Quinn fought the urge to rush out to help him. That would get them both killed. He waited, but with Doyle’s condition, he couldn’t wait much longer.
Doyle picked up his head and laughed a soft, wet laugh. He was still laughing when Baker rushed back into the room carrying bandages and fresh towels. Baker threw his bundle on the bed and began tending to Archie’s wounds.
Quinn heard a gruff male voice from the living room. “Don’t bother, Sean. We’re just gonna plug him after we get the money, anyway.”
Baker kicked the bedroom door closed and went back to tearing towels into bandages. “Fucking idiots don’t listen to me. Nobody ever listens to me. They ignore me and I end up cleaning up the shit.”
Doyle was rocking his head back and forth in the pillows, laughing and muttering.
Baker threw down the makeshift bandages and screamed into Doyle’s face.“What the fuck are you laughing at? I’m trying to save your life, goddamn it!”
Doyle snapped out of it and grabbed his hands.
Quinn pushed the closet door open and was on Baker in two strides, pinning him against the wall by his throat. The traitor’s eyes bulged as Quinn slipped the .45’s barrel into his mouth.
Baker gurgled but didn’t move.
Quinn was surprised to see Archie had tossed aside his bed clothes and was looking over his own wounds.
“I thought you were out of it,” Quinn whispered.
“I heard you in the closet and started acting up to distract him,” Doyle said. He grabbed one of the bandages and tied it around a hole in his thigh.
“The little bastard drugged me after the wake and drove me up here. I’m pretty sure his friends outside already killed the three boys who drove up here with us.”
Quinn squeezed Baker’s throat. “This is how you repay him for everything he’s done for you, you miserable son of a bitch?”
Baker squirmed and gagged. His eyes wild and imploring as he struggled to breathe. Quinn warned, “I’m going to take the gun out of your mouth so you can tell me what we’re up against. If you scream, I’ll gut shoot you and leave you in the woods. Understand?”
Baker nodded. Quinn pulled the barrel out of his mouth and let Baker slide back to the floor. “I swear that it wasn’t supposed to happen like this,” Baker gasped. “It was supposed to be a simple snatch job is all. Just like Frank and Ira said. I was supposed to play along and babysit Archie while five guys came up and phoned in a ransom demand to you or Fatty. Next thing I know these clowns barge in with the rough stuff. They killed Archie’s three bodyguards at the foot of the driveway and headed up here to the house. They were still all hot over killing Rothman. One of them blows past me and heads straight in here to Archie’s room. I start screaming, ‘This ain’t part of the deal!’ but he don’t listen.”
“My fuckin’ hero,” Doyle said from bed. “Numb nuts here forgot to take my back up piece from the nightstand. I heard the gun shots at the end of the driveway and was hiding behind the bed when they kicked the door in.” He nodded toward the large red mess on the wall next to the door. “The best of him is still there. Got the fucker right between the eyes.” He looked down at his right thigh. “The other one caught me in the leg, though.”
Baker started weeping again. “I swear, Terry, I didn’t want this. I just needed the money and the respect...”
Quinn grabbed his throat again to shut him up. “Did you get a doctor?”
Baker nodded quickly, then pointed up at the ceiling. “All I could get was the vet that works on Archie’s horses sometimes. He’s the closest, just across the road. I tried to get him to work on Archie, but the other two made him work on their buddy first. He was dead before he hit the ground, but his brother’s the leader and he made the doc to keep working on him. Said he’d shoot him if he came downstairs and told him his brother was dead.”
Quinn did the math. One shot and two alive. That made three. “I thought it was a five man squad.”
Baker looked surprised. “I...I don’t know anything about that. All I know is that three showed up here.”
Two on two. Quinn He liked those odds even better. “Where are the last two?”
“The leader’s making a ransom call now. I think the other one’s in the kitchen. They’re both mean and wild and you won’t be able to get them both at once by yourself.” Baker managed a smile. “I...I can help you, see? Maybe give you a signal when it’s all right to hit them. I...I mean I already tried keeping Archie alive, see? I already tried to make up for it. I want to help anyway I can.”
