I know what you’re thinking but no, we didn’t go back to my drab place, not that morning, and for the record, I spent the next few hours in my creaky Murphy bed alone.
This time it was the phone that shouted me up out of sleep.
It took me a minute to stagger over to it, a moment longer to decide if I was actually going to pick it up. I figured since I’d already dragged myself over there I might as well answer the damn thing, if only to make it shut up.
“Yeah?”
“You are there.” The voice paused, and I could just about see Cass biting her lower lip the way she did when she was worried or scolding. “You okay, Frank?”
“Sure.”
“We were supposta open the office five minutes ago. I was gettin’ worried. Not that we had any business or anything, but still … It ain’t like you, being late.”
The genuine concern in her voice made me want to apologize, but then I got angry that she’d made me feel guilty and the response came out terse. “I had a long night,” I said, rubbing red exhaustion from my eyes. For the first time in a while my scars hardly itched or ached at all, maybe because I was numb with fatigue.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Cass obviously wanted more, and probably she was entitled to it, but I let it go at that.
“You close the Night case, Frank?”
“Just about.”
“She was here last night, huh?”
“How’d you know?”
“I just … I walked in and I got one of my feelings. So you told her everything?”
“Everything I could.”
“Good. Now you can stick that stupid case in the filing cabinet and get on with other business, taking pictures of cheating husbands and that sort of thing. Payin’ the bills. And I’ll tell you, Frank, I’m mighty glad. I don’t like what this case was doing to you.”
“Well, I’m not through with it yet,” I told her, and I didn’t much care for the way it sounded, like I was apologizing. Only I guess that was pretty much what I was doing. “Got just a little more work to do and it’s gonna bust wide open.”
“What else is there?” Cass said, voice sharp even over the fuzzy connection. “You found out who she is, that’s what she was payin’ you for, right? So it’s over and done with.”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
She sighed, loudly. “Frank, listen, will ya? Please? All this … it was bad from the start, but it’s gonna get worse if you don’t get out right away. It’s gonna get real ugly.”
“One of your feelings?”
“Yeah. A strong one. Real strong.”
“You know I don’t believe in fortune tellers, Cass. No crystal balls or old ladies with pretty decks of cards—or secretaries with ‘feelings.’”
“I’m tellin’ ya, Frank. I’m scared. I feel sick, I’m so scared.”
“Maybe you should take some time off then,” I suggested.
“That isn’t gonna help. You oughtta take some time off.”
“Yeah,” I went on like she hadn’t interrupted. “I think that’s an idea. Why don’t you give yourself a week off? Take your mother down the shore, maybe.”
I didn’t say how much better I’d feel to put some distance between Cass and Mr. Menace’s goons. No need to upset her more than I’d already done.
“That’s not a good idea, Frank,” Cass insisted. “You can’t run the place without me.”
“For a week I can. Anyway you said yourself business is slow these days. After this whole Evelyn Night affair is wrapped up we can get back to the everyday stuff.”
“I don’t need a week off,” Cass said. “I just want things to get back to normal.”
“I’ll see you in a week, Cass.”
“No, Frank, let’s talk about this. Honestly—I have an awful bad feeling about what’ll happen if you don’t drop this case. I walked in the office this morning and you weren’t here and I could tell she’d been here, and it just hit me, so hard I had to sit down, and I thought—”
“See you in a week, Cass,” I said again, and set the phone back in its cradle. Then, on second thought, I picked it up again and dropped it on the table, off the hook, in case Cass tried to call back, which she was pretty much certain to do. Then I wandered back to my Murphy bed and flopped in, ravenous for a bit more sleep. The meager sunlight coming in the window above the sink was giving me a headache, and I needed some rest before I put my plan for the evening into action.
I climbed out of the cab in front of the Chandler Hotel around dusk, my head still a bit woolly with sleep, or the lack of it. Inside, my pal Geiger greeted me with a smile that twitched nervously. I didn’t think much of it—the fella always looked like a plump mouse in a room full of hungry cats.
“She still here?” I asked.
“As far as I know,” he said, hands clutching at one another.
“There a car parked here for me?”
“In the back alley, as you instructed. And, um, about that …” His voice fell to a whisper. “I have reason to believe the gentleman who dropped it off for you was not, uh, shall we say, the ‘rightful owner.’”
