goodnight, Father…. Sure…. Thanks for calling.” He hung up the phone as Nell Wharton returned to the parlor.

“Just a kid,” Nell said. “What gives?”

“He’s a fighter. Got hurt tonight worse than he thought. Fell down on the street. I took him to a doctor, then brought him here. Seems he promised his mother he wouldn’t fight any more. Afraid to go home.”

Nell’s eyes softened. “You’re a funny kind of cop,” she said. “Who reported the kid?”

“A Catholic priest who helped me get him into my car,” Sammy told her cautiously.

“Mendez,” Nell said, curling into the chair with her feet tucked under her. “The name’s on his zipper bag. It connects with something. Maybe something in the papers since the kid’s a fighter.”

“He’s not that much of a fighter,” Sammy said. He gulped his beer and stood staring down at the girl. He was getting enough practice tonight at being a damned fool that one more time wouldn’t hurt.

“Sure, the name connects,” he said. “Rosa Mendez is Rose Alyce’s real name. The kid’s her brother. The priest who called me was Father Shanley. I went out to see him tonight when I left you at the Rialto Bar. We were together when we ran into Carlos staggering around outside the Mendez house like a drunk.”

Nell slanted her wide blue eyes up at the detective. “Sammy Boy, you do one hell of a lot of talking.”

“Sure, I do.” Sammy turned his back on the blonde girl, pacing the short distance of the room as he spoke. “You’re full of favors tonight, Nell. Not easy ones, but maybe like your heart’s too big where I’m concerned.” He gestured at the money spread like a fan on a sofa cushion. “That pile of green stuff amounts to more than twice what I’ve got in the bank. As far as the guy who I think sent it is concerned, it would’ve been just as easy for him to buy a hole in my head. Instead, I’ve got my hands on a grand in cash. Thanks to you!”

He was back facing Nell. He liked what he saw. He even liked what he saw in her eyes.

“Sammy Boy,” Nell’s eyes changed, shaded deeper as she spoke, “there’s just one thing I don’t figure.”

“Go ahead. This is twenty questions.”

“What’s Rosa Mendez to you?”

“That’s the prize question,” Sammy told her. “And you’re going to love the answer … Not one damned thing. I never saw her until the night we were called out to view the body.”

Nell studied him, her eyelids drooping so he couldn’t read her thoughts. “Shakedown?” she asked finally.

“You mean Sandoe?” Sammy shook his head. He settled on the arm of the overstuffed chair, touching her short blonde hair lightly. “A priest named Father Shanley,” Sammy said reflectively. “A sister of Rosa’s named Barbara, maybe seventeen, maybe nineteen, sweet and pretty as a picture. That kid, Carlos, asleep in my bed after having a punk work him over so he could afford to hire a phony shamus. That’s one side of it….

“That grand of cool cash on the sofa. The fact that I was sent on my vacation thirty minutes after I had called a cold case up from the Department of Records. That’s the other side of it.

“I’m damned if I know what I’ve got by the tail, and I’m damned if I know how to let go of it, providing I’ve got it to let go of.”

The blonde girl tilted her chin upward so she could meet the detective’s glance. “I could tell you, Sammy Boy, but I think you’d better sleep on it.” She uncurled herself from the chair, slipped from under Sammy’s arm, and stood. Retrieving her red pumps from the carpet, she put them on, bracing one hand against Sammy’s shoulder.

“Will you call me a taxi?”

“I’ll drive you.”

Nell shook her head. “I’ll leave the money. Shuffle it some more, Sammy Boy, and get religion.” She found her red gloves and pulled them on.

He moved to the phone and dialed.

“Give me a ring when you get up.” She blew him a kiss from the door and closed it after her.

“Veteran’s Cabs,” said a voice in Sammy’s ear. Automatically, he gave the address.

Turning on the radio, he went into the bedroom and undressed in the dark. The kid moved restlessly on the bed behind him, but did not respond to Sammy’s single word question, “Awake?”

Unbuckling his shoulder holster and laying it on the top of the dresser, he felt the leather soaked with sweat. He pulled the flat .38 automatic from the holster and wiped it with a dry handkerchief. Radio music came to him from the open doorway.

Barefooted and in pajamas, he moved quietly to the closet, lifted the heavy Val-pak from the floor, and carried it into the living room. The stenciling on the flap was almost worn off, rank, name, serial number, a patchwork of letters and numbers, almost meaningless now. Meaningless except that there were a million other bags like it and in the same battered condition reminding a whole generation that the seas were broad and the world was round, and the best thing about battles was coming home from them.

One thing about the bag, Sammy reflected, was that it would always expand to hold his good summer suit … should he go to Guaymas.

An all-night disc jockey helped toss him into restless sleep on the sofa.

A brisk tattoo on his door awakened him. A hot slash of sunlight cut across the skin of his face. He swung his feet to the floor and noticed the white envelope with its peeking cargo of green. A fine way to treat a thousand bucks.

“Coming,” Sammy snarled at the door. Crossing the floor of the living room, he felt rocky, as though he had a hangover.

Opening the door, he blinked at the clean, fresh, smiling face of Father Shanley. Unaccountably, the sight of it made Sammy mad.

“I didn’t expect to find you, Sergeant,” the priest said cheerfully. “I wanted to see Carlos and have a talk with him.”

“You might as well come in,” Sammy said gruffly. And then, slightly apologetic, “I’m afraid I’m not much good before breakfast, Father.”

Father Shanley caught sight of the shambles of a bed on the sofa. “I’m sorry. I had no idea you’d still be asleep.”

Sammy rubbed his fingers through his tousled hair. His eyes caught his wrist watch. “Good Lord!” he ejaculated. “It’s nine-thirty.”

Father Shanley’s gaze has come to rest on the battered Val-pak.

Sammy said suddenly, “A friend dropped by last night. Wanted me to make a trip this morning. I haven’t decided yet …” He wondered why he bothered to explain.

Father Shanley’s clear blue eyes met Sammy’s steadily. “If my coming to you yesterday interrupted anything …”

The detective rubbed a grizzled chin. “You didn’t interrupt a thing, Father. You just started something.” He broke it off. “I’d better have a shower. I’ve more cobwebs in my head than an attic.” He started toward the door of the bedroom and the bath beyond.

“I’ll look in on Carlos,” the priest said, following him, “and then make coffee, if you like.”

Sammy came to a halt in the doorway, blinking. “The kid’s gone.”

Father Shanley stared over his shoulder. “Any reason he shouldn’t be?”

“The doctor said he was in good condition.” Sammy shook his head. “No, there’s no reason he shouldn’t go. I got his shirt and pants off. Anyhow, he felt good enough to dress.”

He turned and glanced at the priest. “I guess I’m a hell of a nurse. I’m sorry.”

“He’s probably gone home,” Father Shanley said. “He’s a good boy, Carlos, and I know he was worried about his mother. You go ahead with your shower and I’ll get some breakfast going.”

Sammy wanted to turn him down. He was suspicious of the breakfast, a little afraid, he had to admit, of the impact of the priest’s personality. He shrugged and went into the bathroom. In the shower he managed a whistle. The cold water was driving the fatigue out of him. While he toweled himself dry, the idea hit him. The more he played with the idea, the better he liked it. His whistle rose in key. If Father Shanley was holding Rosary tonight and a funeral tomorrow for Rosa Mendez, what difference did it make what the official verdict was on her death? The Church was saying she was innocent. That should be enough for the family Father Shanley was pulling singlehanded from hell.

Besides, he had some religion to get himself. He still was whistling as he experimented with a Windsor knot in the maroon tie between the wide white tabs of a new shirt. The tune he was whistling was Wait Till The Sun Shines, Nellie….

As he examined the effect of the tie, first from one profile and then the other, his glance fell upon his empty shoulder holster. He remembered giving the gun the once-over with a clean handkerchief. The smeared square of cloth still lay on the dressertop.

The gun was gone. His gun. Colt automatic pistol 24571. Registered with the police department even though it was his personal weapon. Gone with Carlos Mendez!

Carlos was a good boy! The hell he was! Carlos was loose on the town with a .38! Sammy strode into the kitchen.

“Sunny side up, or over?” Father Shanley inquired.

He was in shirt sleeves and the table was set. A minute steak steaming hot and darkly brown was on the plate, and two slices of toast buttered golden; a glass of orange juice was there, and a pot of coffee. A pair of yellow-eyed eggs made a pansy face in the skillet. The priest had a spatula in his hand and looked as if he were enjoying himself.

Sammy stopped that. “Carlos skipped out of here with my gun!” he said. “I’d left it on the dresser.”

“You’re absolutely sure?” Father Shanley’s face turned grave.

“Sure, I’m sure!”

The priest slid the spatula under the eggs, lifted the skillet from the gas, deftly deposited the eggs on Sammy’s plate beside the steak. “Sit down and have your breakfast. We can make our plans while you eat.”

Sammy started to argue the point, changed his mind, sat down, and gulped the chilled orange juice.

Father Shanley sat opposite him, pouring coffee into two cups. “All right, Golden, you’re the detective. Why did he take your gun?”

Sammy cut into the eggs and chewed a mouthful reflectively. He would have to ask Father Shanley how he fried eggs without getting them greasy and still getting them done on top. He said, “I don’t think it was because he wanted a gun; you know what I mean, like every kid wants a gun. I think, I’m sure he took the gun with a definite idea in view.”

“Could he have taken it to sell?” the priest inquired, “I’ve come to understand from certain elements in my parish that guns have a ready, and well, rather lucrative market.” His lips quirked into an involuntary grin. “I rather suspect they’ve paid for a mass or two of mine.”

The detective attacked his steak. No ersatz steak ever had tasted like this one. He stole a glance at the stove. His Lea & Perrin’s sauce was out, and the tomato catsup. He said finally, “There was twenty bucks in the kid’s wallet, and a lot more money of mine in plain sight. No, it wasn’t money.” He was beginning to wonder if priests learned to cook in heaven.

Father Shanley set down his coffee cup and rubbed the tips of his fingers together as he asked, “Then you think—”

Sammy interrupted, “Was Carlos a good Catholic, like his family?”

The priest nodded soberly. “In his own way, intensely so.”

Sergeant Golden used his fork to push a bit of steak through a dab of egg yolk. “What do you mean by that?”

Father Shanley said thoughtfully, “It’s difficult to understand, and more difficult for me to try to explain. Carlos is tough because toughness is the only way of life he understands. Yet he has wanted to be a priest. Piously or profanely, God is with the boy, in his mind or on his tongue, every conscious moment of his life. He takes God into the prize ring, for instance, and because of God, he fights cleanly. On the other hand, Carlos is a member of a minority group grossly discriminated against in this city. He feels it very strongly. His temper is short, and his language and sometimes, I’m afraid, his intention are profane.” The priest stopped talking and looked at the detective curiously to see if his words were making any sense.

Sammy asked, “Could it add up to murder? Isn’t murder something like suicide the way you explained it to me?”

“It’s a sin crying to Heaven for vengeance, if that’s what you mean,” Father Shanley said automatically. “But look at it this way. As far as Carlos knows, I’ve refused Rosa Christian burial. I’ve let him down, his family down. At least that was the state of things when he left for the fight last night. You chaps of the police department have found no one to blame for the crime except the girl herself. The newspapers have crucified her. Isn’t it possible, then, for him to feel the time has come for him to take the matter into his own hands?”

“Murder?”

“An act of vengeance,” modified the priest; “and a crime that must bloody my hands and yours, as well as that boy’s.”

Sammy pushed his chair back from the table, reluctantly. “We’ve got to work fast and careful, Father.”

The priest reached his coat from the back of his chair. “I’m at your orders, Golden.”

“O.K. You get over to the Mendez home and tell Barbara about the gun. She has to be told because we’ve got a lot of places to cover, and I think she can handle her brother.”

“And then?”

“Do you have a car, Father?”

“Mine’s a poor parish,” the priest said drily.

“Then hang onto the cab and have the driver take you to the forty-four hundred block on Norman. You can’t miss Nick Sandoe’s place. It’s a fancy white job with a high, electrified fence around the lot. It’s not listed in the phone book, but Rosa may have told Carlos where it is. The kid can’t get inside the grounds, I’ll guarantee that, but he may be hanging around outside.”

Father Shanley nodded. “You think it’ll be Sandoe rather than that band leader person?”

“I don’t know,” Sammy said honestly, “but you leave Matty Moline to me. Him and a private eye named Crawford, I’ll cover like a blanket. You’re going out to Nick Sandoe’s. A girl I know who’s seen Carlos and knows Sandoe. I’m going to send down to La Marimba. We can trust her; we’ve got to.

“If Sandoe leaves his home, you might as well come back here. Now you get on your way, Father, while I make a couple phone calls.”

“Good luck, Golden.” The priest held out his hand. “And thanks.”

“For being a damned fool with my gun last night?” Sammy shook his hand.

“For playing the whole game when you get your hands on the ball.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Sammy said grimly. “It’s my gun in the hands of an irresponsible kid that has me worried.”

“Is it?” There was a questioning smile on the priest’s face when he closed the door.

Sammy picked up the phone scowling.

“Sammy Boy,” Nell’s voice came rich with sleep, “do you have religion?”

“Trouble,” the detective contradicted. “Look, Nell, I need your help …”

After he had replaced the phone, he spent a moment in serious reflection. It left a bad taste in his mouth that there was nobody at the department he could trust with his information. Not that the whole department was rotten. But he dared not bandy Nick Sandoe’s name. Not if he wanted to pick up Carlos Mendez without the contents of a riot gun in his belly.

Carlos Mendez had never thought so clearly. Never seen things so clearly. And it was funny, too, because there was a pressure in the back of his head that should have been a headache and wasn’t. Perhaps that was Rosa getting to him. He was doing it for Rosa. He had to. She used to put her fingers there and work them down along the tight cords in his neck when he was tied up in knots. He wasn’t tied up in knots this morning.

The slim, flat automatic was snug beneath his waistband, and by glancing down with his light windbreaker folded open a little, he could see the lovely blue bulge of the butt. A dozen times he had tried the quick, surrreptitious movement necessary to get his hand around it.

True, the presence of the gun took some explaining. But why should one explain providence? And how could he possibly explain waking up in a cop’s apartment with the gun staring at him through its one cold blue eye from the dressertop, and the cop sprawled alseep on the sofa in the other room? Truly, the fact that the gun which had come into his hands belonged to a lovin’-lousy cop, made it an act of providence.

Carlos Mendez stood on the corner of Fairmount and Ninth before the Fairmount Drugstore. He did not know how long he had walked to get there. He had walked fast for a long time, intent only on putting distance between him and the cop’s apartment. He had zigzagged his course in case the cop had awakened and tried to follow him. He had been amazed at the clearness and brilliance of the morning. How strange even the familiar landmarks had seemed. As though he were seeing them for the first time, or the last.

Entering the drugstore, he made his way to the telephone booth at the rear. The booth was occupied, but Carlos only wanted the use of the telephone book on the stand beside it. He found the M’s and searched down the columns until he came to Moline. There were four Molines. None of the first initials was M. But there was a J. M. at the Alexis Apartments. The Alexis Apartments were on Ninth and Innes. Six or seven blocks away. He could walk there.

Starting away from the booth, his eyes lit upon the lunch counter and he realized suddenly that he was hungry. He could not remember eating since yesterday noon. Finding a stool at the counter, he ordered ham and eggs and fried potatoes and milk and coffee.

He ordered from a pretty, redheaded waitress in a neat white uniform. As she walked away from him, it seemed for an instant he could see through her clothes. It was more evidence that this was a strange morning.

He glanced curiously at the customers lined along the counter. They were giving him more attention than was normally his share. Truly, the mark of the anointed was upon him. It did not occur to him that he attracted attention because his brow, chin and nose were taped and the flesh around his eyes swollen.

He ate with good appetite. From time to time he glanced at the customers. He wondered covetously if they knew they were watching a condemned man eat a hearty breakfast. He did not doubt that shortly he would be dead. He had made up his mind he would not be taken alive by the lousy police. He savored the importance of being a condemned man.

He paid for his breakfast with one of the ten dollar bills he had planned to take to Jason Crawford. Love the lovin’-lousy dick! He was as phony as the police.

On the street, he set a sly course. He would not walk to the Alexis Apartments directly. Again, he began to zig-zag his route with a block north and then a block west. Once when he caught sight of a black and white sedan of the traffic division approaching down the street, he ducked into an alley.

Flattened against a brick wall, he watched it drift by. The dumb lovin’ cops!

On the corner of Seventh and Lavern, he passed the First Methodist Church. He was suspicious of it, but it was a church. Any church was a house of God. He turned back to it and went up the steps.

The door was open and he entered. He was surprised at the bareness of the church and wondered if they removed their altar except for holy services. But he crossed himself and sank to his knees in the last row of pews. He had hoped there might be a statue of San Miguel, to the warrior saint into whose hands was sometimes given the Lord’s vengeance. He would have liked to talk with San Miguel. He tried to conjure up a picture of the armored saint in his mind.

For a long time he rested his forehead against the curved back of the pew before him. Sweat from his brow and the palms of his hands damped the wood. When at least his lips began to move, he prayed:

O my God, I am sorry and beg pardon for all my sins, not so much because these sins bring suffering and Hell to me, but because they have crucified my loving Saviour Jesus Christ and offended Thy Infinite Goodness. I firmly resolve with the help of Thy Grace to confess my sins, to do penance, and to amend my life. Amen.

It was the Act of Perfect Contrition. It came from the lips of a very young man who was certain he would die this morning. He knew he would not have the chance to deliver it if the police shot cleanly and well after he had done the thing he knew clearly he had to do.

He was still suspicious of the nature of the church in which he prayed, but he was comforted by the fact that his prayer had come freely and naturally from the core of his being.

Carlos Mendez came out of the church and headed once more in the direction of the Alexis Apartments. He felt as if his dead sister Rosa walked at his shoulder.

The Alexis Apartments were swank and imposing. Twenty stories high, they were an impenetrable fortress with a uniformed doormen and a desk clerk posted between Carlos and his unalterable mission.

From the sidewalk across the street, he gave his mind to strategy. Clearly, the front door was not for him. Clearly, too, there must be other entrances.

Sammy Golden took the elevator to the fourteenth floor of the Harkness Building. It was a long and tedious trip with the elevator stopping at nearly every floor. Now that he was a prisoner in its square, mahogany-colored box, he was nervous, certain he shouldn’t be wasting time with this faintly legitimate blackmailer when the kid was out on the street somewhere with a crazy idea in his head and Sammy’s gun in his pocket.

On the fourteenth floor, Sammy came out of the elevator to face a seeing eye on a door. Above the eye was JASON CRAWFORD, and below, CONFIDENTIAL INVESTIGATIONS. Sammy knew Crawford, but this was his first visit to the man’s office.

A woman glanced furtively at him as he came through the door. She had a tightly corseted body under a copy of an expensive suit. She also had a triple chin and a ridiculous hat. She was the essence of Crawford’s profits. Sammy couldn’t blame her husband for stepping out on her.

The only other occupant of the room was a solemn little man with a butter-ball figure and a bald head. He had a wisp of a mustache, and behind rimless spectacles, his child-bright blue eyes seemed bent on devouring a year old copy of the National Geographic. As Sammy strode past him, the little man’s glance flicked over the detective and back to the contents of his magazine with absolutely no change in expression.

There was a desk with a typewriter in the well. But the receptionist-secretary wasn’t in sight. Sammy took the door marked PRIVATE and went through it without knocking.

The girl who belonged to the receptionist’s desk was taking dictation. She lacked a chin, a good front, and probably boy friends. As Sammy swung into the room, she jerked her head up nervously, her cheeks and throat flushing with color, and he had the idea she was in love with her boss.

Jason Crawford growled, “What the hell?” picked Sammy’s name and rank out of some pigeonhole of his mind, and snapped, “Sergeant Golden, Homicide. What ill wind blows you into my office without bothering to knock?”

He was an enormous man with bright blue little pig eyes. Against the heat of the morning, he was in shirt sleeves with his tie loosened and a handkerchief folded between the collar of his blue shirt and sweating red neck.

The detective said, “Carlos Mendez, Rose Alyce’s brother. What’s he buying from you?”

Crawford found a second handkerchief and wiped his face. “We’ll finish the correspondence later,” he told the girl.

She left the room at once.

Crawford continued to swab his face. “Delacy send you?”

Delacy was the police commissioner. Sammy let the question ride.

The private investigator shook his head. “You wouldn’t know who sent you,” he decided. “You have the reputation of being a good cop.”

“What’s Mendez buying?”

The investigator grinned. “Same thing he could’ve bought for seven cents in any newspaper. Here, I’ll show you.” He heaved his body from the swivel chair and moved over to a metal file. He found a Manila folder and extracted a carbon copy of his report. “Take it back to Delacy,” he said. He dropped back into his chair. “Damn, but it’s hot!”

Sammy scanned the report. As Crawford had said, it simply rephrased the accounts that had been in the papers. Nothing was there of Nick Sandoe’s possible relationship to the girl other than that he had been her employer. Everything in it pointed to Matty Moline’s trip to Las Vegas as being the cause of Rosa’s suicide. Sammy folded the report twice and slid it into his pocket.

Then he leaned across the desk, grabbed a handful of shirt and tie and pulled the big man half erect. “If you’re smart, Crawford, you’ll lay off the kid. Forget that he’s ever been here. Those are orders!” He let go of him, then, letting him fall heavily into the swivel chair.

The chair groaned under Crawford’s weight. And though he was breathing hard, the private investigator’s rage was almost perfectly controlled.

He said gently, “You shouldn’t have mussed my tie, Golden. It cost me fifteen bucks. I’m very particular about my ties.”

Sammy went through the front office fast. He had to get to Matty Moline. From the list he had made and destroyed yesterday afternoon, the name Alexis Apartments stuck in his mind.

The doors of the elevators closed on Sammy Golden’s back, when the little bald-headed man who had been reading the National Geographic scampered from Jason Crawford’s office. He pressed the down button urgently. With his hat on and his glasses off, he scarcely looked like the same man who had been in the waiting room. In fact, he scarcely looked like anybody at all. Certainly like nobody who would attract attention. That was probably why he was the best tail in the city.

A husky young fellow in white coveralls and cap kicked Carlos Mendez off the sloping drive that dipped under the Alexis Apartments. Carlos was tempted to use the gun that was tucked into his waistband, but he knew any trouble now would prevent him from doing the job he had come to do.

Carlos walked around the block. When he came to the alley, he strolled down it studying the fire escape. The ladder folded against the last level of steel balcony ten feet above the alley and to the left of the service entrance. The door to the service entrance was open. An old man with salt and pepper hair and friendly eyes sat on a chair tilted back against the wall inside the door.

Carlos wandered past taking this in. The old man could be handled, the kid decided; a sharp clip on the button of his grizzled chin would put him to sleep for a long, long time.

The doorkeeper eyed Carlos’s bruised and bandaged face with amiable curiosity. “What hit you, Son?”

Carlos tried on a grin. “I bumped into a door.” He was sorry the old man was friendly. It would not be a pleasure to hurt such a friendly old one. He wished he could tell him he did not like the dirty thing he had to do. He flexed his right hand. It still felt sore from last night.

The old man said, “That door must have had revolving fists.”

“Many fists,” Carlos admitted. He was irritated that he could not step up and get the thing over with. Irritated because the dirty little thing was holding him back from the big thing he had to do.

A sleek, shining black delivery truck honked and Carlos flattened himself against the wall. The truck came to a halt beside the door. The driver jumped out of the cab and went around the rear of the truck. He swung open the doors. The metal top of the truck was four feet below the second floor balcony of the fire escape.

Carlos knelt between the truck and the side of the apartment and fumbled with the knot of a shoe. He heard the driver talking to the doorman inside the service entrance. He slipped from his shoes, quickly knotting two of the laces. With the shoes over his shoulder, he went cat-quiet up onto the hood of the engines, and from the top of the cab he reached the roof of the truck.

His strong brown hands caught two vertical bars of steel. He chinned upward, using his momentum to shoot one hand up and over the top rail. Curling onto the floor of the fire escape hard against the wall of the Alexis Apartments, he watched the driver regain his truck and move away. The doorkeeper stood below him for a moment, scratching his head. Carlos lay silent, feeling the hard, square shape of the automatic tight against his lithe body under the waistband of his trousers.

The hot metal of the fire escape soaked with the heat of the morning started him sweating profusely. There could be, he thought seriously, only one place hotter than this side of the building in the sun. He was almost certain he would be there before the morning was over. The thought frightened him a little, for hell was a very real place to Carlos Mendez.

The big window facing on the fire escape was locked. He went quickly up a flight of steel steps. The hot metal burned through the soles of his white cotton socks. He moved with the desperate, silent grace of a wild animal.

The window was locked.

He paused and put on his shoes. As he knelt, sweat plastered his jacket to his back. As he tied the laces, his lips moved silently. “O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee and I detest all my sins because I dread the loss of Heaven …”

The pressure at the back of his head was increasing. He had to get out of the terrible heat of the sun.

The window on the third floor was unlocked!

It moved quietly against the palms of his hands pressing upward. The shadowy carpeted hall was blissfully cool. And it was empty. He leaned against the cool wall inside. He held his head between his hands, feeling waves of weakness and nausea sweep through him and the sweat on his back turn cold.

He looked at the nameplate on each door, then climbed to the next floor.

A door opened. Radio music brought his head up with a jerk. He slid behind a drape that framed the window through which he had entered and stood shivering. A svelte, handsome woman emerged from the apartment, closing the door after her. Her eyes passed carelessly over the drapes as she turned her back on the hall window and glided down the carpeted hall.

Carlos waited until he heard the elevator receive her. Then he stole swiftly after her, searching for the stair well. It was opposite the elevators behind a closed door. A uniformed maid was coming up from the floor below. Carlos went up the flight of steps to the fourth floor in a running crouch. The maid’s alert eyes flicked about sharply as she came onto the landing Carlos had left. She shrugged and went through the doorway into the hall.

He found it on the sixth floor. The door facing him said so. That lovin’ bastard, Matty Moline. Carlos’s fingers wrapped around the butt of Sammy Golden’s automatic. He slipped it from his waistband and jerked a cartridge into the chamber. The cartridge had a name on it. Matty Moline! The lovin’-lousy bastard who had killed Rosa as surely as if he had pulled the trigger in the girl’s crooked finger.

He tucked the automatic back into his waistband and worked the zipper of his jacket until it was adjusted so that it would conceal the gun without being in the way.

He was ready now. He would ring the bell to 619.

In sight of the Alexis Apartments, Detective Golden heard the sirens. Automatically, he pulled his coupe over to the curb. With sinking heart he recognized the two black sedans that screeched expertly to a halt beneath the candy-striped canopy of the fancy apartment hotel.

He recognized the blue serge suit that Lieutenant Bill Cantrell affected winter and summer as his lean figure swung from the rear door of the leading sedan. At his heels like faithful terriers followed Dan Adams and Mike “Shorty” Shannon. They disappeared under the flare of awning in a flying wedge formation. Homicide had arrived on business.

Gripping the wheel of the idling coupe, Sammy could hear Father Shanley’s voice: “… a crime that must bloody my hands and yours as well as that boy’s.”

He could hear more than that. He could hear the inevitable assertion of the ballistics expert. Not an assertion, but a fact. A .38 caliber Colt automatic pistol, number 24571, had fired the shots responsible for the death of James Matthew Moline. A pistol which undeniably was the property of Detective-sergeant Samuel E. Golden.

Sammy shivered. In spite of the heat, he shivered. Part of it was defeat of the thing he had tried to do; and part of it, he knew honestly, realized even in that instant, was the defeat of himself as a cop and a man. He was through, finished, washed up.

That damned gun. That immutable piece of evidence with telltale grooves in its barrel, with the telltale nick of its firing pin. The gun that put its trademark on every bullet fired, every cartridge spent.

But what if they didn’t have the gun. What if they hadn’t found the kid? Sammy pulled a handkerchief from his hip and mopped at the sweat on his face. Then he laughed harshly. They, they, they, the men he worked with, the team he was a part of. The hunter had become the hunted. He, Sammy Golden, was the fox!

He started the coupe forward and drove the block necessary to park across the street from the Alexis Apartments. Climbing from the car, he squared his shoulders and strode across the street toward the uniformed officer working with the resplendent doorman. It wasn’t the first time a fox had followed upon the heels of hounds. He did not notice the cab which had pulled up behind his coupe or the very ordinary little man who stared out the rear window in his direction.

Sammy shoved his hands into his pockets and changed his stride to a leisurely amble. He nodded at the cop. “Hello, Murphy. What’s the ruckus inside?”

Murphy glanced at Golden surprised. “Where’d you come from, Sergeant?”

“Driving by. On my way out of town on vacation when you boys passed me like a couple of bats out of hell.”

The uniformed officer shook his head. “Take my advice, Sergeant, and keep driving. If the lieutenant knows you’re available, he’s liable to cancel your leave and put you back to work. The guy upstairs getting cold in spite of the weather is a Name in the News, if you know what I mean, and there’s going to be an awful stink.”

“What guy?” Sammy held onto himself.

“Moline,” the sergeant said. “Hell, Sergeant, you met him last week yourself, when that Mexican gal bumped herself off because this jerk runs off and marries his canary in Las Vegas.”

Sammy was still rocking when he saw redheaded Dan Adams come out of the elevator and head toward the wide-eyed clerk at the reception desk. Sammy nodded to the cop and wandered inside.

The redheaded detective caught sight of him and changed his course as they met half way across the lobby. “I thought you were on vacation.”

“I am.”

“Then what in the devil are you doing here?”

“Curiosity,” Sammy said blandly. “Why do you suppose Nick Sandoe can’t hang onto his help?”

“How in the devil do you know that?” Adams’s hazel eyes sharpened.

“Murphy at the door. I was driving by when your sirens pulled me over to the curb.”

Adams nodded soberly. “We’re in for it,” he said. “We’ll be getting it from topside; we’ll be getting it from the papers. And if we can’t find a stoolie with something to sing about, there’ll be hell to pay. You know damned well that the direction we should go first is a closed door.”

“Sandoe?”

“Sandoe,” Adams agreed as though he were swearing softly.

“What’s it like upstairs?” Sammy asked.

“Three holes mussing up the breast pocket of some expensive flannel. Three cartridges strewn around the carpet.”

“That’s enough shooting to wake the dead,” Sammy said carefully.

Adams shook his head. “Michelle, coming home from the beauty parlor, found him. Put on quite a show. Resident medico’s carted her off to some high-priced bed. No noise until she discovered him. Then all hell broke loose.” Adams shrugged. “That’s no surprise, though; those high-priced cells are practically soundproof. Windows closed for air conditioning, too.”

Sammy was feeling better by the second. He grinned wickedly. “Better get along with my vacation if I’m going to make the beach today. Don’t work too hard, Red.”

“You go to hell,” the redheaded detective told him good-naturedly.

Outside the Alexis Apartments Sammy made a circuit of the block, trying to see the buildings as Carlos Mendez had seen it. Trying to figure a way in and a way out if he had no business there. He wondered with a start if the kid was hiding inside, and where was the gun? Where was that damned gun? He wished he had dared ask about the caliber of the cartridges left on the floor upstairs.

His personal apprehension was tempered now with disgust. Disgust with the whole damned setup. Dan Adams was a good cop, yet nothing they had taught him at Northwestern or under the Provost Marshal told him how to circumvent the nasty political situation. Sammy caught himself up short; he was thinking as if Carlos had not committed the crime; that was wishful thinking. The murder upstairs was an act of vengeance. It was as simple as that, and all that Sandoe’s name did was camouflage the issue. Give him more time to find Carlos Mendez, recover his gun and get rid of it. Give him all that, and how would he handle a murderer who had used his gun to commit the crime? Sammy wasn’t sure.

Down the alley back of the Alexis, he discovered the old man watching the service door.

Sammy leaned against the frame of the door and found his cigarettes. “Seen anything of a kid bandaged up like a mummy?”

“And whose business would you be minding?” the old man demanded.

Sammy palmed his badge.

“Yeah, I seen him. Told me he was hit by a revolving door.”

“Where was he when you saw him?”

“Standin’ about where you are.”

“Where’d he go?”

“Not in here,” said the old man. “That’s as far as my business goes. I tend to it.”

Sammy lighted his cigarette and wandered on. His eyes took in the fire escape ten feet up a sheer wall. Without the truck filling the space beneath, he didn’t get the picture Carlos had.

At the sloping garage entrance, he ran into the young man in coveralls. Sure, he remembered the beat-up Mexican. He’d kicked him off the drive. No, he didn’t go into the garage. Sure, he was sure. He’d been sitting in the cubbyhole beside the entrance twiddling his thumbs until the sirens arrived. No, reading on the job wasn’t permitted at the Alexis.

Sammy sauntered across the street to his coupe, puzzled, but feeling better. The cab still was parked behind his car. He glanced at it incuriously, his mind miles away.

Climbing into the car, he sat drumming his finger tips on the steering wheel. He didn’t trust coincidence. Moline’s body; Carlos in the neighborhood. But what if the kid hadn’t done it? It was a lovely thought. It was the best thought he’d had in a long time. He didn’t believe it even as he fondled it.

Sticking his key in the ignition, he turned it and pressed the starter button. He couldn’t do any good here, and he didn’t want to run into Lieutenant Cantrell. Glancing left, he prepared to swing out into the line of traffic on the boulevard.

There was some activity at the entrance to the Alexis. It was like a sudden blow in Sammy’s stomach. Handcuffed to Detective Mike Shannon, Carlos Mendez was climbing into the lead police car.

He was still fleeing, still not thinking clearly, when he parked the coupe in the lot next to La Marimba Club. The connecting bar that was open at this time of the morning was called La Tapatia.

Nell Wharton wasn’t on a chrome and red stool. Neither was she in a red booth. Sammy asked.

The bartender said, “Who wants to know?”

“Golden.”

“Yeah,” said the bartender, “she was here. Left about ten minutes ago. Said to tell you she was going to your apartment.”

So much the better, Sammy thought.

He swung out of the bar remembering he had told Father Shanley to meet him at the apartment. He gave a wry grin to the combination that might be waiting in his living room. Still, give the Lord and the devil their due, both had class.

