Detective-Sergeant Phil Bradley was big, broad and blustery. He had a face like the side of a cliff. His eyes were so deep in the caves of his craggy brows that you seldom saw they were dark blue.
He entered the apartment with his gun drawn. Behind him were a plainclothesman I didn’t recognize and two uniformed men. Bradley lowered the gun when he saw me.
“A shooting was reported, Kent.”
I waved a hand towards Kitty. “There’s a guy in the bedroom, too.”
I sat down and smoked while Bradley and company examined the bodies. This finished, the sergeant had a whispered conversation with the young detective, then he walked over to me.
“Let’s have it, Kent.”
“The guy shot the girl, I shot him.”
“She was hit in the back.”
“I know. I was holding her.”
“What?”
I leaned back. “I’m tired, Sergeant Bradley.”
“Oh, now isn’t that too bad. Well, don’t you worry about it, Mr. Kent—we know how to keep you awake.”
“Sure. Black coffee, strong lights and pep pills. But you’d better check it out with Inspector Coates first.”
“Coates?” He blinked at me for a moment. “You want me—”
“—to phone him. He’s probably at home.”
Bradley cocked his head and almost closed one eye. “You want me to wake up Inspector Coates at three o’clock in the morning? Look, Kent, I know you’re a big wheel with some rich clients, but I’m afraid you’re going to have to be questioned by a plain old detective-sergeant. This may come as a surprise, but the Inspector is a little too rich for your blood yet.”
“If you don’t phone him, Sergeant Bradley, you may do some bleeding. You see, this is tied up with one of his cases.”
He studied me. “Are you on the level?”
I nodded.
His eyes peered at me from their caverns for a long moment. “You’d better be.” He took a small black book from his breast pocket, thumbed through it until he found what he wanted, then he went to the phone table and, glancing at the book, dialed. After that he held the receiver against his ear and looked at me. “You sure had better be on the—Hello? Inspector Coates? This is Detective-Sergeant Phil Bradley, Twenty-third Precinct.” He listened for a moment. “Yes, I know what time it is, sir. I’m calling because I’m investigating a double homicide and—” He listened some more. “I know, sir, I know, but Larry Kent assured me that you’d want to know about ... Yes, Larry Kent ... Yes, sir, he’s here now.”
Bradley turned to me, a little surprised. “He wants to talk to you.”
I got up and took the phone from him. “Thanks.”
“Kent?” Coates’ filtered voice said into my ear.
“Yes, Inspector.”
“What’s going on?”
“I’m in Kitty Simpson’s apartment. I guess you know it’s just down the hall from Eleanor Gesualdi’s place.”
“What happened?”
I told him.
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
There was a click in my ear. “He’ll be here in fifteen minutes,” I said to Bradley as I cradled the phone.
Bradley just shook his head. I lit another cigarette and we waited.
Coates was better than his estimated time of arrival by about two minutes. It was a warm night but he was wrapped in an overcoat that looked two sizes too large for him. By this time the police coroner and the ambulance had arrived. Coates went from Kitty’s body to the man’s after giving the Sergeant and me a cursory nod. He talked with the coroner, watched the bodies being carried out, then he paced the length of the carpet a few times. Suddenly he stopped, jerked his head around to look at Bradley.
“I’ll leave the details to you, Sergeant.”
“Yes, sir.”
“All but Mr. Kent’s statement. I’ll take care of that personally.”
“Yes, sir.” Bradley eyed me like he was seeing me for the very first time.
Coates slapped me on the back. “Let’s go. I saw your car downstairs. Came here in a taxi. You can drive me home.”
The inspector lived on the east side, near the United Nations building, about a ten-minute drive from Eleanor’s apartment. A few blocks of the ride were behind us when Coates said:
“There are a few things I’d like to tell you—things you ought to know.”
“It’s about time,” I mumbled.
“You should have let me finish. I’d like to tell you, but I have to check them out first.”
“There’s someone higher than you?”
“I’m the low man, Kent.”
“Sounds big.”
“It is. Very.”
