The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps

He lowered them slowly and looked at the man on the floor. The man’s neck was twitching a little. His eyes moved in short stabs — sick eyes.

“Sure it’s the guy?” Copernick’s voice was hoarse.

“Positive. Where’s Ybarra?”

“Oh, he was busy.” He didn’t look at me when he said that. “Those your cuffs?”

“Yeah.”

“Key.”

I tossed it to him. He went down swiftly on one knee beside the killer and took my cuffs off his wrists, tossed them to one side. He got his own off his hip, twisted the bald man’s hands behind him and snapped the cuffs on.

“All right, you bastard,” the killer said tonelessly.

Copernik grinned and balled his fist and hit the handcuffed man in the mouth a terrific blow. His head snapped back almost enough to break his neck. Blood dribbled from the lower corner of his mouth.

“Get a towel,” Copernik ordered.

I got a hand towel and gave it to him. He stuffed it between the handcuffed man’s teeth, viciously, stood up and rubbed his bony fingers through his ratty blond hair.

“All right. Tell it.”

I told it — leaving the girl out completely. It sounded a little funny. Copernik watched me, said nothing. He rubbed the side of his veined nose. Then he got his comb out and worked on his hair just as he had done earlier in the evening, in the cocktail bar.

I went over and gave him the gun. He looked at it casually, dropped it into his side pocket. His eyes had something in them and his face moved in a hard bright grin.

I bent down and began picking up my chessmen and dropping them into the box. I put the box on the mantel, straightened out a leg of the card table, played around for a while. All the time Copernik watched me. I wanted him to think something out.

At last he came out with it. “This guy uses a twenty-two,” he said. “He uses it because he’s good enough to get by with that much gun. That means he’s good. He knocks at your door, pokes that gat in your belly, walks you back into the room, says he’s here to close your mouth for keeps — and yet you take him. You not having any gun. You take him alone. You’re kind of good yourself, pal.”

“Listen,” I said, and looked at the floor. I picked up another chessman and twisted it between my fingers. “I was doing a chess problem,” I said “Trying to forget things.”

“You got something on your mind, pal,” Copernik said softly. “You wouldn’t try to fool an old copper, would you, boy?”

“It’s a swell pinch and I’m giving it to you,” I said. “What the hell more do you want?”

The man on the floor made a vague sound behind the towel. His bald head glistened with sweat.

“What’s the matter, pal? You been up to something?” Copernick almost whispered.

I looked at him quickly, looked away again. “All right,” I said. “You know damn well I couldn’t take him alone. He had the gun on me and he shoots where he looks.”

Copernik closed one eye and squinted at me amiably with the other. “Go on, pal. I kind of thought of that too.”

I shuffled around a little more, to make it look good. I said, slowly: “There was a kid here who pulled a job over in Boyle Heights, a heist job. It didn’t take. A two-bit service station stick-up. I know his family. He’s not really bad. He was here trying to beg train money off me. When the knock came he sneaked in — there.”

I pointed at the wall bed and the door beside. Copernik’s head swiveled slowly, swiveled back. His eyes winked again. “And this kid had a gun,” he said.

I nodded. “And he got behind him. That takes guts, Copernik. You’ve got to give the kid a break. You’ve got to let him stay out of it.”

“Tag out for this kid?” Copernik asked softly.

“Not yet, he says. He’s scared there will be.”

Copernik smiled. “I’m a homicide man,” he said. “I wouldn’t know — or care.”

I pointed down at the gagged and handcuffed man on the floor. “You took him, didn’t you?” I said gently.

Copernik kept on smiling. A big whitish tongue came out and massaged his thick lower lip. “How’d I do it?” he whispered.

“Get the slugs out of Waldo?”

“Sure. Long twenty-two’s. One smashed a rib, one good.”

“You’re a careful guy. You don’t miss any angles. You know anything about me? You dropped in on me to see what guns I had.”

Copernik got up and went down on one knee again beside the killer. “Can you hear me, guy?” he asked with his face close to the face of the man on the floor.

The man made some vague sound. Copernik stood up and yawned. “Who the hell cares what he says? Go on, pal.”

“You wouldn’t expect to find I had anything, but you wanted to look around my place. And while you were mousing around in there” — I pointed to the dressing room — “and me not saying anything, being a little sore, maybe, a knock came on the door. So he came in. So after a while you sneaked out and took him.”