(Day Six)
Rusty’s bald tires slipped and slid me up Paseo Boulevard—maybe this case would ring up new tires for Russ. I figured Holloway was already on the hook for Rusty’s medical bills and my car as “reasonable expenses.” I pulled into my lot. A yellow Duesenberg sat in the lot’s corner not too far from the entrance to my flat. I’d never seen one there. After I parked, I approached the Duesy and ran my hand across the hood. Though wet, it felt still barely warm. It must have arrived sometime after midnight.
With my .38 in hand, I opened the door to the building’s entryway. Its sole light gave me a dim but good view of the first floor and the stairs. Everything looked copacetic. Nothing to see on the second floor either. I stood still at the top of the stairs, listening. Silence. At the door, the match stick lay on the floor. Someone had opened the door. I tried the knob. Locked.
I unlocked the door, and with my revolver ready, silently swung it open. A light glowed in the living room; I was sure I hadn’t left one on. A peek into the kitchen on my left revealed nothing, so I slipped forward into the main room. The lamp next to the couch had been switched on, but nothing else seemed out of order.
Tiptoeing along the wall on my right toward the bedroom, I heard a thump behind me and swung around ready to blast, but there was no target. Another thump and another. They came from the davenport facing the far side of the room. I inched up from behind and peered over. The thumping from Sally’s tail grew louder and more rapid. The pup looked up at me, her tail whopping the cushion. She lay all curled up against the belly of Colleen Holloway, who was lying on her side, sound asleep.
I walked back into the kitchen and poured three fingers of Jim Beam into a water glass, tossed my bloody overcoat on a chair, then returned and sat in the easy chair across from the davenport. I swirled the drink and sipped. Sally hopped down and padded over to me. I picked her up and she settled in my lap. I stroked her downy fur with my free hand. Was there anything softer than puppy fur?
Colleen still slept. A woman’s breasts seem bigger and more inviting when she lies on her side, and the plunging neckline of her silky emerald dress enhanced the image. I found myself staring, trancelike, at the motion her rhythmic breathing created. She wore too much make-up, but it accentuated her green eyes when they were open.
Watching her sleep, it struck me how a guy’s life can change in the turn of a card. Three days ago, I was a contented man. I worked at a trade I loved. Sure, a lot of cases were humdrum, but just as many challenged me, occasionally to the point of danger. I had fired my .38 in a handful of life or death situations, and in each instance my aim was true. I lived with a lovable dog, and in many ways, Sammy had served in place of the mate I had purposefully avoided.
Women blew in and out of my life, which was just the way I wanted it. No strings, none of that tangled lovey-dovey stuff, but plenty of fringe benefits. Girls seemed drawn to me like June bugs to a street lamp, and I could switch the lamp off whenever I wished without having to set up house with any of the Junes. I wasn’t rich, but I did all right. Like that broad Ethel Merman sang, life was just a bowl of cherries.
Now my dog was dead, buried with my own hands in the woods five miles south of here. I was being paid a lot of dough to look for a spoiled rich kid whose time must be running out. Or maybe he’d played us all for suckers and took off with some girl on a lark to L.A. or New York City.
I’d already killed one man and plugged another. My best friend lay in a hospital while they pumped him full of someone else’s blood. And this case might end with me in a bed next to Rusty, or planted in Union Hill Cemetery. I’d never thought those thoughts before—it wasn’t healthy for a guy in my trade to ponder those things.
Now a dame slept on the davenport not eight feet away, a dame I couldn’t shake, and wasn’t sure I wanted to. She made me itch like poison ivy when she was around, and moon like a lovesick schoolboy when she wasn’t. God, I felt tired.
I sipped my drink, and Sally scaled my chest to lick my face—ah, the taste of bourbon and puppy breath. I pushed her back into my lap where she curled into a tiny ball, her bloated puppy-belly rising and falling.
Eyes still closed, Colleen reached for the puppy but found only fabric. Then they opened.
At first, her eyes and the brain couldn’t get together. Her eyes opened wide, consternation and panic in them. She looked ready to scream until she latched onto me and the pup in the chair across the room. My pup’s tail mercilessly beat my crotch. Instead of the scream, her brain selected words.
“Oh, God, Phil, Tommy’s alive!” She struggled off the davenport, stumbled across the room, and collapsed on the floor in front of me, her head next to the pup in my lap. Sally didn’t seem to mind the crowd. Her tail-banging ramped up a notch. I licked fresh-splashed bourbon off my hand while Colleen sobbed theatrically on my thighs.
I had questions but waited for the waterworks to subside. Her eyes soaked my already rain-dampened trousers, so I slid my left hand to her bare shoulder and gave her some there-there pats. My right hand brought the drink up and I drained it before setting it on the floor. Then the right joined the left, patting away. I felt Sally wriggle between us so I transferred a hand to her, patting female pulchritude with one hand, petting it with the other.
The sobs began to abate. The way she cried, the authenticness of it, made me question my original belief that I witnessed crocodile tears. Maybe she was that upset, or that happy. But inside every soda fountain on Hollywood Boulevard sat would-be actresses who could cry on cue.
I slipped Colleen my handkerchief. She lifted her head, wiped her eyes, and cleared the snot from her nose with a loud, unladylike honk. She gazed up at me with makeup-smeared eyes.
“Calm down and tell me what’s happened. But first tell me how you got in here.”
“That odd, older lady downstairs let me in. I guess I woke her, and when I told her that I was looking for you she gushed on and on about you.” Colleen’s voice quavered at first but grew stronger. “She said that you needed a good woman, Phil. She asked if I was one.”
“And?”
“I lied.”
Colleen offered a seductive smile. “She handed me your puppy, brought me up and let me in. She told me your pup’s name but I’ve forgotten it.”
“Sally.”
“Yeah, Sally.”
My trousers were still a little damp from the gunplay on Vine. Colleen’s hands, resting on my knees, heated the wool to the point that it felt like steam should be rising.
“So tell me about Tommy,” I asked. And then she noticed my blood-spattered shirt and suit coat.
“You’re hurt. You’ve been shot?” She grabbed Sally and tossed her on the floor, spread my legs, and slid forward, still on her knees. Colleen opened my suit-coat and lifted my tie looking for the wound.
“Whoa, doll.” I grabbed her shoulders and held her at arm’s length. “It’s not my blood.”
“What happened? Tell me what happened.”
“Hold your horses. First, tell me about Tommy.”
Her hands slid from my coat to my lap causing concern to parts of my anatomy. “He’s alive. Somebody has him and they want Daddy to pay a ransom, a big one.”
“How big?”
“Hannerty says six hundred thousand.”
That brought a whistle from me. Sally, sitting to the side, started yapping, apparently also impressed at the tidy sum. Colleen picked the puppy up and cooed at her, and I felt some relief that Colleen’s hands were no longer in my lap. She seemed distracted, one moment frantic about her brother and the next spouting baby talk to the pup.
“That’s a lot of cabbage,” I said.
“Daddy can pay it. Now, what about all of this blood?”
“How did they contact your father?”
“They phoned him.”
“When?”
“Just before supper tonight—well, last night now.”
“You there when they called?”
“Yes, but Daddy took the call in his study.” She looked back and forth between the pup and me. “All Daddy told Mother and me was that someone had Tommy and wanted a ransom. But Hannerty filled me in.” She fixed her gaze on the pup and cuddled it as if it were her newborn babe.
“Hannerty told me about the money and how Daddy told them the banks were closed and there was no way he could get that kind of cash before Monday.”
“What’d they say to that?”
Sally lapped Colleen’s face, makeup and all. “They told him a big man like him can roust bankers out of bed if need be. They told him to be home with the money by one Sunday afternoon. They would contact him at some point with instructions,” she said, her nose wrinkled at the non-stop licking.
“How do we know he’s even alive?”
“Daddy got to hear his voice, and he asked him a question that only Tommy could answer. Hannerty says that Daddy was sure it was Tommy.”
Without warning, fatigue set in. I’d been running on adrenaline and Jim Beam, and the tank was almost empty. “Okay, listen, doll, I got to get some sleep. I’ll swing by your place mid-morning. I want to talk to your father. Will you be there?”
“Wait, Phil, you didn’t tell me about the blood.”
“Oh, yeah, someone tried to kill my partner Rusty and me outside the Chesterfield Club around midnight. Rusty’s in the hospital now.”
Her brows scrunched with what looked like concern. “You’re not hurt?”
I tried to hurry her out the door but she went lame on me. She was too tired and too distraught, and the roads were wet and slick, and a half-dozen other excuses.
“Okay, okay; you can sleep on the couch.”
Colleen smiled. “Can Sally stay with me?”
“If she wants.”
I went into the bedroom, sat on the armchair and removed my shoes and wet socks, then stood and went to the window. A light pre-dawn drizzle floated down through the arc of the street light. I draped my blood-stained suit coat over the chair. The Paseo was empty of cars this time of night. I heard Sally pad into my room. Smart dog, she already knew who would be buttering her bread. I bent over and scratched her ears, then stood and started to loosen my tie. The scent of perfume preceded Colleen.
“Here, let me get that,” she said.
From behind me she expertly removed the tie and then unbuttoned the bloody shirt. She had undressed a man before. Her body pressed against my back and my breathing slowed and deepened. She removed the cuff links and slid the shirt off my arms. Gently, she coaxed me to raise my arms as she pulled the wet undershirt over my head. Her warm hands trailed down my cold, clammy chest to my belt buckle.
I grabbed her wrists. This wasn’t right. Sure I wanted her, but she was my client’s daughter. And maybe she was tied up in this case more than I yet knew. Plus ninety-five percent of me felt haggard and sleepy, even though the other five percent was upright and alert.
