“There isn’t the slightest doubt in my mind. Who is she?”
“Remember the brunette I drove home the other night? The one you said was beautiful, but must have lived a hard life?”
Stella looked at him in astonishment.
“Whitey Cord is playing all the angles at once,” Ross said. “He told Bix Lawson that if he didn’t deliver you, he’d come after you himself. Then he decided to make it easier to get to you—in case Bix failed—by removing me from the picture. So he sent his girl friend into town to lure me into a trap. She’s using the name Mrs. Christine Franklin, but her real name’s Vanita Bell and her real hair color is red.”
“Reddish-gray, probably,” Stella sniffed. “I knew she had dyed hair the minute I saw her, but I was too polite to mention it. I was afraid you’d think I was jealous.”
“You?” he said. “Perish the thought.”
“How did you ever find her out?”
“I have a suspicious nature, plus a pretty good Chicago contact.” Glancing at his watch, he saw it was past three-thirty. “I have a few preparations to make before my date, and it’s only a little over five hours off. I’d better run.”
Coming to her feet, Stella said in alarm, “What do you mean, your date? You said it was a trap.”
“It ceased being a trap the moment I figured it out,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”
Walking over to him, she laid her hands on his shoulders and looked up into his face. “Please, Clancy, why don’t you just put me on a bus and let me run? You’ll end up getting yourself killed over me.”
“There’s something you don’t seem to understand,” he said, dropping his hands lightly onto her hips. “This is more than just protection of a girl I happen to like very much. Maybe in your case I’d stick my neck out for no other reason than that I liked you very much. But I couldn’t back off even if I didn’t like you at all. They’re trying to push me.”
“Do you have to be that inflexible?”
“Yes, I do. I’m the only independent operator in a system controlled from top to bottom by Bix Lawson. I have to stay that way because I couldn’t possibly take orders from Bix. And the only way to maintain my independence is never to give an inch. If, just once, I ever backed off from anybody, for any reason at all, the vultures would swarm all over me. For my own sake, not just yours, I couldn’t either turn you over to Cord or let you run, even if I wanted to.”
She said, “Your theory that the way to be let alone is to stand like a rock doesn’t seem to be working this time. Everybody’s after you.”
“Bix Lawson doesn’t want to be. He’s merely submitted to pressure from the Syndicate. He’s caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. And I think he’s beginning to suspect he chose the devil.”
She slid her arms about his neck. “I’m afraid you’ll be killed.”
“I’m not,” he said, bending his head to kiss her.
He meant it to be a companionable good-bye kiss, but her wide-open lips met his and suddenly she strained against him. Involuntarily his arms slid about her waist. Then, as her little pointed tongue sought his and her body began writhing against him, the fire in her began to transmit itself to him. All at once he crushed her savagely in his arms.
Eventually he had to come up for air. He started to lead her toward the bed.
“Not here,” she said unsteadily. “That’s their bed.”
Taking his hand, she led him out into the hallway and into the first room into which he had glanced. They were barely inside the room when she released his hand and quickly began to unbutton her outsize flannel shirt.
They made a race of it and she won. She was lying naked on the bed waiting for him before he tossed the last of his clothing aside.
Her eyes began to get big and round as he approached her. She started to tremble as he dropped beside her and took her into his arms.
“It’s always like the first time,” she whispered against his lips. “I’ll never get used to your touching me without shaking like a schoolgirl.”
Her arms slid about his neck and he could feel the plump firmness of her bosom thrusting against his bare chest as she pressed herself against him. He kissed the base of her throat and she pushed his head downward to mother his face between her breasts. He could hear the quickening of her heartbeat.
She shivered when he ran a hand slowly down her side, across the roundness of her hip and along her thigh. Her knees parted to let the hand fall from her outer thigh to her opposite inner thigh. Raising his head from its buried position between her breasts, his lips sought hers as his hand stroked the soft flesh, creeping slowly upward. Her arms tightened their grip and she rolled onto her back, forcing him to roll with her until his weight crushed her slighter frame beneath it.
