It was teeming down outside, pattering a racket on the Dodge’s canopy. Sitting in the open cab, staring back at Hannigan’s, Tom was thinking too hard to care about the rain squalling in on him. He didn’t have two hundred and fifty bucks, and wouldn’t give it to Madden if he had. As soon as he clapped eyes on him, he knew he wasn’t right for Taylor: too short, too young, wrong build for the description given by the witnesses. Nor did he appear to smoke. After speaking with him, he was convinced. Sure, he was good at the tough-guy act, but Tom had met a few killers in his time and he wouldn’t have ranked this yellow-head street rat in their number. Not for a thought-out job anyway. If Madden was in the dope business – and there was no reason to doubt it – it had to be storefront, selling goods on for someone bigger, taking a cut. That way, it even made sense he was anxious to get out of town. If the cops were sniffing around and he really had been dumb enough to trade punches with Taylor, it couldn’t stay a secret for much longer. He would know in his bones that a small fish like him would fry up nicely if the DA needed someone quick in the pan.
One other thing seemed certain: Madden would not take him to Miss Normand. Not knowingly, anyhow. Either he was awaiting Tom’s return with the intention of getting him somewhere quiet to rob him at gunpoint, or it was a ruse to get rid of him and he planned to hightail it out of Hannigan’s just as soon as Tom was gone. That had to be the more likely, because he would have insisted on going with him to get the money otherwise, to be sure he didn’t bring any cops back. If Madden really did know where Normand was holed up, he would have cottoned on, too, that he could squeeze a lot more than two hundred and fifty bucks out of her to stay quiet about it if she really didn’t want to be found. One way or another, Tom was expecting to see Madden walk out that door any second. And he was ready to follow him, on four wheels or on foot.
But Madden didn’t emerge. After twenty minutes or so, Tom was starting to think he might need to reassess his plan when he saw a pair of yellow headlamps cleaving up the dark street towards him. He slid low on the bench seat, watching as a dark, fully enclosed Packard tourer pulled up across from the speak. It didn’t so much park as sit there, lights doused, engine running, steam rising from the hood as it idled in the rain. Another minute passed, slow as a dirge. Then a wedge of light angled out across the sidewalk as Hannigan’s door opened and Madden – he was wearing a hat, but it was him for sure – emerged into the street. Buttoning his jacket against the rain, Madden pulled his brim down and ran across to the waiting tourer. One foot on the running board, he leaned in to speak to someone in the back through an open window. Tom strained to hear but was too far away, the hiss of the rain and rumble of the engine baffling the voices.
He had to know what they were saying. Sliding across the seat, he eased the door open and dropped on to the sidewalk. Crab-like, he scuttled along in the shadow of the auto in front of his, and the next, until he ran out of autos and slipped into the deep recessed porch of Bergmann’s shoe store, keeping the Packard in sight through the curving plate glass of the display windows. By now he could hear Madden’s voice raised in argument, and saw him begin to walk away, gesticulating angrily and cursing. The only other word Tom thought he caught was – could it be? – ‘Taylor’.
What happened next was so fast he only recalled it later in magnesium-bright fragments: Madden striding back across the street, the Packard’s headlamps flaring, the auto pulling away, the sheen of a long-barrel revolver nosing out the open window. Stepping out from the porch, for Tom, was an act of pure instinct. As was his shout of warning. But the yell only confused Madden, who swung round, panicked eyes fixing on Tom emerging from the shadows, and only then looking back over his shoulder, too late, catching nothing but muzzle flash.
The first round thumped into Madden’s back by his left shoulder blade, sending him into a spin that halted abruptly when a second blew a dark gout of blood from his chest and he catapulted back as though his feet had been sliced from under him. The third slug smacked into his skull as he fell, the back of his head evaporating in a spray of red rain as his body attempted one last mid-air convulsion.
Tom dived as the Packard came level, loosing off at him now. He did his best to become one with the sidewalk as a couple of shots hit the storefront behind, and the plate glass shattered and fell, crashing to the paving in shimmering cascades all around. Above the crystal din, he strained to distinguish the Packard’s engine. If it stopped, he’d have to get up and run for cover elsewhere. But the roaring motor passed on, a squeal of tires on the wet street signaling a corner turned. He stayed down. Stayed down until all he heard was the rain again, a hissing on the street broken only by his own heartbeat and the pop and crash of falling glass.
Only then did he drag himself up from the ground, standing as best he could and using the hood of the nearest automobile for support. He patted himself down, examining his limbs and torso for injury or rupture, shaking glass and rain from his coat. He was unscathed but for a graze on his left wrist where he’d hit the sidewalk awkwardly and a bloody scratch on his right knee, the worst of which was a four-inch rip to a good pair of suit pants.
He was OK. He didn’t need to look to tell the same could not be said for Madden. But look he did, unable to keep his eyes from the rain-spattered heap lying sprawled in an expanding stain of blood, his narrow frame contorted beyond nature and any possibility of life. As Tom stumbled over to the body, he became aware of other presences on the street now, peering down from unlit windows, out from cautiously opening doors. A burble of shocked and excited voices leaked from the light-filled doorway of Hannigan’s, the raw, stupefied ‘Jesus Cwyst, Jesus Cwyst’ of the ancient doorman joining the muttering figures spilling into the street, circling the dead body at a distance.
Still shaking as if the ground was moving under him, Tom looked up and around and shouted as best he could.
‘For pity’s sake, stop gawking and somebody call the cops.’