LITMIR.BIZ

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nosy,” I said. “That’s my business.”

      “You won’t find anything in his clothes. I checked all his pockets before I took them to the laundry.”

      “Oh,” I said.

      “You’re a hard man to convince.”

      “Yeah,” I said. “Well, Cress, that’s my business, too, being hard to convince. How long has Richie been gone?”

      “About a month.”

      “And you haven’t heard anything from him?”

      “No, but I didn’t expect to. When would he write letters? Most of the time he’s probably way back in the country somewhere and there’s no post office even.”

      “Uh-huh,” I said.

      I opened a drawer in the chiffonier and there was a collection of handouts and fliers in various sizes and colors, some of them with Richie’s picture and an announcement of an appearance somewhere. There were half a dozen brochures from The Mill, featuring Richie along with a group called the Nelsons, three boys and three guitars.

      I picked out three or four of them with Richie’s picture on them and folded them into my pocket. I couldn’t tell whether she noticed or not. She had cleared out her side of the wardrobe and was taking down the jeans and slacks. I was still pawing through the papers in the chiffonier and my hand ran across a sharp edge, not quite hard enough to draw blood, but causing me to jerk away from it. Cress looked at me.

      “Have you given notice here yet?” I asked.

      “No—is it important?”

      “I guess not, as long as the rent’s paid. How about your job?”

      “I told Roger I wouldn’t be at work for a while.”

      “Did you tell him why?”

      “No, but maybe he guessed. He’s not stupid.”

      Feeling around carefully, I had found the handle of a long knife. I brushed the papers away from it and saw it was a stiletto type, razor sharp on the edges and pointed like a needle; a knife to kill with.

      “This was Richie’s?” I said, holding it up.

      She shook her head vaguely.

      “I guess so. I never saw it before.”

      I wrapped it in my handkerchief to dull the edges and laid it in the suitcase on top of a pair of his slacks. Cress went to the chiffonier and started taking out some men’s shirts and a small wad of feminine undergarments. I looked into the bathroom, and it was clean and contained nothing except the usual facilities. When I got back, Cress was wrapping Richie’s shoes in some of the newspapers and laying them in on top of the other things in the case, which was well filled without being stuffed.

      “I guess that’s everything,” she said.

      “There were some stockings in the kitchen.”

      “Oh, yes, I forgot.”

      She went out there and I looked through the rest of the chiffonier without finding anything. I stood beside her, leaning over the bed, while she put the stockings in the suitcase.

      “Shall we close it now?” I asked.

      “I guess so. I can’t think of anything else.”

      I pulled the lid up and over and let it fall. It didn’t quite click shut. I was leaning over it, preparing to push it down, when she spoke sharply under her breath:

      “Listen…!”

      She had good ears. By the time I heard them, the steps were at the door, the hand on the knob. Every hair on my body stood straight up. I pushed at her with my right hand and moved along the bed to the straight chair. Cress made it to the other side of the bed. I picked up the telephone and tossed it onto the bed.

      “Call the police,” I said.

      The door opened and they came in. I had time to half turn, and two of them were into the room and I could see the third one behind them.

      Nobody said anything. It wasn’t that kind of a party. I flipped the lid of the suitcase back and groped for the knife, now buried under shoes and stockings. I couldn’t find it. One of the trio started around the bed and another one approached me. I could hear Cress dialing the telephone. The bed lurched heavily as the nearest of the three came at me. There was a tearing sound and I knew somebody had ripped the phone from the wall connection. Cress gasped. I brought one of the shoes up out of the suitcase and rapped the heel into the guy’s nose. By then I had found my balance and I twisted and hit him in the belly. It stopped him all right, but the third one was coming around him and he had a gun in his hand, holding it by the muzzle. He lifted it and I ducked into him in the midsection. The gun butt came down hard on my kidneys, but he was off balance. I kept after him, to get into the clear, and when he was ready to hit me again I kicked at him where it would hurt bad and shouldered him into the chiffonier. I heard him grunt and his feet slip under him.

      The first one jumped on my back then and we were in it good. Nothing scientific—just desperate clawing and slugging—them or us, right now. I twisted out from under the one and hit the other with all I had, as low under the ribs as I could get any drive into. It stopped his heart for a second and he sagged down, clawing the cover off the chiffonier as he came. I turned into the other one, who somehow had come by the gun, or had one of his own, and the only chance I had was to get inside and grapple with him. He hit me once on the cheekbone and a glancing blow on the side of the head and I couldn’t see well. I kept hitting him with both hands, and he backed off and swung at me again but lost his footing and fell against the wall beside the door. I was gasping for breath, trying to clear my head and wondering what was happening to Cress and why somebody didn’t come around to see what the noise was about. But they never come. They stay home and pound on the ceiling—or call the manager.

      So call! I thought frantically.

      The one on the floor had turned the gun around to make full use of it and I brought my left foot down on his wrist on the floor and kicked at his face with my right. I connected well enough to quiet him, but it threw me backward onto the bed. The third guy was trying to drag the suitcase across the bed while, as it turned out, holding Cress by the neck with his free arm, with his hand clamped over her mouth. I rolled up over the suitcase and grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket. He let go of the suitcase and hit at me, but he had too many irons in the fire. I pulled myself up by his jacket and pushed, and when he reared back, I hit him in the stomach. He doubled down on his knees and I looked around in time to see the one with the gun coming across the bed at me.

      “All right—” he said.

      But things were going for me now and I couldn’t have stopped if I’d wanted to. I dived into him at his knees and the luck held; he lost his balance on the shifting springs and fell backward and I heard the gun bang against the wall and drop. I swam on over the edge of the bed and got my hands on it, and when he picked himself up, I was holding it by the butt and he saw that and stopped.

      We were both shaking like leaves in the wind. I didn’t dare stick my finger inside the trigger guard for fear of squeezing off unintentionally. I don’t know whether he noticed that or not, but he kept staring at my hand and he didn’t come on. He was smallish, with black-rimmed eyes, scrawny in the throat. He looked young, twenty, twenty-one maybe. There was a cut on his left cheek where I had hit him at some time. The other two I could see only vaguely in the background, not to identify. There was a lot of sweat or something running into my eyes and my throat kept clogging.

      “Back off,” I managed to say.

      He hung there for a few seconds, staring at me with his mouth open, then backed away toward the door.

      “Hold it,” I said.

      He stopped and I fought for breath and time. They were all over the room and I couldn’t figure out how to gather them up. They could have taken me then, the way they were spread out,

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