He leaned against the wall and moved his eyes slowly over her. "You picked a bad time, sister."
"I—I don't understand," she said faintly. "I only dropped in to talk to Mr. Pine about something. I . . ." That was all. She had gone as far as she could. Now it was up to him.
The thin guy said, "You're all right, lady. Relax. You kind of butted in on something. Maybe you won't mind being tied up a little. Just so you won't do any quick yelling."
I said, *T heard of a case once. Girl got tied and gagged and she suffocated. The State called it murder."
He said, "Shut up," absently and continued to look at the girl while he scratched his ear with slow care. Then : "Guess maybe you better come along, honey. Seems the best way."
"I won't go!"
"Sure you'll go." He shifted his slate-gray eyes to the other man. "A sound out of either of 'em, Whitey, and give it to the broad. Let's go."
Nobody was in the corridor and the only sounds came from behind other doors along the way. Small domestic sounds: a radio playing dinner music, a woman's voice shrill with anger, the muted buzz of an electric razor. The ordinary sounds made by ordinary people who were smart enough to make their living in a world where guns were pointed by and at only the unsmart kind of people.
"The back stairs, Mac," the thin guy said quietly. "We meet anybody, don't make no fuss."
They walked behind us down the two flights of bare concrete, our steps loud against the silence. We came out on
the first floor, well down from the elevator and a long way back from the desk. Ceiling lights, recessed, cast a pale amber glow along the corridor and glinted on the door numbers.
"The back way out," the thin one said in his normal voict-.
I led them to the corridor's end and dragged open the heavy door. We came out into a narrow cemented-over area-way lighted by a sealed beam flood lamp. Lola North and I led the parade along a narrow runway to a paved alley, lined with giant-size garbage cans, along this to the street. The rain was coming down heavily now and I turned the collar of my trench coat against it.
We were out on Wayne Avenue now, a few doors south of the Dinsmore. A car rolled slowly past our tight little group, its tires whispering on the wet asphalt, raindrops appearing large and plentiful in the golden lances of the headlights.
"We'll use your scooter, Mac," the soft voice said in my ear. "Where's she parked ?"
I told him, the words thick in my ears, and we went along the walk to the Plymouth. I wondered how they knew I had a car, but it didn't seem important enough to ask about. I probably wouldn't get an answer anyway.
I found my keys and unlocked the right-hand door. The old guy tilted the front seat and indicated that Miss North would find the rear seat quite comfortable. She pushed in, her movements as relaxed as any puppet's, and he followed her. He did so slowly, as though bending wasn't so easy for him any more.
On orders, I slid in behind the wheel and the thin man got in beside me and drew the door shut.
"Roll her, Mac."
I unlocked the ignition before giving it one last try. "Fun," I said, "is fun and I've always said so. But just for the record
HALO FOR SATAN 79
and my peace of mind, for whatever that's worth, what's behind this hard-eye and ready-gun routine?"
The man beside me shifted his left foot and pressed the starter and the motor began to throb. He said pleasantly, "Not now, Mac. We don't want to keep these nice people waiting. Move her."
"Yeah. Do I just drive around the block or would you like to suggest something?" My tone told him how I felt about it.
A lot he cared how I felt. "Get over to Western and take it south."
I made a U turn and drove back to Pratt Boulevard, then west toward Western. My strap watch said it was a few minutes past seven but the sky was already empty of daylight.
The streets out there were lined mostly with large and fairly new apartment buildings, with an occasional private home, spacious and substantial behind a hedge, to break the monotony. Massive cottonwoods and elms hung over walks, parkways and gutters to create dank tunnels filled with shifting shadows and the formless bulk of parked cars.
Rain hammered steadily on the car roof and at the windows, clouding the glass and sealing us in. There was a smell of damp cloth and a suggestion of perspiration, and there were the small noises people make when they're just sitting.
The blocks swept by. Light from intersection lamps winked in and out of the car's interior, the motor hummed quietly to itself, the windshield wipers went sunsh-ah, swish-ah, the old guy behind me breathed asthmatically.
