Slay Ride for a Lady

by Harry Whittington

  He was still speaking to Sally, his voice hoarse through his tightened throat. “So I set out to cover myself with perfume, Sally. You see, I wanted to beat Nelson at his own game. Maybe get Connice back. That’s all it was in the beginning. Somewhere along the way, I got all mixed up in rackets and dirt and politics, and I couldn’t get out of them. But I’d keep meeting Connice, around town, accidentally, at parties, at dinners, at rallies. I could never get her out of my mind. She knew she’d made a horrible mistake. You could read the misery in her eyes. It tore me up. But Henry wouldn’t let her go. Then, not long ago, she came to me, and begged me to tell her how to run away. I told her. I prayed she would make it, and I would find her. But then Henderson gets sprung from Raiford. Ex-cop looking for easy money. And for some of Nelson’s money, he found Connice. And he lulled her. The — the day I arrived in — ”

  Now I knew what was behind Rafferty’s hatred. I knew now why he went on trying to kill me even though a tramp confessed to being the hired slayer of Connice Nelson. Rafferty had been deranged by grief. Lying waiting silently in the stateroom next to mine aboard the Hilotania, he’d not heard the newscast of the confession. He’d heard the news later at second hand, and had disbelieved it when he heard it: he was convinced I had sold out to Henry Nelson and that the tramp had been a rigged up cover for Nelson’s hired killer — me. Sure that I, embittered by prison and needing money had killed Connice, Rafferty had let his emotions sweep him too far into desperate grief to be swayed by reason.

  As his voice rose hoarsely, Rafferty wheeled to me. At the moment I was too sick to move, but the whine of a bullet cut off anything he might have said.

  As though in reflex action, Rafferty’s three gun uglies whirled and began to fire at the sound of that pistol.

  With my left arm, I grabbed Sally down hard and moved her roughly around the end of the car away from the gun fire that was thick now. Bullets whined into metal of new cars with a dull, kissing thud.

  “The taxi!” Sally whispered. “It’s there, Dan. Over there.”

  Keeping low in the shadows, we ran toward it. I threw open the rear door. I thrust Sally into the car ahead of me. She sprawled across the seat. “Hurry, Sam,” she cried.

  The driver was already starting the engine. It roared into life. Somebody spotted us and yelled.

  Sam skidded the car out and drove across a stretch of runway, a patch of rough grass. The car sagged and groaned as we hit a ditch and skidded up the shoulder of the road to the highway. At Dale Mabry Boulevard there was a red light burning, but Sam didn’t even slow down. A truck skidded its brakes and barely missed us.

  I felt Sally pulling herself up in the corner of the car. Her hand clutching mine was icy cold. I looked over my shoulder. I could see the rim of lights at the airport, and nearer, the bouncing headlights of two swift moving cars in pursuit.

  I turned back. Sally’s fingers were crushing my left hand. She was biting down hard on her underlip. At least, she forced a warm smile.

  “Dan, I’ve missed you,” she said.

  I looked at her. Nodded. I wanted to look back over my shoulder, and yet I knew there was no use. “If I get out of this, Sally,” I said. “I want to take care of you. You and Donnie. I’ll never be able to give you the things Ray might have, but — ”

  “Is that the only reason, Dan? Because you’re sorry for us?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve never been sorry for you,” I said. “It’s just that I’ve loved you — I guess the way Rafferty loved Connice Nelson, without any hope — since the first time I saw you.”

  “Have you, Dan?”

  “But how could you care anything about me, after Ray?”

  She smiled. “You were always excitement, Dan. I don’t know how to tell you without seeming unloyal to Ray. I admired him tremendously, Dan. Do you know? He was the brilliant brother. But he never really needed me. He had his whole life, and I never felt really wanted.” She laughed. “How I hated those ‘dames’ we used to see you with. I always felt — they were wanted! I was never afraid of Ray. I’ve always been afraid of you — a little. I — still am.”

  I looked at her. “They used to do this in the Bible.”

  “What?”

  “Marry the widow of a brother. Keep the women in the family.”

  “That still isn’t any reason for wanting to marry me.”

  Now I had to look over my shoulder. The car lights were winking closer as we raced over the Columbus Drive bridge above the Hillsborough river.