“No, Colleen, I have to get some sleep.”
“You will. You’ll sleep like a baby. Soon.”
My hands and her wrists battled for a moment more. She won. My wet, blood-spattered trousers dropped to the floor. She turned me around and we kissed, at first the taste of lipstick and then of tongue. Her arms were around my neck while our tongues played hide and seek. As if on some Hollywood director’s cue, the rain started again, hard. It tapped a rhythm on the window; its sound spoke more of lust than love. From her neck, I traced my fingertips along her pale shoulders, a terrain of bone and soft flesh. I slid the straps of her gown and slip across those shoulders and they joined my trousers on the floor.
The kiss lasted. The five percent held firm control. Without releasing my lips, Colleen’s hands wandered down to swirl my chest hair. My own hands explored the firmness of her breasts, her bullet-hard nipples. Colleen pushed me backward onto the bed and then climbed on top.
The scent of coffee and frying bacon woke me. I was alone in bed. Naked. I donned a bathrobe and followed the smell. Colleen was in the kitchen archway in her slip, feeding the pup a slice of bacon. Sally wagged her appreciation.
In the bathroom, my bloodstained clothes hung from the shower rod. I took care of business there and then joined the dog and the girl in the kitchen. She smiled and placed another cup of coffee on the table next to her own. I nodded my thanks and sat down.
“About last night,” I said. “I don’t remember much. Was it good?”
“What?”
“You know, it?”
“It wasn’t,” she said.
“It wasn’t?”
“No, Phil.”
“Wasn’t good, huh?”
“Wasn’t anything,” she said. “You fell asleep.”
Colleen loaded scrambled eggs, crisp bacon and two slices of buttered toast on a plate and placed it in front of me. I commenced to gobble. She leaned against the sink watching.
“You not eating?”
“I never eat breakfast. Gotta watch my girlish figure.”
“Listen, doll, there’s nothing girlish about your figure.”
She laughed from deep down. “Apparently it’s not woman enough to keep you awake.”
I swallowed a mouthful of eggs. “If this chow is any indication, at least you’ll always be able to get a man through his stomach.”
She flashed a quick smile, then pretended to pout.
“So how’d a rich girl like you learn to cook like this?”
She straightened up, hard nipples poking against her silk slip. “Mother didn’t grow up rich. And she still cooks most of our meals even though Daddy says she should let the help do it. Mother says every girl should know how to cook, and she made sure I did.”
I rounded up the last of the eggs and shoveled them in. Colleen brought the coffee pot and topped off my cup. But instead of letting me drink it, she set the pot down, pushed my chair back and straddled me face-to-face.
Her nose brushed mine and the scent of last night’s perfume was gone, replaced by the real smell of her, just as intoxicating. I inhaled a deep breath of it. Colleen wore nothing under the slip. Once she loosened the tie of my bathrobe, bare skin met bare skin. She kissed me hard, and I returned the favor, my hand firm on the small of her neck. We let our hands roam, and I discovered skin as soft as puppy fur. She slipped me inside and began to ride slowly, slowly across bluestem valleys and up the ridge. Once she reached the plateau, Colleen dug in her spurs and bucked and bounded as if she rode the meanest bronc. I came along for the ride.
We showered together and made love again. The pup sat outside the tub, watching and offering an occasional whine.
In some strange way we fit together, Colleen and I, not just physically, although that was certainly the case. We anticipated and reciprocated and intuited. I had made love to experienced women before, but this was more. It would sound sappy to say Colleen and I were made for each other. I don’t know how else to put it.
As we toweled each other dry, that five percent once again became upright and alert. This time we made love on the bed.
We lay sated, my arm under Colleen’s head, her hand on my thigh. Suddenly she sat up and looked at the clock.
“I have to go. Daddy mustn’t know I’m gone. It might already be too late.” She gathered her clothes and began to dress.
I told her that I’d visit Rusty in the hospital and give her an hour or so, then swing by. Her father and I had a lot to talk about. I walked her to the door.
At the door, we kissed and she started for the stairs.
“Phil?”
“Yeah?”
“I suppose he will tell you this when you see him, but the man on the phone told Daddy to call off his lapdog detective or Tommy dies.” She turned and trotted down the stairs.
“Hey, wait,” I said.
She stopped near the bottom. “Why didn’t you tell me that before?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” Colleen tilted her head, showed a perplexed expression that may or may not have been genuine. “You do funny things to me. My mind swirls and jumbles things when I’m around you. I really must go now.” She gave me a quick wave and hustled down the second set of stairs and out the door.
The rain had ended, leaving the morning windy and crisp. After walking Sally I dropped her off at Mrs. Pot … Lucille’s. She wore a big grin. “Your young lady didn’t leave until this morning.”
“That’s right, Lucille. It was late and raining hard.”
“Uh huh.” Her smile got bigger, and I stifled one. Any further explanation was fruitless.
An hour later I walked into the hospital and asked at the front desk for Riordan—yeah, that was the poor sap’s given name—Callahan’s room number. “Room 404,” the lady told me. But she added that visiting hours don’t begin until eleven. I asked for the cafeteria, and she pointed down the hall. I headed that way a bit, then slipped into the stairwell and hoofed it up to the fourth floor. The door to Rusty’s room stood open. He slept. The old man in the bed next to him looked like he had been dead for some time, except that his chest rose and fell. Rusty had a unit of blood hung up next to him. His skin was wedding-dress white, which made his freckles stand out like ticks on typing paper. His cadaverous neighbor, on the other hand, was more piss-complected.
I touched Rusty gently on his good arm. His eyes flickered open, and instinctively he reached for where he kept his Colt. Rusty’s face grew taut with pain.
“Hold on partner; everything’s square. You’re in the hospital.”
“If everything’s square, how come it feels like somebody sawed off my arm,” Rusty whispered.
“Because you’re not as quick as you used to be.”
“Chesterfield?”
“Yep, you dodged all but one, though.”
“You?”
“I’m fine. We plugged the shooter, but their car got away.”
Rusty tried to reposition himself, then clenched his teeth and sucked air with a hiss.
“What do you need?”
“Can you slide the pillow down some and prop me up?”
I told him to lie as still as possible and let me do the work. I told him not to cry out because I wasn’t supposed to be there.
“Got a bullet for me to bite?”
“I do.”
“Never mind,” he said. “Just be careful.”
I was careful. Even so, he turned two shades whiter and looked as if he had bitten his tongue off.
“Damn!” was all he said. Once Rusty’s grimace subsided, I told him the pertinent parts of Colleen’s visit, including her parting shot about calling off the dogs.
He closed his eyes and for a moment I thought he had slipped into a morphine snooze. His eyes snapped open. “Find time to play any footsie?” He squeezed a half-smile.
“Maybe.”
“So I know you’ll call off this old dog,” he said, pointing a finger at himself with his good arm. “But what about you? You gonna take your fee and your peashooter and go home?”
“Well, Russ, right now I’m a little pissed off. I’m not inclined to turn the other cheek.” I lit up a Lucky. “Want one?”
His eyebrows rose. “I doubt I’m supposed to have one.” I took a drag and blew it his way. “Yeah, let me have it. Might as well go out smoking.” He opened his lips and I slid it in and lit another.
“What’s next then?” he asked, clenching the Lucky in his teeth.
“First I’m gonna have a confab with Holloway.” There was no ashtray, so I flicked my ashes on the tile floor and spread them around with my shoe. I did the same with Rusty’s and slid it back between his lips. “But if Holloway calls me off the case, I’m not so sure I won’t have a serious hearing problem. The bastards killed my dog and shot my pal. I’m not exactly in a forgive-and-forget mood.”
“You figure it’s Palmisano?”
“Maybe. One of his brunos left the club last night not long before we did. Might have set up the ambush.”
Rusty waited for me to continue. When I didn’t, he almost whispered, “It sounded like you were about to give me a ‘but.’” He was fading.
“Can’t fool you,” I said. “But why would Palmisano want to risk making an enemy of Holloway for a few hundred grand?”
Rusty’s eyes were closed. “Yeah, why?”
“What’s going on in here?” A nurse from hell stood in the doorway. A bleached-blonde bowling ball with tree-stump legs, she looked as if she could heft me off the ground twirl me like a baton.
“Just visiting my pal, here,” I offered, with the innocence of a child.
“Give me those cigarettes.” She stepped toward us and held out her hand. Using the discretion part of valor, I handed mine over. She plucked Rusty’s from his lips in mid-inhale, causing Rusty to cough and wince. Oblivious to her patient’s distress, she opened the window and tossed the cigarettes out. I worried I would be next.
“Now you, mister.” She pointed a .45 caliber finger at me. “You get out of here. Visiting hours begin at eleven.” She seemed to be swelling larger. “If I see you here again outside of visiting hours, we’ll need to find a bed for what’s left of you.”
It appeared that she both meant it and was capable of backing up the threat.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “So long, Russ.”
“So long, gumshoe,” he whispered.
On the way to Holloway’s, I decided that I would be the ransom’s bag man. I’d make the exchange by instinct, though mine hadn’t been too keen lately. Depending on the setup for the swap, maybe I’d play it straight—the six-hundred Gs for the kid. But I’d be looking for an opportunity. Though the job called for retrieving the kid bullet-hole-free, payback had become a significant priority.
I arrived around half-past nine and parked behind two swanky sedans in Holloway’s circle drive. Colleen’s Duesy wasn’t in sight. It had probably been garaged. I banged three quick times with the massive door’s lion head brass knocker and was about to try again when Hannerty opened the door.
