Snevelski, Third Assistant in the District Attorney’s office, who trebled his official salary by ‘fixing’ for Parelli, the local big-shot, walked out of the elevator and along the passage. He had his coat collar turned up but he couldn’t disguise his bow legs, his thin shoulders, his peculiar walk.
Lounging outside Parelli’s main door, Scanci and Fannigan, the mobster’s two gorillas, quickly recognised him.
Scanci grinned.
‘Hey-hey, lookit,’ he mouthed. ‘Here comes the law. Howya, Snev? Haveya come for a cut or are you pinchin’ somebody today?’
Fannigan raspberried. Both gorillas laughed.
The Third Assistant D.A. shot them a venomous look. Pushed past, went through the first door along the passage, through the second into Moxy Parelli’s room.
Parelli pushed the girl he was kissing back into her chair. He straightened up. His wide mouth eased into a grin when he saw Snevelsky.
‘Hey, where’s the fire?’ he said cheerfully. ‘What’s eatin’ you, Snev? Have they got wise to you around at the D.A.’s office an’ handed you a kick in the pants or have you come around here to say that you’re thinkin’ of raisin’ the ante? If so, come again. There’s nothing doin’. Not a thing.’
Snevelski turned down his coat collar. There were beads of sweat across his forehead.
‘Send that moll outa here,’ he said. ‘This is business.’
Parelli nodded at the girl. She got up and went out. She pulled a face at Snevelsky as she went. She was twenty-three, plump in the right places, with good legs and an impudent expression. She was expensively and somewhat flashily dressed with a skirt that was too tight round the hips. Snevelsky found himself thinking that he liked molls in tight skirts.
‘So what?’ said Parelli. He did not offer a drink. He didn’t like the Third Assistant. He despised him.
‘It’s bad, Moxy,’ said Snevelsky. ‘Here’s the set-up. We can’t cover up any longer for you on that downtown warehouse shootin’. The Feds are on the job. They got some tie-up that the shootin’ was connected with a Treasury bond grab. They’re makin’ it a Federal job, see? O.K. The D.A. had me in today an’ gave me a nasty one off the ice.
‘He says we gotta pull somebody in for that killin’. He don’t care who, but it’s gotta be somebody an’ it’s gotta be quick. If we don’t, that lousy “G” crowd will be around here puttin’ the heat on the town generally an’ we’ll all be sugared. Got that?’
Parelli sat down. He ran a finger between a fat neck and a silk collar. He thought.
‘I got it,’ he said at last.
He began to grin. He leaned forward as far as his gross stomach would let him. Then:
‘Get this, Snevelsky,’ he said, ‘an’ get it right. I’m goin’ to throw a party tomorrow out at the Grapevine Inn. O.K. The place will be full up an’ they’ll all be my boys, see? There won’t be strangers around.
‘Right. At eleven forty-five you concentrate a police cruiser out there. They can hide in among the trees on the other side of the highway. O.K. They just stick around, see? They wait there.
‘At ten minutes to twelve I’m goin’ to send a certain guy out of the inn by the front doorway. This guy will have an orange in his hand—you got that? That’s good enough for you. Directly the cruiser squad see this guy come out with the orange in his hand they let him have it plenty. They don’t arrest him. They just let him have it good in the guts an’ they’re goin’ to be justified, see? The reason they shoot right away like that is becos he’s got an orange in his hand, see?’
Snevelsky looked across at Parelli with wide eyes.
‘You mean …’ he said. ‘You mean …’
‘I mean the guy with the orange will be the Orange Kid,’ said the mobster. ‘Ain’t that good enough?’ He grinned. ‘Everybody knows that when that bozo chucks a bomb it’s always inside an orange skin. So all the cops have gotta say is that he was just about to chuck one of his usual egg-bombs inside the usual orangeskin an’ they hadta shoot first.’
‘I got it,’ says Snevelsky. ‘But why the Kid? Why …?’
‘Don’t get curious,’ said Parelli. ‘You keep your nose clean an’ shut your trap. I got reasons.’ He grinned. ‘That was the Orange Kid’s doll in here just now,’ he went on. ‘See?’
‘I see,’ said Snevelsky. ‘O.K. I got it. We give it to the Kid for resistin’ arrest an’ attemptin’ to throw a bomb, an’ we discover afterwards that he was the guy who pulled the warehouse killin’.’
‘Correct,’ said Parelli. ‘Now scram becos you make me feel sick in the stomach.’
It was eleven-thirty. The party at the Grapevine was tops. Everybody who was anybody was there. Most of them very high. When Parelli threw a party he threw one.
Irma, who was dancing with the Kid downstairs, stopped when she saw Scanci giving her the eye-sign. She told the Kid she had broken a suspender, that she’d be back in a minute.
Upstairs in the bedroom corridor Parelli was waiting for her. He gave her a big hug.
‘Now listen, kiddo,’ he said. ‘Here it is. In five minutes I’m goin’ to send for the Kid. I’m goin’ to send him out to pick up a guy on the other side of the highway.
‘Just as he’s goin’ outa my bedroom here you come along the passage an’ ask him to bring you back an orange with him.
‘I’ve fixed that the only place where there’s an orange is on the stand just inside the front entrance, an’ there’ll only be one orange there, see?
‘So the Kid will grab it off the fruit girl pronto becos it’s the only one an’ he’ll take it out at the front entrance with him so’s nobody else gets it, becos he loves you so much.’
He grinned.
‘After which we’ll buy him a nice wreath of roses with “He was our dear pal” in silver wordin’ on it, an’ you can move over to me. Got that?’
‘l got it,’ she said. She put up her lips. ‘Gee, have you got brains, Moxy!’ she gurgled.