“You don’t say.”
The man wasn’t exactly street-smart, but even he knew hot property when he saw it. Still, if I was going to make my plan work smoothly, I was going to need reliable wheels. That meant no cabs. So I’d called in another outstanding debt and had an old friend procure some transportation for me. I didn’t care to know where he’d come up with it; as far as I was concerned I was just borrowing it.
“You have the keys for me?”
My pal slipped a set of keys out from under the counter and pushed them across the imitation marble to me with his hand cupped over them, like he was trying to be sly about it.
“I’ll be pleased when you take it off the hotel’s property. Having that particular vehicle here is bound to make our guests … uneasy …”
“It’ll be gone before you know it.”
He nodded.
“Better give me Miss Gray’s room key, too. Or the pass key, if she’s still got the one for the room.”
I’d figured it was safest to keep her there under the alias I’d picked—no need to advertise her real name around, even this far from the west side.
The manager gave me a look as if to say this was just about the last rule he’d break for me, but handed me the pass key anyway. I gave him a nod and headed off upstairs.
I knocked on her door, loud, and waited.
Nothing.
I pounded now, not much giving a damn if the folks in the other rooms objected to the noise. No answer, but I decided I’d given her fair warning and jabbed the key in the lock and opened the door.
I had just registered the fact that the room was empty when a hard hand clamped down on my shoulder from behind me.
I whirled around. The bellboy with the epaulettes on his shoulders was mighty lucky I didn’t deck him, luckier I didn’t go for my piece. A fella just doesn’t get away with sneaking up on a man who’s about had his face sliced off.
“Hey, Mister, that lady you’re lookin’ for, I just saw her outside, leavin’.”
“Which way?” I said, already starting toward the stairs.
“Headin’ west,” the kid said. “I swear I didn’t see her go out—I was right on the door, I don’t know how she got past me, but I wanted to let you know right away.”
All this as we scrambled down the stairs and across the lobby. The kid obviously hoped he’d get a tip out of all this but I was too busy fishing for the car key somewhere in my pocket. I left the kid at the door and hurried around to the alley, hoping I hadn’t missed my chance. I hadn’t figured on her going quite so early—and how the hell had she gotten out without passing the manager, or me?
I almost stopped short when I saw the boosted car poking its nose out of the alley, but I didn’t have time even to snort at the transportation my old buddy had come up with for me. Long and low and black, curtained windows in back. At least I could see why the manager had figured the car was stolen, and why he’d been so nervous about having it parked behind his hotel. Hearses tend to have that effect on people, I’ve noticed.
I climbed in and started it up without bothering to see if the back was occupied. At this point just about anything seemed possible.
The meat wagon moved surprisingly well as I swung it out into the westbound traffic, searching the crowd ambling along the sidewalks for Evelyn. Too many people getting off work, the twilight street a crazy ant-colony of secretaries and men in pinstripe suits, mingling uneasily with the bread-line crowd. My only hope was to point the hearse due west, on the bet I already knew where my client was headed. But the whole escapade was for nothing if I guessed wrong.
I slipped along at the speed of traffic, getting just ahead of the shoe leather crowd, scanning—and caught a glimpse of a well-dressed woman disappearing into the back of a possibly-familiar black car. I couldn’t be sure the woman was Evelyn, couldn’t be sure the car was the one driven by the gaunt chauffer, Ferryman, but I trusted my gut, and followed.
It was no fun task, trying to play inconspicuous in a hearse, but if the driver of the black car knew I was there he didn’t show it. He made a few twists and turns through side streets but I guessed it was the usual game, the same precautions he always took. I kept my distance and a couple of times I lost him and caught him again a block later. Then he took a corner and I took it a block behind him, and the car was gone. Just plain gone, like it hadn’t been there at all. I put on the gas and roared up to the next intersection, staring down every street, but the black car might’ve evaporated like fog for all I could see of it.
I took another gamble and steered the most direct route I knew to the West River Narrows Bridge. There were a couple other ways to that side of the river, sure, but I had to take the chance that they’d go the old familiar route.