“Good morning, Mr. Morris.” Hannerty sounded pleased. “I have been trying to telephone you, both at your office and your home.” Hannerty loomed in front of me, preventing my entrance to the house.
“Oh, yeah? About Tom Junior?”
“Yes, sir.” He did not stand back or step aside. It looked like I was getting the bum’s rush. “The boy has been located, and Mr. Holloway will have no further need of your services. He will allow you to keep the advance, and additionally, he will cover all documented expenses you incurred. Mr. Holloway instructed me to thank you for your diligent efforts.”
“That’s it?”
“I’m not sure I understand the question, Mr. Morris.”
“You’re not going to tell me that kidnappers are holding him? That they’re asking for a sizable ransom? That they want me out of the picture?”
Hannerty’s eyes widened—the sole betrayal of his outward calm. “You must have received some faulty information,” he said, again stone-faced.
The big guy was starting to get my dander up. “Look, Mr. Hannerty, I like you. But I’m not going to stand here in the doorway playing twenty questions with you. I know what’s going on, and I want to talk to Mr. Holloway.”
I thought I detected Hannerty’s effort to stifle a smile, but he still played Rock of Gibraltar in the doorway. “Mr. Holloway is in a meeting.”
“That’s fine; I’ll wait.” Still no movement from the big guy. “Shall I wait out here on the porch steps?”
That brought a brought a full-fledged grin. “You are not going to leave, are you?”
“Not until I see your boss, or the cops drag me off. But I got a hunch your boss doesn’t want a bunch of cop cars hanging around his house today.”
“I could make you leave,” Hannerty said, his smile undiminished.
He had me grinning too. I gave him an up-and-down eyeball examination. “I expect you could, Hannerty. But we’d both be the worse-for-wear.” His demeanor did not change. “And someone would have to toss me in a car and drive me away because I’m not leaving while I can still stand.”
We remained at an impasse. I rubbed the lumpy side of my head. “Besides, I’m getting used to a good beating every few days.”
He stood stock still, his face rigid. My arms hung loosely at my sides, hands clenching and unclenching, ready to tussle.
Instead, Hannerty stepped back inside, his arm making a sweeping gesture. “Won’t you wait in the library, Mr. Morris? May I take your overcoat?”
I entered and began to remove my trench coat when Hannerty moved behind me. With my arms immobilized by the half-way off coat, I knew what was coming, and steeled myself for the first blow.
Hannerty expertly slid the coat off, turned and walked toward the coat rack. Without turning back my way, he said, “I believe you know the way to the library, sir.”
I was beginning to like that lug.
It was just like old home week in the library. That room was where everything started. And it seemed as if it were months ago. But it had been less than six full days. I walked straight to the Fitzgerald book, the one about a Holloway-like Gatsby. I slid it off the shelf and plopped on the same couch Colleen and I had shared. The smell of her perfume, of her, seemed to linger around me. But I had no time for such thoughts. I lit a cigarette.
Flipping through the pages was just something to do with my hands. My mind rarely registered any words on the pages, but rather it began to process possible troublesome situations I might encounter later that day. One side of my brain posed situations. The other side visualized strategies to overcome them, to survive, to get the kid home safe. To exact retribution.
“Mr. Morris?”
I turned to the doorway. “Yeah, Hannerty?”
“May I bring you something to drink?”
“Sure thing. Coffee would be swell if you have any already made.”
“We do, sir. Cream and sugar?”
“Black, please.” Hannerty nodded as if he already knew.
I flipped to Chapter VI, to the party at Gatsby’s place, and how the old-moneyed East Eggers looked down on people like Gatsby. Gatsby, like Holloway, represented the new rich who didn’t possess the requisite nuance and social graces. Holloway could buy a mansion on Ward Parkway and hire a butler, but he’d never fit in with the hoitytoity Mission Hills crowd.
I could hear Holloway and several men in his adjacent office. Words and a few phrases came through when their voices were raised, which was often. They talked money, sometimes loudly.
Hannerty showed, along with a cup and saucer, and a small porcelain pot. He set the cup and saucer on the wing table next to me, poured a cup, and placed the pot nearby.
“Say, Hannerty, is Colleen upstairs?”
“Miss Holloway? No, I believe she’s not home at the moment, sir.” His eyes bored into me as if he could read my thoughts.
“Up and at ’em early today, huh? Surely she’s not in church?”
“No, Mr. Morris. Miss Holloway has not attended Mass in several years, I believe.”
“Why out so early on a big day like this, a life or death day for her kid brother?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, sir. Keeping track of the children’s comings and goings is not a part of my charge. And they are not required to check in and out with me.”
“Okay, big guy, I didn’t mean to impugn you.” His eyebrows lifted at the fancy two-dollar word. Hannerty was pretty smooth and chock full of surprises.
“That’s quite all right, sir. Will there be anything else?”
“No thanks, Hannerty.” I carefully lifted the cup, which must have cost at least a day’s pay for a gumshoe. Hannerty still stood beside the wing table, a funny look on his face, a look like two factions were having it out inside his noggin. I waited for the victor.
Hannerty’s quizzical look faded and he returned his focus to me. “Mr. Morris?” There was both question and hesitation in his voice.
“Yeah?”
“May I trust you?”
“Absolutely. Though my charge is to find Tom Junior, I’m looking out for the best interests of the whole family. Just like you are, big guy.”
Silence. Hannerty’s head produced a slight nod. “We have not seen much of Miss Holloway this week. She’s rarely here for more than an hour or two at a time. Some nights I do not believe she comes home at all, including last night.” He watched me without accusation. “These behaviors have happened before, but never for more than a day or two at a time.” He paused. A long pause that might have meant he was done, or ready to clam up.
“What do you figure is going on?” My question broke the dam.
“Miss Holloway and Master Tom have always been close. Though the young master has a lot of friends, Miss Holloway does not. I think her brother may be her best friend. I think that, with her intimate knowledge of his life, she’s been out looking for him.” Another long pause.
In some ways, Hannerty was as hard to start as my Plymouth, which by then must have been in the police impound lot. “Go on, Hannerty,” I said, giving his engine another crank.
“Well, sir, based on how little we have seen of her these last few days, I think she may have found Master Tom. She may be trying to rescue him herself.”
That’s not what I wanted to hear. What lay ahead on this day was fraught with a pot full of problems. Some of them might get a guy chilled off. Then someone tosses in a pretty girl that I might be falling in love with and stirs her into the cauldron. Shit.
“Have you seen her at all today?”
“No, sir.”
“Yesterday?”
“Briefly in the late afternoon. She left shortly after supper time.”
“Does she always leave in her Duesenberg?”
“Oh, that’s not her car. It’s Mr. Holloway’s.”
“What car does she normally drive?”
“That one. She thinks the Duesenberg is more carefree than the family’s sedans. But she must ask Mr. Holloway before taking the Duesenberg.”
“So he knows when she comes and goes?”
“No, sir, not exactly. She hasn’t been asking him lately, and his mind has been on other things.”
“I nodded toward Holloway’s office. “Have you told him any of this?”
“No, sir.” Hannerty gestured with his palms. “I don’t exactly know how to phrase this, sir. Using your vernacular, one might say that Miss Colleen and I are in cahoots.”
I laughed.
“What I mean, sir, is that Mr. Holloway can be a very hard man, particularly hard on his family, and even more so on his children.”
“I see.”
“Ever since she was little, Miss Colleen and I have had a bond, you might say. I have either looked the other way or actively helped her keep secrets from her father. They were harmless secrets that would only upset him and cause him to needlessly lose his temper. I have been her confidant.”
“What about the boy?”
“Oh, no, Master Tom preferred open rebellion. He and his father have been at war since the boy was twelve. Occasionally they go through periods of peace, but even so, those periods could best be described as uneasy.”
I slid out my cigarette case and popped it open. “Cigarette?”
“Oh, no, sir, I don’t smoke.”
“Never?”
Hannerty’s eyes glittered. “On duty, sir; never on duty.”
“Fair enough.” My thumbnail fired the match on the first try.
Hannerty looked impressed.
“How’d the gang here get along right before the boy disappeared?”
“The gang?”
“The family. Peaceful enough before he disappeared?”
A bell tinkled in the foyer. “That would be Mrs. Holloway. I must go upstairs now.” Hannerty turned toward the door. He stopped in the doorway and swiveled around. “To address your question—good, Mr. Morris. Young Tom had a job, and though he stayed out till all hours he made it to work each day. Not many flare-ups between the boy and his father.”
“What about Colleen?”
He frowned. “For some time, Miss Colleen has seemed melancholy. Some months ago she told me there was a great hole in her life, and it was growing larger. I suggested that she needed a man.”
“What’d she say to that?”
The bell tinkled again.
“I really must attend to Mrs. Holloway now. Excuse me.” He drew the doors closed and three seconds later I heard his toes tap up the stairs.
I tried to shake that last bit of the conversation. A question hung in neon on my frontal lobe: Could I be that man? I resolved to keep a ten-foot pole’s distance from that one.
What mattered immediately was what our young heiress was up to. Did she conduct her own investigation of her brother’s disappearance? I’d had the feeling more than once she wasn’t being square with me. She knew a lot more about the Cresto dame than she let on. I felt sure of that. And there was something about the way she always knew so much about what was going on, including how quickly she knew about the break-in at my place where the goons croaked Sammy.
Each time I questioned Colleen about her knowledge, she had a ready answer: eavesdropping at the old man’s door; Hannerty told her; Tommy had mentioned Cresto. With each explanation, the skeptic’s hair on the nape of my neck prickled. Maybe she was trying to find him on her own. Or maybe she had help. That made more sense. But not enough sense to jibe with the facts and the situation.