Then her mouth formed a little round O and her face assumed the expression that never failed to intrigue him at this particular moment: a mixture of surprise and trepidation and delight.
“Oh, goodness!” she said in an odd voice.
They merged into one being, their minds and souls intermingling into a single entity which shut out awareness of their surroundings so completely. For the prolonged period of their union, neither knew where they were. All the rest of the universe became a meaningless void as they concentrated solely on each other and lost all consciousness of any existence outside of themselves.
Much later, when they were downstairs again, she asked if he would stay for dinner. Glancing at his watch, he saw that they had dallied upstairs for nearly an hour.
“I can’t,” he said. “I have too many things to do before the shops close at six.”
“The shops?” she said puzzledly.
“Uh-huh. I have to make a couple of purchases.” He gave her a quick kiss and headed for the side door.
Running after him, she caught him at the door and clung to him for a minute. “Promise me you’ll be careful, Clancy?”
“I’m always careful,” he said in honest surprise, under the impression that he was.
He had a tendency to confuse carefulness with alertness. And because he kept all five senses tuned to a fine key, so that he was always prepared to react instantly to any sign of danger, he sincerely believed that he was acting carefully even when he rushed headlong into situations where the odds were stacked against him.
Disengaging himself from her embrace, he gave her another quick kiss, this time on the nose, and ran down the steps to his car.
CHAPTER XVIII
DURING THE DRIVE back to town Ross reviewed the plan he had already formed the instant he became sure that Christine Franklin and Vanita Bell were the same person and that the woman was setting him up as a target for her lover, Whitey Cord.
At the cottage that evening he assumed that in the natural course of events things would become as warm as on his previous visit. And you can hardly make love wearing a shoulder holster. He was relatively sure that the woman would make a point of getting his gun away from him, then someone, perhaps Whitey Cord himself, would suddenly appear with the intention of burning him down while he was unarmed.
The motive was as obvious as the plan: Cord has decided it would be impossible to get to Stella until Ross was out of the way, and he had little faith in Bix Lawson’s ability to remove the gambler from circulation.
It was ten minutes after five when he parked in front of Olsen’s Shoe Repair Shop on Fourth Street. Inside, a round little Swede in his fifties was pounding tacks into the heel of a riding boot. He paused to peer at Ross over silver-rimmed glasses, then set down his shoemaker’s hammer and came over to the counter with a wide grin on his face.
“Clancy Ross, by gar. I hear by the radio you yust had some trouble by your club.”
“A little. Can I get a special job done fast, Elmer?”
“Sure. For you I stay open past closing time, if necessary.”
“How late are you open?”
“Six p.m.”
“It shouldn’t take that long,” Ross said
, and described what he wanted.
Pursing his lips, the little Swede nodded understanding. “Yust slip off your coat. The right arm only is all I need.”
Ross slipped the sleeve from his right arm, letting the coat hang from his left shoulder, so that his gun harness remained covered. There were no customers in the place, and he had a permit to carry the gun anyway, but he was always reluctant to advertise to his numerous friends who had no connection with the rackets that he carried a gun.
Coming from behind the counter, the shoemaker wrapped a tape measure around his right forearm, just below the elbow.
“Okay,” he said. “Shouldn’t take more than forty-five minutes. Come back yust at closing time.”
Ross left the shoe repair shop and drove six blocks north to Franklin Avenue. He parked in front of a glass-fronted emporium where three gilded balls hung over the doorway. Discreet gilt lettering on the window read: LEVINE’S PAWNSHOP—LOANS.
Inside, a dapper, impeccably groomed man with graying hair and the distinguished manner of a judge stood behind the counter. Outside of his business place, no one would have dreamed that Solomon Levine was a pawnbroker, and as a matter of fact he wasn’t a very good one. He had too soft a heart for the business, with the result that Clancy Ross had twice been forced to bail his old friend out of impending bankruptcy.
