Strongarm (Prologue Crime)

by Dan J. Marlowe

  “They’ve about got this whole wing,” Silvio pointed out. “Slow an’ easy does it.”

  “An’ speakin’ of lyin’,” Joe Bonigli said suddenly. He jabbed the Russian in the ribs with his thumb. The man’s head, which had been hanging, came up with a jerk. Blood from his face spattered Bonigli’s Italian silk suit. Joe brushed at it disgustedly. “Where’s the money?” he demanded of the man.

  “What — money?” It sounded like an honest query.

  Bonigli turned to face me. Other eyes turned in my direction. “This type follows orders, period,” I said. “He doesn’t know what’s going on. Do you tell your men your business?”

  “I don’t like it,” Bonigli muttered. He looked at Silvio. “We could still get out without no stink?”

  “I’m for goin’ up there,” Biggie said unexpectedly. “If the rest of them are like this one — ” he gestured at the man in Carlo’s grasp “ — well, I’m just in favor of goin’ up there, that’s all.”

  “Me, too,” Frank and Sal said in the same breath.

  “But if there’s no money — ” Bonigli began.

  “We’ll get to that later,” Frank cut him off. “Come on, you guys.”

  “One at a time,” Silvio repeated patiently. “You an’ your cargo last, Carlo.”

  Frank trotted up the stairs, disappearing around a corner that angled back over our heads. Biggie followed him. Sal went up. Bonigli went up, reluctantly. He faced about once before turning the corner as if to say something, then shrugged and continued on. The man whose name I didn’t know went up. Silvio went up. I followed him and joined the silent group on the second floor landing. In seconds Carlo appeared, muscling his burden along.

  “Cover me, Sal,” Silvio said. Sal moved to the left of the fire door. Frank jerked it open and Silvio went through it in one bound, landing in the middle of the hall with drawn gun. “All clear,” his voice floated back immediately.

  We all pushed through into the corridor. “This we do fast,” Silvio went on in a low tone. “Carlo, you lead off this time. Sal, take that monkey’s other arm. Walk him straight down to that door at the end of the hall. Biggie, you see to it he knocks, an’ knocks right. Frank, you take the openin’ side of the door an’ the man behind it. Let’s go.”

  We went down the hall in a loose group. Silvio held up a hand when we reached the door. He nodded at the doors on either side of the corridor flanking the center door. “Those suites’ll more’n likely connect up inside with the center one,” he husked at us. “There’ll be a lot of doors. Watch ’em all. Don’t nobody shoot till you have to.”

  At his words Frank reversed the gun in his hand. He had moved to the left of the center door. I drew the gun Carlo had given me. Biggie moved in behind the Russian who was supported by Carlo and Sal, placed the point of his knife at the base of the man’s neck, and jabbed lightly. The man’s head came up.

  “Knock!” Silvio commanded.

  He knocked, two raps and then three.

  I think it as the longest five seconds of my life before the door started to open. Frank charged in like a berserk bull before it was even open halfway. He ran right over the doorman who went down with only a strangled yelp. When I got inside, Frank was finishing him off with his gun butt.

  It made considerable noise. “Nikolai?” a voice inquired from the room beyond the hallway. “Vat wass dat?”

  From the corner of my eye I saw Carlo slug his burden and toss it aside to free himself for the action ahead. Biggie and I raced to either side of the door of the room beyond. When a big blond with a face like a sheep started out into the hallway, Biggie dented his skull professionally. I helped to catch him and drag him to one side. “Fast, now,” Silvio ordered. “Fast. Fan out. Watch the doors.”

  We poured through into the rooms beyond. I was third or fourth in line. The first one was empty. No less than four doors led off it, only the one at the far end standing partway open. Frank snatched open the nearest closed one and plunged inside. Sounds of combat ensued immediately. Sal hustled in after him. And then ahead of us somewhere Gussie’s clear voice rang out suddenly: “You bastard, if I knew I wouldn’t tell you!” It was followed by a dull sound and a muffled cry.

  I could see the surprise on Silvio’s face but I was already in motion. Even at that, Biggie beat me to the door. I could feel someone running up my back. Silvio and I got jammed in the doorway. When we squeezed through, Silvio’s shove to retain his own balance sent me caroming to the left off the wall, another closed door, and over a chair. On my knees I could see Biggie’s rush scatter three men standing in front of an armchair. He carried one down to the floor, Silvio chopped one down, and Carlo, coming across the room like a runaway truck, obliterated the third.

  I could see Gussie in the armchair. Her feet were tied to its legs. Her upper body was roped to its back. From elbow to wrist her left arm was taped to the arm of the chair. Her thumb and little finger were taped apart at a wide angle, leaving three fingers exposed. Even from across the room it was obvious the fingers had attracted a lot of attention from the gun butt of the man underneath Biggie on the floor.

  That must be Pavel, I thought, as I started to scramble erect. The door beside me flew open almost in my face, and a man rushed out. He was holding a gun. I grabbed his knees, and we hit the floor and slid. The gun went off. Carlo landed on the back of my man with his gun arm working like a piston. The man screamed and went limp.