Fannigan found the Orange Kid in the bar. ‘Hey, Kid,’ he said, ‘the Big Boy wants you—he’s up in his room—it’s business.’
The Kid nodded. Finished his rye. Turned round and made for the stairs. He was five feet ten, slim, an elegant dresser. He’d got style. He moved like a professional dancer and he could twist a four-inch nail between his fingers. He had big blue eyes and an innocent expression. Women went for him.
The Kid had played along with Parelli for five years. He knew where he was with Parelli. To him the mobster was the Big Boy—the real thing. To an East-Side wop kid, brought up to pinchin’ off barrows from the age of four, snatching bags in the street, and acting as look-out for ‘the Boys’ from the age of ten, and every sort of mayhem from the age of fifteen, Parelli looked like the real business.
Parelli had made him what he was. And he was the finest shop-front blaster in the business. From the time the bombs were made down in McGarrow’s warehouse basement to the time when the Kid threw them concealed in the usual orange skin with unerring aim into the shops, offices, even bathrooms of such folk as were foolish enough not to consent to pay for ‘protection’.
The Orange Kid saw the business through coolly and smilingly. And even if the blasting business was not so profitable since repeal, he was also a very good and useful guy with a gun.
Life was O.K. The Orange Kid thought he was big-time in the mob, thought that Irma was the cutest doll ever. Everything was okey doke. So what the hell?
He pushed open the door of the bedroom and sauntered in. Parelli was sitting at a desk in the corner. Scanci grinned at the Kid and handed him a highball.
‘Sit down, Kid,’ said Parelli. ‘Here’s the way it is. Windy Pereira is coming down tonight from Wisconsin. He’s due to show up here right now. O.K. Well, I don’t want him to come in here.
‘I just come to the conclusion that it wouldn’t be so good. There’s too many wise guys around here tonight who might put the wrong sorta construction on me havin’ a meetin’ with Pereira, see?
‘Scram downstairs, Kid, an’ go over the other side of the highway. Flag Pereira when you see that light blue sedan of his an’ tell him to lay off comin’ in here. Tell him to ease right along to the Honeysuckle Inn an’ that I’ll come along there an’ talk business to him at twelve o’clock. You got that?’
‘O.K.’ said the Kid.
He swallowed the drink and went out of the room whistling. Outside down the passage he met Irma coming out of a bedroom.
‘You wanna dance, Kid?’ she said.
He smiled at her.
‘Nope. I’m doin’ a little job. I’ll be seein’ you.’
‘I’m stayin’ right up here till you come back, Kid,’ she said. ‘I don’t want them monkeys downstairs man-handlin’ me on the dance floor. I’ll wait.’
He lit a cigarette.
‘Sweet baby,’ he said.
He gave her a hug.
‘An’ bring me back an orange, Kid, when you come,’ she said. ‘There’s some at the entrance. You better grab one as you go out becos they all got dry mouths downstairs an’ they’ll be fightin’ for ’em later on.’
‘O.K., honey,’ said the Kid.
He walked towards the stairs.
The orange basket in the front hall was empty.
‘I’m sorry,’ said the fruit girl. ‘Some drunk grabbed the last one before I could stop him. I told the sap that Mr Parelli said it wasn’t to be touched, but he wouldn’t listen.’
‘Where’d he go?’ asked the Kid.
‘He went outa the side entrance,’ said the girl. ‘He was high all right!’
The Kid walked back along the passage and out by the side entrance. Away across the lawn, leading to the side road, he could see the drunk lurching along precariously. The Kid went after him.
Out on the side road he stopped with a grin. The drunk had evidently dropped the orange. It was lying in the gutter. The Kid picked it up and polished it with his handkerchief.
As he stood in the shadow of the hedgerow that surrounded the Grapevine he stiffened suddenly. Two cars slid along the side road, pulled up on the waste ground in the shadow of the trees.
The Kid watched them. Saw four men get out of each. Two with Tommy-guns, two with sawn-off shot-guns. Moonlight flashed on a Sam Browne belt buckle. The law!
The Kid stood there thinking. There flashed back into his mind the remark of the fruit girl—‘I told the sap that Mr Parelli said it wasn’t to be touched …’
Why should Parelli want that orange left there, and why did Irma suddenly want an orange? And why was he sent out to meet Windy Pereira and his exit timed with the arrival of a couple of police gun-squads?
The Kid got it. So he was to be the sucker!
He walked quickly back across the lawn, around to the back of the Grapevine, into the garage. He found his roadster, started it up, backed it out on the gravel path at the back of the inn rear wall. He got out and left the engine running.
He opened the tool box in the rear carrier and took out what he wanted. He put it inside the breast of his jacket. Then he eased quietly around to the side entrance, went in and up the stairs.
Irma was waiting in the corridor. She looked a trifle surprised when he appeared.
‘Hello, kid,’ he said. ‘Come along here. I got something funny to tell you.’
They walked along to Parelli’s room. The Kid kicked the door open, pushed the girl in and stepped in after her. He had a flat, snub-nosed automatic in his left hand.
Inside Parelli, Scanci and Fannigan looked at him. Nobody said anything.
‘O.K.,’ said the Orange Kid. ‘Here we go!’
He put his right hand inside his coat, brought it out with something that looked like an orange in it. He threw it into the room, stepped back, shut the door. As he ran for the stairway the bomb detonated. The roar shook the inn. Downstairs a woman shrieked.
The Orange Kid put his foot down on the accelerator and headed for the State line. He didn’t expect to get far, but it was worth trying.
He was doing 70. He took his right hand off the wheel and felt about on the floor. After a second he found the orange he was feeling for.
He changed it over to his left hand and drove with his right. He bit hard through the orange skin and appreciated the tang of the juice.
Somewhere behind him a police siren shrieked.