The Tough Guys Page 13

  “Sure, Mannie, sure.” The metallic click of the hammer of a gun coming back was louder than all the other sounds. It was like a crashing cymbal stroke next to my ear. The guy said, “I’ll put him in cold storage, good, Mannie.”

  Too late the warmth of knowledge reached me. Too late, from those few words, did the answer stand out, stark and simple. Too late did I finally understand the reasoning of a woman, untrained in the devious, thinking only in her natural manner. How much blood, how many dead, how much more to go because the entire affair was overly simplified?

  I could feel myself trying to withdraw from what was coming, my brain pleading for a numbed body to move, to hide. But the body could do neither. The brain heard the smashing thunder of the shots and with a terrible effort forced the body to twitch, to feel out the pain.

  There were more rolling thunders and loud voices and again the brain cried out to move… MOVE! When I did hands went under me, sat me up, and a voice I knew was Dan’s said, “Phil! Phil! You all right?”

  My eyes came open, focused, and I nodded.

  Behind him was Cal Porter and two plainclothesmen, each with a gun in his hand. Cal had gone white and I knew he was ready to be sick. Ruby was dead where I had shot him, two more sprawled out lifelessly across him. Mannie was blubbering insanely on the couch, his eyes huge and wild, his voice trying to come through a swollen mass of flesh that was his mouth.

  Dan said, “What happened… but don’t talk if you’re hurt.”

  “I’m… okay.” I pointed to the closet and told Porter to open it. He found the catch, swung the door out, and picked up the box from the floor. He found the wallet, emptied it into his hands and looked at me.

  I said, “Receipts for clothes… in cold storage. Look at… the date. They’ve been there for… years.”

  “Go on.”

  “Rhino’s wife… hid the stuff there. A damn woman’s… trick. Get to a phone. Check on it… and you’ll be governor, Mr. Porter.”

  Dan hoisted me to my feet. “I have to call this story in. We can’t keep it quiet now.” He looked at the door and nodded. The crowd had already gathered, staring, gasping, speculating. The two cops were having a job keeping them out.

  I said, “A favor, friend. I hate to make you share your scoop, but you know my buddy in Phoenix?”

  “Okay,” Dan laughed. “He’ll get it the same time.”

  Porter had gotten his color back. He seemed different now, the softness gone from his face, the old determination back again. “Where’s the nearest phone?”

  “Store on the corner.”

  “I’ll check this out.” He smiled gently, trying for a degree of friendliness. “I have a feeling, you know what I mean?”

  “I know. The stuff will be there.” I put my hand on his arm. “Look,” I told him. “No hard feelings. Things go wrong sometimes.”

  Outside a siren wailed, stopped in front of the buildings, and two uniformed cops came in with guns drawn. Porter gave Mannie over to them, left instructions with the others, and he turned to me with a final wave.

  I went out in the hall behind him. The cops had squeezed everybody out the front door and were standing there waving them off. The little Gomez boy didn’t bother coming in that way. He came up through the cellar and said very softly from behind me, “Meestair Phil?”

  I turned around. “Oh, hello, kid.”

  “You look for the nice lady. Pretty lady with black hair? She who was here?”

  My mouth was suddenly dry and I nodded.

  “I see something, Meestair Phil. I don’t tell nobody before. I no want trouble.”

  “What was it, kid?”

  “You know Leavy’s store?”

  “Sure.”

  “By the side an alley?”

  I nodded, remembering the place. “It was boarded up.”

  “No. Not boards. Somebody take down soon ago.”

  “Okay, no boards.”

  The kid looked around as though he were fearful of being overheard. “Thees pretty lady. She has bag.” He stretched his hands apart showing me how big it was. “Like so. She walk down street and man come out. Thees man he very mad and he pull her inside. I hear her yell.”

  Without knowing it I had the kid by the shoulder shaking him. “Damn it, what happened?”

  Sudden fear came into his eyes and he stiffened. I let him go, forced a smile and waited. He shrugged, swallowed, and said, “I do not go in there, Meestair Phil. I no want trouble.”