What seemed both logical and preposterous was the notion that Colleen was involved in her brother’s kidnapping. If so, it was logical Colleen would want to keep an eye on the sleuth her father had hired. And she had kept more than her eye on me. If true, she’d made a rube out of me. And if she was involved, logic suggested that she would often need to be where Tommy’s captors were keeping them from overdoing the rough stuff.
What made it preposterous, among other things, was that she had no reason to kidnap her brother—her best friend, according to Hannerty. Why would she extort money from her father? Colleen had the brains and the cunning, but not the motive. Or maybe she had every reason to extort money from her father.
If Colleen knew something about the kidnapping but wasn’t actually involved, then she might have been snooping around, trying to find Tommy herself. She might have discovered who the kidnappers were and where they held him. She might have already gotten herself into a jam or be on the verge of one. I heard voices in the foyer.
Holloway and his money people had either worked things out or reached an impasse. I figured Hannerty would get me in to see Holloway as soon as the hubbub in the foyer faded. I set the book down and waited, eavesdropping as much as I could. Apparently, Holloway was assembling the money—six hundred Gs to be delivered to his home by noon, a tall order. But for those bankers, he stood as the biggest client they had or coveted. Loaning a lot of cabbage to him, even in this Depression, must have seemed as safe as loaning it to FDR.
The voices moved outside. I resisted the impulse to peek out the library window—seen one banker, seen ’em all anyway. Then Holloway raised his voice in the foyer. I caught a “Goddam it, Hannerty,” and my ears burned. The voices calmed.
I heard a door slam, and Hannerty opened the library doors. “Will you please come with me, Mr. Morris?”
Trouble. Hannerty didn’t say, “Mr. Holloway will see you now.” I wondered if I was about to be shown the door.
I found the spot where Gatsby belonged and slid the book back in. “Right behind you, Hannerty.”
Instead of the front door, Hannerty led me to the old man’s office. He pointed to the chair I had grown accustomed to. “Have a seat, Mr. Morris. Mr. Holloway will return in a few moments.” Hannerty left, shutting the door behind him.
Mr. Holloway must have owned a liberal definition of “a few moments.” It was twelve minutes by the Regulator on the wall. At one point, temptation nearly forced me to pick up the telephone on his desk to see what he might be saying and to whom—that is, if he was on another phone somewhere in the house. Instead, I set about chain smoking and taking laps around the office.
Holloway had a lot of photos on the wall, him with dignitaries of one type or another. In one he sat in the back of a convertible with FDR and FDR’s wife. Couldn’t remember her name—Eleanor maybe. There were loads of plaques, too. Masons, Lions Club, Knights of Columbus, all presenting him with one award or another, and all of them probably for donations he’d made or arm twisting he’d done getting other richies to give. I didn’t open any desk or file cabinet drawers, though I was sorely tempted. And I didn’t touch any of the papers on his desk, though I did take a gander at the top layer.
There were blank loan papers from two banks. I supposed the old man would fill them out when he had more time. I wondered if anyone else in this town could borrow that kind of dough without filling out loan papers first.
I wanted to sit in the big man’s chair and take a spin or two. Almost did. And if Holloway showed in mid-revolution, he’d most likely go off like Union Station fireworks on the Fourth of July.
I had squashed the glow of my third cigarette in the desktop ash tray, returned to my assigned seat, and commenced some Rusty-style thumb twiddling when Holloway showed. He slammed the door behind him and marched to his desk without a glance my way. Holloway opened a drawer and pulled out a humidor. From that, he extracted a tree-stump-sized cigar.
“You don’t follow instructions very well, do you, Morris?” He bit off the end of the cigar and spat it into the corner by the file cabinet.
“How’s your English? Didn’t understand the question?” Holloway lit and puffed for a while before he got the whole end of the stump glowing red.
I kept silent, watching the performance.
“You mute, too?”
“No, sir, I don’t exactly follow what instructions you refer to.”
He blew a huge lungful of smoke at me, though I was out of range for most of the damage. “Hannerty tells me he told you to scram, that your position with me had been terminated. He said he gave you my generous offer allowing you to keep the one-thousand dollar retainer as well as any additional reasonable expenses.”
He rested his cigar on the ashtray and leaned over his desk towards me. “Hannerty said you threatened to sit on our porch until I spoke to you.” He tried to stare holes in my head.
Time for turnabout.
Without looking away, I reached into my pocket for my cigarette case and blindly selected my next candidate before returning the case. With a flourish, I produced a stick match from my vest pocket, gave it a dramatic thumbnail flick, and, damn. It didn’t light. Nor did the second flick. I surrendered the stare and lit the match on the sole of my shoe. Once my lungs filled, I jettisoned my modest smoke stream in his general direction. I leaned back in the chair, tempted to try Dominic’s balancing act. Discretion nixed the idea.
“First off, Mr. Holloway, your generous offer was nothing more than what we originally agreed upon. So dismount that high horse.”
His face reddened, and the cigar went back in his mouth.
“Second, I earned every penny of it. Bad men have your son. They killed my dog and my car. Tried to kill me at least three times. Almost killed my partner—doctors are filling him up with someone else’s blood in General Hospital right now.” I expect that my face reddened to match Holloway’s. And I wasn’t done yet.
“I don’t know how much you knew when you hired me, but you got off cheap, even with all of the expenses you’ll owe. From the start, no one in your family has leveled with me. Not you, not Hannerty, not your daughter.” Holloway started to say something. I held up my hand. “Not yet; I’m almost done.
“These are bad people. They’ll most likely kill your son whether they get the ransom or not. And for me, this is personal now. I want to be your bagman. I’ll take the ransom. I’ve got a better chance than anyone else of getting your boy out alive.”
As I finished my little soliloquy, I realized I’d leaned further and further forward in the chair while gabbing. My keister had almost slid off. I scooted back onto the chair and saw the office door open and Hannerty in the doorway.
Holloway exhaled a smoky billow that hung between us. Hannerty said nothing and looked disinterested. Holloway broke the silence.
“Not going to happen, Mr. Morris. They specifically told us to call off our dog. Meaning you. They’ll kill Tom Junior if we don’t. So you’re out, Morris. In fact, if they’re watching the house now, my boy’s life might hang in the balance. I want you out of here now. Hannerty?”
I stood and held out a stop sign for the big lug. “Okay, hear me out.” Hannerty didn’t make a move toward me, and Holloway didn’t give him further orders.
“You had your boy confirm that he was still alive when the kidnappers phoned, right?”
“How’d you know?”
“Doesn’t matter, listen. When they call again—
“Yes, it does matter. How did you know what was said when they phoned here last night?”
I looked at Hannerty. Hannerty knew how.
“I didn’t know,” I lied. “But I do know how kidnappers operate. I figured you knew enough to make sure your boy was alive.” Holloway bought it.
“Let’s talk this out.” I sat again. “When they call again, you make sure the boy’s still breathing. They want the dough. They’ll keep him alive as long as they know you won’t deliver if they ice him. But I’m telling you, they’ll most likely kill him as soon as they get their hands on your money.”
Holloway listened, but I couldn’t be sure I was getting through.
“That’s why you need me. I can handle whatever comes up. Whatever schmuck you send is liable to get himself dead too.” No way Holloway was fool enough to deliver the dough himself, I thought. But he wasn’t volunteering anything. “Say, you aren’t planning to do it yourself?”
“No, Hannerty’s making the exchange.”
I turned to Hannerty. He said nothing, betrayed no emotion.
“You must be kidding, Mr. Holloway. You plan to send your butler? He’s got no prayer of coming back with the boy. Hell, not much chance you’ll ever see him alive again either.”
“Not necessarily.”
The way Holloway said it gave me pause. I looked back and forth between the two.
“Tell him, Hannerty,” Holloway said.
Without facial expression, Hannerty’s body relaxed and he leaned against the door frame. “At age twenty-two, I fought with Patrick Pearse in the Irish Republican Brotherhood. In the Easter Rising of 1916, we were outnumbered twelve to one, yet we held off the British Army for seven days at the Dublin General Post Office. Not so different than your Alamo. A few of us escaped through the sewers and fought again with the Hibernian Rifles in the Irish Republican Army.”
All I could do was whistle.
“So you see, Mr. Morris, I’ve been in jams before. I know a little about danger and weapons, and how to hide and use them.” He grinned. “You would never have seen my pistol when we met six days ago, had I not wanted it seen.”
I laughed out loud. “Touché, Mr. Hannerty.”
I glanced over at Holloway—he leaned back in his chair, his cigar in the side of his mouth and a smug expression on his face. It’s easy for a fella to be smug when his life isn’t on the line. The fact that his butler’s and his son’s lives were didn’t seem to weigh too heavily. Holloway carefully rolled the cigar in his ashtray, removing the ash in one intact chunk.
Hannerty looked at me and winked.
“So you see, Mr. Morris, Tom Junior will be well protected in the exchange,” Holloway said. “And I really must insist that you leave now. I don’t want the thugs that have my boy to think you are still involved. Send your list of expenses tomorrow or Tuesday. Drop it off at my office downtown or bring it here to Hannerty.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way, Mr. Holloway. The kidnappers want the dough. They’ll take it from anyone who brings it, even me. And they won’t get it from me without delivering the boy alive at the same time. No offense, Hannerty, I’m the best man for the job.”
Hannerty, still relaxed against the door frame, nodded. “None taken, sir.”
“My mind’s made up. Hannerty will show you out.” Holloway began shuffling papers to emphasize the dismissal.
As Hannerty and I walked to the door I tried one more time. “I can help you, Hannerty. We need to talk.”
