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  But Stoker didn't say anything, and Fries just closed the door. The room was long, with a sunken effect, and a sandstone fireplace designed for a bigger room. Stoker walked back and forth for a while, looking out the window, looking into the fireplace. Port didn't press him. This time, for the last time, let Stoker pour his heart out, tell of the old times and how far they had come, and the big things in the future as long as the team held together. Port wouldn't pay any attention to Fries, because Fries and his two cents' worth of wise comments weren't going to get in the way at a time like this. Port would concentrate on the appeal in Stoker's voice, his paternal pleading, and having heard it all before would let it come and go like a recital.

  “Danny,” said Stoker, “maybe you've made up your mind. If you have, maybe it'll kill you.”

  Port didn't talk, didn't even whistle. He watched Stoker stand by the fireplace, one foot on the sandstone apron, and the way Stoker looked it didn't fit the old image at all.

  “I'm not arguing any more,” said Stoker. “Pardon the phrase, but it's now bigger than you and me.”

  Maybe a joke right now. Maybe a little chuckle right here where the silence was thickest, and Port wouldn't feel so pushed any more. He couldn't make up his mind fast enough, because Stoker went on.

  “You're a hood, Port. What's worse, you're a hood in the know.”

  Port narrowed his eyes, and this time he did start to whistle. It was as tuneless as ever, as offhand as all the times when he'd heard himself do it, except he was thinking how false it rang. If he were alone, he'd be screaming right now.

  Stoker kept watching him.

  “Why don't I trust you? You don't have to ask. I trust you, but that's neither here nor there. One day I'm going to be dead. Before you, most likely.”

  Now maybe he'd revert to type and start with the old-times'-sake sermon. Port sat down in a leather chair, closed his eyes, and listened to the pillow sigh.

  “Maybe even Fries trusts you.” Stoker paused for a moment. You know more than Fries does, did you know that?”

  Port looked up at the ceiling.

  “About our hookup,” Stoker went on, “about the ins and outs of all kinds of traffic, how our little setup—our vote insurance setup—is just one of the cogs in the whole scheme, the whole balanced scheme.”

  Port chewed his lip and wondered how he might feel five minutes from now.

  “That's how smart you are. In fact, sometimes I wonder, Danny, why you haven't moved up out of this setup.” Suddenly Stoker changed his voice. “But you're not smart enough to walk out!”

  The five minutes hadn't passed, but Port felt the change, the clarity come back into his feeling, and if he didn't quite know what he ought to do, at least the dullness was gone, the cottony vagueness which hangs, waiting, just before the night sets in.

  “You listening, Port?”

  Port looked at Fries and then at Stoker. Either of them could have said it, and neither of them would understand his answer.

  “I make sense,” Stoker said. “Don't I?”

  “Sure. Your kind of sense.”

  “What's that supposed to mean?” Fries wanted to know. Port got out of the chair. Not too much later he'd be walking out.

  “It means that you and I don't think the same way.”

  “How come? You're maybe some kind of superior species?” Fries said.

  Port turned away from Fries so the impulse to answer him would go away.

  “Max, tell him to leave, will you?”

  “Wait in the other room,” said Stoker.

  “By the hooked rug,” said Port.

  Fries was at the door with not enough time to think of a comeback. He closed the door behind him and the silence in the room started to grow again.

  Abruptly Port said, “It all adds up to the same thing. I'm leaving.”

  He said it calmly, clearly, but Stoker did not want to listen. He talked as if he had not been interrupted.

  “Here's your choice. It's either you or Fries.”

  “What?”

  “Face the facts, Danny. I won't be here much longer. Which way do you want it: With Fries under you, or you under Fries?”

  Port felt the rage grow, and he couldn't stop it this time.

  “To me, that's not even a choice.”

  “There's another one. The one I told you at first.”