And he knew the next step. It was funny for him to be needing Father Shanley for a change.

But the best laid plans of mice and men …

Father Shanley hadn’t arrived at Sammy’s third floor walk-up. Nell Wharton had. So had a couple of the boys.

She was sitting on the sofa. There was a black-and-blue mouse the size of a pigeon’s egg alongside her left eye. And a big fellow had a hand very like a ham wrapped around her scarlet mouth.

The big fellow removed his hand from Nell’s mouth when Sammy saw the gun in the small fellow’s hand. The way the big fellow’s hand had messed her lipstick, Nell’s mouth looked like a ragged wound.

The small fellow’s gun said, “Come in.” When Sammy obeyed the gesture, the small fellow spoke. “Shut the door, smart boy.”

The big fellow was in a maroon sport shirt. It was mottled by his sweat like a map of some strange world. His face was flushed with heat, and moist. The small fellow was in gabardine so light in hue as to be almost pink. Under it he wore a dark blue shirt buttoned at the throat but without a tie. His shoes were black points and heels on white. He was precious, Sammy thought, like one of those jeweled poisonous snakes.

Nell said, “I’m sorry, Sammy Boy. This wasn’t my idea.”

The big fellow reached lazily and cuffed her in the face. “I told you to keep your mouth shut.”

Sammy started forward.

“Don’t!” Nell gasped.

“The girl’s smart,” said the small fellow. “Smarter than you, smart boy.” He turned on the radio, tuning the volume on full.

The detective snapped his fingers suddenly. “The Kendall mob. Chicago. There was a wire on you a couple weeks ago. Right after the Second National Trust job.”

“A real smart cop,” said the small fellow.

The radio started yelping a soap opera. The small fellow found some jazz. Its wild cacophony filled the room. A scream would sound like a vocalist.

“O.K., Swede,” said the small fellow.

The big one pulled his bulk from the sofa and came around Sammy to the rear. He moved with a lazy grace. He twisted Sammy’s right arm up behind his back and removed the police positive .38 the detective had substituted for his automatic. He tossed it into the sagging overstuffed chair. Then he twisted Sammy’s left arm around to join his right.

The small fellow dropped his gun into his jacket pocket. “Imagine working on a cop,” he said. “Imagine being paid to work on a cop.” He came over and stood in front of Sammy. “Nick doesn’t like the double-cross.” He slapped the detective across the face with the back of his hand. The large diamond on his middle finger drew a line of blood. “When Nick pays for something, he gets it. Or you do!”

He curled his right fist and lashed at Sammy’s chin. The detective rolled his head, taking the blow along his jaw. The small fellow brought his knee up hard and fast and caught Sammy in the groin. The detective almost doubled with the savage pain of the blow in spite of the big fellow’s effort to hold him erect.

Nell Wharton gathered her legs under her and darted from the sofa toward the chair and Sammy’s gun. The small fellow moved with the speed of a striking snake. He caught the blonde girl’s arm, jerked it, and as she spun with her own momentum, slugged her on the side of the head. She crumpled to the floor without a whimper.

Sammy struggled against his twisted arm. “I’ll kill you for that!” he promised.

The small fellow’s lips were thin and tight. He allowed the corners to twist upwards in a grimace. “You got that backwards, smart boy.”

With a glance for the girl on the floor, he came back to Sammy. “I wish I had a hose,” he said. “I wish I had a hose to use on a cop. It would help to pay back.”

“Smart boy’s got a blackjack on his hip,” said Swede.

The small fellow slipped his hand into Sammy’s hip pocket. When the detective felt the fingers curl around the blackjack, he bent double with a quick, forward rolling movement. His arms were being torn from his body, but the three men went down together. As he hit the floor, he jackknifed his legs and kicked. He heard the small fellow gasp with pain. Then the Swede had a knee in Sammy’s back, and his nose was crushed into the carpet and the hurt was screaming in the sockets of his arms and across his shoulders, screaming up and above the music from the radio, that mass of hideously broken sound built up like a wall around them.

The small fellow got to his feet. His black-and-white oxfords and painted toes. He used the right one to kick Sammy in the ribs.

An agonized sound escaped through the detective’s clenched teeth, a small sound lost in the brittle racket of the jazz.

He was kicked again and again. The pointed toe of the shoe smashed into his body along the line of his ribs, into his hip bone, along his upper thigh. He was going to black out and he knew it. There was no way he could stop it and no way he could stop them. Already he was on the edge of the whirling, nauseous dark. The radio howled like the dream of a smoked-up drummer.

One decimal of pain from unconsciousness with only the sheer strength of his will holding on the edge of the fall-away pit, the kicking stopped. And from far away as though it had slipped through some crack in the hideous music, Sammy heard the sharp crack of bone on bone. He turned his head and forced his eyes open in time to see the small fellow cave to the floor beside him.

The pressure came off his arms. They sprawled limply to his sides. The Swede went up and off his back. Sammy curled his tortured body, rolling so he could see where the big, rubber-soled feet of the Swede were going.

What he saw, he was in no condition to believe. In the small arena of space between furniture and bodies, Father Shanley and the Swede were sparring like professionals.

The Swede had height, weight and reach. But there was a clean precision in the way the young priest moved that was beautiful to behold. As Sammy’s eyes cleared, he saw Father Shanley feint with his left, draw the Swede’s guard down, cross with his right, hard and sudden with the impact of a piledriver behind it, and connect with the big fellow’s jaw.

The Swede rocked. He went off the balls of his feet and onto his heels. But he was more surprised than hurt. He drove back into the priest, his weight and reach carrying his chopping blows home. One ham-sized fist blotted Father Shanley’s left eye.

Sammy got to his hands and knees. The effort cost him a lot, but he kept moving. He crawled over to the small fellow’s sprawled form and fumbled into the pocket of the gabardine coat. He found the flat, neat .32 caliber automatic. He raised up on his knees.

The two men fighting were cautious now. Both feinting. Both shuffling. The big fellow had hurt the priest; the blow into his left eye had cut the skin along the arch of bone, and the blood from it was blinding him on that side.

Sammy raised the automatic. His hand shook. He had to use his left hand as a vise around his right wrist. When the two men were sideways to him, Sammy shot the Swede through the right shoulder.

The sharp bark of the .32 pistol came and went through the shaking racket of the music, scarcely losing the beat. The big fellow’s right arm dropped to his side and he stared at it stupidly. He brought his left hand over and covered the wound, trying to hold in the blood. Then, he began to sway. Father Shanley helped him totter onto the sofa, getting his back between Sammy and the Swede.

“Get out of the way, Father.”

The priest swung and faced the detective. Sammy was making an effort to hold the gun steady. The weakness from his beating was catching up with him. His black eyes were dead in their sockets and the upper lids drooping.

“Get out of the way,” Sammy repeated, “so I can finish the job.”

“Don’t be a fool, Golden.”

Sammy’s breath was coming in sobs. He came to his hands and knees.

Father Shanley started toward him.

“Take care of Nell,” Sammy rasped.

He let go of the gun and began to crawl toward the arm of the sofa. He used the arm to pull him far enough up so he could reach the radio and turn the knob. After the sudden shock of quiet, he felt better.

Father Shanley bent over Nell and felt her wrist for the pulse. Sammy sank onto the floor beside the sofa and stared dully at the big fellow he had wounded.

The priest said, “A cold wet towel should bring her around.” He rose and went through the door of the bedroom, using his handkerchief to wipe the blood from his swelling eye.

When the priest had disappeared through the bedroom on his way to the bath, the Swede lurched to his feet. He went through the door to the stairs, still holding to his wound with his left hand.

“To hell with you!” Sammy said after him. “To hell with you!” He crawled up onto the sofa, wishing briefly he were dead for what the effort cost him.

Father Shanley returned to the liivng room carrying a soaked towel. He had plastered adhesive bandage across the bloody spot below his left brow. The eye was closed.

Sammy said, “Our damned winged pigeon has flown the coop.”

“His wound—” Father Shanley began.

“Should have been between the eyes,” Sammy told him.

The priest bent once more to the unconscious girl. He folded the wet towel gently across her forehead.

“Where in hell did you learn to handle yourself?” Sammy asked.

“Loyola,” Father Shanley said.

Nell Wharton moaned, stirred and opened her eyes. The sight of the priest gazing down at her was almost too much.

“When did I die?” she whispered.

Father Shanley grinned, his smile even the more boyish for the spectacular shiner developing around his left eye. “You’re not dead yet, my child.”

“Then how’d you get here?” Nell demanded.

“Steady, baby,” Sammy called; and then, “This is Father Shanley, Nell.”

The girl got the palms of her hands flat onto the carpet. Father Shanley removed the dripping towel as she pushed herself into a sitting position. She caught sight of the small fellow unconscious on the floor. “What happened?”

Sammy grinned. “Kid Shanley here cooled him, and was working on the big fellow until I butted in with a gun.”

“Are you kidding, Sammy Boy?” Nell moved her glance from the detective to the priest.

Father Shanley touched his swollen eye. “It was I who was being worked on.”

Nell studied him for a moment, taking in the breadth of shoulders under the black broadcloth. “I don’t know about that,” she decided.

Father Shanley helped her to her feet and into the overstuffed chair, reaching the revolver from under her before she could sit upon it. He gestured with the gun, “What about our sleeping friend?”

“There’s a pair of bracelets in the top left-hand drawer of the bureau. In a black leather case.”

The priest secured the handcuffs and returned with them.

Sammy said, “Push the sawtoothed side on through to open ‘em.” He glanced around the room. “Now,” he continued, “put one around the fellow’s wrist tight, and use the other around the steam radiator pipe.”

The priest did as he was told.

“Now he’ll be hard put to run if he wakes up before the police come and after we’ve cleared out.”

“But you’re the police,” Father Shanley said, puzzled.

Sammy shook his head. “Nearer a fugitive,” he corrected soberly. “For one thing, Nell and I are on the spot. Those bums were hired to do a job on me. Nell’s stuck because she tried to help me—help us,” he amended. “This time Nick Sandoe’s hired pugs failed. Next time, they won’t.”

“But the police—” Father Shanley objected.

“Nick’s bigger than the police in this lousy town,” Sammy said. “Besides, if they found my gun on Carlos, the department will be looking for me, and not as a cop on vacation.”

“What are you trying to tell me, Golden?”

“Matty Moline is dead. He was killed this morning in his apartment at the Alexis. Carlos was picked up somewhere in the same building. I saw them bring him out handcuffed to a friend of mine in the department.”

Watching the expression of the priest’s face change as he talked, Sammy thought suddenly, “His boy, Jesus, must have looked like this when they nailed him to the cross.”

Nell Wharton said shakily, “Sammy Boy, where can I find us a drink?”

“Lower shelf in the kitchen, left side,” Sammy responded. He continued to the priest, “I came back to find you, Father, when I ran into this trouble. I watched them put the kid in a police car and start toward town, so I know they’ll have him either at Homicide or the city jail. And here’s where we’ve got to take advantage of that collar you wear backward.”

Father Shanley clasped his hands behind his back and stared down at the detective. “Then there’s something we can do?”

Sammy’s black eyes were bleak when they met the priest’s gaze. With the line of blood along his cheek and the swelling on his jaw, the mask of his face was out of joint. But it was tough, and beneath the toughness was a kind of strength that hadn’t been there since North Africa and Salerno. He said, “When I left the Alexis Apartments, I was licked. I was running away. It took another kind of licking to knock that out of me.

“Now here’s what I want you to do. Get down to the station. They’re probably holding the kid incommunicado. But with your collar, your name, and half the force Irish, you can get to the kid. You’ve got to. Put the Church up against John Gough in person if you have to. There’s an election coming up, so if you really want to see the kid, you can.”

The priest nodded.

Nell Wharton returned with three half-filled glasses. The priest shook his head and smiled. Nell sat beside Sammy. He took a good stiff drink of the brandy and went on.

“Nell and I are going into hiding. In a couple hours or so, I’ll get hold of you at the parish house and tell you where to join us. Meanwhile, you’ve got to find out what happened this morning at the Alexis Apartments.”

“You think perhaps Carlos is innocent?” Father Shanley asked eagerly.

The detective shook his head. “Don’t grow him any wings, Father. He’s probably guilty as hell. An hour ago I was sure of it. Since I’ve become so important to Nick Sandoe that he can afford to hire a couple of pugs wanted for a bank holdup in Chicago, I’m not so sure.”

“I’ll see Carlos,” Father Shanley said.

Sammy pushed himself up from the sofa, swallowed the rest of the brandy in gulps to fight the pain that had risen within him and said, “Get on your way, Father, while I pack a couple of bags. I don’t know where we’re going, but I’ll get in touch with you.”

Nell said suddenly, “I’ve got a place, Sammy Boy. I bought a house up on Rosewood the other day. There’s nothing in it but a stove and refrigerator. But nobody knows about it except me, and the guy I bought it from.” She smiled almost shyly at the priest “And he doesn’t know who I am.”

The phone started to ring.

“We’ll let that go,” Sammy said.

Father Shanley turned to the girl. “I’ll come to your place if you will give me the address.”

“1041 Rosewood,” Nell told him. “Up the hill of the north end of Vernon Avenue.”

“And what is your name, Nell?”

“Nell Wharton, Father.”

Sammy turned at the door of the bedroom. “Father?”

“Yes, Golden?”

“You Catholics,” Sammy said bluntly, “you’re always wanting money for something or other, aren’t you?”

Father Shanley showed some toughness Sammy hadn’t seen before. “Just what are you getting at?”

“I’m serious,” Sammy told him. “And time’s wasting. Isn’t there something you need money for?”

The priest nodded, the one open eye curious. “There’s a school I want to build, but what business is that of yours?”

Sammy reached into his breast pocket. “Here’s a contribution, Father.” He handed the white envelope to the priest.

Father Shanley opened the white envelope. The top bill was for a hundred dollars. So were the nine bills under it. He overcame his surprise, leveled his clear blue eyes on the detective and demanded, “What does this mean?”

Sammy grinned. “There was another Jew once who didn’t know what to do with his thirty pieces of silver. Maybe I do.”

Father Joseph Shanley caught a city-bound street car on the corner. Before the day was over, he reflected gravely, he probably would be running all over the city in cabs, but so long and conscientiously had he practiced the habit of poverty common to his parish, that it would take some practice before he could hail a taxi without counting the quarters and what could be done with them.

Aboard the trolley, however, he was happy with his choice. The familiar habit, the extra time it would give him, both were needed for the thinking he had to do. Oblivious to the stares his rapidly blackening eye drew, he settled to sorting the badly tangled skeins of tragedy and puzzle and shock.

When he had approached Sergeant Golden in Homicide yesterday afternoon, murder had been a nebulous, intangible something, the lesser of two evils put against the suicide of Rosa Mendez and her suffering family. Now, in the shape of a man shot to death in the Alexis Apartments with Carlos in jail for the crime, it was terrible, immediate and intimate.

And there was a shadow and a substance over and above the bloodshed for which he was totally unprepared. Its substance was in the beating which had been administered to Golden and the Wharton girl. Its substance was in the thousand dollars secure in his pocket. Its substance was in the name Golden had named, Rosa’s boss and Rosa’s sin.

And its shadows were around all these things. In the unknown why of the beatings; the ineffable why Golden had called the gift of the thousand dollars, his thirty pieces of silver; the enigmatic, intolerable why Nick Sandoe was bigger than the police department.

Father James Shanley was not ignorant that the city in which he lived had a reputation for being graft-ridden and crime-corrupt. But how had graft touched his parish except at election time with free beer and the promise of jobs for his chronically unemployed? And what was crime but the deadly rodent that lurked in the dark corners of his parishioners’ economic instability? Crimes of theft and passion which he knew how to fight. Certainly they were no relation to “big-time” crime. Why, the only reputedly successful criminal Father Shanley knew was the retired bootlegger who had paid for the organ in the Church of St. Anne.

And now it would seem he had stirred a devil’s brew.

It was two thirty in the afternoon when Father Shanley arrived at the house at 1041 Rosewood. He came to the house in a sleek maroon sedan with enough portholes along its hood to serve a battlewagon.

Sammy Golden answered the door and stared suspiciously at the round little man behind the priest and behind the huge wicker laundry hamper which appeared to be a horn of plenty.

“I’m not used to this sort of thing,” Father Shanley smiled, “but I felt a provisioning would not be out of place.”

“Sure,” Sammy said. He was watching the fat little man with short gray curly hair and friendly dark eyes who was carrying the basket. His face was familiar in the same way the king of diamonds is when you’re away from a deck of cards.

The detective stepped back, swinging the door so they could enter.

“Also,” continued Father Shanley, “in the back of the car are two cots, bedding, four folding chairs, and a card table. And I’ve taken the liberty of calling the gas and electric companies so you’ll have your refrigerator, stove and lights before the afternoon is over.”

“If you’ll show me where the kitchen is,” the little man suggested.

“Sure,” Sammy said. He led the way to the kitchen.

The little man eased the basket onto the sink, then turned and offered his hand. “Permit me, I am Paul Pavlides.”

Sammy took his hand. “I’m Sammy Golden. Father Shanley probably told you.” He knew this man, now. Pavlides was an ex-bootlegger. He’d given the police no trouble for fifteen years and not much before that. It generally was conceded he was out of the racket entirely; but they kept his double portrait in the gallery, probably for sentimental reasons.

Paul Pavlides rubbed his chubby, immaculate hands together, beaming. “It takes me back,” he said, “it really takes me back.” He reached with his fingers and tugged gently at the butt of the revolver under Sammy’s left arm. “Isn’t that too tight?” he asked with the same concern a tennis player might have for the stringing of his racquet.

“The holster,” Sammy told him, “was intended for an automatic.”

The Greek nodded. “I thought so,” he exclaimed.

The detective turned and headed for the living room with the ex-bootlegger at his heels.

“Much better than the movies,” said Mr. Pavlides to Sammy’s back. “No furniture, no props. Just empty rooms and a priest helping you to hide. What a situation!”

Nell Wharton had changed to a cool, pale green slack suit and red espadrilles with rope soles. She was sitting on the floor with a spread of solitaire before her, and an ashtray, cigarettes and an open can of beer. Father Shanley was cross-legged opposite her, telling about the gas and lights.

“But perfect,” exclaimed Paul Pavlides. “But absolutely perfect, believe me!”

Sammy introduced the Greek to Nell.

Pavlides bowed from the waist as much as his stomach would permit.

Sammy dropped onto the floor between the priest and the girl.

“I will bring in the furniture while you talk,” Pavlides offered. He moved from the living room on dancer’s feet with that smooth grace peculiar to certain small fat men.

Father Shanley said, “I’ve seen Carlos.”

Sammy noticed that the red seven on Nell’s discard pile would fit below the black eight. He made the play. “Yeah?”

“He didn’t do it!”

“Says Carlos?” Sammy moved a black six from the file to the left.

“He told me where your gun is and swears it hasn’t been fired.”

“Yeah?” There was no elation rising in Sammy. He didn’t want it to show. He didn’t want emotion to get in his way of thinking. He turned over the card that had been under the black six. It was the ace of hearts. That was a lucky sign. He asked, “Where’s the gun?”

The failure of the detective to respond with pleasure to his news was making Father Shanley irritable. “What is it that you doubt, Golden?”

“Everything,” Sammy told him. That card that had been under the ace was a red five. He played it on the black six. The game was beginning to take shape. “What about the gun?”

The priest hunched forward. “This is what the boy told me. I, for one, believe him. It’s on the fifth floor. Beside the elevator there’s a tall urn of some sort filled with sand. Carlos buried the gun in the sand and rearranged the cigarette butts. That was after he saw the police arrive on the sixth floor and before they picked him up on the second. They haven’t shown him the gun, so he doesn’t think they’ve found it yet.”

Paul Pavlides bustled into the living room with two folding chairs under each arm. He proceeded to set them up.

“What about him?” Sammy asked.

Surprisingly, it was Nell who spoke. “He’s one of us, Sammy Boy. Can’t you see that?”

The Greek beamed. “But, of course …”

“Paul has been a great help to me in the church,” Father Shanley answered, “and it occurred to me that he would be a help to us with the experience he has had in this sort of thing.”

“What sort of thing?” Sammy demanded.

Paul Pavlides sighed. “It is the nature of the policeman,” he said, “always to be suspicious.”

Father Shanley’s voice was grave when he answered the detective, and under the gravity was a tinge of anger. “Even though Carlos is innocent, he is being held for the crime. Already it is in the afternoon papers. The police are treating the boy pretty roughly. I hope I’ve been able to stop some of that. Carlos refers to himself as the ‘fall guy.’ He is very bitter.”

“No doubt,” Sammy agreed drily. He turned over the card that had been under the red five. It was the deuce of hearts. He played it on the ace.

“We must tell them about the gun,” Father Shanley continued, searching Sammy’s face with his one good eye. “Your gun, Golden, I wanted to talk to you first, but we must tell them about your gun.”

“Why?” Sammy turned over the last card in the file. It was a red king. He reached for a black queen.

“If your gun hasn’t been fired,” he said desperately, “Carlos is innocent!”

Sammy raised his eyes and leveled them on the priest. “Look, Father, even if your story is true there is a gun in the ash stand on the fifth floor of the Alexis Apartments, what does it prove?

“The sand has removed Carlos’s fingerprints, and along with them any tangible evidence that my gun was connected with him. So, the gun hasn’t been fired, so it’s not the weapon that killed Matty Moline, but that doesn’t mean Carlos isn’t the murderer. Against the fact that my gun wasn’t used, who benefits except me when the police still have these facts?”

He ticked them off on his fingers.

“Carlos was in the Alexis Apartments at the time the crime was discovered.

“He had motive.

“He had intention.

“He had means.

“He’s precisely the kind of suspect the department needs with this murder following so closely upon the death of Rosa.

“Look at it from this angle. Ten minutes after the police arrive on the scene of the crime, they have a prime suspect in custody. As far as the newspapers are concerned, the department’s clean. And with an election less than a month away, that’s how John Gough wants his police department to operate.”

Father Shanley stared at his interlocked fingers. The buoyancy was gone from his voice. “You make it so hopeless.”

“It is.” Sammy turned the card that had been beneath the black queen. It was the ace of spades. “So was Anzio hopeless,” he added.

Father Shanley’s head jerked up. Nell stopped watching the detective manipulate the cards and glanced into his face curiously. Paul Pavlides came into the room carrying a card table. “I left the cots in the hall,” he said.

Father Shanley reached and touched Sammy on the knee. “I’m sorry I was angry with you. Then, there is something we can do?”

Sammy gestured at the solitaire spread. “It’s like this game of cards. The mathematical chance of winning is very slight. But not so slight that a lot of damned fools won’t play it.” He turned over the trey of hearts. He went on playing as he talked.

“In a moment, we’re going to forget about Carlos, we’ve got to, or we’ll not see the forest for the trees. But, for my own sake, I’ve got to see that gun of mine. Faith’s a fine thing in church, Father, but I’d like the evidence of things seen for a change. Even as we forget Carlos, we’ll work on the assumption that the kid’s innocent. But I’d still like to see the gun.”

Nell Wharton said suddenly, “You leave the gun to me, Sammy Boy.” She stared at the priest, and then stared at the detective. “There’s an old boy who sends his wife to Lido Isle every summer. He lives at the Alexis. He’d love to buy me a drink.”

Sammy paused with a red jack in his hand. “You’ve had one rough time on my account, baby.”

“This guy’s sixty,” Nell snorted. “Only his ideas are young.”

Sammy grinned. Through his one good eye, Father Shanley glanced slantwise at Heaven. And Paul Pavlides, sitting on one of the folding chairs, rubbed his hands together with pleasure.

The detective played the red jack. “Is Nick Sandoe a Catholic?”

The priest shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Paul Pavlides spoke, “Nick is a Catholic, yes. But Greek Orthodox.”

Glancing at Father Shanley, Sammy asked, “Do they feel the same way about suicide as you Romans?”

“Oh yes.” Father Shanley was puzzled.

Staring at the spread of cards before him, Sammy said, “When you leave here, phone Nick Sandoe. Phone him in your capacity as the Mendez family’s priest. Tell him that you know he was Rosa’s employer for a good many years and you thought he would like to learn that a Rosary is being held tonight for the girl, and tomorrow a mass in the Church of St. Anne. Tell him the time and the place for each. Be sure he knows that Rosa is to be buried in sacred ground.”

Father Shanley shifted uneasily and felt for his pipe and tobacco. He didn’t like this utilization of his sacred office to an ulterior end. “Why?” he demanded.

The next card was the ace of diamonds. Incredible luck! The luck of the cards was getting into and mixing with other things.

Sammy said, “In spite of the subsequent murder and the fact that Carlos is in jail, we must never lose sight of your original promise.”

Tobacco spilled on the floor as the priest raised his head from his pipe loading.

The detective continued, “Your evidence of things not seen, Father. The possibility that Rosa Mendez did not commit suicide in Nick Sandoe’s office. Don’t forget it. God knows I’ve tried to, been told to, and paid to. You, Father, and Nell here and I are already casualties because someone thought I persisted in my interest in a closed suicide case.

“Call it a hunch, but I’ll stake my last dollar on it—if my gun hasn’t been fired and Carlos is innocent, our best chance of getting him out of jail is not by concentrating on the murder at the Alexis, but in discovering who killed Rosa and why.”

He turned over a black ten and played it. He glanced at Nell. “Did you stack these cards, baby?”

Nell winked at him. “It was a lousy game, Sammy Boy, until you took over.”

“It’s still a lousy game,” Sammy said. He was not talking about solitaire. He turned to Paul Pavlides. “You still want to be dealt in?”

The Greek pulled at a smooth fat cheek thoughtfully. “Yes,” he admitted finally. “Yesterday and the day before and the year before that and this morning, I was bored. To be bored destroys values. But now I have had my values restored.”

“I don’t give a damn about your values,” Sammy said evenly. “Do you still have any of your old contacts?”

“Contacts? No.” Pavlides frowned regretfully. Then his face brightened. “I still have friends with contacts.”

Sammy turned over the deuce of spades. He did not look at the Greek. “Could you get the word going in a big loud whisper that Johnny Lavinia is getting ready to cross the county line?”

The expectant beam went out of Pavlides’ moon-round face and his soft dark eyes became flinty. “I have not heard that before,” he said.

“Of course not,” the detective snapped. “I just made it up.”

“Ringing in old Johnny,” the Greek murmured nostalgically.

Sammy looked at him sharply. “Friend of yours?” he demanded.

Paul Pavlides’ small even teeth flashed a smile. They flashed white and gold. “It took me back,” he said. “It took me back, Johnny’s name did.” He rubbed his hands together as though he were washing them. “No, he’s no friend of mine. Though I do owe him a favor. He sent a couple of his boys to take me for a ride once.”

“That’s a favor?” Nell was smiling at the Greek.

Pavlides’ dark eyes twinkled. “They were very good boys. I hired them before the ride was over.”

“You’ll get the word around so Nick Sandoe’ll hear it?” Sammy was back to his card game; and he had the feeling, now, he was going to win it.

He heard the Greek say, “It’ll be a pleasure. Yes, it’ll really be a pleasure. May I ask you a question, Mr. Golden?”

Sammy nodded.

“Did you ever make homemade hand grenades out of blocks of T.N.T.?”

“I have seen them.”

Pavlides showed his two-colored teeth. “Then you know how it is, Mr. Detective, when you’re uncertain about the fuse, and do not know when the explosion will come?”

A few minutes later Father Shanley and Paul Pavlides took their leave. So engrossed were they with their own speculations that neither paid the slightest heed to the progress of an unobtrusive little man strolling up the walk opposite mopping his face with a damp handkerchief.

When the maroon sedan had driven from the curb and the door to the tan stucco house was closed, the little man ceased wiping his face, picked up speed, and scurried around the corner to where a taxi was parked and waiting.

“The nearest public phone,” gasped the little man to the driver. He melted onto the hot leather of the seat, cursing the weather.

And as the taxi engine turned over, he scribbled the number of the license plate of the maroon sedan into a small notebook.

In the tan stucco house, Sammy Golden continued to play solitaire. He played slowly, not pushing his luck with the remarkable fall of the cards, but using it as a counterpoint to the active movement of his mind.

From time to time, he glanced at Nell and blessed her gift of silence. The black-and-blue mouse beside her left eye, the bruise growing dark at her temple, disturbed her almost classic beauty. But somehow, Sammy thought, he had never seen her look more lovely. Certainly, there was a softness that had not been there in the brittleness of last evening.

Finally, the game was over. A king topped each of the four piles. He had won the game. For a long time he had known he was going to win. And he wondered about it, disturbed a little, because he never had been the sort to have a good day at playing the horses, or even a night feeling particularly lucky about poker, or with much trust in hunches of any kind.

He stretched his legs and then his arms. He grinned at the four kings and then at Nell.

“What’s for now?” the blonde girl asked.

“You’re going to work what repairs you can and go calling on your hot case of varicose veins,” he told her. “You can take the car because I want you back in time to go to the Rosary for Rosa Mendez. Did you bring a hat along?”

“A dilly. And what’s for you while I’m hightailing around town?”

“A couple more fires under Nick Sandoe. I want to put up enough smoke that he won’t know which fire this little Indian is tending.”

“You know what you’re doing,” Nell said quietly, “but do you know why, Sammy Boy?”

“Maybe to make my own coffin,” Sammy said gravely. “Maybe because the boy with his collar on backwards has done something to me that’s needed doing for a damned long time.”

The girl covered his hand with her own. “You’ve come a long way since last night, Sammy Boy. And you’ve dragged me along. Maybe I’m a boob for liking what’s showing.”

Sammy stared at her earnestly. “Does it show that much?”

Nell raised her hand and rubbed it gently across his shoulders. “No wings yet,” she told him lightly. She let her arm rest along his back and laid her cheek softly against his.

In the bedroom at the parish house, Father Joseph Shanley was on his knees beside the straight oak chair. For nearly an hour he had been examining his soul before God. The trouble had come upon him in his prayer before Office.

“… Cleanse my heart for all vain, perverse, and distracting thoughts; enlighten my mind …” Phrases as natural as spring rain upon the hill back of the church, and they had been like cotton upon his tongue.

How could he ask this of God when he could not clear his mind or his heart of the day’s confusions? Should he beg forgiveness for the thing he surely had begun? Or, should he pray for success for Detective Golden (who seemingly had become a free agent taking justice into his hands, no longer closely related to the office of law and order which he had represented when Father Shanley had approached him)? Or, should he pray for forgiveness upon one hand and for success upon the other; embracing, it would appear, the lie put upon the Jesuits with finis coronat opus?

What was the innocence of Rosa Mendez worth?

He was not seeing the answer except in a glass darkly.

For he had called Nick Sandoe following Sergeant Golden’s instructions.

And now almost bitterly, he reflected, “The only tragedy in all the world is the tragedy of not being a saint.”

Across the width of the city from where Father Shanley wrestled with himself, on the twelfth floor of the Alexis Apartments, Nell Wharton apparently was enjoying the spectacle of a stout, expensively tailored satyr manufacturing Martinis.

Actually, she did feel set up. But the origin of her pleasure was not in the familiar routine of this tête-à-tête. Rather it rested with the weight of a Colt .38 automatic pistol deep in her red suede bag.

The gun had been in the urn as Father Shanley had foretold. And its clip was full, each bullet snug in its bright brass cartridge and not downtown in the police laboratory waiting to be mated with the gun that had killed Matty Moline.

The possibility that the condition of the gun might prove the innocence of Carlos Mendez had occurred to Nell only in passing. The important thing, the thing that had set her up, was that this gun no longer existed as a possible troublemaker for her man.

The stout satyr returned with the pair of Martinis. He gave one to Nell, raised his brows over the brim of the glass as he sipped the fullness from its rim, and then dropped heavily onto the yellow sofa beside her.

The Martini was excellent. Somewhere in the background Stravinsky was machining their state of intimacy to a delicate perfection. Somehow, an immaculately manicured, clean pink hand had come to rest casually upon Nell’s crossed knees.

It was curious, Nell reflected, how a bum was a bum regardless of how much he paid his tailor, or how he behaved in public. She did have such lovely “friends.”

She said, “Would you have an aspirin around, darling?”

“Headache?”

“A nuisance,” she said, “and I’m sorry.”

He pulled his bulk from the sofa and trundled it out of sight in the direction of the bath.

Nell picked up her heavy suede bag, crossed the room swiftly, and shut the door silently behind her. She had not lied entirely about the headache, for the bruises at temple and brow had only their color and shape disguised by the exquisite job of make-up.

Sammy Golden waited until dark before he left the tan stucco house on Rosewood and headed four blocks down the hill to a drugstore. In the phone booth he rang the Times-Herald. The Times-Herald was a syndicate paper with its policy makers three thousand miles away. It was the only paper in the city which could afford to be actively against the administration of Mayor John Gough.

The girl at the switchboard connected the detective with Tom Meigs.

Once a census taker, and annually the Collector of Internal Revenue, discovered that Jack Farr was a secretary by occupation, which was quite extraordinary in view of the five figures which encompassed his yearly income and in view of the fact he could neither take dictation nor type.

In a hard polished way, Jack was handsome. He paid a great deal of attention to his personal grooming. And he chose his dark, conservative suits with the discriminating eye of an artist.

In the circles through which he moved, Jack was respected rather than liked. Even the women who loved him seldom liked him very much.

He never talked for the sake of conversation. Yet he often spoke when there were suggestions to be made.

When the hat check girl at La Marimba, so nervous tonight that her soft blonde beauty was almost ugly, told Jack the boss was on his ear for sure, Jack patted her on the cheek and passed her a buck with his hat.

When the bartender brought him a double Gibson containing three pickled onions, Jack asked, “Cops been giving you any trouble, Bobby?”

The Filipino grinned. “Sorry, Mr. Farr, I do not speak English very well.”

Jack nodded. “That’s the stuff, Bobby. You just keep saying that and giving ‘em a drink on the house if they look as though they’d like to mooch one.”

“Sure, Mr. Farr. On the house.”

