by B C Bell
“Did he owe them any money?” Mac said, putting emphasis on every single word, his stare burning daggers into his uncle’s eyes.
Uncle Ray jerked his hand back from underneath Mac’s, shreds of cigar still sticking to it as he shook it in the air. “Alright, alright, already! Believe me Frank, I never meant to lie to you! I just, I just… I didn’t want you to get hurt. You were just old enough to get into trouble and…” Ray clutched one hand in the other. “I told him not to do it, Mac. I know how crazy that makes me sound considering you just bailed me out. But I told him not to do it. Even offered to take on the loan myself. It just—it just didn’t seem like such a big deal at the time. And then after they killed him I thought, why ruin your life with it. If it helps any, Mac, it’s been killing me for years. Maybe that’s why I finally fell for that loan shark deal myself, maybe I just felt like I deserved…” his voice trailed off weakly.
“Thanks,” Mac said, staring down at the floor. “Thanks for telling me the truth.”
“I’m sorry, Frank. I really am. Mostly I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when you needed me, I was just so broken up. Next thing you know, years have gone by—and then to top it off, you’re saving me.” Ray picked up what was left of the cigar and crushed it in his hand. “You’re a good kid, Frank. And me? I’m a rat.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Ray. Who’s to say, I might’ve done the same thing if I was in your shoes. If you hadn’t taken care of yourself, neither of us would be here right now. And Dad… Well, he was a big boy; he knew what he was getting into.”
“I’m not so sure he did. He loved you, you know.”
“Yeah, I know.”
There was a moment of silence, both men staring down and far away. Then, at the same time, they looked directly at each other.
“Problem is that’s about all I know,” Mac said.
Uncle Ray got up and poured them both a drink anyway. “So what brought all this up? All these questions?”
And Mac told him. Told him about the men who had failed Slots Lurie and how he had punished them. About Lurie’s enemies and how they had succumbed to slow death by poison. About how one of them had supposedly drowned, and about how Slots got his nickname some fifteen-years ago—at about the same time Mac’s father had been starting up his own construction business. He told Ray there was no definitive test for death by drowning, and how—even if there was—the human liver would convert wood alcohol to formaldehyde, the same stuff they use to embalm the bodies. How even if they dug up the body to prove it was murder—if they could prove it—they still couldn’t prove that Slots had done it. He left out The Bagman, but he told him everything else.
After a while Mac stood up to go and realized he hadn’t eaten all day. He didn’t mention it, but Uncle Ray must have noticed. Trudy brought up some sandwiches and lemonade and the three of them sat around talking about Big Jim McCullough, laughing and missing him at the same time.
Of course Mac’s childhood came into the conversation, and he used the opportunity to ask about his sleepwalking. Uncle Ray told him that they knew Mac faked it to raid the pantry, but on several occasions he actually had been walking in his sleep. Oddly enough, it was on those occasions that Mac seemed to find the snacks and Christmas gifts that had been hidden out of his reach. Mac couldn’t remember ever faking his sleep disorder to find anything outside the pantry, but neglected to mention his recent proclivity for problem solving in his sleep. Somehow it had to be connected.
The talk helped. After a few hours Mac had calmed down enough to realize he needed time to rest, to plan, before he went after Slots. He had also neglected to mention he was in a war with the mob, so that when the evening was wrapping up, it seemed like more of a family gathering than a family goodbye. More so than his dead reckoning cared to admit.
After a firm handshake from Uncle Ray and a peck on the cheek from Trudy, Mac opened the door of the Packard only to remember he didn’t have a place to stay that night. He was sure Ray and Trudy would let him spend the night if he mentioned his apartment house had burned down, but he didn’t. Instead, he turned left on Addison again and decided to get a cheap room at The Sheffield House instead of burglarizing the place like he had the last time he was there. It wasn’t exactly The Ritz, or The Drake, but it was close, and a lot of baseball players stayed there when they were on the road. The Giants were in town. Maybe he’d even run into Mel Ott, get a chance to ask him why they traded O’Doul.
