‘I want Blondie,’ I said.

  She looked up to heaven. ‘Get another record.’

  ‘Well … how does Blondie tie up with you?’

  Her eyes were cold. ‘Don’t kid me. You know that’s my sister.’

  I remembered the shoe then and lugged it out of my pocket.

  ‘Ever seen this before?’

  She looked at it and her eyes widened. ‘That’s mine. What are you doing with it?’

  ‘What was Blondie doing with it?’

  She looked at me wonderingly and then her expression changed and I could almost see her thoughts clicking into position.

  ‘Say, where did you get that shoe?’

  ‘Would you be surprised if I told you I found it in the roof-gutter over by the Florida.’

  ‘They you’re …’ she began.

  ‘Yeah, I’m what?’ I encouraged.

  ‘No. You tell me, then I’ll know if you’re lying.’

  ‘Fair enough. I went back for it after I’d lugged Blondie out of the Florida and across the rooftops to get her away from the cops.’

  ‘Then you’re not one of Garvin’s hoods?’

  ‘Ain’t that what I’ve been telling you?’

  ‘Yeah … but I thought you’d come for her and ...’

  ‘And?’ I encouraged.

  ‘Look,’ she said. ‘Lemme loose, will you? I’m on the level with you now. I thought you were one of those hoods. Give me a break and I’ll explain everything to you.’

  I looked at her long and calculatingly.

  ‘I’m on the level,’ she pleaded. ‘The key of the door is in my handbag. You can cut the phone wires if you like. You can clout me down if I try to scream or anything funny. But for God’s sake release my hands, will you? This wire’s killing me.’

  I looked at her long and lingeringly, weighing it up in my mind.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘But if you try one smart alec move …’

  7

  She hadn’t been kidding about that wire. It had cut so deep into the flesh that it couldn’t be seen. And when the circulation began to restore itself she almost passed out.

  I sat there holding a slug of Scotch in my hand, feeding her with it in sips and feeling a low-down heel each time she gave a moan.

  ‘I’ll be all right in a minute,’ she said.

  I hoped so. But she wasn’t looking so good.

  ‘Kinda silly of me,’ she said. ‘I oughtn’t weaken up on you like this.’

  ‘You’re doing swell, kid,’ I told her.

  She tried to smile but it changed into a grimace. I held the glass to her lips and she took a good nip.

  Sure enough, after a few minutes the colour came back to her cheeks and, woman-like, the first thing she thought of was her looks.

  ‘I guess I look a sight. Give me a minute to straighten up, will you?’

  ‘Reckon I’ll come and hold your hand.’

  She grinned at me. Yeah, after all she’d been through, she grinned at me. ‘Still don’t trust me, eh?’

  ‘It don’t pay to take chances.’

  ‘As you like.’

  When she looked at herself in the bathroom mirror, she gave a little gasp. ‘Hell, what a mess.’

  She ran water in the washbasin and cleaned up her puss.

  I perched on the edge of the bath, smoking and watching her as she rouged her cheeks and put colour on her lips.

  ‘How come Blondie had your shoes?’ I asked.

  ‘Sisters do that kind of thing. Lend shoes, I mean.’

  ‘And she told you about the trouble at the Florida?’

  ‘She did.’

  There was something special about the way she said that.

  ‘What d’you mean, by saying it like that?’

  She was blacking her eyebrows now, making funny little grimaces to help her along.

  ‘Why do you want to see Blondie?’ she asked, avoiding my question.

  I thought that over and gave her the straight dope.

  ‘A friend was with me in the Florida. She was a kid about your age. She was a nice kid. I didn’t like it when she got a slug in her back. And when I find the fella responsible for it, he ain’t gonna be happy either.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with Suzy?’

  ‘She knows who did it,’ I said.

  ‘Nat Garvin’s hoods,’ she said meditatively.

  ‘So it was his gang.’

  ‘It was him all right. But just you try and hang it on him. He’ll have an alibi right enough, and the hoods that did it are well under cover.’

  She took it all so calmly that it was a little startling. She didn’t look the kinda dame to be mixed up in this kinda trouble .

  ‘How come you know so much about it?’