“You’re a good boy, Bobby,” Jack said. He stared out of the bar through the arcade to the dance floor and the tables, empty and skeletal in the early evening. He wondered if the death of two entertainers in a week’s time would turn La Marimba into a morgue or do it a land office business. The next three hours would tell the story.

He had made his suggestion. Let the police close the club until after the election. Nick had said, “No.” Already a new name was going up in lights out in front to replace Matty Moline’s. It didn’t make any difference to Jack Farr. He would miss watching and hearing Michelle. She had the kind of figure and voice and put something special into a jump tune. But Nick had been wise to refuse her even when she had insisted in the great tradition, Farr’s soft smile was cynical, that “the show must go on.”

Finishing his drink, he slid off his stool. It was the first drink of the day. Like any tired businessman, he had the feeling he deserved the drink. He had done a day’s work. It would take more than a drink to release the steel spring coiled tightly inside him. But that could wait.

On his way to Nick’s office, he stopped in the restroom and washed his hands and combed his hair before the bright mirror. The thing that pleased him most about his appearance was the miniature red, white and blue ribbon in his dark lapel. Even walking along the street, he liked to catch its reflection in store windows. He was proud of his Silver Star.

Nick Sandoe had a map of the city spread on the desk before him. Heavy lines on it marked off the voting precincts. When Jack entered, Nick raised his head and asked, “Who’ve we got in the fifteenth?”

“Kent,” Jack told him, “Andy Kent.” He selected a green leather chair, settled into it and crossed his legs, carefully arranging the crease in his trousers. He studied the big dapper man before him with honest interest.

Sandoe began to fold the map. “Get hold of Kent and find out what he knows about a Catholic priest out there, a Father Joseph Shanley.”

“Sure,” Jack agreed. “What’s the angle?”

“There’s going to be a Rosary tonight for Rose Alyce at the Lawnwood Mortuary. You’re attending.”

“Not you, Nick?” Jack’s eyes were slits as he lighted a cigarette.

Nick Sandoe didn’t say anything. He found a cigar. It went well with his angular, handsome face framed with gray at the temples.

Jack made a suggestion. “She was one of your girls, Nick. You were fond of her. God knows you didn’t make a secret of it. You’re damned sorry her brother went crazy this morning. If there’s anything you can do …”

“Who do I tell that to?” Nick snapped his lighter shut, his deep-set glance intent on the young man across from him.

“The priest.”

“The priest?”

Farr nodded. “It was a priest who knocked out Frankie Kendall this noon. It was a priest who was fighting with the Swede when Golden shot him through the shoulder. Want to take any bets?”

Sandoe stared at the glowing pyramid on the end of his cigar. “Who’s his bishop?”

Jack shook his head. “Stick to the priest, Nick. A thousand’ll get you one he’s an honest guy. Go out and be honest back at him. You can’t bribe him, and you can’t scare him. The best you can do is to get him on your side. The Mendez kid’s your best offer. Offer to pay the kid’s expenses in court. If the kid doesn’t go to the gas chamber and we get him locked up in a nuthouse, what have we lost?”

Nick nodded with admiration. “I like that. It’s good.”

Farr said quietly, “Don’t underestimate this Father Shanley, Nick. Don’t patronize him. There was a Catholic chaplain in my outfit. Paratroops at his own request. If we’re up against somebody like him, God help us!”

Nick Sandoe pulled the smoke from his clear Havana filler into his lungs and expelled it slowly in a broadening stream. Through the smoke screen, his dark, bright eyes never left the face of his lieutenant. “I’ve never seen you worried before, Jack.”

“I’m not worried.”

“Farr,” Nick said thoughtfully, “that’s not a Catholic-sounding name.”

“I’m not a Catholic.”

“I am,” Nick said. “I’m a Catholic. Greek. There’s this Rosary tonight and a mass tomorrow in the church. That’s what’s got me worried.”

“I’m the one that’s supposed to be worried,” Jack said.

“You don’t know enough to be worried,” Nick said reflectively. “That’s what comes of not being a Catholic. You don’t know when to be worried.”

“I’m not worried, Nick, but I’m sore. Don’t make me any sorer.”

“What’s the bug in your ear?”

“I hired a couple of dogs to do a man’s work.”

“You mean Golden?”

“That kike,” Jack agreed.

Nick Sandoe considered the length of flaky ash on the end of his cigar and knocked it gently into the ashtray. “What are you going to do about Golden?”

“Get him,” Jack said. And then, “What about flowers, Nick?”

“Flowers?”

“For the Rosary,” Jack told him. “American beauties, I think. Several dozen. Not flashy, but expensive. One of your plain cards. Just the engraved name. Nothing written. You always were fond of the girl.”

“I was at that, you know,” Nick said. He sounded sincere.

Nell Wharton brought the gun back to Sammy. Colt automatic pistol 24571, seven full cartridges in its clip.

She brought more than that. She brought her love new discovered and almost virginal it had been so long untouched. She celebrated the good news of the gun, standing on her tiptoes with her arms around Sammy Golden and raising her lips for a kiss. For the first time since she was sixteen, she kissed a man because he was her own true love. Sammy felt the difference, felt the real thing passing between them.

Like Father Shanley’s faith, Nell’s love could move mountains; both of them were moving Detective-sergeant Golden.

Afterward, Nell put on her new hat, ridiculous and impudent, and went off in the coupe to be Sammy’s eyes at the Rosary.

Sammy broke down his automatic pistol and searched out every treacherous grain of sand the gun had collected in the urn in the Alexis Apartments. He sat cross-legged on the floor with the parts of the pistol arranged before him, wiping each piece carefully and in order.

Carlos Mendez was innocent. So, two men had been gunning for Matty Moline, possibly within minutes of each other. Coincidence? Sammy didn’t think so. As a single stone can start a landslide, so had his own peculiar and curious interest in an officially closed suicide case started a chain of reactions that had resulted in somebody else moving instantly toward Matty Moline. Jason Crawford’s lousy report had sharpened the kid’s motive to murder. But what about the other motive, the motive which had impelled the killer?

To shut up Matty Moline? His marriage to Michelle was supposed to have been the reason Rosa Mendez had committed suicide. Was that the weak link in the suicide case? Sammy mulled it over as he fitted the pieces of his pistol together.

Now he was up against the problem he had been reluctant to face. If Father Shanley’s faith in Rosa Mendez was justified, why had the girl been murdered in Nick Sandoe’s office?

And if he found motive and proof, point-blank evidence even, what could he do with it? Mayor Gough, Police Commissioner Delacy, and District Attorney Standish all played cards with Nick Sandoe. More than that, they played the cards Nick dealt.

Well, there was an election coming up in three weeks, the inalienable right of a democratic people to elect their own governing officers. That was a laugh. Dear Mr. Nick Stalin Sandoe, what would you say to a free election? Sure, the Longs and Pendergasts got tripped up now and then. But with the machines they had built, the groundwork and frame built over years, wasn’t it inevitable for somebody else to step into the driver’s seat, shift the gears into motion, drive in low for a couple of years, then swing into second and high? Look at Missouri; look at Louisiana. You look at them, Sammy thought; it makes me sick to my stomach. I’m no damned crusader; I’m just a harness bull who slipped on the eight ball.

The doorbell rang into his confusion of metaphors. Sammy shoved the full clip into his automatic, jacked a cartridge into the chamber, slipped the gun into his waistband and reached his coat from the back of a folding chair.

Whatever else the man at the door appeared, it was not dangerous. He might have been over six feet if he ever stood erect. He didn’t. Hunched forward, his shoulders in brown tweed gave the appearance of the folded wings of some great dusty scavenger bird. His baldness was the sort that would have made an intellectual out of a Cro-Magnon. And the tweeds he wore looked more like a job of sacking than of tailoring. But his blue eyes were alert and intelligent and friendly when Sammy got past the rather incredible nose that stood foremost in his face and seemed to lead the stranger through life.

When he spoke, the aroma of cloves preceded, “I’m Meigs. Of the Times-Herald.” He projected a long, thin hand and let Sammy shake it.

The detective led the way into the living room. “You have your choice of a folding chair that’ll fit any half of your backside, or the floor.”

Meigs sat on the floor and crossed bony ankles. With the air of a magician, he produced a pint of bourbon and broke the seal with his thumbnail. Politely, he offered the bottle to Sammy.

Sammy accepted it reluctantly, pausing with the bottle halfway to his lips to accuse his unexpected visitor. “You’re not covering the Rosary.”

The newspaper man shook his head. Sammy raised the bottle to his lips.

“Sent Mable Marble,” Meigs announced.

Sammy choked.

“Don’t throw up. She’ll milk it like a dairy. Mable’s got more followers in this town than Mary Margaret McBride.” He reached for the bottle. “‘Last night in a mortuary dimly lighted by candles, before a closed casket, a brave young Catholic priest offered unto God the soul of a show girl. A girl sent to Hell by the Police Department and Coroner’s Office of this city …’ That’s the story I’m playing for.” He gestured with the bottle. “Do you think that even in this vino I could find that much Veritas?”

He drank, set the pint carefully on the floor between them, and licked his moist lips. He pulled a notebook from his storehouse of pockets, and then a mechanical pencil. “Now, let’s hear what you’ve got to say for yourself?”

The detective shook his head. “Aside from the Rosary, there isn’t much you can use. The Church says Rosa didn’t commit suicide. Fine, you can quote that. But anything from me—”

“I can allege,” Meigs interrupted, “or I can quote from a usually reliable source.” He grinned, working an amazing transformation in his long, beaked face. “Or I can ask questions, bold-faced questions that the reader can answer for himself. A whole string of bold-faced questions absolutely guaranteed to be misquoted and misinterpreted. You leave the material to me.”

Sammy considered the bottle. He considered the contents. “Dutch courage,” he said, “so a Jew can help a Roman save the soul of a girl who was half Aztec.” He raised the pint.

“I’m a Hard-Shell Baptist, myself, so I wasn’t there at the time,” Meigs announced.

“I’ll take you there,” Sammy assured him. “In the beginning, I was sweating out an early night shift on the homicide desk when Father Shanley arrived and introduced himself …”

Meigs’s shorthand was the size of hieroglyphics in stone, but he kept up with Sammy’s account of the last thirty hours. And when the detective was through talking, he stared at him in admiration.

“Brother Golden,” he exclaimed, “we’re going to set this town on its ear!”

He picked up the pint, measured the four inches remaining in it with a practiced eye, tilted the bottle and drained off precisely two inches. He passed the bottle to Sammy, and popped a couple of clove mints into his mouth. While he chewed vigorously, he scribbled three phone numbers on a card and handed the card to Sammy.

“The first number will reach me at work,” he said. “The second takes care of the flea bag I call home. And the third is a den of iniquity called Miller’s Bar.

“Now, I’m going to give you a rough sketch of what’s in my mind, so you can make your plans accordingly. We’ll break the whole thing in the Sunrise that hits the streets at five forty-five, and with the Home Edition that hits the front porches at about the same time even though it’s run through the presses a little earlier.

“If Mable comes through for me, her story will be the feature. Church Makes Lie of Coroner’s Verdict. And to that, We’ll link all the other stories. The murder at the Alexis, the beating of a priest and a detective by members of the Kendall mob wanted in Chicago for murder and robbery, the alleged frame-up of Carlos Mendez by the cops.

“We’ll call the city to task for letting Sandoe keep La Marimba Club open when it breeds murder, violence and corruption. We’ll run a picture we were saving for nearer election day, a picture of Mayor Gough and Nick Sandoe sitting together at the Inter-City Arena. Beside it we’ll print a big picture of Carlos Mendez in his fighting togs, a shot with the kid’s shoulders on the canvas even if we have to do a little fixing in the darkroom.”

Sammy asked doubtfully, “Can you do all that?”

Meigs nodded soberly. “I was sent here because the circulation of the Times-Herald was running thin. My orders when I left New York was to boost it. Until tonight I’ve not had much luck. You’ve given me a story that may pull the chestnuts out of the fire. Regardless of that, however, I haven’t felt so good since I was a cub doing leg work and they sent me down to Lakehurst, New Jersey, to cover the arrival of a blimp called the Hindenburg.”

Tom Meigs got up from the floor with all the grace of a lean and sleepy bear emerging from hibernation. Sammy accompanied him to the door.

With Nick Sandoe away from the club for a couple hours to attend the Rosary, Jack Farr was the only one present to take the phone call from the private investigator, Jason Crawford.

Over the wire, Crawford’s voice was at once warm and wary. He approached Farr with the exact combination of greed and caution that a fisherman extends to a sailfin following his drag. “Got something for you.”

“Give,” said Farr with little interest.

“This is good.”

“Yeah?”

“What would you say if I could connect Sergeant Golden with Paul Pavlides?”

Jack Farr’s eyes narrowed with interest that didn’t get into his voice. “That you’re a damned liar,” he told Crawford.

“At two thirty this afternoon, Pavlides, in the company of a Catholic priest, called on Golden. They stayed about forty-five minutes. The fact that Golden’s shacked up with a blonde didn’t seem to bother the priest. Girl showed them to the door when they left. Two hours later, the blonde left in Golden’s car. Golden waited awhile, then walked out and made a phone call. Blonde returned and left. At eight thirty Golden had another caller, lanky fellow walking with a stoop. Cabdriver said fare had been picked up at Times-Herald Building. Half hour later, lanky caller left.” Jason Crawford stopped talking and sucked in his breath, waiting.

Farr’s eyes were bleak. “You’re smart, Crawford. What do you want for the address?”

“A thousand bucks.”

“You’re nuts,” Farr told him.

Crawford said evenly, “Golden was up to see me this morning. About the Mendez case. Then he went to the Alexis Apartments, watched Homicide take over, then followed them inside. Afterward he went to La Marimba, then back to his apartment. Twenty minutes later, a big fellow dodged out of the place nursing a bloody shoulder. Then this priest that was with Pavlides later came out; then Golden and the girl. They all looked like they’d been in trouble. Maybe if you don’t want the information bad enough to pay for it, I can sell Golden a little protection.” Again Crawford waited.

Farr said softly, “You’ve gone to a lot of trouble, Crawford. We’ll pay for that with a hundred bucks. Now give me Golden’s address and call off your tail.”

“You think I’m a damned fool?”

“No,” Farr said, “that’s why you’ll be reasonable. Otherwise, tomorrow you’ll wake up with your license revoked and this town too hot to hold you.”

“1041 Rosewood,” Crawford said. Then, his temper got the best of him. “Don’t push me, Farr. Jack Farr’s not such an ordinary name that the Milwaukee police have forgotten it.”

“Look at yourself in the mirror, Crawford. Look at yourself real good and see how nice it is to be alive.” Farr replaced the phone and tilted back his chair, staring absently into space. The thin, sinewy fingers of his right hand rubbed the red, white and blue ribbon on his left lapel. Milwaukee, 1941. My god, that was a long time ago. Three thugs had a kid truck driver backed into the dead end of the alley. None of them worrying very much about what a punk kid could do. Well, the kid had showed them. With a .22-caliber pistol. Then the kid wondered what made his truck so important that they’d have killed him for it. So he had hijacked the truck himself, crossed the state line and burned the truck and its cargo. All its cargo except the dozen neatly wrapped packages in oiled brown paper. Thirty thousand bucks’ worth of heroin.

Jack Farr leaned forward, opened the desk drawer and removed a .22 automatic pistol. A far cry from the twenty-dollar gun that the kid had carried under his shirt on the long night hauls. A .22, still, but with that extra-long barrel that made it a marksman’s weapon. He handled it with love.

Nell Wharton returned from the Rosary preoccupied and worried. The candles, the prayers, and the flowers—carnations above all else cloving and deathly in their pervading odor—had set her on edge. But the big thing, unexpected and frightening, had been the presence of Nick Sandoe.

Just the right amount of bereavement in his handsome face; just the right amount of grief and respect for the dead girl in his bent head and erect carriage; and afterward, while Nell stood in the shadows and watched, she saw him introduce himself to Father Shanley, extend his hand, engage the priest in conversation, quickly catching Father Shanley’s attention and holding it.

She said to the detective when she got back to 1041 Rosewood, “Sammy Boy, we’d better leave our bags packed and hit the road.”

Sammy put an arm around her, walking in from the door. “Why, baby?”

“The fifth column has got to Holy Joe.”

“Huh?”

“Nick was there. He put on a good show. All through the service, I watched him. Then he hunted up Father Shanley like one of these friendly handshakers who hang around church to sell insurance. Even to the handshake, Sammy Boy.”

“Oh, brother!” exclaimed Golden.

“Amen,” said Nell. “Not that he isn’t a lamb,” she added, “but in Nick’s hands …”

“Yeah, a lamb to the slaughter,” Sammy agreed. And then, “Seriously, baby, why don’t you clear out of town for a week or so. The fireworks we’ve seen are nothing to what’s coming. And if there’s one person I don’t want anything to happen to, believe me, it’s you.”

The girl turned in the curve of his arm and gazed up into his intent face. “All the time, Sammy Boy, I’m telling you, you talk too much. Now I’m going to make a speech of my own. I know what I was yesterday, and I know now what you were yesterday, are today and will be tomorrow. So, here goes … When a gal gets hold of a guy, the right guy for her, she should hang onto him whether it’s for a week, a year, or until old rocking chair gets her. I saw last night what we were getting into. I tried to work a switch for you so you could walk out of it at a profit. Funny thing, I was glad you didn’t take it. Now I’m sticking as long as you’ll have me. And that’s my speech.”

There was an awkward pause. Nell started to say something and didn’t. They both were strangers to tenderness and love. They didn’t want the moment to get away from them. They held onto each other.

They still were moving like strangers, talking like strangers, a little awkward and long silences between them when the doorbell rang.

It was Father Shanley and Paul Pavlides.

Sammy arranged the four folding chairs around the card table. He said to Nell, “There are a couple bottles of Chianti in that basket Mr. Pavlides brought. What do you say we crack them?” He turned to the priest. “Will you have a glass of wine, Father?”

“Without the glass,” Nell amended.

Father Shanley’s good blue eye twinkled momentarily. “It would be a pleasure.”

Nell disappeared into the kitchen. The detective said carefully, “I hear Nick Sandoe was at the Rosary.”

“He was,” the priest nodded. “And frankly, I’m puzzled, Golden.”

“I hear he turned on the Sandoe charm.”

Father Shanley looked at Golden thoughtfully. “He did, at that. Outwardly, Mr. Sandoe is a very attractive person. And I must say that his grief for Rosa and his concern over the plight of Carlos appeared very genuine.”

“So that’s it!” Sammy exclaimed.

“Is what?” Father Shanley inquired.

“Never mind for now,” the detective told him. “What did Sandoe say about Carlos?”

Nell returned with two corks pulled and pressed them lightly back into the bottle of Chianti.

The priest said, “Mr. Sandoe told me that he was very sorry Carlos had become mentally unbalanced in his grief for his sister. That from watching the boy fight in the ring he had always supposed him to be clean and sound with a lot to learn about ring technique, but fundamentally a good boy. And that because he always had been fond of Rosa, he would like to assume the expense of Carlos’s trial. And he wondered if I would care to act as intermediary and bring the matter to the attention of Mr. Mendez.”

Nodding with admiration, Sammy reached for one of the wine bottles. “It’s good,” he said. “It’s so good that it’s damned near genius.” He glanced at Father Shanley sharply. “And how do you analyze Sandoe’s motive for that offer, Father?”

“Exactly!” exclaimed Paul Pavlides, expelling the single word as though he had been holding his breath until he could bear his own silence no longer.

Sammy grinned at the fat little Greek. “Try some of your own wine, Pavlides. It’s as good as your judgment.”

The Greek smiled. “After Miss Wharton,” he insisted.

Nell raised the wine, winking at Sammy over the neck of the bottle.

Father Shanley demanded, “What is it that you all see that I am so blind to?”

The detective said gravely, “Your importance in this mess, Father. I’m just a cop who can be fired from the force and then disposed of, or what’s more likely, vice versa. Pavlides, here, has been on the other side of the law, so he’s not important where public opinion is concerned. Nell’s not a danger to Nick Sandoe. But you are.

“The sanctity of your position as a priest, your personal integrity, both are dangerous. That Rosary you held tonight was embarrassing to a lot of important people. When it hits the papers in the morning, it’s going to be a lot more embarrassing. Now what can he do with you? He can’t kill a priest. Even if he thought he could get away with it, he’d have trouble finding a killer to do the job. Most killers may not think a lot about Heaven, but they know somewhere in the back of their minds that at the end of the line, be it San Quentin or Sing Sing, there’s a priest waiting to give them a hand, the only guy in the whole outfit they can trust and look to for help. Nick Sandoe would be hard put to hire a boy to get you. Besides which, the killing of a priest could set even this town on end. And three weeks before election, that would be disastrous.

“So the only intelligent move open to Sandoe is to get you on his side. Think about it, Father. Isn’t there something in your book about the devil speaking with the tongue of angels?”

“You astonish me, Golden,” Father Shanley said. He picked up the bottle and tasted a little wine, rolling it around on his tongue and enjoying the flavor.

“And I, also, must apologize for underestimating you, Sergeant,” said a new voice lightly but with a steely quality vibrating along its edges.

Jack Farr leaned against the doorframe with his long barreled .22 held negligently but steadily in his right hand.

Four heads turned in his direction, Father Shanley swinging in his chair to get his single open eye around.

“You all have nerve,” Farr continued. “I admire that.”

“How …?” Sammy began.

“The back door,” Farr exclaimed. “A precocious child could manage it.”

“Who is this?” Father Shanley inquired, for all the world as if the gun did not exist.

“Jack Farr,” Sammy told him. “Nick’s good right hand and the most dangerous man in the organization.”

The handsome young man bowed his head in a mock bow, his bright eyes never leaving the group. “Again I apologize, Sergeant, because while I underestimated you, you did not do the same for me. The back door,” he added magnanimously, “is a mistake anyone could have made. As a matter of fact, it’s put me in something of a spot. I cannot waste the opportunity or the time. But neither did I expect Father Shanley to be here,” he paused, lost in his own thoughts.

Nell said suddenly, “Jackson, you’ll never get away with it.”

Jack Farr glanced at the girl and then at the detective. “Maybe I can.” He concentrated on Golden. “Will you come with me if I give you my word these others won’t be touched?”

“No!” Nell reached across the table and caught Sammy’s hand.

“Why not?” asked Sammy. “It’s the only way. Jack’s word’s good.” He pushed back his chair and stood using his right hand to release the girl’s grasp.

Father Shanley came to his feet.

“Sit down, Father.” Jack Farr’s voice was dangerous.

“Where Golden goes, I go,” Father Shanley said quietly.

“Stop quoting the Good Book,” Sammy snapped.

“Sit down, Father!” Farr repeated.

Father Shanley began walking toward Farr, keeping his body between him and the detective. “That’s a Silver Star in your lapel, isn’t it?”

“Stand still, Father.” Jack’s voice was deadly.

The priest stopped walking. “What outfit were you with, Farr?”

Sammy came up behind the priest, tried to get around him. Father Shanley’s left arm shot out and held the detective back with a strength that never ceased to surprise Sammy.

“Let him by, Father.”

“We’re staying here,” the priest announced. “I’ve changed my mind. None of us is leaving, unless you want to go, Farr. You heard what Golden said; you can’t kill a priest. That’s the only way you can get Golden.”

“My God,” Farr said tightly, “I believe you.” His dark eyes narrowed to slits. “Take your choice, Father! The four of you, or Golden.”

“He means it,” Golden said. “Let me handle this.”

Father Shanley never took his eyes from the gunman. “What about you others?”

“I’m with you, Padre,” Nell said. Her voice was brittle with excitement.

“What about you, Paul?” the priest asked.

“Me?” The ex-bootlegger’s voice was steady, “I’m fifty-nine, Father Joseph. For a long time my blood pressure has wanted to blow its top.” He shrugged. “Maybe tomorrow, it would.”

Nell rose from her chair, came to Sammy’s side and put her arm around him.

Farr shook his head, perplexed. His dark eyes were as hard as agates. “That’s it, then?”

“You can’t get away with it,” Sammy said. “You and Sandoe will be through in this town. So will John Gough and all your other pals.”

“Four bodies. What’s to bring that home to anybody?”

“Because already they’re connected with the Rosa Mendez case, with the murder of Matty Moline. Read your paper in the morning, Farr. Not your paper, but the only sheet in town that’s got money and guts enough to fight you. Read the Times-Herald in the morning.” It was the ace card, the only one he had to play. Sammy waited on its fall.

Jack Farr swore. His eyes burned into the detective as though searching for a lie. That it was not a lie he knew. Jason Crawford already had confirmed it. Then he smiled, a tight smile made only with the mouth.

“Your round, Golden. Reach for your gun. If your hand is anywhere near the trigger guard, I’ll drill you between the eyes.”

Sammy reached under his coat. After an instant’s hesitation, he produced the automatic, holding it by the end of the butt.

“Keep holding it like that and with your other hand, release the clip.”

The detective did, letting it fall to the floor.

“Now toss me the gun. Gently, brother, gently.”

The automatic arched through the air and Farr caught it left-handed. “Cartridge in the chamber?” he asked.

“What do you think?”

Farr balanced Sammy’s gun in his left hand, brought it up toward the overhead light, and pulled the trigger. The single shot shattered the room into darkness. The gun clattered to the floor. And they heard the front door slam.

Sammy was down on his knees with the clip of cartridges in one hand and feeling for his gun with the other, when a glass in one of the front windows was smashed and another shot flashed.

“Who the hell?” he demanded.

“Me,” announced Paul Pavlides sadly. “I also have a gun, but I’m such a bad shot.”

A car outside raced its motor and gathered speed in second gear.

“Well, this hide-out’s shot, Sammy Boy,” Nell decided matter of factly.

“By the way,” the detective said drily, “I’d better thank you for saving my life, Father. But how did you happen to give them our address?”

“I didn’t,” Father Shanley snapped back at him. “Do we dare turn on any lights. I’m not exactly accustomed to this sort of thing.”

“No,” said Sammy. “And we’ve got to get out of here. Fast.”

At ten thirty the following morning, Wednesday, a young man nattily attired in a lightweight gray summer suit joined the group of visitors who were gathering in the foyer of the Times-Herald Building for the guided tour of the city’s most up-to-date newspaper plant. Perhaps because the day was overcast, he carried across his arm a lightweight but bulky trench coat.

Dutifully, with nineteen others in the party, he followed the guide through the intricacies of getting out a newspaper. He watched the girls in the want-ad department take advertisements over the telephone and across the desk. He heard facts and figures about the tremendous volume of business. He saw how the layout group scattered advertising through the paper, and learned a little of the psychology of advertising. Then he saw the city room, standing on its edge and watching the staff at work, saw the horseshoe-shaped copy desk where the news stories took their final form; watched the teletype machines string out the news of the day for miles of tape on end; heard a simple explanation of the wire-photo setup and watched a picture come in that had been taken an hour ago across the country. He saw the sports department, and the various offices where the elite of the business found sanctuary for their genius. Then, with the others, he took the elevators down to view the presses.

As the superstructure of the press came into view, he called the guide aside and asked him where he could find a restroom.

The guide told him, adding, “If we’re not here at the gravure machines, follow on through the next arch.”

Thanking him, the young man did not wait to hear the beginning of the lecture. In the rest room, locked in a booth, he drew a cheap dollar watch from the pocket of the trench coat and wound it. The watch was remarkable in that two thin, covered copper wires were taped to each side of its case, and the front glass was off. The very short bare end of one wire was wound around the minute hand; and the very short bare end of the other wire was similarly wound around the hour hand. The watch was set at three minutes to twelve. It was obvious that in precisely three minutes, the wires attached to the two hands would touch.

When he emerged from the rest room, the guided tour had left the great room that held the most modern and gigantic of rotary gravure presses. At the far end of the room, a mechanic had a piece of the machine apart. Otherwise, the room was empty. The press, itself, was not working. This was, the young man supposed, because the Times-Herald was a morning paper.

Slipping under the guardrail, he went halfway down the line of the machine, staying on the side away from the mechanic. Then, darting a glance around, he shoved his folded coat into an aperture in the machinery and went swiftly back to the walk beyond the presses, and took three steps at a time that led up to the main floor and the public entrance of the building.

Outside, waiting for a red light to change, he lit a cigarette with shaking hands. His face was covered with tiny beads of perspiration and he could feel his white shirt sticking to his back. He heard the explosion as he crossed to the other side of the street.

A uniformed cop went by him on the run. The young man neither halted nor looked back.

The plastic explosive which had been molded and shaped between coat and lining was probably the most destructive force available short of splitting an atom. Had the young man stayed with the guided tour for sixty seconds longer than he had, he never would have put his folded trench coat in the press devoted solely to color supplements.

Nick Sandoe’s soft gray flannel suit fitted in a manner which made women glance critically at their husbands. With it, he wore a white shirt, a blue knit tie, a blue carnation of feathers, and a midnight-blue Homburg hat. He did not remove the hat when he told the girl at the desk, “Tell Mayor Gough that Mr. Sandoe is here.”

“Go right in, Mr. Sandoe, Mayor Gough is expecting you.” Her pretty brown eyes in a rather plain face worshiped him.

Nick thought, That’s girl hasn’t been used properly. A box of roses and there wouldn’t be a secret in this office. I may have to invite her out for an evening if Gough gets any more jittery than he is now. Fastidiously he shuddered at the thought of the gown she could afford and would choose. He grinned wryly. That might be the price of mixing his business with her pleasure.

The state of Mayor Gough’s mind was the state of his fine head of white hair. It was mussed. When Sandoe entered his office, he sprang from his chair and came around it, hand extended. “Thank God, you’re here!”

Sandoe accepted the extended hand and let his own be thoroughly wrung. To disturb the conventions with Gough would be like trying to rearrange the mechanical responses of a highly developed machine by I.B.M.

“My God, isn’t it awful!” boomed the mayor. The Times-Herald was spread over the desk behind him.

Nick thought, After you, the deluge. He said, “It’s bad, John. But not so bad it can’t be fixed.”

“Libel! Slander! Lies!” shouted the mayor, delivering himself of three thunderbolts.

A small frown creased Sandoe’s brow vertically above the bridge of his handsome nose. “You haven’t talked to the Press yet?”

“Not until I had seen you, Nick. There’s the regular midweek conference at one.” He leaned back, his clean scrubbed hands resting on the desk.

Sandoe walked to the window and stood staring down at the street below. He said over his shoulder, “Forget the libel and slander. It’s not there. Not enough to take to court anyway. A lost slander case could be a lost election.”

The mayor had his head bowed forward listening. His chin rested on his chest, concealing his polka dot bow tie. He looked like a sleeping lion.

Sandoe said carefully, “If you’ll allow me to make some suggestions, John.” A ridiculous statement, he thought even as he made it, but a part of the ritual.

“Sure, Nick.” John Gough raised his head.

Nick Sandoe said, “You are completely surprised by the stand the Times-Herald has taken. While undoubtedly you are shocked, you are going to begin an investigation at once. You are closing the La Marimba Club. You are re-opening the Mendez case …”

John Gough’s eyes snapped wide, startled. “But Nick …”

Imperturbably, Sandoe continued, “You are also beginning a thorough investigation of the police department, having been assured by Commissioner Delacy of full co-operation and support. In the meantime, Detective-sergeant Golden has been suspended. You will make it clear that Golden has been acting outside channels. That if he had pertinent information, he should have brought it to the attention of the proper authorities, but instead, he apparently has been acting in secret and with a great selfish purpose. The fact that Golden’s Jewish will incline a great many people to that belief on their own. And we’ll utilize it without ever mentioning it in public.”

“That’s a damned Jew for you,” Gough said bitterly. “That’s a damned Jew for you every time!”

Good Lord, Sandoe thought startled, he already believes it himself.

He went on, “Now listen carefully, John. In another fashion, we’ll take the same tack with the priest, Father Shanley, that we’ve used with Golden. Call Bishop Croissant. Tell him that this morning’s edition of the Times-Herald came as a complete shock to you. That on the basis of the priest’s declaration you have asked for re-examination of the evidence in the death of Rosa Mendez. You are wondering if the bishop would accept a luncheon date with you, or grant you an audience at his convenience. You will say further that you are anxious to discover what is behind Father Shanley’s astonishing declaration that the Mendez girl did not commit suicide. And that while your admiration for the Church is deep and sincere, you do understand that the instruments of the Church are upon occasion fallible; and you’re wondering whether it could be possible that, misguided by his youthful enthusiasm, or upon advice of others, Father Shanley has been led astray and into the midst of some unfortunate publicity.” Sandoe paused, found a cigar and lit it. “You might also mention at the press conference that you’ve called the bishop and give the gist of your conversation.”

While Nick Sandoe watched him, Mayor Gough ran his fingers through his fine white hair, roughly grooming it into place. His eyes were bright. “My God, Nick, you’ve done it. That will take care of our mackerel snappers!”

Sandoe said crisply. “There’s one more thing, John. Handle it carefully. But make sure it gets into your interview. At the moment Detective Golden has disappeared, but the last evidence of his whereabouts that has come to your attention, has Golden traveling with a girl who has been investigated by the police. The police department probably has her picture. Be reluctant with this information and let the reporters do the leg work.”

“A pimp!” exclaimed John Gough with just the right combination of disgust and enthusiasm.

“Don’t even think that word,” Sandoe said coldly. “Thinking it, you might let it slip off your tongue. It’s a dirty word. Not a word from a man in your office.” Then suddenly he smiled, came across the room and clapped the mayor on the shoulder. “The reins are in your hands, John. Have a good ride!”

He started for the door, the mayor walking with him. He swung the door open, letting go of it with his hand, and John Gough caught it. “It’s been a real pleasure to see you, Nick.”

“Glad to co-operate, Mayor,” Sandoe said for the benefit of anyone who might be in the outer office. He was thinking, “I’d have a word with the girl at the desk if that ass would only shut the door.”

That was when the flashbulb exploded. Then the young man in the plaid sports coat was out of the waiting room and clattering down the hall before either Sandoe or Gough got their eyes back in focus.

“Damn!” exclaimed John Gough. “Hell and damnation!”

Sandoe snapped at the girl at the desk, “Who was that?”

“I—I don’t know. He said he was waiting for you, Mr. Sandoe.”

