Egghead started to turn around. Johnny drew the gun back six inches and lunged at the small of the thin man’s back. It straightened him up like a galvanic shock.
They halted in front of Johnny’s room.
“Do your stuff,” whispered Johnny.
Egghead started to swing his right arm, backward and forward, just a little, but he said nothing.
“Stick your arms up. Clasp those mitts behind your neck. Go on... or I’ll give it to you right now. That’s better. Now talk!”
Egghead muttered something unintelligible.
“When I count three... I’ll pull the trigger,” Johnny said softly. “One, two, thr—”
“Kippy!” Egghead’s voice was shrill.
“You lousy fink... what you doing out in that hall?” The man inside was sore.
“Boss! We better scram. That mug’s not comin’ back today. They took him to the hospital.”
“Shut up. Do what I told you, or I’ll come out there and blow you apart — hear me?”
Johnny put his mouth close to Egghead’s ear:
“Tell him to go to hell... you’re going to beat it,” he whispered.
Kippy said: “You going?”
“You go to hell... I’m gonna scram.”
Egghead’s tone was not defiant, but the words carried sufficient surprise, for the door opened.
Kippy looked into the muzzle of Johnny’s gun and lowered his head, as a bull does when it makes its charge.
“I’ll be a—,” he said. “You double-crossing dope, you... ”
“That’ll be all,” said Johnny. “Get up those mitts.”
“He made me, boss,” whimpered Egghead.
“Yeah?” Kippy’s hand went to his left shoulder and Johnny fired. Not at the chest, not at the stomach. Right between the eyes.
There was a simultaneous spurt of hot flame from Kippy’s gun.
Egghead murmured: “Ah!” in astonishment and buckled at the knees.
“You’ve got a bullet-proof vest, Kippy,” said Johnny. “And I had this snowbird, for my bullet-proof. That’s an even break.”
Kippy could not hear him. He lay, face down, over the threshold of the wrecked room. A thin stream of dark red ran away from his forehead like a piece of cord.
The policeman he had slipped came pounding down the hall.
“Say, you,” he bellowed, belligerently.
“Pipe down. Get a little sense, copper. This is a break for you, if you use your head. You’ve been in on a cleanup — if I say so.”
“Well... ” The officer was dubious.
“Get a load of this,” said Johnny in an undertone. “You came up to my room with me... an errand, see... and they shot it out with us. You get a rating, account of this, if you’re smart.”
“Sure,” breathed the cop. “I make you, mister. You sure are a busy little powder-burner, ain’t you?”
Johnny felt very tired.
“I’m going back to doc’s room. I need a good double-order of sleep. But don’t forget, what I told you. How it happened.”
“I’ll play ball,” said the man in uniform. “What’ll I do with this... ” he turned Egghead over. The coke’s face was pasty-gray and his lips were blue.
Johnny looked at the wet spot on the thin man’s vest.
“He might be patched up for the chair,” he said, finally. “Anyway... he’s got a chance.”
“I’ll take him in,” said the cop.
“Hell, yes.” Johnny walked towards the stairs, through the curious crowd. “He’s one for the book, all right.”
Lead Party
by Paul Cain
Gerry Kells from the East, who pulled a “fast one” in West Coast gambling, skirts the edges of the political racket and sits in when the blow-off comes.
1
At one-thirty, Kells got out of a cab and went into the Sixth Street entrance of the Howard Hotel. In the elevator he said: “Four.” Around two turns, down a short corridor, he knocked at a heavy old-fashioned door.
A voice yelled: “Come in.”
There were three men in the small room. One sat at a typewriter near the window. He had a leathery good-natured face, and he spoke evenly into the telephone beside him: “Sure... Sure... ”
The other two were playing cooncan on a suit-box balanced on their laps. One of them put down his hand, put the suit-box on the floor, stood up.
Kells said: “Fenner.”
The man at the telephone put one hand over the mouthpiece, turned his head to call through an open door behind him: “A gent to see you, L.D.”
The man who had stood up, walked to the door and nodded at someone in the next room and turned to Kells. “In here.”
Kells went past him into the room and closed the door behind him. That room was larger. Fenner, a slight, silver-haired man of about fifty, was lying on a bed in his trousers and undershirt. There was an electric-light on the wall behind the bed. Fenner put down the paper he had been reading and swung up to sit facing Kells. He said: “Sit down,” and picked up his shoes and put them on. Then he went over and raised the blind on one of the windows that looked out on Spring Street. He said: “Well, Mister Kells, is it hot enough for you?”
Kells nodded, said sarcastically: “You’re harder to see than De Mille. I called your hotel and they made me get a Congressional O. K. and make out a couple dozen affidavits before they gave me this number.” He jerked his head towards the little room through which he had entered. “What’s it all about L.D.?”
Fenner sat down in a big chair and smiled sleepily. He took a crumpled package of Home Runs out of his pocket, extracted a cigarette and lighted it. “About a year ago,” he said, “a man named Dickinson — a newspaperman — came out here with a bright idea and a little capital, and started a scandal-sheet called The Coaster.”
Fenner inhaled his cigarette deeply, blew a soft gray cone of smoke towards the ceiling. “He ran it into the ground on the blackmail side and got into a couple libel jams... ”
Kells said: “I remember... ”
Fenner went on: “I got postponements on the libel cases and I got the injunction raised. Now it’s the Coast Guardian; A Political Weekly for Thinking People. Dickinson is still the editor and publisher, and” — he smiled thinly — “I’m the silent partner. The first number comes out next week, no sale, we give it away.”
Kells said: “The city campaign ought to start rolling along about next week... ”
Fenner slapped his knee in mock surprise. “By George! That’s a coincidence.” He sat grinning contentedly at Kells. Then his face hardened a little and a faint fanatical twinkle came into his eyes. He spoke, and it was as if he had said the same thing many times before. “I’m a working boss, Mister Kells. I gave this city the squarest deal it ever had. They beat my men at the polls last time, but by—! they didn’t beat me — and next election day I’m going to take the city back” — he paused, and then very pointedly made the pun — “like. Bow took Richman.”
Kells said: “I doubt it.” He smiled a little to take the edge off his words, went on: “What did you get from Perry?”
“Nothing.” Fenner yawned. “I got to his wife right after you called and gave her your message and arranged for her bail. She’s witness number one for the State. It took me a little longer to beat the incommunicado on Perry, and when I saw him and told him she had confessed that he killed Haardt, he closed up like a clam.”