“God, Ed.”

I got up, put an arm around her. We walked to the kitchen. She put water on for coffee. While it cooked, I gave her a quick run-down on my part of the evening. I left out the call to the Continental agency in Cleveland. She didn’t have to know that I hadn’t trusted her.

SHE WAS SMOKING TOO MANY CIGARETTES too quickly. She was nervous and it showed. Why not? She had a lot to be nervous about. Half the world was trying to kill her. That sort of thing tends to get on your nerves.

“It doesn’t add,” I said.

“What doesn’t?”

“The whole thing. This morning they didn’t know where to find you, Rhona. Zucker’s lawyer was ready to pay ten thousand bucks just to get hold of you. A few hours later they know where you are and all they want to do is kill us both. They hand out contracts on the two of us. I’m supposed to get shot in East New York and you’re supposed to get blown up in your own apartment.”

“Maybe they had us followed. Or maybe somebody tipped them off.”

“Who?” I shrugged. “But there’s more. Why should they play around with a bomb? They could decoy you with a phone call, then drop you with a bullet on the street. Why get so fancy? Why send you on a wild goose chase to Hector’s? That’s the kind of play an amateur might use. A pro would be more direct. And we’re up against professionals.”

The coffee finished dripping. She poured out a pair of cups. I sweetened mine with a shot of scotch and let it cool a little.

“Look,” I said. “Let’s suppose they wanted to search the apartment. They still didn’t have to get cute about it. Did you have anything here?”

“Nothing they would be interested in.”

“Well, they might not have known that. But they still could have shot you down on the street and then sent a man upstairs. Or they could break in, kill you, then search. It just doesn’t make any sense.”

“I guess not,” she said.

We sat there drinking our coffee, tossing it all back and forth and getting nowhere in particular. She started to relax. God knows how. I decided that a card mechanic has to have a sound nervous system, and she was a card mechanic’s daughter. Maybe that’s the sort of thing that passes down a family tree.

I told her to go to sleep.

“Is it safe?”

“Nothing’s safe,” I said. “I don’t think they’ll be around tonight. It’s late and we’re both half-dead. I am, anyway, and you must be.”

“I’m kind of tired, Ed.”

“Sure. We’ll get some sleep and see what happens tomorrow. It’s been their play all along now. Maybe I can start something for our side, set some wheels in motion.”

“I’m scared, Ed.”

“So am I. But I’m tired enough to sleep. How about you?”

She shrugged. “I guess I’m all right,” she said. “Uh…you’ll sleep on the couch tonight, won’t you?”

“No.”

“Ed,” she said. “Ed, listen, don’t be silly. You’re exhausted and you almost got killed tonight and—”

“No.”

“Ed, you’re crazy. Oh, you nut. Ed, Ed, you will sleep on the couch, won’t you?”

I didn’t—not on the couch…

SHE FELL ASLEEP RIGHT AWAY. I tossed and turned and listened to her measured breathing, and I wondered how the hell she managed it. I closed my eyes and counted fences jumping sheep, and things like that, and nothing worked. I hadn’t expected it to.

It was still too tangled up to make any appreciable sort of sense. There were just too damned many inconsistencies. I couldn’t figure them out.

Sleep on it, I told myself. Sleep on it, stupid. And, eventually, I did just that.

The morning wasn’t too bad. She woke up first, and by the time I opened my eyes she was busy frying bacon and eggs in the kitchen. I showered and got dressed and went in for breakfast. There was fresh coffee made and the food was on the table. She even looked pretty in the morning. It seemed impossible, but she did.

The bacon was crisp, the eggs were fine, the coffee was perfect. I told her so and she beamed. “I had plenty of practice,” she said. “I used to cook for Dad all the time, since my mother died.”

It was around ten by the time I got out of there. First we had to go over the ground rules. This time, dammit, she would stay in the apartment. This time, dammit, she wouldn’t answer the phone unless it was my signal. Same for the door.

“Ed—”

I was at the door. I turned. Her mouth came up to me and her lips brushed mine.

“Be careful, Ed.”

Outside, the sun was shining. There was a different doorman on duty. He ignored me—he knew the ground rules there, by George, and the rules said that the doorman took no notice of anyone. They were strictly ornamental.

I hauled out my wallet, dug out the card I’d gotten a day ago. Just a day? It seemed much longer. I studied the card—Phillip Carr. Attorney at Law. 42 East 37thStreet.

I walked to the corner to save the doorman the trouble of hailing me a cab, and to save myself the tip I’d have had to give him. I got into a taxi and told the driver to take me to Fifth and 37th.

It was time to get rolling. Carr and Zucker and the rest of the crooked-card-game set had dealt every hand so far. Rhona and I were just throwing our chips in the center and calling every bet.

You can do that for just so long. Then it’s time to deal a hand yourself.

