by John Roeburt
It looked as if we were going to die.
Nameless Brooklyn streets slipped by, white-mantled and silent. Five O’Clock seemed to know the neighborhood, braking for his turns automatically even though you could hardly see through the clouds of snow swirling at the windshield.
The car was long and black. A hearse.
We were riding to our own funeral in our own hearse and I thought I could probably open the door on my side and dive out into the snow, risking a broken bone, and get away. But there was Ken on the other side of Puggie, and Steffy sitting between Five O’Clock and Barrett.
We passed through a residential neighborhood with snow-roofed houses and big, bare, snowy trees all looking alike. A man in a fur-collared storm coat was walking a dog, a spotted terrier that rolled and frolicked in the snow as we went by.
“It ain’t a fit night out for a dog, even. That’s cruelty to animals,” said Five O’Clock, guffawing.
“Watch your driving,” Barrett told him. His pipe had gone out.
I sneezed. The residential neighborhood faded into a business area, all the store windows and neon tubing dark. There was a subway kiosk on our left, lettered with the words Interboro Rapid Transit. In the morning it would swallow the hundreds of sleepy-eyed strap-hangers staring at the tabloid headlines which might say, if the late editions hadn’t gone to press yet, TRIPLE MURDER IN PROSPECT PARK. The bodies of two men, identified as Kenneth and Jason Chase, brothers, and Stephanie Grujdzak, the attractive daughter of a Manhattan Homicide police lieutenant, were found early this morning in Prospect Park.
“We’re almost there,” Puggie said.
I sneezed and took a deep breath through my mouth and thought of all the things the strap-hangers would think and leaned forward before Puggie had time to stop me, over Five O’clock’s shoulder, wrenching the steering wheel hard to the left. Puggie cursed and I was hoping Five O’Clock would jam on the brakes instinctively and send the big Chrysler into a skid. I couldn’t tell because I was fighting with Puggie for the .45 which he was trying to bring around to kill me right here instead of in the Park.
It was like an atomic explosion heard from the general vicinity of ground zero when the .45 went off in the closed car, blowing a hole in the roof. Puggie’s mouth was working as if he were still cursing, but I couldn’t hear a thing.
The Chrysler had skidded across the snow to the curb on the left side of the street, where the engine stalled. Puggie had netted only powder burns on his face and in his eyes for firing the .45. He sat there in pain, staring at the gun, and I figured he wouldn’t get around to using it for a while.
I yanked the door open on my side and plunged into the snow. There was another shot sooner than I had expected, but Ken had deflected Puggie’s arm. I whirled and got Five O’Clock’s door open from the outside, while he sat there grinding the starter and trying to kick the car over. He was groping inside his coat for a gun when I tugged him out into the snow by his lapels and stepped on his face there in the snow and yelled, “Get the hell out, Steffy!”
She came sliding across the seat while Barrett was trying to hold her there. He wound up with her coat only and she’d be cold but maybe alive.
“You dirty—” Puggie howled, and stuck his face out into the snow. I hit him before he could fire the .45 again, but he kept on coming. When he got all the way outside there was room for Ken to follow. I looked at him once to make sure he was on his feet. Then I grabbed Steffy’s hand and started running across the snow.
Puggie’s .45 or Five O’clock’s or both exploded four times behind us. I turned and saw Ken falling forward in the bright snow-reflected glare of a street light. A .45 slug had entered his skull from behind and ripped his face open in front. He fell like that, with no face left, sprawling across the snow.
“The subway,” I told Steffy. “We’ve got to reach that subway.”
We kept running. Later I could think of Ken and what they had done to him, but now I was lifting my feet and setting them down in the snow and lifting them again and holding Steffy’s hand as we ran, and feeling feverish. We’d put some distance between us and Five O’Clock, who was leading Puggie and Barrett across the snow behind us, but they were still too close. Their .45’s roared, slugs caroming off the brick taxpayer wall beside us and peppering our faces with chips of brick and mortar.
