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The same March, 1959 issue of Guilty that included “Keep Away From My Daughter” also brought to the world Dan Malcolm’s “One Night of Violence,” a longish story that I wrote in .September, 1958. My records show that I turned it in under the title, “Violent Night,” which Scottie changed because, I guess, it sounded too much like a dark version of a Christmas carol. It was one of those rare occasions when his title change was an improvement, and I maintain it here.
Note that the gangster in this story bears the familiar name of “Coppola.” Familiar now, that is, but in 1958 I had never heard of the future director of The Godfather, because Francis Ford Coppola was a mere 19 years old then, still in college dreaming dreams of the UCLA film school. I suppose I picked the name out of thin air. (Around the same time, I named the protagonist of one of my sciencefiction novels “Ted Kennedy,” no resemblance intended, because the future senator from Massachusetts was just 26, and though his older brother was beginning to make himself visible on the national political scene, Teddy himself was at that point working for his law degree at Harvard. It’s a risk that writers face—having some character in a story he wrote a couple of eons ago turn out to have the same name as someone who will be very famous, eventually, but not quite yet.
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ONE NIGHT OF VIOLENCE
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It was past six in the evening when Mike Keller finished up the last stop of the day. By that time the sun was long since down, because it was a cold, chilly October day in central Wisconsin. Time to knock off for the day, Keller thought. He was a salesman, making the rounds for a furnace company. This was the first day of his regular three-day sales trip through the middle of the state.
He had covered a lot of ground that day, since he had started out bright and early in Fond du Lac. He was well into Columbia County, and the day had been pretty successful. Keller felt good about things, all factors considered. He enjoyed traveling around, talking to new people and getting to know them, getting them, to like him and buy from him. And the job paid well. The only part about it that he didn’t like was that he had to spend too much time away from Beth and the kids, making these long jaunts across Wisconsin and sleeping alone in cold, drafty motels instead of home with his wife.
But it was a good job, and after a few more years on the road they would give him a post in the home office, paying maybe ten or twelve thousand a year, and from then on everything would be swell.
Keller finished saying good-bye to his last customer of the day and climbed into his Oldsmobile. He hit the road, steaming along the flat, straight highway at an effortless mph. His traveling schedu1e called for him to spend the night at a place called Wofford’s Motel, on Route 16 near Wyocena. In the morning, he’d continue along Route 16, making some stops in Portage and Wisconsin Dells, then cutting south through Sauk County.
He stopped off at a road-house a few miles from the motel and ate a light supper, just some bean soup, frankfurters and beans, and coffee. When he was on the road, he usually ate his big meal at noontime. That gave him the extra energy to get through the day. When he was finished eating, he drove along the highway till he reached the turnoff that led to Wofford’s Motel.
Usually, when he was on this route, he stopped at a place called Hickman’s, two or three miles further along the road. But Hickman’s tended to be a little stingy with the steam heat, and the rent was high. So a friend had suggested this other motel, Wofford’s, and Keller decided to give it a try.
–
It looked just like a million other motels, when he drove up to it about quarter to eight that evening. It was one story high, a long rambling place spread out in the shape of a big letter “L,” with a concrete motor-court filling in the middle. A dozen or so cars were parked in the motor-court, but the place didn’t look anywhere near full.
Keller turned off the roadway, pulled his car into a vacant parking spot, and doused the motor. He took his small traveling suitcase from the back seat and trudged over to the neon-decorated doorway that said “OFFICE.”
A tired-looking middle-aged man was sitting back of the desk reading a Milwaukee paper. He looked up at Keller without expression.
“Yes?”
“I sent you a postcard last week, making a reservation for tonight. The name’s Michael Keller.”
Slowly, the desk man unlimbered himself and riffled through a reservation book. While he looked for Keller’s card he said, “You sure didn’t need to bother with a reservation tonight, fella. Damn if we have more than fifteen rooms full outa sixty.”
Keller shrugged. “Guess I’m a cautious type that’s all. This time of year I like to know I got a room. I wouldn’t want to have to go cruising around looking for one, late at night.”
“Here we are,” the clerk muttered, pulling Keller’s card out of the book. “Okay. Room 23, nine bucks for the night. That okay?”
Grinning, Keller said, “Nine bucks will have to be okay, won’t it?” He took the key, picked up his suitcase, and headed across the paved walkway to the door numbered 23.
He let himself in.
It wasn’t a bad room at all, on the small side, but he didn’t mind that. A single bed with a blue coverlet, a couple of chairs, a dresser, a neat little bathroom. There was a radio, but no television set. The room was nice and warm. Keller made a mental note to add this place to his list of good motels, for use whenever he happened to come through this section.
He unpacked and went through the little ritual of taking the framed photos of his wife and kids out and setting them up on the dresser. He did this wherever he went. He put his wife Beth’s photo in the middle, surrounding it with the snaps of six-year-old Jeanie, four-year-old Tom, and Dannie, the baby.
Next thing he did was to take some motel stationery out of the dresser drawer. He wrote, as always, a postcard to Beth. He would mail it first thing in the morning at the next town he stopped at, and she would get it the day after. He would be home late the night on which she received the postcard, but she always looked forward to the card anyway. He wrote simply that he had had a good day, hoped for equal good luck tomorrow, and that he sent his love to her and to the kids. He stuck a stamp on the postcard and set it aside.
He unpacked the book he was reading, took off his shoes, and sprawled in the armchair to read. One good thing about this job, he thought, was that he got time to do plenty of reading. For the first time in his life he could read some good books and improve himself. On this trip he was carrying a book by Zola. The last time out, it had been a book about the Revolutionary War.