“I know, sir, but not now. Can you be in your office by noon? We may not have all of the money until then, and we don’t expect a call from the kidnappers until sometime after that.”
I looked at the foyer’s big grandfather: it showed 10:50. I had one stop to make first. “I think so. If it looks like I can’t make it, I’ll try to call.” He opened the front door. “Holloway ever answer the telephone?”
“Never, sir.”
“Good. And call me Phil when we’re not around the boss.”
“I will, sir”
“I will, Phil,” I said.
“Yes, Phil. But I’ll not telephone until after the kidnappers have contacted us. Then we can discuss my strategy.”
“Our strategy.”
“Perhaps, Phil. Until then.” We shook hands. His grip was just short of painful.
I turned off Ward Parkway and zigzagged over to northbound State Line, headed to the river bottoms and the Valencia Hotel. Time to try once more to visit Beverly Cresto. I wasn’t prepared to plug any hallway watchmen but would give forceful reasons why a watchman should allow a brief, chaperoned conversation.
On the way, my mind turned to Hannerty. His past shouldn’t have been such a surprise. Even in a finely tailored suit, the man was a physical specimen. The nimble way he carried himself spoke of a man who worked to get the most out of his body—like I used to do, should still be doing. I thought how much I could use a drink, and at the same time resolved that I would quit drinking as soon as this case was over.
The Easter Rising, Republican Brotherhood, and IRA told of a different kind of training. Hannerty hadn’t been schooled in the military but in guerilla organizations. To have survived, he knew a thing or two about operations against the odds, about being outnumbered, which we’d surely be. I was going too, whether he wanted me or not. If it came to a shoving match, I’d let him think he won, let him think he was going it alone. I could do guerilla.
I pulled into the hotel’s circle drive. The same doorman stood watch. He didn’t recognize me until I stepped out of the car.
“Hello, sir, still not staying?”
“Nope. Tell you what, though.” I peeled off two ones and placed them and Rusty’s car keys in his dingy white-gloved hand. “Keep an eye on the car, and only move it if you have to. I gotta be somewhere soon and I’ll be in a hurry when I leave.” The doorman gave me a toothy, two-dollar smile.
Inside, the desk clerk from before must have had the day off, so I ignored the new guy and just headed for the elevator.
“May I help you, sir?” The clerk said with a volume and tone that indicated proprietorship.
I didn’t turn or slow down. “Nope, just visiting some friends.” I pushed the call button.
“May I ask whom you’re visiting?”
I turned toward him. “No, buster, you may not. It’s none of your business.”
Properly chagrined, he returned to his clerk’s busy work.
I asked the elevator man for the sixth floor. Silently he delivered me. The elevator was positioned near the L, and I could see both halls as I stepped out. Nobody there. I knocked on the door at 612. No answer. A moment later 623 produced the same result.
I took the stairs down and walked over to the clerk. “Sorry I was rude to you earlier, Mark.” That’s the name his lapel pin revealed.
“That’s quite all right. Now, may I help you?”
Yep. He was pissed and not professional enough to hide it. I produced the wad of bills again and slapped another two Washingtons on the counter and slid them his way but kept my fingers on them. “Neither of my friends, Miss Cresto in 612 nor Mr. Harman in 623, seem to be in.”
“I coulda told you that if you’d answered me when you came in. They both checked out around eight-thirty this morning.”
“Really? Where’d they go?”
“How should I know? I look like the Encyclopedia Britannica?” He grabbed the two bucks, slid them under the counter, and reached for the cigarette parked behind his ear.
The doorman saw me leave the front desk and head his way. He hustled, held open the main door, then beat me to the car and opened that one too, handing me the keys. I still had almost a half hour before noon.
Church bells clanged the quarter hour a few blocks over on 12th Street as I pulled up to my office building. The main doors were locked, but I had a key. Elevators didn’t run on Sundays so I hoofed it up the stairs. Winded, I arrived at my office. The door hadn’t been messed with.
At my desk, I made sure the phone had a dial tone, slid open the bottom drawer, and plopped down the Beam bottle. No need for the glass. The bottle was three inches from empty. I set to work on it, pulling straight from the bottle.
I lifted the phone receiver and dialed the main cop switchboard. To my surprise, Chief Myers was in his office.
“What you doing in on a Sunday morning, Chief Myers?”
“The police department never sleeps,” Myers said. “But I’m glad you called. I was about to try to reach you.”
“Oh, yeah? What you got?”
“Plenty, Morris.”
He did, too. Turns out Detective Sanderson had gabbed with the Chief after he and his pal third-degreed me at the hospital. And then Myers’ boys did check the other hospitals, and in one of them, they found a fella with a .38 slug in his chest not far from his heart. The fella might not make it. The odd thing—if anything could seem odd anymore—was the guy was from Detroit. He had a record long enough to fill the pages of an issue of True Detective.
“What do you make of that, Chief Myers?”
“I’m not finished,” the Chief said. “I tried to contact Detective Patterson at his home this morning, and his wife said he didn’t come home last night. He told her yesterday not to worry, that he’d be on a stakeout.”
“And I’m guessing you didn’t authorize one.”
“Bingo. What’s more, when I tried to phone Detective Harman to get some answers, the hotel operator told me that he had already checked out.”
He paused, and I pictured him at his desk shaking his head, his bulbous nose swinging, blackjack-like, along with it. “Harman’s required by his Detroit superiors to keep me informed of any developments.”
“Any other bombs to drop?” I said.
“No.”
“What do you make of it?”
The Chief didn’t pause at all. He’d given it some thought already. “I think there’s some major kind of Detroit mob action going on here in KC, a lot bigger than the drug smuggling case Patterson and Harman were investigating. And I think the two detectives are either involved and on the take, or they’re crotch-deep in trouble.”
“They may be involved in more than you know.” As soon as the words left my mouth I knew I’d said too much. Myers’ egg didn’t hatch yesterday.
“What?” Myers said. “What else do you know?”
Damn. What could I tell him without telling him too much?
“We’re pretty sure Tom Junior has been abducted. And Patterson and Harman have the last person the boy was seen with in their protective custody.”
He waited for more. When I wasn’t forthcoming, he began to dig. “You mean Beverly Cresto?”
“Yeah.”
“How do you know it’s an abduction? Have they demanded ransom?”
“Look, Chief: we’ve already talked about what I can and cannot say in order to keep faith with my client. I can’t answer those questions.”
“But you think Patterson and Harman may be involved in the abduction?”
“I do. And here’s what I can tell you. I may need your help within the next twelve hours. Should I call here?”
“Yeah, I’ll tell the switchboard to put you through immediately. If I’m not here they’ll know where to find me. What’s going down today? Or is it tonight?”
“Can’t say. Really, I’m sorry.”
“What can I do right now besides wait for your call?”
“Find your detectives.”
My watch showed almost straight up noon. It was my turn to wait by the phone. But first I called Dominic. I wanted to tell him that, in addition to the one charred in the warehouse fire, a second Detroit gangster had been wounded trying to chill off Rusty and me. Who better to dig for information than a newspaperman? Dom could gab with his Free Press buddies in Motor City. But I couldn’t reach him at the city desk and got no answer at home.
Using the experience and cunning stored in my noggin, I tried to come up with a plausible explanation for what the hell was going on. But no scenario fit all the facts. Some sharp investigator I was. Every time I found a puzzle piece that didn’t fit, I raised Jim Beam to my lips. No way I could get drunk when lives hung in the balance. No way I could put Mr. Beam back in the bottom drawer.
By 1:15 and my phone still silent, I had come up with a slapped-together scenario on two sheets of paper: the Detroit mob decides to initiate a takeover move in Kansas City. The top rooster in KC’s henhouse was Lazzeri’s Black Hand Sicilian mob. Detroit probes the Black Hand’s strengths and weaknesses, looking for places to strike crippling blows. They have a Kansas City girl, Beverly Cresto, whose lover is Detroit cop detective Harman. Detective Harman is dirty. He’s on the take with the Detroit mob. Harman tells her to sidle in with a fella in the Black Hand. Tommy, unluckily, is the fella that gets sidled. They snatch him while on a date with her.
Once the Detroiters snatch themselves a KC mobster, they plan to extract what they can, and then bump him off. That’s before they discover they struck the mother lode. They not only dig the information from the kid—the arsoned booze warehouse?—to the extent he knows, but they decide to sell him back to the wealthy father.
If I was Harman or whoever ran the show, once I got the money, I’d kill the kid anyway. And then I’d either make it look like the Black Hand killed him, or the Irish mob had kidnapped and killed him out of revenge for their own kid lap-dogging for Palmisano. One way, you have Holloway and his mighty machine after the Black Hand. The other way, you ramp up the KC mob’s civil war. Either way, you keep the Detroit takeover under the radar and weaken the KC mobs.
I looked at what I had scribbled on the paper in front of me. Swiss cheese, full of holes— and influenced heavily by my friend Jim Beam. But it was the best I could do. One thing I felt certain of—Tom Holloway Junior was scheduled to die, and maybe the Cresto girl too.
I wasn’t confident Beverly Cresto was involved. She might have just had the misfortune to go out on the town with the kid on the wrong night. She might have had the smarts to know what would happen to them once the ransom was paid. With her life on the line, maybe she distanced herself from Tommy and began a goo-goo eyes routine with Harman. She wouldn’t be the first dame who tried to stay alive lying on her back.
Then I began to worry about Colleen. Hannerty feared she had found where they kept her brother and thought she might be trying to rescue him. If so, why hadn’t she come to me? Or more logical, why not confide in her pal Hannerty, the man she’d been in cahoots with since she was a girl? I wondered if she knew Hannerty’s Irish Republican credentials. There simply was no way Colleen would go it alone. She was too smart for that.
