“Oh ... no reason. I was wondering if there’s someplace close by where I could get some coffee.” “There’s coffee upstairs at the party. Why didn’t you ask for it then, before I brought you down?”
“I didn’t know I wanted it then.”
He sneered and finished rolling his cigarette. “Dames,” he muttered. He put the cigarette in his mouth and lit it.
Kristin could hear the sounds of the party still going strong upstairs. There was raucous laughter and music coming from a phonograph, the new Rudy Valle hit. She became nervous. What if the party ended soon and Rooney came down before she had a chance to open the doors to Hunter, and to escape? She’d have to go with Rooney to his hotel then. There would be no getting out of it. Perhaps she could plead sickness. Perhaps she could. . . .
Oh, dam it! she thought. If it reached that point, it almost wouldn’t matter what she did. Her plan would be mined. If she failed, she would never have a chance to learn from any other gangsters where Chad was being kept. If she didn’t find out soon, it would be hopeless. Even if Chad were still alive, how much longer would his captors keep him that way? She didn’t even know what they wanted with him in the first place.
“Listen,” she said in a pleading voice, which she tried to make sound sweet and sexy. “Would you go get me some coffee? Please. I’d be really grateful.”
“Yeah? How grateful?”
I’d ... I’d keep quiet about anything you might want to ... do to me, so Rooney wouldn’t find out.” “Come here.”
She hesitated. Then she moved to him and came up close. He pushed open the coat she was wearing and put his hand on her throat, slowly moving it down to cup her breast. She did not move back or flinch, though she had an intense desire to do so. She saw him grining at her leeringly, and she felt revulsion.
“Please?” she said. “The coffee?”
“Can’t. Rooney wouldn’t like it if I left you alone down here.”
She pulled back sharply.
He laughed. “I just want to have my cake and eat it too.”
“Well, why can’t you leave me alone for a minute? What do you think I’m going to do? Drink up all of your precious whiskey?”
Marty frowned and stared at her. “How’d you know that’s what we got down here? Everything’s crated up. You can’t see nothing.”
She became frightened under his suspicious stare. “The crates. They say—”
“They say ‘Near Beer,’ that’s what they say. In big black letters. Take a look.”
“Oh, don’t be so serious. You act like it’s a capital crime that I know you men are bootleggers. What did you think I thought you were? Kindergarten teachers? Or is that supposed to be a convention of plumbing salesmen upstairs?”
His suspicions were not lessened. Members of the underworld knew that Rooney and the mob were bootleggers. But pains had been taken to make sure everyone else thought they were legitimate Near Beer importers and that this was a legitimate warehouse for the legal beer, which contained less than one-half of 1% alcohol.
Marty came up to her and took her arm, holding her roughly. “You and me better go upstairs and get you some of that coffee you want. And while we’re at it, maybe you can tell the boss about how you happen to know so much.”
“The baker told me! He said I was to jump out of a cake at a party for—”
“For bootleggers? Pierre, he don’t have loose lips like that. He knows what happens to people with loose lips. You better come with me, doll.” He started pulling her with him as they went to the creaky wooden stairs and began ascending to the upper story.
Kristin was frightened. She didn’t know what to do. When they were near the top, she became desperate. She fell to one knee on the stairway, pretending to trip. He released his grip on her arm so that he would not trip also. He reached a hand back to her to help her to her feet. “Come on, come on. Ain’t no use trying to stall me. I know something’s going on here.”
She took his hand, and then, suddenly, she pulled forward with all her might.
“Hey!”
Still kneeling on the stairway, she put her shoulder against his knees as he came stumbling forward. He tripped over her and tumbled, rolling and banging his way down the stairs. He ended up on the bottom, sprawled on his back, moaning. “Ohhh.' Ohhh. I’m gonna . . . I’m gonna kill you for this.” He didn’t have any wind in him to yell, and he was too hurt to get up.
Kristin scurried down the stairs quickly, went to the barnlike doors and pushed back the horizontal wooden bolt holding the doors closed. She tugged at one of the doors, trying to pull it open. When it was open only a few inches, someone from the other side pushed it farther. A head popped in and looked quickly around, surveying the scene. A hand appeared below the head, holding a pistol.