  ‘Being Suzy’s sister.’ She began to comb her hair and I noticed how it rippled through the comb and shone with a lustre of its own.

  ‘Is she mixed up with them?’

  She stopped combing and her voice became serious. ‘She can’t help herself. That man Garvin’s carrying a torch for her that’d set Niagara Falls afire. He just won’t leave her alone. She daren’t speak to another fella without signing his death warrant.’

  ‘How come?’

  She shrugged her shoulders. ‘That’s the way it is. If Suzy takes a night out with some Romeo, the fella gets bumped off the next day. That’s what happened down at the Florida. You saw it happen.’

  That knocked me flat. ‘You mean this Garvin fella’s so stuck on Suzy that he bumps off her boyfriends?’

  ‘Some lover, ain’t he?’ she commented.

  ‘The man’s crazy.’

  ‘He certainly is. It’s strange how love hits some folk, though. I guess we all go crazy in different ways when we’re in love.’

  ‘No dame would make me give a song and dance,’ I said.

  ‘No?’ There was mockery in her tones. ‘What’s good for burns?’ she added casually.

  ‘Tannic acid jelly,’ I said, not thinking what was in her mind.

  She took a jar from the medicine cabinet, put her foot on the edge of the bath and pulled up her skirt. I remembered then why she would be wanting the ointment.

  ‘Gee, I’m sorry about that,’ I said.

  ‘If it leaves a scar, I’ll never forgive you.’

  I began to feel a little hot under the collar. There was something kinda nice about the way she didn’t seem to mind me being there while she dabbed on ointment and tightened her suspenders – kinda breathtaking, too.

  I began to notice other things, too.

  ‘Does it worry you?’ she asked coolly. She knew I was looking at her and she was liking it.

  ‘I guess I’m sorry I tore your dress, too.’

  ‘I’d feel better in another blouse.’

  She walked out from the bathroom across to the bedroom. I lounged after her and stood leaning against the doorpost while she changed. I didn’t trust myself to get any closer.

  ‘I’d like to think that you weren’t standing there watching to prevent me from starting something,’ she said. ‘I’d like to think that you’re standing there to peek at me.’

  ‘But that’s why I am standing ...’ I began.

  Her ripple of laughter interrupted me.

  ‘Okay,’ I grumbled, ‘have fun with me.’ I ground out the cigarette in an ashtray and refused to look at her. A few moments later she came over and took me by the arm.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘ I didn’t mean to rib you, but you sounded so cocky about being in love that I just had to take you down a peg.’

  ‘Okay,’ I snarled. ‘Button up your blouse and spill some more about Garvin.’

  ‘Now you’re offended.’

  ‘Stow it, will ya. Just tell me where this Garvin fella hangs out.’

  ‘Now, look,’ she said determinedly. ‘You’re not going to get any big knight errant ideas about paying off Garvin, are you? He’s a big noise around here. With luck you might only end up in a nice clean sack with a cut throat for asking questions. You’re much too nice a guy to fool around in a sack that way.’

  ‘Look. I may be a nice guy. But I had a friend, a sweet kid who right now is laid out on a cold white slab. Some folks might think nothing about it. But I’m not made that way.’

  Her eyes were kinda sleepy and serious. ‘It’s got you on the raw. You’re serious about this thing, aren’t you?’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Suzy’s not gonna like it.’

  ‘And why won’t Suzy like it?’

  ‘Because,’ she said. ‘Because Suzy’s so madly in love with Garvin that she’d die for him.’

  She poured out the drinks for a change.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ I said. ‘The Garvin fella gives Suzy hell and yet she’d die for him. It don’t make sense.’

  ‘Women never do make sense,’ she replied. ‘Not when they’re in love.’

  ‘Why don’t Suzy get hitched with this fella?’

  ‘Why?’ She swung around on me. ‘You ask me why. You, who’ve had your friend killed before your eyes. Would you hitch yourself to one of the dirtiest, low-down racketeers that ever lived? Would you marry a killer a hundred times over, a man whose hands are covered in blood, a man whose wealth has been made from the flesh and blood of others?’

  ‘But she’s in love with him, you say.’