  Stoker saw the color come into Port's face, a thing he had never seen, and like an infection he felt his own face become glutted with blood, the heartpound loud in his ears, and he shouted, “Take it or leave it! I'm through begging you! Take it or leave it, and I don't give one stinking damn!”

  Port's voice came out hoarse. He controlled its strength but no longer anything else.

  “You go to hell!”

  “Wha—”

  “If I can't get rid of you and the air you breathe, you and the Frieses and Bellamys and the big shots with small heads and the small shots with big heads, then I'd sooner crap out!”

  “I'll see you will!”

  “Try it, Stoker. Try stopping me now!”

  Port saw Stoker stare, breathing hard, his face ugly with great drops of sweat, and then he swiveled fast because of the sound.

  But the door was closing already. When Paternik saw that Port was looking at him he went back half a step, smiled softly, and said, “I apologize. I heard voices. You will forgive an old man's curiosity...”

  “Sure. That's all right—”

  Port saw Paternik stand there, and then he came closer.

  “Forget it,” said Port, but Paternik didn't hear. Port could tell by his face. He wasn't even looking at Port. He was cocking his white-haired head, frowning, and seemed to be on the point of clearing his throat. He made a smooth movement closing the door, and when he spoke it came suddenly.

  “For heaven's sake!”

  Then Port heard what the judge was seeing, a thin, sick groan that cut off as if choked. A choke which was pain itself, pain freezing all motion to death.

  It was a miracle that Stoker still stood. He did not even weave. His arms were out, a pathetic gesture of a hug interrupted, and the worn face was full of struggle. But nothing moved.

  He collapsed suddenly, one leg still on the stone apron, and if it hadn't been for the sound on the stone, Stoker's falling to lie stretched out would have been a relief. The face was past tiredness and the arms were through trying to reach.

  Chapter Twenty

  The party broke up very quickly. Port didn't see anyone leave, but he heard the murmuring and the awed tones through the door, as if Stoker were suddenly somebody else and all the old relationships had died with him.

  Before everyone left, and right after the cops from the gates had come into the house, Port had paid one of them to take Shelly home. Once Shelly was out of the house, Port went back to the room.

  In the room with the dead man there were Port and Judge Paternik; Bellamy, who was the host, and Fries, who now had position. Fries left after a while because he had a lot to do elsewhere. They sat in the room with dead Stoker, one of the cops from the gate guarding the door.

  “Not to distract from the tragedy,” said Judge Paternik, “but it was fortunate that I came in.”

  Port smoked silently and Bellamy, who had his arms on his knees, looked up with a wrinkled forehead. He licked his lower lip once, then looked down again. His forehead stayed creased.

  “I speak from the legal point of view. My entrance made me a witness.”

  “Not that it needed one,” said Bellamy.

  Port sat without thinking, waiting for the police, for the routine, but he was waiting for more. He hadn't reacted yet. He wondered whether it might have been easier to know how he felt if Stoker and he had finished their argument. Then, perhaps, it would all be clear now.

  “Of course, when you say he had a heart condition,” the judge was saying, “that makes the matter nothing but routine. Including the skull fracture.”

  “Is it fractured?” asked Bellamy.<
br />
  “The sound was quite awful,” said the judge.

  Port remembered the sound. It had been like something mechanical, nothing alive. Port looked at Stoker as if he hadn't known until now that Stoker was dead.

  It seemed to Port they had to wait quite a while. Off and on Bellamy and the judge exchanged a few words, and then Bellamy urged the judge to go home. There was no reason for him to stay, and a person in his position was certainly not required to go through the routine of police questioning. The judge thought the same.

  “I can be reached at my home here in town,” he told Port and Bellamy.

  “I'll tell them,” said Bellamy. “Maybe just a written statement, in case they bring it up.”

  “Of course,” said the judge.

  “I'll drop around,” said Bellamy. “Just to see how you are and to give my respects to your wife.”

  “Mrs. Paternik stayed in the Capitol,” said the judge. “Her activities rarely permit her...”

  “That's wonderful,” said Bellamy. “I admire that.”