“Dallas! He’s . . . he’s there, at the base of the stairs. He’s not unconscious. If he screams. . . .”
Hunter rushed past her, not asking who she was talking about. He reached Marty just as the injured thug was trying to rise to a sitting position, and at the same time pulling a pistol from his shoulder holster. Marty pointed the gun at Hunter, but Hunter was near him now and kicked it out of his hand.
“Don’t scream, kid. Don’t make a sound. I don’t want to plug you. But I will if I have to.”
“You rotten bastard.”
Hunter saw the folded square of handkerchief in the pocket of the man’s coat, which Kristin was wearing. She was right next to Hunter, having followed on his heels. Hunter grabbed the handkerchief from the pocket and wadded it up. “Open wide, kid.”
Marty hesitated. His eyes narrowed. He opened his mouth to yell, to alert the men upstairs. Hunter smashed him in the temple with the barrel of the gun. Marty’s eyes closed, and his head dropped. He lay unconscious on the floor.
Others from Hunter’s band had entered the warehouse and stood around them now. Kristin was surprised to see that all of them carried weapons, either pistols or Tommy guns.
“I thought there’d be no killing!” she exclaimed. “I thought the object of this whole thing was to go through all this deceit of letting you in quietly so you wouldn’t have to shoot things up and start a gang war?”
“We won’t shoot if we don’t have to,” Hunter said.
Ironman entered the warehouse now, in a double-breasted pinstripe suit and a white fedora pulled low over his forehead. Behind him were men Kristin had not seen before. The were from Ironman’s own gang, not Hunter’s. They carried sticks of dynamite banded together in clumps of three, with fuses attached.
Kristin was shocked. She had not thought they would blow up the place. She had naïvely thought they would bring axes and would destroy the bottles. Of course, now that she saw how many crates there were— hundreds!—she realized that that would take hours, which they didn’t have. And it would cause noise while they did it, which would bring Rooney’s men.
Dynamite could cause even more noise, but by the time the blast occurred, it would be too late for Rooney’s men to do anything about it. And Hunter’s and Ironman’s bands would be in their cars and screeching away.
Hunter grabbed one of Ironman’s henchmen. “T.J., move this lug outside.” He nodded down to the unconscious Marty.
“What for?” said the shark-faced thug. “Let him drink a booze and dynamite cocktail. One less of these guys is fine with me.”
“Move him, I said.”
T.J. sneered at Hunter’s apparent softheartedness, but he tossed his bundle of dynamite to someone else and bent down to grab Marty under the shoulders and drag him outside to safety. Kristin saw T.J.’s face clearly for the first time when he turned around. She was shocked. She recognized him. This was one of the men who had accosted Chad that night!
Kristin felt paralyzed for an instant, but she quickly came to her senses when the man glanced at her. She turned her head down and to the side. She didn’t know if he would recognize her in her new hairstyle and after he had seen her for only an instant that night so long
ago. But she couldn’t take any chances. If they found out she was Chad’s sister now, under these circumstances . . . well, there was no telling what they might do. She might find herself tied up and left in the warehouse, sitting on three sticks of dynamite.
T.J. pulled Marty outside, while the other men placed the dynamite bundles strategically in the nooks and crannies between the crates. Hunter turned to Kristin. “You get outside too. Wait in the limo. It’s around the corner.”
She looked up at the high ceiling of the warehouse, beyond which was the second floor of the building, where Rooney’s men were partying. She looked at the bundles of dynamite. “You’re not going to kill them?”
“The blast won’t be that big. It’ll turn this place into shattered glass and whiskey dripping crates, but it won’t penetrate through the ceiling. Anyway, what are you worried about? You wanted to be a tough guy’s moll, to see some action. You got it, babe. Now get the hell out of here and into the car.”
T.J., the man she recognized as having helped abduct Chad, returned. He began laying down fuses to bundles of dynamite inserted among the crates of whiskey. Kristin kept her face averted from him as she walked quickly out of the warehouse.