The time was half past eight. Keller planned to read till about eleven, maybe eleven-thirty if he got really wrapped up in what he was reading. Then lights out, with the little alarm clock set for six-thirty ayem. Breakfast at seven, after a shower and a shave, and then, by eight, the first stop of the second day’s route. He would make a big curving swing south through the Sac Prairie country, then start heading around on the homeward leg along Route 151 through Madison and back to Fond du Lac.
He started to get involved in the book, and time passed rapidly. Soon it was quarter after nine. Feeling thirsty, Keller laid the book aside and poured a drink of water for himself.
He heard the sound of a door slamming nearby. Then, footsteps and voices. The walls weren’t very thick at this motel, apparently. He could hear the muffled sound of people speaking.
Then he heard something else. A woman’s voice—she was screaming. The scream was cut short abruptly. It was as if a hand had been clapped suddenly over her mouth.
Keller frowned. It’s none of my business, he told himself. He was a married man with three kids. It didn’t make sense to butt into somebody else’s quarrel.
But still, he was right next door. Maybe someone was getting hurt. He put his shoes on and went outside.
–
He paused for a second outside the adjoining room, Room 24, trying to make up his mind. He could hear a couple of low masculine voices inside, and a steady quiet female sobbing sound. The sensible thing would be to turn around and go back into his own room and forget the whole thing. Or else to phone the desk clerk and let him go investigate the scream.
But almost before he knew what he was doing, Keller reached out and knocked at the door of Room 24.
The door opened almost instantly. A lean-faced man with piercing eyes glared out at Keller. The man was about Keller’s own height, five feet ten inches.
“Yeah? What is it?”
“Pardon me for intruding,” Keller said mildly. “I’m in the room next door. I heard someone cry out, a couple of minutes ago, and I wondered if there was any way I could help—”
“Yeah,” said the lean-faced man. He grinned, showing wolfish yellow teeth. “You could help out. Yeah.”
Suddenly he reached out and caught Keller by the collar of his shirt. He yanked the salesman into the room with one quick jerk. Keller was too surprised to do anything but tumble inward.
The door slammed shut behind him and he heard the lock click. In his first puzzled moment he looked around at the group that faced him.
He saw the gun first. He knew enough about guns to recognize it was a .357 Magnum that, at this distance, could blow a hole through him big enough to fit a cat through.
The man holding the gun was sitting in the armchair, legs crossed. He was a pudgy-looking, greasy-faced man with glossy black hair.
The girl was on the bed. She was a blonde, in her early twenties. She was wearing only a brassiere and a slip. She had been tied up with strips torn from her dress and her blouse, and one side of her face was puffing up where someone had hit her.
The lean-faced man was standing by the door. There was a third man in the room, a good-looking fair-haired kid of twenty or twenty-one. He was sitting on the bed, ready to clap his hand over the girl’s mouth if she tried to yell again.
Keller felt his knees go watery. He was thirty-four, so he had been old enough to be drafted in World War II, but he had spent the whole war policing a prisoner-of-war camp in Colorado, and this was the first time in his life anyone had ever pointed a gun at him and meant it. He wanted to sit down, but there was no place to sit.
He said, “Look here, guys, I don’t want any trouble; I don’t know what you’re up to, but I’m a married man with kids and I want out.”
“Shut up,” said the man with the gun.
“I’ll go back to my room and forget I ever came in here,” Keller pleaded. “I don’t want to get mixed up in—”
“Shut up,” said the man with the gun a second time. The big gun twitched meaningfully in a little circle and came to rest in a dead line with Keller’s forehead. Keller gulped and decided not to say anything further just now. The girl on the bed was staring at him oddly, almost with sympathy. Keller wondered what this caper was all about. He wished fervently that he had minded his own business and not tried to play Boy Scout.
“Raise your hands high up in the air,” the fat man with the gun commanded thinly.
Keller obeyed without a word. The hard-looking man who had pulled him inside approached him and efficiently frisked him from shoulders to hips.
“He’s clean,” the hard-faced man reported.
“Good,” the fat man commented. He stared at Keller. “Okay. When you stuck your face in here a minute ago, you asked if you could help. Well, the answer is yes. You can help us quite a bit.”
–
Keller stood stiffly erect, feeling tremendously uncomfortable. He thought of his book lying face down in his own room, only a few feet away. He thought of Beth, many miles to the east. By now all the children would be asleep. Beth would be in the living-room, listening to the radio, sewing, maybe. Perhaps Nora Matthews from next door had come to visit her. Certainly Beth was not at all likely to suspect that at this moment her husband was looking down the barrel of a deadly .357 Magnum.
“How can I help you?” Keller asked.
“You know what a Judas goat is?” asked the plump, greasy-faced man.
Keller nodded jerkily. “The Judas goat is the one that leads the rest of the herd to slaughter,” he said in an uneven voice.
“Yeah. That’s right. Well, we want you to be our Judas goat for us. It’s nice and convenient that you dropped in just when you did. Saved us the trouble of looking around for a fellow to help us out.”
“Just what do you want me to do?” Keller asked. “Who are you, anyway? What’s going on here?”
The greasy-faced man said, “My name is Johnny Coppola. Does that mean anything to you?”
“No. Should it?”
“Depends on how law-abiding you are,” Coppola said.
“Plenty,” Keller said.
“Then you ain’t likely to know me. But everyone in Chicago does. I’ve got a few—uh—business enterprises down in Chicago. These men are two of my associates. Three more of my associates are registered in other rooms of this motel.”
Chicago gangsters, Keller said to himself. His throat was terribly dry.