“He did, did he?” Sandoe’s glance had discovered the calendar. It was one of the daily sort with a large single numeral exposed. It was on the oak railing behind the girl’s back and propped against the wall beside the door through which Sandoe had emerged and in which the mayor was standing. In two inch letters with a six inch numeral between, it proclaimed:

OCTOBER
6
WEDNESDAY

Sandoe picked up the calendar and shoved it before the girl. “Where did this come from?”

The girl’s expression was honestly bewildered and frightened. “I never saw it before in my life,” she declared when she could find her tongue.

“You will,” Sandoe promised savagely. “You’ll be seeing it in the papers!” He slammed it into the metal wastebasket beside the desk.

Then, he got hold of himself. Swinging, he put a hand against the mayor’s chest and pushed John Gough into the office ahead of him. He closed the door and leaned against it staring at the unhealthy color the mayor’s face had become.

“We’re in for a fight,” he said. “You always were a fighter, John.” Pretty thick, he thought, but it was the only way to handle the man. He saw the mayor’s shoulders stiffen, his head come up.

“The people want a fighting mayor, John. We’ll be stronger for the trouble that’s coming.” He thought, Words are like plasma to the old boy. He asked, “How long has that girl been with you?”

Mayor Gough rubbed his fingers into his brows. “Couple of months, maybe three.” And then he said angrily, “She’ll have to go, the little fool!”

Sandoe shook his head. “Have her investigated. But don’t fire her. If she’s all right, she’ll be better than a Doberman pinscher out there after what’s happened today.”

He took a handkerchief from his breast pocket, dabbed at the perspiration on his temples, put the handkerchief in a hip pocket and left the office. On the way out, he paused long enough to apologize to the girl. She accepted his apology through a damp piece of cleansing tissue.

Before the City Hall, he hailed a cab. Nick Sandoe liked the anonymity of taxis. He had sent a good number of floral wreaths to the boys who liked the splendor of palaces on wheels.

He gave the driver the address of an apartment house on North Brentwood and settled back in the seat. John Gough had the go-ahead on reopening the Rosa Mendez case. Suicide it had been, and suicide it would remain. A grim smile touched the corners of his mouth. That was where he really would have to tip his hat to the capricious lady called Fate. Carlos Mendez in jail charged with murder in the first degree was the smoke screen that made the move one of political expedience and safety.

Then a shadow crossed his face as he turned his mind to the problem of the Times-Herald. That photographer in the mayor’s anteroom; the gag of the calendar showing the date of his most recent visit to the mayor. There was an intelligent, clever and dangerous brain behind that sort of planning. Whose? That was something Jack would have to look into for him.

In the meantime, however, he had taken care of the Times-Herald doubly. He had planned the mayor’s critical press conference to disarm the opposition; and by this time, he glanced at his watch, the Times-Herald, itself, should be out of circulation.

Sandoe frowned. Pulling over to the curb ahead of the cab was one of the big red Times-Herald trucks. Across the banner on the tail end of the truck was the black word, EXTRA! He shouldn’t have tipped his hat to the capricious lady quite so soon.

He leaned forward and tapped on the glass. “Pull into the curb. I want a paper.”

The cabby nodded and guided his car up behind the red truck. The newsboy was slashing the hemp twine from a newly tossed bundle. Nick Sandoe called to him and waved a dollar bill.

The boy came over to the cab with an armload of papers. Sandoe took an extra, dropped the dollar, and nodded for the cabby to go ahead.

He sat erect, savagely intent, as he scanned the banner line and the story beneath it:

TIMES-HERALD BLDG. BOMBED
TWO DEAD! SIX INJURED!

Thug Tactics Cost Kids Comics

A powerful explosive charge concealed in a folded trench coat this morning killed two employees and injured six others as it wrecked a giant rotary gravure press in Times-Herald sub-basement.

In view of the Times-Herald’s stand for A CLEAN SWEEP IN CITY GOVERNMENT, it is believed the time bomb was intended for news presses in the adjoining sub-basement.

Those killed in the blast were William McGiven, a mechanic, working on the color press preparatory to running next Sunday’s comics, and Andrew Johnson, a …

Nick Sandoe swore. The cabby turned his head. Nick waved him on. “Of all the idiotic, bumbling jobs …”

The apartment on North Brentwood was first floor, front. Irritably, Nick kept his thumb on the bell until the door swung open. Jack Farr glared at him without speaking, then stood aside to let Sandoe enter. There were splashes of color or claret on his shirt front. His eyes, like dark embers, glowed in shadowed sockets. His hands were stained with iodine and taped across the knuckles.

Unfolding the paper, Nick exposed the headlines. “You see this?”

Farr shook his head. “Heard it on the radio.”

“What about Wormser?” Nick asked.

Wearily Jack nodded at an overstuffed chair of creamy beige. Over one arm of the chair was folded the body of a young man in a torn and mussed lightweight, gray summer suit. His neck was bent at an unnatural angle. His long blond hair hung down toward the floor like a woman’s.

Nick strode across the room and stared at the sprawled figure. He reached down and touched an ear lobe. The skin was cold. He swore softly. Then he leveled his gaze at his lieutenant. “Gorillas are cheap,” he stated flatly. “I pay you to use your brains.”

Farr had moved to a table by the window and found a cigarette. He lit it awkwardly. He had hurt his hands working the kid over. He blew twin streams of blue smoke and said bitterly, “He sure did a job for us. Blowing up the funny-paper machine.”

Sandoe measured his words. “Maybe the habit’s catching, doing things first, thinking about them afterwards. What are you going to do about this?” He indicated the body.

Farr’s shiny eyes narrowed. “We’ve heard Johnny Lavinia’s planning to cross the county line, right?”

Nick nodded, his glance wary. “From a source we can’t trust.”

“It makes sense,” Farr argued. “So close to election, he thinks he can get away with it. Get established before we dare to move.”

“So?”

“So,” Farr said speculatively, “I was thinking of carting Wormser across the line and dumping him on Johnny’s front porch. Sort of an inconvenient corpse, an awkward bag of potatoes, that’ll set Lavinia to thinking twice, maybe three times, before he makes any move.”

“Will Johnny know him?”

Farr shook his head. “Wormser’s a boy I trained myself. No record, and he hasn’t been around much.” He added savagely, “That’s why he was so perfect for the setup this morning. If only the damned fool …”

“We can’t have any trouble with Lavinia—now,” Nick said, clipping the “now” off from the other words so that it stood alone and significant.

“Ounce of prevention,” murmured Farr.

“Perhaps you’re right,” Sandoe agreed.

The new hide-out was, as Nell Wharton admitted, quite a change from the house on Rosewood. It was on the third floor of a middle-class apartment building in the Fleetsland district. It was, in truth, Mr. Pavlides’ own hideout, a fact the little Greek had supplied shyly along with the information that he owned the building. Furnished with twenty years’ accumulation of odds and ends, it was at once shabby and as comfortable as an old shoe.

The only modern piece of furniture was an expensive combination console containing a television set, a radio and a phonograph. It was here that Paul Pavlides hid out from his stout wife, Hilda, and enjoyed the secret life in staunch admiration of stalwart heroes whose methods of living dangerously in a nonexistent West were far more satisfactory than, if not so lucrative as, the dangerous life of Paul Pavlides once had been.

They moved in after midnight, Pavlides leading the way on tiptoe, showing them around the apartment, apologetic for the dust and inordinately proud of his castle.

Now, shaved and showered and rested, with a breakfast of crackers and cheese and beer, the best the apartment could provide, Sammy paced the crowded floor of the living room nervously.

A program of recordings had been interrupted with a flash report of the bombing of the Times-Herald Building.

Nell flicked here and there with a dustcloth, the domestic occupation doing little to conceal her own state of nerves.

Twice Sammy had tried to get through on the telephone to Tom Meigs. He had not succeeded and he dared not leave his name attached to a phone number for Meigs to call. At noon, he tried to reach Meigs at the Miller’s Bar number. Meigs had left ten minutes earlier.

“Just here for a short one,” the bartender told him informatively, “only about half a pint.”

Sammy said, “If he’s in during the afternoon, have him call this number.” Sammy read from the circle inside the dial.

“Sure. Who’ll I tell him called?”

“This’ll sound silly,” Sammy told him, “but tell Meigs the blimp, Hindenburg, is trying to get hold of him.”

“Oh,” said the bartender. “A wrestler, huh?”

Sammy hung up.

Finally, Nell said, “Use a flit gun on the ants in your pants, Sammy Boy, and sit down for a minute.”

“Damn it,” the detective complained, “that’s all I’ve done, baby. Sit down and think, and the whole damned town’s blowing up!”

He paused in mid-stride. “Name some saints!”

“You blowing your top, Sammy Boy?”

“I never was more serious,” Sammy assured her. “Name some saints.”

“That’s a game I’d be good at for sure.” She wrinkled her brow. “St. Peter, the old boy at the gate. St. Luke, the hospital. St. Jean, that’s Ingrid Bergman.” She arched an eyebrow. “What’s the prize?”

“Wait a minute! It’d be in Spanish!”

“Great!” the blonde girl exclaimed. “Now we’re getting to the sixty-four dollar question. Santa Catalina, San Diego, Santa Barbara, San Jose, San Francisco, San Juan Capistrano …”

“That’s it!” Sammy shouted.

“Robert San Juan,” he said more mildly but with considerable satisfaction.

“I’m glad we’ve got that cleared up,” Nell told him. “It relieves my mind no end.”

Sammy leaned over the girl, drew her head against his chest and planted a kiss where it did little good. “Baby, I keep telling everybody we’ve got to stick to the case of Rosa Mendez, to Father Shanley’s evidence of things not seen; and nobody does anything about it. Now, I’m going to.”

“I don’t know exactly where I lost the conversation,” the blonde admitted, “but I think I missed something after the place where I said you had ants in your pants.”

The detective grinned at her. “Robert San Juan’s a Filipino barboy at La Marimba. He’s the one who discovered the body of Rosa Mendez. His English is so damned awful that we didn’t learn much from him except that the experience scared him to death. Now, I’m wondering just exactly what or who did scare the hell out of him…. I’m going to pick up Father Shanley and pay a call on Robert. Not only does our Irish friend speak Spanish, but he’s got the Lord on his side.”

Nell stood up and held out her arms. “Kiss me good, Sammy Boy.”

“Sure,” Sammy agreed, “but to what do I owe the pleasure?”

Nell toyed with his necktie. Her blue eyes were serious and deeper than wells. “Because each one may be the last one. I like what I’ve got, Sammy Boy. But it’s not for keeps. Not from where we’re sitting.”

He curled his hand and brushed it against her chin. “We’ll be telling our grandchildren about this. And I’ll say, ‘There was your old granny toting her forty-five in her stocking.’”

“Shut up,” Nell said, “and kiss me. You always did talk too much.”

On the same Friday evening when Rosa Mendez had died by an act of violence, Bishop Francis Croissant had attended a banquet given by the Knights of Columbus at the William and Mary Hotel. He arrived, as was his custom, in a Rolls Royce which had served the diocese faithfully for two decades.

Walking into the lobby with certain members of the council, His Excellency remarked that while the venerable Rolls no doubt exuded an odor of sanctity, it had in these days of streamlining and the pneumatic cushion, the aesthetic appeal and comfort of an old icebox. An icebox, the bishop continued, embroidering his little joke, without the benefit of ice, even, in this execrably hot weather. Furthermore, the Rolls forever gave him the feeling of being a round bishop in a square car.

For, it was doubtful if there was about His Excellency a single straight line from his apple-round face to his plump calves; though one had only to look into the alert brown eyes of the man to discern the difference between a condition of thyroid and a condition of spirit.

That among the group enjoying the bishop’s company in the lobby of the William and Mary Hotel there had happened to be a dealer in automobiles of medium price and excellent manufacture was, no doubt, coincidental.

Today, at any rate, Bishop Croissant was admiring with sparkling glance the trim perfection of a brand new black sedan from “The Anti-Icebox League of America,” when he was called to the phone by the mayor’s office.

And so it was that His Excellency had himself driven to see Father Joseph Shanley, instead of calling the young priest across town to attend his bishop.

Riding through the city, entertained by the smoothness and comfort of the new transportation, Bishop Croissant reflected upon what he knew concerning the priest at the Church of St. Anne, and tried to recollect the details of the phone call in which he had given Father Shanley permission to proceed with the proper litanies in the case of Rosa Mendez.

Case, thought the bishop, was an unfortunate choice of words. For case implied the criminal and legal aspects of the affair, the business of civil authority far removed from the spiritual duty attending a soul. And as such a civil case, it certainly was no business of Father Shanley’s.

Yet, if the Mendez girl were innocent of suicide, if her behavior as a young woman, above and beyond the fact that she had been a show girl, was Christian (a matter, perhaps, in which the judgment of a priest as young as the one at St. Anne’s would not be entirely unbiased), then Father Shanley had every right to conduct his spiritual services regardless of a state of temporal affairs where a Rosary had become front news and a source of political irritation to the mayor of the city.

Duty had thrown Bishop Croissant often enough into contact with Mayor Gough for him to form an opinion of the man. The opinion was not charitable. He regarded the mayor as a charlatan. Furthermore, in 1949, the mayor had made some unfortunate public statements in regard to federal aid and parochial schools.

As he rode, his fingers stealing down now and then to rub the good new fabric of the sedan’s back seat, His Excellency puzzled over the reasonable and intelligent approach His Honor had made to the delicate problem of informing the bishop that one of his priests was stepping out of line. Take that phrase about instruments of the Church upon certain occasions being fallible. Who, wondered His Excellency, had fed those words to John Gough with such force that the mayor was able to ingest them and give them back again with all the deft delivery of a long playing phonograph record?

He had his chauffeur park the car across the street from the Church of St. Anne. To discipline his fingers for their approval of his new car, he put them to the beads of his rosary. And sitting in this Mexican neighborhood, squalid in its poverty and yet loving beauty so much that geraniums or sunflowers bloomed by every doorstep, the bishop, Croissant, was carried back, back with the beads of his rosary to Guadalajara to the hectic early days of 1926 when a zealous young priest, Father Francis Croissant, had been swept from his church on the Avenue of San Felipe with the anticlerical wind that was sweeping all Mexico.

Still caught in the web of time, Bishop Croissant found his breviary and opened it to the Office for the Day. Now and then, his lips moved with pleasure over the familiar words…. Unimportant to the fact that six evenings ago a girl named Rosa Mendez had died by violence? Perhaps, yet nearly a quarter of a century before, another Mendez (the name in Spanish is not unlike Smith) had guarded the life of a priest he loved with his own.

Father Joseph Shanley came from the steps of the parish house and down the walk to the white picket fence and its border of roses. Preoccupied, he glanced at the sedan parked across the street before the church and saw only a new car. With his penknife, he began to cut the full-blown roses from their bushes. He did not work as though he were much concerned with his gardening but rather as though he were concerned with his thoughts and needed a breath of fresh air and an occupation for his hands while he sorted things that were in his mind.

Putting away his breviary, Bishop Croissant fell to studying the young priest who suddenly had become such a problem. He liked what he saw; the strong physical carriage of the man, the sensitive, intelligent face, the clean precision of his hands moving among the roses while his mind was miles away. “He would have made a surgeon,” thought the bishop, “had we not got him….”

Tending his roses, Father Shanley turned and the sunlight hit upon the planes of the other side of his face. “Good heavens!” exclaimed His Excellency. “He has a black eye!”

A small coupe drew up before the parish house cutting the priest from his bishop’s view. A young man in a brightly checked sports coat, who nevertheless carried himself with an air of authority, got out from under the wheel on the street side, calling out to Father Shanley as he did so.

That detective! The detective whose name was connected with his young curate’s in the Mendez case, Bishop Croissant decided.

He spoke to his chauffeur. “I’ll get out now, Ned.”

The chauffeur sprang from the sedan and opened the rear door, extending a hand to assist the bishop. “Not so high from the curbing as the Rolls, Your Excellency.”

Bishop Croissant smiled. “If this is coming down in the world, I do it with pleasure.”

For nearly an hour Sammy Golden fidgeted behind the wheel of his coupe while Father Shanley remained closeted with the bishop. A dozen cigarettes smoked to stubs littered the pavement outside the car’s window. Why couldn’t the bishop have stayed home and tended to his bishopric or whatever bishops were supposed to do?

Somewhere near-by, the mortal remains of Rosa Mendez had been consigned to sacred ground and there they would remain until the Angel Gabriel blew his fatal, final trumpet call. Father Shanley’s duty was done.

If nothing else, the bishop’s visit portended the end to any part the young priest might have in the unfinished business Rosa Mendez had left behind her.

Sammy’s thoughts were bitter while he waited. Why should a priest’s superior be superior to a cop’s superior?

Lieutenant Cantrell had told Sammy to step out of the case. He hadn’t, and look where he was now, up to his neck with no place to duck and no place to swim.

Now, the bishop was telling Father Shanley to step out of the case. And would he? You could bet your sweet life he would. That collar he wore backward might as well be a yoke.

Then, Sammy was sore at himself for being sore. What if he’d read the story wrong? What if Father Shanley was in there waiting for the end of the world? Waiting to be shipped to Timbuktu or wherever they shipped young priests who got out of line. Maybe he was getting it even worse than Sammy had. Because Father Shanley didn’t have a job where he could give two weeks’ notice, or a union behind him to go on strike if the boss got too tough.

That was a great picture for you, a bunch of priests on strike and picketing, carrying signs that read, THIS CHURCH UNFAIR. Unfair to what, Sammy wondered. And suddenly, he knew the answer. Unfair to Sammy Golden; that was what he’d been thinking. The Roman Catholic Church was unfair to Samuel Elijah Golden. In spite of himself, he grinned.

Bishop Croissant and Father Shanley emerged from the parish house. As they walked by, Sammy remembered to touch the brim of his hat, almost standard operating procedure in a police department where half the force was Irish.

The bishop nodded and smiled, his bright brown eyes intent on Sammy for an instant. And Father Shanley called pleasantly enough, “Be with you in a moment, Golden.”

At least, Sammy decided, he wasn’t a moral leper, yet.

After the bishop had been driven away in his fine new car, the priest crossed the street, swung open the door of the coupe and settled into the seat.

“Wings clipped?” Sammy inquired. “Sails furled? Ixnay on the Desperate Dan stuff?”

Father Shanley glanced at the detective, surprised, smiled, and dropped a friendly hand on his shoulder. “So I wasn’t the only one sweating it out?”

“Good Lord, no. What happened?”

Father Shanley found a handkerchief and wiped his face. Then his grin broadened. “Among other things His Excellency informed me delicately that if I ever again were forced into the insufferable position where the use of fists was deemed necessary after searching my conscience, he hoped I would pick somebody I could lick. Black eyes, he pointed out, are not becoming to young curates.”

“Say,” Sammy exclaimed, “the old boy has a sense of humor.”

“Trusting you mean no disrespect, he has. Furthermore, the Knights of Columbus this morning presented His Excellency with a new car, for which Father Joseph Shanley must give due thanks for his bishop’s good humor. Furthermore, it was Mayor Gough who complained to His Excellency upon the behavior of one of his priests, namely this same Joseph Shanley, who must also remember to be grateful for His Excellency’s unfavorable opinion of His Honor, which therefore inclined him to be prejudiced in his curate’s favor. Furthermore, a man named Paco Mendez saved the life of the bishop a good many years ago in Guadalajara which has inclined His Excellency to favor any action done on the behalf of a Mendez.”

“Speaking of coincidence!” Sammy said.

“Which we are not,” said Father Shanley. He added gravely, “Not that the way of the Lord is not wonderful and curiously strange.”

“So maybe you can help me at that.”

“How?”

“I’m going to try to pick up a Robert San Juan and ask him some questions. He’s a Filipino barboy who works at La Marimba. He’s the one who discovered the body of Rosa Mendez in Nick Sandoe’s office. Now, I want to throw a little of the fear of God into him and I need an interpreter. His English pretends to be worse than my Spanish. And I was kind of figuring both of those things might come in your department.”

Father Shanley thought it over and then shook his head. “I’m sorry, Golden. That’s not quite in my department. While the bishop didn’t reprimand me, he did remind me that my secular duties are clearly defined and related to matters of the spirit, and that regardless of how happy His Excellency would be to see my faith in Rosa Mendez justified by public proof of her innocence, he did point out that solving murder mysteries was not precisely my job. And while that ‘precisely’ business gives me certain latitude, I feel that helping, er, third degree a barboy wouldn’t be wise at this time.”

“O.K., Father,” Sammy said brusquely, “sorry I bothered you. Don’t lose any sleep over it.”

“No, wait.” Father Shanley laid a hand on Sammy’s arm. “Why don’t you take Barbara Mendez with you?”

“Barbara?” Sammy glanced at the priest, astonished. “Take that kid into something like this?”

“Why not? She’s bilingual.”

“But, damn it, Father!”

“Exactly.” Father Shanley smiled gently. “She might keep you from employing some of the tactics in your mind. And you’ll accomplish just as much without them. Believe me, I know. I spent a year in the Philippines.”

When Father Shanley brought Barbara Mendez down the steps from the cottage, Sammy decided she still was wearing the clothes in which she had dressed for the funeral. The quality and the cut of the black she wore was an obvious indication that the clothing had been her sister’s. It was also obvious that Barbara was a few pounds heavier than Rosa had been which gave the cloth a tautness that was startling. The total effect was not good, but it was provocative from the too high, show-girl heels to the small black straw and sequin shield that served as a hat.

Sammy swung the door open and Father Shanley helped the girl in. With his hands on the closed door of the car, he said, “Good luck to you two,” and to Sammy, “Take good care of her, Golden.”

“Sure, Father.” Sammy put the coupe in gear and they moved away down the street, leaving the priest at the curb staring thoughtfully after them.

Glancing at Barbara out of the corner of his eye as he drove, the detective said, “Didn’t intend to pull you into this. Don’t like it.”

The girl’s richly modulated voice was serious as she stared straight ahead. “I do, Sergeant. I like it very much. All the time I have done nothing except feel sorry. Feel sorry and listen to Mama’s crying and worry about Carlos. Now, I am doing something. It is important. Important to me. Do you understand, please?”

At a corner drugstore on the way into town, Sammy parked. “I have to make a phone call,” he said. “Be right back.”

He dropped in his coin, dialed automatically, and then assumed a hesitant voice and manner. “Is there a Detective Adams there? I believe he’s in the Homicide Division.”

“Just a moment,” Brice’s voice said at the switchboard. The voice was impersonal and efficient. It didn’t sound as if it had recognized Sammy.

“Detective Adams speaking,” Sammy heard.

He asked, “Anybody around to overhear you, Red?”

“Holy smoke!” Dan yelped. And then, “What in the devil are you up to, Sammy?”

“I’m the Saint,” Sammy told him. “I’m the Cisco Kid and Sam Spade.”

“You’re also hotter than a firecracker,” Adams interrupted.

“O.K.,” Sammy said. “Make a name for yourself and pull me in. But before you do, what’s the chance of you having a look at the Mendez file without being sent on your vacation?”

Adams’s voice was guarded. “Pretty good, Sammy. Gough has ordered the case re-opened. I guess Sandoe wants to check and see if he’s covered everything.”

“Then the file’s in the office?”

“On my desk.”

“It’s enough to make a Christian of me!” Sammy ejaculated. “Listen, Red, run through it and find me the home address of Robert San Juan.”

“You got something?”

“Ideas.”

“O.K., Sherlock. Wait a minute … Here it is. Fillmore Hotel.”

“Thanks, Red. One more thing. What’s the chance of my getting a copy of that piece of a note the Mendez girl left behind her?”

Dan Adams was silent for a moment. “Why not?” he said finally. “I can use silk gloves, my secret typewriter, and send it by carrier pigeon.”

“You don’t need to do that. Send it to Father Joseph Shanley, Parish House, St. Anne’s Church. Send it by special messenger. I’ll pay you when I see you if they don’t get me first.”

“Planning on attending your hanging myself,” Adams said. “Seriously, Sammy, if you run onto something we can use, send it along. I’d kind of like to kick up a little dust myself.”

“O.K., Red. And thanks.”

“Sure, Sammy.” And then almost in a whisper, “There’s a lot of us pulling for you, Sammy. Right here in the department. You’d be surprised.”

He hung up the receiver, feeling good. There was a lot of good left in the world. Adams had showed him that. So had that fat bishop of Father Shanley’s, for all his caution; and Father Shanley, himself, and Paul Pavlides, and Tom Meigs, and Nell Wharton. Nell Wharton! Sammy threw away the thought because it was making him sentimental. This was no time for sentiment. This was the time for the Fillmore Hotel. That rotten little flea bag over on Ninth. A hell of a place to take a girl like Barbara Mendez. A good girl, a good nineteen-year-old girl who had wanted to wear the best clothes she could wear to her sister’s funeral and who had ended up looking like a whore. The best intentions were like that sometimes. Sammy climbed back into his coupe wondering what in the devil had turned him so philosophical all of a sudden. Perhaps, like Mr. Pavlides, he was acquiring values.

The Fillmore was shabby without pretense, dirty without effort, and complacent in the pathetic and necessary purpose it served. A room for a buck; the luxury of a grimy bath for two. You weren’t on skid row if you had a room at the Fillmore, but it was a wayside inn on the same road.

That wasn’t the reason Robert San Juan stayed there. If the Fillmore had a single virtue it was a kind of tolerance that began and ended with the payment of your bill, daily, weekly, and monthly rates.

Parked before the hotel, Sammy stared at it and wondered what to do with the girl beside him. She was here of her own choice, but she had chosen without knowing, just as Father Shanley had chosen for her without knowing.

Then, Fate, who was being entirely unpredictable this eighth day of October, gave him a hand. Robert San Juan, immaculate in a gabardine suit almost sky blue in color, wandered out of the hotel and stood lost and lonely and indecisive at the curb.

“There’s our boy,” Sammy announced. He reached for the door handle.

Barbara put a hand on his sleeve. “Wait, Sergeant, please.” And when Sammy paused in the act and turned his eyes toward her, “Listen, Sergeant, when Father Shanley told me what you wanted me for, he said it was to talk to a Robert San Juan. So I thought to myself, ‘That name. This is a Filipino or Puerto Rican boy.’ So I went quickly and put on one of my sister’s dresses which is too tight for me, and my sister’s shoes which are too tall for me, because that is what this boy would like …

“There, see, he is walking down the street all by himself. Drive past him and around the block and I will get out and pick him up and talk to him and let him buy me a drink.”

“Are you crazy, kid?”

“No, Sergeant Golden, please. You’re the police, you would only scare him. I am a girl. I can make him feel important. I can get him to tell me where he works. And when he tells me, I can find that important, too, and I can bring the two importances together with the death of my sister. And that is very dramatic, and because I am muy simpatica, very friendly, and because I am speaking with him in our own language, it is like having a curtain around us, and maybe I will hear something you would never hear in a hundred million years.”

Sammy stared at her in awe. A nineteen-year-old girl with a wisdom as ancient as Eve’s. He said slowly, “I could tail you, I guess.”

“But, of course!” Barbara’s smile was enchanting. “That is why I have the confidence.”

Sammy started the car ahead. Barbara ducked down on the seat with her head in his lap when they drove past Robert San Juan. Sammy said, “Don’t drink any of the rotgut they serve in the joints around here.”

“A glass of wine,” Barbara decided. “Burgundy or claret, I think. They are not what is called fortified, and the alcohol is very little.”

Glancing down at her with amazement, Sammy demanded, “Youngster, where do you learn all these things?”

Barbara giggled, very much her own age for a moment. “My boy friend, Antonio, he works in a liquor store. When we get married, we are going to own one.”

“Thank God something makes sense,” Sammy muttered. He turned the corner, pulled the coupe into the curb and let the girl out. He warned, “If you want this trick to work, don’t look for me. If you can’t see me, don’t think you’ve lost me. I’ll be around and I’ll have my eye on you. If things get out of hand and you want me fast, drop your handkerchief or your purse, whichever is in your hand at the time.”

With misgiving, Sammy watched her walk away. Awkward in her too tight skirt, awkward in her too high heels, she was nevertheless the dream of many a man far less vulnerable than Robert San Juan. And she was wise beyond her years and it was possible she could bring the thing off in the way she had predicted.

Sammy drove a half block more before he found a parking space. He slid the coupe into it, stepped out and crossed the street, jaywalking. He hurried toward Ninth on the opposite side of the intersection from the spot where he had left Barbara.

Sammy was apparently engrossed in the display of one of Ninth Street’s stores of the we-buy-and-sell-anything class when the pretty Mexican girl walked by with San Juan, her arm slipped through the crooked elbow of his sky-blue gabardine suit and her high heels clicking like a typewriter on the hunt and peck.

There was a bar on the corner, glittering and garish, with a neon sign that said PAYCHECKS CASHED HERE, and a legend soaped on the window to assure prospective customers that the finest mixed drinks were a quarter, straight shots twenty cents, and hot homemade soup a dime. Barbara and Robert San Juan disappeared into the place.

Walking to the corner, Sammy discovered there was a second entrance. He used it, selecting a stool at the bar that allowed him to watch the television set and the booth occupied by Barbara and San Juan at the same time. Barbara’s back was to him now, but she had seen him come in without a change in her expression; he hoped that would satisfy her.

A bottle of beer occupied him for fifteen minutes. Once during that time, Barbara turned her head, scanned the customers along the bar, settled on Sammy and winked. The barboy from La Marimba grabbed her wrist, speaking swiftly in staccato Spanish, and Barbara shot a reply back at him. He dropped her wrist, reached into his breast pocket and pulled out his billfold, breaking open the pocket and showing her its contents of currency. Barbara forgot the customers at the bar, and stroked San Juan’s wrist. He squared his padded, sky-blue shoulders, cocky.

Sammy had a second bottle of beer. He was finishing it when Robert San Juan excused himself from Barbara at the booth and headed down the dark hall behind the television set and under a sign marked REST ROOMS.

Sammy slid from his stool and with a wink for Barbara, followed San Juan into the obscure hall. Under a dim and greasy light bulb, San Juan was at the wall telephone. Pushing past him, Sammy entered the men’s room, holding the door open a crack.

He heard the Filipino say, “Mr. Farr, this is Bobby San Juan. Listen, Mr. Farr, a funny thing; I am with a woman, a Conchita Cintron …”

Sammy stepped from the rest room, sliced one hand down across the hook on the side of the phone, broke the connection, grabbed San Juan’s little finger and twisted his arm up behind his back.

“Come easy, San Juan. Police.” Sammy flashed his badge and pocketed it. He headed toward the side door of the bar with his prisoner, jerking his head at Barbara to show he wanted her to follow.

As he pushed San Juan through the door, a big blond man in coveralls stepped back onto the sidewalk to let them pass. The big man’s sharp eyes caught the significance of Sammy’s finger hold on the Filipino. One of his large hands snapped out, caught the detective’s shoulder, spun him around, and left him wide open for the swinging fist that hit him square in the stomach.

Sammy slid down the brick wall of the building, holding his stomach with both hands, his eyes glazed with pain and shock.

“Next time,” the blond fellow growled, “pick on somebody your own size, chum.” He dusted his hands together and went into the bar.

Barbara helped Sammy get to his feet. They went along the side of the building, Sammy bracing himself with his hand against the brick wall. When they reached the alley, Sammy said, “Turn your head, kid, I’m going to be sick.”

Afterward, they went down the alley toward the street where his coupe was parked.

Tom Meigs said, “Thank you, Miss Wharton, for trusting me with the address.” He folded onto the sofa, resting his elbows on widespread bony knees with his interlocked hands dangling down between his calves, so that from where Nell was sitting, he looked rather like a capital M with a head on it.

Aware of the odor of cloves, she smiled at the homely, aromatic, somehow attractive person before her, and replied quietly, “There are too few of us not to trust each other.”

Meigs nodded, unclasped his hands, shuffled one of them into a side pocket of his tweed jacket under a folded newspaper and produced a pint bottle, breaking the seal on it with his thumbnail as he held it up before the girl. “Will you have a drink with me, Miss Wharton?”

Her smile broadened. “I doubt if Miss Wharton will, but Nell might. I’ll get some glasses.”

He watched her rise and leave the room, approving of her loveliness without his sharp, lazy eyes missing the bruises on her temple and beside her eye in spite of an adroit job of make-up.

When she returned with two tumblers, Meigs poured three fingers of whisky into each, handed one to her, waited for her to seat herself across from him, watched with detached appreciation while she crossed her legs, and then said, “I’ve taken a room at the William and Mary for a couple cousins of mine who are arriving in town today from San Francisco. A Mrs. William Q. Townsley and a Sara Meigs.”

“I don’t think I’m losing my mind,” Nell frowned. “But if one more man takes me through a conversation I can’t follow, I’ll sure begin to wonder. You didn’t come here to talk about your cousins, Meigs.”

“Depends on who those cousins are,” Meigs said carefully. “One of them’s a staff writer of mine, name of Mable Marble. Have you seen the afternoon Record yet, Nell?”

The girl shook her head.

Meigs produced the newspaper from his side pocket, setting his drink on the floor. Folding the paper open to the picture page, he passed it to Nell and retrieved his whisky.

“Of all the lousy tricks!” the girl exclaimed. Tears brimmed without spilling in the corners of her eyes.

“Exactly,” Meigs agreed. He studied her speculatively, wondering if the tears were from shame, grief, or anger.

The picture in question was of Nell Wharton. It was a professional photograph edited for newspaper consumption. Her arms were folded across her breasts and the study ended decisively at her navel. To a million or more readers, it would be as was intended, a picture of a naked woman. Due to the mutilation of the original photograph, it was not even a nude in the classic sense. It simply suggested, without quite showing, a woman with all her clothes off. The caption read: Have you seen this woman? Ex-Model and “Pay-Off” girl sought by police in conjunction with sensation-seeking, suspended city detective. Story, Page one.

“Finish your drink,” Meigs said, “while I tell you what’s in my mind. We’ve got to get out of here before Golden gets back.”

“You mean I should run out on Sammy?” Nell demanded, suspiciously.

Meigs nodded.