I sat in the backseat and gnawed on a pipestem while the cabby fought his way uptown through mid-morning traffic. Phillip Carr, Attorney at Law. Okay, shyster, I thought. Let’s see what happens.

NINE

The cab dropped me in front of Carr’s building about midway between Fifth and Madison on 37th Street. I took an express elevator to the twentieth floor, walked along a chrome-plated hallway to a door with Carr’s name on it. I walked in.

The secretary’s desk was kidney shaped. The girl behind it wasn’t. Her bright red hair had been painfully spray-netted until it had the general consistency of plastic. Her smile was metallic. Her sweater bulged nicely, giving a hint of flesh that the hair and the smile tried to conceal. I told her I wanted to see Carr.

“Your name, please?”

“Ed London,” I said.

She got up gracefully, wiggled her well-girdled hips on the way through a door marked PRIVATE. The door closed behind her. I picked up a magazine from a table, glanced at it, tossed it back. The door opened and the girl came out again.

“He’ll see you,” she said.

“I thought he would.”

Phillip Carr’s office had framed diplomas on the wall from every college but Leavenworth. He stood up, smiled at me, and stuck out his hand for a handshake. I didn’t take it, and after a few seconds he fetched it back again.

“Well,” he said. “I’m damn glad to see you, London. You were pretty hostile yesterday. I guess you’ve thought things over.”

“Something like that.”

“Cigar?”

“No thanks.”

“Well,” he said.

“I thought it all over. Especially what you said about rewards and punishments.”

“And?”

“I’ve got a reward for you.”

He didn’t get it until I hit him in the face. He’d stood there, hands at his sides, waiting patiently for me to tell him what the reward was, while I curled one hand into a fist, and aimed it at his jaw. It was a nice punch. It picked him up and sent him sailing over his desk, and it dropped him in an untidy pile on the floor.

He came up cursing. He made a grab for a desk drawer, probably to get a gun. I kicked him away from it. He crouched, snarling like a tiger at bay, and lunged for the button that would summon the secretary. I caught him by the lapels and gave him a little push that turned his lunge into a full-blown charge. He didn’t slow down until he bounced off a wall and collapsed onto the high-pile carpet.

“Take it easy,” I said. “You’ll have a heart attack.”

“You son of a—”

I picked him up and hit him a few times. It wasn’t a particularly nice thing to do. At the moment, I wasn’t an especially nice guy. Try to kill someone often enough and he’s bound to get riled.

I hit him in the nose, and some of the cartilage melted down and readjusted itself. I hit him in the mouth and heard a tooth or two snap. He spat them out and stared at them. I hauled him to his feet again and gave him another heave and watched him fall all over the floor.

The secretary never got in the way. Good Old Miss Girdled-Hips—she only came running when someone pressed the little buzzer. She was the soul of discretion. You could murder her boss in his office and she’d never leave her desk.

I picked him up again. He was breathing raggedly and bleeding profusely. I held him by the lapels and gave him my nastiest glare.

“Had enough?”

“Yes,” he panted, fear in his eyes.

I felt a little foolish. Then I remembered the dynamite blast in Rhona’s apartment, the tommy-gun in Canarsie, the three punks in East New York. I started to get mad again. That was dangerous—I didn’t want to kill the bastard. I dumped him in an armchair and let him catch his breath.

“This time I’ll talk about rewards and punishments,” I told him. “You’ve got a client and I’ve got a client. Your client is trying to kill mine.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Your client is a man named Abe Zucker,” I said. “He runs a rigged card game and fleeces heavy-money marks. He was doing fine. Then a man named Jack Blake came along and tried a few tricks of his own.”

And, like a proud little schoolboy reciting the preamble to the Constitution, I read the whole bit to him. First he just sat there. Then he looked amused, and then he started to laugh.

I asked him what was so funny.

“London,” he smirked. “You’re a panic. A detective? You couldn’t find sand in a desert.”

“What are you getting at?”

“What am I getting at?” He laughed some more. “Abe Zucker running a card game,” he said. “That’s a wild one, London. Don’t you know who Zucker is? Abe Zucker is so damned big he wouldn’t waste his time on all the poker games in the country. That’s not his line, London. It never was.”

“What is?”

“Nothing just now. He got out of the heavy stuff a long time ago. He put his dough in legit stuff and kept it there. Abe Zucker is cleaner than you are, London. Card games!” He laughed again.

I kept my eyes on his face, trying to see what I could read there. If he was putting on an act he was good enough for Broadway…I believed him.

“Card games,” he repeated. “Card games.”

“Then straighten me out, Carr.”

He looked at me, the smile gone now. “I wouldn’t tell you the right time, London. Now get out of here—”

I started to leave when he added, “…you punk.”

I picked him up, shook him like a rat. “Talk,” I said.