DONOHUE AND THE HOLY Ghost dragged Smiley’s body across the floor by the ankles, stuffed it into a closet, closed the door. The passage left a wide, bloody smear that rapidly soaked into Dick’s carpet. I saw him staring at that stained path with widened eyes and wondered how long it would be before he came apart.
Donohue poured us all shots of warm vodka. We slumped back onto chairs and sofa. What bemused me was that not one of us, not once, glanced at that mountain of jewelry piled higgledy-piggledy on Dick’s desk. It didn’t seem so much to us now. Just stones.
“Listen,” Jack Donohue said, head tilted back, staring at the ceiling. “I don’t have to tell you we’re in a bind. The cops are looking for us. By this time the Feds are in on it, figuring we’re going across the state line. But the worst is the Corporation. They’ll be combing the city. And when they’re on your ass, believe me they make the cops look like Boy Scouts. I mean they’re everywhere. I figure it’ll take them about a day or two to come up with the Hotel Harding, Fangio’s, the whole shmear.”
“How will they do that?” I asked curiously.
Donohue shrugged. “That watchman will find Clement in the 47th Street garage. The cops will check out his contacts, which will lead them to me. And what the cops know, the Corporation will know. They’ll put out the word. They’ll pay off or promise favors. The desk clerk at the Harding will talk. And Blanche. The bartender and waitress at Fangio’s. Everyone will talk. There’s no way the six of us can travel together. Ghost, what do you want to do?”
The Holy Ghost, feet and fingers tapping uncontrollably, turned to Angela. They had a brief conversation in Spanish, rapid, harsh, the words spit out at machine-gun speed. Much gesturing, many expressions: fear, anger, dismay. Finally:
“We’ll split,” the Holy Ghost said to Donohue. “Fade into Spanish Harlem. We’ll make it there.”
“Sure you will,” Jack said, flashing one of his brilliant grins. I hadn’t seen that grin for a long time. I don’t know why, but it made me feel better. “You and Angela just go to ground. You got a good chance, a real good chance.” He gestured toward the desk. “Take whatever you want from that stack of shit. Forget about percentages. Just take. But if you’re smart, you’ll stick to the small stuff. Rings, unset stones, maybe a bracelet or two. Things you can sell or hock without anyone asking questions. Help yourself.”
We watched Angela and the Holy Ghost paw over the heap of sparkling jewelry. They followed Donohue’s advice and selected only single stones, rings, earrings, gold chains, cufflinks. Angela filled her purse; the Ghost jammed his pockets.
“Well,” the Holy Ghost said awkwardly, “it was a good one, Jack. Just like you said.”
“You bet,” Donohue said, winking at him. “A nice Christmas for you—right?”
“You better believe it,” the Holy Ghost said. “Presents for everyone. We’ll be careful with this stuff, Jack. I mean, we won’t put on any flash.”
“I know you won’t,” Donohue said. “I know you’ll play it smart. You want to take one of the cars?”
“No,” the Ghost said. “We’ll manage without.”
“Sure,” Jack said. “I understand. Be lucky.”
“Yeah,” the Holy Ghost said. “You, too.” He went over to Hymie Gore, patted the big man’s cheek. “Take care of yourself, Hyme.”
“What?” Gore said. “Oh … yeah. See you around, pal.”
The Holy Ghost turned to Dick Fleming and me.
“Very pleased to have made your acquaintance,” he said.
“Likewise,” Angela said.
Then they were gone. Donohue locked the door behind them, put on the chain.
“They may make it,” he mused. “They may just. The Ghost is smart enough to move the stuff slowly, all over the place. He’ll unload it here, there, everywhere. He’s no dummy. Hyme, how about you? Want to split?”
Hymie Gore looked up from his tumbler of vodka.
“I’ll stick with you, Jack,” he said. “If that’s okay with you?”
“Sure,” Donohue said. “If that’s what you want.”
He sat down in the armchair. But he didn’t sit; he collapsed. I realized what this day had taken out of him. He was drained, shrunken. He seemed to be running on pure nerve; he had no physical strength left. I wondered how long he could go on without rest, without sleep. Until he was safe, I supposed, and wondered if that time would ever come.
He sipped his vodka and regarded Dick and me thoughtfully over the rim of his glass.
“That leaves you two,” he said. “You got a couple of choices. I’m going to run, probably south to Miami. I got to get out of the city. They’ll burn me here. Me and Hyme. If you want to come along, that’s okay. As long as you know that I call the plays. Your other choice is to stay and take your chances with the law. Sorry about the clunk in your closet, Fleming, but it had to be. Then there’s the robbery, and those two stiffs in the garage on 47th. You’ll have to weasel out of all that. Plus the bomb scares, the stolen Chevy, and so forth. But it’s your decision. If you want to stay, we’ll tie you up—just tight enough to give us a chance to split. Then you can call the cops and sing your hearts out.”
“But you’ll take my book?” I asked him.
He grinned at me.
“You bet your sweet juicy little ass. An insurance policy, like. You two want to talk it over, go right ahead. Go over to the corner where Hyme and I can’t hear you. Just keep in sight, that’s all.”