Quinn grabbed Baker’s face and slammed him back against the wall. “Thanks, pal.”
He fired two shots into Baker’s belly and let the traitor sink slowly to the floor. A bloody slick trailed on the wallpaper as he sank to the floor.
Quinn went to Archie. He heard the kitchen door crash open. A shotgun blast. No return gunfire. Cain got the one in the kitchen.
One more to go.
He heard someone running down the hall from the living room. A single pistol shot. Another shotgun blast. One more shot. The roar of the shotgun. A thud against the wall, then the floor. Familiar footsteps came from the kitchen, marching up the hallway. Then a light rap on the bedroom door. “Everything okay, boss?” It was Jimmy Cain.
Quinn was already working on Doyle’s wounds. “There’s a doctor upstairs tending to a dead man,” Quinn called out. “Get him down here. But be careful. There might be one more with him.”
Quinn ignored Baker’s sobs as he tried put pressure on Doyle’s thigh wound. The blood only came faster. He tore one of the bandages lengthwise and pulled it as tight as he could.
Doyle bellowed. Quinn wrapped it around the leg and repeated it before tying it into a knot. The blood flow barely slowed. Quinn concentrated on the original shoulder wound. The hole had opened again, too.
“Ah, this is nothin’,” Doyle said, with a weak smile. “Don’t fuss with that, kid. It’s too late now anyway. I’m done for.”
“Bullshit,” Quinn kept working. “You’ve lost a lot of blood, but the doc can...”
Doyle was groggy for real this time. “You never did know when to give up, did you? Even in the ring, you never could see the whole play. You could’ve fought for the title if you’d just been smart enough to take that dive like you was supposed to. But you couldn’t take a handout. No, you had to take it on your own. You had to kill the fuckin’ guy.”
Quinn kept working. “Save your strength, boss.”
But Doyle kept trying to slap Quinn’s hands away. “They’re just gonna keep comin’ at me, anyway. They’ll never stop now until I’m dead and you know it. Just...let...me...go.”
Doyle’s eyes rolled up into the back of his head. His tongue bulged and he began to gurgle.
Archie was dying.
For the first time since childhood, Quinn felt true terror.
He slapped Archie’s face twice to bring him out of it. Nothing. He could feel Doyle slipping away, drifting into eternity. Quinn wasn’t ready to let him go. Not yet.
Quinn reared back and slammed his fist over Doyle’s heart. Archie’s eyes sprang back open, wide and alive.
The doctor ran into the room with his medical bag. “Don’t do that, you damned fool!” He was a skinny little man, but he had enough strength to push Quinn out of the way. “You’ll break his chest and puncture a lung. Get the hell out of here before you kill him.”
Quinn heard Baker’s whimpering from the floor. He pulled his pistol and aimed at Baker’s head. Cain did the same. “His whimpering going to keep you from working on Archie, doc?”
The vet was examining the shoulder wound. “Not really.”
“Good.” Quinn and Cain put their guns away. “Just concentrate on the man in the bed. We’ll worry about him later.”
Quinn closed the bedroom door behind them. He and Cain stepped over the body of one of Doyle’s attackers to get into the living room. He’d been a short, stocky man, but looked to have a solid build. Cain�
��s shotgun blast had caught him in the upper chest and head. Most of his face was gone. What was left wasn’t pretty.
Jimmy Cain laid the shotgun against the wall and dropped on the couch. “Baker tell you what happened to them three boys I sent up here with Archie?”
Quinn nodded in a way that told the story.
Cain swore to himself. “Jesus, boss. What are we gonna do now?” Quinn was already thinking about that. Nothing he came up with looked good. Doyle had two big holes in him and was bleeding bad. He might die. He was sure Sanders had sent a goon squad to wipe Archie out and take control of the mob.
Quinn knew he could send some boys to pick up Sanders. But Sanders had plenty of men who liked him. Attacking Sanders could split the Doyle mob in half.
Besides, Quinn was running things now. He had to think, like a boss. He had to try to save Archie’s empire. For Archie’s sake, not his.