Western Avenue, well lighted, very wide and with streetcar tracks down its center, loomed ahead. I swung south into it, keeping the needle at thirty-five. There was considerably
r.iorc traffic here and I kept my thoughts hard on my driving.
Shortly after we passed Wilson Avenue, the thin man came to life. "West on Irving, Mac."
"Very good, sir."
Irving Park was another streetcar line and the Plymouth hounced some along the bricks as I swung into it. The miles fell back and the rain went on and traffic lights gleamed red, amber and green.
Out near the western edge of town my seatmate began to squirm around, trying to catch a glimpse of the intersection street markers. I slowed at his order and a little later he said, "Left at the next corner. Third house on the east side ! of the street."
"Aye, aye, sir."
He grunted with what might have been amusement but probably wasn't. I made the turn, rolled on the required distance and swung into the curb and applied my brakes in front of a small brick bungalow lost in heavy shadows from two huge sycamores flanking the walk. A fifty-foot lawn and two hedges kept at bay the neighbors on either side.
The four of us got out and went along a walk that curved for no reason, under the dripping limbs of the sycamores and up onto a small porch. The man with the vocal cords put his thumb against a white button and a buzzer gave a bronx cheer from inside. The door moved back three inches on a chain and a grumpy voice from the darkness beyond said, "Yeah ?" in a voice that hinted bullets would start flying if the password w'asn't right.
"Riley," the thin one said. "Open the goddam door."
It closed far enough to release the chain, then swung all the way back. We went into what I suspected was a hall, although it was as dark as the inside of a cannibal. The black-
ness lasted until the door was shut and the chain fumbled back into place. It seemed an awful lot of precaution.
A switch clicked and I blinked at a narrow hall with an oak trim and green-and-white-striped paper on the walls.
Three men now, the new one short and stocky in gray-trousers and a white shirt open at the neck. He was well along in years but still husky enough to give you trouble. He would love to give you trouble, his expression said. Any time and any place. He looked at me out of a lumpy face, then at Lola North. A tired leer tried to crawl into his eyes at sight of her but gave up from lack of practice, and his gaze came back to me again. I got a sneer instead of a leer.
"This is the gee, hunh? Pretty boy for a shamus. They must be teaching it in college these days."
I said, "Your job was to open the door, grandpa. Now you can get back to your broom."
His yellow-gray eyes turned opaque as paint. He said tightly, "Why, you lousy elbow!" and swung the toe of a pointed shoe at my shin.
I moved my leg quick enough to make him miss, then put
, a palm against his shirt front and shoved. He slammed into
the wall hard enough to shake it, banging his head smartly
and leaving an oil stain on the paper. He stood there, panting
shallowly, his eyes vacant with shock and his knees unsteady.
The thin one, Riley, appeared faintly amused. "Shame on you. An old man like that." He indicated a closed door at the far end of the hall. "Down there. Pine. You too, honey."
The man with the gun in his pocket followed us back
there. Riley bent the fingers of his right hand and tapped the knuckles lightly against the white-enameled panel.
"Who is it?" A woman's voice, hard and brassy as a cartridge shell.
"Riley. We got the guy."
"Come on in."
It was a bedroom turned sitting room and office by removing the bed and substituting a handsome walnut desk complete with glass top, telephone and a fluorescent lamp with a copper standard the color of a new penny. There was a modern couch against a side wall, two lounge chairs in contrasting solid colors, a green and brown rug and a walnut liquor cabinet almost the size of the desk. All new and shiny as if the delivery truck were just pulling out of the driveway. Ivory-metal Venetian blinds were lowered and tightly closed, but not any more tightly closed than the two windows beyond them. Heat from a radiator hissing softly in one corner made the air humid as the steamroom of a Turkish bath. There was light, plenty of light, but I couldn't tell exactly where it was coming from.
A room done without much imagination but nothing about it to make you shudder.