Nell flared, “Maybe you mean O.K., Meigs, but if you think I can’t take all they can dish out and then some, you’re crazy. As long as Sammy wants me around, I’m the rag doll to be kicked. They can’t hurt me that much. Not if he doesn’t care.”

“They’ve already hurt you that much,” Meigs said gently. “Both of you. If you stick together, you’ll wreck everything that’s good between you, and everything we’re trying to do.” He found a couple clove mints and popped them into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully.

“Look, Nell,” he said determinedly, “I’m not trying to break anything up. You’re both top drawer, and if there’s something between you, I hope to hell it works out. You’ve both got guts or you wouldn’t be backed into the corner where you are now. But here’s the point. You’re in a spot where public opinion can’t be damned. From here on out, there are three choices, bums, heroes, or martyrs. If you end up bums, tramps might be a better word, you can start running and never stop. Being a martyr’s no damned fun. Not from your point of view or Golden’s. If you stick with me while we have a try at cleaning out this lousy town, maybe you’ll end up top of the heap. So you can walk down the street proud of each other. If you’re in love with the guy, that’s important, regardless of what you’re thinking.

“What I want to do is establish you two separately, establish that condition with reliable witnesses furnished by me, and establish you as a couple of guys who won’t knuckle under to a political setup that puts the Borgias in kindergarten.

“Think about it for a minute. Look at that picture on your lap. A million guys and gals from nine to ninety are looking at a picture of a naked woman and thinking about sin. Ever since Eve picked the first fig leaf, it’s been like that, and with that reaction, they’re not going to take your fight with Sandoe and the city seriously. Even your pal, Father Shanley, is going to have some trouble with his conscience when he runs across that picture …”

“O.K.,” Nell said dully. “Call off the artillery. I’ll come quietly.”

“Then you see?” Meigs asked eagerly.

Nell finished her drink and looked at him steadily. “You’re trying to shoot straight,” she said, “so I’ll tell you something. You’re fast with the head work and you’re smart. But this time, you’re exactly half right.”

Meigs met her glance without wavering. He said nothing, but the question was in his eyes.

Nell leaned forward, folding her hands over her crossed knees. “Everything you said is right from Sammy’s point of view. Even if he doesn’t think so, and I hope for a minute he doesn’t, what you’ve said is right. As far as I’m concerned, Meigs, old boy, you’re nuts.

“I don’t gave a damn who killed the Mendez dame or why. I don’t give a damn who’s the mayor of this city, or who’s the dogcatcher. I’m scared to death of Nick Sandoe and his playmates and I’d take a slow boat to China to get out of their way. But it so happens I’m damned fool enough to be in love with a guy. What he wants is more important than what I want. You say that for his sake I should take a powder. For his sake, I’ll do it. But if he thinks different, if he even so much as wiggles his little finger in my direction, I’m coming.

“Now you sit and think that one over while I pack a bag.” Nell rose and left the room swiftly, holding her shoulders and her head stiff and proud.

Meigs lifted the pint and unscrewed the top. “Before you write that novel, you’ve got to learn something about love, old boy,” he said to himself. He drank, put the bottle back together, and searched in his pockets for his mints. “How does it feel,” he wondered, “to have a woman love you like that?”

As they came out of the alley and into the street where the coupe was parked, Sammy led Barbara into a lunchroom that was next to the alley. He chose two stools beside the dirty window and away from the other customers.

“Coffee,” he ordered from the hulking, flaccid blonde in a dirty apron. He dropped a quarter on the counter, and when the coffee came, gulped from the steaming mug, forcing the bitter, hot, black liquid down his throat.

The waitress hovered, dully curious about the pair of them.

“Go wash some more dishes in the coffee,” Sammy snapped. And when she went away, he said, “O.K., kid, what did you learn before Sammy played it smart?”

“I’m sorry for him,” Barbara told the detective. “He’s a very scared young hombre.”

“That all?” Sammy asked rudely, sure it wasn’t worth the sharp pains in his stomach, the cold sweat standing out all over his body.

Barbara said quickly, “No, that is a feeling I had about him. Here are the other things. When I flirted with you, that was because he told me La Marimba was closed. And I said if he was not working I was wasting my time. And he showed me what was in his wallet. A fifty-dollar bill, two twenties, and a ten. Never, I tell him, have I seen so much money, And he tells me there is more where that came from. That La Marimba being closed is just a vacation. Always he can work there. They will never fire Bobby San Juan.”

“Now you’re cooking,” Sammy told her with an enthusiasm greater than the nausea washing up out of his stomach and keeping the coffee sour and bitter in his mouth. “What about the night Rosa …?” He broke it off, wanting to be gentle.

“Yes,” Barbara swallowed hard, fighting back tears, “there we have something. There is, how do you call it, a before and an after. They do not connect, add up. Here again, it is a feeling …”

“Don’t trust your feelings, kid. What do you mean, a before and an after?”

The girl picked up the greasy spoon before her and twisted it between her hands. “This is the before,” she explained. “About eight o’clock Friday night, the bar phone rings and Bobby answers it. It is this Mr. Farr who works for Mr. Sandoe. I do not know exactly what he does—”

“I know Farr. Go on.”

“Anyway,” Barbara continued, “he orders four drinks—”

“Four?” Sammy interrupted, excited.

Barbara glanced at him curiously. “Yes, four. A brandy and soda, a stinger, that would be for my sister, and two whiskies and soda, and tells Bobby to bring them to Mr. Sandoe’s office. This he does, leaving Jesus Cabeza at the bar.”

Sammy waited, trying not to push things.

The girl said, “When he arrives outside the office, he knocks, and his knocking pushes the door open a little way, but they do not hear him because an explosion is going on inside the office. Rosa is screaming at Mr. Sandoe. Not frightened, but angry. Some in English and some in Spanish. And Bobby hopes that Mr. Sandoe does not understand Spanish because of some of the things my sister is calling him.

“So Bobby tries to close the door he has jarred open and go away. But this Mr. Farr sees the door moving and runs over and jerks it open. He starts to say something angry, then he sees the drinks and says, ‘Bring them in, Bobby. I think we all need a drink.’ Bobby does and Rosa shuts up for a minute. And Mr. Sandoe says, ‘Thank God!’ And Bobby puts the drinks on the desk and leaves quickly—”

Sammy interrupted anxiously, “Four drinks, Barbara. One for Rosa, one for Sandoe, one for Farr. What about the fourth?”

Barbara dropped the spoon and pressed her temples. “Yes, he said something. There is another man, very well dressed, a gray suit with thin chalk stripes. When Bobby comes into the room, this man has his back turned, is staring out the window. He does not turn around, or at least, Bobby does not think so, because he is watching my sister. Still full of anger, he tells me, with her chest moving up and down magnificently and her eyes filled with daggers. And all the anger frightens him. It is in the room like a cloud of thunder ready to burst in two, and he departs from it quickly.

“That is all the before, Sergeant Golden. All I can remember.”

“And that’s all about the other man? His back, the gray suit?”

Barbara nodded. “It’s all. I’m sorry.”

“Probably couldn’t have learned any more myself,” he said to cover the bitter disappointment.

“Is it anything you can use?”

“I think so.” Sammy scratched his head. “A good deal of it’s stuff we never heard before. Did San Juan know what the scrap was about?”

The girl searched her mind. “No. When I ask him why is this gitana so angry, he does not know. He says he does not want to know. Only to forget all about it.”

Filing the last phrase away in his mind, Sammy inquired, “What about San Juan finding the body?” He touched the back of her hand, covering it with his own for an instant. “I’m sorry, kid. This is hard on you, but you wanted to get in on it.”

Barbara nodded soberly. “I am a detective now. Not a person, not Rosa’s sister. This is what I pretend, and what I’ll keep on pretending until I am sitting in the dark alone and I hear Mama sobbing through the wall late at night.”

The detective turned his head from the girl, staring out the grimy window at the street. “O.K.,” he said gruffly, “let’s have that report.”

“Yes sir,” Barbara said steadily. “The report. It is almost nine o’clock. At the bar for a minute it is quiet. Everybody has what Bobby calls a fresh one. He remembers the glasses and tray he left in the office, and he ducks out to get them. He knocks. Nobody answers. He tries the door and is surprised because it is unlocked and nobody is in the office.

“He goes in and picks up the tray. Three glasses are on it. The fourth is on the other side of the desk making a ring where it stands on top of the desk. He goes around the desk to get the glass. That is when he sees Rosa.” Barbara bit her lip and stopped speaking.

“Anything more? Anything more he said that I should know?”. Sammy asked, gentle but determined.

The girl shook her head. “Only ugly things like how much of my sister’s legs were showing because of the way she had fallen.”

“O.K., kid,” Sammy said quickly. “With the glasses gone and Rosa dead, that’s where we came in.” Then to take her mind off her sister and back to the problem and the game, “What did you mean about the before and after not adding up? That feeling you said you had?”

Barbara’s black eyes were enormous. “Don’t you see it, Sergeant? My sister was angry. Very angry. She had a rage against Mr. Sandoe. Then in a few minutes, in less than an hour, she was dead. Why? To get even with Mr. Sandoe? To get over being mad, she put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger? That doesn’t make sense! Would your girl friend kill herself because she was mad at you?”

“That’s not a good comparison,” Sammy said quickly. “Rosa was in love with Moline. Not Sandoe. Couldn’t she be mad at Nick, and still grief stricken over the thing Moline had done to her by running off with Michelle?”

Barbara thought it over, her quiet, pensive face an odd contrast to the blatant sexiness of her sister’s clothes. She said, “What you say is right, Sergeant. My sister, I think, was in love with Matty Moline. But before that she was in love with Mr. Sandoe, not once, but many times, in and out of love with Mr. Sandoe. And always coming back to Mr. Sandoe, maybe because he never bored her, and maybe,” Barbara added, too wisely for her years, “because it was good business, good show business to be in love with Mr. Sandoe.

“But to come back to Friday night, Sergeant Golden. She was very, very angry, bursting with such anger that even when she did not speak, she filled Bobby San Juan with the feeling of it. And it is a very long way down the ladder from being very angry to being very sad. It is true she could be very angry at Mr. Sandoe, and then sing some of the sad songs she sang in the floor show, like Noche de Ronda or Perfidia, and then drink too much at one of the tables and become muy triste like the lovers in the songs my people sing, and because her own lover had run away just like in all the songs. Then, sí, it is possible she would feel tragic enough to commit the big sin. But not in less than an hour, Sergeant Golden, not in fewer minutes than there are upon the face of a clock.”

A fly buzzed on the dirty glass of the window. The dull blonde waitress was drying the silverware, sorting it as she dried, and dropping the pieces noisily into a frame of four boxes.

Sammy murmured, “Lord save us from you when you’re thirty.”

“What, Sergeant Golden?” The girl leaned forward, trying to understand.

Sammy’s grin was crooked. “Forget it,” he said, not as easily as he would have liked. And then seriously, “You’re just about the wisest woman I’ve ever known, and that’s the trouble, you’re not a woman yet.”

“I’m nineteen!” Barbara flared.

“Sure, and going on twenty and that’s exactly what I mean,” Sammy told her. He glanced along the wall behind them and discovered a pay phone, semiprivate because it was in an alcove formed by the open door of the lunchroom. “I’ve got to make a call,” he said.

A dime brought the police department. Dan Adams was still at his desk. Sammy said rapidly, “You said you could use a tip, Red, even if it causes some trouble. Here it is. Pick up San Juan and lay it to him. He’s got a pocketful of money that’ll take some explaining; and he heard part of a scrap between Sandoe and the Mendez girl just before she died. Here’s the picture. At around eight o’clock he delivered four drinks to the office. Four. Get that, Red? Sandoe and Farr were in the office with Rosa. And somebody else, a man in gray, chalk-striped suit who kept his back to San Juan. Maybe one of Sandoe’s junior grade lieutenants. Maybe not. When San Juan came in, Rosa was giving Nick holy hell. Less than an hour later when San Juan came back to pick up the empty glasses, he found Rosa dead. But he carried away those four glasses and we never heard about them. Think you can tackle San Juan?”

“Can do!” Adams said. Then, “What have you got that I haven’t?”

“You mean trouble?”

“I mean sex appeal.” Dan Adams whistled a thin, shrill wolf call over the phone.

“What the hell?” Sammy demanded indignantly.

“Go buy a paper,” the redheaded detective told him. “The one in the Record’s the best.” He whistled again.

At fifteen thirty on the police call board, less than ten minutes after Sammy and Barbara had departed from the vicinity of the Fillmore Hotel, instructions to pick up Robert San Juan for questioning were out over the police radio network.

At three thirty by Patrolman Frank Moore’s wrist watch, the black and white patrol car slid into the passenger loading zone before the Fillmore Hotel.

Patrolman Moore stepped out on the right side of the car and strode into the lobby, a night stick swinging confidently with its leather strap hooked over his thumb.

A watery-eyed, nervous clerk who wanted no trouble with the police provided Robert San Juan’s room number and a pass key.

The door to 401 was closed and locked. Before he used the master key, Officer Moore put his ear against the door and listened. He had a feeling the room was occupied. Afterward, in the Guerney Street Receiving Hospital, he said he had had a hunch that something was wrong. An observation not precisely accurate, for at that particular moment, a woman’s voice had come through the open transom of 403 saying, “Don’t, Charlie … Please!”

So Patrolman Moore had inserted the key into the lock of 401 with his mind as far away as the next transom. He swung the door open and glanced into the room. Across the faded counterpane on the bed by the window sprawled a small figure in a sky-blue suit. Patrolman Moore’s strong jaw dropped slack. He recognized a corpse when he saw one.

Then, a blunt instrument smashed into the side of his head.

Jack Farr let the yellow convertible drift through the mid-afternoon traffic with very little volition from him other than the automatic responses necessary to keep the car moving and obeying the traffic signals. His flat, dark eyes were as polished as onyx and as cold.

It had been close at the Fillmore. Too close!

The fact that he had won with nothing to make the ambush except the inward swing of the door and the luck of the split-second timing of the bawd’s voice in the next room had braced him, had filled him again with the feeling that he would live forever.

But he didn’t understand it.

From Bobby San Juan’s description, it had been Golden who nabbed him in the bar where he had gone with the beautiful brunette who asked too many questions. Golden had said, “Police,” and shown his badge. Golden was on the run. Golden was suspended. Golden had no authority.

Yet twenty minutes after San Juan had made his escape from the detective, the police had arrived at the Fillmore looking for La Marimba’s barboy. The possibility of coincidence couldn’t be ruled out with Nick having given the mayor the go-ahead on reopening the Mendez case. But Farr didn’t believe it. The police had hit the weak link in the chain too accurately, too quickly, and too apparently in conjunction with, or as a follow-up to, Golden’s lead.

Golden-schmolden, however you went at it, it got back to that damned kike!

And who was the brunette he had set on San Juan. A looker, if you could believe San Juan. Conchita, he had called her, Conchita Cintron.

Jack Farr let his mind run back over the entertainers who had passed on circuit through La Marimba in the last five years. There had been a Conchita, a black-haired, starry-eyed stripper; but she’d been an Irish girl from Brooklyn and the one with San Juan had rattled Spanish like a native.

That was smart. By God, he had underestimated Golden!

Cintron, Conchita Cintron. The name was familiar. For some reason he should know it. His thoughts drifted over the list of girls who paid a percentage to Nick, from the sleek, expensive top-flight operators to the sick and worn out girls in the six-by-six cribs. Nothing clicked.

He eased the convertible to the curb and plunged into a corner drugstore he had spotted. The telephone book didn’t help. There were two Cintrons, both men, both with addresses that didn’t fit into the picture.

Tapping a cigarette on the phone directory, Farr thought of the newspapers. He called a reporter he knew on the Record.

“Jim,” he said, “Jack Farr. Does the name Conchita Cintron mean anything to you?”

“You go in for bullfighting?”

“Bullfighting?” Farr demanded, astonished.

“Yeah. The Cintron girl’s a matador. Top woman bullfighter in the business. I saw her in Tiajuana before the war. But beautiful!”

“Thanks,” Farr said absently. He hung up the receiver and went back to his convertible. He sat in it at the curbing, finishing his cigarette. Suddenly he flung the stub of his smoke out the window and swore at himself for his stupidity.

Who would know a name like that and choose it, speak Spanish like a native and do it, and have reason enough to play along with Golden in the Mendez business? Who, but a member of Rose’s own family? Didn’t she have a carload of sisters?

So engrossed was he with his discovery and the plan forming incisively in his mind, that he failed to notice the taxi that pulled from a parking place two cars behind him and followed the yellow convertible into traffic.

Even had he observed the cab, the very ordinary face of its very ordinary little occupant would have meant as little to him as it once had meant to Sammy Golden. In fact, so violent had been the life of Jack Farr in the last eighteen hours, that he had quite forgotten the threats he had made to Jason Crawford, that small-time ham with the big-time memory.

In Paul Pavlides’ small apartment, Sammy Golden had become like a caged tiger, a man-eater with the men in sight and bars all around him.

Nell Wharton was gone and had left a note behind her. Sammy looked again at Nell’s nakedness in the picture in the Record, the half polite words that called her a criminal, and wondered if he destroyed everyone he touched.

Robert San Juan had been murdered. Patrolman Frank Moore was in the hospital with a fractured skull. Why? Because San Juan had called Farr, and Sammy had given that call a fatal urgency by interrupting it. So he was the cause of it; he could finger the man who did it; but what could he do about it?

What, indeed? Backtracking San Juan through his last afternoon on earth, the police had gathered fairly accurate descriptions of Barbara Mendez and Sammy. They had turned those descriptions and a photograph of Sammy over to the evening papers. So that the Record, among others, carried the news that the police were looking for him, along with the story of his suspension from the force.

Sammy wondered what hell they were making for Detective Dan Adams down at City Hall. Would he be able to carry off the idea that it had been a hunch of his own to pick up San Juan, or an anonymous tip, or, would he be forced to show his hand about co-operating with suspended Detective Golden and land himself in the same leaking boat?

Going to the icebox, Sammy found a bottle of beer and uncapped it. Then with it forgotten between his hands, he sat on the sofa and stared at the floor. There was one thing he could do. One thing that made any sense at all. He could give himself up, turn in his badge, and take whatever was coming to him besides being fired. It was hard to say how he would be framed.

He remembered his beer and tilted the bottle to his lips, working with the idea of giving himself up…. Or was it giving up, himself? Was it giving up when you were licked? The facts, the setup licked you. Not a state of mind…. You’re turning into quite a philosopher, Sammy Boy, quite a damned philosopher. The echo of Nell’s tag for him stung in his mind. What a time to fall in love. What a hell of a time to fall in love!

The doorbell punctuated his thoughts.

Father Shanley stood in the open door, his hat in his hand, and said without preamble, “Barbara’s gone.”

Sammy stepped back into the room, allowing the priest to enter. “Damn those Mendezes,” he exploded; and then getting hold of himself, he said, “Excuse me, Father. Tell me what you know.”

The priest reached into his side pocket, producing a folded envelope. “This came this afternoon. It seems to be a copy of Rosa’s last note, and I presume it was intended for you, so I decided to bring it to you after supper. On the way over, I stopped at the Mendez house to see how Mother Mendez was holding up. Barbara was not there. She had come in from her trip with you, changed her clothes, and later in the afternoon gone on an errand to a near-by grocery. On her way home from school, Ynez saw her sister get into a car with a man. ‘A very handsome dark-haired man in a very handsome yellow car with the top down,’ according to a rather envious younger sister, I fear.”

“Farr!” Sammy said, feeling fear grow inside him, big and ugly and immediate.

“We don’t know,” Father Shanley said quickly.

“Don’t we?” Sammy moved to the closet, reaching in to get his holster and its harness from the hook and strapping it to his body with the holster snug under his left arm. He picked up his automatic from where it lay on the sofa, and slid it into the holster, checking the set of the gun and its freedom of movement. He shrugged into his sports coat and removed his hat from the chair.

“Where are we going?” Father Shanley asked.

A grim expression settled solidly onto Sammy’s square, dark face. He shook his head. “No place together, Father. I’m going after Farr. I’m going to kill him. And I don’t want my conscience tagging along with its collar on backward.”

Father Shanley stared at the detective soberly, then he put his hands to the lapels of his black broadcloth suit. “I can’t take the collar off,” he said, “but I can cover it up until it stops bothering you.” He turned the lapels over, snapping the coat collar up, obscuring the badge of his priesthood.

The detective said savagely, “You’re going to the F.B.I. Kidnaping lets them in. You’re going to Meigs so he can get the story on the streets and over the air in spot radio announcements; television, too, if he can get a picture of the girl. Maybe the idea of kidnaping hasn’t hit Farr yet. If Barbara isn’t dead, getting that idea where it can hit Farr between the eyes or ears is the most important thing on earth.”

Father Shanley gestured at the phone. “With that, it’ll take five minutes. There’s nothing you can do in five minutes that we can’t do better together.”

He leaned against the door Sammy had to go through. His voice and his gaze were level. “Use the phone, Golden. You’ll know what to say.” His words and eyes cut through Sammy’s anger. The detective shrugged.

It was, perhaps, ten minutes later when they went down the stairs together, two young men with the weight of another life on their shoulders and a desperate urgency that they could not leave in God’s hands. Not even the priest.

On the third floor of the Post Office, behind a door gilt with the legend, U. S. TREASURY DEPT., a middle-aged man inclined to baldness who looked as though he might be an accountant, and who did, in fact, number a C.P.A. among his qualifications, frowned at a copy of the Times-Herald which was folded open to the editorial page.

That the editorial concerned him was evident from its heading: OPEN LETTER TO THE COLLECTOR OF INTERNAL REVENUE.

Meigs had composed it in Miller’s Bar. He had scribbled it on the back of an election poster bearing John Gough’s face. He had told the bartender soberly that this was his Get-This-Burg Address. When it was completed, Meigs had turned the poster over and penciled a pointed beard, an extravagant mustache, and a pair of unswept horns onto the mayor’s determinedly forthright countenance. Then, with the poster tucked under his arm, he had headed out of the bar and diagonally across the street in the direction of the Times-Herald Building.

The editorial was a masterpiece.

It took up the city’s major elected employees. It discussed their public incomes and private activities, activities it was careful to point out where the long green and the short conscience were entirely too commensurate. The mayor’s new suburban home rising higher than his salary; the district attorney’s month-long vacation in Mexico at such hostels as the Reforma and the Hotel de las Americas; the city treasurer’s new twelve-cylinder car on an eight-cylinder salary.

When Meigs had finished his editorial, he had felt a blood brother to Swift, though the amount of cloudy Irish whisky inside him made him wonder whether the Swift he had in mind was Jonathan or Tom.

The editorial, however, served its purpose. For while the middle-aged treasury agent doubted its facts as facts and its figures as figures, he did jot them down. And certainly, they were a premise for a formal investigation.

It was five miles from the apartment Sammy had borrowed from Paul Pavlides to Jack Farr’s address on North Brentwood; five miles of traffic, traffic lights, and (because Sammy was on the edge of violence) discourteous drivers.

There was within him, complex and terrifying, a rage against Farr, against himself, and against Fate or whatever power controlled the greater order of things. And underneath the rage was a cold core of fear, not for himself, but for Barbara.

Father Shanley asked as they braked for a red light. “How do you feel about dying, Golden?”

“I’m dead against it,” Sammy snapped.

“Sorry,” said Father Shanley abruptly, “I didn’t mean to play straight man for the comic. I was thinking about Farr. I’ve met him just once. At gun point. Hard, polished and brittle. Rather, to tell you the truth, like a black tom cat I owned once. Ruthless, soulless, and indifferent to consequence, because the only consequence that occurred to him was the destruction of the opponent. The cat died riding fifty pounds of bull terrier across the street in front of a truck. He never knew what hit him. Certainly, he wasn’t prepared for it. I imagine Farr’s the same sort, and that death will come to him in the same way, a surprise package at a wild party.

“I was thinking about Farr, and then I began to wonder about you. Your toughness, Golden, is a shell, a mask adequate to the moment but not to yourself. You’re sensitive. You have moral principles. And because of our time and our generation, you’re ashamed of them and try to deny them, even to yourself. Right is the letter of the law, and wrong is the girl who parks overtime or the robber who shoots the liquor store proprietor. That was what you settled for up until a few days ago.”

The traffic light turned green and Sammy pushed the coupe ahead.

Father Shanley continued, “Now, you’ve changed all that. Right and wrong have reversed their field. Now, you’re taking the law into your own hands and going out to kill a man you have decided must die. You’re no different than Carlos Mendez was when you thought he was insane, a dangerous lunatic loose with your gun.”

“Can it, Father.”

“If we were going after the girl,” Father Shanley said imperturbably, “and Farr was to die as an unavoidable consequence, that would be one thing. But somehow that doesn’t seem to be the point in your mind. Getting Farr has become the big thing even though, all things being equal, the chances are that Farr will get you when it comes to the showdown.”

“What a happy thought!” Sammy said grimly.

“Don’t get me wrong,” the priest said quickly, “my prayers are with you. I’m with you even though I don’t like the chemistry of your emotions which has poisoned your mind and soul. I’ve seen the same thing before. I was on Iwo. And I have seen good men as brutal as men can be. It wasn’t a pretty picture on those awful islands, nor is it here in a steel jungle where the track of the killer runs on rubber down an asphalt trail.”

“You should write a book,” Sammy said. He swung the coupe into the curb about half a block from Jack Farr’s apartment on North Brentwood.

As the two men came to the curb before the parked car, Father Shanley touched Golden on the shoulder. “Think about Barbara,” he said.

“My God!” Sammy exclaimed savagely. “What do you think is driving me nuts along with your blithering!”

They found the apartment number below Jack Farr’s name on the mailbox. Because of the mildness of the evening, and the early hour, the front door was blocked open. But before they entered, at a word from Sammy, they checked the outside of the building and discovered that Farr’s suite was dark.

A passkey from Sammy’s key ring served to open the second door to the apartment into a small kitchen. Father Shanley stood quietly in the darkness until a cautious inspection had proved the apartment empty. Then Sammy said, “We’d better have a look around,” and began turning on lights as they moved through the apartment.

One moment after he had turned on the lights in the living room, he was kneeling on the floor beside the beige chair in the far corner with a sickness and passion inside him so strong that his teeth had bitten through the skin of his lower lip to keep him from crying out.

The chocolate brown spots and blotches on the creamy nap of the chair were a map of violence and murder. He touched his fingers to the dark stain on the green carpet at the corner of the chair and raised them to his nostrils to catch the faint, bitter odor.

“Blood?” Father Shanley’s voice came from a long way as though in a whisper.

Grimly, Sammy nodded.

“What does it mean?” the priest demanded, moving closer to the bleak spectacle apparent in the now ominously empty chair.

“That she was punished,” Sammy said, “that she was punished a lot before she died. She wouldn’t talk and he wanted her to talk.” He added, “There are ways and means. Farr would know them all.” He put his hand on the arm of the chair and pushed himself to his feet. “There’s no use waiting around here.”

Father Shanley said softly, “If what you believe is true, I don’t know as I blame you for what you’re thinking. I don’t know but what I feel the same way myself. What do we do next?”

“Go hunting,” Sammy said.

Behind the wheel once more, Sammy said before he started the coupe, “Do you see what we’re up against, Father? He’s probably out to dump Barbara’s body in some dark alley or darker parkway; and tomorrow, we’ll learn of another sex crime, a crime of passion committed upon a young Mexican girl too pretty for her own good who accepted a ride from a stranger. That’ll be the official verdict, the obvious verdict. And do you believe it’ll ever be pinned down to Jack Farr?”

He backed the coupe from the parking place and headed it in the direction of La Marimba Club. He had made his choice of where the judge and jury and executioner should wait; for he knew that dark, locked fortress of the closed night club was a sanctuary that would attract Farr. And sometime tonight, all the unfinished business in the world would be finished.

He turned his glance from the road and spoke to Father Shanley.

“A sin crying to Heaven for vengeance? Well, tell me this. What’s the sin and who’s the sinner if Farr dies tonight?”

“Vengeance is Mine, sayeth the Lord,” the priest murmured beside him.

And mine, and mine, and mine! thought Sammy Golden silently as though reciting a litany.

There were four doors to La Marimba Club. With the priest at his shoulder, Sammy tried all of them; main entrance, bar entrance, service entrance, and a small door onto the parking lot which led up a flight of stairs to Sandoe’s office. His ring of keys held nothing equal to the four excellent locks.

In keeping with the Spanish name and the Latin atmosphere of the club, the windows on the lower floor were barred with heavy grill work, at once ornamental and impregnable.

Father Shanley said, “I suppose we can sit in the car and wait. Your car’s ordinary enough that it wouldn’t attract undue attention parked across the street.”

Sammy shook his head. “Do you remember the gun Farr held on us the other night?”

“Not particularly,” the priest admitted. “There was something odd about it, out of proportion, as I think back to it. Why?”

“It was a sporting model .22 automatic with an extra-long barrel for accurate shooting. A .22’s not a deadly weapon except by accident or in the hands of an expert. Farr’s not the kind to indulge in any accidental shooting. Probably, he could knock the pips out of a deck of cards at a respectable distance. I’ll meet him in the open if I have to. Otherwise, I’d rather not.”

They were standing in the parking lot. On the second floor, above where they stood, was a plate glass window with Venetian blinds behind it. Father Shanley pointed at the window. “Mr. Sandoe’s office?”

“The same.”

“Did I tell you how Carlos got into the Alexis Apartments?”

Sammy glanced at the priest curiously. “I meant to ask you about that. Not that I see what it has to do—”

“A delivery truck drove up to the service entrance while Carlos was in the alley. He climbed from the roof of the cab to the fire escape.”

Sammy stared at the plate-glass window thoughtfully. “That window doesn’t open.”

Father Shanley said blandly. “There were a bunch of bad boys out in the neighborhood of my parish a few years ago. Not really bad, but on their way to becoming petty thieves when they were finally caught. They broke into stores through alley windows. A couple of them, sons of my parishioners, came into my hands for rehabilitation. Turned into nice boys. One of them’s an altar boy yet. Know how they used to break the windows?”

Sammy got his mouth closed, and shook his head at the priest.

“They’d take a newspaper,” Father Shanley explained, “several thicknesses. Two of them would hold it flush with the window, and a third one would break the glass with a hammer, hitting the glass through the paper. It must have made some noise, of course, but not nearly so much as breaking the glass outright. Quite often, I understand, the glass would crack from one end to another without falling out at all. Then they’d simply jimmy the pieces loose and climb through.”

Sammy demanded, “Do you mean to say you’d stand on top of my coupe and hold up the army blanket I’ve got in the back while I went to work with a hammer?”

The priest grinned briefly. “Ordinarily, a religious must obtain special permission to enter a night club. However, with the club closed, and going into the second story only to the office …”

“For the love of Mike!” Sammy exclaimed, and then, “I’ll get the car.”

He walked across the parking lot to the curb. It was about half the size of a football field and as empty of cars as a Notre Dame backfield is of Irish. On the far side began a line of small shops extending to the corner. They were fancy, useless shops filled with a great number of commodities which had as their chief value a quality called chic. They were not the sort of shop to have a proprietor living in the back. On the other hand, they were very much the sort of shop to have a private protection agency patrolling past them several times a night.

On the other side of La Marimba, to the rear and along the alley, were the secondary courts of the ultra-exclusive Racquet Club. A twelve-foot screen fence followed the line of courts down the alley.

The detective guided his car into the parking lot and parked it close to the wall of the club. From the rear compartment, he pulled an old army blanket and a ballpeen hammer. He handed the blanket to the priest and kept the hammer for himself.

Three cars whooshed past on the boulevard, their lights catching the odd charade in which Sammy and Father Shanley were frozen. But the cars were moving fast, one jockeying around the other two with a burst of speed. The two men scrambled quickly to the top of the coupe.

Father Shanley folded the blanket and held it flush against the window.

Sammy swung the hammer.

There was a shimmering, shattering tremble of sound as the glass cracked.

In the silence that followed, Sammy glanced up to catch what the priest was saying.

“Hail Mary, full of grace! The Lord is with thee; blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is—”

“What?” Sammy demanded.

“Say that I’m beginning my penance,” Father Shanley told him. “Hit it again, Golden!”

A large section of the window slid suddenly with the blow, crashing to the ground between the wall and the car and splitting the night in two. Father Shanley draped the blanket over the ragged edge of the sill, and they climbed through the window, Sammy holding up the ladder of Venetian blinds until the priest had ducked under them.

They stood for a moment staring out through the blinds. No one came running. Beside the window, against the wall, was a large leather chair. It caught a little light from the window, but not enough that an occupant would be revealed, and it was not in direct line with either of the doors.

“Sit here,” Sammy instructed. “I’ll take the chair behind Nick’s desk.”

“We’re waiting?” Father Shanley asked.

“Waiting,” the detective echoed grimly. He had shaken off the inescapable humor of a cop and a priest doing a second-story job, and he was back to Farr. To waiting for Farr. To kill Farr. That was the whole equation, beginning and end. Q.E.D.

Father Joseph Shanley had settled into the leather chair, crossed his legs, and was rubbing his finger tips together before his face in the darkness. He was in a ticklish, ridiculous, rather terrifying spot. He shuddered at the spectacle of himself, a priest, being identified as a criminal for illegal entry into a night club. It could wreck his whole life, regardless of his motive. Yet the life of the young man moving quietly in the darkness beyond him depended upon his inspiration or lack of inspiration in the next few minutes or next few hours. If Golden killed Farr as an act of vengeance, not only were two lives lost, Farr the victim, and Golden the murderer, as surely lost as if he aimed the bullet at himself, but so was Father Shanley lost, as a man and as an agent of God who could stand by and be as blameworthy as any for the act of violence. He thought of disarming Golden, knocking him out, and pulling him from this place before violence was done. Yet what would that accomplish, except delay? It was no answer. But if there were nothing else … In the darkness he flexed his hands.