It was cool and very dark outside. Looking up, she could see the stars shining brightly. She hugged the coat tightly around herself and started down the alley toward the corner to get inside the Phaeton limousine as Dallas Hunter had ordered. Behind her she left Ironman’s and Hunter’s men as they stealthily attended to their tasks.
Just as she turned the corner, an arm swung out in front of her, and a hand clamped down over her mouth. She tried to scream, but it was impossible. She struggled to get free, but the man’s other arm went around her chest and held her tightly, her back against his front. She couldn’t bite the hand because it pressed too tightly over her mouth, hurting her lips. She felt herself being dragged backward out of the alley, between two buildings.
Off to the side she saw Rooney, his face furious, clearly visible even in the darkness. He was waving his men forward, saying in a low voice, “Go, go, go!”
Each time he said “go,” one man advanced down the alleyway, bent forward, pistol or Tommy gun in his hands. She saw the outside stairway down which Rooney and his men had descended. One of Hunter’s men had been stationed outside, watching the stairs, but he had somehow been silenced. As Kristin was pulled backward, she saw him on the ground, the back of his head bloody.
Rooney turned his attention to Kristin and snarled at her. “You just wait. I’ll take care of you later.”
A second pair of hands joined the pair that was holding her. Her wrists were bound behind her with rope. The pressure over her lips relaxed. Now she could do it. She bit the hand that was clamped over her mouth.
“Ow!” The hand jerked away.
She started to scream. But just at that instant all hell broke loose. There was the sound of gunfire: abrupt staccato bursts from the Tommys. There was yelling and shouting. Her scream was swallowed up and drowned out in the general bedlam. The noises of the battle were so loud, it hurt her eardrums.
She had never been anywhere near a gun battle, and she had no idea it was so physical. Her ears hurt. The sounds seemed to press in on her as if they had force. Her nostrils were assailed with the sharp odor of gunpowder. She saw flashes from the muzzles of the Tommys as Rooney’s men and Hunter’s shot it out.
The man who had been holding her flung her to the ground at the base of a wall. She knew she should get up and run, but when she tried, she stumbled. It was hard to stand up with her wrists tied behind her. Bullets were whizzing by everywhere, clanging into the walls of the buildings bordering the alleyway. One came so close, it chipped out a hunk of brick only inches away from her ear. She got down low on the ground and stayed there.
Hunter’s men were coming out of the warehouse, firing as they came. Rooney’s men were scattering. Rooney himself came to Kristin. There was murder in his eyes, and his face was grotesquely lit up by the flashes of nearby gunfire. He grasped her by her arm and pulled her to her feet. He began tugging her along with him as he retreated down the alley, away from Hunter’s men. Several of Rooney’s band were with Kristin and Rooney now, retreating in a group, firing as they went.
Suddenly there was an enormous flash of yellow light, then an earsplitting thunderous clap. A blast of air hit them like a fist, knocking them backward. The insides of the warehouse exploded. After the first blast of noise, there was the tinkling sound of broken glass. Black smoke billowed out of the warehouse doors. One of the doors had been blown away, though the building walls remained intact. Smoke gushed out, carried by the force of the explosion. It stung their eyes and made them cough.
Through the general uproar and commotion, Kristin could hear the sound of engines starting up. Then Iron man’s gruff voice cut through the mixture of noises. “Dallas, get the hell back here! Get back, damn you!”
Kristin saw Hunter running down the alleyway toward her, running in a half crouch, dodging behind trash bins and into entrance alcoves. Chunks of brick were flying all around as Rooney’s men fired at him. Hunter returned their fire as he advanced.
Kristin was filled with desperate hope. His rescuing her was the only chance she had. If he failed, she would be left to face Rooney’s fury. And yet, she knew he would fail. He stood no chance of reaching her.
A car roared down the alley and screeched to a halt behind Hunter. A door flung open, and Ironman’s voice boomed out. “Don’t be a fool! You think I need fools working for me? Leave her to Rooney. What the hell is she to you, anyway?”
