by Lionel White
It was as though he had final y grown up.
Her hand went across to him and she softly rubbed the side of his head. He didn't move and instinctively she leaned over and kissed him gently on the mouth.
God, she was just as crazy about him as she had always been. More so. She was glad now that she had waited.
Four years had been a long time, a hel of a long time. For a moment she wondered what those years might have done to her. But at once, she dismissed the thought. Whatever they had done, it hadn't seemed to bother Johnny at al . He was just as much in love with her as he had always been.
Just as impetuous and just as demanding. It was one of the things which made her always want him and need him—his constant demand for her.
Twisting her lovely, long limbed body, she put her feet on the floor at the side of the bed and sat up.
“It's getting late, Johnny,” she said. “Must be after four. I'l get dressed and make us a cup of coffee. You suppose this man has any coffee around the place?”
He opened his eyes wide then, and looked around at her. He smiled.
“Come on back,” he said.
She shook her head and the shoulder length blonde hair covered the side of her face.
“Not on your life, baby,” she said. “You get up now and get dressed. I want to be wel out of here before this Unger character gets home.”
He grunted.
“Guess you're right, honey. You hit the bathroom; I'l be up in a second. There's a coffeepot in the kitchen. See if you can find something for a couple of sandwiches.”
He reached for a cigarette from the package she had replaced on the table. The girl stood up and crossed the room toward the bath. She reached and took a handful of clothes from the back of a chair as she passed. A moment later the door closed behind her.
Flicking an ash on the floor, he thought, God it was worth waiting for. Worth every bitter second of those four years.
When he heard the sound of the shower, he too got up. He pul ed on his clothes carelessly and was tucking in his shirt as she once more returned to the room.
“Honey,” he said, looking at her with the admiration stil deep on his face, “honey, listen. The hel with the coffee. Run down to the corner and pick up a bottle of Scotch. Jesus, I feel like a drink. I want to celebrate. After four years, I feel like something a little stronger than coffee.”
She looked at him silently for a second and then spoke.
“You sure it's a good idea—drinking?” she asked.
He smiled.
“You don't have to worry,” he said. “Nobody ever had to worry about my drinking. It's just that I feel like celebrating.”
“Wel ,” she said, slowly, “al right, Johnny. You know what you want. The only thing is, remember, it's been four years and it's likely to hit you awful fast.
You want to be wide awake for tonight.”
He nodded, at once serious.
“I'l be wide awake,” he said. “Don't worry—I'l be plenty wide awake.”
She smiled then, and pul ing on the little cardinal's hat, she sort of half shook her head to brush the hair back and turned toward the door.
“Be right back,” she said.
“Wait,” he said, “I'l get you some money.”
“I've got money,” she said and quickly opened the door and closed it behind her.
Johnny Clay frowned and sat in the straight-backed chair next to the window. He thought of the single five dol ar bil which Marvin Unger had left him that morning—just in case. He laughed, not pleasantly.
“Tight bastard,” he said, under his breath.
But at once his mind went back to Fay. Jesus, there was a mil ion things he wanted to ask her. They hadn't hardly talked at al . There were so many things they had to tel each other. Four years is a long time to cover in a few minutes.
Of course he knew that she stil had the job; that she stil lived with her family out in Brooklyn. She hadn't had to tel him that she had waited for him and only him al these years. That he knew, unasked. Her actions alone had told him.
And he'd had damned little opportunity to tel her much. He'd only just briefly outlined his plans; told her what he had in mind.
He knew she wouldn't like the idea. Certainly she had felt bad enough about it that time, more than four years ago, when the court had passed sentence on him and he'd started up the river. And she'd always been after him to get an honest job, to settle down.
Yes, he'd been surprised when she hadn't started right in to make objections.
After he had told her about it, she'd been quiet for a long time. And then, at last, she'd said, “Wel , Johnny, I guess you know what you're doing.”
“I know,” he'd told her. “I know al right. After al , I've had four years—four damned long years, to think about it. To plan it.”
She'd nodded, looking at him with that melting look which always got him.
“Just be sure you're right about it, Johnny,” she said. “Be awful sure you're right. It's robbery, Johnny. It's criminal. But you know that.”
“I'm right.”
There'd been no questions about the right or wrong of it. That part she understood. Right now she was too happy in being with him, in loving him, to go into it.
“The only mistake I made before,” he'd told her, “was shooting for peanuts. Four years taught me one thing if nothing else. Any time you take a chance on going to jail, you got to be sure that the rewards are worth the risk. They can send you away for a ten dol ar heist just as quick as they can for a mil ion dol ar job.”
But then, they hadn't talked any more. They had other things to do. More important things.
He had the ice cubes out and a couple of glasses on the table when she returned. She tossed her tiny hat on the bed and then sat on the edge of it as he fixed two highbal s with whiskey, soda and ice. Silently they touched rims and then sipped the drinks.
Looking at him with a serious expression in her turquoise eyes, she said, “Johnny, why don't you get out of this place? It's depressing here; dingy.”
He shook his head.
