THE VAN ARRIVED AT the West 47th Street garage before we did. As we pulled up, Smiley opened the outside doors, then closed them behind us.
“Trouble,” he said as Donohue got out of the Chevy.
Jack stripped away his face mustache and the Band-Aid stuck to his forehead. Then he stood, hands on hips, staring at the back of the Bonomo truck. One of the rear door windows was shattered. There were a half-dozen bullet holes puckering the back doors and body of the truck.
“Nice shooting,” Donohue said sourly. “Who caught it?”
“The helper,” Smiley said. “Flat on the floor, trussed like a chicken, you’d think he’d be safe. He took one through the top of his head. One pill and he’s a clunk. Clement caught two, one bad. He’s going.”
“Let’s take a look,” Donohue said.
He opened the rear van doors. I stood at his shoulder, peering in. It looked like a slaughterhouse in there. The roped, gagged, and taped Bonomo helper lay motionless in one corner. There was apparently a neat hole in the top of his skull. You couldn’t really see it because the hair was wet, dark, and matted around the wound. But you could see the blood glistening.
Dick Fleming sat cross-legged in the center of the van floor, surrounded by filled pillowcases and mops, buckets, sponges, squeegees, etc. His face was white as paper and his lips were trembling uncontrollably. Clement was stretched out in front of him, his head in Fleming’s lap. Dick was jamming one of the spare pillowcases into Clement’s ribs, low down, near the stomach. Clement’s eyes were closed, and he was sucking in short, harsh breaths, coughing up blood-flecked foam. There was another bullet hole in his right leg, oozing blood.
I turned away, gagging.
“Son of a bitch!” Jack Donohue said bitterly.
He climbed into the van. He bent down close to Clement’s face. He said something, but I didn’t hear what it was. He took the sodden pillowcase from Fleming’s hand, pulled it away gently. He looked at the wound, grimaced, then pressed the cloth back in place.
He climbed out, leaned against the truck. He lighted a cigarette with shaking fingers.
“We’ve got to get him to a hospital,” I said.
They all looked at me with blank faces. Black Jack took a deep breath.
“We would if it would do any good, Jannie,” he said quietly. “But it wouldn’t. There’s something bad cut in there. An artery maybe. He’s on his way out.”
“You don’t know!” I cried furiously.
“I know,” Jack Donohue said, nodding. “I know the signs. Ten, fifteen minutes at the most. Listen, if I thought he had a chance, don’t you think I’d let you and Fleming get him to a doctor? Go take a look for yourself. Go on, take a look.”
I climbed into the van, resolving not to be sick. I steadied myself by putting a hand on Dick’s shoulder. He looked up at me, trying very hard not to weep.
“Jannie, he’s dying,” he said, shocked and anguished.
I looked down at that crimson pillowcase jammed into Clement’s chest. Blood was everywhere. The wounded man was soaked with it. Dick’s coveralls were stained. The floor of the van was a puddle. I couldn’t believe one body could contain so much blood.
I knelt in the mess. I smoothed Clement’s wet hair back from his forehead. His face was ashen. Now his breath was coming in great heaving sobs, as if a great weight were pressing him down. I saw his eyelids flutter, his lips move.
I leaned close.
“You’re going to be all right,” I whispered to him, my lips close to his ear. “We’re going to get you to a hospital and get you patched up. You’ll see, you’ll be fine in a week or so. Strutting around. We’ll get you the best doctors and they’ll fix you up. Just hang in there, and everything will be all right. You’ll be hopping around in your executive suit and …”
I went on and on like that. I saw his lips move again. I put my ear close to hear what he was trying to say.
“Bullshit,” he said.
Then he was gone. Like that. One instant he was alive, fighting to breathe. The next instant a great gush of blood flooded from his mouth, his head flopped over limply.
I climbed shakily out of the truck. The others had stripped off their coveralls. Jack Donohue was leaning against me truck again, smoking a fresh cigarette. His eyes were narrowed against the smoke.
“He’s dead,” I said to Donohue. “Satisfied?”
He looked at me without expression.
“It was your idea,” he said.
I turned away.
