“Well?” she asked, when the door had been closed behind us. Her voice was deep but not masculine—a voice that went well with her looks.
“Vance ganged him in Larrouy’s. He took one in the back,” I said.
“Who are you?”
“Get him to bed,” I stalled. “We’ve got all night to talk.”
She turned, snapping her fingers. A shabby little old man darted out of a door toward the rear. His brown eyes were very scary.
“Get to hell upstairs,” she ordered. “Fix the bed, get hot water and towels.”
The little old man scrambled up the stairs like a rheumatic rabbit.
The skull-cracker took the girl’s side of Red, and he and I carried the giant up to a room where the little man was scurrying around with basins and cloth. Flora and Nancy Regan followed us. We spread the wounded man face-down on the bed and stripped him. Blood still ran from the bullet-hole. He was unconscious.
Nancy Regan went to pieces.
“He’s dying! He’s dying! Get a doctor! Oh, Reddy, dearest—”
“Shut up!” said Big Flora. “The damned fool ought to croak—going to Larrouy’s tonight!” She caught the little man by the shoulder and threw him at the door. “Zonite and more water,” she called after him. “Give me your knife, Pogy.”
The ape-built man took from his pocket a spring-knife with a long blade that had been sharpened until it was narrow and thin. This is the knife, I thought, that cut the Motsa Kid’s throat.
With it, Big Flora cut the bullet out of Red O’Leary’s back.
The ape-built Pogy kept Nancy Regan over in a corner of the room while the operating was done. The little scared man knelt beside the bed, handing the woman what she asked for, mopping up Red’s blood as it ran from the wound.
I stood beside Flora, smoking cigarettes from the pack she had given me. When she raised her head, I would transfer the cigarette from my mouth to hers. She would fill her lungs with a draw that ate half the cigarette and nod. I would take the cigarette from her mouth. She would blow out the smoke and bend to her work again. I would light another cigarette from what was left of that one, and be ready for her next smoke.
Her bare arms were blood to the elbows. Her face was damp with sweat. It was a gory mess, and it took time. But when she straightened up for the last smoke, the bullet was out of Red, the bleeding had stopped, and he was bandaged.
“Thank God that’s over,” I said, lighting one of my own cigarettes. “Those pills you smoke are terrible.”
The little scared man was cleaning up. Nancy Regan had fainted in a chair across the room, and nobody was paying any attention to her.
“Keep your eye on this gent, Pogy,” Big Flora told the skull-cracker, nodding at me, “while I wash up.”
I went over to the girl, rubbed her hands, put some water on her face, and got her awake.
“The bullet’s out. Red’s sleeping. He’ll be picking fights again within a week,” I told her.
She jumped up and ran over to the bed.
Flora came in. She had washed and had changed her blood-stained black gown for a green kimono affair, which gaped here and there to show a lot of orchid-colored underthings.
“Talk,” she commanded, standing in front of me. “Who, what and why?”
“I’m Percy Maguire,” I said, as if this name, which I had just thought up, explained everything.
“That’s the who,” she said, as if my phoney alias explained nothing. “Now what’s the what and why?”
The ape-built Pogy, standing on one side, looked me up and down. I’m short and lumpy. My face doesn’t scare children, but it’s a more or less truthful witness to a life that hasn’t been overburdened with refinement and gentility. The evening’s entertainment had decorated me with bruises and scratches, and had done things to what was left of my clothes.
“Percy,” he echoed, showing wide-spaced yellow teeth in a grin. “My Gawd, brother, your folks must of been color-blind!”
“That’s the what and why,” I insisted to the woman, paying no attention to the wheeze from the zoo. “I’m Percy Maguire, and I want my hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
The muscles in her brows came down over her eyes.
“You’ve got a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, have you?”
I nodded up into her handsome brutal face.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s what I came for.”
“Oh, you haven’t got them? You want them?”
“Listen, sister, I want my dough.” I had to get tough if this play was to go over. “This swapping Oh-have-yous and Yes-I-haves don’t get me anything but a thirst. We were in the big knock-over, see? And after that, when we find the pay-off’s a bust, I said to the kid I was training with, ‘Never mind, Kid, we’ll get our whack. Just follow Percy.’ And then Bluepoint comes to me and asks me to throw in with him, and I said, ‘Sure!’ and me and the kid throw in with him until we all come across Red in the dump tonight. Then I told the kid, ‘These coffee-and-doughnut guns are going to rub Red out, and that won’t get us anything. We’ll take him away from ’em and make him steer us to where Big Flora’s sitting on the jack. We ought to be good for a hundred and fifty grand apiece, now that there’s damned few in on it. After we get that, if we want to bump Red off, all right. But business before pleasure, and a hundred and fifty thou is business.’ So we did. We opened an out for the big boy when he didn’t have any. The kid got mushy with the broad along the road and got knocked for a loop. That was all right with me. If she was worth a hundred and fifty grand to him—fair enough. I came on with Red. I pulled the big tramp out after he stopped the slug. By rights I ought to collect the kid’s dib, too—making three hundred thou for me—but give me the hundred and fifty I started out for and we’ll call it even-steven.”