  “Sally, I’m leaving you up here. Go back home. I’ll come for you. If I can. You hear?”

  “You promise, Dan?”

  “If I can.”

  “Promise.”

  “I promise.”

  Her mouth was against mine. I knew in that sharp instant how really lonely I had been all my life, and I knew exactly why I had been lonely, and why I had had to remain lonely.

  “I’m glad you didn’t ask me not to go,” I said.

  Her eyes were shining. “I know it’s no use,” she said through her tears. “I was married to Ray, remember? And compared to you, Ray wasn’t even stubborn at all.”

  Sam slowed the taxi to fifteen miles an hour in the middle of a dark block below Tampa Street, and I leaped from the cab and started to run.

  In less than twenty minutes, I was in the shadows across the street from the Lafayette Hotel. I could see the dark car parked in the middle of the block. I could see the man sitting at the wheel. He was smoking, curled under the wheel. But I knew he was watchful. A tap on the horn, a sound recognized by another goon in Lafayette lobby even on busy Florida Avenue, a quick message up to the penthouse, and Henry Nelson was prepared for you.

  I had one chance, and I knew I had only one. If Big Mike Rafferty’s gunmen had kept Nelson’s boys too busy at the airport to allow a telephone message to Nelson. But unless Rafferty’s firing had been accurate somebody would have gotten to the telephone. Nelson needed only one word: “Henderson.” He’d know I’d slipped through then, and he’d throw up the final, insurmountable wall between us.

  But I moved along the walk. I had scaled too many of his walls to stop now. I had come too far. I was too full of hate. The goon in the black car wasn’t aware of me until I had his face in my clenched left hand.

  As he croaked out in fright, I dragged him forward by his nose, and then slammed his head back against the metal rim of the door. When I released him, he crumpled forward on the seat. I picked out Nelson’s downstairs boy lounging in a chair near the entrance. I moved in on him.

  He saw me, and leaped to his feet. He was already going toward the telephones when he saw the gun bulge in my coat pocket. You’re not a cop thirteen years in a town without getting a reputation of some kind. The kind I had stopped this bad boy on his toes. I could see him freeze, and settle back on his heels.

  I motioned him ahead of me toward an open elevator.

  “The penthouse,” I said to the operator.

  The operator stared at the gunsel. But Nelson’s bad boy knew better than to move. “I’m sorry, sir,” the operator objected. “The penthouse is private.”

  “I know,” I said tiredly. “You want to take us up there? Or you want me to run this thing myself?”

  “I’ll take you, sir,” he said, staring at the automatic in my hand. “But this may cost me my job.”

  “It’s going to cost me a hell of a lot more than that,” I said coldly, “and you can always get another job.”

  • • •

  WHEN WE STEPPED out into the foyer of the penthouse, there was only one man sitting near the elevator. There was a gun in his lap. But it was already too late for him to lift it. I kept the lobby boy before me. I knew for sure now they had not sent word from the airport. Things were too quiet: they were off guard here at Nelson’s headquarters. Henry Nelson was sure I was by this time already dead, bullet riddled.

  “Drop it,” I told him.

  He dropped it.

  “Suppose y
ou two go ahead of me,” I said. “Nelson might start shooting. You may as well get it first.”

  We went through the double doors into the big office where Nelson had hired me to find Connice. The place looked the same. But I knew better. It wasn’t even part of the same world. That world was over and gone. For all of us. For me as well as for Henry Nelson.

  Nelson had been on top of the world then. And now the wolves were baying after him. The politicians who used to smile at him, now had their knives seeking a soft spot in his vulnerable back. The three men closest to Nelson had been with him then. And he’d used them as a wall between himself and an ex-cop. Lungs Garcia, and his bitter black eyes. Phillips Clark and his fine home in Hyde Park. I looked around the room. Of all of them, only Buster Eddington the nervous energy idea man remained. I looked about the silent room. Where was Buster?

  Henry Nelson was standing in the center of the richly appointed room. There was no longer any arrogance in his face as he looked around at us. He was pale. He looked old. He looked as though evil had caught up with him at last, possessed him, aged him, making him sallow and unwholesome.

