Black Mask (Vol. 33, No. 3 — September 1949)

“Sure,” the girl jeered. “Act One, Scene One. That’s as far as you’ve got. You haven’t even written in an ashtray.”

Rawne took her arm. “You and I, Lulie darling,” he said, “are not the only suckers who’ve been supplying Jim with cabbage which he fed to racetrack parimutuel machines. But I’m putting in the prior claim. You can go to work when I get my twenty-three hundred.”

She turned on Rawne, her green eyes hot with anger, but his grip was not light. He guided her firmly into the hallway and closed the door on her. She hammered on the panel.

“Oh,” she shouted in a trembling voice, “what a slow, slow death I’d like to arrange for you!”

Rawne returned to the living room. Greer was standing by a lounge chair that had a torn gray slip cover. He was wiping his glasses. Tears rolled slowly down his aging cheeks.

“Kevin boy,” he pleaded with Rawne, “you talk like I have money. Good Lord, Kevin, don’t upset me now! I’m too finely tuned. I’m keyed to concert pitch. I’m so filled with this new play I should be in an ivory tower. I should be in a monastery. It’s all written, Kevin. Every beautiful line of the play. In my head. You’ll make me lose it.”

Rawne rolled his cigar across his mouth. “Cut it, Jim. You’ve been washed for fifteen years. You haven’t written anything except bad checks for years. You’ve been living off this racket, kidding chumps like me that with a little financial help you could repeat Tarnished Lady. When I stopped dreaming of fast cars and a hunting lodge in Maine, you were in my bankroll so deep I kept supplying the spinach, hoping you’d pick a horse that wouldn’t graze in the backstretch. Today you had him — Blown Smoke in the seventh, and you walked away from a cashier’s window with ten thousand dollars.”

Greer put on his thick glasses. He ran a nervous hand through his black hair. “You’ve been drinking, Kevin.”

“I’ve been talking to a detective,” Rawne said. “He phoned me from Belmont Park after the eighth. I’ve been slipping him beer money to keep tabs on you.”

“Oh.” Greer nodded grimly, wisely. “I see.” His tone was bitter. “No trust. No faith. Little wonder the world’s upside down. Okay, Kevin — if that’s the way you want it. I’ll pay you. Tomorrow.”

Rawne took a short puff and waved his cigar impatiently. “You’ll pay me now. The detective put an exercise boy on your tail. You came straight home. The money’s here. So make it easy for yourself.”

The wrinkled lids came down over Greer’s pop eyes. He went to the closet muttering, and fished a bulging wallet from an old coat. The corner of his mouth kept twitching while he counted hundred-dollar bills into Rawne’s palm.

Rawne gave them a second count and put the money in his wallet. He buttoned the wallet down in his back trousers pocket. He stood there, scowling thoughtfully, smoking, his gaze shifting about the eluttered room. The radio was on, tuned low.

Across the way a man and woman leaned together on a window sill.

Rawne looked at Greer and shook his head. Greer’s cheeks were unnaturally red. He stood rigidly. His thin lip had its mean little curl and the corner was working. His eyes were like black agates. With a final wondering glance, Rawne turned around and went out, humming.

The hallway was pitch-dark. He walked down the creaking stairs, his cigar a red lamp in the blackness. Radios blared. Somewhere a woman was screaming. A child was crying. Rawne groped along the third-floor hall.

Starting down the next flight he felt along the wall. He touched somebody who was crouching in the wall niche just below the landing. Rawne started to speak. He got a violent shove from this somebody, a terrific shove. Rawne crashed into the railing, almost toppling over it. He cut loose with loud, short words and threw his right fist.

His fist hit this somebody in the face and there was a groan. Rawne got slammed in the stomach. He got slammed with a foot that caught him on his belt. His breath left him in an agonized grunt. His cigar went spinning.

He went crashing down the stairs, backwards, feet out from under him, left arm hooked over the railing. His head hit the floor, and the vertebrae in his neck clicked.

He lay there like a drunk sleeping it off. Somebody yanked at his back pocket. A button rolled off into the stairwell. The stairs creaked going up.

Pretty soon Rawne began cursing and then he was able to push himself to his knees. There was no weight under the left armpit and his voice grew as loud as the radio’s. The baby was still squalling and the shrill lady hadn’t worn herself thin. Rawne slapped around in the darkness until he found his gun. He stuck it in the holster and got up.

A sag was in his knees. He labored up the stairs, lurching from side to side. On the fourth floor a line of soft light came from 4A. The door of Greer’s apartment was opened a crack. Rawne kicked it wide. He went into the foyer and looked at himself in the cracked mirror. His hair was rumpled and his face was dirty. The right side was covered with blood.