I motioned with my head, and Dick and I moved over to the window. Donohue and Hymie Gore stayed where they were. Both were stretched out, drinks propped on their chests. Their heads were back, eyes half-closed. But I had seen how quickly they could move. I wasn’t about to try a mad dash for the phone or the locked and chained door.
“Dick,” I said, holding his arms, “what do you think? What should we do?”
“I don’t know, Jannie,” he said bewilderedly. “Where do we stand on this whole thing? Legally, I mean?”
“It’s a mess,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m no lawyer, but here’s how I see it: We can claim that we acted under duress, that we were forced to take part in the robbery and witness the killing of Smiley against our will.”
“It’s the truth,” Dick said hotly.
“Sure it is. I was threatened by a knife, you by a gun. But the cops are going to ask, ‘You claim you were under duress for twelve hours? And never once during that time, not for one instant, could you have yelled, screamed, fallen down in fake faint, or do anything else to bring this whole thing to a screeching halt?’”
Dick was silent.
“We’ll have the devil’s own time proving duress,” I went on. “But that’s not the worst of it. The worst is that goddamned manuscript of mine, that lousy Project X. Donohue is never going to let that out of his hands, because it proves we were the kingpins in the robbery, the leaders. We planned the whole caper. We picked the target, cased the place. I made nice-nice with the manager, and you checked out the police surveillance of the store. With that manuscript in his hands, if he’s ever picked up by the cops, Donohue can claim we set the whole thing up and he was just a hired hand. That’s what he meant by calling it an insurance policy.”
“But you were just doing research for a book.”
“Dick, that’s the oldest gag going. It’s got whiskers. The cops hear that excuse every day in the week. Every John caught with a hooker claims he was just doing research for a book. Burglars, muggers, second-story men, swindlers, kidnappers—when they’re caught, all of them claim to be writers, doing research. If I tell the cops the truth—I was doing research—they’ll fall down laughing. They’ll read that manuscript and all they’ll see is a day-by-day account of the planning of a spectacularly successful jewelry store heist that left three men dead—so far.”
“But we’re not criminals,” Dick protested. “We have no records. We both earn a good living. We’re solid citizens. What possible motive would we have for pulling an actual robbery?”
“Greed,” I said. “Sick excitement. A clever DA could suggest a dozen motives. Maybe we did it just to prove how smart we are, to outwit the cops, to defy society and the law. Whatever. But the motive really isn’t important if the cops get their hands on Project X. They’ve got a conviction on that alone.”
“Then you figure we don’t have a chance if we give ourselves up?”
“I didn’t say that. Maybe if we surrender and prove we didn’t profit from the crimes, a smart, expensive lawyer could get us off with a fine, suspended sentence, probation. It’s possible. You want to take the chance?”
He was silent again, rubbing his blond eyebrows furiously from side to side.
“Jannie,” he said finally, “you do what you want to do, and I’ll do what I want to do. I mean, we don’t necessarily have to do the same thing, do we? If we disagree, we can go our separate ways, can’t we?”
I looked at him curiously.
“Sure, Dick,” I said. “I’m not going to try to talk you into anything. It’s your neck. It’s your decision how to save it.”
He sighed. “Got a cigarette?” he said.
I went back to the cobbler’s-bench cocktail table, picked up a pack of cigarettes and a book of matches, brought them back to Dick at the window. Jack Donohue opened his eyes to watch what I was doing, but he didn’t say one word.
“Let me tell you something,” Dick said, lighting our cigarettes. “When the bullets started banging through that truck, I flopped down on my face, as flat as I could get. My head was close to the Bonomo helper. He was a young, husky, good-looking guy. I was staring right at him when he was hit. He shuddered and then he was dead. I knew it. And then, later, Clement died while I was holding him. In my arms. And then we opened the pillowcases and saw all that gorgeous jewelry we had stolen. And then Smiley was killed.”
“So?” I said, perplexed. “What’s the point?”
“The point is,” he said, turning away from me to stare out the window, “the point is that there’s never been any drama in my life. Never. I’m thirty-one years old and the most exciting thing that’s happened to me up to now was a week’s vacation in Acapulco, where I got diarrhea. I do all the smart, senseless things a single man in Manhattan is supposed to do. But I never kidded myself that I was living. I mean, nothing was happening. I looked forward to a long, safe, uneventful life. Jannie, it wasn’t enough.”
I stared at the back of his head, wondering why he wouldn’t look at me. What he was saying had meaning. I could understand how a guy like him could be shocked, excited, almost exhilarated by the events of the past twelve hours. It was a new world for him. A mild, gentle editor of children’s books finds himself in a hypercharged scene of armed robbery, violence and sudden death.
I had been wrong about him; he wasn’t about to crack up. But an earthquake had shaken him, changed his perceptions. There was a life he hadn’t even envisioned—except once removed in books, movies, television. But this was the real thing. And now he was in the middle of it, part of it. It was raw, sweaty, dangerous. Hadn’t he opted for risk and adventure, sensing the lack in his own life?
