One Lonely Night Read Free Page A

snow, all flattened out and glistening wetly.
    I kicked that over the side too.
    Now let them find him. Let them learn who it was and how it happened. Let everybody have a laugh while you’re at it!
    It was done and I lit a cigarette. The snow still coming down put a new layer over the tracks and the dark stain. It almost covered up the patch of cloth that had come from the girl’s coat, but I picked that up and stuck it in with the rest of the stuff.
    Now my footsteps were the only sound along the ramp. I walked back to the city telling myself that it was all right, it had to happen that way. I was me and I couldn’t have been anything else even if there had been no war. I was all right, the world was wrong. A police car moaned through the pay station and passed me as its siren was dying down to a low whine. I didn’t even give it a second thought. They weren’t going anywhere, certainly not to the top of the hump because not one car had passed during those few minutes it had happened. Nobody saw me, nobody cared. If they did the hell with ’em.
    I reached the streets of the city and turned back for another look at the steel forest that climbed into the sky. No, nobody ever walked across the bridge on a night like this.
    Hardly nobody.

CHAPTER TWO
    I DIDN’T GO HOME that night. I went to my office and sat in the big leather-covered chair behind the desk and drank without getting drunk. I held the .45 in my lap, cleaned and reloaded, watching it, feeling in it an extension of myself. How many people had it sent on the long road? My mind blocked off the thought of the past and I put the gun back in the sling under my arm and slept. I dreamt that the judge with the white hair and eyes like two berries on a bush was pointing at me, ordering me to take the long road myself, and I had the .45 in my hand and my finger worked the trigger. It clicked and wouldn’t go off, and with every sharp click a host of devilish voices would take up a dirge of laughter and I threw the gun at him, but it wouldn’t leave my hand. It was part of me and it stuck fast.
    The key turning in the lock awakened me. Throughout that dream of violent action I hadn’t moved an inch, so that when I brought my head up I was looking straight at Velda. She didn’t know I was there until she tossed the day’s mail on the desk. For a second she froze with startled surprise, then relaxed into a grin.
    “You scared the whosis out of me, Mike.” She paused and bit her lip. “Aren’t you here early?”
    “I didn’t go home, kid.”
    “Oh. I thought you might call me. I stayed up pretty late.”
    “I didn’t get drunk, either.”
    “No?”
    “No.”
    Velda frowned again. She wanted to say something, but during office hours she respected my position. I was the boss and she was my secretary. Very beautiful, of course. I loved her like hell, but she didn’t know how much and she was still part of the pay roll. She decided to brighten the office with a smile instead, sorted the things on my desk, and started back to the reception room.
    “Velda ...”
    She stopped, her hand on the knob and looked over her shoulder. “Yes, Mike?”
    “Come here.” I stood up and sat on the edge of the desk tapping a Lucky against my thumbnail. “What kind of a guy am I, kitten?”
    Her eyes probed into my brain and touched the discontent. For a moment her smile turned into an animal look I had seen only once before. “Mike ... that judge was a bastard. You’re an all-right guy.”
    “How do you know?” I stuck the butt between my lips and lit it.
    She stood there spraddle-legged with her hands low on her hips like a man, her breasts rising and falling faster than they should, fighting the wispy thinness of the dress. “I could love you a little or I could love you a lot, Mike. Sometimes it’s both ways but mostly it’s a lot. If you weren’t all right I couldn’t love you at all. Is that what you wanted me to say?”
    “No.” I blew out a stream of