by Ralph Dennis
“That’s funny,” Falco said. “Just one left and it’s all you’re going to need.”
I waited while he opened the door and got out. Waited until he closed the door and cut the overhead light. Then I lipped the smoke and lit it. Hand up so that she could see it, I crushed the Pall Mall pack and shoved my hand down into the litter basket. I got the butt of the .38 the first time. I drew it up in one movement and placed it in my lap. A short beat and the hand continued upward to take the cigarette from my mouth as I blew a thin stream of smoke toward the roof of the car.
Outside, the top of the trunk swung up and blocked the back window. I dropped my left hand and caught the .38, found the safety and clicked it off. I turned it so that the barrel pointed toward the passenger seat. My finger on the trigger now. I pushed the piece until it was covered by a fold of my topcoat.
Slam of the trunk.
“It might not matter now,” I said to Regina. “Who made the mistake with Ronny? You were after the stash, weren’t you?”
“He was. I told him there wasn’t a stash but he didn’t believe me. He said all those old time gamblers liked to live like they didn’t have two dimes to rub together.”
“And you were there … when they worked on him?”
“No.” A thin edge like hysteria in her voice. “I left. I got sick.”
“So Falco and Tony Mitchell did the ugly work?”
“Yes.” A choked tone from her, like she could not make her throat work.
“Just the three of you in it?”
“Yes, but I didn’t kill anybody.”
The door on the passenger side opened partly, the overhead light went on for a brief moment and then Falco slid in and closed the door behind him.
“I heard that,” he said. “I’m getting tired of hearing you harp on that. It can be fixed. And maybe you ought to.”
I understood the implication there. Falco couldn’t be sure of Regina as long as she said things like that. The cure for it was to force her to do the job on me, or at least to do part of it. Then she couldn’t pull out on him. She’d have made her bones and it would tie them together closer than a marriage certificate.
She wanted to ignore it. “Is the money all there?”
“Looks like it,” he said.
“The ledger,” I said. “You ran on that by accident?”
“Call it a hundred and fifty thousand dollar accident,” Falco said. “The old guy, he didn’t want to talk about it. He had that much loyalty. So we had to convince him.”
“You must have practiced on hogs,” I said.
The briefcase was across his knees, the .38 pointing at me. “Step outside,” he said.
“It’s cold out there. She might as well off me in here.”
“Listen to the man.”
“I’m not going to shoot anybody,” Regina said.
“Sure you are,” Falco said. “Pull the trigger once and it’s over.”
My finger tight over the trigger, but I didn’t like the odds. He was still lined up on me and the cold iron pressed against my neck.
“Do it,” Falco said.
“No.” The pressure of the iron moved away from my neck. “No, I won’t.”
Falco said, “It’s him or you, baby.” The short-barrel .38 moved out of line with me, up and beyond, angling toward the back seat. I watched it, waiting my time, until the iron eye was past.
The blast of the .38 P.P. almost tore it out of my left hand. Not used to firing it with my left. I thought I’d burst my ear drums. And at the last moment maybe I chickened. It wasn’t a gut shot. It hit him in the side.
Regina screamed.
I don’t know how he did it. I guess he was tougher than I thought. He fell back against the door and his elbow hit the door handle. The door swung open. He kicked at me as he tumbled out. I fired again but he’d rolled toward the rear of the car as soon as he struck the asphalt.
Couldn’t leave the car. Wanted to but couldn’t. I shifted the iron to my right hand. I twisted around and leaned over the seat back. She was stunned, the gun in her hands but it wasn’t pointed at me, and I swung my left and clubbed her on the side of her head. She bounced against the side of the car and was still. Out, I thought. I didn’t have time to worry about her iron. I pushed the door handle and dropped to a knee on the asphalt. Duck walking away from the lighted car.
Falco wasn’t done. He put a round into the front seat. It was from a bad angle and smashed against the dash. Might have known he couldn’t reach me but he wanted me to know it wasn’t a cakewalk.
And then I heard the footsteps running away. Not a steady run but like it was out of sync somehow. The shot in his side was bothering him now. I stepped around the rear of the car and started after him. He had pointed himself toward a stand of huge trees. Beyond that was a network of back lots. At that moment a car bumped over the high rise of the entrance from 8th Street. The headlights lit me up. He reached the first of the big oaks. One hand on the tree, he turned and lifted his piece. I saw the flame and took a dive for the asphalt. Another shot and that was all.
The car stopped near me and Hump was out and running, bent over, to me. He grabbed my shoulder and turned me. “You all right, Jim?”
“I was until you showed up.” I stood up and ran for the car. The briefcase was still on the seat, along with the fold of xerox pages. “It’s going to get busy here. Park your car. Leave the keys for me behind the visor.”
I reached across the seat and punched the glove box button. I dug around and came up with the spare key. Cigarettes tumbled out. I slapped the key in Hump’s hand. “Regina’s in back. Check for a gun. Drive my car to my house.”
“Jim … ?”
“Meet you there.”
I set out at a trot toward the network of back lots.
