Macintosh answered for me. He said: “You’ll stay in the car, son. This is going to be no place for you.” And aside, to me: “I hope it won’t be anyway. You and Kirb go in the front way. He knows who to look for and you must have an idea.”
I said I had. He moved toward the back of the place, hauling out an old single-action .45, and Kirby and I gave him a couple of minutes to get around to the back and then went in the front.
We must have looked like business because Gino Rucci saw us and started toward the back. Kirby gave one look at the crowd at the bar and started to call out names. He said: “You Bates! You Wilson! Sangini! Ellis! Get back from that bar and along the wall. Jump now.”
He didn’t have a gun in sight but the four men moved away from the bar and against the wall. I said:
“You got it under control. I’m going back.”
He nodded and said, without looking away from the four he’d picked: “Okey, go head.”
I followed Rucci into the back room. He was almost at the back door when I saw him, and I stepped to one side, so my back would be against the wall, and cleared the gun from under my coat. Just in case. Rucci opened the back door, looking over his shoulder at me, and started out. He ran into Macintosh, who was standing there. Macintosh just reached a hand out and shoved, and Rucci, who still had his head craned back over his shoulder, twisted and fell on the dance floor. Macintosh said: “And now?”
I just happened to turn my head toward the booth at my right, one that was facing the back door, and I saw a dark, ugly-looking monkey come out with a gun. He held it just under the edge of the table, where Macintosh couldn’t possibly have seen it, but in plain sight from where I was. He was with a red-headed girl and I could hear him growclass="underline"
“Beat it, kid! It’s a sneeze I think.”
The red head got out of the booth in a hurry and went past me and out in the front and I watched the dark man until I saw he wasn’t going to start anything but was just waiting.
And then I looked toward the door again.
Rucci had twisted around until he was on his knees and one hand. He was only about ten feet from Macintosh and he had to bend his fat neck up to see him. He was just braced there, staring up, but one hand was fumbling back of him.
Macintosh maybe couldn’t see the hand but he knew what it was doing. He just stood there waiting, one hand propped against the door casing and the other out of sight. All he wanted was for Rucci to make one move and it looked as though Rucci was going to make it.
Rucci was in no hurry, though. He kept staring up at Macintosh, fumbling underneath the back of his coat. I looked at the bird at my right and saw he was half standing but that the gun was still below the table. He knew what was coming as well as I did, but he wasn’t quite sure what to do about it.
I looked past him then and right into the eyes of my Spanish effect. She was sitting facing me and her mouth was open and her cheeks were so pale the rouge stood out in patches on them. Mrs. Wendel was sitting alongside of her and I could see a hefty arm and shoulder on my side of the booth that could only belong to Lester’s Hazel. Mrs. Wendel apparently hadn’t noticed me but was staring at Rucci and Macintosh. Hazel of course was facing away from me. But all Spanish could see was me and I took my left hand and waved her to be quiet.
Most of the company appeared to be in some doubt of what was going on but there were three men in one booth and two in another that were wise.
The three were the same type; flashy and city. The two were old timers; men around sixty. I figured the three for friends of Rucci’s and decided I’d take the bird on my right first, then switch to them.
Rucci had been on the floor for maybe ten seconds but it seemed an hour. Maybe a bit longer than ten seconds, but certainly not twice that. The red-headed girl that had been in the booth at my right hadn’t had time to get to the bar. I could see Rucci’s hand clear his coat tails; and could see the light flash on the gun it held: and then Macintosh said:
“Okey! Okey! It’s the pay-off!”
Chapter Twenty-Three
THE shot from the front of the place, where Kirby was holding forth, started the thing off, and from there on things went like a flash of lightning. It came smashing out from the front room, sounding like a big gun, and it galvanized Rucci into action. His hand flashed into Macintosh’s sight and Macintosh shot him. All he’d been waiting for was the excuse. At the same time I saw this I jumped for the booth at my right and slammed the man there across the back of the head with my gun, just as he brought his own up over the edge of the table and in sight.
And then I twisted, so I could see what the three in the booth were doing.
It was plenty. One of them was already out of the booth with a gun in his hand. The second also had a gun but he was still sitting down and trying to get a good solid aim at Macintosh, who was standing in the door and swinging his own gun up. The third man was having trouble; he was sitting in such a way his gun was hanging in the clip and he was dragging gun and holster and all out from under his coat.
I took all the time I needed to make sure and let go at the second man of the three. He was all I could see, at the time, but during the second it took me to get him centered right and squeeze the trigger, I heard a little gun go off three times and a damned big one crash once. The little gun sounded like a kid’s cap pistol against the noise of the cannon. My own gun’s recoil threw my hand up but the second man of the three was out of the picture. I was sure of it. I’d seen his shoulders lined up against the front sight just as I shot and knew he was all through. I saw the one that had managed to get out of the booth down on the floor, saw Macintosh still standing in the doorway, and then shouted at the third man: “Drop it, you dope!”
He couldn’t have dropped it if he’d tried. The damned thing was still hung in the clip. But he quit trying to get it out and lifted both hands above his head. If he’d lifted them up any faster I think his hands would have kept on going up through the ceiling. He’d have thrown them right off his wrists.
I called over to Macintosh: “You all right?”
He called back: “See about Kirby.”
I remember the two old timers about then and looked at their booth and didn’t see them. Then I saw a grey head poke up from below the table and figured I’d been right in thinking they knew what was coming. I turned and started for the front room and right as I did Spanish hit me from the side and started climbing all over me and screaming:
“Shean! Shean! Are you hurt! Are you hurt!”
I said I wasn’t hurt and tried to tear her loose. I couldn’t, without clipping her in the chin doing it, so I started out in the front room with her draped around me like a shawl. I got through the door and got my first sight of the front room just as more action broke out. Kirby was standing right in front of the bar, with his back to it, and he had his gun out and lined on five men now, against the wall. Another was on the floor, rolling around as though he’d heard the call. One of Rucci’s pretty boy bar men had a bottle in his hand and was just getting ready to smack Kirby over the head with it and Kirby was beautifully unaware of what was coming.
I might have called out but I still had my gun in my hand and used it instead. I got my left arm around Spanish and held her tight for the second it took me to get set, then shot the bar man through the knee.
He went down and around in a spin. The heavy flat nosed bullet knocked the leg out from under him and threw him around the other, making it the center of his whirl. The back bar had a lower case, with a swell display of bottled goods, and his head went crashing through one of these windows at least eight feet back from where he’d been when I shot. And he’d made two complete circles before he hit.