“It's the safest place,” he said. “I have to stay here. Everything now depends on it.”
She half shook her head.
“This man Unger,” she said. “Just how...”
He interrupted her before she could finish the question.
“Unger isn't exactly a friend,” he said. “He's a court stenographer down in Special Sessions. I've known him for a number of years, but not wel . Then, at the time my case came up and I was sentenced, he looked me up while I was waiting to be transferred to Sing Sing. He wanted me to get a message through to a man who was doing time up there, in case I had a chance to do so. It turned out I did.
“When I got out I figured he sort of owed me a favor. I looked up his name in the phone book and cal ed him. We got together and had dinner. I was looking around for a guy like him—a guy who'd be a respectable front, who had a little larceny in his heart and who might back the play. I felt him out. It didn't take long.”
Fay looked at him, her eyes serious.
“Are you sure, Johnny,” she asked, “that he isn't just playing you along for a sucker? A court stenographer...”
Johnny shook his head.
“No—I know just where he stands. The man isn't a crook in the normal sense of the word. But he's greedy and he's got larceny. I was careful with him and played him along gradual y. He's al right. He went for the deal hook, line and sinker. He's letting me lay low here, he's making my contacts, arranging a lot of the details. He's going to cut in for a good chunk of the dough, once we get it. He won't, of course, be in on the actual caper itself. But he's valuable, very valuable.”
Fay stil looked a little doubtful.
“The others,” she said, “they al seem sort of queer.”
“That's the beauty of this thing,” Johnny told her. “I'm avoiding the one mistake most thieves make. They always tie up with other thieves. These men, the on
es who are in on the deal with me—none of them are professional crooks. They al have jobs, they al live seemingly decent, normal lives. But they al have money problems and they al have larceny in them. No, you don't have to worry. This thing is going to be foolproof.”
Fay nodded her blonde head.
“I wish there was something I could do, Johnny,” she said.
Johnny Clay looked at her sharply and shook his head.
“Not for a mil ion,” he said. “You're staying strictly out of this. It was even risky—dangerous—for me to let you come up here today. I don't want you tied in in any possible way.”
“Yes, but...”
He stood up and went to her and put his arms around her slender waist. He kissed the soft spot just under her chin.
“Honey,” he said, “when it's over and done with, you'l be in it up to your neck. We'l be lamming together, baby, after al . But until it's done, until I have the dough, I want you out. It's the only way.”
“If there was only something...
“There's plenty you can do,” he again interrupted. “Get that birth certificate of your brother's. Get a reservation for those plane tickets. Begin to spread the story around your office about planning to get married and give them notice. You got plenty to do.”
He looked over at the cheap alarm clock on the dresser.
“And in the meantime,” he said, “you better get moving. I don't want to take any chances on Unger walking in and finding you here.”
She stood up then and put her second drink down without tasting it.
“Al right, Johnny,” she said. “Only—only when am I going to see you again?”
He looked at her for a long moment while he thought. He hated to have her leave; he hated the idea that he couldn't go with her, then and there.
“I'l cal you,” he said. “As soon as I can, I'l cal . It wil be at your office, sometime during the first part of the week.”
They stood facing each other for a moment and then suddenly she was in his arms. Her hands held the back of his head as she pressed against him and her half opened mouth found his.
She left the room then, two minutes later, without speaking.
* * *
It was exactly six forty-five when George Peatty climbed the high stoop of the brownstone front up on West a Hundred and Tenth Street. He took the key from his trouser pocket, inserted it and twisted the doorknob. He climbed two flights of carpeted stairs and opened the door at the right. Entering his apartment, he careful y removed his light felt hat, laid it on the smal table in the hal and then went into the living room. He stil carried the half dozen roses wrapped up in the green papered cornucopia.
About to open his mouth and cal out, he was suddenly interrupted by the sound of a crash coming from the bedroom. A moment later he heard laughter. He passed through the living room and down the hal way to the bedroom. He wasn't alarmed.
Bil Malcolm was down on his knees on the floor, at the end of the big double bed, beginning to pick up the pieces of broken glass. The uncapped gin bottle was stil in his right hand, carried at a dangerous angle. He had a foolish grin on his handsome face and George knew at once that he was drunk.
Betty, Malcolm's short, chubby wife, sat on the side of the bed. She was laughing.
Sherry was over by the window, fooling with one of the dials on the portable radio. There was a cigarette between her perfect red lips and she held a partly fil ed glass in her hand. She was dressed in a thin, diaphanous dressing gown and her crimson nailed feet were bare.
Instinctively, George knew that she was sober—no matter how much she may have had to drink. She looked up the moment George reached the door, sensing his presence.
“My God, George,” she said, “take the bottle out of Bil 's hand before he spil s that too. The dope is drunk.”
“He's always drunk,” Betty said. She stood up and weaved slightly as she moved toward her husband.
“Come on, Bil ,” she said, her voice husky. “Gotta go.” She reached over and took the bottle and put it down on the floor. “My God, you're a clumsy...”
“Oh, stay and have another,” Sherry said. “George, get a couple more glasses...”