  ‘Can she help that? Hasn’t she fought against it with every ounce of willpower her body’s got?’

  ‘It sounds screwy to me,’ I told her.

  ‘It is screwy. Life’s like that.’

  I sat down and fumbled for another cigarette. She walked across to the phone and picked it up. I hardly noticed what she was doing until I heard her say:

  ‘Suite 69. Will you serve dinner for two, please?’

  First thing next morning I went to the bank and drew out my war gratuity. I’d put it away for a rainy day and it had come. I addressed an envelope to Lola’s mother and sent the cash anonymously by registered post. It wasn’t gonna replace Lola, but it’d help the old lady along for a while.

  Then I went back to my hotel and fished out my service revolver. I wasn’t supposed to have it, but somehow I’d got so used to having it around while I was winkling out Japs, that I felt I ought to keep it.

  It was big and heavy, not the kinda gun you could stick in your jacket pocket. But it was well-cleaned and oiled and could blow a sizable hole in an elephant.

  Then I got busy sewing the holster into my waistcoat, underneath the armpit. That was the best way to carry around a gun that size, I figured.

  I did all this quite coolly and determinedly. I didn’t think that I was going out to kill a man. It wasn’t like that at all. I was just going out to some mopping-up. I felt like a rat-catcher must feel when he sets off to do his daily round.

  I’d got Garvin’s address from Joel – Joel being Blondie’s sister. It was the Golden Peacock, like the taxi-jockey said. I’d got lots of other things from Joel, too, after we’d had dinner the previous night. I was getting to feel quite strong about that dame. She was tough, she was loyal and … well, I guess I was failing fast.

  When I put on my jacket and looked in the mirror, the bulge of the gun couldn’t be seen. That was what I wanted. But it was going to be a job getting it out from its holster. I just had to hope that I’d get an easy break.

  There was an automatic café on the corner of my block. I went in, helped myself to ham and eggs and coffee and got that stowed under my belt and then set off.

  I was surprised at my coolness. At times like this, just before an advance way back in the jungle, there’d always been that kinda suppressed excitement that kept every nerve on edge, waiting for something to break. But it wasn’t like that now. I just knew that I was going out to kill or be killed, and it didn’t seem to matter to me one way or the other.

  Some folks might think I was doing a dopey kinda thing. The police are paid to take care of guys like Garvin. But I wanted to handle this job personally. Besides, from what I’d heard around town about Garvin, the cops wouldn’t have much chance to take care of him the way I’d do it. That’s what politics do.

  I walked because it felt good to get exercise and I needed some fresh air too. It took me about an hour to get to Garvin’s hangout. And a nice hangout it was too. Like the Ritz and Mindy’s coiled into one.

  Even though it was mid-afternoon, a show was on. I walked inside and a commissionaire bowed me to the check desk, where I left my hat in charge of a long-legged dame whose skirts were higher than the bottom of her pants. And it was a physical impossibility for the bottom of her pants to be any higher at that.

  I tossed her a dime and was ushered to a table by an effusive head waiter who almost scraped his forehead on the ground. Two snaps of his fingers and a waiter appeared miraculously and handed me a menu.

  I hardly looked at it. ‘Bring me a Rye.’

  Just then came a roll on the drums, the lights went out all over the place and a single flashlight stabbed through the blackness outlining one of the slickest lookers I’d ever seen.

  She had a rich, deep voice, just right for the slow blues she crooned. It was a rich, voluptuous voice that had some magical quality of softness and comfort. The customers liked it. They probably liked her too. From where I was, I could see a lot of her. The backless evening dress she wore had only the most slender of straps to hold it in position, and whenever she moved, the front of her dress opened tantalisingly. The skirt was split too, from ankle to waist, and there didn’t seem to be anything under the dress. And the dame did a lot of moving too, rippling her arms and swaying her waist. I wasn’t surprised the customers applauded until they got an encore.

  From way over on my right I caught a wisp of voices.

  ‘That Garvin dame is good!’

  ‘Good for what?’ followed by a snigger.

  Then the band began to play the ‘St Louis Blues’.

  The waiter brought my Rye.