The windows of the car shattered as they were raked with gunfire. Hunter looked down the alleyway to where Kristin was barely visible, being held behind a porch beam by Rooney, who was firing with a Tommy. “Come on,” Rooney was shouting in a crazed voice. “Come on and get her!”
Hunter’s face was grave, his teeth gritted and bared. There was nothing he could do. He leaped out from his position, barreled down the alley toward Ironman’s car and dove inside. The car screeched backward out of the alley, the door still flapping open. It backed into the street, then sped away in a squeal of rubber and grinding of gears. Two other cars raced after it, containing the rest of Ironman’s and Hunter’s gang.
Fire was blazing within the warehouse now, the searing flames leaping out of the entrance and crackling loudly. Rooney jerked Kristin’s face toward his own, making her stare into his eyes. His skin was glistening with sweat, yellow from the flames of the fire. His jaw trembled with rage, as if he was so furious he could not bring himself to speak. In the distance, coming closer, was the sound of sirens—police cars or fire trucks or both. Kristin could not tell. And no one waited around to find out.
A van pulled up near them at the mouth of the alley. Rooney pulled Kristin inside. Others from his gang jumped in also, except those who were limping feebly and had to be pulled in. The van jerked sharply, then sped away. Kristin looked out the rear window and saw the destruction that was left. The scene was highlighted by the flames from the burning building. Several bodies lay still; others were writhing in pain.
Kristin was pulled away from the window and thrown down to the metal floor of the van. One of the men inside was delirious from exhaustion and his wounds. He kept shouting over and over, “It’s her fault! It’s her fault!” “She let them in!” declared another.
Strong, sweaty hands encircled her throat. She could not breathe. She saw Rooney’s fierce, frenzied face staring down at her just before everything went black.
CHAPTER 8
They did not kill her, though after a while she almost wished they had. She regained consciousness in a cool, spacious bedroom, which had beige walls and a thick white carpet. She was on a large bed, lying naked on a fluffy purple satin comforter. Her head ached, and her cheeks seemed on fire. She went into the adjoining bathroom and looked in the mirror. She did not look bruised, though her cheeks and throat were flushed with redness.
Her mo
uth felt very dry. She filled a glass with cold water from the tap and drank it down thirstily. Then she wrapped a big bath towel around herself to hide her nakedness. The first thing she had to do was see if there was some way of escaping. She noticed that the single window in the bathroom was louvered, and there was a , screen beyond it. If she had a screwdriver, she might be able to remove it.
She went back into the bedroom and looked at the door. She tried it very slowly and quietly in case anyone was outside the room waiting for her to regain consciousness.It was locked, as she thought it would be. She went to the window and looked out. It was daylight, probably about noon. She was on the second floor of what appeared to be a country estate. There were softly rolling, grassy hills outside, and a Tarmac road that disappeared off in the distance. From all appearances, she was not the first prisoner to be held in this room; the window was barred from the outside, like a jail cell.
There was a sound outside her door. A key was being inserted into the lock. Kristin thought of rushing back to the bed and pretending to be still unconscious, but to make that look believable, she would have to remove the bath towel. She couldn’t bear the thought of being nakedly exposed to whomever was coming for her. So instead, she just cowered back against the corner, quickly searching for something to grasp and use as a weapon. She found nothing. Her jailers had made sure she would not.
The door opened, and Rooney came into the room, followed by two of his henchmen. His face was stern and angry, though the wild fury that had been in it last night was thankfully gone. He wore a short-sleeved, Hawaiian print shirt and tropical style linen trousers.
“Good. You’re awake,” he said, looking down at her. “Now I’ll find out what I want to know.” He motioned with a jerk of his head for his two henchmen, who immediately started toward Kristin.
Kristin crouched half forward and bared her nails, ready to fight them off, but it was hopeless. They grabbed her, knocked her hands away, pulled her over to the bed. One of them had a rope. They bound her wrists to the posts at the sides of the headboard. Then Rooney came forward and ripped away her bath towel as she lay on her back, exposing her to the men’s view. She felt a hot flush of shame as they all stared at her.
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