A tall blonde, with a hard empty face, a slinky red evening gown pulled much too tightly around a better than average figure, was on the couch with her feet drawn under her and a highball glass in one hand. She regarded me with complete disinterest as I came in with Lola and the boys.
But the man in the chair behind the desk was worth more than a second glance. He wore a heavy dark suit, complete with buttoned vest, and a wool dressing robe in figured brown over that. Such an outfit, with the outdoor temperature in the seventies and the corner radiator going full blast, would have melted down a monument. Beads of moisture dotted the sallow w^axlike skin of his forehead and cheeks but he seemed chilled to the bone.
He sat there, arms hugging his chest, and looked at me out
of a face that was old and haggard and lined with suflFering. Only a pair of brown eyes that seemed much too large for his face, and his neatly combed curly black hair, had the sheen of life to them.
I recognized him, but only because his name had come up several times during the past twelve hours.
Louis Antuni. The Mr. Big of Prohibition days in Chicago. Louie Antuni, referred to also as the Big Guy, the open-handed, suave, cheerful Sicilian of the Roaring Twenties. The king of alky cookers, the prince of horse parlors, the potentate of pimps, the nabob of numbers. The man who handed out diamond-studded tie clasps and bronze-bound caskets, often to the same men. The man who was responsible for more deaths than many, but who had kissed off all raps except for the one the man with the star-spangled hat hung on him for income tax evasion. That had taken him out of the game, and he stayed out even after the doors of the Big House opened for him nearly four years later.
It all seemed a long time ago.
Only this wasn't the Louie Antuni of the old days. Not by eleven thousand miles it wasn't. This was an old man, a sick man, a man who was breathing and whose breathing took all his determination and most of his strength.
His eyes stayed on me—emotionless, expressionless, empty of everything except life—until they would know me from this day forward. It was impossible to look into those eyes for very long. I felt a trickle of perspiration along the skin of my chest. The room was hot but I hadn't realized it was that hot. . . .
He shifted his gaze to Lola North—Lola with her golden hair glinting under the indirect lighting, the hollows under her cheekbones strangely accentuated, her expression a kind
of proppcd-up haughtiness which the fear in her bkie-black eyes denied. . . .
She took that obsidian stare for all of five seconds, then the color rushed into her face and the muscles of her throat moved spasmodically. She looked down at the tips of her shoes and one hand reached out blindly and caught my arm.
Nothing changed in Antuni's face. A thick tongue, so gray it seemed more nearly white, came out slowly and touched shrunken lips. He took two deep breaths to get his voice up on its feet, and said, "What ees thees, Riley? I say breeng Meester Pine. Who ees thees w^oman ?"
His voice was even more of a shock than his appearance. It was harsh, whispering, like sandpaper against mortar. The cords of his wasted neck twitched and crawled with strain. Right then is when I first became aware of an odor of corruption in the room—the reek of malignancy.
Riley, who had been examining a line in the palm of his left hand, looked at the man behind the desk with casual solemnity. "She was with him, Louie. Leaving her could of been a mistake."
"Take her out."
"Come on, honey."
She looked at me in silent appeal and fear was suddenly strong in every line of her. I said, "She belongs wath me, Antuni. Let her stay."
Yellow talons that once must have been fingers came down and fastened themselves to the arms of his chair. "You know me, hah, Meester Pine?"
"Uh-hunh."
"Not much like the old Louie, no?" There might have been bitterness in his tone. I couldn't tell.
"I wouldn't know about that," I said.
HALO FOR SATAN 85
"Thees young lady she'sa wait een the nex' room, I wan' a private talk, Meester Pine."
I shook my head. "Not with the kind of boys you got out there. Besides I tell her everything."
He shrugged to show I could have my own way—at least on that point. He went through another of his breathing exercises, then said, "You know why you are here, Meester Pine?"
"Certainly I know, A Bankers' Special came and got me."
"You don' like thees, hah?"
"Would it make a difference?"
Flames seemed to move in the brown depths of his eyes. "Don' get wise weeth me, you son va beetch."