“As for the girl,” Coppola went on, “her name happens to be Peggy Ryan. She keeps company with a cheap hood name of Mike Fitzpatrick. You know Fitzpatrick?”
Keller shook his head.
Coppola shrugged. “Fitzpatrick is also a Chicago operator. But he happens to be up in this neighborhood right now, because two days ago someone kidnapped his girlfriend Peggy and someone else sent him an anonymous tip that she had been taken up into middle Wisconsin.”
Keller looked at the girl on the bed. Her hands were tied behind her back, and her ankles were tied together. Her face was full, her lips moist and sensual. Hatred smoldered in her eyes. She had high round breasts and long, creamy legs.
Coppola said, “Fitzpatrick is looking for his girlfriend and he wants her back real hard. He and his boys are in a hotel in Portage, a few miles up the road. And here’s where you come in. We sort of want you to drive up to Portage and find Mike Fitzpatrick, and tell him where his girlfriend is. Tell him that she was abandoned by her kidnappers and that she wants him to come pick her up. That’s all you have to do.”
“And then what happens?”
“To you, nothing. You go away and forget you ever came here tonight.”
“But to Mike Fitzpatrick? It’s a trap for him, isn’t it?” Keller asked. “I lure him down here with the girl as bait, and he comes in here all unsuspecting?”
“Yeah,” said the hard-faced man behind him. “You sort of get the picture fast, smart boy.”
Keller nodded. He didn’t give a damn if these two mobs slaughtered each other. He just wanted to get out of here, away from that cannon pointed at him, wanted to get away alive and without any holes in him.
“Okay,” Keller said. “I’ll do whatever you want me to if you’ll leave me alone afterward. You want me to go right now?”
Coppola nodded. “Yeah. You have a car, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Keller said.
“Okay. You get in your car and go up to Portage. He’s at the Bailey Hotel. You tell him that Peggy Ryan is down here at—what’s the name of this place? Wofford’s. You tell him that she was kidnapped, but her heisters got scared off when they learned that he was in the next town, and they dropped her at this motel. You tell him that she’s stuck at the motel without a dime, and the motel owner won’t let her check out and he’s watching her like a hawk, and so he has to come down in person to get her. And you give him this, just as a clincher.”
Coppola nodded and the hard-faced man handed Keller a ring. It was a diamond ring, about two carats. Keller looked at it closely. It was inscribed along the inside of the band, To Peggy from Mike, with all my love. Keller guessed that a ring like this might be worth a couple of thousand.
“Everything clear?” Coppola asked.
Keller nodded. “I’ll leave right away.”
The fat gangster grinned. “Just one more little thing. Gimme your wallet.”
“My wallet? But?”
Keller felt the hard-faced man prod him in the ribs. He took his wallet out and handed it to Coppola. He had about eighty bucks in it, but Coppola obviously wasn’t interested in the cash. He was looking through the wallet, through the card section and the photos. Keller kept snapshots of Beth and the kids in the wallet.
Finally Coppola looked up, smiling coldly. He drew Keller’s social-security card from the wallet and handed everything else back to Keller. He said, “Okay, Mr. Mike Keller of 404 Maple Avenue, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. I see you got a wife and three kids. That’s nice.”
“What are you getting at?” Keller asked edgily.
“I just want some insurance. I want to make sure you won’t just get into your car and drive away and never come back. And I want to make sure you don’t louse us up by tipping off Fitzpatrick.”
“I won’t try any funny stuff,” Keller promised.
“You better not. Because in case you never go to Fitzpatrick, or in case you call the cops, or in case you pull some other stunt? If you try any of that, Mr. Mike Keller, and anybody in my gang should survive this night, you’re going to regret it. I know where you live, now. I know you got a family. And if you try to cross me Keller, I’ll see to it that you and your family get hunted down and wiped out, one by one. First your kids and then your wife, and you last of all. You got that straight?”
“Don’t worry. I won’t cross you.” Keller’s voice was hoarse-sounding. He was no more of a coward than the next guy, but this kind of threat shook him deeply.
“Good,” Coppola said. “Okay. Scram. Bailey’s Hotel, in Portage. And remember my warning.”
–
The hard-faced man opened the door for him, and Keller stepped out onto the little porch that ran the whole length of the motel. He gripped the railing tight and took a deep breath. His heart was thundering.
He knew he didn’t have any choice but to do what Coppola wanted. It was too risky to try calling the mobster’s bluff. He couldn’t risk the lives of Beth and the kids by notifying the police or by simply leaving the motel and vanishing. Maybe Coppola would track him down and maybe not, but there was no sense chancing it.
Keller let himself into his own room and slipped into his jacket. His book still lay where he had put it down, twenty minutes ago. He shook his head mournfully. If he hadn’t butted in where he didn’t belong, he wouldn’t be caught up in this pattern of violence and revenge now. But it was no good trying to second-guess. He had butted in; and now he was forced to be an unwilling accomplice in the ambush Johnny Coppola was planning for his gang enemy.
He took his car keys from the dresser, locked up his room, and went outside again, down the porch steps and toward his car. He saw that the door of Room 24 was slightly ajar. Although he could see no one, he was certain that the lean, hard-faced man was standing there, peering out, watching him.
Keller got behind the wheel of his car. His hand was shaking so much that he had trouble fitting the key into the ignition. But finally he got the car moving, and drove down the motel driveway and onto the main road, heading north and west toward the town of Portage.
It was no more than five miles away. A six or seven minute drive, at best. The night was quietly cold, with an almost-full moon lighting up the broad flat countryside, and a sharp sprinkling of stars overhead. The time was about quarter to ten. Back home, Beth would probably be combing out her long, lovely red-brown hair now, and getting ready for bed. He missed her tremendously.