Sammy found Nick’s upholstered swivel chair and dropped into it, rolling it backward and twisting it with a movement of his thighs so his back was to the wall and he was facing the inside door to the office, with the door down to the parking lot on his right side and in the corner of his eye. He pulled his gun from the shoulder holster and tucked it muzzle foremost between his legs. Then, he dared to light a cigarette, keeping the flare of the match brief and getting his light at once. He smoked the cigarette cupped, his left hand covering the bright orange button, and found some small pleasure in the smoke coiling into his lungs. He had smoked the same way in foxholes and for the same purpose.

Time passed. He could hear it in the tick of his watch each time he brought the cigarette to his lips. The watch was ticking off the minutes that remained to Jack Farr on earth.

Father Shanley’s voice whispered through the darkness, “This isn’t finding Barbara, Golden.”

“Barbara’s dead,” Golden said bitterly. “Start some prayers while you sit there, Father. Give the kid a lift into Heaven. That’s your business. They never came any better than she was.”

Silence came back and folded around them, only the intense separate thoughts of each moving in the darkness.

Suddenly Sammy whispered, “Did you just scuff your feet?”

“No,” a breath of a word coming back to him.

“Hold your breath. Listen.” Sammy’s hand jumped to the gun between his knees and leveled it at the door before him.

No more than a rat might make between the walls of a building, came the sound, faint and scratching, no more than that.

The priest thought, If I can get myself between him and Farr …

It came again. Someone was moving in the building. And it puzzled Sammy, puzzled his trained hearing and mind. Both the direction from which it came and its intent. It was not a creeping sound, but was like the rat he had thought of before, scratching, gnawing, in the woodwork.

Silently, the detective came to his feet. The priest, sitting tensely in the leather chair, saw him move, a shadow among shadows, absolutely without sound.

To Sammy, moving forward across the carpet, edging around the desk, the noise became clearer. It was not in the room with him, nor out in the hall, nor on the floor below. It did come, it must come from the wall of the office.

Standing in the darkness, he stared back to the night of Rosa Mendez’s suicide and the look of Nick Sandoe’s office under bright lights. Then he had it. The closet!

Cautious of a trap, Sammy eased to the wall and felt his way along it until he found the door he had forgotten. The sound continued, louder now that it was at its source. He twisted the knob and flung the door open, keeping the door between him and the closet, only his gun and one eye around the edge of the door and diagonal to the inky opening.

Nothing happened.

Arm extended across the door, he struck a match with his thumbnail. The sudden flare of light was away from his eyes and away from the muzzle of his gun. It illuminated the closet. On the floor, a tawny and expensive alpaca coat moved restlessly. From under the coat extended a pair of tan, bare legs, bobby socks, and cleanly chalked saddle shoes. Around the ankles a cord was tightly bound.

He reached and jerked the coat from the huddled figure it covered. Barbara Mendez’s bright, frightened eyes shone up at him.

“Thank God!” Sammy exclaimed reverently and weakly. Then over his shoulder, he called to the priest, “Turn on the lights, Father. We’ve found Barbara!”

In the instant before the match went out, he saw fear go from the girl’s eyes and hope bloom in them like a bright flower.

Father Shanley had found the switch, and now as the soft white glow of the hidden fluorescent lights flickered and then brightened steadily, he thought, This is the miracle I needed!

As the detective bent to gather the huddled girl into his arms, his eyes fell upon the expensive topcoat which had been thrown over her, and they became as bright with professional interest as a hunting dog’s on the scent of quail in November.

He carried Barbara to the sofa across the room and laid her upon it, careless of his words, “You’re all right, kid, all right, all right!” Saying them more for his own sake than hers.

Father Shanley knelt beside him as they removed the girl’s bonds. Sammy cut the gag and the cords at her wrist, while the priest picked the knots at her ankles.

She tried her lips when the gag was gone, feeling the hurt at the corners where the tight cloth had been. “I knew you’d come,” she said softly. “One of you, or both of you.”

“God be thanked, we came in time,” said the priest, gratefulness welling in his eyes, and a contentment at last telling him how fully he had been justified in breaking into this place.

“Where’s Farr?” Sammy demanded.

“Farr?” Barbara’s brow arched with the question and then recognition. “He’s away on some kind of a job,” she said. “I don’t know what. It was right after he brought me here. Nick called. That would be Mr. Sandoe, wouldn’t it?”

Sammy nodded, waiting for her to continue. Father Shanley was loading his pipe, watching the two of them, his sensitive face relaxed and happy.

She said, “That was pretty lucky, that phone call. Lucky for me, I guess.” She glanced at the priest, “St. Anne took care of me, Father.”

Sammy asked, “Did you hear the phone call?”

“I heard what Mr. Farr said.”

“Tell me what you remember, kid. Everything you remember.”

She sat up, shuffling her feet on the carpet, rubbing her wrists. In the white blouse, black skirt and low-heeled white shoes, she was a hundred times prettier than she had been in her sister’s tight parody on Sex.

She said, “I don’t remember exactly. But the first thing Mr. Farr said after Mr. Sandoe had said something, was a name. Warmser, Wornster, something like that. And then after a minute, he said, ‘He’s still at the apartment.’ And then after another minute, he said, kind of mad, ‘Keep your shirt on, Nick. I got a box from the warehouse. One of those that the last slot machine consignment came in. Yeah, nailed up.’ Then Mr. Sandoe spoke for quite a while, and Mr. Farr tried to interrupt, and finally he said, ‘O.K., I’ll drop what I’m doing and finish it later. Don’t worry, Lavinia’ll get his surprise party.’ Then he hung up and came back to me and said, ‘Sister, I’m going to be all tied up for a while. And so are you.’”

“Great sense of humor,” Sammy muttered angrily. “Somebody was killed in Farr’s apartment today. We saw the blood, and, well … Anyhow, our little man’s had a busy day and now he’s gone across the county line to deliver a nasty little surprise to a mobster who’s been threatening Sandoe’s hold on this county for a long time.” He turned to Father Shanley, and said with grim satisfaction, “Your friend, Pavlides, did a good job. Sandoe may find himself in a shooting war before the night’s over.” He came back to Barbara. “How’d you happen to climb into a stranger’s car, kid?”

Barbara said, “I know I was dumb, Sergeant. But I didn’t know who this Mr. Farr was, and he drove up and said he wanted to talk to me, that he knew something about what had happened to my sister. Something the police didn’t know, and he couldn’t take it to the police without getting into a lot of trouble, but maybe I could.”

Sammy turned his back, crossed the room, and retrieved the alpaca coat that had covered Barbara in the closet. “Where did this come from?”

“I don’t know,” the girl frowned. “It was on this sofa under me when I came to.”

“Came to?” Sammy’s voice was mean, a cop’s voice, mad.

Barbara rubbed the back of her head tenderly. Father Shanley removed her fingers and felt the bump gently with his own.

She said, “When we drove up in front of this place, I knew I was in trouble. I tried to run away. Mr. Farr hit me on the back of the head with something and the next thing I knew I was here. This is Mr. Sandoe’s office, isn’t it?”

“Damn him,” Sammy exploded. “Damn him to hell!”

Father Shanley said quickly, “She’s all right, Golden. We got here in time. Give thanks for a moment, not anger.” He grinned. “And don’t swear at me for suggesting it! What does the coat mean?”

Sammy held it up and pointed. There were several irregularly placed holes as large around as a fountain pen in the coat, and one of them was badly scorched.

“Bullet holes?” the priest asked.

Sammy nodded. He went to the desk and found a long, new pencil. After a moment of experimenting, he was able by wadding the coat together to pass the pencil through every one of the holes in line. “That’s what the coat means,” he said.

“But what?” the girl asked.

“Everything and nothing,” Sammy explained honestly. “To deaden the sound and trap the bullet, a gun was fired through this coat when it was tightly bunched. What gun, and for what purpose, we don’t know. But I’ve a damned good hunch … And I’ll bet, too, that Farr had this coat in his car and that he used it to bundle you into the club after he’d blackjacked you.”

Father Shanley said excitedly, “It’s something about Rosa!”

Sammy’s eyes were searching the office. They passed the open closet door, took in the position of the desk and came back to the closet door. “It would fit,” he murmured. And then to Father Shanley, “Say a small prayer for me, Father.”

He strode to the closet and glanced up. The bulb socket was empty in the ceiling. He unscrewed the bulb in the desk lamp and returned to the closet. When the bulb was in the socket, he found the light switch beside the door. Father Shanley and the girl stood behind him while he crouched in the closet and made his inspection. His search at the woodwork at the back of the closet was quick and expert. And a foot up the wall, he found the small gouge. Almost to the depth of the first knuckle and varnished over. The varnish in the area had an odor faintly fresh.

“That’ll do it!” Sammy exclaimed.

“Do what?” Barbara demanded.

He turned and faced the two of them, the coat draped over his left arm. “It’s only an idea,” he said, “but there’s enough evidence to back it up. Two shots were fired in this office the night Rosa was killed.”

“But why?” Father Shanley’s blue eyes were puzzled.

Sammy said, “So it could be proved that Rosa fired the gun that killed her. There was the flash burn at her temple, of course, but Farr was smart enough to remember the cordite test, the test run on the skin of the hand to prove the hand held the gun that was fired. So Rosa did fire the second shot, the shot that went through the coat and into the woodwork. At least, her hand held the gun when the shot was fired.”

“How horrible,” Father Shanley murmured, distressed.

“Forget that,” the detective told him. “This is the sort of thing that brought you to Homicide. This is the thing you demanded I find. We’ll not be able to use it in the way you had planned. But, by Heaven, we’ll use it!”

“How?” Father Shanley asked.

“That’ll take some figuring,” Sammy said. “And we’ve got to get out of here. But first …” he started for the inner door of the office with the coat over his arm. At the door, he paused. “Wait here for me.”

Nearly five minutes passed before he returned to the office. He did not have the coat with him.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said. He used his handkerchief to unscrew the hot bulb in the closet and return it to the desk lamp. Then he turned off the lights in the office. In the darkness, he led the way to the door of the private entrance, down a steep flight of narrow steps, through a second door, and out onto the parking lot.

“But we’re leaving the coat behind,” Father Shanley objected.

Sammy asked flatly, “Would it trouble your conscience, Father, if the three of us forgot that coat? A sin of omission, you would call it.”

Sammy opened the door for Barbara, then let the priest get the two of them in while he walked around to the driver’s side. Glass from the broken window splintered under his feet. He climbed behind the wheel.

“Where to now?” Father Shanley asked.

“Barbara home first,” Sammy said. He found his keys and got the proper one into the ignition.

The blinding glare of a spotlight hit the windshield and spattered them with brilliance. Sammy did three things almost simultaneously. He pulled Barbara’s head into his lap and below the rim of the windshield; he flipped the key in the ignition; and he ground his feet onto starter and clutch, shifting at once to the gas and letting the coupe jump forward in low. He was into second gear as they completed the first elbow of the turn.

The explosion was like a shot and the coupe jolted and leaned. A spear of plate glass had knifed its way through the right front tire.

Sammy flung the door open on his side away from the searching light and scrambled out, pulling the girl after him. The priest followed. They crouched for an instant in the shadow. Sammy’s automatic had appeared in his right hand. And with his left he fumbled into his trouser pocket and found a crumpled dollar bill. He pressed it into Barbara’s hand.

“That’s not a police car. When I move into the light, you two fade for the alley, keeping my car between you and the spotlight. When you get to the alley, beat it left. Two blocks will bring you to a taxi stand.” His glance slid to the priest alone, “Get the kid home, Father. She’s had a rough day.”

Without waiting for a reply, he darted from the shelter of the coupe and crouched on the gravel, facing the brilliant spot. His eyelids were lowered against the glare that had followed him across the gravel of the lot as though he were a featured dancer in a comic ballet; through their slits, his sharp eyes studied the blur of car behind the light. “Yellow,” he thought; “cream at the very least.”

He still was too much of a cop to take the first shot. It could be the private watchman patrol with its light focused on him.

And if it were Farr, Farr with his target .22 braced steadily in the frame between door and wind-wing, why wasn’t he shooting?

Sammy heard the girl’s feet going across the gravel toward the alley. But only the girl’s feet. No heavier running. No Father Shanley.

That was the end of his waiting. A sharp slick report came with the gravel that jumped at his feet and stung him in the face. Most men shooting at night overshoot the target when they miss. This gunman had corrected for that. Sammy triggered two quick shots at the parked car, aiming a little lower than the light and to the left. He heard the slugs crack metal.

The gun spoke from behind the light, the beam obscuring its flash, and a wasp fanned close to Sammy’s ear.

Twisting as he rose, Sammy ran across the parking lot. He ran zigzag and crouching low as though the field were filled with imaginary tacklers. He pivoted suddenly, and coming steady in his crouch, fired twice more, and heard his shots burrow into metal. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Father Shanley moving across the parking lot to join him. “Shake a leg, Father!” he called. He emptied his gun into the car, not shooting to kill, but shooting to keep Farr occupied while the priest got off the parking lot.

The third shot from the .22 caught the detective in the left arm above the elbow. He felt the shock and surprise of it and, afterward, the pain. But it did not spin him or knock him flat as a larger caliber bullet would have done. It did knock the fresh clip of cartridges from his left hand and sent it skittering through the gravel.

Sammy spun and followed the priest into the alley. They started down the rear line of shops. “You’re wounded?” Father Shanley asked.

“Winged,” Sammy told him. He dropped his gun into his side coat pocket. “We’ll take care of it later.”

Down the boulevard to the east, a siren was wailing. The two men moved up the alley in the opposite direction from the one the girl had taken. Sammy’s arm needed a tourniquet. But there wasn’t time for that. The cops were coming. There was a tight, wry grin tucked into the corners of Sammy’s mouth. “Jiggers, the cops!” he said.

Sammy glanced at Father Shanley. “How does it feel to be on the other side of the law, Father?”

They had taken a dozen steps before the priest replied, “Terrifying, Golden. And I’m grateful.”

It was a curious reply, but Sammy’s thoughts were too busy to consider it. They had reached the mouth of the alley, and the detective had his fugitive urge working against his policeman’s mind in search of the best route of escape.

A cab came down the street and drew up beside the fireplug at the corner of the alleyway as the two men flattened themselves against the shadowy wall of the building. The rear door of the taxi swung open, and a voice called, “Right this way, Mr. Golden. Right this way, Father. Quickly, please!”

Sammy nodded to the priest, dropped his hand into his coat pocket and grasped his empty gun.

The voice from the cab continued, “Your gun is empty, Mr. Golden, unless I miscounted the shots, and I do not believe you have been able to reload it with your wound, though, of course, your priest friend may have given you a hand.”

The two men crossed the walk and climbed into the cab. Sammy dropped to the seat in the center of the cab and stared at the remarkable little man beside him who had watched a gun battle and counted the shots. “Who are you?” he demanded.

Father Shanley had closed the door after him, and was pulling down the jump seat so he could give Sammy more room in which to nurse his wound.

The little man said, “I’m nobody, really,” and his appearance went a long way to justify his description of himself.

“You’re an angel of providence,” the priest told him.

The little man smiled, pleased. “That’s as good an answer as any.” He addressed the cabdriver. “Home base, Mike.”

The driver nodded and put the car in gear.

“I’m doing this of my own volition,” the little man said. “I’m not certain Mr. Crawford will approve. But I don’t think we need anything more on Farr. And you certainly do need a hand, Mr. Golden. It was unfortunate, too, about the blowout,” he added sympathetically. “Not that Mr. Farr’s superb convertible wouldn’t have been able to overtake your somewhat older coupe, Mr. Golden. My goodness, you should try to follow that car of Mr. Farr’s on the open highway.”

The taxi had made a right-hand turn onto the boulevard and they went past La Marimba at a moderate speed. The yellow car was gone from the curb, and in its place was a black and white police car parked facing the wrong way. Two uniformed officers were in the parking lot examining Sammy’s coupe.

The detective was puzzled. “By Crawford I suppose you mean Jason Crawford. Nothing else makes sense.” He had found a handkerchief and stuffed it into the sleeve of his coat around his left arm.

“That’s right,” said the little man.

Turning to the priest, Sammy asked, “Would you light me a cigarette, Father? I’m afraid I can’t manage it.”

“Shouldn’t we do something about your wound?” the priest asked.

“We’ll wait till we have some good light and some privacy. Not that an unreported gun wound won’t add to my list of crimes,” Sammy said. “That cigarette, please.” He was using his right hand to hold his left arm tightly with his thumb pressed hard in the manner of a stone under a tourniquet on a pressure point.

Father Shanley put a cigarette between Sammy’s lips.

When they arrived at the Harkness Building, the little man said, “Will you wait in the cab for a moment, Mr. Golden, while the Father and I sign the ledger. I’ll send the watchman on an errand, then we’ll bring you in. What Mr. Johns doesn’t know won’t hurt him. And keep your left hand in your coat pocket, please. We can’t leave a trail behind us.”

Jason Crawford was in the oversized chair behind his desk. Though the night was cool and the window behind him was open, he was in shirt sleeves with his fancy tie loose at his throat. He stared at Golden and the priest with sharp eyes too small for the size of his skull, and then over their shoulders at the top of the little man’s head. “Well, Smith?”

The little man said uneasily, “I brought Golden in. It seemed like a good idea.”

Crawford observed Sammy’s damply stained coat sleeve and the brooklets of crimson that had run between his fingers and dried some in the night air.

“Farr?” Crawford asked.

“Yes,” said Smith.

“Why the soul-saver?”

“He was with Golden when they came out of the club with the girl.”

“Where’s Farr now?”

“Somewhere in his yellow convertible. There are five bullets in the side of it. None in Farr.”

“Why’d you bring Golden here?”

Sammy was interested in the conversation, but he could feel the weakness from the blood he had lost. He found a chair and dropped into it. Father Shanley followed him. “Let me help you get your coat off.”

Sammy raised his right arm and let the priest slip the coat sleeve from it. Then he leaned forward still holding to his left arm.

Smith said mildly, “Farr must be poison to Sandoe now. Picking up the girl would make that so. Somebody’s got to pay the bill. I thought of the Times-Herald. Golden seems to be connected with them.”

“You’re not paid to think,” Crawford said automatically. But his hard blue eyes were remote from the reprimand. He rubbed the back of his neck. “You’ve got an angle,” he admitted. He picked up the phone, turning toward the detective. “Who’s your friend on the paper, Golden?”

“Meigs; Tom Meigs. If Father Shanley will get my wallet from the pocket of my coat, there’s a card there with three numbers on it. One of them should reach Meigs if he’s not at the Mendez house.”

“That’s damned co-operative,” the private investigator said suspiciously.

Sammy glanced down at his injured arm. “I’m in no condition to tell you to go to hell. This arm’s got to be fixed up so I can go to work on a couple angles myself. Meigs’ll help me see to that.”

Father Shanley carried Sammy’s wallet to Crawford.

“Front pocket,” Sammy said. “Meigs’s personal card, three phone numbers penciled on the back of it.”

The big man slid the card from its leather envelope with the broad, flat spatula of his thumb. “Tear off his shirt sleeve,” he said to Father Shanley, “and I’ll see what I can do for him after I’ve talked to this newsboy.”

Mable Marble had her hair up in curlers. Because her hair was dark and liberally sprinkled with gray, and because the curlers were the sort that stood up and away from her head with individual T-shaped handles to manipulate the clamps, the effect was rather like the roof of an apartment house cluttered with television aerials.

She said to Nell Wharton, “Take a cold shower, honey, Then you won’t miss him so much.” Her voice was rich and easy with lots of volume, as it should have been if the size of her chest was any indication of the lung power somewhere underneath.

Nell stopped fiddling with the cords of the Venetian blind, took her eyes from the street ten floors beneath, and faced her companion. “Why haven’t we heard from him?” she demanded. “Meigs said he would give him the phone number. That wasn’t too much to ask. Just the phone number.”

“You sound like something out of Fannie Hurst,” said Mable. “Meigs is busier than a gelding with a bee under its tail. So’s your boy friend.”

“I don’t like being cooped up.”

“Some coop, a suite at the William and Mary! Let’s order up a couple gallons of Scotch and tackle some canasta. Two handed, fifteen cards.” She reached for the phone. “Room Service, please,” and after a moment, “Four double Scotch and sodas for 1017, please. And hurry them. We’re entertaining.” She cradled the phone.

“Entertaining?” Nell asked. “Who?”

“Me,” Mable pushed a forefinger in the space between her ample breasts. “This all goes on the expense account, honey.”

“Does everybody on the paper drink like you and Tom Meigs?” Nell demanded.

“Lord love us, no!” Mable shouted. “Somebody’s got to put out the paper. We’re just the geniuses—or is it genii?”

The Scotch arrived. Mable signed a chit, and borrowed a dollar from Nell to tip the boy.

They settled to canasta. Though the public furor over the game had tapered, it still was a game admirably suited to Mable’s diverse talents. For there was not enough brainwork required to interfere with either her cheerful flow of salty conversation or her drinking. When the Scotch and soda was a memory, Mable picked up the phone and ordered again. The ratio had been three to one.

Close to eleven o’clock, with a score of several thousand points and six drinks in her favor, Mable began to snore softly with twenty-seven cards clasped firmly in one hand.

Nell turned off the light shining in her companion’s eyes, tiptoed to the closet and selected a red sports coat. She left the room silently.

The doorman whistled a cab for her and bowed her into it, taking his time bent over her sleek and admirable legs.

She gave the address of Paul Pavlides’ apartment. She did not plan to stay there. She wanted to see Sammy, have his arms around her, to know that another day had ended all right. It was a crazy and awful thing, this business of being in love, tremendous and fragile and frightening.

The apartment was empty. But Sammy had been there. The newspapers scattered on the floor, the empty beer bottle, the envelope on the table. She opened the envelope and slipped out the single sheet of paper.

My darling, darling Matty,

How could you do this thing to me? Over and over again I have asked myself, how could you do it? Was our love, this thing between us, not enough? Did I come to you too easy, too free? Too much with my heart on my sleeve?

Or was it the other thing, the thing which I told you, even though you knew it would fix everything between us, give us a chance to make our own lives, if I took care of it?

Were you afraid of that? The thing I would do? Oh, my darling Matty, surely it wasn’t that hopeless!

Nell picked up the plain white envelope addressed to Father Joseph Shanley. He would understand the plea of hopeless love; the thought came with a compassion new to her. Then she shrugged away her newborn sentimentality with the memory of Matty Moline and the way his hot, pink hands had chased her knees around under the table at La Marimba.

But why had this copy of the letter been sent to Father Shanley, and what was it doing here? Unless, and the thought pleased her, Father Shanley and Sammy were out together. She laughed. What a wifely thought, to be happy because your man had stepped out with the priest. Who was getting religion, anyway?

The next thought wasn’t wifely: not unless you went back to Pocahontas trying to take the close shave in place of her boy friend. Nell wondered if there was a gun around the apartment. She went into the bedroom and started through Sammy’s bag.

The police positive .38 revolver trembled in her hand, its weight too heavy for her wrist. She could use it in a pinch, but it wasn’t the gun she wanted. Not the sort of gun you could conceal in the clothes Nell Wharton wore.

She searched further. Then, under a clean blue shirt, between the shirt and the paper in which it had come from the laundry, she found it. A .32-caliber automatic, neat, and flat, and deadly. It looked like the gun Sammy had taken from Frankie Kendall after Father Shanley had knocked out the little mobster. It was the gun with which he had shot the big Swede through the shoulder. Nell checked its clip, the lead in the chamber, made certain the safety was off, and dropped the gun in the big patch pocket of her boxy coat.

After phoning for a taxi, Nell took a last look around the apartment before she left. In a night and a day it had become almost like home. The telephone rang. Sammy wouldn’t be calling Sammy. She let it ring.

Nell gave the cabdriver the number of the apartment on North Brentwood from memory. It was Jack Farr’s apartment. It was an address she would forget tomorrow along with a great many others.

Tom Meigs said, “I still think you should see a doctor.”

Sammy shook his head. “Crawford and Father Shanley did fine.” He moved his bandaged arm tenderly in its sling, then held up the tumbler in his right hand. It was half filled with brandy. “This finishes the cure.”

Meigs held a paper cup of the same. He turned his head over his shoulder as though it were on a swivel like an owl’s, and said to the private detective, “Put the likker on our bill, Brother Crawford.”

“Don’t worry,” the big man grinned. He had a new account.

Meigs returned to Sammy. “I gather from what you’ve told me that you believe there’s a big piece of the puzzle missing in the Rosa Mendez case. Not only for us, but for Sandoe and Farr as well.”

“You mean something Sandoe wants to get his hands on and can’t find?” Crawford asked wisely.

Sammy glanced at the investigator. “There’s no reason not to discuss it with you,” he decided. “The Times-Herald can foot a larger bill than any other potential customer, and still not shoot you in the back if dissatisfied with your service like some others I can mention. That should take care of your trustworthiness.”

“You’ve got me all wrong,” Crawford protested, smiling. “You’ll hurt my feelings. I’m a sensitive guy.”

Meigs clasped his arms around his jackknifed knees and said, “To get back to that missing piece …”

Sammy’s dark face was sober with thought. “Look at what’s happened since I began nosing around. Two murders, no, three if you count the one we don’t know about, the body Farr delivered to Lavinia tonight …”

Crawford said, “O.K., Smith. Give them what we’ve got.”

The little man pulled a paper-backed notebook from his pocket and flipped it open. “I don’t know his name,” he said, “but here’s a description of the young man who went into Farr’s apartment just before noon today and didn’t come out. At least, not by the same entrance.” He read from his notebook, “Blond, twenty to twenty-three, five-ten, weight, one-fifty; well dressed, light gray summer suit, black and white shoes, gray felt hat, white shirt, blue tie with red figured flowers in it; chain smoker, at least, lit one cigarette from another before he went up the stairs to the apartment.”

Sammy said, “Warmser, Wornster, something of the sort was the name Barbara Mendez heard Farr use in reference to him.”

Meigs said excitedly, “Want to bet it’s not the rat who planted the time bomb in the wrong press at the Times-Herald? Guide taking a tour through the building described one of our visitors who disappeared a few minutes before the explosion. Asked directions to a rest room just before the party reached the presses.” He pulled a fold of copy paper from his pocket and began to scribble some notes. He glanced at Crawford. “Quote the firm?”

Crawford shook his head. “You’re not paying my life insurance.”

“Usually reliable source,” Meigs grinned. He made notes for perhaps thirty seconds, then glanced at Sammy. “Didn’t mean to break your line of thought. What about the other two murders?”

Sammy picked up where he had been interrupted. “Moline and San Juan must have known something. Something, perhaps, they didn’t even know they knew. At least, it wasn’t important enough to worry them, and apparently, they were safe enough until it began to look like a cold case of suicide was being warmed over.

“For example, the fourth person in the office the night Rosa was killed. Could it have been Matty Moline? Or could it have been somebody who shouldn’t have been in the club and whom Moline had seen? That last goes for San Juan. He saw the fourth person, but evidently didn’t recognize him. Still, the fact that San Juan had seen him was enough to make the Filipino a dangerous witness.”

Sammy let that sink in, thinking it over himself, then continued, “Before we get lost on the trail of an unknown person, however, we must come back to the problem of why Rosa Mendez was killed.” He glanced at the priest. “As you put it, Father, ‘the evidence of things not seen.’ It’s been on my mind all along and I’m damned if I know what we’re after.” He paused, set down his glass, and scratched his head. “That’s the crux of it. What evidence could Father Shanley conceivably have brought me, or could I have stumbled onto, that would be damning enough and concrete enough to scare the pants off the untouchable Nick Sandoe?”

Jason Crawford inquired cannily, “That unfinished note of Rosa Mendez’s, could there be another page?”

Sammy shook his head. “I’ve worried about it. And if there was another page to that letter, and if it did refer to the thing for which we’re hunting, it stands to reason it fell into the hands of the murderer and was burned or flushed down a toilet or something.”

Meigs unwound himself from his folded position and went after another drink. Pouring brandy into a fresh paper cup, he remarked, “Have you thought about it in the light of the election being less than a month from the night the girl was killed?”

The phone rang, and almost on the reflex, Meigs scooped it to his ear. His lean, buzzard face darkened with quick anger. “Damn it, Mable, did you get a snootful?” He swung toward Sammy. “What’s the address of the apartment where you’re staying?”

Sammy told him and he relayed it to the woman on the other end of the line. “Get on over there and have a look around,” he added. “Leave word at the desk that she’s to phone you there if she comes in.” He replaced the phone abruptly. “Your girl friend got Mable looped and pulled a sneak. What’s your phone number?”

“Claremont 7991,” Sammy told him, feeling worry run over him like prickly heat.

Meigs dialed the number, letting the phone ring on the other end of the line for a long time.

Jason Crawford asked suspiciously, “How’d she know you were here, Meigs?”

“Left your number with the girl at the switchboard,” Meigs explained; and to Sammy, “She’s not at the apartment, anyhow.”

There was an authoritative knock at the outer door of the office. Smith went quickly. They all sat silent upon hearing the parade-ground voice beyond the second open door. Then the little man was forced back into the office ahead of three tall cops. Two of them were in uniform. The third was Detective-sergeant Dan Adams.

Crawford shouted, “What’s the idea of crowding in here? You got a search warrant?”

Adams shook his red head. “Not a search warrant,” he said grimly, “but a couple for the arrest of Samuel E. Golden.”

“On what charge?” Meigs demanded.

“Material witness, murder of Robert San Juan. That’s the one we had on ice. I’ve got another. Illegal entry, trespassing, disorderly conduct, and assault with a deadly weapon.” He forgot the others and looked at Golden. “Coming, Sammy?” There was pain in his voice; it broke through and cracked the authority.

Sammy pushed himself wearily from the chair. His coat flopped open loosely because his left arm was in a sling. “You’d better have my gun, Red.” He reached under his coat and produced the empty automatic butt foremost. The two uniformed cops dropped their hands from their holsters.

Father Shanley stepped up to the redheaded detective. “That illegal entry, assault and such, was it in conjunction with Golden’s activities in the vicinity of La Marimba Club this evening?”

Adams slanted ssupicious eyes at the priest. “That’s right, Father.”

“I don’t know who trumped up those ridiculous charges in such a hurry,” the priest said calmly, “but if you take Golden, you’ll have to take me. I helped him break in. As a matter of fact, it was I who suggested the method and entered with him.”

Dan Adams said bleakly, “I didn’t hear you, Father.”

One of the cops, a black-eyed Irishman with a brogue in the look of him if not in his speech, shuffled his feet, embarrassed.

“Also,” continued Father Shanley crisply, “while I’m no authority on the law, I believe the fact that we entered the building to rescue a girl who was being held against her will, and who, in fact, had been kidnaped earlier this afternoon, mitigated our illegal actions.”

Meigs spoke with his voice hard and triumphant. “What about that kidnaping, Officer?”

“What kidnaping?” Dan Adams asked. He said it with his mouth. It wasn’t a question in his veiled green eyes.

“Barbara Mendez, Red!” Sammy came to life suddenly as the size of the frame made clearer the picture.

The sergeant of detectives said tonelessly, “The kid’s in the tank, Sammy. She was picked up fleeing the vicinity of the Marimba Club at the time of the shooting. The boys who picked her up did it on suspicion. They didn’t know we had a couple of warrants for her. Material witness, same as you, on the San Juan case, and another for pandering down on Ninth Street this afternoon.”

“Pandering!” Sammy exploded.

“Infamous,” murmured Father Shanley.

“False arrest, if you should ask me,” Meigs said with the fighter’s gleam coming back into his eyes.

Dan Adams felt through his pockets and found a cigarette. He tapped it on his thumbnail. “Don’t blow a gasket,” he said. “We tore up the pandering warrant. Also the material witness deal.”

Sammy brightened, and then almost instantly, his expression clouded with suspicion. “But you say she’s still in the tank.”

The detective struck a match for his cigarette. “Yeah, Sammy, she’s still there. Booked on suspicion of murder.”

Tom Meigs’s voice was brittle when he spoke, brittle with sarcasm and infinitely dangerous. “Isn’t that just dandy? You’ve got two Mendez kids suspected of two unsolved murders so far this week. Correct me if I’m wrong, Father, but I remember, there are still six Mendez kids who haven’t been charged with anything yet. Think how many embarrassing crimes the police department can pin on that one family if they keep up at this rate. Of course, when they get to the nine-or ten-year-old daughter, they’re going to have trouble pinning a homicide on her.”

Sammy worked hard to keep his voice level. “What’s behind that phony arrest, Red?”

Adams met his angry stare squarely. “Your tip, Sammy. You said that San Juan had a wallet full of money that would take some explaining.”

“That’s right,” Sammy agreed cautiously.

“Know how much, by any chance?”

“Hundred bucks in the wallet. A fifty, two twenties, and a ten.”

Adams nodded. “That much was in her purse when she was picked up. San Juan’s fingerprints were on it.”

Sammy rubbed his right hand across his brow, probing into the flesh with his fingers as though he would reach the bone and brain underneath.

“Come on,” Adams said. “I’ve wasted too much time and talked too much already.”

Sammy swung his glance to the newspaper man. “I’ll have to leave it up to you, Tom. Get a lawyer for Barbara. Get the best in town and get him fast. If that sweet kid’s framed, I’ll kill Sandoe with my bare hands.”

Meigs said, “Don’t worry, Sammy. There’ll be a lawyer at the station before you arrive. He’ll be there to act for both of you.”

“Thanks.” Sammy returned to Adams. “I’ll be ready to go in a minute, Red. As soon as I’ve had a chance to talk to Father Shanley. A private talk. As my priest he can receive a privileged communication.”

“Your priest?” Adams got his mouth shut, and just for an instant a twinkle touched the corners of his eyes. “O.K., Golden. Have your talk with the padre, but make it snappy.”

Sammy led Father Shanley around Crawford’s desk to the corner by the large metal file. Crawford remained at the desk, doodling onto a scratch-pad. Meigs was using the phone, demanding that somebody give him attorney Douglas Blanding’s home address.

Sammy kept his voice low. “Listen, Father, you’ll be going by the Mendez house tonight to try to give a little comfort to Mama Mendez?”

The priest nodded.

“O.K. While you’re there find out if Rosa was at her family’s home for a visit the week before she was murdered.”

“I can answer that now. She was at confession the afternoon she died.”