We reached the kiosk, where Steffy tripped on the slippery top step. I righted her and plunged down into the musty dampness of the subway with her. We slammed through the exit gate and onto the platform; the station agent must have been too sleepy to notice us.
“A train,” Steffy said. “Pray for a train.”
We ran along the platform, which was littered with newspapers and gum wrappers, but deserted. Barrett and his hoods came plunging down the stairs behind us, but we could hear the rumble of a train approaching.
I grinned wildly at Steffy and was about to tell her how we could get off the train a few stations further down the line and contact the police in perfect safety. The train flashed by, roaring and spitting angry blue sparks at the tracks. The center tracks, far from the platform. It was an express and kept on going and you could catch a quick glimpse of the sleepy faces in the windows, framed by yellow light.
“Jason!” Steffy cried. “Oh, God, Jason.”
I took her hand again and kept running along the platform. Five O’Clock or Puggie fired again and the explosion echoed in the tunnel. The station agent yelled something.
A sign said there was an exit to the street at the other end of the long platform, in the direction from which the express train had come. We’d make it, I thought. They couldn’t shoot accurately at this distance in the dimness of the subway tunnel.
We’d make it.
But a gate barred the exit at the end of the platform, a sign informing us that it was an auxiliary exit open only during rush hours. Five O’Clock came tearing down the platform, not fifty paces away, with Puggie and Barrett right behind him. Even if a train came now, it would be too late.
“Jump!” I told Steffy, and leaped off the platform myself. I waited for her on the tracks and caught her as she came down. Five O’Clock snapped a shot off and the slug splintered the third-rail guard. Then we were running along the tracks and left the station behind us, plunging into the darkness of the tunnel. Every few yards or so a dirty naked bulb cast dim shadows that lost themselves quickly in the gloom. There was a three-foot space between the tracks and the wall, where occasional safety niches had been hewn in the cement. Here away from the station the third rail was unprotected and looked innocent but could electrocute a man.
We ran and heard them pounding along the tracks behind us. Steffy’s foot caught on the ties and she screamed as she fell forward, flat between the tracks. I helped her to her feet, but she was scowling and sobbing with pain and said, “My ankle. It’s my ankle.”
I carried her to the darkness of one of the safety niches, a foot-deep depression in the cement wall, the size of a doorway. We flattened ourselves there and waited. Five O’Clock came first, so close I could have reached out and touched him. He stared straight ahead, his .45 ready. Barrett was a dozen yards behind him, with Puggie trailing.
“Hold it,” Barrett said, panting. “I don’t hear them.” The three of them stopped, with Puggie directly opposite our niche.
“They’re hiding somewhere.”
“I can’t see nothing,” Five O’Clock said.
My stuffed nose started to itch and tickle on the inside. The muscles gathered themselves for a sneeze. Steffy looked at me and saw my face contorting and her lips formed the words, “Ob, no.” If it wasn’t so tragic it would have been funny. It suddenly was the most important thing in the world to keep from sneezing. I thought of the only remedy ever devised. I held a finger under my nose.
It didn’t work.
I sneezed and in my ears it sounded louder than the express train which had roared by. At the same moment I leaped from the niche and was grappling with Puggi
e before he had the time to use his .45. It was between us as we fought back and forth across the tracks. Puggie was trying to force me against the raised third rail. If he succeeded, I thought, he’d fry not only me but himself as well, and die with a surprised look on his face.
Five O’Clock and Barrett came running back through the tunnel toward us, just as Puggie got a leg behind me and pushed me over it. I went down hard but twisted away from the rail, then saw the muzzle blast as Five O’Clock fired on the run. Puggie clutched his side and tumbled down after me. I rolled aside and you could smell it, the clothing and the flesh sizzling. I picked up Puggie’s .45 and shot Five O’Clock in the chest as he lumbered toward me.