A light breeze blew in over Lake Michigan, cooling the night air, so rather than take the main thoroughfares Mac decided to zigzag toward the hotel. He hung another left on Ashland and then a right. As he pulled up to the stop sign on Southport, he noticed the lights reflecting off his windshield in stroboscopic fashion. Red lights—police car lights.
The old burglar instinct kicked in immediately, not once, but twice. First, the intuitive jolt of adrenal fear embedded from a career on the wrong side of the law; and then second, the realization that he was already off the hook. The lights were in front of him; they were arresting somebody else. Nevertheless, he came to a complete stop at the sign. That’s when he realized the red flashers were spinning not just from the top of a squad car, but from an ambulance directly in front of Mr. Stephano’s grocery store.
Mac hopped out of the Packard, without even bothering to park, and ran across the street. A small cluster of people were already gathering around the door.
“What happened?” he asked a boy in knickers next to the newsstand.
“Somebody got robbed, I think,” the paperboy said.
Mac could hear the ambulance driver yelling something about “shock” on the radio in the background. He started shoving people out of his way, pushing through the gathering crowd of onlookers. A beat cop stopped him at the door.
“This is a crime scene, mister. No trespassing.” The officer pulled the brim of his hat down and yelled again for the crowd to disperse.
“I’m a friend of the family,” Mac said, lightly pressing the air in front of the patrolmen’s chest, letting the policeman know he intended to pass.
The officer flung his nightstick down in front of the door, and Mac parried with his forearm, pushing his way in. The cop brought the stick up again, threatening to take a swing.
“I’m a friend of the family!” Mac repeated. He could hear Mama Stephano screaming from inside the store.
“It’s OK, it’s OK!” she wailed. “Steph wants to talk to him! He’s a friend!”
“Let him through,” the patrolman inside said.
The cop at the door didn’t hear him. Mac caught the police baton in mid-swing. He held it in an iron grip as the two men traded fiery stares.
“It’s OK! Let him in!” the policeman ordered from inside.
Mac let go and the nightstick jerked out of his reach. He could see Mr. Stephano inside, lying on the floor, gasping for breath. There was blood on the front of the counter, and a small pool forming beneath the old man. The medic finished taking Mr. Stephano’s pulse and tore open the old man’s shirt to examine the wound. One of the buttons zipped by Mac’s head as he knelt down. It rattled across the floor in slow motion as Mac took the old man’s hand in his own. He wanted to know what had happened, but he knew better than to interfere in the ambulance man’s work.
“It’s OK, Mr. Stephano, It’s OK. Hang on. You’re going to be all right.”
Mr. Stephano raised his head and looked at Mac as the medic pulled handfuls of gauze and tape out of his bag, the pool of blood on the floor ever widening. The old man lay his head back down on the floor and motioned for Mac to lean in closer while the medic pressed down on a gob of bloody cotton, pulling tape from a roll with his teeth. Mac leaned over, eyes wide, mouth hanging.
“It’s OK, kid. Fancy pants gangsters.” Stephano laughed. “I didn’t tell ‘em a thing.” There was a gurg
ling sound in his throat, and Mac held the old man’s head in his hands. Mr. Stephano looked up at his wife, lovingly. Then a second later, he was looking through her. He went limp in Mac’s hands.
“Don’t you die on me, old man!” Mac cried. “Don’t you die!” His right hand pressed at Stephano’s chest, trying to somehow hold the life in.
The medic leaned back on his knees, arms hanging at his sides. Mac slowly lifted his hand away—suddenly aware that it was covered in blood. He held it in front of himself, staring at it.
“I’m sorry,” the medic said, standing up. “I’m sorry… It’s amazing he held on as long as he did.”
The policeman behind him wrote down the time of death as Mrs. Stephano held a handkerchief to her face. The wail of panic was gone. Only a sobbing sound seemed to come from her throat. Two ladies from upstairs, her neighbors—one old, one young—stepped in close to comfort her. She put her head on the younger one’s shoulder and trembled.