While he was still a couple of miles from Portage, he drove up to a late-night roadhouse whose neon signs proclaimed BEER WINE WHISKEY COCKTAILS. The place was full of local kids, rocking and rolling to the strains of a booming jukebox. Keller steadied his nerves with a single shot of bourbon, then returned to the car. Ordinarily he did not drink while he was behind the wheel, but tonight, he thought, was something special. One shot wouldn’t affect his coordination much, and it would go a long way to settle the butterflies in his stomach.
A few minutes later he was in Portage, a town of about eight thousand people. He had been through the town maybe fifty times in the last few years, but he had never stayed in it overnight, and so he had no idea where the Bailey Hotel was. He pulled up at a gas station.
When the serviceman came out, Keller said, “I’m looking for the Bailey Hotel.”
“Go along Main for a while, then turn left at the third traffic light. The Bailey’s on the left-hand side of the street. You can’t miss it.”
“Thanks. Let me have three bucks’ worth in the tank, too, while you’re at it.”
While the station-man filled the gas tank, Keller jotted the amount down on his expense card with a shaky hand. The man grinned at him as Keller forked over three singles.
“Say, Mac, are you feeling okay?”
“Sure,” Keller said.
“Well, you look kinda pale to me, that’s all.”
“Just nerves,” Keller said. “Been working a rough schedule. You know how it is.”
“Yeah. Well, take it easy.”
–
Keller drove off. Not much later, he reached the third traffic light on Main, turned left and pulled his car to a halt outside the swinging sign that read BAILEY HOTEL. It was a dingy-looking place, four stories high, with a red brick front. Keller went inside.
It had the usual kind of cheap-hotel lobby—old battered armchairs, a couple of tables covered with last month’s magazines, a video set, a few big potted plants in the corners. The man at the desk was playing solitaire when Keller came up to him.
“I’m looking for a party named Fitzpatrick, from Chicago. Could you give me the room?”
The desk clerk frowned. “Don’t think we have any Fitzpatricks here. Lemme check.”
He checked. When he was through checking, he shook his head. “Sorry, nobody by that name been here all week. Maybe at Crawford’s, four blocks up.”
Keller shook his head. “Maybe Fitzpatrick isn’t here yet?” he said. He should have realized that the gangster would not have registered under his own name. “But some of his friends must have arrived. You have anyone else from Chicago here?” Keller took a wild flyer. “Mr. Smith, maybe, or Mr. Jones?”
The clerk brightened. “Yeah. Room 34, upstairs, here it is, Smith and two friends, all from Chicago. I’ll ring them and find out if they’re in. Who’s calling please?”
Keller said. “Tell them it’s Mr. Black. Tell them I’m a friend of Miss Ryan?”
“Okay. Hold on.” The clerk ambled over to the switchboard, plugged in a jack, and waited. A moment later he said, “Mr. Smith? The desk calling. A gentleman named Mr. Black is here, says he wants to see you. He says he’s a friend of Miss Ryan. Yeah, that’s right. Ryan.” There was a long pause. “He’ll be right up,” the clerk said, and broke the connection. He said to Keller, “Take the elevator over there. It’s on the third floor.”
The elevator was an old creaky affair that wheezed and moaned all the way up. Keller was glad to get out of it on the third floor.
Room 34 was right opposite the elevator. Keller knocked once and the door opened. He found himself facing a man in his early thirties, with sharp cheekbones and an ugly scar lacing diagonally across one cheek. Behind him were two other men, one heavyset and muscular, the other smaller and thinner. The air of the room was gray with cigarette smoke.
The one with the cheekbones said, “I’m Mr. Smith. You want to see me?”
“I have a message from Miss Ryan,” Keller said, trying to keep his voice calm. “Can I come in?”
“Sure,” the man who called himself Smith said. Keller stepped inside. He noticed that all three men were poised, ready to whip out guns at the first hint of trouble. Well, he wasn’t going to make any trouble.
He had already taken the diamond ring out and held it in the palm of his hand, so it would not be necessary for him to reach into his pockets and so possibly draw fire. He opened his hand and held the ring out.
“Does this look familiar, Mr. Smith?”
Smith’s hard eyes glared. “Where did you get that ring?” he demanded.
“Miss Ryan gave it to me to bring to you. That is, if your name isn’t Smith. She said the man I was looking for was named Fitzpatrick. Is that you?”
“Maybe,” Smith said. “But suppose you start telling me things, and tell them fast. What do you want? Why did she give you the ring? Who the hell are you, anyway?”
“I’m just an innocent bystander,” Keller said. “I’m a furnace salesman, and I pulled into this motel tonight, and ten minutes after I got settled in my room there was a knock on the door. A girl. Blonde, young. Scared-looking. She told me she’d been kidnapped by some gangsters in Chicago a couple of days ago and taken up here. That her boyfriend and his pals were on her trail. The kidnappers had found out they were being traced, and they left her at the motel and beat it. She said her boyfriend’s name was Mike Fitzpatrick, and he was staying at the Bailey Hotel in Portage, and she asked me to drive up there and take a message to him for her.”
“Why couldn’t you just drive her up here, instead of all this roundabout business?”
“She owes two days rent at the motel,” Keller said. “The owner won’t listen to any stories about kidnapping. He keeps an eye on her and won’t let her off the grounds for fear she’ll skip. But it was okay for her to send me out and have me tell you to come get her. That’s why she gave me this ring, so you’d believe me.”
Keller handed the ring to “Smith,” who looked at it once, then fingered it without looking at it. “Okay,” the man who called himself Smith said. “You came to the right guy. I’m Mike Fitzpatrick. These are some friends of mine. Where’s the motel?”