  They all nodded at each other and the policeman at the door let the judge through.

  When the detectives and the medical examiner came it turned out to be open-and-shut, and the inquest would be of the briefest kind. The detectives did all their duties, the lab men had just come along for the ride, and there would be a few more formalities later, nothing time-consuming, just the sort of thing requiring legal presence. It could even be done by mail.

  It made a peculiar after-the-party feeling in the empty house, leaving no tensions and causing no stir.

  “Want a drink before leaving?” said Bellamy.

  “No thanks. I'll be going.”

  “Take your time,” said Bellamy. “When it happens, it's always a surprise.”

  “Yeah. That's true.”

  “You don't know where to put your feelings.”

  Port didn't like to hear it from Bellamy, but it was true.

  “Take your time. If you want a drink, you know where to find it,” and Bellamy walked out of the room, leaving the door open.

  Port got up too, but when he got to the hall it was empty. He had a hat somewhere. He found it on the hall table, only one hat left on the table, and then he went back to the room with the bar. He reached for a bottle to pour a drink, but then he stopped, wondering why he needed a drink because he suddenly found that his ties were gone.

  He walked out of the house, closed the big door behind him, and stood on the dim terrace. There was another light further away, at the curve of the driveway, and it showed the wet night fog hanging in the air. Port breathed deeply.

  This was the time! He had thought his planning had made him ready, his schemes, and then in the end, if nothing else, his decision. But Stoker had been alive, and the sick man's invisible hold, stronger than threats, had worked better than arguments, because leaving then had still been a walking out. But not any more.

  He ran down the stairs three at a time and kept running till he got to his car. It wasn't a need to hurry, just the feel in his muscles, in his lungs, of moving freely. He was whistling when he drove off, loud and strong.

  He wasn't going to wait till morning. He would pick up Shelly in the middle of the night and they'd drive out of town before the light came up. And if she were in bed, that would only delay them long enough for her to get dressed. But he was sorry—on the way to her house—that all the florists were closed.

  Shelly wasn't in.

  There was a light in the kitchen, the door wasn't locked, and Ramon was lying in bed. One side of his face was dark purple, with a white, professional bandage higher up.

  “Where's Shelly?”

  Ramon was smoking and didn't answer. He took long, Steady drags and lay on the bed, dressed, without moving.

  “You got a fever?”

  “I'm all right.”

  “I asked you where Shelly is!”

  Ramon dropped ashes into the cup by his bed and said, “She's out.”

  Port sat down on the bed and didn't look at Ramon.

  “Did she get home?”

  Ramon was very casual—except for the strong hostile streak under his voice.

  “She got home. Then she went out.”

  “For medicine or something?”

  “Yeah.”

  Port looked at his watch, then took out a cigarette. When he had lit it he blew the smoke up in the air so it wouldn't drift toward the sick man. Then he looked at Ramon.

  “Why don't you lay off me. You'd make it that much easier all around,” Port asked.

  “What makes you think I want to make it easier for you?”

  “I don't know what, but I'm not in your way.”

  “I'm seeing to that,” Ramon snapped.

  “What more do you want? I'm leaving, and you're all set with Bellamy.”

  “I'm remembering that.”

  “And with the upset in the Stoker outfit right now, you made a good thing of it.”

  “That's what I'm working on.”

  “Do that. And leave me alone.”

  “I'll do that. When you stay away from my sister.”

  Port got up. “You're going to be a real big wheel. I can see that. You not only get excited about things you got nothing to do with, but you keep bucking the wrong people.”

  “You don't scare me,” said Ramon.

  Port gave him a tired look and walked toward the kitchen. He said, “I'll blame it on the fever,” and sat down.

  Port sat and waited. He could hear his own breathing and now and then the creaking of Ramon's bed, small sounds but heavy. The sound of someone moving in bed was always a heavy sound, as if the bed wouldn't let go. Then the feel of it spread to the kitchen and Port sat very still, feeling the weight grow in the room, and he didn't move because he was balancing it.