We rode in silence for a while, then Coates said:
“That fellow in Miss Simpson’s apartment. We’ll find out who he is eventually, but I doubt if we’ll learn why he wanted to kill you—and, more important, who gave him the order.”
“It could have been Lagusta,” I said.
“Lagusta.” Coates’ mind chewed on this for a while. “As you mentioned earlier, it doesn’t seem likely that he’d order a killing without getting a majority vote from the board of directors.”
“I don’t know about that. He could always plead ignorance. Quite a few people have taken a crack at me, and there are a hell of a lot more who’ve been—and are—thinking about it. If the board put Lagusta on the carpet for moving without getting a majority vote, he could throw up his hands and say he knew nothing about it and then he could point out what I just did.”
“On the other hand,” Coates said, “it’s just possible that he got enough votes. You must admit, it looks like a Mafia tie-in. There’s Kitty Simpson. You told me in the apartment that she worked for Stanley Brink.”
“Yes—and I had the feeling when I said it that you already knew.”
The hint of a smile touched at Coates’ lips. “What did I do, twitch my nose?”
“You looked bored to distraction.”
“I’ll have to watch that. You’re an observant fellow, Kent. By the way, it’s late. You’re going to get some sleep, aren’t you?”
“I may sleep the whole morning through, Inspector.”
“You can’t do that, Kent.”
“Why not?”
“For one thing, I’ll want you to come to my office and make out a formal statement about what happened in Miss Simpson’s apartment. Let’s make that about eleven o’clock, shall we? Unless, of course, something happens to keep you.”
I looked shocked. “Let something happen to keep me from an appointment with you, Inspector? Hell, I might as well burn my license in Times Square.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. I’m not as bad as you make out. In fact, there are times when I can be downright charming. All I ask for is a little cooperation.”
I took my eyes from the road for a split-second. His face was bland. I said, “You’re looking bored again, Inspector.”
He laughed. He actually laughed. And why not? He was playing it by the book, yet he was getting the cooperation of a private detective. If I could make the fur fly with Brink after his visit to the morgue in the morning, the odds were I’d have something to trade with the Inspector. Of course, trailing Brink would be the only excuse that would be acceptable to Coates if I failed to keep my eleven o’clock appointment in his office.
“You can let me off at the next corner,” Coates said.
I geared down and rolled the Corvette to the curb.
“Nice car,” Coates said, getting out. He leaned in. “A bit conspicuous, though, isn’t it? I imagine that quite a few people know you drive a white Corvette.”
“Quite a few,” I agreed. “And probably Brink, too. But don’t let that worry you, Inspector.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Now why should I worry about a thing like that? I was merely making an observation, that’s all. Goodnight, Kent.”
“Goodnight, Inspector.”
He closed the door. I de-clutched and fed gas to the engine. He was a fox, the Inspector. “Okay, you bald-headed cutie,” I said, “I’ll do your dirty work for you.”
Then I thought of Eleanor and I could feel my face set hard. If something had happened to her, then it would be dirty work. Real dirty. I closed my mind to everything but the road ahead. No sense in torturing yourself when you don’t know, when you’re stumbling around in the dark.
I drove straight into the garage when I reached my apartment building. I ached in the head and stomach and I was dead weary. A belt of whisky in a glass of milk and a sleeping pill were on my mind as I rolled down the garage door and started walking towards the apartment building steps.
It was twenty to four and the city was quiet, so quiet that the opening and closing of a car door across the street hit my ears like two pistol shots. Then came the sharp clacking of heels ... and the figure of a man, thin and tall, took shape in the darkness.
I thought: Leather heels—killers don’t wear leather heels. But I tensed and placed my right hand under my coat. Then the thin man moved into the circle of light thrown by a street lamp and my hand went to the butt of my holstered .45 and I pulled out the gun.
“Hold it,” I said. “Hold it or I’ll blow your spine from here to Broadway.”
He stopped.
And my heart skipped a beat as I recognized him.
Carl Esposito, the Miami man, one of the seven members of the board of directors of the Mafia.