He led me into a study as comfortable as Raymond Margrove’s had been hard and unyielding, pushed a wall panel which swivelled to expose a small bar, and offered me a drink.
Liking the atmosphere of this study better, I accepted.
When we were comfortably seated with our drinks, I pulled out the envelope and gave it to him. Quickly he checked the contents, then glanced at me with a slightly embarrassed expression.
“Did you see these?” he asked.
“Naturally,” I said. “I had to make sure it was what I was looking for.”
“Of course. Excuse the silly question.”
Laying the pictures on a metal ash tray, he touched a match to them and watched them burn with a faint smile. He made no attempt to explain or apologize for his ridiculous appearance in the photographs, for which I admired him.
“Do I owe you anything, Mr. Moon?” he asked.
“I was retained by Margrove,” I told him. “He paid me. Settle with him, if you wish.”
Setting down my empty glass, I rose and told him I’d be running along. Courteously he held the door for me, followed me along the hall and opened the front door for me too.
But before I could pass through it, a woman entered. She was a tall willowy brunette in her early thirties, with more curves than a mountain highway and a full, sultry mouth. She was about three-quarters drunk.
“Hel-lo!” she trilled, steadying herself with one hand against my chest. She stared up into my face with wide-open invitation and asked, “Where’d you come from, you fascinating ugly man?”
“Elizabeth!” Mayor Cash said, attempting to take her arm.
Impatiently she shrugged him off. “What’s your name, ugly man?”
Before answering I walked over to a hall mirror and studied the drooping eyelid and bent nose I once gathered from a set of brass knuckles. I don’t think about my looks very much, but I guess I am ugly.
Turning back to her, I said, “Moon. Manville Moon. What’s your name, ugly woman?”
She laughed fit to kill. When she finally got back her breath, she said, “You don’t mean it, because you think I’m beautiful. But you really are ugly, isn’t he, John? Ugly and strong. Just the way I like men. You staying to dinner, Mr. Ugly Moon?”
“No thanks,” I said.
“Please, Elizabeth,” said the mayor. “Mr. Moon was just leaving.”
“Go away, spoil-sport,” she said. Moving toward me, she steadied herself against my chest again. “Come back after dinner and we’ll get ugly drunk together. My name is Elizabeth. Elizabeth Cash.”
“Mrs.?”
“Pooh,” she said. “Sure, Mrs. But who cares? We’ll lock old spoil-sport in his study and you and I’ll get ugly drunk.”
“Sure,” I said, sidling around her to the door. “Expect me about then, or maybe sooner unless I get held up. Nice to have met you both.”
I got out the door and closed it in her face before she could stagger after me.
But I didn’t return after dinner to get ugly drunk. I sat around my apartment until midnight waiting for the news to break, and at midnight I heard a newsboy calling, “Extra! Read all about it!”...
The tall, sad-faced gunman named Keys preceded us down the stairs. I went second and Hank, the college boy, followed in trail position, his gun centered on my back through the cloth of his coat.
Instead of the traditional black sedan gangsters are supposed to use when taking people for rides, their car was the same blue coupe I had imagined was following me the day before.
I said, “This thing was tailing me yesterday before I did anything to make anybody mad. Any particular reason?”
“Get in,” Hank said.
I sat in the middle between the door Keys, who drove, and Hank, who held the gun against my side. No one spoke while we drove leisurely across town, obeying all traffic rules. When we reached the city limits, Keys opened up to sixty.
As we rode along, I had been examining Key’s profile, which struck me as vaguely familiar.
“Haven’t I seen your picture on a poster somewhere?” I asked.
Immediately his sadness evaporated and he said proudly, “Two-thousand dollars reward.” After a moment he added with a faint note of complaint, “Not dead or alive, though. Only alive.”
“What are you wanted for?”
“Couple of bank jobs.” His proud expression returned. “Nobody in the country can match me at opening a crib.”
“You must never have heard of Jackie Morgan,” I said.
“Morgan!” He almost ran off the road swinging to peer at me. When he straightened the car again, he said. “He don’t count because he’s retired.” Without any conviction he added, “I top him anyway.”
“Shut up and find a side road leading to the river,” the young gunman on my right instructed.
Up to then I had hoped, without much confidence, they were taking me to be interviewed by whomever had replaced Gerald Ketterer as head of the gambling syndicate, or at most intended merely to mess me up a little.
I said, “I don’t know anyone at the river.”
“We’ll introduce you to some fish,” Hank told me dryly.
A mile farther on Keys turned left onto a dirt road.
“As long as I won’t be able to tell anyone,” I said. “Mind explaining who’s paying you for this?”
“The City Improvement Association,” Hank said. “They think you’re an eyesore.” He was quite a card.
I tried it another way. “It must be either Dan Ironbaltz, Jimmy Goodrich or Art Depledge. Which one steps into the king boss’ shoes, now that he’s dead?”
The young man looked at me curiously. “What makes you think he’s dead?”
That stopped me. I was still trying to figure it out when we passed the last farmhouse situated along the deserted road and caught a momentary glimpse of the river a half mile ahead.
“What kind of bullets do you use?” I asked Hank suddenly.
“Steel-jackets,” he said, grinning into my face.
“Interesting. Because I’m going to make a break in a minute.”
“What?” he asked, as though he hadn’t quite understood what I said.
“I’ll get knocked off,” I explained, keeping my voice casual in spite of the tight feeling in my stomach. “But I’m going to get knocked off anyway. This way I’ll at least have the satisfaction of lousing you up. A steel-jacket will go right through me and kill your driver, which at this speed will probably kill you too.”
“Hey!” Keys said, slowing the car.
The pressure left my side as Hank shifted in his seat to half face me, swinging the automatic around so that the muzzle was a foot from my stomach.
“Thanks for calling my attention to it,” he said with a grin.
“Don’t mention it,” I told him, suddenly smacking the heel of my right hand against the muzzle at the same time my left clamped over the slide.
I had learned that trick in Ranger training during the war, but never had a chance to use it before. I was as surprised as Hank that it actually worked. An automatic can’t fire when pressure is applied to the muzzle and kept there.
Since the gun was still pointed at my stomach, Hank wasted a second trying to pull the trigger. Then he started a left toward my jaw, which put me at a disadvantage since both my hands were occupied.
Luckily Keys picked that instant to jam on the brakes, jolting the car to a stop and killing the engine. The gunman lurched toward the windshield and his fist merely grazed my cheek.
Before he could swing again, I pushed my left hand outward until the gun pointed at Keys, and released the muzzle pressure. His finger must have been frozen on the trigger, for the gun blasted square into Key’s stomach.
Then I brought my right elbow against Hank’s jaw with such force that the back of his head shattered the door glass on that side.