  ‘Her name Garvin?’ I asked, thumbing towards the spotlight.

  ‘Yes, sir. I thought everybody knew that.’

  ‘Any relation to Nat Garvin?’

  ‘His sister, sir.’

  ‘Will she have a drink with me?’

  ‘Only by appointment, sir. Have you an appointment?’

  ‘Well, not exactly. But if you’d give her this ...’

  I took a card from my pocket and scribbled on it hurriedly.

  ‘Got an envelope?’

  ‘I’ll get one, sir.’

  When he came back, I’d finished writing. I slipped the card in the envelope, sealed it carefully and gave it to him with a five-dollar bill.

  Then it was just a question of waiting.

  The act finished. She took a dozen bows and retired behind the curtain. The band struck up and couples drifted onto the floor and danced under softened lights.

  She approached from behind so that I didn’t know she was there until she’d had time to look me over.

  ‘Mr Janson?’ she said.

  I stood up. ‘I hope you’ll excuse me ...’ I began.

  She jerked her head at the waiter who was standing there, and sat down. As soon as the waiter was gone, she leaned forward across the table.

  ‘What’s this about my life being in danger?’

  ‘ I hope you’re gonna take this easy,’ I said. ‘I’m not just a rubberneck wanting to guzzle Scotch with you and try dating you up for the evening. That message was a phoney. But I’ve still gotta talk with you.’

  She looked at me calculatingly.

  ‘Start talking. And it’d better be good.’

  ‘I’m new in this town,’ I said. ‘I’ve just got outa the services. A fella I used to know told me that if I ever wanted a job, Nat Garvin would be the fella to see.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘He’s a difficult man to see, I’ve been told.’

  ‘And ...?’

  ‘Aw gee, lady. Give me a break, willya? I thought you’d be a sport and give me an introduction.’

  She sat back and looked at me hard. ‘You’ve got a nerve,’ she said. She was wearing a cape around her shoulders, and as she leaned back her arms were revealed. Beneath the powder she’d used to set off the spotlight I caught sight of a vicious bruise just above the elbow.

  ‘I’m not asking much,’ I wheedled. ‘I only want a chance to talk to the boss.’

  ‘Why don’t you apply to the head waiter?’

  I didn’t reply at once. Instead I made a great play, pulling out my cigarette-case, offering it to her and lighting up.

  I blew out a long plume of smoke and said:

  ‘That’s not the kinda graft I’m after. I’d like something a little more risky and a lot more profitable.’

  ‘And who was the fella who told you to come here?’

  ‘Tiny Farrant,’ I replied promptly.

  ‘And who’s he?’

  ‘He’s a Chicago operator,’ I told her. ‘He moved in on the Spencer territory after prohibition.’

  She sat there looking at me so long I began to think she’d gone to sleep with her eyes open.

  ‘All right,’ she said at last. ‘You’d better come with me.’

  She stood up and I stood up, too. With my elbow I nudged my side and felt the comforting bulge of the revolver. So far so good. If my luck held, in a few minutes I’d be blasting hell outa Nat Garvin. For the first time, it struck me that I might get the chair for this, if the clean-up didn’t show that Garvin was behind the Florida stick-up. Otherwise I might get out in a coupla years with good conduct.

  She led the way and I followed. We went around the walls, around to a door marked ‘Office.’

  She had to knock before it opened, and right the other side was a thug with a hare-lip. He looked at me enquiringly.

  ‘We’re going up to see Nat,’ she told him.

  He nodded and stood aside. The dame led me over to a private lift. I opened the gates and stood aside to let her in. Then as I stepped into the lift a bell rang.

  The girl gave me a queer look. ‘You rodded up?’ she asked.

  I caught on then to the bell. ‘Why, no,’ I told her.

  ‘Okay.’ .

  She pressed a button and we sped up. When the lift stopped, the doors opened automatically, and as I stepped out, a coupla fellows lined up aside me. Both of them deftly ran their fingers over me, and at once they located my gun. Even before I realised it, a hand was lugging my revolver from its holster, and as I realised that all my chances of settling Garvin’s hash were about to disappear, I decided to fight for it. .

 

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