Twenty minutes later I gave it up. I reached 10th Street and I checked that area, all the doorways and the shops and the Society Page, a topless bar. Nothing. I came back down Peachtree, that long block between 10th and 8th. I was headed up the drive past the Follies when I saw the police cars parked there. I angled between a couple of cars and stepped down to the walk on the side of 8th Street. I walked back far enough to see that my car was gone. I stood around in a group of other curious people.
And then I walked back to Peachtree and thumbed down the first cab that cruised past. On the ride to my place, in the closed and airless cab, I got a whiff of burned cloth. I looked down at my topcoat and realized, for the first time, that I’d shot through the topcoat and ruined about a hundred and fifty dollars worth of tweed.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“It done?” Hump sat on the sofa next to Regina Clark. The whole right side of her face, cheek and jawline, was swollen and turning dark. I guess I’d hit her a better shot than I’d meant to. At the time it hadn’t seemed a good idea to play around with her hysteria and the piece she was holding.
I shucked my topcoat and showed him the burn hole just above the pocket on the right side. I tossed the coat to him and while he examined it, I got the .38 out of my waistband, swung the cylinder out and ejected the shells. I shook them around in my hand while I stared at Regina and then I opened my hand and selected the two burnt ones. I placed them on the coffee table directly in front of her. “It’s done.”
“Where is he?”
“Face down in a garbage can behind that picture frame house.” I was talking to him but watching her out of the corner of my eye. It didn’t seem to shake her any. Or maybe all the things that had happened to her in one evening had stunned her past any kind of shock.
“We close it out now?”
I thumbed shells back into the cylinder and replaced the burnt ones from the spares in my trouser pocket. “As soon as we collect the rest of the money, the other fifty thousand dollars.”
Hump shifted on the sofa, his eyes lifting and fastening on Regina. “That ought to be easy.”
In time it was easy. We didn’t have to offer to swell the other side of her face or break
an arm or leg. As soon as she really believed that Falco was dead, the dam cracked and the water ran until it was low tide.
That Sunday morning, knowing James Falco was on the list Heppler had made for me, she slipped out of Marcy’s apartment and drove to Winston Place. Falco saw the danger too and they’d packed a few things and left. Falco didn’t panic. He found a place and they had breakfast and he made a few calls. The money was good and it wasn’t too hard to find an old corner boy who was willing to take a bit of risk for a thousand in cash.
“His name?”
“Willy Butts,” she said.
“Where?”
It was an old house on Park. Willy Butts was doing some contracting now and he and a crew were replacing some sheet rock and doing some painting and plastering. For the thousand Willy took them to the house and set them up on the second floor. The original owners hadn’t moved all the furniture out yet and the new owners hadn’t moved in yet and wouldn’t until the work was finished on the ground floor. Regina and Falco stayed in the house all Sunday and left the next morning before Butts and his crew arrived.
“And you planned to stay there tonight?”
No, they hadn’t. They’d left their clothing there and they’d stashed their part of the fifty thousand, what was left after Tony Mitchell got his one third, behind the artificial gas log in the upstairs center bedroom.
“You have the key now?”
Head shaking until the movement set the pain going again in her face. “James had it.”
I told Hump to mix her a strong drink. I went into the bedroom and closed the door. The Man answered the phone himself.
“What the hell has been going on? I’ve been waiting—”
“Take it easy. I’ve got the copy and the money. I’ve got the girl and Falco is running around out there somewhere with a hole I put in him.” I took a deep breath. “Is that enough?”
“Where are you?” The Man asked. It was less a question than a demand for an answer.
“At home but I won’t be here long. I found out where Falco stashed the money from the first payment. He’ll head for it and, if he’s hurt bad and isn’t thinking straight, he might try to hole up there.”
“Where?”
“Don’t worry about it. I don’t want your soldiers in the way.”
“What are you going to do with the girl?”
“I don’t know. Turn her over to Art Maloney maybe.”
“That might not be wise.”
“I don’t feel like arguing about it right now.” I didn’t feel like doing much of anything. I needed about four drinks to knock me down and ten hours in bed. “Keep a tight a-hole. I’ll drop the copy and the money by in an hour or so.”
I hung up on him. Seconds later, about the time it would take him to find my number and dial it, the phone rang. I let it ring while I ripped the top off a fresh pack of smokes and lit one. My hand was shaking and I black-smoked half the cigarette lighting it. After twenty rings or so he gave up. I grinned at the phone, felt stupid doing it, and got my light topcoat from the closet.
Hump stood up when I entered the living room. “You’re going over there by yourself?”
“Thought I might.”
“I’ll ride with you.”
Maybe it was the way we lied all the time. He could read a lie with the best of them.
I nodded at Regina. “What about her?”
“We’ll put her to bed. She needs the rest.”
Hump led her into the bedroom and stretched her out on the bed while I got a roll of tape from the medicine cabinet.
I tossed the roll to him and stood in the doorway and watched while he pulled her shoes off and taped her ankles together. “I’ve been meaning to ask. Why did you settle on Ronny?”
“Why not? He was just another mark.”
“That’s rough as a cob,” I said.
“You can say that. You didn’t have to be pawed by him or by a hundred other men like him.”