  “No trouble, kid.” I reached in my pocket and took out a bill. The kid clutched at it like a miracle come true, grinned broadly, and darted off toward the darkness of the cellar. I walked back to the room where the bodies were, found Lafarge’s .45 on the floor and shoved it back under my belt. Then I went out the way the kid had gone out, past the cops, the curious, onto a street whose occupants were all clustered in front of one building.

  It was raining again, the dehydrated smells of the city being activated again into a foul soup of human essence. I walked through it to the corner, thinking of how Terry had run across this same street into the same room where so much had happened only minutes ago. And now there were only a few steps left.

  Like the Gomez kid said, the boards weren’t there any more. I went through the gap into the blackness of an alley, my hands touching the rough brick of the building walls on either side of me. I walked slowly, feeling for debris with my feet, not knowing where I was or where I was going, knowing only that some place this alley ended and there I would find Terry. Alive, if I weren’t too late.

  The alley was longer than I expected. Twice I felt the steel grilling from cellar windows under my feet and tried them, but they were rusted shut and impossible to budge. The litter of years, cans and papers and junk thrown off rooftops was thick, but curiously enough not scattered underfoot. It was as though a path had been kicked through the stuff.

  That’s how I knew when I reached the end of the path. A knee-high pile of garbage stopped me and when I felt the walls, in the one on my left I touched a door.

  I had the .45 in my fist when I shoved it open. Unexpectedly it swung soundlessly and I stepped inside, my guts half ready to stop a bullet. My eyes were well-adjusted to the darkness and I could see as well as sense the incredible pile of junk that filled the room. It was an old storeroom of some kind, long unused. Very faintly a yellow tinge showed me the way, a path between stacked crates. I walked quietly, carefully, followed the bend in the aisle to the other door through whose time-grimed window came the pale glow of a lamp.

  Inside there was the rhythmic clap of flesh on flesh and the steady cursing of a deep chested voice saying vile things over and over again.

  The door was locked. Momentarily. I kicked the damn thing open and went in with a roar and in that small fraction of time saw Terry, bloody and bruised in the chair, her eyes open without seeing and the face of Rhino Massley coming at me with a hoarse yell of maniacal fury.

  I should have shot him then. I shouldn’t have waited. I shouldn’t have let all the pent-up things boil out of my mind into my fists because he slammed into me and the gun flew out of my hand to the floor and Rhino was on top of me clawing for my throat.

  There was nothing left in me, nothing at all. I was a complete fool, dead weak from the terrible things that happened to me at the apartment and I couldn’t tear him off.

  If Terry hadn’t moaned softly then, he would have killed me. Instead he cursed her with a hiss, climbed off me, and took a step toward the table. When he turned around, he had a gun in his hand, his eyes lit up so that the white showed all around the iris and I realized that Massley was mad, completely mad.

  I looked up at him, my breath coming in great sucking gasps.

  “You’re part of this, aren’t you?” he said.

  Instead of answering him I lifted my hand and pointed to Terry. “She’s… your daughter. You did that to… your daughter?”

  His teeth shone in the yellow light, lips bared so that his face wa
s a lined mask of hate. “I have no daughter. Somewhere I have a son. A son. A son.”

  I shook my head. “Terry is.…”

  “Terry is my son!” he shouted. “Somewhere I have a son. Damn them all. Damn all women for what they are. I have only a son, do you understand! She left me a son and named him Terry. It was he who should have carried that suitcase. Damn you both! Damn you and that woman there. What have you done with him?”

  He was quieter this time, a little more rational for the moment. “You know what it is I want, otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”

  I let my head drop with a nod of assent.

  “Do you tell me or do I simply kill you and look for myself. It won’t be too hard to do.”

  “Let her go,” I whispered.

  He shrugged. “Why not? She really doesn’t matter.”

  “My apartment. Down the street. Third house from the corner. Downstairs left apartment.”