  As though the first shot had been a signal, a lot more went off. Everyone dropped to the floor. I couldn’t see what anyone was shooting at. Not much of it seemed to be in our room, but for seven or eight seconds it sounded like the Battle of Chickamauga. Then it died out. I crawled across the floor to Gussie’s chair. Silvio popped up on the other side of it, surveying first the room and then me. Biggie was beside him. “Who’s she?” Silvio demanded, looking at the armchair.

  “She’s mine,” I said. “There’s another one around here, too, so take it easy with those popguns.”

  “Hi, Uncle Pete,” Gussie whispered. Beads of perspiration dotted her forehead but she smiled at me. Her face was so pale the freckles on her nose stood out starkly and her red hair appeared orange. Biggie went to work busily with his knife, cutting her loose.

  “Where’s Lynn?” I asked her. Far off I could hear raised, inquiring voices.

  “Back bedroom.” Gussie leaned down to rub her freed legs with her right hand. “She never came to, but they gave her a needle to make sure.” She struggled up out of the chair and before I knew what she was doing took the revolver I wasn’t even conscious of holding out of my hand. She put it under her left arm until she could change her grip and get it by the barrel. She took two steps over to the casualties sitting up on the floor with Carlo standing over them with uplifted gun butt. She had her eyes locked on the one I was sure had to be Pavel. He tried to duck when she started to swing her arm, but she followed him all the way. His mouth disappeared in a crimson smear and splinters of ivory. The gun flew across the room.

  “How to go, kid,” Carlo approved.

  Biggie silently tried to hand her his knife. She shook her head no and dropped down into the armchair again. I was on my way to the rear of the suite. Sal came out a side door, cursing, blood soaking his trousers from a thigh wound. Frank followed him with a puffed and purple ear. The first door I came to revealed Joe Bonigli standing in the next room with a gun in his left hand and his right lovingly exploring the contents of my bag, which was sitting up on a chair. “Man, you really delivered it,” he said to me as I went by him.

  The suites were a rabbit warren of rooms. I opened a door and looked in. Nothing. I opened another. There was an explosion almost in my face and something hit me hard in the chest. The next thing I knew I was on my back staring up at the ceiling. Too high to be serious, I told myself. Too high. I tried to get up, and couldn’t.

  Above my head a gun went off three times. Almost alongside me the mustache plunged down to my eye level. Then Silvio
was picking me up. I tried to get my legs under me, but they didn’t feel as if they were there. “Bed — ” I croaked. I couldn’t see around Silvio’s bulk.

  He glanced over at it. “Yeah,” he said. “There’s another broad in it.” He turned back to me, his tough, nut-brown features anxious. “We got to get you out of here.”

  “Get out — yourself,” I told him. “Tired — running. Sweat — this one out.”

  He started to say something and stopped as Bonigli’s voice called warningly from the doorway. “The whole joint’s comin’ to life, Sil!” Under one arm he had my bag wrapped in a sheet.

  “Tell Biggie I said to make sure the stairs are clear,” Silvio said calmly.

  “Better — take off,” I said to him.

  “If that’s the way you want it — ” He bent his head closer to my ear. “The stuff you wanted — ”

  “I’ve got it.”

  “What a two hundred percent bastard!” he said admiringly. Gussie materialized and took my other arm. She and Silvio half-carried me to edge of the bed. Lynn was lying in its center, her face pale but peaceful. Her eyes were closed.

  “She’s all right?” I asked Gussie in alarm.

  “Just knocked out,” she assured me.

  “I’m takin’ off like a big bird,” Silvio announced. “You hear all that damn commotion out there? People are gettin’ nervous. Come an’ see us, man.” He walked rapidly out the door.

  It was suddenly very quiet in the room. And I remembered something. I’d stashed the papers downstairs to leave myself bargaining room if something went wrong with Silvio’s putsch. If I didn’t make it past his chest shot, nobody would ever find them. I pulled at Gussie’s sleeve. “Telephone?” I asked her.

  “What, Uncle Pete?”

  “Telephone. Get me — to one.”

  “There’s one in the next room, but don’t you think you’d better stay here? Until I can get a doctor?”

  “Get me in — there if you have to — roll me.”

  She protested again, and I tried to get off the bed myself. It wasn’t a success, but it convinced Gussie I really meant business. She draped my left arm around her neck and slipped her right arm around my waist. I never thought she’d get me off the bed, but she did. I almost took her down when I stumbled over the next room’s threshold, but she recovered and lugged me to a chair in front of a small table on which a phone rested. It was a dial phone. Naturally they wouldn’t have wanted anyone monitoring their calls.

  “Congress Hotel,” I said to Gussie. “Look it up. Hurry.”

  I sat there trying to hold my head up. I discovered I couldn’t use my right arm. When Gussie gave me the number, I started to tell her to dial till I saw her left hand. I couldn’t use my right; she couldn’t use her left. For a minute I thought I was stymied.

  Gussie solved it. “I’ll hold the receiver to your mouth and ear,” she told me. “You dial with your left hand.”