Bil reached his feet, wobbling.
“Nope,” he said, thickly. “Gotta go. Gotta go now.” He lurched toward the door.
“Hiya, Georgie boy,” he said as he passed Peatty. “Missed the damn party.”
Betty fol owed him out of the room and a moment later they heard the slam of the outside door.
George Peatty turned to his wife.
“My God, Sherry,” he said, “don't those two ever get sober?”
Even as he said the words, he knew he was doing the wrong thing. He didn't want to argue with her and he knew that any criticism of the Malcolms, his wife's friends from downstairs, always led to a fight. It seemed that lately anything he said upset Sherry.
Sherry looked at her husband, the long, theatrical black lashes half closed over her smoldering eyes. Her body, smal , beautiful y molded, deceptively soft, moved with the grace of a cat as she went over to the bed and curled up on it.
At twenty-four, Sherry Peatty was a woman who positively exuded sex. There was a velvet texture to her dark olive skin; her face was almost Slavic in contour and she affected a tight, short hair cut which went far to set off the loveliness of her smal , pert face.
“The Malcolms are al right,” she said, her husky voice bored and detached. “At least they have a little life in them. What am I supposed to do—sit around here and vegetate al day?”
“Wel ...”
“Wel my fanny,” Sherry said, anger now moving into her tone. “We don't do anything. Nothing. A movie once a week. My God, I get tired of this kind of life. I get tired of never having money, never going anywhere, doing anything. It may be al right for you—you've had your fling.”
Her mouth pouted and she looked as though she were about to cry.
George heard the words, but he wasn't paying attention to them. He was thinking that she was stil the most desirable woman he had ever known. He was thinking that right now he'd like to go over and take her in his arms and make love to her.
He held the flowers out in a half conciliatory gesture.
Sherry took them and at once put them down unopened. She looked up at her husband. Her eyes were cold now and wide with resentment.
“This dump,” she said. “I'm damned tired of it. I'm tired of not having things; not having the money to do things.”
He went over and sat on the side of the bed and started to put his arm around her. Quickly she brushed it away.
“Sherry,” he said, “listen Sherry. In another week or so I'm going to have money. Real money. Thousands of dol ars.”
She looked at him then with sudden interest but a second later she turned away.
“Yeah.” Her voice was heavy with sarcasm. “What—you got another sure thing at the track? Last time you had one it cost us two weeks' pay!”
For a long minute he looked at her. He knew he shouldn't say anything; he knew even one word would be dangerous. That if Johnny were to learn he had talked, he'd be out. That would be the very least he could expect. He could also be half beaten to death or even kil ed. But then again he looked over at Sherry and he was blinded to everything but his desire for her. That and the realization that he was losing her.
“Not a horse,” he said. “Something a lot bigger than any horse. Something so big I don't even dare tel you about it.”
She looked up at him then from under the long lashes with sudden curiosity. She reached over and her body pressed against his.
“Big?” she said. “If you're serious, if this isn't just another of your stories, then tel me. Tel me what it is.”
Again he hesitated. But he felt her body pressing against his and he knew that he'd have to tel her sooner or later. She'd have to know sometime.
Wel , the hel with Johnny. The reason he was in on the thing anyway was because of Sherry and his f
ear of losing her.
“Sherry,” he said, “I'l tel you, but you'l have to keep absolutely quiet about it. This is it—the real thing.”
She was impatient and started to pul away from him.
“It's the track al right,” he said, “but not what you think. I'm in with a mob—a mob that's going to knock over the track take.”
For a moment she was utterly stil , a smal frown on her forehead. She pul ed away then and looked at him, her eyes wide.
“What do you mean?” she said. “The track take—what do you mean?”
His face was pale when he answered and the vein was throbbing again in his neck.
“That's right—the whole track take. We're going to knock over the office safe.”
She stared at him as though he had suddenly lost his mind.
“For God's sake,” she said. “George, are you hopped up? Are you crazy? Why my God...”
“I'm not crazy,” he said. “I'm cold sober. I'm tel ing you—we're going to hijack the safe. We're meeting tonight to make the plans.”
Stil unbelieving, she asked, “Who's meeting? Who's we?”
He tightened then and his mouth was a straight contrary line.
“Gees, Sherry,” he said, “that I can't tel you. I can only say this. I'm in on it and it's big. Just about the biggest thing that has ever been planned.
We're...”
“The track,” she said, stil unbelieving. “You and your friends must be insane. Why, nobody's ever knocked off a whole race track. It can't be done.
Good God, there's thousands of people—hundreds of cops... George, you should know—you work there.”
He looked stubborn then when he spoke.
“It can be done,” he said. “That's just the thing; that's the beauty of it. It hasn't been done or even tried and so nobody thinks it's possible. Not even the Pinkertons believe it could be worked. That's one reason it's going to work.”
“You better get me a drink, George,” Sherry suddenly said. “Get me a drink and tel me about it.”
He stood up and retrieved the gin bottle from the floor. Going out to the kitchen, he mixed two Martinis. He wanted a couple of minutes to think.
