The Tough Guys Page 6

  There was only one other door in the room, a single door on the other side. It was against all fire regulations and now they’d know why. I lit the wick on the last bottle, let it catch hold all the way, stepped inside, and threw it across the room.

  Everything seemed to come at once… the screams, the yelling from outside. Somebody shouted and opened the big doors at the head of the room and a sheet of flame leaped in on the draft.

  There was Harry Adrano. I shot him.

  There was Calvin Bock. I shot him.

  There was Sergei Rudinoff. I shot him and took the briefcase off his body and knew that what I had done would upset the Soviet world.

  There was the man who owned the airlines and I shot him.

  Only Nat Paley saw me and tried to go for his gun. All the rest were screaming and trying to go through the maze of flame at the door. But it was like Nat to go for his gun so I shot him, too, but not as cleanly as the rest. He could burn the rest of the way.

  I got Dari out of the straps that held her down, carried her to the one window that offered escape, and shoved her out. In the room the bongo drummer went screaming through the wall of flame. From far off came staccato bursts of gunfire and now no matter what happened, it was won.

  I shoved her on the roof and, although everything else was flame, this one place was still empty and cool.

  And while she waited for me there, I stepped back inside the room, the shrivelling heat beating at my face, and saw the gross Mr. Simpson still alive, trapped by his own obesity, a foul thing on a ridiculous throne, still in his robes, still clutching his belt…

  And I did him a favor. I said, “So long, Senator.”

  I brought the shotgun up and let him look all the way into that great black eye and then blew his head off.

  It was an easy jump to the ground. I caught her. We walked away.

  Tomorrow there would be strange events, strange people, and a new national policy.

  But now Dari was looking at me, her eyes loving, her mouth wanting, her mind a turbulence of fear because she thought I was part of it all and didn’t know I was a cop, and I had all the time in the world to tell her true.

  THE SEVEN YEAR KILL

  For seven long years Rocca had been down. And he was almost out when the beautiful brunette wound up in his closet—and started him on a trip that would lead through a terrifying maze of bodies both hot and cold. At the end of the road lay the biggest surprise of all—a surprise that could prove fatal to an ordinary guy.

  From far off in the heat and sea of sweat I heard the noise and the voices.

  The gloom of the room was split by a shaft of light that stretched across my face from the partly opened door. It was from there that the voice kept saying, “Open this damn door, buddy.”

  I rolled off the cot and finally got to the door, pushed it shut, slipped off the chain, then backed off when it almost knocked me down swinging open.

  Both the hoods were big. The snub-nose jobs in their hands made them even bigger. But they didn’t come that big. I said, “What the hell you want?”

  Without even looking, one swung and last night came boiling out of me all over the floor and I crouched there on my hands and knees trying to keep from dying.

  The other guy said, “She ain’t here. This joker was drunk on the cot with the chain on. How could she get in here?”

  Neither one said anything, but when I raised my head the guy with the long face and bloody shoe was looking at me. I started to grin at him. Not mean. Just a big, friendly grin like I knew how it was and I kept it going until the guy shrugged and said to the other. “He’s nuts. Come on.”

  It was five minutes before I could get up, and another five before I could reach the sink. I ran it cold and splashed it over my face and head, washing the blood down the drain.

  I didn’t bother looking in the mirror. I felt my way back inside, reached the cot, and flopped out on it, suddenly grateful for the heat of the wall that sucked at the vast pain that was my head.

  When I knew I was ready I said, “Okay, come on out of there.”

  Across the room the panelled closet door that seemed to be part of the wall swung open. For a moment there was only the darkness, then a shadow detached itself from the deeper black, took a step forward with a harsh, shuddering sob, and stood there, rigid.

  I reached behind me and turned on the night lamp. It gave off a dull reddish glow, but it was enough.

  She was beautiful. There was something Indian-like about her, maybe the black hair or the high planes of her face. Sweat had plastered her dress across her body, her breasts in high, bold relief, the muscular flatness of her belly moving as she breathed. Sudden fear of the hunted had drained her face so that her lips made a full red splash in contrast.

  She stood there watching me, saying nothing, a quiver in her flanks as in a mare about to bolt. Spraddle-legged like that I could see the sweep of her thighs and liked what I saw.

  I said, “They’re gone.”

  “I never chain that door,” I said. “Never. And that closet’s the only place to hide in here. Cleverly made, that.”

  Her tongue flicked out and wet her lips. “When did you… realize.”

  “Right away.” The words had blood on them and I wiped it away with my sleeve.

  She was staring at my face. “You could have told. Then they…”

  “I wouldn’t tell them punks if their legs were on fire.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Sure. It’s just a helluva way to get waked up, that’s all.”

  For the first time she started to smile. No, not quite smile… a grin, sort of. It changed her whole face and somehow there was no heat and no hangover and no pain in my head and everything was different and I was different. But it was like a flash flood, suddenly there and suddenly gone, leaving behind it only damage from another broken memory.

  “Can I do anything for you?”