I pulled the trigger again, but the automatic clicked on an empty chamber. I hurled it at Barrett and got to my feet.
There was the faint drip, drip of water somewhere as snow melted and leaked through a crack in the roof of the tunnel. There was the sound of Barrett’s hard breathing as we grappled there on the tracks and occasionally you could hear Steffy sobbing. There was something else.
A distant rumbling sound which grew louder. A pulsing blue glow far down the tunnel.
Local train rumbling toward the station on this track!
Barrett butted me with his head and got hold of my ears and tried it again. I think I bit his scalp but then he doubled me over, slicing the edge of his palm across my kidney. His knee came up against my chest, spilling me on my back near where Five O’Clock lay. Writhing clear as Barrett leaped at me, feet first, I jumped up. My left arm dangled at my side now. It had weight but no strength. There was a roaring in my ears, engulfing me.
The train took shape down the track. You could see it now, filling the tunnel and growing larger every second.
I ducked under Barrett’s wild swing and caught him with a rabbit punch as he went by. He turned and I hit him again, but now the train was filling the world with noise and light and its enormous bulk. I dove for the niche in the wall and pressed myself flat there with Steffy.
The train roared up and past us and Barrett screamed briefly.
* * * *
There were cops and white-uniformed doctors and crowds of reporters and flashbulbs. There were questions. There was cooperation between Pop Grujdzak and the Brooklyn Homicide boys, and cooperation with the District Attorney’s office. There was a lack of sleep and bleary eyes and a lot of shouting while the whole thing came out.
There was Julia who would not know happiness for a long time and might never know it again. And Pop Grujdzak saying it was all right, everything was all right, she could come home with him and Emma.
And there was Steffy who kept on kissing me and didn’t seem to mind that she’d catch my cold…
Seems Pop Grujdzak’s car had had a flat on the bridge, which had slowed him up. So he’d put out an S.O.S. for prowl cars to hunt us down. Only trouble was, he sent them to Livonia Street, Five O’clock’s only stamping ground that the cops knew about. They had raided a numbers set-up there only the day before, but now they all tore Livonia apart again before getting a lead that sent them to The House That Jack Built, then through the Park after us.
“We found the missing Kincaid papers in that joint,” Pop said. “Also, a lot of girls.”
“I won’t tell Aunt Emma on you,” I promised.
He actually tried to smile.
Old Pop with his rasping voice. It would be different from now on, he kept telling me. I’d saved his daughter’s life.
Different or the same, I didn’t care. I just wanted a few gallons of hot brandy and a lot of blankets.
And either way I was going to marry his daughter.
BLONDE BAIT, by Ed Lacy
DEDICATION
For Frankie and Andy Simpson, the bridge sharps.
CHAPTER I
Telling Hal Anderson about Rose was a mistake. I knew it even as the words spilled out. But this was one time I couldn’t keep my fool mouth shut.
It was ten years since I had seen him, and I was still sore about the double-cross he’d pulled on me. So now I wanted to rub his nose in it, but good.
I was sitting in a little bar near the waterfront in Port-au-Prince, waiting while my boat, the Sea Princess, was taking on stores. I almost dropped my drink when the familiar, tall, white-uniformed figure appeared in front of me. “Mickey!” he shouted and began to pump my hand. “For a second I thought I was seeing things. Damn, boy, you haven’t changed a bit. Still a tub of muscles, same old hat—even smell the same. Great to see you!”
“Sure. Sit down, Hal, and have a drink on me.”
“You bet.”
He sat down, first carefully creasing his drill trousers, and I ordered two more rums.
Hal grinned as he said, “Funny, we should be drinking together again, after all these years.”
“Yeah,” I said, wondering if I’d be as well off now if Hal was still my partner. Of course, I wouldn’t have Rose.
“What are you doing in Haiti, Mickey?”
“Man, you can see what I’m doing: drinking rum. Lazying around.”
“You haven’t changed.”