  I dialed. “Robert Frutig,” I said into the mouthpiece Gussie held against my lips. I didn’t even have time to wonder what I’d do if he wasn’t there. His voice crackled in my ear. “Karma, Frutig.” He stared to jabber something. “Shut up — listen to me. San Marco Hotel. Unused ground floor — rear door. Inside twenty — yards behind fire extinguisher. Got it?”

  He repeated it. “Where the hell are you? What’s — ”

  “Move,” I told him. I was holding onto the edge of the table with my good left hand. The receiver Gussie was holding for me was pressing into my face. When she removed it, she saw what was happening and made a grab for me with her good hand.

  She didn’t quite make it.

  The table rose up and hit me in the face.

  • • •

  When I opened my eyes I was in a hospital bed and Gussie was sitting in a chair beside it. Her left hand was in a cast, and when she saw my eyes open she waved it at me. “Only two broken,” she said cheerfully.

  “Sorry — kid.”

  “I wouldn’t have missed it for a farm!” she proclaimed stoutly. “Oh, I forgot — you’re not supposed to talk.” I didn’t feel like talking. Gussie read my mind. “Lynn has a slight concussion, but she’ll be up and around tomorrow.”

  “Call up — your home,” I whispered.

  She shook her red head. “I’m not going home, Uncle Pete. Mr. Frutig has promised to get me a clerical job in Washington for not talking about all this. He’s coming in to see you as soon as the doctor lets him. And I’ve got to go now; the nurse said five minutes.”

  Her bright smile faded away from the side of the bed.

  Amid the clangor of dull iron in my skull I had room for a stray thought: God help Washington.

  My eyes closed.

  Even with them closed there seemed to be a thick mist floating behind my eyelids.

  Then it was gone, and I fell asleep.

  chapter XII

  I’ve been in a mental hospital a year now, the first six weeks on my back.

  There’s nothing official about it. Less than a dozen people know I’m here. Frutig and his boss arranged it; they had us moved from the hospital where we were taken from the San Marco before anyone knew who I was. They argued I had to have someplace to do my “hot” time until Risko was bagged. They were right, of course; it’s a lot better than the pen. And no parole board to worry about when I finally get the green light.

  I’m getting closer to it. Joe Foley is fighting a rearguard delaying action, but since they reopened the Barrett case the handwriting is on the wall for Charley Risko. They’re moving in on him in a couple of other directions, too, but that’s the one that counts. His number is up. The people that are after him now, even the lawyers have lawyers.

  Some days the atmosphere is depressing, but I have a nice room, and I go downstairs almost every day and work out in the gym. Lynn has a job two towns away. I see her twice a week. Gussie comes up from Washington once a month. The last two times Frutig’s driven her. I’d forgotten how young he was until I saw them together. I guess Gussie has the ring well into his nose.

  I don’t know what I’ll do when I leave.

  My end of the San Marco job will be waiting if I want it, and even at Bonigli’s discount rates it should be better than a sharp stone in the back. I haven’t said anything to Lynn about it, although she knows everything else. I’ll bring up the subject of the money when they trundle Risko away. She may see nothing wrong with taking it under the circumstances, or she may not want to have anything to do with it at all. It will be up to her. Somehow or other I can’t seem to get very worked up over it one way or the other.

  Frutig’s boss has offered to set me up in a small business in an East coast seaport. If the opportunity presented itself, I’d do him a favor or two in return. I have a feeling Lynn will like that idea even less than the other one, since it could involve excitement she feels she’s had enough of lately, and again, it will be up to her.

  Frankly, I don’t care.

  The days pass slowly, but they pass.

  Pete Karma is dead, of course, but I like to think he led a useful life.

  I may be here another six months, nine months, a year. I hope not, but I may be. Regardless, I have to figure myself a big, big winner. I had to get a hell of a lot of good breaks to make it this far around the race track.

  With Lynn, the rest of the way is going to be a cinch.

  THE END

  Winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America, Dan J. Marlowe’s crime novels and short stories have been published in more than a dozen countries and languages, including Gallimard’s Série Noire in France. Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1914, Marlowe worked as a self-employed writer from 1957 until his death in Los Angeles in 1987.

  Serving as inspiration for contemporary literature, Prologue Books, a division of F+W Media, offers readers a vibrant, living record of crime, science fiction, fantasy, western, and romance genres.:

  If you enjoyed this Crime title from Prologue Books, c
heck out Four for the Money by Dan J. Marlowe:

  www.prologuebooks.com

  This edition published by

  Prologue Books

  an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  57 Littlefield Street

  Avon, MA 02322

  www.prologuebooks.com

  Copyright © 1963 by Fawcett Publications, Inc.

  Copyright Registration Renewed © 1991 by Robert Ragan

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Image ©istockphoto/deniz genç

  This is a work of fiction.

  Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN 10: 1-4405-4619-3

  ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4619-8

  eISBN 10: 1-4405-4423-9

  eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4423-1

  We hope you enjoyed reading this Simon & Schuster ebook.

  * * *

  Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to sign up and see terms and conditions.

  CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

  Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.