The gloves were ofif. Now I knew where I stood. Why I stood there was something I knew nothing about and I might be dead and the concrete mixed for my feet without ever learning the answer.
For a long moment Antuni studied me from under sagging eyelids, then he jerked his head at the two men and they went out as quickly and as quietly as candle flames. In the silence the blonde clicked a fingernail against her glass and looked increasingly bored.
Abruptly he leaned forward and burned me with his gaze, "How much he'sa pay you, Meester Pine?"
"How much is who paying me ?"
"Thees Jafar Baijan ees who. Tell me,"
"I don't know anyone by that name, Mr, Antuni,"
He thought about my answer for a long time. Finally he leaned back in his chair and drew the tips of his fingers across his forehead in a gesture that was infinitely weary and somehow pathetic.
He said, "I am tired and eet ees hard for me to talk much.
I don' wan' you to tell me lies. The paper she'sa say you fin' Vito. I wan' to know about thees."
I said, "Any objection to our sitting down ?"
lie hadn't thought of that. He waved a hand at the easy chairs. Even that seemed an effort for him. I helped Miss North out of her raincoat, shrugged out of mine and laid both of them across one arm of the couch. I sat down in the other chair, put my hat on the floor and looked thirstily at the glass in the blonde's hand. She sucked at her drink and memorized the lobe of my left ear.
Antuni's harsh whisper reached me. "Well, Meester Pine."
I showed him a countenance as open and frank as a Boy Scout's. "I'm not too proud to admit I haven't the slightest idea why you sent for me, Mr. Antuni. You knew my name and you knew where to find me. That means you know what business I'm in, as well.
"Right now I'm working on a case. If that case has any connection with you or with any of your boys, I didn't know it when I took the job and I don't know it now. I was sent out to that Erie Street address to see a man named Walsh. He was out. In looking around I found a body hanging in the closet. I didn't know whose body it was until the police told me. He was dead when I found him, and if I'm any judge he was dead before I was hired. That's the whole story and it's exactly that simple."
I stopped ihere. He moved his head stiffly, trying to ease his throat evidently. "Don' make me as
k you theengs," he whispered. "Who sen' you there ?"
My strap watch ticked away the seconds loud enough for me to hear it tick. I heard Lola North stir in her chair and the rain tugging at the windows and the clink of ice cubes in the blonde's highball.
I thought of the man across the desk from me, of his repu- j
HALO FOR SATAN 87
tation in the days when Hquor trucks rolled through Chicago streets with police escorts to beat off highjackers, of bodies turned into dust because Louis Antuni had wanted them that way. I thought of the man named Riley who was reasonably young and possibly pleasanter than he looked, of his companion who was old and silent and who did nothing but point a gun.
And all the while I was thinking these things Louis Antuni waited for me to make up my mind.
I said, "I was sent there by His Grace, Bishop McManus of the Catholic Church. Walsh called on him three days ago. When Walsh failed to keep a second appointment the Bishop sent me around to learn the reason."
He sat there like a boulder on a hill and looked six inches into my frontal lobes. And then he said the last thing in the world I expected to hear.
"I weesh to apologize to you, Meester Pine. When I read een the paper that eet ees you who fin' Vito, I theenk some wrong theengs. I theenk maybe you fin' sometheeng there besides Vito, that maybe you take thees theeng. I sen' a man to your office to learn eef eet ees there. He does not fin' eet."
"All he found," I said, "was a man's head. So he had to go and bounce a lead pipe off it. It was my head, Mr. Antuni."
He went right on, as if I hadn't spoken at all. "Later, I call up some people I know. They know you, sure. Tough guy, they say, but honest. All right. Maybe they don' know about Baijan, though—that maybe you work for heem. So I sen' for you to fin' out.
"You say you work for Hees Grace. All right. I know about heem. I already have a boy across the street there to see eef Wirtz he'sa go back."
I had to think back quickly before I could be sure. Then I
The Long escape Page 7