‘There,’ I heard somebody say.
‘We gotta get outta here before the cops come,’ another voice said.
‘I ain’t walkin’ away from ten grand,’ the first voice said. ‘Not when I’m this close to it. And I don’t hear no sirens. Look, the blood goes there.’
‘You guys are gonna hear more than sirens,’ I heard Jerry say. ‘More like little birdies.’
I peered around just in time to see the two men turn to see Jerry standing behind them, towering over them.
‘What the—’ one of the said, but Jerry cut him off with a right that put him down and out. In fact, I would have been surprised if the guy wasn’t eating through a straw for months.
As he went down, the other one reached for his belt. I could see Jerry’s .45 was not in his hand.
‘Don’t,’ Jerry advised him. ‘We only need one of you alive.’
‘Yeah, fuck you,’ the guy said, and made a move for his belt.
Jerry drew his .45 and shot the guy once. I felt as if I was at an old Saturday morning matinee, watching Tom Mix.
‘Billy!’ a voice called from somewhere else in the store. ‘You get ’im?’
‘Billy?’ another voice called.
‘Billy can’t answer right now,’ Jerry called back.
I stood up as I heard one man curse and another say, ‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’
We heard them run, and then we heard the sirens.
‘Mr G.?’ Jerry said. ‘Do we run?’
‘We can’t, Jerry,’ I said. ‘We got a dead man in here, maybe two outside, and one of them is a cop. We can’t talk our way out of this one.’
‘Well,’ he said, sticking his gun back in his belt and gesturing to the man on the floor, ‘at least we got this one alive.’
I looked down at the unconscious man. He had blood coming from his mouth. He might have bitten his tongue, and given it was Jerry who hit him, he might even have bitten it clean through.
‘If he can even talk,’ I said. I looked down at Holliday’s gun in my hand and dropped it to the floor.
‘He’ll talk,’ Jerry said. ‘He’ll sing like a canary, even if he has to write his answers down.’
‘You said these guys were pros.’
‘They acted like it.’
‘Then if we couldn’t get Delving to talk, what makes you think this one will tell us anything?’
‘Because he’ll be smart enough to be afraid,’ Jerry said, ‘once he finds out Mr Giancana didn’t sanction this hit.’