Mac kept looking at his hand. He stood up, looked at Mrs. Stephano crying. He looked at the man from the ambulance—who had done all he could—gave him a brief nod, then turned and walked toward the door. He pushed the patrolman with the nightstick out of his way, staining the uniform with the dead man’s blood. Looking up as he crossed the street, it was a different Mac McCullough that noticed the moon was only seven-eighths full.
He turned the car around and headed for the garage.
Chapter VIII
A Voice for the Dead
Crankshaft had been working late, playing with the Blue Streak. He’d added a few extras of his own to the Graham, something else to keep it from being street legal. He could hardly wait to try it out. No wonder Mac broke the rules so often.
The ace mechanic was sitting behind the rear bumper, admiring his handiwork, when an unexpected crashing sound and the roar of an engine suddenly startled him from his reverie. Car brakes screeched, and he heard the gravel above him grind under the wheels of a car sliding in a fantail stop. He picked up a wrench and ran up the ramp to ground level, wielding it like a hammer.
Mac’s silhouette bolted out of the Packard as if ejected into the cloud of dust stirred up by the car. He bounded toward the entrance ramp, the fire in his eyes burning through the shadows, alarming even Crankshaft.
“Let’s go,” Mac said
“Who?” Crankshaft had seen the blood on his hands.
“They gutted Stephano.”
The mechanic nodded, and they treaded back underground.
After climbing into the modified roadster, Crankshaft popped open the glove compartment and pulled out something else he had been working on—a pair of motorcycle goggles treated with the same reflective material as the windshield of the car. Strapped around his head, he snapped them over the bill of his cap like an old time wheelman.
Mac climbed in the other side of the car. Crankshaft hit the starter and the engine hummed.
The Blue-Streak came out of the ground like an angel escaping from hell, surfacing as if birthed by the piles of discarded engine parts that camouflaged its secret hideout. It swerved smoothly around the Packard in a corner, tighter than any factory car could have made. The engine sound changed from a hum to a purr and the Blue Streak soared through the gates and into the night as if it were a part of it.
Crankshaft shifted the engine into fourth in the straightaway, downshifting to second in the curves, still obeying the traffic signs. They didn’t want to call attention to themselves, yet. Mac sat with his arm resting on the sill of the open window, staring at the seven-eighths moon. Neither of them said a word.
Five minutes later a blue-gray demon pulled up on the curb next to the Lincoln Men’s Club.
“You know how to use a Tommygun?” Mac said.
“Croix De Guerre,” Crankshaft said. The French Medal of Honor he had won in the Great War.
Nobody was around to notice the vigilante with a leather face and a driver in reflective goggles stepping out of the car. Mac opened the rumble seat, exposing an arsenal. Crankshaft picked up one of the Tommy guns and pulled an extra drum of ammo out. The ratcheting sound of arms and ammunition reverberated off the shadowed alley walls.
Mac grabbed a handful of ammo and tucked two grenades into his vest. He pulled his hat on tighter and unholstered his revolver as the two of them approached the front door. Mac kicked it in.
The sound of splitting wood cut the air as every eye in the old Lincoln Taproom flew toward the door. A man in a mask, wearing a fedora and holding a .45 revolver in the air stood framed by the night
“Hi guys,” he said, smiling deceptively through the mask.
The smell of cheap liquor filled The Bagman’s nostrils as he stepped through the door. A man sat at the bar, startled, with a drink and blood on his hands. Mac almost shot him then and there, until he realized there were tradesmen making for the exits, still wearing butcher’s aprons covered with blood. Several of them angled around the big man in the door only to halt when they saw the driver with no eyes wielding a machine gun in their way. They turned and made for the rear exit. Mac let them go.