Dick Fleming came climbing out of the van. I helped him get out of his soaked coveralls. Blood had seeped through to make dark stains on his pants and blotches on his white shirt. There were blood smears on his face; his hands were sticky with the stuff. He tried to wipe it all away with his handkerchief. I stood close to him. I put an arm across his shoulders. I could feel him shake.
“I’ve never seen a man die before,” he said in a low, unsteady voice. “I’ve never even seen a dead person before. That’s strange, isn’t it?”
No one seemed to know what to do next. They were all looking at Jack Donohue, waiting.
“The problem is—” he started.
“The problem is,” I said, “that it’s not just armed robbery now. The helper is dead. An innocent man. Now it’s felony homicide.”
“Shut your fucking mouth,” he said without rancor, “and let me think this out.”
We waited. The others moved around quietly, putting on jackets, raincoats, topcoats.
“All right,” Donohue said. “I’ve got it sorted out. Clement getting snuffed is too bad, but we all took our chances. Rather him than us—right? The problem is, we were going to Clement’s pad up in the Bronx. I never figured on going back to the Hotel Harding. So Clement said we could use his place to hide out and make the split. But with him burnt, that’s out. So now we need a new hidey-hole. We got to get out of here, that’s for sure. So where we’re going is …” His head turned slowly until he was looking directly at Fleming. “We’re going to your place.”
“Dick’s place?” I gasped. “Why the hell there? Why not my apartment?”
“No way,” Donohue said, shaking his head. “Plenty of witnesses saw the Bonomo cleaning van. How long do you think it’ll take the cops to get the trip sheet from Bonomo, go back over the truck’s route, and nose around at every stop? Then they find your abandoned Jag in front of that antique shop on Madison Avenue. They check out the license plate and go directly to your apartment. They could be there right now, waiting for you.”
“Thanks a lot,” I said.
“They’ll run a chase on you,” Donohue went on. “All your friends and acquaintances. Sooner or later they’ll come up with Fleming’s name and address. But that won’t be for a day or two. Meanwhile his apartment will be as safe as any place in the city. We checked it out. Ten apartments in an old, converted brownstone. Everyone in the place works; right now we’ll have the whole building to ourselves. Am I right, Fleming?”
Dick didn’t answer.
“Okay,” Donohue said, “let’s get moving. All the pillowcases out of the van and the Chevy, into the Volkswagen and Ford. We’ll go like this: me, Jannie, and Angela in the VW, me driving. Smiley, Gore, the Ghost, and Fleming in the rented Ford, Smiley driving.”
It took less than five minutes to transfer the loot to the final getaway cars. While everyone was working, Donohue wiped down me van with a pair of discarded coveralls, smearing door handles, doors, side panels, steering wheel, gear shift lever, the interior of the cab, and the back of the van. Then, for good measure, he did the same smear job on the Chevy.
Finally, just before we left, he climbed into the van one last time and came out with the sodden pillowcase that had been used to jam Clement’s fatal wound. Donohue dropped the mess onto the cement floor of the garage and set fire to it. We waited until the soaked pillowcase was entirely consumed by flickering blue flames.
We stood around, watching that sad little fire. It was like a Viking’s funeral for poor Clement. (I never did learn if that was his first or last name.) When the fire had burned down, flared up, went out, I thought that was the end of a man who hoped to be something he could never be. Now there was only a small heap of grayish ash on the greasy floor of an abandoned garage.
“Let’s go,” Jack Donohue said, but not before he transferred my manuscript, Project X, from the back seat of the Ford to the VW. That guy didn’t miss a trick.
Fleming’s brownstone was empty, just as Donohue knew it would be. Dick handed over his keys without demur, seemingly still stunned by the death of Clement in his arms. We went up to his apartment, a few at a time, lugging the bulging pillowcases. Angela never strayed far from my side, and there was always an armed man close to Dick.
Inside, door locked and chained, everyone collapsed on chairs and sofa, physically and emotionally drained. Donohue asked politely for whiskey, and Dick brought out a bottle of vodka and a half-filled jug of burgundy. Everyone had a healthy belt. It was like drinking hope.