“Down near Wyocena, on Route 16. The name of the place is Wofford’s.”
“And Peggy’s, down there?”
“Yeah. In Room 24.”
“Okay,” Mike Fitzpatrick said. “Let’s get going, then. Wofford’s Motel, on Route 16. Come on.”
–
They went downstairs, the four of them, Fitzpatrick, his two fellow thugs, and Keller. Fitzpatrick’s car was out in front of the hotel—a long, slow, sleek sedan, with Illinois license plates. The car made Keller’s auto, which was two years old, look like a venerable heap.
“You drive ahead,” Fitzpatrick ordered. “We’ll follow along behind you.”
“Okay,” Keller said nervously.
He got into his own car and started it, driving back through the quiet streets of the town toward the highway. He saw the low black sedan in his rearview mirror, keeping twenty or thirty feet behind him. His hands gripped the wheel tightly. It was all like something out of a nightmare, he thought. Kidnappings, gangland vendettas, black sedans with Illinois plates.
His mind’s eye leaped ahead fifteen minutes or so, to the arrival at the motel. He could see it all clearly. Fitzpatrick and his men going up to Room 24, knocking on the door; then the door opening, the sudden unexpected blaze of gunfire, Fitzpatrick falling in a bloody heap while Coppola and his gang raced for their cars and made a getaway.
On the other hand, he pictured what would happen if through some miracle Fitzpatrick or one of his men escaped the lead fury. Certainly they would kill him, for having decoyed them into the trap. They would not care that he had had no choice; all that interested them was the fact that the salesman had led them into a deathtrap.
Keller’s jaws tightened. His face was a pale, sweating mask. Desperately, he wanted out. He desired no part in the violence yet to come; he wanted to be a dozen miles away when the first explosions of gunfire began.
In no time at all, they were approaching Wofford’s Motel. Keller glanced at his watch. Almost eleven o’clock. The few miles between the motel and Pottage had slipped by too fast. Now they were here. Now it was time for the showdown.
A new thought occurred. Suppose Coppola opened fire the moment Fitzpatrick stepped from his car? Keller was sure to get caught in the middle, that way. Bullets would be flying in every direction. It was not safe to enter the motel’s parking-court. Perhaps Coppola intended to kill him, too, just to eradicate the one witness who might be able to help the police untangle the night’s violence.
He made up his mind. He slowed his car to a halt while he was still a hundred yards from the entrance to the motel. He yanked back the handbrake and got out. Fitzpatrick’s car had stopped not far behind his. Keller walked over to the parked sedan.
Fitzpatrick was sitting in front, next to the driver. He unrolled his window and looked out. The gangster’s face was shiny with sweat. Evidently Fitzpatrick was suspicious of a trap.
“What’s going on?” the mobster demanded. “How come you stopped out here on the road?”
“The motel’s right in front of us,” Keller said. “You go on around me and drive in. I’m gonna go up the road for a cup of coffee before I go in.”
“Like hell you are, bud,” Fitzpatrick snapped. “You ain’t going for any cups of coffee right now.”
“Huh? Look here—”
“You look here. How much does the girl owe the management for two days’ rent?”
Keller was startled by the question. He stammered for a moment before saying, “Oh, eighteen or nineteen bucks, I guess.”
“Good.” Fitzpatrick peeled two crisp new ten-dollar bills from a thick roll. “This ought to cover it, then. Here. Give her the dough and tell her we’re waiting up the road for her.”
Keller stared at the two bills in his hand. He hadn’t expected Fitzpatrick to pull something like this.
“Why can’t you go in there and check her out?” Keller asked.
Fitzpatrick smiled coldly. “These days I don’t go walking in nowhere without a couple of affidavits first. How do I know this ain’t some kind of trap?”
Keller tongued his dry lips. How right you are! he thought silently. But what did he do now? He couldn’t possibly produce the girl.
“Whatsamatter?” Fitzpatrick demanded roughly, when Keller remained silent. “There is funny business going on here, ain’t there? Ain’t there?”
“No funny business,” Keller said thinly. “The girl sent me to get you.”
“Okay. Then bring her out here.”
Keller nodded helplessly. An idea struck him. He walked away, down the hundred yards of road and into the motel court. He stood behind some shrubbery for a couple of minutes, then walked out again and back to Fitzpatrick’s car.
“Well?”
“She won’t come,” Keller said. “She says she’s afraid to trust anybody. You have to go in there and get her yourself.”
Without a word, Fitzpatrick got out of his car, slamming the door hard. He walked over to Keller. With a lightning-fast motion he got one hand clamped around Keller’s throat, and shook him.
Keller made no attempt to defend himself. Not against three men with guns. He sputtered and tried to breathe.
Fitzpatrick grated, “It’s a trap, ain’t it? Coppola’s holed up there with Peggy, and he’s waiting for me to come waltzing in and get cooled. Well, I’m just as smart as he is, and maybe a little smarter! Answer me! Is it a trap or isn’t it?”
Keller made a strangling sound. Fitzpatrick released him, and Keller gasped for breath. After a minute he said, “Don’t know what you’re talking about—traps—girl asked me to drive up to Portage and—”
Fitzpatrick slapped him hard, backhand. Blood began to well from a split corner of Keller’s lower lip. The gangster said after a moment, “All right, wise guy. We’ll see whether it’s a trap or not. You’re going to spring it.”
“I’m telling you—”
“Shut up. Come on. We’ll all go walk into that motel court. You can lead the way. You can walk up to Room 24 and knock on the door. Then the door opens. If it’s a trap, you’re the first one who gets shot.” Fitzgerald gestured with his thumb. “Let’s go.”