Two men in suits lingered at the far end of the bar. Four others, butchers of a different sort, were gathered around a pool table. Two were leaning on their pool cues, one had been about to take his shot. The other one was still spilling the mug of beer pressed to his lips down his shirt. Something sped out of the gloom behind the door. There was no way Crankshaft could have seen the man. Mac never even saw it coming.
A pool cue smashed against the side of The Bagman’s head, the wide end splintering off and whirling through the air over the bar. The masked man’s eyes scrunched up, he opened the left one and tilted his head to the side, grinning at the man who had hit him. The man behind the door gripped the thin end of the pool cue in both hands.
A gloved fist shot out in a roundhouse right to the jaw. The man’s head bounced off the wall, and he crumpled to the floor like a bag of potatoes. His head hit the floorboards before the pool cue.
The poolroom thug leaning across the table spun his cue stick like a baton and charged, swinging wildly. The Bagman snagged it, one-handed, in the air, all without losing eye contact. His attacker’s eyes widened in a combination of fear and surprise and, for a split second, Mac held the pool cue wedged in his hand, immovable. His attacker tightened his grip and pulled in an effort to gain control of the cue. The Bagman stabbed the stick down through his attacker’s own fingers, as if he were still shooting pool, and jabbed the man in the eye. The scream of pain scarred the air like a curse on the room itself.
In the same motion, Mac stepped back and to the side, as if recoiling from his own gesture. Somebody threw a beer mug. The cue seemed to hang in the air for the briefest of moments as Mac switched his grip and—still wielding the .45 in his left hand—swung the cue stick with his right, smashing the mug aimed at his head in midair. Glass showered the two gunsels behind the pool table, distracting them while Mac did a hop, skip, and punt at the man who had thrown the mug, kicking him in the crotch. With no time for thought, the other two men’s hands cleared their jackets, a .45 automatic in each.
Mac dove under the pool table as gunfire followed him, bullets ripping the green felt and ricocheting off the slate. Dust and cordite filled the air.
The two men in suits at the far end of the bar began to reach into their pockets— but the sudden burst of a machine gun stopped them. The roar of the Thompson drowned out everything else as bullet holes popped in a straight line above the two gangster’s heads, perforating the wallpaper and curving down in a smooth half circle that stopped only inches away from the first man’s chest. The gangsters held their hands out in the air. Crankshaft let loose with one final burst on the other side, cutting open a picture of somebody’s relatives on the wall to make a point.
“You boys play nice. Wait your turn,” Cra
nkshaft said, smoke drifting from the Tommy’s muzzle.
For a moment nothing moved but smoke and dust. The two men behind the pool table looked at Crank as if for guidance. He shrugged his shoulders. Both men ducked to shoot under the table. The Bagman heaved from beneath the other side and tipped it over on their backs. A thud and a high-pitched cracking sound were followed by a gunshot as one of the men struggled to free himself. The other was past struggling.
Mac kicked the gun out of the survivor’s hand, and hit him on the head with the .45. The room was silent except for the sound of settling dust and plaster falling off the walls. The Bagman stood up and walked toward the two malingerers still standing at the far side of the bar with their hands twitching.
“Gentleman, I’m looking for Slots Lurie.” Mac wasn’t even out of breath.
One of the gangsters somehow managed to look up without the nervous look on his face changing, pointing and moving his hand up and down without taking it out of the air.
“Does he have an emergency exit up there now?”
Both men shook their heads no.
“You know if you’re lying to me I will hunt you down and kill you?”
One thug nodded yes, the other no. They looked at each other, panic stricken. Then one nodded no, and the other yes. Their eyes and jowls sagged together as if they were about to cry, then both tried to nod yes and no at once.
“One more time, gentlemen. Is Slots upstairs?”
It was a definitive yes.
“And if he’s not, you know I am going to kill you?”
Another yes.
Mac slugged the first one on the head with the butt of the revolver before the goon knew what hit him. The second cringed and scrunched up his eyes trying not to see what was coming but, like a lot of criminals, he kept peeking out between the lids.