  Dorothy was holding Patsy. When she saw me, the color drained out of her cheeks. She only shook her head. She didn’t speak.

  “Surprised?” I inquired sarcastically.

  “Where’s Buster?” Nelson demanded. “Where is Eddington.”

  I smiled as I met his eyes. So Eddington had been the last wall of defense Nelson could muster. Eddington had been out at the airport to greet me. He’d held back when he saw Big Mike Rafferty, and had directed the gun play when we’d grouped like clay pigeons at the rim of the parking lot!

  “The last time I saw him,” I said, “he was in a gun fight with Mike Rafferty at the airport. A gun fight that will ruin Rafferty politically, even if he lives.”

  For a moment, Nelson’s sick eyes lighted. I could see him forgetting that his own men were laughing at him now. Forgetting laughter that hurt him as nothing else could. He forgot that he was being dumped by the political leaders, that no matter what happened he was going to take the rap for all the scandal that had flared out on the front pages of the newspaper. He forgot that he’d lost the respect of the men who once bowed before him, even forgot that Garcia and Clark were dead, and that he was old and finished and alone. It pleased his ego to think that Mike Rafferty, his old enemy was through. Pleased him so much that he forgot his own plight, forgot the gun in the hand of the man who’d come thousands of miles to kill him — me.

  He laughed with just a suggestion of his old arrogance. “Then I’ve won,” he said. “I’ve beaten Rafferty again. No matter what happens, he can’t go on living here in Tampa now. The stupid fool, getting mixed up in it himself.”

  I matched his laugh.

  “You seem to forget,” I said. “I’ve got a gun in my hand. You haven’t won anything. Because I’ve come to pay you for all you’ve done to me.”

  He faced me. Some of the arrogance seeped from his face. He seemed to see me, and recognize me for the first time. I felt his eyes raking across the stone bruises and the rock cuts that had turned my face into a raw, red thing. He seemed to know my body was as ribboned as my face, he seemed to see the agony I was in. Maybe even in that moment, he saw what had really happened to Lungs Garcia in the Pacific. Maybe he saw Clark’s big Cadillac hurtling over the impediment and out into the darkness. Maybe he saw all the walls he’d erected between us, and the way they’d fallen. Maybe he knew that he could handle an adversary as politically powerful as he. Or a whole political party. Or a whole group of strong men. But I think he knew that he was facing a little guy, a damned fool ex-cop who didn’t know when he was better off dead. Maybe he knew then there weren’t any defenses against a little guy when you’ve driven him out of his mind with misery.

  I saw his shoulders sag, I saw the way his lips pulled down in his rigid face.

  “You framed me,” I whispered hoarsely, “for the manslaughter killing of a hoodlum who was dead before he was thrown into the street. You had me sent to Raiford. Then you double-crossed me when I found Connice for you — ”

  He shook his head, straightened his shoulders a little. “I never told you why I wanted to find my wife. Only that I wanted to find her,” he said coldly.

  “I’m back here, Nelson,” I said evenly. “I’ve come to pay you. I hope you’re ready.”

  His voice was harsh. “Don’t be an idiot. You can’t get away with it. I’ll square with you. When Buster returns, I’ll call him off. I’ll sign papers admitting you were double-crossed. I’ll pay you what you’re owed.”

  “What will that get you, Nelson? You’re washed up in Tampa. You’re through. You’ll be lucky they didn’t tar and feather you.”

  He shook his head, still confident of his own destiny. “I’ll get away, Henderson. I’ve got what I wanted. I’ve got my baby back. Now I’ve got my baby, I’ll get out Things are finished here. But I’ll still be all right.”

  “Your baby?” I stared at him, and then I began to laugh.

  A look of pain and horror spread across his eyes. He couldn’t stand to be laughed at. It brought everything back to him.

  “Why are you laughing?” he raged. He started toward me, forgetting the gun in my hand.

  I lifted the nose of the automatic.

  “Stay where you are, Nelson,” I said. “I’ve a little surprise for you. It’s Connice’s parting gift to you, really. She must have known you planned to kill her if you found her. So she fixed you. She really fixed you.”

  His voice was dry and lifeless.

