Johnny Liddell had a second drink and waited. There was no further sign of Crew Cut. He leaned his back against the bar, studied the activity going on throughout the room, but could detect no signs of anybody paying him special attention.
“I guess we might just as well go on upstairs,” he murmured to Muggsy. “When that character took off with such a fever, I figured we were going to get some action. But it wouldn’t take this long.” He checked his watch, determined over fifteen minutes had passed since Murray had headed for the game room.
“Should we have another drink?” Muggsy wanted to know.
Liddell considered it, shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’m not very partial to Mickey Finns.” He glanced down the bar to where the barman stood polishing glasses. “Maybe they’ve decided to be subtle about getting rid of us.” He laid a bill down on the bar, caught the girl by the arm, and headed for the staircase.
The game room advertised itself by a low, tense murmur of conversation, spiced by the occasional chatter of roulette balls. At the far end of the room, a portable bar had been set up. There were three craps tables, two roulette setups, and along the wall a string of one-armed bandits stood with a metal arm raised in salute.
Liddell stood in the entrance to the room, glanced around. Sergeant Murray was standing at a craps table near a short hallway that ran toward the rear of the building. Crew Cut was nowhere in sight.
Liddell and Muggsy walked over to the table. He slid a fifty across to the cashier, accepted three red chips and four whites in return. He found a place at the table, contented himself with laying it on the points with the man at his side.
He had run his stack to a pile of seven reds and nine whites when a man in a tuxedo tapped him on the shoulder.
“Are you Liddell?” he asked, in a low, flat voice.
“Yeah.”
“Would you mind stepping into the office? Mr. Dongan would like to talk to you. Mr. Dongan operates the house.” He said it as if operating the house was the next thing to being God.
Liddell handed his chips over to Muggsy, flicked a glance at Murray. The plain-clothes man gave no sign of having seen the byplay, leaned over to toss a white chip on the Don’t Pass line. When he straightened up, his eyes brushed past Liddell, managed a suspicion of a wink.
The office was at the end of the short corridor leading from the craps table. Murray had made certain to take up a position where he could see anybody who came to or left the office.
The man with the tuxedo knocked on the door stenciled “Private,” and waited. After a moment, it was opened by Crew Cut, who dismissed the tuxedoed guard with a nod. The room itself was comfortably furnished with large easy chairs, a few tables scattered around, and illumination was provided entirely by lamps, giving the room a warm, intimate glow.
Lou Dongan sat sprawled in an easy chair, his feet propped up on a small table. His partner, Mike Davey, sat behind a large, highly polished desk under a draped wall that concealed a second entrance to the room.
Dongan waved lazily to Liddell as he walked in. “I’m sorry I wasn’t around when you got here, Liddell.” His smile plowed white trenches in the tan of his cheek. “I was afraid you might think there were some hard feelings if I didn’t come over and say hello.”
“Why should there be hard feelings?” Liddell wanted to know.
The white-haired man’s eyes flicked to Crew Cut. “I don’t think we’ll need you, Sammy.” He dismissed him casually. “I’ll ring you if I want you.”
Sammy withdrew without a word, closing the door after him.
Dongan waved Liddell to a chair. “Sit down and make yourself comfortable.” He laced his fingers across his chest. “You’ve been a pretty busy guy these past few days.”
Liddell dropped into a chair, nodded. “I manage to keep busy.”
Mike Davey stirred uneasily on his desk chair. “What are you trying to do to us, Liddell? You heard they knocked out our plane setup? You setting this place up for a knock over, too?”
“Why should I do that, Mike?” Liddell noticed that the years had made a lot of changes in Mike Davey. The lean wolfishness of his face was blurred by an overlay of fat. Flat, lusterless eyes still peered from under heavily veined, thickened eyelids, but the discolored sacs that buttressed them discounted the old menace.
“You tell us,” Davey snapped.
“Maybe I don’t like having a half-baked meat ball like your boy outside dropping by my office to lean on me.”
“That was a mistake,” Dongan conceded. “We thought a friendly hint might be enough.” He studied his fingernails, polished them on his sleeve. “Apparently, it wasn’t.” He rolled his eyes upward; his lips peeled back from a perfect set of teeth. “I wish it had been. For both our sakes.”
“You don’t give up easily, do you, Lou? When the kid layes an egg on his assignment, you send two guns. That wasn’t smart at all.”
Davey stared at his partner. Dongan raised his shoulders in a shrug, and the smile furrowed his cheeks again. “You ought to try a psychiatrist, Johnny, I think maybe you’re developing things. Persecution complexes.” He reached over to a humidor, picked out two cigars. He held one up to Liddell, drew a shake of the head. His partner nodded, he tossed him one. “Maybe what you need is a nice long rest.” He bit off the end of the cigar and spat it at a wastebasket. “We might even be willing to make a donation toward it.”
“In what? Lead?”
“You’re talking crazy, Liddell.” Mike Davey chewed on the end of his unlit cigar angrily. “You think we got nothing on our mind but hits? We got a big business here. We got no time for muscle. We’re trying to reason with you like good guys. Keep your nose out of our business. We don’t want nothing from you, you stay away from us.”