“All right,” Donohue said, “now comes the birthday party. Let’s see what we’ve got …”
He cleared Dick’s desk, piling books, manuscripts, magazines on the floor. He hoisted up the first of the fourteen pillowcases and ripped off the tape. He began to lay out the contents neatly on the desktop. We all clustered about.
I don’t care how expertly you describe gems, nothing can match the awe-inspiring sight of the real things in profusion. I admit we all (me included) ooh’ed and ah’ed as the items came out of the pillowcase and were arranged in close rows on the dark walnut top of Dick’s desk.
Donohue raised the shade, and winter sunlight streamed through to strike sparks from those precious stones. Chokers and rings, pendants and earrings: All flashed, glittered, caught fire and burned. They took the light, ignited, glowed from within. What a display that was! I forgot for the moment that all this was stolen property, taken at the cost of two lives. All I could see were hard white, green, and red flames, twinkling and gleaming.
Donohue picked out a gorgeous bracelet of small cabochon rubies and diamonds set in flowerlike clusters on a white gold band. He handed it to Angela with a courtly bow.
“With our thanks and compliments, senorita,” he said solemnly.
“Gracias,” she murmured, taking the bracelet and looking down at it unbelievingly. As well she should; it was probably worth more than she had earned in her entire life.
I was about to cry “What about me?” in an aggrieved tone, and caught myself just in time.
“Smiley,” Donohue said, gesturing toward the desktop, “how much would you guess?”
“Quarter of a mil,” Smiley said promptly. “At least.”
“At least,” Donohue agreed. “Maybe more. But that’s retail value. Still, twenty percent from a fence ain’t bad. All right, let’s keep score. That’s a quarter of a mil.”
He swept the jewelry back into the opened pillowcase and set it aside. He pulled up another case and stripped off the tape. This one contained boxes and packets that had been taken from the safe in the vault room of Brandenberg & Sons.
Donohue pulled out a flat, black leather box and set it on the desktop.
“Here we go,” he said, and raised the lid.
We all craned forward. Children opening their Christmas gifts.
Inside the case, nestled on puffed velvet, was a gorgeous three-strand necklace of alternating diamonds and emeralds on ornate gold chains. The three strands were joined in front to support an enormous marquise diamond that seemed to have a million facets. They caught the light and gave it back, so that all the faces thrust forward were illuminated. That gem burned.
There were gasps, cries, a few spoken words. Then all sounds died away. We stood in silence. Everyone was staring at a small, chaste metal label fixed to the inside of the case lid.
It read: “Devolte Bros. San Francisco.”
“What the fuck?” the Holy Ghost said in a deep, wondering voice.
“Now wait a minute,” Donohue said. “Wait just one cotton-picking minute. It could have been a loan. It could have been sent to Brandenberg on consignment. Let’s take a look.”
The next fifteen minutes were madness. All of us, Dick and I included, tore those pillowcases open, ripped them apart. The sparkling contents were dumped onto the desktop. Cases were jerked open, locked boxes smashed, stock tags stripped away. The pile of gems on the desk heaped higher, slipped, slid, fell to the floor. No one paid any attention; diamonds and sapphires were trod underfoot, wealth scattered, all that fortune treated like so many bargain items in a supermarket: “Damaged merchandise—prices as marked.”
Finally, all the pillowcases emptied, the loot piled in a ragged heap, we stopped, breathing hard, and looked at one another.
All the plunder from the Devolte Bros, heist in San Francisco was there, and jewelry bearing the tags of stores in St. Louis, Denver, Chicago, Dallas, and even some from London, Rome, and Rio. Jewelry from all over the world.
I looked at Jack Donohue. He was biting his lower lip and blinking so rapidly I could catch no expression in his eyes. It was Smiley who spoke first.
“A Corporation front,” he said dazedly, staring at that mountain of glitter. “A fencing and cutting operation. Working out of a legit East Side jewelry shop.”
Dick Fleming turned to me in amazement.
“Those weren’t salesmen, Jannie,” he said. “The guys with attaché cases handcuffed to their wrists. They were couriers, bringing in stolen stuff from all over.”