But Quinn knew that even if Archie lived, he’d be a marked man for the rest of his life. If Sanders or Shapiro or Wallace didn’t get him, some other mob would. And if they didn’t, the government would. All this violence had stirred up a lot of resentment against Archie. People saw he wasn’t invincible and they’d keep at him until he was gone.
The old days were over. Quinn wondered if Archie might not be better off dead after all.
That’s when it hit him: Archie had to die.
At least for a little while.
Quinn picked up the candlestick phone and jiggled the cradle until the operator came on the line. He gave her Fatty’s number and she connected them.
He’d spent the past five years doing his best to keep Archie Doyle alive. He hoped Doyle would forgive him for what he was about to do.
“What’re you doin’, boss?” Cain asked from the couch.
The call went through and Fatty picked up. “Aw, Jesus, Terry. Thank Christ it’s you. We just got a phone call from some bastards who said they grabbed Archie. They’re calling back later with a goddamned ransom demand.”
Quinn didn’t know who else might be listening in, so he said, “Archie’s gone, Fatty. They killed him just before we got here.”
Fatty began to sob.
Cain’s draw dropped open and Quinn muffled the mouthpiece against his chest. “Not one fucking word out of you.” He went back to Corcoran. “They got him in the leg but his shoulder opened up again. We killed the two bastards who got him, but Archie bled out before we could save him.” Quinn didn’t have to act for this part. “That little shit Baker sold him out. Set the whole thing up. He was working with Frank Sanders and Ira Shapiro. I think they hired this Wallace guy to help them sell out Doyle and Rothman to make a grab for the two gangs.”
“And neither of them will live long enough to enjoy it.” The fat man’s voice quivered. “I’ll send the boys to round up Sanders and pay the hymie a visit. They’ll both be dead within the hour.”
“No you won’t,” Quinn said. “With Rothman dead, the cops’ll be waiting for us to pull something like that. Just sit tight and keep things running until I get back. I’ll send Cain back with Archie’s body in a day or two. We’re both gonna need some time up here to get things squared away the way Archie would’ve wanted.”
Quinn let Fatty ramble about how dark a day this was before putting the ear piece back in the cradle. He spotted a pack of cigarettes on the coffee table and helped himself. He figured they belonged to the dead faceless man on the floor. He figured the owner wouldn’t mind.
Cain’s mouth was still wide open. Quinn said, “Keeping your mouth open like that will draw flies, Jimmy.”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” “What I’m paid to do, keeping Archie alive.”
THE DOCTOR had been working on Archie for over two hours. Quinn and Cain waited quietly at the kitchen table. Cain nursed a Highball. Quinn was halfway through a glass of milk. He hated milk, but he didn’t feel like drinking and he wanted something cold.
They ignored the dead man slumped next to the ice box. Corpses had ceased to bother either of them long ago.
Neither man had spoken since the phone call. Not even when they’d dragged Baker into the woods over an hour before. He’d been still begging for mercy when they left him beneath a tree. It didn’t matter whether the animals or the blood loss got him first. Dead was dead and Baker had it coming.
The last of the morphine had left Quinn’s system long ago. The hole in his side had settled into a dull ache. He was amazed the stitches hadn’t opened. He thought of calling Alice to tell her he was okay, but he was afraid she wouldn’t answer the phone.
Quinn realized that day was the end of a lot of things in his life. The end of him and Alice. The end of Archie Doyle’s reign as Duke of New York, too. He thought of all they’d been through and all they’d done. Quinn had killed thirty-seven people in the five years he’d worked for Archie. Most of them men, but a few women, but not a civilian in the bunch.
Every one of them had been in the Life. Grifters, bookies, gamblers, low-lifes, drunks, junkies, blackmailers, thieves. Remembering that took the sting out of it, helped him sleep nights. He’d done it all for Archie because Archie had gotten The Boys to lay off him five years before. He did it because Archie had been the only consistent force in his life.