Dongan nodded. “That’s about the way it shapes up, Liddell. We don’t want any trouble, but that doesn’t say we won’t handle it if we have to. Muscle is bad for business, you know that.” He waved toward the door. “We need a boy like Sammy, sure, but you notice we get a kid that adds class to the joint instead of looking like a meat ball.” He touched a match to his cigar, drew a mouthful of smoke, blew it at the ceiling in a blue-gray feathery stream. “There are two ways to do everything — the easy way and the hard way. Don’t make us do it the hard way.”
“Nobody likes trouble, Dongan. You should have thought of that before you had Lane knocked off.”
The smile froze on Dongan’s lips; a pinched look crept into his eyes. “I told you I don’t know the girl. Going around making cracks like that’s no way to break a hundred.” He rolled the cigar between his thumb and forefinger, testing its firmness. “Nobody can break my alibi for the night she was killed. Or Mike’s either, for that matter.”
“Maybe not. But there’s a guy around this town was hired to knock me off by the guy who killed Lane. I’ll be seeing that guy any hour now, and when I do, he’s going to tell me who hired him.”
Dongan flicked a tiny gray particle of ash from his trousers, didn’t look up.
“It doesn’t matter very much what murder a guy gets burned for, Dongan.” Liddell continued. “It all adds up the same way that last night in the death house. You die a thousand times before the juice ever hits you.”
“Sounds monotonous,” Dongan rolled his eyes upward.
“Final, too.”
“Why don’t we stop horsing and get down to cases, Lou?” Mike Davey growled. “This guy is costing us plenty of grief. Sweet talking’s going to get us nowhere.” His heavy-lidded eyes settled on Liddell. “Like I said, we got an important business, shamus, and we don’t like muscle. That don’t mean we don’t have it. Classy operation or no classy operation, we’re taking care of ourselves in the clinches.” He got up, walked around the desk, stood in front of Liddell. “Act as smart as you think you are, shamus, and leave us alone.”
“O.K. You back my play by telling the Jersey cops how much in diamonds was really in that house that night — ”
Dongan snorted. “You’re crazy. You think after all the trouble I took to stay clear of that mess I’m going to walk into it up to my armpits just to make you look good?”
“I just thought I’d ask,” Liddell grinned. “I knew the answer before I did.” He looked from Davey to his partner and back. “You talk about doing things the hard way? I haven’t even started. You don’t know what it feels like to be leaned on by a guy that’s really loaded. And as soon as I uncover the hopped-up meat ball that tried to take me, I’ll be loaded for bear.”
Mike Davey’s eyes narrowed to thin slits. He walked to the door, yanked it open, and Crew Cut walked in.
“Get this bum out of here,” Davey snarled. “Make sure he don’t come back.”
Dongan shook his head sadly, touched the tips of his fingers together in front of his chest. “You’re a hard guy to get along with, Liddell. You can’t blame Mike, you know. How long do you think he can put up with you throwing monkey wrenches into his operation?”
Crew Cut pulled his hand from his pocket. An ugly snub-nosed .38 was clenched in his big fist. “Come on, mister. You knew you were gambling over your head when you came here. You just lost.”
Liddell grinned bleakly. “Maybe, but I hedged the bet a little.”
Dongan looked interested. “Meaning?”
“I left a friend out at the craps table — ”
Hodges grinned. “A very pretty one, too. I’ll be glad to take care of her for you.”
“She’s a reporter for the Dispatch.”
“Miss Kiely?” Dongan’s smile faded; a little V-shaped wrinkle appeared between his eyes. “That is a little awkward,” he conceded.
“And a sergeant from Homicide on the Jersey police force is also out there waiting for me.” He grinned at Davey. “He’s at the table right at the end of the corridor. You can’t miss him, Mike. He has cop written all over him.”
Davey looked to his partner. “I’ll go out and take a look.” Dongan nodded.
Davey was back in a minute. He tore the cigar from between his teeth, bounced it off the floor. “There’s a guy there looks like a cop, all right. And he’s keeping his eyes on the entrance to the office.” He walked over, stood in front of Liddell. “You lousy bastard, I ought to — ”
Liddell lashed out with his heel, caught the big man in the shin. Davey let out a howl and went down in a heap.
His partner smiled patiently at Liddell. “Up to now, it hasn’t been anything personal with Mike. Now, if I were you, I’d watch out.”
Liddell got up from his chair, ignored the menace of the .38 in Hodges’ hand. “Look, Dongan, I’ve been sitting here listening to you guys tell me how tough you are and what’s going to happen to me. I’ve been listening because I’ve been waiting for one of you to spill something I want to hear. But now I’m fed up with hearing what’s going to happen to me. You start listening to what’s going to happen to you — ” He walked over to Dongan. Crew Cut slipped up behind him, jabbed the .38 in his back. He caught Liddell by the arm, tried to swing him around.
Liddell pivoted, chopped down at the wrist of the gun hand. With his free hand, he caught the guard under the chin with the heel of his own hand, slammed him back against the wall. Crew Cut slid to a sitting position and raised the .38.
