an ambulance if he’s badly hurt.”
“I would have, but to get an ambulance from a city hospital you have to call the police first. Even private hospitals—and most doctors—report an accident with firearms. Don’t they?”
The doctor ignored the question, asked another with icy annoyance. “And Eddie doesn’t want to see the police?”
“You know that.”
“Where is he?” Wurber demanded irritably.
“In . . . that hole, as you called it.”
“Curse the day I ever saw the man,” Wurber muttered. “He’s always brought trouble.”
“But you must come,” I persisted. “You couldn’t let him die. That would bring the police, too.”
I didn’t look at him. I kept my eyes lowered, for the demure effect, the helpless, spring expression. “You will come?”
“I am still a doctor,” he said crossly, “even though—at times—I think it would be better if some people were to die.”
A soft veil of rain enveloped the street when we came out. An impressive car with a New Jersey license was parked a few doors away. I was sure it belonged to Wurber, but he ignored it and headed toward Broadway. At the corner, in front of a dingy, eighth-rate hotel, we picked up a cab. I popped into it, my hand on the opposite door handle, just in case.
The cabby was looking at him. Wurber hesitated, glanced at me. My hand tightened on the door handle. My expression, I hoped, was perfectly blank. Wurber gave a number on Third Avenue, got in, and sat beside me, close. I released the door handle.
The driver looked around. “Is that in the Seventies?”
“Near Ninetieth Street,” I said automatically. I’d been dunning a man only a few numbers away.
Dr. Wurber nodded. His bushy eyebrows close together under the brim of his hat gave him a totally different appearance. With him, a hat was a disguise. He settled back, his knees spread, touching mine.
I sat in rigid silence, my mind ticking faster than the meter as we crossed 72nd Street and entered the Park. The silent rain misted the lights and the windshield, filled the air with fragrance. I tried to relax, get an easier hold on myself, but my nerves wouldn’t unbend.
What I needed was a good plan, and how could you plan when you didn’t know what came next? This could be a trap in reverse. Wurber might be leading me into one of his own. I had to take that chance.
The cab wound skillfully through the maze of drives, the tires singing on the wet road. The buildings along Central Park South gleamed like a fairy city through the rose-gray mist. I thought of the nice safe restaurant where I had dinner and of my apartment, around the corner from it. Surely nothing serious could happen this close to home. Dr. Wurber’s elbow brushed mine and I started.
“Cigarette?”
I took one, accepted his light, couldn’t avoid his fat little finger lingering against mine. My skin crawled. After all his dealings with women over the years, I wondered he ever wanted to see or touch another one; but he obviously did.
The cab crossed Fifth Avenue, headed east, then took Park Avenue, north. It was such a very little way now. I tried to empty my mind. This was no time for crossing bridges, coming or going. I had connected Dr. Wurber with Eddie Wells. If he took me to Eddie Wells, he might take me indirectly to Eddie Wells’s child.
The cab turned under the elevated into Third Avenue. I noted the number on the first store. The address Dr. Wurber gave was in the middle of the short block. It was a rag-tag section, with cheap flats and rooming houses over small stores, the entrances to the dwellings wedged between the shops.
We stopped. Wurber paid the driver and we crossed the wet sidewalk, Wurber clutching his black bag and picking his way in those small pointed shoes. I strode into the dingy entrance as though I knew where I was going. There were some battered mailboxes in the dirty wall of the vestibule, bells with indecipherable name plates. The door opened when a man walked out. I caught the door and Wurber and I walked in.
The hall smelled of bad plumbing, cooked cabbage, and everlasting darkness. I hung back, let Wurber go before me up the creaking, grease-slippery stairs. A girl of about fifteen ran past us down the stairs, her child mouth heavy with make-up, her cheap red sling pumps clattering. I shuddered. Certainly I’ve seen poverty, and drab little girls trying to be beautiful. But there was something about this place that was worse than poor, worse than dirty. It had an almost melodramatic air of evil, like a scene in a movie. A dingy, damp, friendless place.
Dr. Wurber, panting, turned at the third-floor landing. I followed him through the narrow hall, lighted by a single feeble bulb. He stopped before a door. So did I.
“Well, let us in,” he said impatiently. I put out my hand before I realized what he meant.
“I . . . I don’t have a key.” Still holding the knob, I knocked with my free hand. There was no answer. I knocked again. Dr. Wurber was fuming.
“Coming out . . . leaving this man . . . anybody could have walked in.”
I turned the knob. The door was unlocked. Cool air blew across my face as I pushed the door open. I realized a window was raised. I reached for the wall switch as a train roared by, shaking the building like an earthquake. In the passing glare, I glimpsed the line of the light cord in the middle of the room. I moved quickly and pulled on the light.
With my hand still on the greasy, fly-specked cord, I surveyed the dingy kitchen-sitting room. Empty beer bottles and crusts from sandwiches littered the deal table. A fact-detective magazine lay on a chair near the window.
Behind me Wurber was saying, “Where is he? What have . . .”
There was a door ajar, leading into another room. I said, “In there. That’s where he was.”
There are some things you know. Some things you know without ever realizing how the meaning came to you. But this was not one of those occasions. I had no premonition as Wurber pushed open the door. I was on his heels as he stopped, gasped, muttered oaths as he found the pull cord for the light. Then he stepped aside.
Lying on that rumpled, unmade bed, still in trousers and shirt, was Eddie Wells. No mistaking the face, the upturned nose, the winged brows, the petulant mouth. Nor was there any mistaking the hideous hole in his forehead, the dark smear of blood across the upper half of his face, the crimson splotches on his shirt.
Dr. Wurber was staring at me. Accusation—ghastly clear—burned in those pale eyes.
I’d said Eddie was shot. That was what I told Wurber—to bring him here. And I’d been right. That was the fantastic fact I had to face now.
Eddie had been shot. He was dead.
3.
I HAD seen death neatly dressed in a coffin, but never like this, raw and rude, with staring eyes. Eddie Wells had met death literally face to face. Obviously he had been backed into the dirty cluttered bedroom at gunpoint and shot. There had been no struggle. His hair was neatly combed. The crease still marked his trousers.
Dr. Wurber, his