The thrilling robbery, the careening escape, the deaths of men close to him—all had given life a savor it never had before. He was feeling now, feeling deeply. Fear, courage, love, hate. Things he had never really felt before. They had been words with dictionary definitions. But now, only now, he knew what they meant.
And there was something else. I wasn’t sure about it, but I had to find out.
I put up a hand, stroked his fine hair fondly.
“Dick,” I said in a low voice, “do you want to make love with Jack Donohue?”
He didn’t answer for a long time, and I thought perhaps he hadn’t heard me. But finally he turned. He looked into my eyes.
“I don’t know,” he said, puzzled, troubled. “Maybe.”
“Then you’re going with him?”
He nodded.
“Then I’m going, too,” I said.
“Jannie,” he groaned, “please. Not for my sake.”
“Of course not,” I said. “I have my own motives.”
“Like what?”
“First of all, I want to stay close to my manuscript. I spent a lot of time and work on that thing and I’m not going to give it up without a struggle. Second, I want to see how it comes out.”
“What? You’re crazy!”
“No, no—Sol Faber claims readers want neat, tidy endings. I can’t see how this caper can possibly end tidily, but God knows I’ve been wrong up to now. So I’m coming along. In for a penny, in for a pound. Besides, there’s the matter of ego. I don’t like being manipulated, and that’s what Black Jack has been doing: manipulating us. I want to see if I have the wit and energy to beat him at his own game.”
“You voluntarily go now,” he reminded me, “and your duress defense goes out the window. You become a full-fledged accomplice.”
“I can always plead insanity.”
“You should have done that three months ago,” he said. But he was smiling, and leaned forward to kiss the tip of my nose. Then we marched back to stand side by side in front of Donohue.
“We’re going with you,” I announced.
Jack let his breath out in a long sigh.
“Biggest long-shot gamble I’ve ever made,” he said, grinning. “It’s nice to have a winner.”
“Would you really have turned us loose to go to the cops?” I asked him.
“Sure,” he said cheerfully.
I didn’t believe him for a minute. I hadn’t told Dick Fleming one of the reasons I had decided we should go with Donohue: I was afraid that if we didn’t he’d kill us both. He was capable of it.
“I’ve been figuring our best bet,” Donohue said, standing and pacing around the room. “We’ve got a day or two before that thing in the closet begins to stink up the joint. But I think we better get out of here tonight, after dark. They won’t have very good descriptions of us. Me, Hyme, and Fleming were in coveralls. They had masks, and I had the fake cookie-duster and the Band-Aid. You’re the problem, Jannie.”
“Me?” I protested. “Why me?”
“Get with it,” he said disgustedly. “They find the Jag, trace your apartment, get an accurate description and a photograph from your sister or friends. You’ll be all over the front pages of the tabloids and on the TV news shows by tomorrow. So you’ve got to become Bea Flanders again.”
“Not again!” I wailed. “I thought I was finished with those goddamned falsies. Besides, all Bea’s stuff is at my apartment.”
“Not to worry,” Donohue said. “I’ll go out, pick up enough junk for you to change your looks. A red wig, a—”
“Not red,” I said. “I hate red hair.”
“Will you use your fucking brain?” he snarled at me. “The cops get to your apartment, they’ll know what Jannie Shean looks like. The Corporation traces me to the Hotel Harding, they’ll make the connection with the blonde who lived next door to me. So now you’ve got to be a redhead. So I’ll pick up a red wig, tight skirt and sweater, a trenchcoat—whatever. Make me out a list. While I’m out, I’ll buy some food and booze, enough to keep us going until we get out of town.”
“How are you going to pay for all this?” I asked suspiciously.
He flashed one of his 100-watt grins and jerked a thumb toward the pile of stolen jewelry.
“Hock a couple of things,” he said. “Rings, watches, earrings—like that. There’s no way, no way, the cops can have a description of the stuff out to pawn shops already. By the time they do, we’ll be long gone.”
“Listen,” I said, “what about the insurance—” I stopped suddenly. “Forget it. It was a dumb idea. It’s not likely Brandenberg and Sons would have taken out insurance on hot jewelry.”
“No,” Donohue said dryly, “not likely. While I’m gone, Fleming, you get into some clean clothes. That stuff you’re wearing is a mess.”
Dick looked at him gratefully.
“Another thing,” Jack said. “You got any suitcases?”
“A couple,” Dick said. “Two leather, and some canvas carryalls.”
“Good,” Donohue said, smiling at him. “Pack up all the ice. Put some shirts and towels around it so it doesn’t rattle. I’ll be gone for a couple of hours, maybe more. I’ll take your phone number, and if there’s any problem, I’ll try to call. I’ll let the phone ring twice, then hang up. Then I’ll call again. That one you answer. But don’t answer any other calls. Got it? And don’t open the door for anyone. Don’t play the radio or TV. And try to move around quiet. And don’t worry about me: I’ll be back.”
Strangely enough, I was sure he would.
“I’ll take the Ford,” he said. “I’ll gas up. We’ll leave about midnight. Get some sleep—if you can.”
“Where we going, Jack?” Hymie Gore asked him.
“South,” Donohue said. “Miami.”
“We’ll never make it,” I said.
“Sure we will,” he said. “Dead or alive.”