My pencil made dots on a third page as I tried to figure where Colleen was and what she was up to. The phone rang.
It was Hannerty. He spoke softly. The kidnappers had telephoned.
“They wanted to make sure we had raised the money,” Hannerty said.
“Did you get the dough?” I asked.
“Yes, the bankers made good on their assurance to Mr. Holloway. The kidnappers told him to place the money in a suitcase.” Hannerty paused. “I stood next to him as he spoke to the kidnappers. I told Mr. Holloway that because they wanted small bills, we could not fit the entire amount in one suitcase.”
“What’d they say to that?”
“They told him no more than two. Even if we must sit on them to get them closed.”
“So when do we make the swap?”
“We don’t know yet, sir. They told Mr. Holloway to select a car that has plenty of petrol. They will call again. The house is being watched, they said. If anyone arrives or leaves before they next telephone, young Thomas dies. After the call, I locked the gate to the drive.”
“Are you sure he’s not already dead?”
“No, sir. But Mr. Holloway told them the next time they telephone he wants to speak to Thomas or there will be no deal.
“Good.”
“Yes, sir. Mr. Holloway was very firm. The abductors said they would comply, and after speaking to young Thomas, he would be given instructions for one man, alone, to drive the money to a location. He wouldn’t be given much time to get there. And then they abruptly ended the call.”
“Good,” I said. “You got a plan?”
“Perhaps. Depends on how you’re willing to help.”
“Look, Hannerty, I agreed to take this job, and I don’t welsh. Deal me in. What’s your play?”
That came out of left field. “Maybe.” And it was true. Either I did or Colleen was stringing me along. “Why you asking at a time like this?”
“They say they’re watching Mr. Holloway’s home,” Hannerty said. “I want to get you here without them seeing and without Mr. Holloway knowing.”
“What’s that got to do with my girlfriend?”
Hannerty told me. As he explained his plan, my appreciation grew for what a formidable foe the Brits must have had during the Irish fight for independence. If things worked like they should, his plan would get us to wherever the switch would be. Then—as I’d always thought—we would have to rely on brains and instinct.
After hanging up I dialed Jill’s apartment. She answered on the seventh ring. She sounded breathless and put out.
“Jill, it’s Phil.”
“Yeah? What do you want?”
“Something big has come up. I need your help.”
“I hope you don’t need it before I put away the groceries.”
“I’ll wait.” Her receiver whacked hard on a counter or table.
I waited. And waited. At one point I wondered if she had cornered the market on Post Toasties.
“Okay, what?”
“I need you to be my girlfriend for the afternoon.”
“You need what?”
I told her Hannerty’s plan to get me back to the Holloway place unseen by anyone, including Holloway. The Cates mansion on Fifty-Fourth backed up to the Holloway estate. The Cateses were visiting family in Winnetka and returning around midnight on the Chicago Limited. Martin Collins, their butler, watched the house while they were gone. Collins and Hannerty both grew up in County Donegal and were pals here in the States.
“So, Jill, I need you to come and pick me up at the office. Take me to the Cates place. We go to the door arm-in-arm like old family friends. Collins lets us in, you eat tea and crumpets, while me and Hannerty go rescue the kid. Okay?”
“What’s a crumpet?”
I knew she wasn’t serious. I could see it in her face, even from four miles away. “It’s like a biscuit, only for rich people. Okay? The kid’s life might be on the line.”
“Why my car? Why not yours?”
“Mine’s dead.”
She let out one single, squealed “Ha!” And then she followed with, “I knew that wreck wouldn’t make it through the winter. But I figured it’d at least make it to winter.”
“It’s not like that. My car was murdered last night. And they tried to murder Rusty and me. Rusty’s in the hospital.”
“Oh, my God! How? Is he, is he okay?”
“Surgeon says Rusty’s probably going to be okay.”
“Surgeon? I’m on my way.”
“Jill?”
“Yeah.”
“The Cateses are loaded. Wear something nice.”
The connection severed without a reply.
On the way up Ward Parkway, I filled Jill in on the details. I could see her whole body relax when I convinced her Rusty was going to be okay. She looked gorgeous worried, and she looked beautiful relieved. I was hard to pull my eyes away from her as she drove. But I needed to keep watch for suspicious cars tailing us. Her flivver looked a little out of place in that neighborhood, but not all fat cats associated exclusively with other fat cats. At the Cates’ I told Jill to pull into the circle drive like we owned the place. We parked right in front of the main door. As I grabbed the door handle, Jill slugged me in the upper arm.
“What’s the deal! You tell me to get all dressed up and you’re wearing that?”
The “that” was my second nicest suit but obscured by my “work” trench coat and fedora. Both needed a visit to the cleaners. The fedora was tipped up and resting on the back of my head to spare the lumps and bruises.
“Sorry, Jill, it was all I had at the office and there wasn’t time to go home.”
Climbing out of her Ford, I pulled my hat down low and adjusted the brim. She came around and put her arm in mine, not as a lover would, but more like a sadistic jailer. I felt it plenty in the ribs but kept my trap shut. I may have winced, however, because as we walked up the steps, she lightened up. I exercised the knocker three times.
While we waited, a black Chrysler turned off the parkway and came up the street slowly our way. Too slowly to suit me. I grabbed Jill by the arms and pulled her toward me.
“Kiss me, Jill, quick.” But I didn’t wait for my words to register. I laid one on her, only I kept an eye on the Chrysler. She struggled at first, and I just went through the motions. The car drove on and the kiss ended more friendly than the way it began. She looked puzzled. Kind of like how I felt.
“The car, Jill, the one that just went by, we had to make the happy couple thing look good.” That’s when she slapped me. Hard.
“Now we can be a couple that’s fighting,” she said, standing with her arms crossed, looking out at the street.
I knocked again. A few seconds later Collins opened the door.
“Mr. Morris?”
I nodded.
“Won’t you come in?”
Inside, I offered my hand. “This is my friend, Jill Freely.”
We shook hands. “Martin Collins. It’s a pleasure. Miss Freely, Mr. Morris, won’t you please follow me?”
He led us into the Cates library—nice, but not Holloway nice. Collins had placed a spread of food on the maple library table. There were roast beef and cheddar sandwiches, and biscuit things with butter and what looked like orange marmalade. Collins had placed cups and glasses, a pitcher of cold tea, and pot of hot coffee. My stomach growled a greeting to the chow.
“Help yourselves,” Collins said. “But Mr. Morris, we must leave momentarily. Conor wants you in place in the carriage house by one-thirty.”
“Sure thing, Mr. Collins,” I said with my mouth full of beef and cheddar and the remnants of the sandwich waving in my hand. “I missed lunch, and call me Phil.”
“His stomach always thinks it misses meals,” Jill said, as she examined the biscuits.
Collins watched her eyeing the biscuit. “Those are crumpets, Miss Freely,” Collins said. “Mrs. Cates’ family hails from London.”
Jill and I looked at each other with crumpet-eating grins on our faces.
I’d finished my sandwich and downed a half cup of coffee when Collins said it was time to go.
“Miss Freely, I’ll only be a few minutes showing Phil the way to the Holloway carriage house. Please make yourself comfortable.”
“It should take Hannerty and me a few hours, Jill,” I said. “The kidnappers might even want to wait until dark to make the swap. That’s how I’d do it anyway.” I grabbed another sandwich and followed Martin Collins out the back door.
The Cates’ back lawn looked like some garden spot they’d feature in the Saturday Evening Post. Rows of blooming chrysanthemums guarded our walk to the back gate. Very classy. The gate had a simple latch mechanism, no locks. The two families must get along well.
Collins opened the gate and led me through a maze of juniper and pine on the Holloway side. The carriage house stood about two hundred feet from the main house. Collins felt along the top of the side entrance door frame, found a key, and opened the door.
“This is as far as I go,” he said. “Mr. Hannerty will arrive as soon as the kidnappers contact the Holloways. He said that you gentlemen will be using the Cadillac.”
I thanked Collins and asked him to tell Jill not to worry if it gets late. Collins said that he would keep her safe and allay her concerns. He really did use that word—allay. Though I’ve read it, I’d never heard it spoken before.
The carriage house looked spotless. It had indoor plumbing, of which I took full advantage. It housed Cadillac and Buick sedans and a 1932 LaSalle roadster. There was one empty spot which I assumed was for the Duesenberg.
I checked out the Cadillac, especially its trunk and the lock mechanism because that was to be my accommodation. I sat in the front passenger seat, pulled out my Police Positive .38 and inspected it. Not that it needed inspecting, but more like a reassuring routine. As a ball player, before each pitch, I tugged at my pants, adjusted the brim of my hat, tightened my grip on the bat and tapped it three times on home plate. Reassurance.
With the .38, I opened the cylinder, removed all six slugs, checked the barrel, each cylinder, tested the hammer and the trigger mechanisms, and then replaced each slug after inspecting it. I patted my left vest pocket and felt the comfort of six spare slugs.
I took Dad’s watch from my right vest pocket. Almost 2:30. I left the car door open and took a few laps around the place. I wanted a drink. Just one, one to calm my nerves, to steady my hands and my resolve. I settled for three Lucky Strikes, each lit from the remains of its predecessor.
A telephone rang from the small office in the back corner. Me and my third Lucky Strike went to check it out. I figured it must be the kidnappers and I better not touch it. It kept ringing and I kept not picking it up until it went silent.
No more than a minute later it rang again, but only once. Ten seconds later, one ring. When it rang for the fourth time I picked up the receiver and held it to my ear, but said nothing.