–
The hundred yards seemed to take forever. Keller’s legs longed to fold up under him.
He knew what would happen as soon as he entered the main plaza of the motor-court leading the three gangsters. Coppola’s men would open fire. He would be cut down along with Fitzpatrick and the others. Fitzpatrick was counting on having Keller crack before they reached the entrance.
Fitzpatrick was right. Ten yards still remained when Keller said, “Hold it,” and stopped.
“You want to tell us something?” Fitzpatrick asked.
“Yeah,” Keller said, breathing heavily. “I don’t have anything to do with this. I’m just a guy who checked into the motel tonight. But you guessed right—it is a trap. Coppola, and two other guys are in Room 24 with your girl. I guess the idea is to gun you down when you go to get her. They said they’d kill my wife and children if I didn’t decoy you into it.”
Fitzpatrick’s smile was ugly. “Good thing you wised up and told us in time, pal. This switches things around a whole lot.”
He glanced at one of his companions. “Get some rope from the car, Sammy.”
The heavyset thug jogged back to the sedan, opened the trunk, and took out a coil of hemp. Returning, he and his comrade quickly trussed Keller’s legs together, then his arms, while Fitzpatrick supervised.
“This is just to keep you out of trouble for a while,” Fitzpatrick explained. “And so we can find you again later if you’ve pulled some kind of triple-cross on us. So long, sucker.”
Keller lay by the side of the road, a hundred yards from his own car, unable to move, and watched the three gangsters stealthily move toward the entrance of Wofford’s Motel. The furnace salesman was bathed in his own perspiration by now. Thoughts spun wildly through his mind, as he figured all the possibilities and tried to compute the way they would affect him.
No doubt Fitzpatrick and his men would try some kind of sneak assault on Room 24. Keller figured the different things that might happen. If Fitzpatrick and his two fellow hoods succeeded in killing the Coppola outfit, they might still come back here and kill him too, just to silence him. But if Coppola emerged the victor, he would probably go after Keller for having betrayed him—or even just to shut him up.
Either way, Keller realized coldly, he was a dead man. Whether Fitzpatrick’s side won the duel or Coppola’s. His only hope was that all of them get killed. Every last one. Only then would he be safe.
–
The road was utterly silent. No cars were coming by—not now, after eleven o’clock. Keller wondered what Fitzpatrick planned to do. Duck around back, perhaps. Or try to lure Coppola into the open.
He momentarily stopped conjecturing and fought with his bonds. They were well tied; they sliced painfully into his wrists and ankles. But he knew a little about knots. And he had strong fingers. He struggled to maneuver himself into a position where he could go to work on the ropes.
There, he thought, bending and twisting backward. His clutching fingers managed to snag the ropes binding his ankles. It was difficult work. A chill wind roared down on him. In the forty-degree weather, his hands were growing numb rapidly.
But he had an end of the rope, now, and he deftly twisted and maneuvered. He had to get free, he told himself. Had to. For Beth and the kids.
The rope gave momentarily in his hand. He took up the slack, weaved it through a loop, and suddenly he realized that he was going to get his legs free. The knot was open. It was just a matter of unwinding the tight cord, now. Around and around and around, and abruptly he could move his legs again. He paused for a moment, letting the circulation return. Then, bracing himself against a tree, he clambered to a standing position.
Hands, now. That was a tougher proposition. His wrists were pinioned behind his back, and it was impossible for him to reach the cord with his fingers. He looked around, hoping to find something he could use to sever the cord with. Rub it against a tree-trunk? That might take forever before the friction weakened the rope. But there had to be some way. He had to get free. His heart pounded mercilessly. Five minutes had passed since the Fitzpatrick outfit had entered the motel grounds. What was happening? Why was it so silent?
The car, Keller thought in sudden triumph.
Fitzpatrick’s sedan was parked just behind his own car. Breathless, Keller ran to it. It was as he thought. The sleek sedan sported a hood ornament—a streamlined torpedo shape that came to a sharp point!
Keller approached the mobster’s car, back first. He put his feet on the bumpers and stood up, leaning back, so his wrists faced the sharp hood ornament. He set to work, digging the point of the ornament between the fibers of the rope, ripping, weakening. It was tough work. But he kept at it, twisting and pulling and once almost toppling face-forward off the bumpers.
And finally the frayed rope snapped.
Keller whipped his arms apart. Feverishly he undid the knots, ripped off the fragments of rope, freed himself. He rubbed his aching hands together. He was free!
His first thought was to get into his car and drive away. Far away, maybe even home to Beth. He could always come back some other time to pick up his belongings from the motel owner.
But a moment later he realized with strange clarity that to run away now was the worst thing he could do. He had to stay here and find out what happened. He had to make sure none of Coppola’s gang escaped to make good their threat against him and against his family. He had to make sure none of Fitzpatrick’s men escaped to carry out vengeance against him. He could not run away now. If he did, he would live in lingering fear, never knowing when violence would enter his life once again.
He stood there, thinking things through. Suddenly a single shot split the silence of the night. Keller frowned. Then, cautiously, he began to make his way toward the entrance to Wofford’s Motel.
–
Two more shots—and a man’s scream—shattered the night before Keller reached the entrance. He paused for a moment at the arched neon gateway to the motel. For the second time tonight he was sticking his neck out when it was safer just to remain hidden away like a turtle in its shell.
But this time he had to know what was happening.
He ducked around the gateway and peered into the long L-shaped court of the motel. Lights were on all over the place, but no one was coming out of his room to investigate the shooting.