I thought this hocus ought to stick. Of course I wasn’t counting on her ever giving me any money, but if the rank and file of the mob hadn’t known these people, why should these people know everybody in the mob?
Flora spoke to Pogy:
“Get that damned heap away from the front door.”
I felt better when he went out. She wouldn’t have sent him out to move the car if she had meant to do anything to me right away.
“Got any food in the joint?” I asked, making myself at home.
She went to the head of the steps and yelled down, “Get something for us to eat.”
Red was still unconscious. Nancy Regan sat beside him, holding one of his hands. Her face was drained white. Big Flora came into the room again, looked at the invalid, put a hand on his forehead, felt his pulse.
“Come on downstairs,” she said.
“I—I’d rather stay here, if I may,” Nancy Regan said. Voice and eyes showed utter terror of Flora.
The big woman, saying nothing, went downstairs. I followed her to the kitchen, where the little man was working on ham and eggs at the range. The window and back door, I saw, were reinforced with heavy planking and braced with timbers nailed to the floor. The clock over the sink said 2:50 a.m.
Flora brought out a quart of liquor and poured drinks for herself and me. We sat at the table and while we waited for our food she cursed Red O’Leary and Nancy Regan, because he had got himself disabled keeping a date with her at a time when Flora needed his strength most. She cursed them individually, as a pair, and was making it a racial matter by cursing all the Irish when the little man gave us our ham and eggs.
We had finished the solids and were stirring hooch in our second cups of coffee when Pogy came back. He had news.
“There’s a couple of mugs hanging around the corner that I don’t much like.”
“Bulls or—?” Flora asked.
“Or,” he said.
Flora began to curse Red and Nancy again. But she had pretty well played that line out already. She turned to me.
<
br /> “What the hell did you bring them here for?” she demanded. “Leaving a mile-wide trail behind you! Why didn’t you let the lousy bum die where he got his dose?”
“I brought him here for my hundred and fifty grand. Slip it to me and I’ll be on my way. You don’t owe me anything else. I don’t owe you anything. Give me my rhino instead of lip and I’ll pull my freight.”
“Like hell you will,” said Pogy.
The woman looked at me under lowered brows and drank her coffee.
XIII
Fifteen minutes later the shabby little old man came running into the kitchen, saying he had heard feet on the roof. His faded brown eyes were dull as an ox’s with fright, and his withered lips writhed under his straggly yellow-white mustache.
Flora profanely called him a this-and-that kind of old one-thing-and-another and chased him upstairs again. She got up from the table and pulled the green kimono tight around her big body.
“You’re here,” she told me, “and you’ll put in with us. There’s no other way. Got a rod?”
I admitted I had a gun but shook my head at the rest of it.
“This is not my wake—yet,” I said. “It’ll take one hundred and fifty thousand berries, spot cash, paid in the hand, to buy Percy in on it.”
I wanted to know if the loot was on the premises.
Nancy Regan’s tearful voice came from the stairs:
“No, no, darling! Please, please, go back to bed! You’ll kill yourself, Reddy, dear!”
Red O’Leary strode into the kitchen. He was naked except for a pair of gray pants and his bandage. His eyes were feverish and happy. His dry lips were stretched in a grin. He had a gun in his left hand. His right arm hung useless. Behind him trotted Nancy. She stopped pleading and shrank behind him when she saw Big Flora.
“Ring the gong, and let’s go,” the half-naked red-head laughed. “Vance is in our street.”
Flora went over to him, put her fingers on his wrist, held them there a couple of seconds, and nodded:
“You crazy son-of-a-gun,” she said in a tone that was more like maternal pride than anything else. “You’re good for a fight right now. And a damned good thing, too, because you’re going to get it.”
Red laughed—a triumphant laugh that boasted of his toughness—then his eyes turned to me. Laughter went out of them and a puzzled look drew them narrow.
“Hello,” he said. “I dreamed about you, but I can’t remember what it was. It was— Wait. I’ll get it in a minute. It was— By God! I dreamed it was you that plugged me!”
Flora smiled at me, the first time I had seen her smile, and she spoke quickly:
“Take him, Pogy!”
I twisted obliquely out of my chair.
Pogy’s fist took me in the temple. Staggering across the room, struggling to keep my feet, I thought of the bruise on the dead Motsa Kid’s temple.
Pogy was on me when the wall bumped me upright.
I put a fist—spat!—in his flat nose. Blood squirted, but his hairy paws gripped me. I tucked my chin in, ground the top of my head into his face. The scent Big Flora used came strong to me. Her silk clothes brushed against me. With both hands full of my hair she pulled my head back, stretching my neck for Pogy. He took hold of it with his paws. I quit. He didn’t throttle me any more than was necessary, but it was bad enough.
Flora frisked me for gun and blackjack.
“.38 special,” she named the caliber of the gun. “I dug a .38 special bullet out of you, Red.” The words came faintly to me through the roaring in my ears.
The little old man’s voice was chattering in the kitchen. I couldn’t make out anything he said. Pogy’s hands went away from me. I put my own hands to my throat. It was hell not to have any pressure at all there. The blackness went slowly away from my eyes, leaving a lot of little purple clouds that floated around and around. Presently I could sit up on the floor. I knew by that I had been lying down on it.