“Put up the gun, Sammy,” Dongan barked. He looked to Liddell. “Get out while you can still walk, shamus.”
Crew Cut’s hand shook, his knuckle was white on the trigger. He got himself under control with difficulty. Liddell grinned at him, deliberately turned his back.
“I’ll walk out of here any time I want, Dongan. I’m going to give you all the chances you want to try for me outside. Only one of us is going to walk away from it when you do, because the next time one of your cheap stooges tries and misses, I’m declaring open season on you.”
The ever present smile had drained completely from Dongan’s face. He stared at Liddell for a moment, dropped his eyes, fumbled with his cigar. “Let him go, Sammy.” He feigned indifference to Liddell’s threat. “Nothing happens to him while he’s in the place.”
“Gee, thanks,” Liddell grunted. He flicked a glance at Crew Cut, grinned. “You were right, Mike. Times have changed when you have to hire a half-baked muscle man to protect you. In the old days, you were a hard man.”
Davey was on his feet. He was tenderly massaging his damaged shinbone. A muscle twitched under his left eye maddeningly. The eyes were almost lost behind the puffiness under them.
“You’re crazy, Liddell.” He hit himself in the chest with the side of his hand. “I’m Mike Davey. I eat guys like you for breakfast. Nobody has to take care of me.”
“You could fool me,” Liddell told him. He watched the bad eye twitch, caught the faint flicker of fear in both. He walked toward Mike, oblivious of the man with the gun in back of him. “What’re you sweating about, Mike?”
Davey took an involuntary step backward. He swabbed at his damp upper lip with the back of his hand. “Don’t push your luck, shamus. So you got a cop outside. He can be taken care of, too.”
“You’ve lost it, haven’t you, Mike?” Liddell grinned at the fat man. “You’ve lost it inside. It’s not like the old days when you were hungry. Now you’re getting fat and soft. You’re afraid they’re measuring you for the fall, aren’t you, Mike?”
“Get him out of here,” Davey roared at the man with the gun.
Hodges looked to Dongan for instructions; the white-haired man shook his head. “Not here.” He glared at Liddell, got up, caught him by the arm. “O.K., shamus, so you’ve made your declaration of war. You know where we stand, too. We’ve had all the pressure from you we’re taking.” He met Liddell’s stare. “Sure, you’re tough. But they never came so tough they couldn’t be hit. Maybe you can take the first one or the second one that tries for you. But sooner or later, you can be hit.”
Liddell grinned, nodded. “Maybe. But you should live so long. Because when the first one doesn’t make it, you’re going to have company. And you won’t have to get up to let me out when I leave. The next time I come visiting, you won’t be on your feet when I leave.”
He turned, pushed Hodges out of the way, walked unhurriedly out the door, and returned to the craps table. Muggsy had run the chips into a sizable pile of reds and whites. She studied Liddell’s face inquiringly as he rejoined her.
“Everything O.K.?”
Liddell nodded. He winked at Murray and picked up the stack of chips and headed for the cashier’s desk. After a moment, Murray joined him there. He pushed a small pile of chips through, accepted some bills in return.
“I was beginning to worry,” he told Liddell.
“You’ve got plenty of company. Let’s get out of here fast. I think I lighted a fire under Dongan and company.” He led the way out of the gaming room and down the stairs. They ransomed their coats from the checkroom, headed for the street.
“What’s the pitch?” Murray wanted to know as they descended the stairs to the street. “Why the rush?”
“Just a hunch. I threw a scare into Dongan about the gun that tried for me last night. He has his muscle boy in there with him and if he knows where that gun is hidden out, he’ll try to get rid of him.”
Murray nodded. “What do we do?”
“We try to follow Hodges if he shows. We stake the place out.”
Murray looked around, noted that all the houses were connected. “If we keep an eye on this door, that should do it.”
Liddell shook his head. “Davey’s an old bootlegger. He probably has more exits to that place than you’ve got hairs on your head. Dongan came in by another door while we were watching the entrance to the office.”
“How do you know?”
“He said so. That’s why they left us alone so long. Davey sent for him. He got in without going through the game room. Hodges can get out the same way.”
“How do you suggest we handle it?”
“We can keep an eye on this door, but let’s make sure he doesn’t have an exit that runs through a couple of these houses and comes out up the block. There’s some kind of escape hatch in that game room.” He pinched at his nostrils. “I wonder if it feeds into an alley that opens on the block behind?”
“I’ll stay here,” Murray volunteered. “You have a look back there. If for any reason we don’t make contact tonight, I’ll reach you at your office in the morning.”
The doorman walked down the stairs. “Want a cab, mister?”
Liddell nodded, watched the Jersey detective walk off, melt into the shadows of one of the areaways up the street. The doorman stood in the street, blew a whistle, and a cab materialized from around the corner.
Liddell helped Muggsy into the back seat, dropped in beside her. For the benefit of the doorman, he gave Muggsy’s address on Central Park. When the cab roared away from the curb, he leaned forward, asked the cabby to circle the block and drop him around the corner. Over Muggsy’s protestations, he ordered the driver to take her to her apartment.