“Good!” Sammy saw the priest flinch. “Sorry, Father. I didn’t mean it like it sounded. Remember, all we’ve got to work with is the raw and dirty business that stays after the soul’s departed, and I haven’t the time to argue the good and bad of it, but while I was listening to myself talk tonight, I got an idea, a hunch. I don’t know what it’s worth, but they’re putting me on ice for a while, so, you’re the only one left to do the job.

“I’m sure the Mendezes trust you enough to let you make a search. Particularly among any of Rosa’s things that may be tucked away around the house. In a drawer, a box, between the pages of a book; some place that Rosa may have considered safe from Sandoe’s prying may be something she could have given into your keeping. Something that would incriminate Sandoe or imperil his organization. Something Sandoe thinks you or I have seen or possess. I can’t tell you what it is. I don’t know. But look, Father. Look for Barbara’s and Carlos’s sake. Look and look and look. And if you find anything, anything even of a suspicious or inexplainable nature, take it to Tom Meigs. He’ll know what to do with it.” Sammy stopped, staring at the priest, wondering if he had put it to him right.

“Very well, Sammy.” Father Shanley put a hand on Golden’s shoulder. “And if Meigs’s lawyer can’t pull any fancy tricks to get you out of jail, sprung, I believe the expression is, don’t forget I was witness to and a part of every ‘crime’ you committed this night.”

Sammy used his good hand to squeeze the arm of the priest. “There’s one thing I’m damned glad of—that Red Adams looked right through you, Father. But, thanks for trying.” Embarrassed, he dropped his hand and moved away from the priest.

As he came around the desk, he paused where Meigs had his ear clamped to the phone. “Can I say something, Tom?”

The newspaperman nodded, not quitting the call.

“Don’t crucify Sergeant Adams if you report any of this historic meeting. Adams tried to help me out this afternoon. Now he’s on the garbage detail.”

Sammy glanced into the blue agate eyes of the private investigator. “Don’t take any wooden nickels, chum.”

Crawford winked at him, looking surprisingly human for a minute.

“O.K., Red, let’s put the show on the road.” Then Sammy went out of the office ahead of the three cops. And Dan Adams came to walk beside him when they got to the corridor and the second door was closed behind them.

Sammy turned to the two uniformed officers. “You can cut the great stone face act,” he said.

Their expressions didn’t change.

“My pals,” Sammy said to the detective beside him, “they’re waiting to cut off my gold buttons and drum me out of the regiment.”

Adams lit a cigarette from the butt of the one that had been in the corner of his mouth. Then he said soberly, “No, they’re not, Sammy. Clancy would give his good right arm to have his priest think one half so much of him as that one back there thinks of you. Good Lord, do you realize what that guy was doing when he stepped up and said he’d broken into Nick’s place?”

“He was trying to give me a hand.”

“Sure,” Adams said, “and a hell of a lot more than that. He was taking the very good chance of being kicked out of his priesthood. And how does a priest go about getting himself another job if he’s forced to leave the Church? How does he even live with himself?

“There was a chaplain in my outfit overseas. A young fellow about the age of Father Shanley. A swell guy. We were crazy about him, even bums like me who weren’t Catholics or very much of anything else. Anyhow, something went wrong out there, everything did on Guada in ‘42, and somewhere along the line, this priest I’m telling you about got all screwed up. When he got back to the States he got out of the priesthood and tried to enter civil life. Got married, in fact; had a couple of kids the last time I saw him. Fine wife, fine kids, and the unhappiest man I’ve ever seen. Now, he’s driving a soft drink truck and trying to write little inspirational articles for the popular magazines. I stuck out a supper at his apartment one night until about nine thirty. Then damned if I didn’t beat it for the nearest bar and cry in my beer.”

Sammy said, “That doesn’t sound like Father Shanley, Red.”

“Of course not,” the redheaded detective agreed. “It doesn’t sound like the guy I know, either. But when you’re a priest forever, and you quit the priesthood and you quit the forever, it’s not like quitting the wrong job after being stuck in it for a couple of years, or quitting after seven years with the wrong woman. That’s what I’m trying to say about your Father Shanley if he sticks his neck out too far for you.”

The elevator came, and the four of them stepped into it. They descended in a heavy, boxed-in silence until Sammy asked, “How did you trail me here, Red?”

“Cabby that brought you,” Adams told him; “the blood in his cab scared him.”

In the taxi on the way to Farr’s apartment, Nell slipped on a pair of gray suede gloves that were in the pocket of the boxy red coat. When she arrived at the apartment, she rang and waited. No one came to answer her ring and she tried the front door. It was locked. She moved down the hall and tried the second door. Unwittingly, Sammy had left it unlocked for her.

She walked through the apartment wondering about the number of lights burning. She turned them off, and sat on the sofa in the dark, suede fingers tapping the upholstered arm nervously.

Then, quite suddenly, unexpectedly, the nervousness was gone, and she was in the dark, quiet, and well aware of the sureness rising in her. She was going to kill a man. Give him a name, she was going to kill Jack Farr. It was as simple as that. As simple as waiting in the dark and having a gun.

While she waited, the minutes coiling slowly around her, speeded only now and then by a car passing on the street before the apartment, she rejected the foolishness of the gloves on her hands, the quick shot in the dark, and the clean getaway.

It wouldn’t be like Sammy’s game of solitaire. Not this time. This time, the cards were stacked against the player. The day before yesterday, she and Jack Farr had been on the same team. And she had been around too many shady corners to believe she could become his murderer and not have the bill marked “paid in full.”

Funny, she thought, that this was the price of love—the end of all good things for herself, and all bad things for Sammy.

Still, it was nice to have him with her in the dark, the memory of his fine hard face almost handsome in the softness of his new love for her. She got rid of that thought quick. It called for too much beyond tonight. There was nothing beyond tonight.

Nothing? Her mind came to dwell on Father Shanley. What would he tell her about her world between two nothings, the big sleeps which were on either side of the little troubled ones. He’d have answers, she decided, plenty of answers. But not for her. For the kids on the other side of the street, maybe, but not for a girl sitting alone in the dark with a gun in her pocket. Waiting now to keep a late date, the latest date of all.

E pluribus unum, she said to Father Shanley, that’s Latin for go peddle your fish while I peddle mine. Then, she added, but if you can do something for Sammy Boy … She didn’t finish the thought.

A car had turned sharply in at the curb, its lights flashing brilliant for an instant against the window pane beside her before they dropped out of sight as the parking was completed.

Cat-quiet, she began her wait suspended on the edge of the violence. She heard the door of the car slam. The hand behind the slamming had been quick, confident and careless. She heard the footsteps on the walk, their tempo change as they mounted the few steps to the foyer, and then become quieter as they moved onto the carpet in the hall.

Then, there was the hard, immediate sound of metal against metal as a key came into the lock of the front door before her.

She didn’t move. She didn’t breathe. The gun in her hand quivered a little.

They had been driving for five minutes, Clancy and the other cop in front, Golden and Adams in the rear, when Sammy said, “We’re not heading for the station.”

The redheaded detective replied wearily, “That’s right. We’re bound for the Tenth Precinct. You’re being wrapped up.”

“Meigs’s boys will find me.”

“I hope so,” Adams told him seriously. “But it’ll take some time. That’s the idea, I think.”

They rode in silence. Adams broke it. “How’s your arm?”

“It’s got me rocky,” Sammy said, “but not too bad. The bones are in one piece, and I’m not bleeding to death. The slug was from a .22.”

“From a .22?” Adams’s green eyes narrowed with interest.

Sammy glanced at him. “Remind you of something?”

Adams shrugged. “What difference would it make?”

“I could tell you where to pick up the gun.”

“I got a wife and kids,” Adams said.

“Feeling different than you did this afternoon when you wanted to kick up a little dust.” It was an observation, not a question.

Sirens sounded behind them. The police car pulled toward the curb and idled. Two motorcycles sped by them, wailing down the night and slashing it scarlet with their red lights. Behind them, purring with quiet power, came a black sedan.

“His Honor, the mayor,” said the cop who was driving.

“Must tickle his old woman to have him hurry home to her like that,” Clancy observed.

“He probably needs his bicarbonate,” said the first cop.

“Ever figure out the number of babies he runs through a change of diapers screaming bloody murder this time of night?” Clancy asked philosophically.

The police car resumed its journey.

“Hail to the chief,” Adams muttered belatedly.

Sammy said, “You’re only doing a job, Red.”

“Get holier than me,” the redheaded detective snarled, “and I’ll break your damned neck.”

Fifteen minutes later, they arrived at the Tenth Precinct Station. “Out here,” Adams said, “you can listen to the mockingbirds.”

The car drew up before a flight of stairs at the side of the brick station house.

“I’ll take him in,” Adams told the two uniformed officers, “so you can get back to your checker game.”

“Need any help, Sergeant?” Clancy asked.

Adams grinned at him. “With a one-armed man?”

Sammy climbed out of the black and white sedan and stood waiting at the curb. Adams followed, giving a wave to the escort as they pulled ahead and into the parking lot behind the building.

Dan Adams said, “I’ve been watching your left hand. You can wiggle your fingers.”

“I told you I was lucky.”

“Shut up. I said you can wiggle those fingers. That means you can drive if you have to. One of the boys going home from Central Station drove my car out here for me. I noticed it at the curb on the corner as we came by. I told him to leave the keys in the ignition. It’d be safe enough in front of the station.”

“Listen, Red, you’re in enough hot water.”

“Shut up, damn it! There’s one condition. It’s important. You’ve got to knock me out. Pull your punch and I’ll shoot your damned tail off.”

Sammy tried to say something and the words were all tied up.

Adams closed his eyes and stuck out his chin.

Sammy brought his right fist up from the basement. There was no acting in the way Adams’s eyes shot open before he began to fold toward the sidewalk.

“You always did have a glass chin, you bum,” Sammy mumbled. He pivoted and sprinted for the corner.

The shabby convertible was at the curb, pointed away from the station house, and the keys, good as gold, hung like a pendant from the ignition lock.

The front door to his apartment swung open and Jack Farr came into his living room, snapping on the wall switch with his left hand. A cigarette was tucked neatly in the corner of his lips, and his dark eyes were lost in thought. Though his brows arched slightly at the sight of the girl with the gun, his bland expression scarcely changed.

Rooted to the spot where the gun demanded that he be, he stood waiting, a little bored and not quite patient, as contemptuous of death as he was of the blonde who held it in her hands.

Nell said, “I’m going to kill you, Jackson.”

Farr smiled slightly, acknowledging her terse little speech but not bothering to answer.

“Didn’t you hear me, Jackson? I’m going to kill you.”

The dark young man took the cigarette from between his lips, examined the end gravely, and then flicked off the ash.

There was a desperate urgency in her voice when she spoke again. “Isn’t there anything you want to say?”

“Sweetheart,” Farr’s tone was easy, “in spite of what you’ve heard to the contrary, you can’t talk a guy to death.” His mouth laughed at the humor he had invented. “But, if you want to talk, I’ll tell you this. I don’t think Golden or the padre would send a woman to do a man’s work.”

“Strictly my own idea, Jackson.”

“And when the job’s done,” he continued meditatively, “and the finger’s on you because your boy friend’s in the can and nobody’s going to finger Shanley—”

“Sammy’s in jail?” Nell was genuinely startled.

“So, he’s no longer in my way,” Farr went on smoothly.

“Jackson, you’re a rotten liar.”

The smile on his lips was hard and sure. “Call the Times-Herald,” he suggested. “Even that lousy rag can give you the facts. You know where the phone is.”

Nell’s glance wavered from over the gunsight to the living-room table and the phone.

When her eyes left Jack Farr, so did his passive attitude. With the steel-spring savagery of a wild animal, he flexed his knees, rose onto the balls of his feet, and flung himself across the distance between them in a flat dive.

The gun in Nell’s hand exploded. The muzzle blast burned along his cheek. The slashing crack of sound deafened his left ear even as his hurtling weight knocked the girl sideways spilling her body along the sofa. He grabbed her right wrist, twisted cruelly. The gun spurted from her fingers and bounced on the floor.

Somewhere down the hall a door came open, letting out a radio voice. Nell started to scream. Jack curled a hard hand around her face and over her soft mouth. Nell caught his forefinger between her small, even teeth. She bit and bit hard, tasted the blood of the man even as he swore.

Someone was coming down the hall.

Farr scooped the small automatic from the floor, palmed it flat, smashed it brutally against the struggling girl’s head, and felt her go limp in the curve of his arm.

He was at the open door when his neighbor arrived.

“Say, Farr,” Mr. Milliken demanded, “did you hear a shot?”

Jack Farr held up the gun. Mr. Milliken’s eyes bulged. Grinning, the dark young man pointed his chin over a shoulder, stepping far enough aside for Mr. Milliken to see Nell’s sprawled figure on the sofa. “Girl friend bought a gun,” he explained. “Brought it over for me to show her how to use it. Damn thing went off.”

“The, the girl …” Mr. Milliken was fascinated.

“Screamed and passed out,” Jack told him. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll bring her around.”

“Is there anything I can do?” his neighbor inquired hopefully.

Jack Farr lowered his voice and spoke apologetically for the weaker sex. “She’s had a little too much to drink. You know what I mean, Milliken. Be better if I bring her around myself. She’d hate to be sick in front of a stranger.”

“Sure, old man,” Milliken agreed reluctantly.

With the door closed, Jack Farr drew his right hand from his pocket. The forefinger still was bleeding. The damned little vixen!

Crossing the room, he gathered Nell in his arms, carried her into the bedroom and dropped her on the bed. Then, he went into the bathroom to attend his bleeding finger.

Returning, he brought a fresh roll of adhesive tape. With it, he taped the wrists, eyes and mouth of the unconscious girl. She was absolutely helpless now until he decided what to do with her.

Staring at her thoughtfully, his expression became a little softer. She had class and spirit, this one. By heaven, she had spirit. It was too bad, really.

Sammy drove as fast as the encumbrance of the wound and sling would allow. Still, he was careful to keep within the letter of the law. He stayed on the main boulevard, heading away from town until he had driven close to ten miles.

At a stop for gasoline, he took advantage of the attendant’s occupation with pump and hose to make a phone call.

“Where the hell are you?” Tom Meigs barked. “And why?”

After Sammy told him, Meigs said, “That stolen car marks you. It’s too big a target. Here’s what you do. Drive somewhere near a bus line. Wait a minute … Where are you from Jefferson Village?”

“About a mile and a half northeast,” Sammy told him.

“O.K. That’s a Federal Housing Project, about three hundred chicken coop units and no garages, and outside the city limits. Park Adams’s car at the curb somewhere in the middle of it and smear up the license plates. Then get rid of that sling you’re wearing and grab a Jefferson bus back to town. Get off at Fourteenth and Chester. Somewhere within half a block of the intersection will be a car with a press card on the windshield. The key will be under the floor mat. Take it from there. But keep me posted.”

“Some day,” Sammy said, “I’ll take a couple hours to thank you. Have you heard from Nell?”

“Not a thing.”

“Barbara Mendez?” Sammy asked.

“Blanding’s on the job. He called from the station a while ago. It’s suspicion of murder. She’s not charged with the crime yet. Blanding has the idea they can be backed into the corner with that. Of course, it may be morning before we—”

“I’ve been thinking,” Sammy interrupted. “Except that I know why he did it, Adams was a damned fool to tell us about San Juan’s latent fingerprints being developed on the money. If you can get hold of your pal, Blanding, and he can get to Barbara, have him tell her that under no circumstances is she to touch that cash. I have a hunch that Farr stuffed it into her purse to cover himself. He could laugh at a kidnaping charge if he was apprehending a murderess. Also, pulling a sleight of hand, you can bet he wasn’t wearing gloves. So they probably picked up his prints on the money, too. That’s something you might ask the Police Department in one of your big, juicy editorial questions.”

“Front burner cooking!” Meigs shouted. And then lowering his voice, “Between you and me, we’ve got a witness under wraps who saw Farr enter the Fillmore Hotel ten minutes before that cop in the hospital got hit on the head.”

Sammy said suddenly, “O.K., Myrtle, you duck out on your old man and I’ll meet you in the usual spot.”

The service station attendant coming into the brightly lighted cubicle grinned at Sammy over a rack of new tires.

Tom Meigs said in a high falsetto, “You bring the you-know-what, honey.”

And Sammy hung up the receiver.

When Mayor Gough arrived home after his spectacular and tardy dash from City Hall, he did not, as had been suggested, go for his bicarbonate of soda. Instead, he poured five fingers of Scotch into a crystal glass with a square base and carried the fancy label bottle along with his drink into the library.

Hearing her husband slam the massive front door and tramp with noisy irritation about the house on the floor below, Agnes, who had been a Moorhouse before her marriage, slipped into a negligee which might better have been called a wrapper, a pair of pink mules (soft and silky against the three corns which had been giving her trouble), and crept down the broad sweep of stairs. John had been so nervous and so upset this past week, and at such a critical time so shortly before election (not that the opposition candidate, a Republican, mind you, had the ghost of a chance), that Agnes felt it was her duty to stand by John and comfort him. Even at this late hour of the evening.

The library door was open and Agnes went through it, her soft-soled slippers making scarcely a sound as they crossed the carpet. His Honor was reading the Times-Herald, the late evening edition which bore the succeeding day’s date, and muttering aloud as though the newspaper could hear his unprintable imprecations.

She thought, If I rub his poor tired forehead for him, and came behind his chair, slipping her soft, plump fingers along the lines at his temples.

John Gough left the seat of his chair, traveling vertically. His face turned pasty, and then flooded purple as he swung his magnificent leonine head and recognized his wife.

“Go back to bed, you old cow!” he shouted.

Agnes recoiled as though struck, and then sobbed, “Oh, John, your drink’s spilled all over our carpet.”

“Carpet be damned,” shouted the mayor.

Agnes backed away from him, gnawing on her knuckles, her eyes flaring doewise, the pupils immense.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” shouted John Gough. “I’m sorry I shouted at you.” He made an effort to lower his voice. “Accept my humble apologies, my dear. But something’s come up; that’s it, several things have come up.”

His wife let go of her faintly soap-tasting knuckles, and drawing them away from her teeth, she said, “It’s that Jewish detective, and that sinister priest!” Then Agnes had a socially significant thought. “Good heavens, John, do you suppose the Catholics and the Jews are conspiring against you?”

John Gough shook his impressive head. “It’s this scandal sheet!” He waved the Times-Herald at his wife. “This disgusting, despicable scandalmongering example of yellow journalism, this lying tabloid!”

“But if they’re all lies, John—” she began.

“Of course, they’re lies!”

“Then why don’t you prosecute, dear?”

“Hell and damnation!” thundered His Honor. “Go back to bed, woman!”

It was after midnight when the Jefferson Village bus paused at the corner of Fourteenth and Chester. Sammy descended to the curbing. His left arm was once more in his coat sleeve, but it was a limp arm with nerve edges in it as touchy as an aching tooth, and above the elbow in the region of the wound there was the hot glow of infection.

Catercorner from the bus stop was a small, twenty-four hour restaurant. Golden jaywalked, pushed his way through the door, selected a booth against the wall, and slid into it with his back to the street.

A redheaded waitress with brittle jade eyes took his order for coffee, and the special steak plate including potatoes any style. He selected French fries.

While he waited for his food, he leaned his head against the back of the booth and closed his eyes.

The waitress brought his coffee, and when he heard the clatter of china and opened his eyes, it was in time to see her avert her gaze from a close scrutiny of his face.

He tried the coffee, black and scalding, and afterward when he could taste again, the bitterness of it was on his tongue, rancid with the flavor of an urn too seldom cleaned.

The steak arrived on a heavy cheap platter with the potatoes, overbrown and shrunken and as attractive as a last year’s bird nest, spread around it.

This was the food he counted on to put strength back in him for the night ahead. He picked up the knife in his right hand and reached carefully for the fork. The fingers of his left hand refused to co-operate. He couldn’t make them hold onto the fork. Twice he got it slanted over the meat and felt it slip from his fumbling fingers as pain shot through his wounded arm. He put down the knife and picked up the fork in his right hand. The steak was three quarters of an inch thick and tough. He couldn’t manage it singlehanded. He pushed the plate away from him and fumbled for a cigarette.

The waitress came to the booth. “Something wrong with the steak?”

Sammy shook his head. “It’s me.” He found a pack of matches and let the fingers of his left hand rest flat upon the open cover. He tore a match free and struck it, still holding the cover flat.

The waitress stared at the stained left sleeve of his sport jacket. Her eyes became as bright and hard as emeralds. She said, “A couple of cops are having coffee at the front counter. Friends of mine. Wonder what they’d think about your case of lead poisoning?”

He got his cigarette alight without his right hand shaking. He slanted an angry glance at the girl. “I wonder,” he said.

The girl said, “That steak plate you have there’s worth a buck fifty. Let’s see what’s in your wallet.”

“What if I told you to go to hell?”

The girl shrugged. “It’s your funeral,” she said.

Sammy pulled his wallet out and slid it across the table. The redheaded waitress opened it. There were thirty-seven dollars in the currency compartment. Her breasts moved with the tight excitement of her take. She pressed her thighs against the table of the booth so no one but Sammy could see her slip thirty-five dollars into her apron pocket. She picked up the remaining two dollars and folded them between her fingers, sliding the ravished wallet back to the detective. “The two,” she said, “will pay for your food and my tip.”

Sammy picked up the empty wallet and dropped it into a pocket, saying nothing.

The girl said angrily, “I thought I recognized you when you came in. Believe me, I can use this money better than your barebacked girl friend whose picture was in the paper.”

Sammy said, “I can’t manage the food. But I could handle another cup of coffee, if it’s paid for.”

The redhead looked at him quizzically, and said suddenly, “Ah hell, why not?” She turned on her heel and marched over to the coffee urn, a hardboiled redhead fighting the battle of her middle thirties, her legs still good though tending to muscle, and her ankles and feet swollen from standing eight hours a night.

Sammy glanced down the narrow corridor between the booths and the counter stools. It was a good six feet from the booth to the door to the kitchen. What lay beyond remained to be seen. He slid from the booth, and without a backward glance, strode down the passage and through the kitchen door.

The fry cook dropped bony hands onto the points of his hips and said, “Ain’t nobody allowed in the kitchen, Mister.”

“Sorry, I was looking for the rest room.” Sammy went on through the kitchen and out the back door. A fat gray rat ran between his legs as he turned a sharp corner around the line of tall, scabby, stinking cans against the back wall of the restaurant.

Maybe the redhead wouldn’t spill to the cops now that she had collected. Maybe she would. The double-cross fitted better with what had been in her eyes.

Sammy kept moving. As he reached the corner of the alley, hit the edge of a halo from a street light, a good, hard cop’s voice yelled, “Stop, Golden!”

Sammy swung to the right, skirting the brilliant, moth-speckled arc of light on the pavement, and began to run. His feet pounded against the midnight silence of the empty street. His left arm dangled awkwardly, throbbing and painful. Two hundred yards ahead of a cop and running toward nowhere. This was what it was like, then, the running of a wounded animal or a wounded thief.

He came abreast the intersection of Twelfth and Chester as the red light changed. He swung across it, panicky. The cop behind him was holding his fire. Probably didn’t want to kill another cop. A siren purred and then picked up volume and began to scream. That was the second cop who had been at the counter. He had grabbed the patrol car at the curb and taken time to talk into the radio before he began his part of the hunt. Now he was coming faster than feet would ever go. The red spot on the front of his sedan curved the corner a block away.

Closed, brooding, ugly little shops with no place to hide. Sammy flew by them, and took the alley. Because it was dark like a hole in the ground. To his right were the backs of the row of shops; to his left was a high board fence. Behind the boards of the fence, an invisible dog kited its voice in skyrocketing yelps.

A window slammed open and a man began to swear at the dog, his words tired, ragged, and ugly. Sammy pulled into the alcove of one of the back doors of the shops. His ribs were constricting his tortured lungs; a taste, acid sharp, strangled the breath in his throat.

The cop had halted at the edge of the alley and put on his flashlight. The dog continued to bark ecstatically. The man continued to swear at the dog methodically and hopelessly as the sleepless do. A woman’s voice bitched up from an open window and covered the man’s words with her complaining. A child began to cry.

A shaft of brilliance suddenly knifed the length of the alley. The patrol car had arrived at the other end of the alley from the cop on foot, swinging its spotlight to obliterate the shaft of night between the high board fence and the rear of the shops.

A black cat sped down the alley trying to outrun the speed of light. It crossed in front of Sammy, a black cat chasing its own tall shadow.

The policeman who had pursued Sammy on foot called, “O.K., Joe, keep me covered and I’ll come on through.”

Sammy was flat against the door in the tiny alcove, still in the shadow, but the toes of his shoes were in the light, fat and brown and shiny, as big as mountains and as obvious when he stared down at them.

His mind fathomed hopelessness. There was no way to go. He wanted to step out from behind the tenuous shield of shadow and say, “Here I am. Let’s get it over with.” If the cop who had known his name had called, “Come on, Golden, make it easy for all of us,” he would have.

But the cop was flashing his light into the tall trash cans, eliminating each and every bit of cover on his way down the alley.

Then there was a voice, so fragile, so close to silence itself, that Sammy doubted he had heard it. “Come in, my son.”

And the door against which he was pressed was opening inward, a shadow against deeper shadows. And thin, spidery fingers grasped his arm.

“I will lead you. Move your feet carefully. There is a clutter of furniture in this room.” Still only a whisper of sound, each word precise and standing apart, disembodied in the darkness behind him. But the thin fingers were urging him backward through the door.

Sammy moved his feet, lifting them carefully and ever so slowly out of the rim of light that had touched his toes. He felt his heel come down on something soft that gave beneath his weight, heard a stifled gasp no louder than a whisper, and realized he had stepped on a small, bare foot.

The voice said, “Stand still. I must close the door.”

He stood quietly. But turning his head, he caught a glimpse of his mysterious savior. Nightshirt, nightcap, thin scrawny neck under a too large head, this was the silhouette the instant before the door closed silently upon the light from the alley, shut out some of the barking and some of the noise of shouting from beyond the high board fence.

What he had seen looked like an illustration from an old-fashioned children’s book; and he was sorely puzzled, for this comic little figure had snatched him from the hands of the police, and withstood the unexpected and intolerable pain of having a bare foot crushed, with an efficiency and self-control that spoke of strange and undeniable experience in such matters.

“Now,” said the thin voice suddenly at his ear once more, “I am going to place your hand upon my shoulder, lead you across this room and up a flight of stairs.”

Silent and puzzled, Sammy followed the little man, keeping his chain step short and cautious so he would not again trample bare feet. Halfway up the flight of steps was a small window, the glass filmed with dust. The little man paused in his stride and they slanted their eyes down to the alley below. Four uniformed policemen had their heads together, and Sammy knew he had guessed correctly about the patrol car calling for help in his pursuit.

The nightcap bobbed in his face, and the little man whispered, again with that peculiar individuality lent to each word, “Always you can count on the stupidity of the police. Like a pack of hounds they must hunt, nose to tail.”

Sammy wanted to argue, but realizing he was the fugitive, he held his tongue and hoped his mysterious host was right about the police this once.

They continued their trip up the stairs and into a room musty and stale and dark as a cave. Again, his guide cautioned him to stand quietly.

Sammy heard bare feet patter lightly against a wooden floor, then the creak of bedsprings, the complaining of a warped window being forced up, a screen unhooked and swung open. And as his eyes adjusted themselves to the darkness, he saw the hunched figure of the little man with his nightcap dangling out of the dark window.

“What occurs below, please?” he demanded.

The beam from the flashlight struck the little man in the face, and a voice called good-naturedly, “Go back to bed, Grandpa!”

“Yes, and what good will that do with your large feet and large mouths to keep me awake?”

“This door to your shop locked?” a second voice inquired.

“Yes. Certainly. Of course. Try it, please.”

Sammy heard the police follow his host’s suggestion.

“It’s O.K., Pop.”

“Thank you, Officers,” said the little man. His head bobbed in from the open window and he locked the screen and then the window. The bedsprings creaked once more and Sammy saw the little man stand on the bed and pull a blanket up to cover the window.

“Now,” said his host, “we will dare to light a candle.”

He struck a match and lit a candle stuck onto a saucer on an upended orange crate. There was a cloth under the saucer, and on the cloth a cheese glass containing sharpened pencils, and a cheap copybook. In the two sections of the orange crate, books were stacked.

It was the small man, himself, however, who held Sammy’s attention. Thin and fragile and lost in a woolen nightshirt, he was more like a grizzled, wrinkled gnome than a mortal, and there was a quality about him, about his brilliant dark eyes under the steel-rimmed spectacles, about the lines of pain and melancholy etched into the taut parchment of his skin over the bone of his skull, which was immortal.

Cautious and curious, too, Sammy Golden asked, “How did you know I needed you? Why did you trust me?”

The little man sat upon the edge of his cheap, mussed bed, toyed with the yarn tassel on his nightcap, and said, “I have seen your face one thousand times and the way you try to ignore a wound that is hurting you and the way you breathe, moving your belly below the thoracic arch so deeply do you need the fresh air in your lungs.”

“Let’s try that one over,” Sammy said suspiciously. “You didn’t see my thoracic arch when I was down there in the dark and you were up here.”

“Footsteps,” the little man said softly. “Footsteps in terror down a dark alleyway in the middle of the night. When I heard them, I acted. Habit is not a thing you can break in a new place and a new time.”

Then Sammy knew.

He asked gently in the tongue his mother had preferred, “Germany, my father?”

“Vienna,” said the little man sadly, “my bartered bride. Thrice widowed in half a century.”

Father Shanley sat with the sheet of stationery unfolded in his hands. His blue eyes were cold with fury that such a petty, despicable note could reap such a grim harvest.

Dolores had brought it to him in Rosa’s pocket manual of prayers, a limp black leather volume with a gold cross imprinted upon it. It had been in Rosa’s hands that Friday when she had come for her last confession. A tall, splendid figure of a girl, too garish in the clothes she wore, but beautiful beyond belief; and the little black book had said to Father Joseph, “She is not lost because she carries me still, because she remembers Him.”

Now, it would seem she had profaned the book, used it as a depository for evil. Yet remembering the half a note he had carried to Sergeant Golden earlier in the evening, the impassioned, hopeless fragment of a plea which had served the police for a suicide note, the priest was inclined to forgive. Forgive her this folded letter concealed between the pages containing the moving and powerful litany of The Blessed Virgin Mary:

Lord have mercy on us.

Christ have mercy on us.

Lord have mercy on us.

Christ hear us.

Christ graciously hear us …

And on the page opposite:

Holy Mary pray for us.

Holy Mother of God pray for us …

Folded between these pages, a note from His Honor, the mayor, to Nick Sandoe. A dull anxious and ugly memorandum written because John Gough needed to meet a plumbing bill on his new house, and the September payment of his cut on the slot machines had not arrived. A stupid note by a stupid man. And because it had fallen into Rosa’s hands, the machine it could have destroyed had killed again and again, four times in all; and then had found its dupes and set them up like tenpins, Carlos, and Barbara, and Golden. Father Shanley would have to pray forgiveness for the rage in his heart, personal and terrible.

He folded the letter carefully and slipped it into his breast pocket. Then, because the urgent duty ahead of him was secular in nature, he forced himself to take the time to go once more to the bedside of Mama Mendez and bring what comfort he could to that tragically collapsed hulk of a woman.

Afterward, he walked three blocks and waited half an hour to catch the last car into town. He left the trolley two blocks from the Times-Herald Building and proceeded briskly toward the newspaper, fully conscious of the explosive possibilities of the paper bombshell in his breast pocket.

For two hours, Sammy Golden stayed with the little refugee whose name was Herman Lipchitz. During the first hour they heard, constantly, the activity of the police in the alley, on the other side of the high board fence, trying and knocking on the doors of the line of shops, on the roof over their heads. Sammy stripped off his coat and Lipchitz shook his head disapprovingly at the fresh blood that had seeped through the bandage on Sammy’s arm. To Sammy, the arm felt like a separate part of him, heavy as a slugger’s bat, and aching.

Lipchitz told Sammy something of his schoolteaching days before the First Reich, skipped quickly the days and nights of terror, and came to dwell happily upon his great good fortune at being provided an empty storeroom in which to live and enough to eat by a third cousin on his mother’s side of the family. He was trying his hand at some small translations and hoped to become facile enough in the difficult art to earn his own way.

It was a quarter to three when Sammy said finally, “It’s been nearly half an hour since we’ve heard anything, Herr Lipchitz. I’ve got to make a try for it. Can you let me out the front door of the shop?”

The old man nodded. “I am a lonely old man. I am grateful for our talk and that we have trusted in each other. I do not like it that what happened tonight should happen in America, that this hunting of man by men never ceases …” And at the front door, “Come back and see me again, my good friend.”

Sammy slipped out the door and stood in the shadowy entrance. The dark street seemed deserted. He crossed it briskly but not in flight. Over his shoulder, he counted the shops, and noted that the one in which he had found sanctuary was eighth from the corner. He would come back and see the old man.

He went down Twelfth, leaving Chester behind him. The boulevard was too brightly lighted to use in his search for the car Tom Meigs had staked out for him. Working back to Fourteenth on the opposite side of the street from the restaurant, he paused.

A black and white police car was parked in front of the restaurant. Through the front window, Sammy could see the broad blue backs of the two cops. The redhead had her elbows on the counter across from them. He eased down the walk, inspecting the windshields of the parked cars.

The card said PRESS CAR in letters three inches high. The Times-Herald masthead was above the large letters. The car was parked under a street light diagonally across the street from the all-night restaurant. He got in on the walk side, feeling along the floorboard until his fingers closed around the key. He slipped it into the ignition, twisted it, and put his foot upon the starter. The street light shone directly in his face as he pulled away from the curb.

The redheaded waitress said something to the cops and pointed. One of them started from his stool at the counter. The second one put his hand on his shoulder and pulled him back. They had investigated the street. The second cop had remembered the press card in the windshield. That was one more bit of luck Sammy owed Tom Meigs.

Sammy rested his left hand on the steering wheel. It steadied the coupe on course and that was all. He would do no signaling tonight. He took the straightest course possible to Paul Pavlides’ apartment, keeping one eye on the rear view mirror. Every corner he had to turn brought a gasp of pain.