“Phil?” The voice had a comforting Irish lilt.
“Hannerty?”
“I forgot to tell you that we have a private line to the carriage house.”
“Will wonders never cease? So that’s what rich folks spend their dough on.”
“We haven’t heard anything yet. I wanted to make sure you had arrived safely. No one saw you arrive at the Cateses?”
“A car drove by a little slow, but not too suspiciously.” I thought of the kiss. A guy could get used to kissing Jill.
“Good. You fixed okay for firearms?”
“I’ve got my .38 revolver and some spare shells.” I touched my vest pocket. Reassurance.
“Could you use a spare, Phil? You never know when taking the time to reload can get a lad killed.”
Good idea. Why hadn’t I brought the snub nose? “Sure, if you’re offering.”
“I’ll see what I can obtain. Otherwise, there’s nothing to do but wait.” Hannerty paused. “There may be no time to telephone you after the kidnappers contact us, or Mr. Holloway might be too near. I’ll be walking out the front door with suitcases just in case they are watching the house. I’ll try to make some noise as I walk down the drive.”
“Got it.”
“And don’t try to use the phone. It only rings the house.”
“It ain’t this ol’ cowboy’s first rodeo, Hannerty.”
“Just covering everything.” He hung up.
About an hour later, and still no word from the house, I stepped outside for a smoke. I left the door ajar so I could hear the telephone if it rang. The day was cool but nice. And whatever breeze there might have been was blunted by trees and shrubs. From my spot against the carriage house wall, I could only see a tiny bit of the house, a couple of windows on a corner of the second floor.
As I gazed up, someone looked down at me through one of the windows—Colleen. Instinctively I recoiled back through the doorway and shut the door. She wasn’t supposed to be there.
What kind of con were they running on me?
I began to pace, beating a path around the three cars. I should have been glad Colleen wasn’t in a jam. Instead, I felt illogically angry.
Was Hannerty in on it? He had to be.
I still stewed and steamed and stomped around the garage when I heard a quiet knock. The side door opened part way and Colleen poked her head in. Only it wasn’t Colleen. It was, but it wasn’t. She was too old.
She stepped inside. “Mr. Morris.”
She was comely and elegant, the perfect antecedent of her daughter. Colleen would look like that when she reached fifty. Stately. Mrs. Holloway approached me, clutching a small purse. She offered her hand. The urge to take it, bow, and gently kiss it was strong. Instead, I shook hands. Her hand was cool and soft.
“Mr. Hannerty has informed me of all of your troubles and sorrow trying to find my boy. I’m sorry about your friend in the hospital. And I am so sorry for the loss of your dog.” She looked the part too, ready to cry.
“As a girl, I had a dog I loved very much. Whenever I think of Tippy, I can taste the grief that I felt, and still feel, when she died.” Her eyes glistened, deciding whether to drip tears down her cheeks or stay put. She had Colleen’s eyes, eyes that compromised between green and blue.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Holloway.” That was all I could think of to say.
“No, no, dear boy. Tippy died a long time ago. Those memories are dear to me. I carry them now with fondness. Feeling the joy and the pain of the days with Tippy reminds me that I am fully alive. They remind me what is precious and what is not. Tom Junior is precious to me, not the money or this house. I’m glad to have a person like you aiding us.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Holloway. I will do everything possible to see your son safely returned to you.” I didn’t say I’d risk my life. That would have made me seem egotistical. She seemed like a smart dame. She knew.
“Was that you in the window a few minutes ago?”
“Yes, it was.”
“I thought it was Colleen. She bears a striking resemblance to you, and I see now where she got her beauty.”
She looked down at the floor and blushed a bit. “Colleen has told me about you, Mr. Morris. You are even more handsome than she described.”
Enough of the mutual admiration. “Do you know where your daughter is now?”
Her brows wrinkled. “No. She has been gone a lot since her brother disappeared. She says she’s been looking for him. Colleen says she’s been helping you.” She looked me in the eyes. “Should I be worried about her, too?”
“Nah.” The evidence mounted that I was lying there, but no sense in burdening her with more worry.
Relief softened her face. Wrinkles disappeared. “Thank God.” She opened her purse and carefully slipped out a pistol. She held it out to me as though it were a dead mouse. “This is for you from Mr. Hannerty.”
She extended her arm and I took the mouse off her hands.
“Mr. Hannerty says that it’s a 1903 Model Colt, thirty-two caliber with an eight round clip,” she said by rote. “Oh, yes.” She reached in her purse. “And here is a second clip. Mr. Hannerty says that the Colt is small enough to fit in your pocket.” It was. “But it still packs a punch.”
It did. Rusty had one.
I slipped the weapon and clip into the pocket of my suit coat. “Tell Hannerty this’ll work perfect. Does your husband know what’s going on out here?”
She looked toward the house as if she could see through walls. “Heavens no! Thomas would have a fit. And I must get back.”
“It was a pleasure meeting you, Mrs. Holloway.” I touched the brim of my hat.
“And you, Mr. Morris. I hope next time we meet I will have both of my children present to thank you.” With that, she left, quietly closing the door.
It was nearly five and my stomach roared. I had a theory. When a guy expends adrenaline, either in the heat of action or in the anticipation of it, hunger results. Or maybe it was only this guy that got ravenous. Whatever the reason, I was hungry enough to eat a whitewall tire. But I didn’t think Holloway would approve.
Pacing only increased my hunger. But sitting in the passenger seat of the Cadillac, listening to my belly squeak and rumble was even worse. I took apart Hannerty’s Colt, inspected it, and reassembled it, ignoring my stomach’s protestations. The Colt was back in my pocket and I paced the same route around the cars when once again someone knocked on the door.
It opened three inches. “It’s okay, Mr. Morris. It’s me, Collins.”
I let him know I wasn’t going to blast him and the door opened the rest of the way. Collins had a thermos and a sack of what I hoped was food.
“It was dark enough I thought it safe to send Miss Freely home,” Collins said. “I watched her drive onto the parkway. No one followed her.”
“Thanks, Mr. Collins. Is that food?”
“Yes, indeed. The rest of the sandwiches and crumpets. I thought you might be hungry.”
“You must read minds.”
“And I brought some fresh percolated coffee, as well.”
“You’re a peach, Mr. Collins.”
“Thank you, sir.” He was already backing out the door. “Good luck tonight.”
“Thanks.”
Alone again. But alone with food wasn’t half bad.
My watch showed 7:50 when the phone rang. It was Hannerty.
“We’re on. Mr. Holloway just left the room to get the money. I’ll be out shortly.” He hung up.
Less than five minutes later, Hannerty walked in with two suitcases. “We must get to this address near the stockyards by eight-thirty.”
My watch showed three minutes after eight. “That’s not much time.”
“Did you check the trunk?”
“Yeah, and the lock. It looks like I can remove two screws and open it from the inside.”
“Exactly.” Hannerty produced a screwdriver and a flashlight from his overcoat. He opened the trunk and placed them inside. “They told me to drive to that address, park under the streetlight, and wait for further instructions.”
“We better get going.” I climbed into the trunk. “Oh yeah, and thanks for the Colt.”
“You’re welcome. I’m shutting the lid now.”
Once the lid had closed I turned the flashlight on and off to make sure it worked. As I shut it off, I heard something heavy banging on the lock and felt the car shudder. Shit.
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m boogering the lock and handle to make sure no one else can open it. You’ll still be able to get it open from the inside.”
“You better be right.”
“I am,” he said.
I heard the garage door open and felt Hannerty’s car door shut. The Cadillac fired up.
“Can you hear me in there?”
“Loud and clear,” I shouted.
We were on our way. I checked my watch with the flashlight—be lucky to make it on time.
It became obvious that Hannerty lead-footed it by the engine noise and way I got thrown around the trunk.
“You okay back there?”
“Is the Pope Irish? Don’t worry about me. Just drive.” And he did. Very fast. It wasn’t the accelerator or braking that hurt so much. I was able to brace myself. But the cornering sent me rolling all over the trunk.
Hannerty slowed down, then stopped. I could see a tiny ray of light from the damaged lock. Hannerty better be right about getting the damned thing open. I kept quiet and still.
“You come alone?” The voice was familiar. I tried to place it.
“I did.” Whether by design or from stress, Hannerty had reverted to his home country lilt, which turned his answer into “Oy dad.”
“Got the dough?”
“Oy do.”
“That it next to you?”
“Aye, it is”
The voice. It was Flat Face’s chubby pal. Flat Face must be near. I wanted to run a quick science experiment. How far would a .38 slug travel after punching a hole through the trunk and fender of a Cadillac? Instead, I kept quiet and still.
“Okay, mister. Hand over the bags and we’ll bring out the brat.”
“That’s not how we’ll be working this,” Hannerty said. “I’ll need to see the boy first.”
I felt better about this partnership and wanted to open the trunk, hop out and pat the Irishman on the back.
Chubby snorted. “You can’t blame a guy for trying.”
Hannerty said nothing.
I heard steps around to the street side and Chubby’s voice again. “Okay, no one in the back seat. What’s in the trunk?”
“Nothing.”
“Let’s open it and see.”
“Can’t.”
“I got a gun in my hand that says you can.”
“And I’ve one here pointin’ at you says the trunk been damaged when some punk lads like you tried to break into it. No one will be opening it.”
I heard footsteps circling around. The latch jiggled and the car’s rear end bobbed as he tried to heft it open. The steps moved back to the side of the car.
“Here’s the next step,” Chubby said. “Drive to 926 James Street. It’s not far. Do you know where it is?”
“Pretty much,” Hannerty said.