Keller glanced up at Room 24. The front window, he saw, had been splintered by a bullet.
Suddenly bright bursts of light spurted from the facing wing of the L. Keller ducked instinctively, but the shots were not aimed for him. He realized that two of Fitzpatrick’s men were lying in the courtyard, concealed behind two of the parked cars. From where he stood he could see them plainly—the heavy-set one named Sammy, and the thin, short one. Fitzpatrick was nowhere to be seen. His two henchmen lay behind the cars, sighting over their hoods and pumping shots through the window of Room 24. All the way across the court, on the facing wing of the L, they were drawing fire from two men Keller had never seen before. He realized that these must be other confederates of Coppola. He remembered that Coppola had said that three more “associates” of his were registered in other rooms of the motel.
Then he saw the third “associate.” There was a man sprawled grotesquely out in a pool of blood, almost at the feet of the two Coppola thugs at the far side of the motor-court. So one of the pudgy gangster’s men was dead or seriously wounded already. That left five, including Coppola himself, to fight off three attackers. That is, if Fitzpatrick were still alive.
From his vantage-point near the entrance to the motel, Keller watched the thin Fitzpatrick man edging through the side of the motor-court while the bigger one covered him. Suddenly Keller heard shots from a distance, muffled-sounding.
He knew where Fitzpatrick was. The scar-faced man had gone around back of the motel, and was firing into the rear window of Room 24. Another scream told him that a second Coppola man had been hit. The men in Room 24 were under attack from both front and rear, now.
But the two men at the far end of the L were preventing any careful assault from the front, because they were keeping up a more or less constant fire.
Keller wondered about the girl in the room under fire. Probably she was locked in the bathroom and out of danger. But was Fitzpatrick so anxious to kill Coppola that he was willing to risk hitting the girl? Evidently he was, Keller realized.
There was another exchange of shots. One went astray and smashed into the window of Room 23, Keller’s room. He grinned despite himself. It was a lucky thing he was somewhere else, he told himself.
–
For two or three minutes after that exchange, there was silence. By this time, Keller thought, the motel proprietor had probably notified the police of the gun-battle. But it would take time for the cops to arrive—maybe as much as ten or fifteen minutes, if they were coming from Portage, the nearest good-sized town. Plenty could happen in ten or fifteen minutes.
Keller noticed that the thin man was still creeping toward the porch, despite an occasional burst from the two strafers on the other wing of the motel. A sudden loud interchange of shots took place and one of the two Coppola men uttered a horrible gargling scream and dropped forward onto the concrete parking area.
Two Coppola men down now. The remaining man out there huddled behind a stanchion and pumped a fruitless shot toward the two Fitzpatrick men. The odds were narrowing now. Four against three.
But where was Fitzpatrick?
Keller heard a sudden voice. Coppola’s. “Fitzpatrick, can you hear me? Call off your men or I’ll kill the girl! I’ll kill her!”
Silence.
Then, out of nowhere, the sound of shattering glass, followed by a howl of rage.
Smoke began to pour from the front window of Room 24. A curious greenish greasy smoke.
Keller realized why Fitzpatrick had been silent so long. The gangster had obviously taken the opportunity to slip around back through the dark woods, past the motel grounds, back to his car. He had taken some sort of gas bomb out and, returning, hurled it through the rear window of Room 24.
Coppola was smoked out! Keller heard choking, coughing sounds. Smoke still billowed through the broken window. He wondered how long Coppola and his two henchmen could remain in the room.
He got his answer a moment later. The door of Room 24 was flung open. The youthful blond boy who Keller had seen with Coppola earlier emerged. Blood already streaked his white shirt, and Keller realized that he was the one who had been wounded before. Now he came out coughing and screaming, with a gun in his right hand and his left arm thrown over his eyes.
The thin Fitzpatrick man sprang up immediately and fired two shots. The blond boy grabbed at his middle as a spout of red suddenly burst forth. He toppled forward, tumbling over the low railing and dropping with a heavy thud onto the hood of somebody’s parked car.
But in the same instant the gun of the remaining Coppola mobster across the motor-court spoke. This time his aim was accurate. The thin man fell, yelling.
Keller revised his score. There were still two men in the room, Coppola and the hard-faced man, along with the girl. A third Coppola man was dug in for sniping across the way. Fitzpatrick was someplace in the back of the motel, and the heavy-set man named Sammy was stationed out in front, behind a parked car.
Three against two. But it could only be a few more seconds before the smoke-bomb forced Coppola and his aide out of Room 24. And in only a few more minutes the police would be here to mop up the survivors.
Fitzpatrick had appeared now. He came suddenly around the other side of the motel, rounding the L no more than fifty feet from Keller. But he did not even see Keller. The gangster took careful aim and blew the head off Coppola’s sniper.
Two against two. And Fitzpatrick and Sammy were still fresh, while the two men in the room were struggling against the effects of a gas bomb.
The door of Room 24 opened a second time. Keller, crouching in the shadows, stared. The girl emerged this time.
She was nude. The brightness of the almost-full moon showed her pale, lovely body, and showed the tearstained puffiness of her face. She came stumbling out of the room as if she had been pushed.
Keller saw Fitzpatrick go racing across the motor-court toward her. It was a mistake.
Abruptly fat Coppola himself came from the room. He was wearing an improvised gasmask made out of strips of cloth, evidently torn from the girl’s clothes.
Coppola chuckled harshly. Fitzpatrick was caught in the middle of the motor-court, with no place to hide. He had never expected Coppola to have been able to withstand the gassing, it seemed.