“Nope. At least I haven’t tried to. You have. Why the monkey suit?”
“I’m on the purser’s staff of the American Spirit.” He nodded at the liner down in the harbor.
“What do you do, hold hands with the seasick?”
“Cut it out, Mickey.”
“I figured by this time you’d have long finished college, be a free wheeling executive.”
“Stop it, Mickey,” he said calmly. “I did go to college for two years. One summer I signed on as an A.B. I met a girl in Nice and married her on the next trip. Colette and I live in New York City, got us a house there, and two fine kids. She’s something, a wonderful girl, an artist, and a…”
“So you got hooked.”
“You’re nuts. I’m a very happy guy. What the hell have I to regret? I eat regularly, don’t work hard, send my salary home, and see my family every five weeks. Like a honeymoon each time. It isn’t a bad deal. My having been an ensign helps and some day I’ll…”
“Some day, will you ever be able to stop saying ‘sir’ to the clucks?”
He fanned his face with his hat and laughed. “My God, still the same old Mickey. Hell, sir is only a word. You used to…”
“No, that was your department.”
He finished his rum, then he said, “It wouldn’t have worked, Mickey. Even with the new boat. I’m not made for that kind of life. You see, I like having a wife, kids, a home, worrying and plugging for the future. I’m not built like a…”
“A bum,” I added. “Yeah, maybe that does take a kind of talent.” I finished my drink, motioned for another round.
“Still have the Sea Princess?”
I nodded.
“Lord, not with the same rusty converted Essex motor?”
“Nope. I have two turbo Diesels now.”
Hal gave a mock whistle. The rum was making him sweat and I could see how badly he wanted to open his tight collar. “Sea Princess,” he laughed. “What a name for that clumsy double-ender.”
“Yeah?” I winked at him. “You should see her now. Matter of fact, I’m going down to the dock, sailing with the tide. Want to come along?” I suppose it was then, his cracks about the first Sea Princess that made me show off. And I was a little high on rum, too.
I really enjoyed his pop-eyed look when we got to the Sea Princess. It gave me a bang to see her, too, for she’s thirty-two feet of the sweetest flushdecked sloop you’ll ever see. Mr. Bayard, who sold me supplies, was sitting atop the cabin, his linen suit stained under the armpits, fanning himself with a newspaper. His sun glasses seemed to be the same color as his dark brown face. He waved and came over and told me in French everything was loaded. I owed him a balance of forty bucks and casually handed him a fifty-dollar bill, told him to keep the change. He was so excited he began to sweat more. We shook hands and as he walked down the dock he shouted his thanks again.
“Want to see my papers?”
“My good Lord, what a job! Why she must have cost twenty-thousand. Or more.”
“More,” I lied.
“She’s pure dream.”
“Yeah.”
“Fellow could sail around the world in this.”
“I may try it some day. Want a drink?”
Hal looked at his watch. “Okay. I have time.”
“I have a half hour,” I said, as he followed me down into the polished mahogany cabin. He came in stooped and I told him, “Straighten up, plenty of head room here,” and wondered why I’d asked him aboard. I had this desire to brag so strong, I couldn’t help myself. And all the time I knew it was a mistake.
I broke out a bottle of Canadian rye, to impress him, and some ice. The cabin was jammed with crates—tins of fancy food, books, magazines, a new hi-fi set, and many other things.
Hal inspected the galley, the head, the shower, the bunks, even opened the refrigerator. Then he took inventory of all the boxes and crates. He glanced at me with a slow smile, his eyes asking what was my racket. Then he said it: “Smuggling?”
“Come off it. What’s there to smuggle these days?” I gave him his drink and glanced at the wall clock. Actually, catching the tide didn’t mean much to me except a little saving in fuel.
“Heading back to Miami?” His eyes were still racing around the cabin. They finally found the snap of Rose over my bunk. The camera had caught her running toward the waves in a bikini. It was my favorite picture.