‘You’re still asking questions,’ Roth said.
I shook my head to clear it. Roth hit hard for a skinny man. I guessed that he was all muscle, like a whip. I tasted blood. My lip had already begun to swell. A tooth felt loose. I shook my head again and got up. I got halfway up. My hand was still on the floor. Roth hit me again. He hit twice. The right caught me on the cheek, I think, and the left hit my nose. The right lifted me up, and my nose was directly in the line of the left. I remember thinking that Jake Roth had not done it properly. He had led with his right. Very poor boxing.
‘You talked to the cops,’ someone said. I think it was still Roth.
I saw Max Bagnio. He seemed to be standing over me. That was odd, because he had been behind me. I wondered when he had moved. Bagnio looked bored. The little gunman was still looking around wistfully for Marty, I think. Then I realized that Max had not moved, I had. The last two punches had knocked me across the floor beyond Bagnio. I was lying flat with my head almost under a chair. I could taste a lot of blood and my nose was numb. I guessed that it was broken. My cheekbone felt red hot. There were tears in my eyes. My head seemed to belong to someone else. My legs would not move. Then Max Bagnio seemed to float away. I shook my head and Bagnio came back. So did Jake Roth.
‘You were told,’ Roth said. ‘We told you.’
His voice seemed distant, in some other room, although his face was close. The tone of his voice was one of hurt bewilderment. I had been told. By Pappas. By Jake Roth. And yet I had asked questions. I had gone to the police. Roth did not understand that. I had been told. It was confusing to Roth. His face bent close down over me. I felt his hands pinching my ears. He helped me up to a sitting position. The pinching was clearing my head a little. Roth leaned me against a chair. His face bent close.
‘You didn’t listen, buddy boy,’ Roth said.
His hand slapped my face lightly. On the broken nose. It hurt.
‘You got to listen,’ Roth said.
His hand slapped again. There was a lot of pain. I felt the chair behind my shoulders. I leaned my left shoulder hard against the chair, pressed my left shoulder against the chair, and swung my right fist with all the strength I had. It hit Roth flush on the chin. I felt the punch go all through my arm and up to my nose. It felt good. It cleared my head for a moment. I saw Roth go over backwards and sprawl all long legs kicking in the air. He had been crouched and off balance and my punch had not been bad. I even saw a little blood on his face as he came back up. He came back up fast. He had been hit before, and I’m no fighter. But there was blood on his mouth. I guessed that he had bitten his lip when I hit. I grinned. He kicked me in the stomach.
‘You dirty little son-of-a-bitch!’ Roth snarled.
He kicked me in the side where I lay doubled up. His shoes were big and pointed. I felt hands picking me up. It was Max Bagnio. He sat me against a chair again. Max seemed to be holding Roth away now. I sat there and saw them argue. Then Roth leaned down again.
‘You got it, buddy boy? You got it now?’
I hit him again. My strength was pretty near gone, the punch did not even knock him down. But it must have made him crazy mad. He did not hit me, and he did not kick me. Maybe he had decided, somewhere in that vicious and cunning but not too intelligent brain, that kicks and punches were not doing the job. I felt his hands on my throat. I was lifted. And then I seemed to hurl through the air and hit a wall with a crash.
I was on a floor, and it was cold. Somehow my brain was still working. I felt a little like the time I had been torpedoed and had had a concussion but somehow had been able to think clearly enough to get over the side and into the raft and even help row the raft. I knew that I was not functioning, not well, but perhaps enough. Anyway, I felt the coldness of the floor and realized that Roth had thrown me into the kitchen. By the neck like a chicken. I think it was that thought that made me mad — like a goddamned chicken.
I shook my head and looked around. Roth was coming towards the kitchen. It all seemed to be in slow motion, distant. I got to my knees and counted the drawers in the kitchen cabinet. I opened the one I wanted. I took out the heavy, fifteen-inch butcher knife. It had a razor-sharp edge. I had sharpened it for Marty myself. I fell back down with my back against the cabinet, sitting up, the butcher knife in my hand. I made a hell of an effort, and the room came clear. Roth and Bagnio were both in the kitchen doorway.
They had their automatics in their hands. I suppose that was actually a reflex action for them as soon as they saw the butcher knife. They both stepped into the kitchen. They stood apart so that I could only get to one of them at a time. The kitchen was small with little room to manoeuvre, and I was sort of wedged into a corner against the cabinets. I looked straight into the muzzles of those two guns. Roth laughed.
‘A stinking shiv against two guns! You’d die real quick, sucker. I’ll gun you before you move a hair.’
‘Put it down, Fortune,’ Bagnio said.
‘No closer,’ I said. My voice sounded strange even to me. My lips were swollen like balloons. My jaw hurt. My nose had begun to throb like a hammer.
Roth was pale. ‘I’ll kill you, buddy.’
‘You’ll have to,’ I said. I held the knife.
Bagnio took a step. ‘Listen, Fortune…’
I flicked the knife in front of me. ‘You’ll have to kill me. Get close again and I’ll kill you. You want me, you better use those guns. Come near me and I’ll kill you.’
I meant it then. I had been hit hard enough and often enough to mean it. I really meant what I said. I had had enough. But I was also thinking. Roth and Bagnio had no orders from Andy to kill me; I was sure of that. I counted on that. I hoped I was right. Not that it mattered. If they had orders to kill me, they would do it one way or the other. There was a chance that if they shot, I might be able to knife one of them. No, there was no chance. The automatics were both. 45 calibre. Roth pointed his.
‘Jake,’ Bagnio said.
‘Beat it if you don’t like it,’ Roth said.
‘Let’s go, Jake,’ Bagnio said.
I heard his voice. Bagnio was uneasy. I was sure of it. Bagnio was nervous. Something was bothering Little Max more than a beating should have bothered him. Especially a beating ordered by Andy Pappas. Maybe I was wrong.
‘This dirty bastard punk,’ Roth said.
‘We done the job,’ Bagnio said. ‘He got the message.’
I’m not even sure when they left. I found myself alone on the kitchen floor. I thought I remembered Max Bagnio looking back in the kitchen doorway, saying, ‘Take it easy, Fortune.’ A testimonial. Max Bagnio was giving me a salute, man to man. The way the Zulu warriors had saluted the surviving British soldiers at Roark’s Drift after about one hundred British had held off eight thousand or more Zulus for a whole day and night and the Zulus had given up. Bully. That was why the Zulus had lost in the end.
I remember the pain building.
I remember thinking that not only my nose was broken when the pain grew in my side and chest.
I remember Marty’s face bending over me.
I think I remember the doctor.
I know I remember the pain.
Chapter 13
The first time I woke up I concentrated on where I was. That is an old reflex of a drifter like me. I was in a bed. There was sun outside drawn shades. The furniture was not my own bedroom. It did not look like the room in the Hotel Manning. It was not jail, and it was not a hospital. It was a problem, but I gave it up. I was more interested in the pain.
The second time I woke up I concentrated on how I was. My head was light and not attached to my neck. There was a headache in the head that floated somewhere above the bed. My face was swollen. There was a bandage of some kind on my nose. I ached all over. I seemed to be strapped across the ribs. But I also seemed to be all there.