Crossing the long gray hump of the bridge, I couldn’t quite chase Cass’s words out of my mind. Something about putting that sluggish black river between me and the halfway decent part of town felt like I’d just done what she said—like I’d gone that last step too far. Then the dark buildings of the west side were in front of me and it was too late to go back. If I could only find out where Evelyn Night vanished to every evening, if I could only untangle that much more of this sordid riddle, I could pull her out of it, give her back the life that was supposed to go with that name I’d found. I wasn’t sure what it would mean for me—for us, if there was any us—but that didn’t matter. And that was about the surest sign Cass had gotten it at least partly right: I had stopped looking out for myself and my business and was in this entirely for a woman I hardly knew. I wasn’t myself, not one bit. But that felt okay. Maybe that other fella, the one Cass still expected to see at the office every morning, hadn’t known quite as much as he’d thought. Maybe sometimes a man needed to take better care of someone else than he did of himself.
Or maybe I was kidding myself that I didn’t expect to get anything out of saving Evelyn from whatever lurked here, on the wrong side of things. Maybe part of me was even keen to catch her at the kind of games Damia Nyx and I had played together. Sure—and not much question which part of me …
I swung the meat wagon onto the narrow road that fronted the river and killed the lights. Unless they were looking for me as they came over the bridge, they’d never spot me in the shadows of the towering, soot-colored abutments. I kept the engine running and waited, hoping like a gambler tossing in his last chip that I’d guessed right. I had a feeling that if I’d gotten it wrong, I’d lose Evelyn for good.
I nearly held my breath, and it wasn’t all because of the stink coming off the West River.
It seemed like I sat there a long time, but I couldn’t read my watch in the dark to know for sure. Three cars passed, only one of them headed west, and none I recognized. I was about ready to give up, but then what? Go putter around the office? Head home and try again tomorrow night? I still had my doubts whether or not there’d even be a tomorrow night as far as Evelyn Night was concerned.
The Falcon came out of nowhere, shoving its way through a grimy fog that’d risen on the river and now shrouded the bridge. It rolled past without slowing down and I had to jam the hearse into gear and slam the gas to get after it again. I left the lights off, hoping I could see my quarry in the gloomy streets without being spotted. Night had settled in and half the street lights around here stood as dead as trees after a forest fire, so for once I had the darkness on my side—at least for now.
I had quite the romp, trying to hang back a discreet distance and not lose the black Dashiell Falcon as it weaved in and out of the winding streets, up alleys and down back roads, deeper and deeper into the crumbling district of the Tartarus Syndicate’s empire. I followed as much by luck and instinct as anything, but somehow I kept the other car’s taillights in my windshield. I’d half guessed we’d end up at the club again, or maybe outside that weird stairway to Hell where Damia Nyx had tried to have my blood for a dinner cocktail. But when the other car crawled to a stop it was in no place I recognized, just more abandoned buildings and graffiti-scrawled warehouse walls. I watched the tall pale chauffeur unfold himself from the front seat and open the rear door, watched my client step out, offering her left hand for his assistance. Then the two of them vanished down an alley so narrow I hadn’t even seen it. Either that, or they’d walked right through a brick wall together. From where I sat I could only guess, but at this point even black magic didn’t seem all that unlikely.
I waited a minute or so then pulled up to the curb across from the Falcon and climbed out, leaving the door unlocked. I hoped my borrowed hayburner would still be where I left it when I got back. Not too many street toughs would go after a hearse, but in this neighborhood you could never be sure—and anyway, the thing had already been stolen once. Even so, I intended to be able to get out of here quick if it came down to that.
I put a hand on my piece, just to reassure myself that it was there, tucked away in an inner pocket since I’d left my holster in Damia Nyx’s den. For a minute, then, I hesitated. No one in my line of work is all that eager to step into the dark of a totally unknown situation, and even less when the one thing you do know is that the dark has teeth and claws. But, foolish as it was, I’d come this far and I’d be damned before I turned back. Maybe I’d fallen in love, or maybe it was something lower than that. Or maybe I was just stubborn. Whatever the case, I was determined to get Evelyn out of that world, no matter what it cost me. I thought about drawing the .38, but decided that would be a bit too conspicuous, even here.
Pulling my hat down over my brow, I crossed the street, headed toward the spot where the Falcon’s passengers had disappeared.