Quinn knew the world Archie had shown him was rotten. It preyed on people’s weaknesses. It made money from their faults. But it was the only life Quinn had ever known. And it beat what had been waiting for him in the hallway outside his locker room that warm September night five years before.
Quinn vowed to fight to keep Archie’s legacy alive. It was important to him because it was important to Archie. But first he’d kill Shapiro. And Sanders. And Wallace.
He flinched when he heard the bedroom door open. Quinn and Cain ran to see him.
The vet stood in the hallway, looking older and thinner than he had an hour ago. He stepped over the faceless dead man into the living room and dropped himself on the couch. His face and hands were streaked with dried blood.
“How is he doc?” Quinn asked. “Give it to me straight?”
The vet looked up at Quinn with pale blue eyes. “Have you seen that man’s body? It’s a roadmap of pain. Old fractures, scar tissue, bullet wounds. It’s unlike anything I’ve seen in my entire life.” He looked at Cain. “I counted eleven old bullet holes in him, not including the two he got today.”
Quinn fought the urge to smack the doc out of it. “Is he going to pull through?”
“I’d imagine so. Judging by the amount of blood he’s lost over the last few days, he should have died hours ago. But he is as strong as an ox.” The vet gave a weary smile. “And if there’s one thing an old vet like me knows, its oxen.”
“So he’s gonna make it?” Cain echoed.
“There’s always the risk of infection,” the vet said, “but seeing what he’s lived through before, I’d say Mr. Doyle keeps on living out of sheer habit.” It was the best news Quinn had heard in a long time, maybe ever. Everything in him wanted to go in and talk to Archie right then and there.
But Quinn knew that wouldn’t accomplish much in the long run. There were more important things here than sentiment. “Do you understand what happened here today, doc?”
“No and I don’t care to. All I know is that Mr. Doyle’s been good to me and my family. I’ll do what I can to keep him alive.”
“I’ll get a doctor up here as soon as I can, but it might take a day or so. Can you hold out until then?”
“Certainly. But you have to remember that Mr. Doyle’s in grave condition. Even if he was in the finest hospital in the world under the best of care, the slightest infection could kill him.” He looked at the dead, faceless man on the floor. “I don’t want to be held responsible if he dies.”
“Then let’s hope he doesn’t.”
He saw that Cain was still steamed about him telling Fatty that Archie was dead. Quinn clued him in. “And the best way I knew to keep Archie alive was to tell Fatty he was de
ad. If word got out he was alive, this place might be crawling with people who want to finish the job. Understand?”
“Sure, boss,” Cain said, “but what are we gonna use for a body? We’ve gotta have something to plant in the graveyard.”
Quinn looked down at the bloodied, faceless corpse on the floor. “We’ll give him the part. He’s about Archie’s size. With his face gone, so no one will know the difference.”
He watched Cain look the corpse over and realize it wasn’t a bad idea.
Quinn continued, “I’ll clue Fatty in on the plan when I get back to New York. Face-to-face to make sure no one’s listening. He’ll make all the arrangements.”
Cain seemed very confused. “You’re going back to New York?”
“Right now. I’ve got a couple of loose ends to tie up before Archie’s resurrection.”
Twenty minutes later, Quinn bought some gas at a filling station. And made a phone call to the Chauncey Arms.
FRIDAY NIGHT was Fight Night at Madison Square Garden.
Quinn knew Frank Sanders never missed the fights when he was in town. He doubted Sanders would even let the supposed death of his best friend break his ritual. Especially since he had a hand in it.
Quinn knew the news about Archie’s death would spread fast throughout the city. Everyone would assume Sanders was in charge now and would treat him accordingly.
And, since his coup worked, there was no need to hide out. Frank Sanders and Ira Shapiro were running things now.
Neither had a care in the world.
Quinn took his time walking through the crowded narrow aisles of the Garden. It was the first time he’d been in the building since the night they took away his license five long years before. One career had ended that night. Tonight, so would another.
The place never changed. The haze from cigar smoke still hovered overhead. The murmur of the crowd and the sound of leather hitting flesh. The creaking of the ring beneath the middleweights as they circled each other.
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