“Ronny?” I guess the shock was in my voice. “He was that way with you?”
“No, not really. But he was like those other men. He wanted it. All those fat old men who weren’t any good any more, who’d offer you anything they had to suck on them to see if it’d help.”
“Ronny ask that of you?”
“No, but he kept putting his fat hands on me and he kept hugging me all the time.”
Hump moved to the head of the bed. He drew her right arm up and wrapped tape around the wrist. Then he taped that hand to the bedpost on that side.
“So you set him up?”
“It wasn’t hard.”
She knew Falco in Vegas. All the time she was acting like Ronny’s long-lost daughter when he came to town. They were tight, and when Falco got in some trouble and left Vegas she wanted to join him in Atlanta. Falco was tapped-out and didn’t have the airfare, so she conned Ronny for the cash. When she was in Atlanta, Falco got the idea of taking Ronny at the card table. He worked his way into Heppler’s Wednesday games. But Ronny didn’t open himself up in those days and Falco got the idea that he’d rob Ronny for his play money stash, the stash he knew all the big gamblers kept.
Hump circled the bed. He lifted Regina’s left arm and rolled the tape around that wrist.
“As soon as you planned it, as soon as you set Ronny up, you had to know you’d have to kill him. You couldn’t leave him alive.”
“I didn’t kill anybody,” she said.
“Don’t split hairs.”
“All right, I knew it. But he was an old man. As far as I was concerned, he was already dead.”
Hump finished with the left hand. He patted the tape end against the bedpost.
“How’d I get involved in this?” I held out my hand and Hump tossed the tape roll to me. I tore off a strip about five inches long and walked over and looked down at her.
“Ronny talked about you a time or two. He said you were getting into some shady deals and he was worried about you.”
“That was all?”
Nodding. “And when I told James about you, he said you’d probably make a good middle man.”
Hump stood, knees tight against the side of the bed. “It bothers me. The way you felt about Ronny, why’d you go to the memorial service?”
“Oh, it wasn’t for that reason.”
“Why?”
“I got curious. I wanted to see who’d be there.”
I leaned over her and slapped the strip of tape across her mouth.
The door was open. No lights burning in the living room or past the high curved doorway in what was probably the dining room. A huge stack of sheetrock blocked the center of the living room. A paint-splattered tarp was spread on the floor of the dining room. The ceiling and about half the room was painted.
Light leaked down the stairs from the second floor. I moved in that direction. Hump was behind me. He wasn’t carrying and I’d have to worry about him if shooting started.
Carpets on the stairs. No sound as I moved up them. A single light on the wall of the second floor hallway. Beyond that I could see the full flare of a light from a room, probably the bedroom. At the head of the stairs I stopped and listened. No sound from in there. Yes, one noise. Water running. Nothing else I could pick out.
I edged down the hall. Near the door I flattened out against the wall. Still no sound. I sucked it up and swung through the doorway. Iron up and ready. No need for that after all.
Falco was stretched out on the bed. He was bare from the waist up. He’d tried to press a towel to the wound in his side. Blood had flowed down the towel like oil follows a wick. Eyes open, blank at the ceiling. I leaned over him and felt his throat. No pulse and the skin was cold.
I looked in the bathroom. Water was running from one tap. Blood scum circled the top of the wash basin. A balled-up bloody towel was on the floor next to the tub.
I moved the fire screen and squatted. I reached behind the ceramic log and lifted out a paper-wrapped bundle. It was the right shape and feel. I
tucked it under one arm and toed the fire screen back into place.
We left it exactly as it was and went down the stairs and back out to the car. I tossed the bundle into the back seat and we drove to my house.
I recognized the black who stood in the center of my living room. He was one of the two who’d picked me up that first Sunday afternoon during the ice storm aftermath. I hadn’t seen any car in the drive or parked near the house.
“You walk here?”
“Got left here,” he said.
I walked past him and looked through the open door at the bed. It was empty. Only a bit of tape was left at each bedpost where her hands had been.
“Where’s the girl?”
“What girl? No girl here when I got here.”
“What do you want?”
“The Man wants you right now.”
“When I get ready,” I said. I was running out of patience. The crap hitting me from all sides.
I went into the bedroom and lifted the phone receiver and began dialing. From the doorway the black moved toward me. “He said right now.” I went on dialing. I got the switchboard and asked for Art Maloney.
“Yeah, Jim?”
I gave him the address on Park.
“What’s there?”
“Falco. He’s dead.”
“You want to explain this to me? You shoot him?”
“Earlier. Down on the Strip. Found him and he took a shot at me.” That was a lie but they’d have trouble proving it. I had a busted up dash to back me up.
“You going to meet me when I get there? Where are you now?”
“Out,” I said. “I had the girl and she got away. I’ve got an idea where she might be.”
“I’ve got to see you, Jim.”
“Later,” I said. I hung up and turned around and looked at the black in my bedroom doorway.
“Now I’m ready.”
I waited my time. First things first and then there’d be second things. I waved aside the offer of the Hines cognac and asked for a beer instead. It was PBR and had an aftertaste like swamp water.