For a period after his near financial downfalls, the pawnbroker always operated his business with the relentlessness of a Scrooge, so he had been able to pay both advances back. But the moment he became solvent again he immediately became a sucker again for everyone who walked in with a sad story of a sick mother or a dying wife and wanted to pawn for fifty dollars a watch he had just bought in another pawnshop for ten.
He was one of the gambler’s favorite people.
The pawnbroker gave him a reserved but pleasant smile and said, “How are you, Clancy?”
“Fine, Sol,” the gambler said, thrusting his hand across the counter to clasp the pawnbroker’s. “How’s the family?”
“Rose is well. Joe graduates from college next spring. I hear you’ve been having a little trouble.”
“Some. I need a particular type of gun, Sol. It has to be small; about vest-pocket size. And it has to have a ring at the base of the stock that I can tie a cord to.”
The pawnbroker furrowed his brow in thought. After musing a few moments, he went to a glass case at the rear of the shop, unlocked it and lifted out a small leather box. Carrying it back to the counter, he set it in front of Ross and lifted the lid.
A stubby, double-barreled derringer lay in the velvet-lined case. A small metal ring on a swivel was fixed to the base of the butt.
Breaking the gun open, Ross peered down the barrels.
“It’s in perfect condition,” Levine said. “I test-fired it.”
“Got any shells for it?”
“Sure.” Returning to the gun case, he brought back a box of.41 caliber rim-fire cartridges.
Replacing the gun in its velvet-lined case, Ross snapped shut the lid, dropped the case in one side pocket and the box of cartridges in the other. Taking out his wallet, he said, “How much do I owe you?”
The pawnbroker’s lips formed a half smile. “I planned to ask thirty-five and come down to fifteen. But you never play the game, Clancy. If all my customers were like you, there wouldn’t be any fun in this business.”
Ross grinned. “I could haggle you down to ten without half trying. And if I told you I needed it to put my poor old sick mother out of her misery, you’d give it to me for nothing. Who you trying to kid?”
“Okay, ten,” Levine said.
Giving his head a hopeless shake, Ross dropped a ten and a five on the counter. “I heard you the first time. How much for the shells?”
“Included. I don’t suppose you want to sign the gun-register book?”
“Of course I do. Let’s have it.”
The pawnbroker looked faintly surprised. From beneath the counter he brought a thin ledger and flipped pages until he came to one only half filled with notations. In the space immediately below the last entry he wrote down the make and serial number of the gun. Then he reversed the ledger to face Ross and handed him the pen.
In the space reserved for the name and address of the purchaser, Ross printed in block letters: Mrs. Christine Franklin, Stowe Point, Muskie Lake.
When he turned the ledger around for the pawnbroker to read what he had printed, Levine studied it without comment.
“There probably won’t be a kickback,” Ross said, “but if there is, she’s thirty-one, five feet five, weighs one twenty-four, has black hair and brown eyes. That’s from her driver’s license. You won’t want to describe that exactly, of course.”
Sol Levine nodded. “I know. The police might wonder how I knew her exact age, height and weight. Around thirty, between five four and six, a hundred and twenty to a hundred and thirty.”
“You catch. If it comes to viewing her in a show-up, which is unlikely, she has a figure which will unfreeze your hardening arteries, and a face to match. Smooth, dusky complexion, a small, slightly flat nose which looks nicer flat than it would more delicately shaped, and almond eyes which give her a kind of oriental look.”
“Hmm,” the pawnbroker said. “I ought to be able to pick her out. I can almost see her now.”
“Yeah, I can tell,” Ross said dryly. “You’d better get that lecherous look off your face before you go home to Rose.”
Sol Levine burst out laughing. “I’m not that old yet, young man. It takes more than a mental picture to give me evil thoughts.”
“Aw, you wouldn’t know what to do with the real thing, you dirty old man.” Ross turned toward the door. “Thanks, Sol.”