The stairs to the apartment wore him out. His hand jittered when he tried to fit the key into the lock of the door. He made it finally and staggered into the bedroom. He would have fallen onto the bed fully clothed except for the fact that the bed was littered with his suitcase and its contents.

The disarray keened through his fatigue as fear pumped the energy of desperation into him. Had the police tracked him here? Where were they now? Or was it one of Sandoe’s boys? Farr, or someone else? He grabbed the revolver from the bedspread and whirled around expecting ambush.

No one shot. No one spoke. No one moved.

He made a tour of the apartment. He did not miss the copy of Rosa’s suicide note, out of its envelope and on the table. Aside from his spilled suitcase, that seemed to be the only thing which had been changed in the apartment since he had left it.

It had not been a search at Sandoe’s orders, then, for some vital piece of evidence that he thought was in Sammy’s hands. Nor, when he thought of it, would the police have made the search and left him a loaded revolver on the counterpane.

He made a hasty examination of the gun in his hand. The cylinder was full. The gun was in firing order.

Through narrow and practiced eyes, Sammy studied the clutter on the bed, trying to divine the purpose of the quick and careless search. The way the clean blue shirt lay askew in its paper laundry wrapper gave him the answer. His fingers proved his observation. The .32 automatic was gone.

Logically, there were four people who knew the address; Nell, Father Shanley, Meigs and Pavlides. He carried the thought further. Nell, and the Greek if he wished, would have keys to the apartment. Pavlides carried his own gun and certainly would not come to Sammy if he needed another. On the other hand, Nell wanting a gun …

But why? Meigs had holed her up in the best hotel in town with Mable Marble who, according to the Times-Herald woman’s page, was everybody’s friend. Yet Nell had sneaked out of the hotel, come back to the apartment after a gun, and departed. For where?

Maybe he wouldn’t have to guess. He pulled out the phone book, sat down beside the phone, and opened the directory to the classified section and found a list of the taxicab companies. The four major concerns employed cabs with a two-way radio system. It would have to be one of those if his trick were to work. He dialed the first number on the list.

When the Arrow Cab Company had identified itself, Sammy said briskly, “Police Department calling. This is Lieutenant Cantrell. Would you contact your drivers to learn if any of them picked up a striking blonde woman, five-foot-five, 115 pounds, about twenty-five to thirty years of age. She is believed to have departed from the 1300 block on Gunther some time between ten o’clock and midnight.”

“Can I give you a ring back in about ten minutes, Lieutenant?”

“You can,” Sammy told him, and added artfully, “At Central Station. Wait a moment … Do you think you can have that information in ten minutes?”

“Can do, Lieutenant.”

“Then you’d better call me back here. I’m at the apartment on Gunther from which the blonde woman is believed to have disappeared. The phone number is,” Sammy paused, then read from the center of the dial, “Claremont 7991. Repeat that back, please.”

The dispatcher did, assured Sammy of his co-operation. Sammy cradled the phone, picked it up at once, dialed the Gem Cab Company, and went through the same routine again. Then he used it on the Star Taxi dispatcher, and the Veterans’ Cabs. Each time he first instructed them to phone headquarters, then recalled the order and suggested that they get in touch with him at the apartment. The risk involved could not be ignored, If one man in four was cautious enough to confirm the call at police headquarters, Sammy knew he would be in trouble again.

While he waited for return calls from the cab companies, he slipped out of his sports coat with the torn and bloody sleeve and into a brown tweed jacket. His entire left arm felt swollen and the pain of it had settled into an aching throb.

He built himself a drink tall on the whisky and short on tap water. He wasn’t up to wrestling with the ice cubes so he drank it “British,” thinking with wry amusement that it was funny how the war persisted in sticking with you in peculiar little unimportant ways, like a drink without ice being strictly tallyho. He got a cigarette going, working it and the drink with his right hand, pulling strength and a second wind from both of them.

The Arrow Cab Company called back with nothing to report.

The Gem Cab Company had a driver who had picked up an “old dame of forty” two blocks farther south on Gunther.

The Star Taxi dispatcher said a driver had picked up a beautiful blonde in a red coat from 1347 Gunther at eleven thirty and delivered her to the 100 block on North Brentwood. “A knockout, Lieutenant, according to the driver.”

With sweat standing on his temples, Sammy gave ninety awful seconds to the pretense of an official phone call. He asked the right questions to identify driver and cab, tossed a curt thank you to the dispatcher, and cradled the phone savagely.

That fool of a girl going after Jack Farr with a gun! The rage in him fought back the fear, fear for her, and kept it from overwhelming him.

He went down the stairs to the car. He was riding on the ragged edge of his nerves. Nerves that were buoying past the poison building in his swollen arm, aching through his fatigue-ridden body. They would hold him up for another hour. They would have to do that. Afterward, he wouldn’t care.

Meigs stopped the presses when Father Shanley arrived with John Gough’s letter to Nick Sandoe. He produced a hidden flask, took a copious swallow that settled the contents an inch lower, then went to work setting up a new front page.

He scrapped the heat wave, the United Nations, John L. Lewis, and a two-headed calf born yesterday in Cucamunga. He rebuilt the front page against a mile high pair of banner lines.

PRIEST AND PRAYER BOOK
REVEAL MURDER MOTIVES!

Between two boxes, one containing a photograph of Mayor Gough’s note, and the other, a Sandoe enterprise where slot machines were featured prominently, he told the story of the note’s discovery. He quoted the entire text of the Litany of the Blessed Virgin.

“Lily blooming in the muck!” he shouted at the astonished priest. “There goes their damned election!” he added triumphantly, punctuating his statement with a couple of clove-flavored mints. He flapped about the office, elbows akimbo, like an expectant eagle cheated of the gift of wings.

Father Shanley worked silently at filling his pipe. He was mildly surprised at the explosion he had set off, and more than a little worried for his own part in the affair.

The Home Edition left by truck at four thirty. The Sunrise was coming off the presses with EXTRA boxed into each corner for flavor.

The lights were on in Jack Farr’s apartment; and a milkman rattled through the hall ahead of Sammy. He knew which key fitted the kitchen door and used it carefully, making scarcely a sound. His gun was steady in his right hand when he pushed the door open with his shoulder.

Farr came out of the living room as Sammy started across the kitchen. Farr, too, had a gun in his hand. The forefinger crooked through the steel curve of trigger was crudely bandaged.

Farr’s eyes flickered. Sammy felt his finger begin to squeeze. Then Farr said steadily, “I’ve been expecting you, Golden.”

“Where is she, Farr?”

“Tied up.”

“The joke’s corny. You’ve used it before.”

Farr shrugged. Then, unexpectedly, he smiled, cutting the tautness between them. “We’re in a funny spot,” he said, “because whoever pulls the trigger first is almost guaranteed to be shot on the other guy’s reflex.”

“Is Nell all right?”

“She is.”

“Then, I don’t much care.”

Farr’s opaque eyes mocked him. He leaned his back against the wall of the kitchen and said negligently, “I’ve thought about that, too. She’s in my bedroom, will be when the cops come. Even if we both lose, she can’t win. The vice squad’s had orders to pull her in. The kid gloves are off and they’ll put it to her. And after they’ve dirtied her up but good, they’ll put her away for a while, a long while, you can bet on that.”

Sammy groaned, a small, desperate, futile sound that escaped his tight lips. The high cards in this hand were Farr’s. For a longer time than he cared to think about, Nell’s business had been on the other side of the law. That meant a public trial would be rotten, a session of dirty stories for the sake of public virtue.

Jack Farr’s smile was easier. “Like a pair of chess masters,” he said, “we seen to play to stalemate.”

Then suddenly, like a neat shot of brandy settling under his belt, Sammy knew why Farr was sparring. It was the difference in the caliber of the guns they held. What Farr had said was true; the first man to shoot would undoubtedly receive a bullet in return. But with six feet between them, the difference between a .38 slug and one from a .22 could be fatal. Furthermore, Farr’s right hand was injured not once but twice; the bandage around his trigger finger was fresh, the tape across his knuckles older. It explained why Farr had not killed Golden when he had shot him in the parking lot; it explained why now he was relying upon his wits instead of his gun. His injured hand had him worried. The sizes of their guns had him worried.

Sammy grinned. “I’m going to walk out of here, Farr.”

“Not while I can pull the trigger.”

“You’ve got a bad hand. You’ve got a kid’s gun.”

“Shall we dance?” Farr’s eyes flickered as he pulled the trigger.

Sammy felt the smash of the first bullet at the instant his own crumpled Farr. He stood there with the fire in his side, emptying his gun into the falling figure. He was surprised when he realized his gun was clicking onto an empty cylinder, that after the first shot he had been the only one firing. The gun fell from his nerveless fingers and he staggered across the kitchen to lean against the small breakfast table.

His trousers started to slide down his legs. Even above the intense hurt in him, the fact annoyed him. He reached down to jerk his belt tight. The belt came free from his body in his hand. He stared at it dully and then began to laugh hysterically. Farr always had been a fancy shot.

Then he remembered Nell. He couldn’t lean against the table until he blacked out or bled to death. He had to get to her. He lunged out of the kitchen, almost bent double, his right hand tight across the waistband of his trousers and the star-bursting hole in his side.

Nell was on Farr’s bed, securely bound, not moving at all, as still as death.

Sammy fell onto the bed and picked himself up. Blood the color of claret spilled onto the white sheet under him. It felt as though his whole insides were spilling out.

With his one good hand, he worked awkwardly at the tape binding Nell’s wrists. Finally, it began to tear free. There was a yard of it to unwind. The way her hands moved, he knew she was conscious.

He got his fingers under the edge of tape Farr had plastered across her eyes and brows. He jerked it as hard as he could, feeling the hair of her brows and lashes reluctant against the pull of the adhesive. Her eyes flew open, filled with tears of pure pain.

She blinked several times, her pupils enormous and blue and misty, while the tears ran down her cheeks. Then she raised her hands to work loose the tape across her mouth.

Sammy said roughly, “Put the show on the road, baby. Get the hell out of here. Fast!”

Then he fell down the dark, whirling, star-slashed well he had been skirting for the longest five minutes in the world.

Nick Sandoe came awake instantly when the phone rang. With the sureness of a man who never makes a waste move, even in the dark, he lifted the phone from its cradle. A desk sergeant with seven months to go to retirement told him that Jack Farr was dead, and that Detective-sergeant Golden, seriously wounded, was in custody. The sergeant was retiring on far more than his mediocre pension.

After cradling the phone, Sandoe lay staring at the dark ceiling above his head. He was sorry about Farr. He would be hard to replace. They had understood each other. Still, it had been coming for a long time. It had been coming ever since a scared kid had killed three men in an alley in Milwaukee and never had been scared after that. Looking at it honestly there in the dark, Nick knew that Golden had saved him a job. Farr’s handling of the Matty Moline affair, using that fancy gun with its unmistakable .22-caliber trademark, had been sloppy. He had traded too much on the immunity Sandoe could give him. Nobody could own a city that much. Though he damned near had, Nick thought. Before Shanley and Golden, before the Times-Herald, before the day before yesterday.

He was as wide awake now as he had been sound asleep. He snapped on the lamp beside his bed, slid his feet into slippers, shrugged into his robe, and padded into the kitchen. He would make coffee himself. He did not want the disturbance of service.

While he was pouring coffee, the phone in the bedroom began to ring again. Nick carried his coffee with him. He listened without a change of expression while Jim Macon of the Record read him excerpts of the stories appearing on the front page of the early edition of the Times-Herald: “Priest and Prayer Book Reveal Murder Motives … Mayor Gough Implicated … Sandoe Gambling Enterprises tied to City Hall …”

After the reporter was finished, Sandoe made a call. He said into the mouthpiece, “I’ll be at the airport in forty-five minutes, Buddy. Have the plane fueled to capacity. If anybody gets nosy, you’re taking me to Las Vegas on business.”

He dressed rapidly, but with care. He did not, however, take time to shave. Where he was going, shaving was not important. He was not going to Las Vegas. Nor did the plane need full fuel tanks to take him there.

The phone rang while he pulled a pair of horsehide bags from the closet. He let it ring. The bags were heavy, already packed. He then selected a soft gray felt hat and put it on his head carefully. Before picking up the bags and carrying them to the garage, he drew on a pair of pigskin driving gloves. The phone still was ringing when he left the house. It was an unlisted phone and it had no extensions beyond the bedroom. That was why nobody answered it.

He took the gray Ford coupe. It looked like any other Ford if you did not observe the glass in it too closely.

At the airport there was time for another cup of coffee. Nick went into the small, all-night lunchstand which served the private flyers and traffic along the south side of the field.

A sedan with a Times-Herald masthead on the windshield delivered a dozen extras into the rack before the lunchstand. Nick bought one, paying the girl behind the counter for it. He swore softly as he saw the mayor’s note to him on the delayed slot-machine pay-off. That damned note! Then, suddenly, the rage inside him was gone and it didn’t matter any more. It had been a good show while it lasted. Now, the jackals could fight over what was left, tearing at their own insides as well as the carcass of the city. The only thing he really was sorry about was Rosa Mendez.

His pilot came in and said, “It’ll be about five minutes more, Mr. Sandoe.”

Nick nodded. He watched the kid go out of the lunchroom and back to the plane. Anytime but now he would have asked Buddy to have a cup of coffee with him. The kid had been a colonel once. Not that he was truly a kid any more in his early thirties, but he still had that arrested development look which stayed with so many who had been the most important thing they ever would be when they were twenty-five or less.

He thought about the ex-colonel, wondering whether he could be worked into the spot Farr had occupied should he ever think it worth while to begin all over again in another city. He trusted the flyer. That’s what Sandoe was thinking when he heard his name called through the screen door of the lunchroom.

Though the last hours of darkness were tepid with the promise of heat for the day ahead, Mayor John Gough wore a black topcoat; and below the cuffs of his flannel trousers, paisley-patterned pajamas slopped over the tops of his slippers. Green by the neon light from the roof of the café, his broad face was sweating, and his white hair had the appearance of the crest of an angry wave.

When Sandoe had let the door of the café close behind him, he said crisply, coldly, “You damned fool!”

“Nick,” the mayor began, “thank God, I’ve found you!”

“What are you doing here?”

Gough tried a smile without assurance. “From a sinking ship, Nick, you and me together.”

Sandoe shoved his hands into his outside jacket pockets and began to walk toward the hangar before which a single-engined, red plane was warming up. The mayor padded along beside him, his loose slippers scuffing up gravel and dust.

“You always said you’d take care of me, Nick.”

Sandoe halted, half pivoting so he faced John Gough. “How did you locate me here at the airport?”

Gough put a hand on his arm. “I called your house. The private number. Nobody answered. I tried the Club. Then, thinking of the plane, I called Buddy. He said he was leaving for the airport to fly you to Las Vegas. Do you think Las Vegas is safe?”

“Nobody’s going to Las Vegas.”

John Gough’s eyes widened. His grin returned, firmer this time. “That’s smart. Right smart. Where are we going?”

Sandoe shook the mayor’s hand from his arm and resumed his stride toward the plane. “You’re going to hell, John,” he said without feeling.

“We’re in this together!”

The pilot stuck his head out the door of the plane and shouted over the roar of the motor, “Ready anytime you are, Mr. Sandoe.”

“Baggage aboard, Buddy?”

“Yes, sir.” The pilot’s head disappeared.

Sandoe saw that the blocks were away from the wheels of the plane. He swung toward the mayor and his voice was fierce, the controls washed away by the flood of his emotion. “I thought I didn’t give a damn any more. But I do. There’s one thing I give a damn about. That’s you, John. I hope you’ll spend the rest of your dirty, penny-grafting, fatheaded life paying for the one rotten crime for which you’ll never be tried.”

“It was you, Nick, you as much as I!” Gough shouted frantically.

“I didn’t pull the trigger. I didn’t bitch things up.”

“We’re getting out together, Nick.”

Something in the mayor’s tone made Sandoe wary. He kept his hands in his jacket pockets. “Get out of my way, John.”

Gough stepped aside. “You first, Nick.”

Sandoe glanced over his shoulder before he started to climb into the cabin. There was a stubby-nosed .32 automatic pistol in the mayor’s hand. The hand was shaking, but not enough to miss.

“You poor, stupid fool,” Sandoe said. He turned toward Gough slowly.

“We’ll talk in the plane,” Gough said. “Get aboard,” he ordered. There was strength in his voice, a strength Sandoe never heard before and he recognized it as absolute desperation. Inestimably dangerous.

So Nick Sandoe shot the mayor four times without ever removing his hand from the outside pocket of his tweed jacket. “You son of a bitch,” he said slowly. “You dirty damned son of a bitch. Maybe that helps even the score.” The pocket of his jacket was smoking and the burning wool had an acrid odor.

Sandoe was still standing there with his hands in his pockets and looking down at John Gough at his feet when his pilot dropped lightly out of the plane behind him and pinned his arms.

“Self-defense, Buddy,” Nick said coolly. “Don’t you see the gun in his hand?” Even as he spoke, he realized he never could trust the ex-colonel. It was odd to think he had considered Buddy as a prospect to fill Jack Farr’s shoes.

The pilot pushed him roughly toward the wall phone at the rear of the hangar, and before he made the call to the police department, he clipped Nick Sandoe behind the ear. The ex-colonel was a very careful fellow, and he had been around even longer than Sandoe had imagined.

The newspaper man slid a thin, bony hand into his coat pocket, peered at the closed, sterile white door behind him, leaned over the white counterpane of the bed, grinned hawkishly, and asked, “Care for a touch of disinfectant?”

“As long as it’s disinfectant,” Sammy said. “I suppose everybody downtown’s running around trying to act like they didn’t know Sandoe from a hole in the ground.”

Producing the pint of rye his hand had discovered, Tom Meigs uncapped it and tilted it carefully to Sammy’s lips. “Whatever they’re doing at the City Hall, it’s not doing you any harm. The D.A.’s declared you’re a hero. The Police Commissioner’s made a public statement promising a full and sympathetic review of your suspension.”

“My best friends,” Sammy said bitterly.

“Good enough to get you reinstated before election.” Meigs disinfected himself. Then the rye disappeared.

“What if I don’t want it?” the detective asked morosely.

Meigs stopped hunting for clove mints. “You don’t mean that. You were born a cop and you’ll die one. This is going to be a different town after election. And, son, there’s going to be some big holes in the force.”

A nurse put her head in the door. “Mustn’t tire our patient, Mr. Meigs.”

Meigs shot a disarming grin over his shoulder. “I’m what the doctor ordered,” he told the nurse. And then, to Sammy, “Do you think Nick Sandoe’s telling the truth?”

“About who killed Rosa?”

Meigs nodded, found a couple of clove mints and popped them into his mouth.

Sammy stared at the foot of the bed. “It’s the only answer that makes sense,” he said. “Look at it this way. It was almost a perfect crime. But, it was a patch-up job. The quick and smart thinking came after Rosa was dead. Not before. Sandoe and Farr worked fast and efficiently to undo what had been done. The murder was unpremeditated. They never would have killed the girl in the office of La Marimba Club. The club was a clean place. None of the girls operated from there. No gambling took place on the premises. It was a business headquarters with a good enough night club down the stairs to pay its own way. It gave Nick a good front, a fairly honorable and respectable profession as manager and owner.”

“But they didn’t get Gough’s letter.”

“The point is,” Sammy told him, “Sandoe or Farr would have. That’s why Rosa dared let loose on them the night of her death. As long as she had the letter tucked away in a safe place, she thought she was safe. Certainly, she should have been, so close to election.”

The newspaper man thought it over. “Why did Farr kill Moline?” he asked. “Did the bandleader see something the night of the shooting?”

Sammy shook his head. “It was San Juan who saw Mayor Gough in Sandoe’s office. Matty Moline was disposed of because he knew about John Gough’s letter. Perhaps, he even knew what was in it. Remember the so-called suicide note? Rosa asked Moline if he was afraid of the other thing, and what she would do about it. When I began poking around on the case, Moline was killed because he was the weakest and most obvious link in the chain. Not any weaker than John Gough, maybe, but from the point of my digging, more available, and certainly more suspect.” Sammy paused, and shook his head when Meigs tried to pour another drink down his throat.

The newspaper man helped himself, wiped his lips and hunted for his clove mints. “If Moline and Rosa were carrying on, how’d he happen to marry Michelle?”

“The easy way out,” Sammy said. “The girl was probably in love with him. He was that kind of a tramp. It was one way he could follow Sandoe’s orders and land in a convenient bed of roses.”

“Sandoe gave orders?” Meigs arched a questioning eyebrow.

Sammy nodded. “Remember what Barbara told me. Her sister was in and out of love with Sandoe all the time. That was fine with Nick as long as he had what he wanted. She kept her job. He kept her. Moline got in the way of that, so Sandoe issued orders.”

Tom Meigs grinned. “You sound like My Last Duchess.” He waved the bottle and quoted Robert Browning: “‘I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together …’”

The detective shook his head. “Nick still wanted his duchess. I think it was his hatred for Gough that caused him to lose his head at the end. You don’t stand three feet from a man and pour four shots into him to save your life. Not if you have nerves like Sandoe’s.”

The nurse put her head in the door again. “Really, Mr. Meigs, Sergeant Golden isn’t supposed to be allowed visitors, yet.”

Still, Father Shanley managed to get Nell into the hospital that evening.

After the nurse had departed, Nell sat on the edge of the bed, held Sammy’s good hand and stroked his mussed, crisp, dark hair. Her handsome legs were crossed at the ankles, and from where he lay, Sammy could see that the slave bracelet she always had worn was gone. Her hands, too, were absolutely free of jewelry, and she had a clean, washed look.

The detective said, “Baby, I was worried about you.”

Nell smiled. “Tom Meigs made them give me a break.”

“He’s quite a guy,” Sammy said.

Father Shanley’s blue eyes crinkled at the corners. “Do you think he could do any good with my bishop?”

Sammy glanced quickly at the priest and saw that he really wasn’t worried very much. Those Killarney imps who inhabit even the best of the Irish were dancing once more in Father Joseph’s smile.

Later, the priest asked, “Will Sandoe go free on his plea of self-defense?”

Sammy frowned. “There’s a good chance of it,” he said. “But if you should ask me, Nick pulled the trigger when he did because he was still seeing that night in La Marimba when John Gough grabbed the gun out of the desk drawer and murdered Rosa, killed her because His Honor was scared stiff of her threats. I think Sandoe’s been seeing that night ever since it happened. I think he had to kill the mayor because, in his own way, Nick had loved Rosa very much.”

“Love’s a funny thing, Sammy Boy.”

The mask was off Sammy’s eyes when he gazed up at the blonde girl. “Sometimes it works out all right, Baby.”

“Sammy Boy, you’re not just kidding.”

“Bless you both,” said Father Shanley.

But it’s doubtful that they heard him.

If you liked The Big Sin check out:

The Brass Halo

IT came out of the clarinet as softly sighing as death is, and she wrapped her voice around it and gave it away. A cascade of notes, a floating sadness, and the bass behind her went thump-thump-thump as though it were a Salvation Army drum a long way down the alley. Only the trumpet, muted with all of its brassiness taken away, whined and complained. The piano talked softly in the background, off the main mike, like an interpreter at some United Nations of hearts. For this was the way that Domino sang.

Lonely, Lord, she was lonely, and there was that in her soft voice which was as eternally blue as the cool, deep waters, as the wide open eyes of a child fresh-born, as the sky above high mountains, and as the hurt which is inside all of us—the something hidden, something remembered hurt, wrapped in all the blue ribbons of a bygone first love.

All of which suited Little Augie perfectly, and he had it pretty well defined. Nothing sold liquor as loneliness did. And when your blues were not New Orleans, not Birdland, not Light House, but something more eternal more universal than all of these, then you were in, then you had it made—and you didn’t have to cater to the cats, the hep or the cognoscenti, to the longhairs, or the very short. You could cater to everybody. Anyone who was a little bit blue inside—and who the hell wasn’t?

Take tonight’s full house—an off night like Monday. Augie smiled. What a thing she was, what a pretty little piece! Hair no darker than a raven’s wing, and those surprising blue eyes with a skin as pale as moonlight. Moonlight, yes, but with a warmth underneath that was almost rosy. He had seen marble like that somewhere. Marble you wanted to touch. Little Augie pulled on his ear. At Forest Grove, he guessed, that time he had buried a cousin, dead of lead poisoning—there had been some statuary with flesh surfaces almost as inviting as the skin which held within this small dove’s voice.

Domino had finished with The Party’s Over, let the combo backing her make a few sweet footnotes, and then all together they slid into Ellington’s Sophisticated Lady. What she did for that fallen angel, forming her of the whole cloth of sadness, was wonderful to hear. Augie rubbed his big hands together. Liquor was flowing throughout the Intimate Club like tears.

Funny girl, Augie thought, not a mixer. He remembered some of the joints he had run. In those days, she wouldn’t have done at all. No sir, not at all. He grinned at the idea of Domino hustling drinks. There was a surprising gentleness in his bright, dark eyes. He could have climbed down any beanstalk.

Enough of his pleasant reveries. Augie glanced around the club. You didn’t get white ties, or black, or even ties at all very often down at the beach. Still, that big fellow there at the end of the bar with the front tails of his shirt tied across his tan navel and none of the buttons even close to the buttonholes…. Augie put the frame in motion. Augie began to glide.

At the young man’s shoulder, he paused. “The drink doesn’t suit you?” His voice was velvet.

The young man glanced up. His eyes were grey, comfortable. “It’s fine.”

“You’ve not touched it for half an hour.”

“Domino,” the young man said, “she’s singing.”

“Friend of yours?” Augie was worried.

He nodded. He twirled the glass between lean brown fingers. Up the stretch of arm behind those fingers was a lot of muscle.

Augie puzzled over the nod. “Never saw her talk to you.”

“Never has.”

Domino dropped out of Sophisticated Lady and the combo drifted into I Hadn’t Anyone ‘Til You.

Jerk, Augie thought. Smart boy. Still, it would be better to do it smooth; there was something about the easy grace of the fellow that promised trouble if you tried a hard bounce.

The girl wove her voice into the music. The anyone ‘til you became a melancholy last chance. The young man forgot all about Augie.

Augie moved his big shoulders under the pearl-grey gabardine jacket. Then he saw the two men come from behind the drape over the door at the left of the stage. His big head stiffened with the weight of his chin settling toward the white napery of his shirt front. How had they slipped past him, getting back there off limits? Trouble, that’s what they were. You could see that in the taut, whitewashed face of the kid, in the way the little man carried his shoulders in the tight blue topcoat, his hands balled into side pockets.

For a giant, Little Augie moved with astonishing lightness. His sharp, dark eyes, immersed in pockets of flesh, were as dangerous as a wild boar’s.

“You two!” There was a lash to the pair of words though they were no louder than the flight of a wasp.

The little man spun on a leather heel. His hands remained in his pockets. The young man giggled.

“What were you doing back there?” Augie demanded.

“Rest room,” the little man said softly, “we were looking for the rest room.”

Augie jerked his thumb toward the right. “Can’t you read?”

“Sorry,” the little man said. “I guess we missed it.” The kid with him giggled again. Augie glanced at him over the smaller man’s shoulder, looked into his eyes. The kid was riding a kite; the kid was junked good. You could always tell.

“Get out!”

“Sure,” the little man said, “sure.”

It was a good act, Little Augie decided. Only one trouble with it; the little man didn’t scare; he wouldn’t have been so agreeable if it hadn’t suited him to be. The kid had started to say something; he hadn’t, though; the little man had given him a shove and they had kept moving until they disappeared out the door. Augie shrugged. Perhaps that was it, the kid on the needle, the little man wanting to avoid trouble. Not for his own sake, for the kid’s.

Now it was time to get back to the unsettled business of the big young fellow with the bare belly button. Sure, the Intimate Club was on the El Porto Strip just above the beach, and in the afternoon you didn’t care how they dressed when they dropped in for a drink as long as their suits or trunks weren’t soaked with salt water. But at this time of night, it wasn’t good for the tone of the place. Let the nuts go up the road or down it. There were plenty of crumby joints….

Domino was doing the finale for this set. Ramsey, the clarinetist, had written the tune. It had been strictly instrumental to begin with. Then the girl had hummed it one night. And during rehearsals, they had worked up some words. Augie paused to listen. He had been thinking about the tone of his place, and if the kids were successful in their dicker to do an album for the Hy-Phone outfit, Blues from the Intimate Club, that would add a hell of a lot of tone. He would put up a glass showcase out in front with the album cover used four or five times and pictures of the group.

“… how was the moon, my love,

and how close the stars …

together while I was alone, my love,

and why should the night have bars …”

She whispered her way out of the song with the haunting, lingering, almost nothingness that followed the end of most every number, bowed her head, not smiling at all, and the blue spot above her went out.

Augie returned to the carelessly dressed young man. He had swung on his stool and was facing the bar, staring reflectively at his own brown face. It was not so much that he approved of what he saw, but rather that he was regarding something deeper inside.

The Intimate Club’s proprietor said quietly, “I want to talk to you.”

The young man nodded. He did not turn his head. He watched Augie’s face reflected in the mirror. Suddenly he smiled.

“What are you grinning at?”

“An idea. You fit. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. Absolutely.” He seemed very happy with his discovery.

“What is this crazy talk?” Augie demanded. He was off balance. He didn’t like it.

The young man turned. “Would you have some time in the morning?”

“Time? What for?”

“Here,” the young man reached in his pocket and fished out a soft pencil. On the cocktail napkin before him on the bar, he scribbled an address. “Just a couple of blocks,” he explained. “Left at Ira’s Market and down the hill. About halfway down.” He handed the napkin to Augie. “Any time after ten,” he said.

“Wait a minute, you …” Augie began. Then, she was standing at his shoulder, scarcely reaching the top of it.

“I’m going out, Augie.”

“Sure, kid.” He slanted his wrist watch into the light from the bar. “You got a half hour,” he said. “Don’t you go wandering down none of them dark alleys.” He was remembering the two men, the crazy eyes of the kid, wondering.

“Augie,” she put her hand on his thick wrist. Her blue eyes were brilliant with an excitement he couldn’t define. “I love you,” she said.

She turned quickly and walked away. What a small thing she was, scarcely over five feet. Even the big softness of the casual pink coat failed to conceal a delicacy of bone as brittle as old china.

“Well,” the young man said softly, “well, I’ll be damned!”

Augie glowered at him. “Don’t you get no funny ideas! I got a wife. I got five kids.”

“You’re all right,” the young man said.

“You get out,” Augie said savagely.

“I had intended to,” the young man told him, keeping his voice pleasant.

“And next time”—Augie caught himself and lowered his voice—”and next time,” he repeated quietly, “when you want to come in here with the night crowd, you button your shirt!”

For a moment, sheer astonishment showed in the young man’s grey eyes, and then he began to laugh. It was a good laugh, it came from deep down. “I’ll go,” he said finally. “Oh good Lord, I’ll go.” He started to slide off the stool.

Little Augie caught his shoulder. “I’ll buy you a drink.”

The young man stared at him, resting easy under the pressure of Augie’s strong hand. Then he chuckled.

The bartender was watching them.

“I’ll take brandy,” the young man said. “Brandy is for heroes.” He paused and regarded Little Augie. “Providing you’ll drink with me.” He reached in his pocket again.

The bartender glanced at his boss. Augie nodded. “This is on the house,” he said to the young man.

The grey eyes regarded him earnestly. “You don’t really think I wanted to go out there to chase her, do you?”

“I don’t know.” Augie shook his beer-barrel head. “I don’t have you figured at all.”

“My name’s Gay,” the young man said. “Allen Gay. Mean anything to you?”

Augie ran the name around in his head. It didn’t connect with anything. He said so.

The bartender brought their drinks.

Gay raised his glass. “To Domino,” he said.

Augie hesitated. Then he nodded. “God bless her soul!” he said.

They drank.

Outside, along the beach road, under the street lamp where the fog hung like a pale curtain between the light and the dark, the mask which had been Domino’s face went to pieces like a shattered mirror. But she made herself walk until she reached the grey shadow, and then she began to run.

It was four blocks to the corner of Rosecranz and when she saw the cab parked across from Pancho’s, she slowed and waited until she could control her breath. She only needed to say two words to the cabby, but she had to say them matter-of-factly.

The driver of the cab was a young man with a leather jacket over his shirt and a scarf wrapped about his throat against the damp chill. He opened the door for her with the casual friendliness of a beach cabby.

“International Airport,” she said.

In the back of the cab it was dark. In the back of the cab there was waiting.

And while there was waiting, she had to think.

The yellow Cad came out of the alley below the beach road and moved slowly up the hill. The slim, nervous kid, sitting beside the driver, slid a slim cigarette lighter back and forth between moist hands.

“Why didn’t we grab her when we had the chance?” His voice was high-pitched, as nervous as his pale, moving hands.

His companion was smaller than he, but he gave the feeling of power and confidence which made him seem larger—an effect which had not been lost on Little Augie not so many minutes ago. There was much in the way he had been tailored which added to this illusion. There was also much actual strength, though it was not on display as in the built-in posture of a muscle boy. Still, it was there, and you would not be fooled by the lack of show if you had been around and had met such dangerous little men before.

“We don’t know what he told her,” the little man said, “or where she’s going, or who she’s got to see.”

“They will find him,” the kid said. “They will find him and go to his office.”

“You are a fool,” the driver said softly. “You watched without eyes in the back of your head. I removed his obvious identification. There is, of course, his car. One among many, you understand. It is the margin of risk we must take. First her, and then his office. A good margin, a comfortable one. Yes—” he nodded to himself as much as to the nervous kid beside him—”I think there will be plenty of time.”

The cab made a left-hand turn on Coast Highway with the change of light and picked up speed in the direction of El Segundo. The yellow Cadillac followed, not close, but easily and smoothly. Even at night, the bright red-and-white paint job on the taxi made a fine moving target. There was no need to crowd it, only to take care.

Read more of The Brass Halo

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Copyright © 1952 by Jack Webb, Registration Renewed 1980
All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

eISBN 10: 1-4405-4144-2
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4144-5