Coppola was holding the big .357 Magnum. He brushed aside the gauze that had protected his eyes and face and fired twice, in rapid succession.
The first shot caught Fitzpatrick square in the chest. The impact of the big slug ripping into him knocked the scar-faced man back almost ten feet. Fitzpatrick let out a grotesque howl and shrank into a crumpled dead heap. His gun went skittering out of his hands and came to rest no more than five paces from where Keller was hiding.
Coppola’s second shot was aimed at Fitzpatrick’s fleshy henchman, Sammy. But this time Coppola was not quite so lucky. The girl, Peggy Ryan, running wildly and blindly around the motor-court area, lurched in her hysterical flight and crossed in front of Coppola the instant his bullet was released.
Keller gasped. The .357 slug entered the girl’s body between her shoulder-blades and ripped its way right through her. A fountain of blood erupted between her full, ripe breasts. She stood transfixed, a white statue stained with red, frozen in the moonlight for a fraction of a second. Then the force of the shot knocked her down.
Sammy, who had been spared by her lucky lurch, made the most of his opportunity. He rose from his hiding place behind the car and pumped two slugs into Coppola’s flabby body. The mob boss looked astonished and amazed. Coppola still had not fully realized that he had killed the girl instead of his remaining enemy. He frowned in a curious fashion, then clutched at his stomach and started to sag. Sammy tried to fire again at the falling Coppola, but his gun clicked and refused to deliver a shot. He had fired his last round.
Smoke had just about ceased to billow from Room 24 now. The gas bomb had spent itself. Sammy rose from hiding and looked around cautiously in all directions. Keller drew his breath in sharply as he saw the snout of a gun project from the glassless window of Room 24. Sammy had underestimated the number of his opponents. There was one left, the lean, hard-faced man who was the dead Coppola’s second-in-command.
The gun in the window chattered three times.
Sammy whirled as the slugs thudded into him.
“What the—”
He never finished the sentence.
He went down as though his legs had instantly turned to spaghetti. The motor-court was very silent. It was the silence of the tomb.
–
Keller, huddled up in the dark shrubbery near the entrance, felt some of the tension ebb out of him. The duel was over. They were all dead—Fitzpatrick, Sammy, the girl, Fitzpatrick’s other thug, Coppola and the blond boy and the three others.
There had been only one survivor. The hard-faced man.
Keller shifted his feet. He was getting cramped. He looked out across the shamble that the pleasant little motel had become. Three dead men lay sprawled on the base of the L, over to his right. Closer to him lay the ugly corpse of Fitzpatrick. On the balcony was Coppola’s body. Here and there in the parking area lay the corpses of Fitzpatrick’s two henchmen, the girl, and the young blond-haired boy.
But there had been one survivor, Keller realized with new horror as he understood the full implication.
As he watched, the door of Room 24 swung slowly open for the last time. The hard-faced man came out. He looked in all directions. He had no way of knowing how many henchmen Fitzpatrick had come with.
But there was no sign of anyone else. Keller watched as the lean, cold-expressioned killer began to tiptoe across the balcony to the stairway down to the parking area. He was going to drive away, now, before the police arrived.
The motel walls were cracked with bullet-holes, and half a dozen windows had been smashed during the violent battle. No doubt the other guests had remained huddled under their beds all the while, not daring to look out. In only a minute or two, the police would probably show up.
Maybe, thought Keller, the police would get here in time to apprehend the hard-faced man.
Maybe not, though.
His mind dwelled for a moment on what might happen if the hard-faced man escaped. No doubt there were other members of the Coppola organization still in Chicago. They would want revenge. The hard-faced man would tell them of the furnace salesman who had tipped Fitzpatrick off about the ambush, and so caused the deaths of so many men.
They’ll come after me, Keller thought. They’ll kill Beth and Jeanie and Tom and the baby, and me last of all.
He could not let the hard-faced man escape.
Keller stood frozen in an agony of indecision. He was a law-abiding man. He knew how to use a gun, but he had never shot at any living thing in his life. And he knew that if he let that coldblooded killer escape, he was signing not only his own death warrant but that of his wife and children.
For the past twenty minutes, while bullets had sprayed all around, he had huddled in the shadows, strictly a spectator. But now the time had come to act.
Keller was not a particularly brave man. But now he had no choice.
Fitzpatrick’s gun lay gleaming in the moonlight, a few steps away. A hundred fifty feet further away, the hard-faced man was getting into a car.
Keller stepped forward.
His fingers closed on the warm butt of Fitzpatrick’s gun. It was, he noticed, a .38 automatic. He prayed it still had a shot or two left in it.
He straightened up. A hundred fifty feet away, the cold-faced man had the car door open. In a few seconds he would be gone, heading for Chicago and revenge.
“Hey, you!” Keller shouted. “Over here!”
The mobster paused uncertainly, before entering the car. He turned. He looked around.
Keller saw him as he stood in the moonlight—saw the cold, fleshless face of the man who so many hours ago had yanked him into a motel room and started this whole long night of violence. Keller raised the gun. He felt perfectly calm.
For Beth, he thought. For Jeanie and Tom and the baby.
He squeezed the trigger and a sound like a clap of doom exploded in front of him and a white hot pellet sprang across a hundred fifty feet of air and tore through a man’s heart. The hard-faced man dropped without a sound. Keller smiled crookedly.
He let the gun drop from his hands. In the distance police sirens finally shrilled. The nervous reaction came sweeping up over him, and Keller laughed hysterically in relief. The night of violence was over. Beth and the children were safe from gangland vendetta. Policemen were springing from their cars and advancing into the corpse-littered motor-court. Keller walked toward them, weak-kneed but happy, to tell them all about it.