Another summer’s day went by, and then it was the twilight of the crime.
Bishop waited for her as darkness fell. He paced at his apartment window, smoking one cigarette after another. He glanced outside from time to time, past the bank advertisement on the billboard, at the sky. He watched the slender moon rise above the city.
It was ten o’clock, then ten fifteen. Then the buzzer sounded. There she was in his doorway, breathless. Her cheeks were flushed. Her eyes were bright. She had a suitcase with her, a small red bag stuffed fat.
She dumped the bag on the foyer floor. Stepped to him, and kissed him. He pulled out of it, looked at her. Stroked her hair from her face. She was nervous and frightened and beautiful, so beautiful it made him ache. And if he did not kill Cobra tonight, he thought, he would never see her again. He hadn’t put it that plainly to himself before, but now he did. As long as Cobra was alive, she would be afraid like this. She would let her father spirit her away somewhere and surround her with guards, and he would never see her.
He stood there and held her and looked at her face and she looked up at him and she was flushed and breathless and for a moment he forgot everything else and he did not know what he would do.
“What did you tell him when you left?” he said.
“I just ran,” she said. “I wrote him a note.”
“Okay.”
“To make it look natural, like a breakup, so he won’t suspect about tonight.”
“Sure. That’s good.”
“He’ll know, though. When the police show up, he’ll know I was in on it.”
Bishop didn’t answer. He already knew what she wanted from him.
After a while, they moved apart. They went to the table by the window. They sat on the wooden chairs. They smoked cigarettes. They touched each other’s hands, played with each other’s fingers. He looked at her fingers with his and thought that he would never see her again.
Ten-thirty sharp. The buzzer. Honey sucked in a last drag of smoke, crushed out her cigarette quickly. Bishop went to the door. He pulled it open. Philip Graham stepped in.
Honey stood up out of her chair. Father and daughter faced each other across the room. Graham, with his perfect hair and his forthright chin and that never-changing look of disapproval behind his big glasses, looked almost unaffected by the meeting except that he seemed somehow to vibrate inside with suppressed emotion.
“Look—” he said with a quick frown. And he raised his hand as if about to continue, to make a pronouncement. But he didn’t continue. That was all he said.
Honey picked up her suitcase. “Whatever,” she muttered. “Could we just go?”
Graham lowered his hand. He released a breath. He nodded unhappily.
At the door, he stopped to speak to Bishop. “Thank you,” he said. “I’ll tell Mr. Weiss I’m pleased with your work.”
Bishop smiled a little at that. He liked the way Graham said it: straight, looking right at him. They both knew he had hired the detective to seduce his daughter away from Cobra, and they both knew Bishop had done it and Graham would not pretend otherwise. Bishop liked that in him. It reminded him of Honey.
“I’ll wait in the hall,” Graham said, and he went out.
Honey came to Bishop and kissed him. A light, soft kiss, the last kiss. She didn’t say anything but it was all in her glance. If he did not kill Cobra, he would never see her again. Bishop kissed her back and tried to hold the taste of her on his lips.
He watched her go and he watched the door close. Then he stood in the center of the room alone and watched the closed door.
He was still standing like that a few minutes later when the phone rang. Reluctantly, he turned from the door, went to the phone on the table, snapped it up.
It was Cobra. His voice was harsh and tense.
“Twenty minutes” was all he said. “Shotgun Alley.”