  “Nobody can do anything for me, kid.”

  She looked around, the grin gone now. “I… was running. This was the first place I came to. Your door was open.”

  I shaded the light with my hand. “Who were they?”

  The fear touched her eyes. “I don’t know,” she finally said.

  “They weren’t just playing around, kid.”

  She nodded as if it were a familiar thing to her, then she took a few quick steps across the room and looked over me through the window to the street below.

  Close now, I could see she was more lovely than I realized, bigger, and more scared. She was intent on the street below, and when I slipped my hand around hers and squeezed it; she squeezed back involuntarily without realizing it until I let go. Then she gave a sudden start and stepped back quickly, a frown crossing her face.

  “I just kissed you,” I said.

  “What?” softly.

  “When we were kids we called it sneak kissing, hand kissing. It meant you wanted to do more but somebody might be looking.” I laughed at the expression on her face, but it hurt my head and I stopped. But it was worth it. I saw the trace of the grin again before the fear came back.

  Once more she scanned the street, then said, “I’ll have to go now.”

  “You’re crazy if you do. You didn’t know those two. How will you know any others who make a try for you. And right now you’re a beautiful, sweaty, wet target. In this neighborhood you couldn’t be missed.”

  She sucked her breath in through her teeth, and moved back from the window. I pointed to the chair at the foot of the couch and she sat down, hugging herself as though she were cold.

  “When did it happen before?” I asked.

  For a moment she stared past me, then shook her head. “I… don’t know what you mean.”

  I bit the words out. “You’re lying.”

  The anger came slowly, her folded arms pushing her breasts taut. “Why am I, then?”

  “If you didn’t know them and didn’t expect them to hit, they would have nailed you. They were pros
.”

  The anger receded and it was like losing her outer defenses. I had made her think and correlate and whatever the answers were put her on edge like a great big animal. “All right. It had happened before. Twice.”

  “When?”

  “Tuesday. A car almost ran me down in front of my house. Then the day before yesterday I was followed.”

  “How’d you know? Pros aren’t easy to spot.”

  Without hesitating she said, “I shopped in the lingerie department of three stores. You don’t see many men there and when you do they’re noticeable and uncomfortable. I saw this particular one in all three places. I left, made two cab changes, and went into the subway.”

  She paused, took a deep shuddering breath. Then with a small choking sob, buried her face in her hands and tried to keep from screaming.

  I pushed myself up from the cot, my head a sudden spuming ball of pain. I reached over and took her hands down. She wasn’t hysterical. She was just on the deep edge momentarily and now she was coming out of it. “Say it,” I told her.

  She nodded. “The train was coming in the station.”

  “Go on.”

  “I… felt his hands at my back and he pushed and I was falling and that train was coming on and I could hear the screams and the yells and the train trying to stop and my head hit something and it was like falling into a blessed sleep.” She closed her eyes, rubbing at her temples to ease the pain of the thought. “I woke up and they were still yelling and hammering and lights were like fingers poking at me and I didn’t know where I was. Terrible. It was terrible.”

  Then it was my turn to remember. “I saw the pictures. You fell between the tracks in the drainage well. Contusions and abrasions.”

  “I was very lucky.”

  “You told them you slipped off the edge.”

  “I know.”

  “Why?”

  “Some silly woman said I tried to kill myself. She said I jumped. I explained that when I felt myself go I did launch myself out to fall between the tracks.”

  “They accepted it?”

  “Yes. Otherwise I would have been held for observation.”

  “Smart thinking. Why didn’t you say you were pushed?”

  She looked up slowly. “I… was afraid. It isn’t always easy to do certain things when you’re afraid.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I know. What name did you give out?”

  “Ann Lowry,” she told me, and her eyes were squinting now. “You’re asking an awful lot of questions about me. Who are you?”

  “Phil Rocca, kid. I’m a nothing.”

  When a long moment had gone by, she asked quietly, “All right, then. Who were you?”

  All of it came back like a breath of fresh air. The old days. The long time ago. The quick excitement of life and the feeling of accomplishment. The spicy competition that was in reality a constant war of nerves with all the intrigue and action of actual conflict. Then maybe Rooney’s or Patty’s for supper, to gloat or sulk depending on who won.

  I said, “I was a police reporter on a now defunct journal, a guy who once had a great story. But an editor and a publisher were too cowardly to print it and because I had it I had to be removed. So I was framed into prison. Nobody went to bat for me. I took seven years in the can and the paper and the story is no more. So here I am.”

  “I’m sorry. Who did a thing like that?”

  “A guy I dream about killing every day but never will be able to because he’s already dead.”

  She took in the squalor of the room. “Does it have to be this way?”

  “Uh-huh. It does. This is all there is, there ain’t no more. Not for me. And as for you, kid, there’s only one question more. The BIG WHY. Somebody’s trying to finger you out, and the last time they’re playing guns. It doesn’t get that big without a reason. You’re a money dame with money clothes and you wind up in the tenement district in front of two guns. Where were you headed?”