  He had imagined this differently, his coming in, the first words, and then what Shelly would do. He was going to say, “Now, Shelly,” and that's all he would have to say for her to know what came next—she would just go with him, and that would be their beginning.

  Port wiped his hand across his mouth and went back into the room where Ramon was.

  “I'm going home to get my bags,” said Port. “When Shelly comes in tell her I'll pick her up.”

  “Like hell.”

  Port controlled himself, remembering that the man was sick.

  “Just tell her.”

  “I'll tellyou something,” said Ramon. “I don't pimp for my sister.”

  Port could make out Ramon's face by the light from the kitchen, but with Ramon's face disfigured it was hard to tell what he felt at the moment. He hadn't sounded just tough, the way he must have meant it. Perhaps it was the pain and the fever. Mostly fever.

  It was long after midnight, and Port made good time. When he got to the building he took the stairs up because it felt faster, and when he saw the light under his door he started to run. It explained Ramon's answers; he hadn't known where Shelly was. Port opened the door.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  “NOW THAT YOU'RE here, close the door,” said Bellamy.

  Port closed the door.

  Kirby was there with a gun in his hand, and Judge Paternik was sitting on the bed.

  “You can put the gun away, Kirby. He doesn't carry one,” said Bellamy.

  Kirby did, and then Port started to tremble.

  “You might as well hear all of it, Port,” Bellamy turned to the judge. “You want to tell him?”

  “Perhaps you should ask him first,” said the judge.

  Bellamy shrugged. “Port, I've asked you often, I've asked you nice. You're staying in town, working for me.”

  There was a tight knot of hate inside Port's chest, and he held it there, sweating, 'til he could use it.

  “No answer, Daniel?”

  “Why don't you take a flying...”

  “Shut up, you crazy hood!”

  It felt very much like the mood in Ramon's kitchen, with the growing weight pressing down har
d. There was something here, something very big, like the foreboding before a dream turns into a nightmare.

  “I've got you dead to rights this time.”

  “What?” said Port, and he sounded hoarse.

  “Judge?” and Bellamy raised his eyebrows.

  “It was murder,” said the judge.

  Port felt his limp arms and very heavy hands. As a rational man he would not have believed this; he might even have laughed. But he wasn't that. He heard what the judge had said.

  “I saw you do it, Port. I witnessed the crime, which I will detail to the police.”

  “Unless you join up,” said Bellamy, but Port didn't hear him.

  The judge said, “Why haven't I done so yet? Very simple, Mr. Port. I too have a heart condition, and as a consequence of the murder I witnessed I could have stayed only upon jeopardy of my health.”

  “You're sewed up.”

  “Now, in detail,” said the judge. “I walked in at the end of a quarrel—it was the shouting which had attracted my attention—and saw you deliver a powerful blow to the back of Stoker's head. I will say that having witnessed this, it is my opinion, no matter what the immediate cause of death, I feel that if this isn't murder, the law is a farce!”

  Kirby half sat on the windowsill, arms folded, grinning. Bellamy sat hunched forward now, with his shoulders more massive because of his pose; and the judge sat upright and gave Port a clear glance. The white hair was as imposing as ever, the full eyebrows gave depth to his eyes, and the old mouth was in a settled line, not severe, but contained.

  “Why—” said Port. He was looking at the judge. “Why you?”

  “Didn't you know?” said Bellamy. “The judge heads up the Reform Party.”

  They gave it a chance to sink in. They watched Port open his mouth without making a sound, and when he closed it they felt he was done. Nothing showed in his face, nothing moved, only his hands started to rub up and down the sides of his pants.

  “You see it now?” asked Bellamy.

  Port saw nothing. He only felt mat they could do anything, that they had everything, but he saw nothing. They had the powerful, big Bellamy, the name and brain of Paternik, gun-happy Kirby, big-dreaming Ramon—everything.