“Sure,” I said, nodding. “They’d pry out the stones and melt down the settings in that back room. Reset the rocks on simple, elegant chains or whatever. And the runners would take it away for redistribution. A big operation. All those jewel robberies in the last three years …”
“The Corporation,” Smiley repeated. Finally, finally, he had stopped smiling. “It has to be the Corporation. Who else could bankroll something that big?”
Donohue said: “No wonder he said we were making a mistake.”
“Who?” I demanded sharply. “Who said that?”
“The manager. Noel Jarvis.”
“Antonio Rossi?”
“Who?” Smiley asked.
“The manager,” I told him. “His real name is Antonio Rossi.”
Smiley whirled on Donohue.
“You knew that?” he yelled.
“Well … yeah … sure,” Jack said, shrugging. “It was in her book.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
“I didn’t think it meant anything.”
“You stupid fuck!” Smiley screamed at him. “Rossi is a heavy. A heavy! Oh my God, we’ve ripped off the Corporation. We’re in the stew. Every one of us is dead!”
“Now wait a second,” Donohue said. “Don’t panic. We can still unload this stuff. I got a fence all lined up. Asa Coe. Top man in the business.”
He used Dick’s phone, dialed the number rapidly.
“Hello there!” he said heartily. “This is Sam Morrison. I met with Mr. Coe a few weeks ago, and he said—What? What? Now just wait a—”
He hung up the phone softly. He turned to us with a sick smile.
“He doesn’t know me and doesn’t want to know me. The word’s out. Already.”
“That does it,” Smiley said. He tugged his black leather cap farther down over one eye. He gestured toward the glittering heap of stolen gems. “It’s all yours. I want no part of it. I’m walking.”
“The hell you say,” Jack Donohue said.
“The hell I say,” Smiley agreed, smiling once again. “I’m including myself out. I want to walk around with something between my legs for a few more years.”
We were listening to him, watching the soft, pleasant smile on his face. So when he pulled a gun from his jacket pocket, no one reacted. We were all frozen.
“Nice and easy,” Smiley said. “No rough stuff. I’m just taking a walk, that’s all.”
“No way,” Jack Donohue said. “So you can tip the Corporation? Save your own skin and fuck us? No way.”
He slid slowly, cautiously toward Smiley. All of the squat man’s attention was on him. Maybe that’s the way Donohue planned it. Because while Smiley tensed, drew his lips back in an expression more grimace than grin, it was Hymie Gore who moved. Jack hadn’t exaggerated when he had told me the big man was fast.
Fast? He was a blur. One big mitt came down on Smiley’s wrist and hand, turning the gun inward. Then the two heavy men were pressed close in a straining embrace. It all happened so quickly that none of us had a chance to intervene. Jack Donohue was just starting forward when the gun was fired three times, rapidly.
Simon Lefferts, my editor, had been right: A gun doesn’t go Ka-chow! But it doesn’t go bang, blam, or pop either. In this case, muffled between two thick men, it made a dull, thudding sound, like a side of beef dropping to the floor.
And that’s exactly what happened. Hymie Gore released his grip and stepped away. Smiley stood an instant, tottering, his eyes glazing. Then he went down with a thump that shook the room. He straightened. His heels beat a tattoo on the floor. Then his legs stiffened. Then he was still. The black leather cap had fallen off. He was completely bald, freckles on his naked scalp.
Jack Donohue kicked the corpse viciously in the ribs.
“The miserable fuck!” he said furiously. “He’d have sold our asses.”
Perhaps I should have fainted or become ill at witnessing this ugly violence. But it was the third dead man I had seen in the past hour, and something had happened to me: I had lost the capacity to feel. I think it was an unconscious reaction. I think it was a self-protective mechanism. The psyche, to protect the organism, shuts off feelings of horror, disgust, despair. You no longer understand what has happened, is happening. You see, you observe, but gunshots become merely loud sounds, blood becomes merely a red liquid, a corpse becomes merely a motionless heap. How else could you survive?
“Nice going, Hyme,” Donohue said to Gore. “You did real good.”
“Gee, thanks, Jack,” Hymie Gore said happily. “I never did like that creep. He called me a stupe onct.”