We all heard the elevator door slam. The hood who had slumped in his chair jumped to attention. He had to see the gun in my hand before he overcame habit, and relaxed. I moved back against the wall. Dorothy turned watchful eyes toward the door. Henry Nelson dropped the pen and stood up behind the table. Was he still hoping? Was he looking for Buster Eddington and one last chance to beat this rap?
The door was pushed slowly open.
Rafferty came through it.
He moved slowly and awkwardly, like a great ship that’s listing, sinking and won’t give up. The light in the room glistened in the fresh blood flowing from the gash in his left eye down across his wide, Irish mouth. His red hair was streaked with mud and caked with blood. His coat was gone, and his shirt was ripped. He was still a huge man, but all the power and authority was gone out of him. The only thing Big Mike Rafferty had any more was the gun held loosely in his right hand.
“Nelson!” he gritted through his clenched teeth. He seemed afraid to open his mouth, as though he was holding himself together by sheer will.
Nelson stood tall, his left sleeve empty. “I’m here,” he said.
They faced each other. The beaten, finished man behind the table, the ripped, gouged one bleeding out his life with every ragged thud of his heart, in the doorway. And between them, it seemed to me, Connice stood — as she’s always stood between them.
It was as though they were alone in the room. The two men who had outraged every moral law in their move to power. Alone with the burning memory of the woman they’d loved, and the gun in Rafferty’s bleeding hand.
“I’ve come to take you to hell with me, Nelson,” Rafferty said. “I’ve come for my baby.”
He took a painful forward step into the room.
Nelson retreated one step. Slowly Rafferty advanced.
Rafferty’s face was transfixed. He kept moving, unable to lift the gun yet. His voice dragged across his mouth.
“Wait,” Rafferty said. “Wait for it, Nelson. Or yell for help. And where’ll you get it? Your last boy Eddington is dead now. I saw that, Nelson. There’s nobody to help you. Nobody but me. It would be a hell of a thing to let you go on living. We know what’s ahead for you if you lived, don’t we, Nelson. We’ve put poor devils through it in our time, haven’t we? I’m going to fix you, Nelson, the way you ought to have been fixed twenty years ago. Remember the mob, Nelson — they came in the night and operated on you? Cut you. You couldn’t be that baby’s father, could you, Nelson? Everybody you’ve known has suffered because of that, haven’t they, Nelson? They cut off your arm because of the cruel things you did. But that didn’t help. Did it Nelson? It only made you more inhuman. But I’m not going to leave anything undone. This will fix you, Nelson. This will end your troubles!”
He was at the table now. His hand came upward slowly. Nelson looked wildly about the room. His gunsels stood without moving, without looking at him. His eyes came back to Rafferty. To Rafferty’s face, and the gun in his hand. Nelson’s laugh was a snarl. He wheeled about through a window.
There was the clatter of broken glass as he hurled himself outward.
Rafferty had brought the gun up as far as his belt. But he was too weak to press the trigger. The gun slipped from his fingers and clopped on the thick carpet.
The lobby-boy ran to the smashed window. He leaned down. “Geez,” he said. “What a mob down there a’ready.”
Rafferty stood staring at that torn window. His knees buckled slowly. He tried to support himself on the table, but the downward pull was too much. He was on his knees and still struggling to get up as I dialed the desk and told them to send a doctor.
With a slow grin, Rafferty slid to the floor. I bent over him. “I’m all right,” he said softly. “I got sense now, kid. I know — now — you didn’t do it. I got the — the whole story from Eddington before he died. I was crazy, see.” He tried to smile. “I’ll take care of Patsy, Dan. She’ll be okay. I’ll be — the kinda guy you are — I’ll make her proud.”
I nodded and stood up. I could see the life he planned for her — a thousand miles from Tampa. I was tired. But I was thinking about Ray. He’d fought Rafferty and Nelson because he wanted to make his town a decent place to live in. You did it, Ray, I thought. You did all right. I dropped the gun from my hand as I started across the room. Dorothy called, her voice distracted, “Dan!”
But I didn’t look back. As I reached the elevator, I could already hear the ambulance sirens in the street below.
THE END
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Heat of Night
The Naked Jungle
Drawn to Evil
The Brass Monkey
A Woman On the Place
One Deadly Dawn
Call Me Killer
Don’t Speak to Strange Girls
Mourn the Hangman
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This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
ISBN 10: 1-4405-4657-6
ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4657-0
eISBN 10: 1-4405-4491-3
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-4491-0
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