“Thank you,” the pawnbroker said. “You did the buying. Give my regards to Sam.”
“Sure,” Ross said, and went on out.
It was five minutes of six when Ross got back to Olsen’s Shoe Repair Shop. He found his special order ready. Elmer Olsen held up for his examination a leather strap about three inches wide, with a narrower strip of leather stitched to one end of it and a small buckle to the other. Stitched to the center of the strap so that it hung downward was an inch-wide strip of elastic tape, and to its end was tied a three-inch length of shoelace.
“Want to try it on?” the shoemaker asked.
“When you take measurements, things fit,” Ross said. “How much?”
A few moments later, the leather and elastic contrivance reposing in his pocket on top of the box of cartridges, he climbed in his Lincoln and headed toward the center of town to find some dinner before starting to get ready for his date.
By the time he had eaten dinner and had gotten back to the Rotunda it was seven p.m. Daylight Saving Time had ended a week earlier and the days were beginning to get shorter. With sunset an hour old, an overcast sky had already made it quite dark.
As Ross swung the Lincoln into the alley behind the club, he noted that the street lamp at the alley mouth was not yet lighted. He might have passed this off as merely a delay in timing by the powerhouse engineer delegated to throw the switch for street lamps in that area, but as he slowed to swing into the parking lot, he saw that the shaded bulb over the rear door of the club was also dark. As this was controlled by a photo-electric device which automatically turned it on at dusk, alarm bells began ringing in his mind.
His reaction was instantaneous. Pushing the throttle to the floor, he roared on past the parking lot toward the other end of the alley.
There was a harsh, chattering sound as a submachine gun opened up from somewhere on the parking lot. An instant later a second chorused in from near the rear door on the opposite side of the alley. Bits of flying glass stung the back of his head from the car’s shattered rear window, and the right side of the windshield disintegrated before him.
Then he was making a dirt-track left turn from the alley mouth and gunning the Lincoln toward the next intersection at top speed. He made another skidding left turn t
here, straightened out the wheel, slammed on his brakes and skidded into a parking place at the curb in the center of the block. Leaping from the car, he raced across the street and darted into the narrow areaway between two office buildings. At the far end of the areaway he came out into the parking lot again at the end farthest from the club’s rear door.
Not more than thirty seconds had passed since the machine guns opened up.
Dimly he could make out a single car parked on the lot near the alley. As he ran toward it on tiptoe, his gun in his hand, he heard a hoarse voice whisper, “Think we got him?”
“I didn’t hear his car crash into anything,” another voice answered. “We better blow out of here.”
Ross came to a halt behind the parked car. Hurrying feet scruffed on the parking lot’s rough concrete as two dim figures approached the car. When they were within ten feet, Ross stepped out in the open.
The would-be assassins halted abruptly and both submachine guns started to swing toward him. His thirty-eight cracked twice, the shots so closely spaced they sounded like a single drawn-out explosion.
There was a gasp from one man and a shocked grunt from the other. Then one sat down with a spine-jolting jar, groaned and toppled over on his side. The other emitted a long-drawn-out sigh and slowly pitched forward on his face. Both machine guns clattered to the concrete.
The gambler’s eyes probed the darkness in all directions and his ears were tuned for the slightest sound. When he could detect no evidence of anyone else in the area, he reached through the car window and switched on the headlights. By their glow he examined the machine-gunners.
One was the barrel-shaped driver of Bix Lawson’s car, whom he had kicked in the stomach in front of police headquarters. The other was the tall, lanky man who had been seated in the rear of the car.
Both were quite dead.
So Bix Lawson had issued my death warrant, Ross thought. Well, I just cancelled it—at least for the time being.
It occurred to him, that Whitey Cord hadn’t seen fit to inform Lawson about the trap set for later that night, or the racket boss would hardly have gone to the trouble of setting this earlier one. A case of the right hand not knowing what the left was doing.
She'll Hate Me Tomorrow Page 12