  “I see.” He looked toward Terry, smiling peculiarly. She was breathing heavily, a trickle of blood running from her nose, but now her eyes were closed. Without looking at me, knowing I was too far away to be able to do a thing, he said, “You like this… woman?”

  Once again, I nodded dumbly, sensing full well what he was going to do. He still watched Terry, still smiled that terrible way. And while he watched I moved my eyes and saw the .45 where it had fallen and sobbed deeply and let myself collapse again.

  When I got up this time Rhino Massley was smiling, the gun in his hand pointed at Terry’s head and to me he said, “Then watch her die.”

  I let him smile for the last time and squeezed the trigger of the .45 and watched it cave in his chest. The gun he held went off into the ceiling then flew out of his hand, but I didn’t let that stop me. I disintegrated Rhino’s face into a crazy welter of bits and pieces and when the last slug was gone threw the empty rod at his body and stood there yelling my head off with a panic that lasted only a minute.

  The soft cry of Terry’s voice spun me around. She was sitting up, the shock of the gunshots jerking her into consciousness, eyes wide with terror and one hand over her mouth covering a soundless scream.

  I took her in my arms, cradled her, and let her bury her face against me. Outside I could hear the whistles and the yells and voices shouting directions.

  I said, “It’s all right, baby, it’s all over now.”

  “Phil?” It was a child’s question, asking for a touch of security.

  “It’s me, kitten. He won’t hurt you ever again. It’s all right.” I kissed her gently, softly, knowing that now she was hurt. Later I would tell her what happened. Not all of it, nor would anyone else. There was no reason for any to know. As far as the world was concerned, Rhino was buried back there in Phoenix. Cal Porter would see to that. What he had to work with now gave him a lever big enough, to pull it off or even jack himself into the big chair in Albany. It would be an easy story to tell. Simple. Rhino Massley’s black bundle had been found. Certain hoods tried to beat the law to it and were killed.

  She opened her eyes, drew back, and looked at me. She smiled through the pain she felt and touched my face. Across the room she could see the huddled lump of Massley.

  “That man, Phil. He wasn’t my father.” Her voice had a note of surety.

  “You’re right, Terry. He was just another hood. He had a gimmick he thought could get you to lead him to something. He’s dead.”

  “But my father… ?”

  “He died a long time ago, sugar. You never knew him.”

  I kissed her again.

  “Let’s go home,” I said.

  And we did—

  THE BASTARD BANNERMAN

  CHAPTER ONE

  I let the old Ford drift over the hill so I could see the sweep of the Bannerman estate nestling in the cove of the bay with the light of the full moon throwing shadows from the tall pines and making the columns of the mansion stand clear like a skeletal hand.

  The hedgerow inside the fieldstone wall that surrounded the place had outgrown it by six feet since I had seen it last and as I eased past the huge brick posts that had once supported a handmade wrought iron gate I could see what time and negligence had done to it. The gates were still there, but propped open, the posts ripped loose from the brick.

  At no time did I have any intention of stopping by. Cutting off the main east-west highway onto 242 was an act of curiosity more than nostalgia, but when a guy lives the first twelve years of his life in a place before he gets the boot into the wild world outside, it’s a natural thing to want to see if his old home had as many scars as he did.

  Through the break in the tree line I could see the lights on downstairs. I grinned to myself, braked the Ford, backed up and turned in the drive and followed the curve of it up to the house.

  What a damn fool I am, I thought. Do I shake hands or slap somebody’s tail for them? This was no prodigal son returning and if I expected a happy homecoming I was blowing smoke all the way.

  But what the hell, that was all twenty-three years ago, two wars ago, a lifetime ago and when curiosity gets the better of you, go to it. Like the old man used to say before he died though, just remember what it did to the cat. Then he’d laugh because that was my name. C. C., for Cat Cay Bannerman.

  Now I knew the joke. Cat Cay was where I was conceived and born, only out of wedlock. The girl died an hour after I showed up and the old man brought me home with his name and a stigma the rest of the family couldn’t live with.