“When you get there, bring the money inside the main door, the one with a light above it. The exchange will be made inside.”
The sidekick banged twice on the Cadillac’s hood and said, “Off with you now, because I’m signaling my pal inside, and he’s about to make a phone call. If you’re not there in five minutes after the phone rings, the boy dies.”
“Now that would be a grave mistake on your part, lad.” Hannerty started up the car and I braced myself as we burned tires.
I knew the area. The address was nearby in the west river bottoms area where the Kansas River emptied into the Missouri. A warehouse and meat-packing district, it was a rough part of town where there’d been at least five shootings since last winter.
“You get all of that?”
“Yeah,” I answered. His voice was muffled, but I’d heard it all. I began to feel claustrophobic.
“When I go in, I’ll move as far away from the door as possible. You try and find another entrance. If you can’t, come in the same door very carefully.”
“Gotcha. Have your gun in your hand,” I said. “They want the money. Once they have it, no reason why they shouldn’t just pop you.”
“Right.”
“Keep your gun out. And when you see the boy’s captors, point your gun at the most important looking one. Let them know your finger’s itchy and you’ll zotz your target at the first sign of funny business.”
“Aye, got you. What’s your play, Phil?”
The Irish accent was still strong and I wondered if the voice he used at Holloway’s was a total butler’s affectation. “I’m strictly backup. If the exchange goes without a hitch, I stay hidden. If there’s trouble, I’m right beside you.”
“All right then. If I think I’m set up or the exchange is a load of blarney, I’ll use the word Ireland. If I say it, make yourself seen with your weapon in your hand. I’m at Ninth and James, we’re almost there.”
I took a deep breath, exhaled, and waited.
As the car slowed Hannerty quietly said, “Give me a minute or two. Listen for the door.”
“Got it.” I waited a bit to jimmy the lock mechanism in case another goon was about to check the car out.
The car door shut. Hannerty left no sound of footfall. I loosed the first latch screw. It dropped into my hand. I began on the second.
Hannerty made excessive noise with the building’s door handle, for my benefit I assumed. The second screw joined the first in my hand. Grudgingly, the lock mechanism slid off and the hood no longer latched. I opened it an inch or so and looked around. The main entrance had a light over it, and a sign I couldn’t read from the trunk. Near the left edge of the building stood a second door, with no light, no visible sign. I’d try that door first, though my lock-picking tools rested in the City’s bullet-riddled, dead-Plymouth burial grounds.
With the lid still slightly opened, I silently counted to ten using my Emporia boyhood “Hide and Seek” method. “One cowboy, two cowboys, three cowboys …” Once I gathered the requisite cowboys, with my .38 in hand, I swung the lid up and stepped out. I felt sore as hell. A fella my age shouldn’t be hanging out in trunks.
Nobody around. A stroke of good luck.
The side door was locked, but a window just around the left side of the building was neither latched nor shut all the way. Though it was open only a fraction of an inch, I figured I’d use it as my way in. The frame had recently been painted, the job sloppily done. It had been painted open with the window in its current position.
Time ticked and Hannerty might already be standing in a troublesome quandary. With my pocket knife, I scraped the paint where window met frame, then stuck the knife on the sill and heaved. The window offered another two inches.
The distant sound of voices inside, including Hannerty’s, informed me that negotiations were underway. Hannerty worked to find a way to get the kid out still breathing. I hustled to the car’s trunk and grabbed the lug wrench which I used to pop the window open with what seemed a lion’s roar. Quickly I slid in, squatted, and held my breath.
I stood in a small office, the only light came through the sliver of an opening in the door to the next room. Voices came from there.
“What was that?” someone said.
“Sounded like it was outside.” Another voice.
“No. It was inside. It came from over there.” That was Detective Harman. I was certain I recognized his voice.
Hannerty spoke next. “Fock the noises. Let’s finish this. Tell your lad to walk to me. I’ll be setting my cases down and we’ll back out the door.”
There was no place to hide in the tiny office. I crept to the door and peered through the opening—a warehouse, almost empty, rows of steel shelves, maybe a third of them loaded with boxes. From an elevated ceiling about twenty feet high, a single hanging lamp illuminated one aisle, leaving the rest of the place in shadows. Hannerty’s raised voice echoed as if he spoke from a cave.
Four men stood under the lamplight. One was Tom Junior. His hands were bound. He wore a white shirt and black slacks, both relatively clean. He hadn’t spent six days in unwashed captivity. Two men flanked him, holding pistols at aimed at Tom. The one to Tom’s right, the nearer one, was my old pal Flat Face. Also in the street-side edge of the light, thirty feet in front of those three stood Hannerty. He’d set the bags on the floor next to him.
Behind Tom and the two gunmen, mostly in the shadows beyond the huge room’s single switched on hanging light, I could barely make out Harman and Patterson. Their weapons, pointed at Hannerty, glinted in the partial light.
Between those two, also holding a gun, was a woman. Tall, she wore a dark dress and a hat with veil, which further obscured her shadowy face. Her long blond hair gleamed in contrast to the darkness. I had finally set eyes on Beverly Cresto.
My Jim Beam high had taken a powder hours ago, but the impulsiveness it always brought still hung around. I wanted to step into the room, blast Flat Face, then see how many others I could take down before one of them plugged me. I made sure the Colt was easily accessible.
“That’s not gonna happen.” Flat Face’s voice echoed. His gun pointed at the kid, swung over to Hannerty. “Now you know the kid’s alive. This is how it works. Set the bags down, and your pistol, then back away to the door. We turn the kid loose. He comes to you, and the both of you leave. Nobody gets shot and you get the brat safe and sound.”
From the shadows, Harman nodded his head as if Flat Face ran the show. I knew better and so did Hannerty. Hannerty kept his weapon pointed at Harman. “I won’t be settin’ the gun down. It’ll stay pointed at your man there.” Hannerty nodded at Detective Harman.
Flat Face looked exasperated. “Well, then, it looks like we shoot you and take the dough. Suits me.”
“Maybe you will, lad. But I’ve got a trembling finger here, and I’d be betting that you can’t kill me fast enough to save your mate behind you.”
Stalemate. I watched Harman. It was obvious he wanted Hannerty dead. He also wanted himself alive—a standoff. Next to Harman, Cresto fidgeted like she had chiggers in her corset. And the gun in her hand, though pointed down, fidgeted along with the rest of her. One trigger pulled, whether pointed at the ground or at someone, would unleash the carnage. But even standing out of the light, the girl was striking. Unbidden thoughts of another beautiful blonde bubbled up. I ignored the foolish parts of me demanding attention.
It makes good sense for a private investigator to refrain from second-guessing his actions. A fella does what he needs to do with the information he has. In hindsight it might not have been the best decision, might even have been the worst. But a guy makes his choice and lives—or dies—with the outcome.
I saw a standoff. I saw Hannerty outnumbered by more than a few. I saw the kid and Hannerty dead, maybe Harman too. I saw it was my move.
I guess I thought I would even the odds some. They’d see that the only way to make this work was a clean swap. It seemed like the best move I could make, the only move to keep everyone alive.
We all make mistakes.
I stepped through the doorway. Where I stood was mostly in the shadows, too, but there was no cover. I was a shadowy sitting duck. I leveled my .38 at Patterson. “Patterson, you and Harman are dead if you don’t do what my friend says. Send the boy over.” I stood, legs apart, ready for Flat Face to swing his weapon my way and fire, ready for anything.
But I wasn’t ready for anything. I wasn’t ready for Cresto to look squarely at me and say “Phil?” in Colleen’s voice. I wasn’t ready for her to pull the trigger and send a slug ricocheting off the floor with a deafening echo.
From the moment Hannerty and I left Holloway’s place, I was ready for the wholesale slaughter that ensued. I drilled a hole in Patterson’s chest and a second in his forehead. As I swiveled the .38 to Flat Face, Hannerty opened up on the guys around Tom Junior. In the corner of my eye, Harman grabbed the girl by her arm and jerked her in front of him. Behind her, Harman opened up on Hannerty.
The Holloway kid screamed “No! No! Stop it! Stop!” Then the guy I was here to rescue took a slug from behind and dropped.
As soon as I turned his way, Flat Face clipped me in the shoulder with a large caliber. It slammed me against the office wall. Put me on my keister. Two more slugs chipped plaster above my head. In the smoke and noise, I noticed my .38 was no longer in my hand. It ended up on the floor about four feet away. It might as well have been a thousand.
Flat Face smiled and sauntered my way. Everyone but Flat Face was one the floor. The girl didn’t move, nor did the other goon. Detective Harman lay moaning next to the girl. Blood spattered, Hannerty sat next to the suitcases, their weight holding him up.
As Flat Face approached me, Hannerty aimed at his back and squeezed the trigger. Click. Another click, and a third. Hannerty’s clip was empty. Flat face swiveled and pulled his trigger. Hannerty’s face exploded.
When Flat Face turned back to me, his smile soured. The first slug from my Colt parted his hair on the wrong side. The second, a hair lower, turned out his lights.
I slid the rest of the way to the floor, lying on my side. My head rested on cold, comforting concrete. Blood drooled from my mouth, the sweet scent of gunpowder in my nostrils. The only sound was Harman’s plaintive moan. I couldn’t see him or move his way, or I would have silenced him for good.
A car screeched to a halt outside. Two car doors slammed. In dashed Chubby from down the street and a gangster pal, their guns drawn. My Colt barked. Neither of them had a chance.
Harman quieted to a gurgle. The chorus of the Gershwin brothers’ song began playing in my head: songs of love, but not for me. I tried to hum along, but pain escorted me down, down into darkness.
I thought of Colleen.