The purple clouds shrank until I could see past them enough to know there were only three of us in the room now. Cringing in a chair, back in a corner, was Nancy Regan. On another chair, beside the door, a black pistol in his hand, sat the scared little old man. His eyes were desperately frightened. Gun and hand shook at me. I tried to ask him to either stop shaking or move his gun away from me, but I couldn’t get any words out yet.
Upstairs, guns boomed, their reports exaggerated by the smallness of the house.
The little man winced.
“Let me get out,” he whispered with unexpected abruptness, “and I will give you everything. I will! Everything—if you will let me get out of this house!”
This feeble ray of light where there hadn’t been a dot gave me back the use of my vocal apparatus.
“Talk turkey,” I managed to say.
“I will give you those upstairs—that she-devil. I will give you the money. I will give you all—if you will let me go out. I am old. I am sick. I cannot live in prison. What have I to do with robberies? Nothing. Is it my fault that she-devil—? You have seen it here. I am a slave—I who am near the end of my life. Abuse, cursings, beatings—and those are not enough. Now I must go to prison because that she-devil is a she-devil. I am an old man who cannot live in prisons. You let me go out. You do me that kindness. I will give you that she-devil—those other devils—the money they stole. That I will do!”
Thus this panic-stricken little old man, squirming and fidgeting on his chair.
“How can I get you out?” I asked, getting up from the floor, my eye on his gun. If I could get to him while we talked. …
“How not? You are a friend of the police—that I know. The police are here now—waiting for daylight before they come into this house. I myself with my old eyes saw them take that Bluepoint Vance. You can take me out past your friends, the police. You do what I ask, and I will give you those devils and their moneys.”
“Sounds good,” I said, taking a careless step toward him. “But can I just stroll out of here when I want to?”
“No! No!” he said, paying no attention to the second step I took toward him. “But first I will give you those three devils. I will give them to you alive but without power. And their money. That I will do, and then you will take me out—and this girl here.” He nodded suddenly at Nancy, whose white face, still nice in spite of its terror, was mostly wide eyes just now. “She, too, has nothing to do with those devils’ crimes. She must go with me.”
I wondered what this old rabbit thought he could do. I frowned exceedingly thoughtful while I took still another step toward him.
“Make no mistake,” he whispered earnestly. “When that she-devil comes back into this room you will die—she will kill you certainly.”
Three more steps and I would be close enough to take hold of him and his gun.
Footsteps were in the hall. Too late for a jump.
“Yes?” he hissed desperately.
I nodded a split-second before Big Flora came through the door.
XIV
She was dressed for action in a pair of blue pants that were probably Pogy’s, beaded moccasins, a silk waist. A ribbon held her curly yellow hair back from her face. She had a gun in one hand, one in each hip pocket.
The one in her hand swung up.
“You’re done,” she told me, quite matter-of-fact.
My newly acquired confederate whined, “Wait, wait, Flora! Not here like this, please! Let me take him into the cellar.”
She scowled at him, shrugging her silken shoulders.
“Make it quick,” she said. “It’ll be light in another half-hour.”
I felt too much like crying to laugh at them. Was I supposed to think this woman would let the rabbit change her plans? I suppose I must have put some value on the old gink’s help, or I wouldn’t have been so disappointed when this little comedy told me it was a frame-up
. But any hole they worked me into couldn’t be any worse than the one I was in.
So I went ahead of the old man into the hall, opened the door he indicated, switched on the basement light, and went down the rough steps.
Close behind me he was whispering, “I’ll first show you the moneys, and then I will give to you those devils. And you will not forget your promise? I and that girl shall go out through the police?”
“Oh, yes,” I assured the old joker.
He came up beside me, sticking a gun-butt in my hand.
“Hide it,” he hissed, and, when I had pocketed that one, gave me another, producing them with his free hand from under his coat.
Then he actually showed me the loot. It was still in the boxes and bags in which it had been carried from the banks. He insisted on opening some of them to show me the money—green bundles belted with the bank’s yellow wrappers. The boxes and bags were stacked in a small brick cell that was fitted with a padlocked door, to which he had the key.
He closed the door when we were through looking, but he did not lock it, and he led me back part of the way we had come.
“That, as you see, is the money,” he said. “Now for those. You will stand here, hiding behind these boxes.”
A partition divided the cellar in half. It was pierced by a doorway that had no door. The place the old man told me to hide was close beside this doorway, between the partition and four packing-cases. Hiding there, I would be to the right of, and a little behind, anyone who came downstairs and walked through the cellar toward the cell that held the money. That is, I would be in that position when they went to go through the doorway in the partition.
The old man was fumbling beneath one of the boxes. He brought out an eighteen-inch length of lead pipe stuffed in a similar length of black garden hose. He gave this to me as he explained everything.
“They will come down here one at a time. When they are about to go through this door, you will know what to do with this. And then you will have them, and I will have your promise. Is it not so?”
Creeping Siamese and Other Stories Page 9