  The bar sinister. The bastard Bannerman. To be raised with the bar dexter class in wealth and tradition, but always on the tail end out of sight so the blight on the family escutcheon wouldn’t be seen by the more genteel folk.

  I parked behind the two other cars, walked up the broad flight of steps to the porch and pulled the bell cord. It had an electrical device now and chimed somewhere inside. When that happened the voices that seemed a little too loud suddenly stopped and when the door opened I looked at the tiny old lady that used to make me jelly sandwiches when I was locked in my room and tell me everything was going to be all right and I said, “Hello, Annie.”

  She stiffened automatically, looked up at me over her glasses, annoyed. “Yes?” Her voice was thin now, and quavered a little.

  I bent down and kissed her cheek. It was quick and she didn’t have time to pull away, but her mouth opened in a gasp of indignation. Before she could speak I said, “It’s been a long time, Annie. Don’t you remember the one you called your pussy cat?”

  Her eyebrows went up slowly as memories returned. She reached out, touched my face, shaking her head in disbelief. “Cat. My little Cat Cay.”

  I lifted her right off her feet, held her up and squeezed her a little. The two day old beard was rough against her cheek and she squealed with a little sob of pleasure until I put her down. “I don’t believe it,” she told me. “So many years. You’re so… so big now. Come in, Cat, come in, come in.”

  “You haven’t changed, Annie. You still smell of apple pie and furniture polish.”

  She closed the door, took my arm with fragile fingers, stepped back and looked at me closely. “Yes, it’s you all right… the broken nose Rudy gave you, the scar where you fell out of the tree… your father’s eyes.”

  But at the same time she was looking at the well-worn black suit and the battered porkpie hat and in her mind I was still the left over, the one who didn’t fit or belong, who had always been a convenient whipping boy for Rudy and his brother Theodore, the family scapegoat who took the blame and punishment for everything two cousins did and had to cut out at twelve.

  “Where’s the clan?” I asked her.

  Her eyes darted toward the pair of oak doors that led to the library, “Cat… do you think you should…”

  “Why not, old girl? No hard feelings on my part. What happened is over and I’m not going to be around long enough to get any rumors started. Besides, there’s not one thing I want from this bunch of Bannermans. By myself I do okay and no s
quawks. I’m only passing through.”

  She was going to say something else, stopped herself and pointed to the doors. “They’re all… inside there.” There was a peculiar edge to her voice, but she was still the family housekeeper and didn’t intrude in the closed circle of affairs.

  I patted her shoulder, pushed down the two great brass handles and swung the doors open. For one second I had that cold feeling like I used to get when I was told to report and knew what was going to happen. Uncle Miles would be pacing the floor in his whipcord breeches, slapping his leg with the riding crop while he listened to Rudy and Teddy lie about who let the bay mare eat herself to death from the feed bin, or who fired the old cabin out back. I’d know the crop was for me with long hours in the dark attic bedroom and a week of doing backbreaking man-chores to follow until I was allowed the company of the family again. I remembered the way old MacCauley hated to assign the jobs, but he had his orders from Miles and he’d try to take the load off my back, knowing he’d be fired if he was caught. If my old man had been alive he would have knocked his brother’s ass off for doing it. But pop had died. He went under a frozen lake to get Rudy who had fallen through, caught pneumonia and a week later was dead.

  But it wasn’t the same now. Uncle Miles was a skinny, frightened old man who sat behind a desk with a tight face that was all bluster and fear and Rudy and Ted, a couple of pudgy boy-men with faces showing the signs of dissipation and easy living. Neither one of them had much hair left and their faces were pink and soft looking. Ted, who always was the lesser of the two, fidgeted with his hands at a corner of the desk while Rudy stood there pompously with his hands on his hips and his tongue licking his thick lips nervously.

  There was a third one I didn’t know who was relaxed in a chair with his legs crossed, smoking, an angular guy with thick, black hair and a pointed widow’s peak above a face that was strong and handsome.

  The other two I did know. One was Carl Matteau, the other Popeye Gage and they were Syndicate boys from Chicago and they both had amused, tolerant expressions on their faces.