  She had to tell somebody. Some things are just too big to hold in long. “I was going to meet my father. I had… never seen him.”

  “Meet him here? In this neighborhood!”

  “It was his idea. I think it was because… he was down and out. Not that it would have mattered. All my life he took good care of me and my mother. He set up a trust fund for us both even before I was born.”

  “Why didn’t you ever see him?”

  “Mother divorced him a year after they were married. She took me to California and never returned. She died there two months ago.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Her shrug was peculiar. “Perhaps I should be too. I’m not. Mother was strange. She was always wrapped up in herself, and her ailments with nothing left over for anybody else, not even me. She would never speak to me about my father. It was as if he had never even existed. If it weren’t that I found some of her private papers, I’d never have known what my real name was.”

  “Oh? What was it?”

  She squinted again. “Massley. Terry Massley.”

  That terrible thing in my stomach uncoiled and pulled at my intestines up into the hollow. I seemed to glow from the sudden flush of blood that a heart gone suddenly berserk threw at a mad pace into the far reaches of its system.

  I was so tight and eager again it almost made me sick. I got up, made another trip back to the sink, and ran the bowl brim full with cold water, washed down, and soaked my head clear. Then when the pounding had stopped I pulled in a deep breath and looked at myself in the mirror. Dirty, unshaven, eyes red with too much whiskey and not enough sleep, cheekbones prominent from not enough to eat. And I could smell myself. I stank. But in a way I felt good.

  Over my shoulder I saw her. Woman-big and beautiful. Her name was Terry Massley.

  And Rhino Massley was the guy who had me socked away for seven years.

  Rhino had been a smart mobster with millions in loot. He was supposed to be dead, but things like that could be arranged, especially when you have millions.

  And now Terry Massley was going to meet her father and, from the kill bits that had been pulled, there was mob action going on and that pointed to a big, wonderful possibility.

  Rhino was alive and I could kill him myself!

  I stared at my eyes, watching them change. Coincidence, I thought, ah, sweet, lovely coincidence. How I’ve cursed you and scorned you and declaimed you in the name of objective news reporting. And here you are now knocking at my door. Thanks. Thanks a bunch.

  She was puzzled. “Do you feel all right?”

  “I feel great,” I said. “Would you like me to help you find your father. Coming from the coast you don’t know anyone else, do you?”

  She shook her head.

  “Okay, I know the neighborhood. I’m part of this sewer life and I can move around. I even know tricks that could make me king of this garbage heap, if I wanted it. If your old man is here, I’ll find him for you. I’ll be glad to. You’ll never know how glad I’ll be to do it.”

  She didn’t move quickly at all. It was with a deliberate slowness as if she were afraid of herself. She stood up, took a step toward me and slowly sank to her knees. Then she reached up and took my head between her hands and her mouth was a sudden wild, wet fire I had never tasted before and was burning a madness into me I had never wanted to feel again.

  I pushed her away and looked at her closely. There was no lie in what she was saying to me. She was saying thanks because I was going to help her find her father.

  But I had to be sure. After all this time I couldn’t afford to lose a chance at what I wanted by taking one.

  I said, “What brought you to this neighborhood to start with?”

  The letter she handed me had been typewritten, addressed to her Los Angeles home.

  It read:

  Dear Terry,

  I have just learned of your mother’s death. Although we have never met, it is imperative we do so now. Take your mother’s personal effects with you and stay at the Sherman the week of th
e 9th. I will contact you there.

  Your Father

  “He didn’t even sign his name,” I said.

  “I know. Businessmen do that when their secretary isn’t around.”

  “This isn’t the neighborhood to meet businessmen with secretaries,” I reminded her. “So he contacted you. How?”

  “A note was waiting for me when I got there.”

  “How’d you sign the register?”

  “Ann Lowry.” She paused. “It… was the name I had had all my life.”

  “Sure. Then how’d you get the note?”

  “A man at the desk asked if anything had been left for him. When the clerk leafed through the casual mail I saw the one with Terry Massley on it.”

  “What did it say?”

  “That today at 11 o’clock in the morning I was to walk from Eighth Avenue westward on this block and he would pick me up on the way in a cab.”

  “How would he recognize you?”

  “He left a cheap white suitcase with a red and black college pennant pasted on either side. It was extremely conspicuous. I was to carry it on my curb side.”

  “I suppose it was empty.”

  “Of anything important… yes. To give it a little bulk there were a bunch of week-old newspapers in it.”

  “The letter,” I asked, “that was straight mail?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then how did the suitcase get there?”

  “All the clerk knew was that it came by messenger. There hadn’t been anything irregular about it, so he didn’t remember anything special about the delivery. After I looked into the suitcase I carried out instructions. I waited until it was time, took the suitcase with me, and walked over to Eighth and started down here.”

  I had to turn my head so she couldn’t see the look of hungry expectation in my face. The cab pick-up was another ragged edge bit that spelled hood, and I knew that some place Rhino would be waiting alive—so I could kill him. Man, it was a great feeling!