  “What are you talking about?”

  I spoke to Dorothy.

  “Open the locket on the baby’s neck,” I told her. “Show it to him. When Connice told me it was a picture of the baby’s father, I didn’t think anything about it. I didn’t look at the picture until just before I got to San Francisco. But it made me more anxious than ever to bring Patsy to you.”

  Dorothy’s fingers fumbled at the locket. She held it up to Nelson’s rigid face.

  “Rafferty!”

  The word cracked across his lips.

  I laughed at him. “Sure. Rafferty. He and Connice have always been in love. But you wouldn’t let her go. They decided not to wait for you. And so there you are, Nelson. Not even her baby belonged to you!”

  His face was gray. You could feel sorry for him, seeing him like that. When you knew how mighty and strong he had been, you didn’t like to look at the final disintegration, the finish. His trusted lieutenants were dead, but he could take that. He knew he was finished as a political power, and he knew he was going to be the goat for the whole rotten business, but he could plan to go on somewhere else. But you knew looking at him now, that he was beaten. This last thing he could not take: in his way, he had worshipped Connice — at least her beauty, and what the possession of it did for his ego. No one else in the world had the power to beat Nelson, but Connice had done it, she had lain him open in the most vulnerable place. She had done the one thing to him that ripped out his heart, and turned his guts to jelly.

  He nodded toward the gun in my hand. “All right, Henderson,” he said at last. “You’d be doing me a favor. I can’t stand to be laughed at. I can’t stand to be pitied.”

  I looked at him. If ever a man was old inside, and wanted to die, Nelson was that man. Suddenly death wasn’t enough. Death wasn’t rotting in the chain gang. It wasn’t Connice’s lovely face burned with gun powder, her blood spewed about the room. It wasn’t Ray’s honesty and decency and all he’d stood for sprawled out on the red bricks of Nebraska Avenue.

  I shook my head. “I’ve changed my mind, Nelson. I’m not going to kill you. I’m going to take you down to the District Attorney and turn you over to him. That crowd wants you. I want you to live through all this. I want you to hear all the laughter. I wouldn’t want you to miss it.”

  He stared at me, like a beaten prizefighter hanging on the ropes.

  “First,” I said. “Sit do
wn and write out a full confession. You hired men to kill my brother. You sent Garcia to kill Connice. All of it. I want to have it ready for the D.A.”

  He offered no protest. Nodding, he turned toward his desk.

  “No,” I said. “There are buzzers there. And hidden guns. A man like you doesn’t give up. You know more tricks than the comic books.”

  I made the goons pull out a straight table into the adjoining bedroom. In there were no exits. The windows opened on no fire escapes. I put paper and pen on the table, before the open door. “Sit there,” I told him.

  I stood there listening to the scratch of his pen.

  Dorothy looked at me. Her face muscles were rigid, her face pale. She said, “I thought I was doing the right thing, Dan. I thought I was keeping the baby out of danger. I thought she ought to be brought here to her father.”

  I didn’t even answer her.

  After a moment, she spoke again, her voice still dull and even. “That’s what the lawyer, Mr. Clark, said was best. I believed him. I was trying to keep you out of trouble. I was doing it for us.”

  “You were planning to do it when I came to the Church?”

  I was remembering the way she had said there was something she had to tell me. Suddenly I knew what it had been.

  She shook her head. “Not if you’d told me you’d go away with me.”

  My lips curled, I couldn’t help it. “How much did they pay you?”

  She stared at me, her eyes dry. “Ten — ten thousand dollars,” she said.

  “You called yourself a slut from the streets when you let me hold you in my arms,” I said. I looked at her. “What do you call yourself now?”

  “I was doing it for us, Dan.”

  “You were doing it for money, baby. You couldn’t resist it. You could resist me. What I wanted was sinful. But enough money makes all the difference in the world.”

  “It was for us I did it!”

  “Sure it was! I don’t doubt that’s what you told yourself. But inside, you know you’re lying. You haven’t loved anybody since your Fred told you you weren’t a nice girl. You’ve been getting even ever since, haven’t you? And this time you even collected a payoff, didn’t you? Well, I hope you’ll be happy, baby. You and your ten grand.”