He tugged at the girl and O’Hara tried to move out of her embrace, grinning at the oily-faced man. He said, “Think nothing of it. I’ve had ’em go tight on me, too.”
“He’s no stranger, Rig,” the redhead burped, clinging closer. “This’s ol’ handsome brute — been following me round since last night.” She kissed O’Hara enthusiastically, if sloppily, on the neck and said, “Haven’t you been following me round, ol’ handsome brute?”
The brown eyes of the man named Rig got very sharp and narrow suddenly. They bored at O’Hara, left him and flicked sidewise down the hall to where the fire-escape window stood open. He said, “He’s been tailing you, has he?” in a soft, inquiring voice.
The redhead suddenly lost her hold on O’Hara and sat down on the floor where she seemed perfectly satisfied. O’Hara took a step away from her and the right hand of the oily-faced man slid under his lapel with lightning speed and came out again, holding a well worn, useful-looking automatic.
O’Hara made his face surprised, startled. He said, “Now wait, fella, this is all wrong. The gal’s so tight she’s having delusions. I haven’t been following her around and there’s no reason for playing with guns.”
The redhead cooed from the floor, “Ol’ handsome brute’s kidding, Rig. S-sure he’s been—”
“Never mind, Seena,” Rig said, still in the soft voice. “We’ll find out about this, pal. Pick the gal up and bring her back into the apartment.”
O’Hara swore silently but he kept the injured and nervous look on his face and he didn’t have to work very hard for the nervous look. He didn’t like the oily-faced man’s soft voice or hard eyes and he knew that if he once got into that apartment with Vic Philippi and the other hoodlum, things would start working out very, very badly.
He stooped, picked the redhead up and she cuddled to him. He figured, maybe that with her in his arms, covering him from Rig’s gun, he might work out something. But Rig was smart, too; while O’Hara was leaning over, getting a grab on the redhead in various places, he moved around, got his gun into O’Hara’s back.
He said, “March, pal.”
They went through the door into a good-sized foyer and the oily-faced man heeled the door shut behind him, called, “Vic! Hey, Vic!”
Draperies between the foyer and the next room went aside suddenly and Vic Philippi came past them. O’Hara didn’t think he’d ever seen so great a change in a man in the short space of twenty-four hours as he saw in Philippi. The man’s face had been smooth and youngish although you knew it wasn’t really young; now it was old without any qualifications, lined, shadowed. The dark eyes were staring pinpoints and Philippi’s mouth was tight and strained.
“Look, Vic,” said Rig, “I found this slug snooping around outside. Seena says he’s been tailing her and the fire-escape window was open, like he’d been trying to be nosy.”
Philippi didn’t even look at Rig or seem to hear him. He took three quick steps across the foyer and his hand, pulling into a fist, slammed O’Hara across the jaw. A large seal ring tore flesh off O’Hara’s chin and O’Hara, already overbalanced by the redhead’s weight, went backward into the wall. The redhead fell out of his arms and lit flat on her back. She said, “Ow!” and began a steady stream of violent language.
Philippi said between his teeth, “You—”
“You know him?” said Rig.
Philippi said, “Bring him in here.”
“Not in there, Vic.”
“I said bring him in!”
“Mistake,” Rig said briefly but he took his cue from Philippi’s harsh, threatening voice. He hauled O’Hara away from the wall and manhandled him into the room off the foyer and O’Hara made no resistance but his eyes were sultry, his nostrils pinched in and his mouth a thin line. He looked as though he were wishing he could have Rig alone somewhere and minus the gun.
The room O’Hara was shoved into was the one he had seen in the mirror. The man who wore the gray suede shoes lay on his back near the window, tall and thin and bony and yet oddly limp for all his boniness. He was — or had been — Harry Atkins, the town’s racket head. He had been shot twice, once through the throat just below the chin and once high in the left cheek; blood made a mess on the taupe rug around his shoulders. Beyond the body, the hoodlum who had been beating Eddie Mullen the night before, lounged in a chair and gloomed at O’Hara.
Philippi said in a half-strangled voice, “You see that, you lousy son?”
O’Hara nodded, said, “I couldn’t exactly miss it, could I?”
If he’d been perplexed, muddled before by the night’s chain of screwy circumstances, he was doubly so now. By all the rules Philippi ought to be covering up a murder which was bound to kick back at him, if only because it removed the main obstacle to his moving in locally and starting up a first-class protection racket. And it didn’t add up, either, that Philippi was so overwrought, almost beside himself. O’Hara had run across a lot of racketeers, mobsters, in his day and he’d never seen one yet that seemed to take somebody else’s murder quite so hard.
Philippi snarled, “Smart, hah?” and swung at O’Hara.
O’Hara ducked this time and Philippi missed. But Rig didn’t miss. His gun clunked across O’Hara’s skull behind the ear and O’Hara went, slack-kneed, against a chair and down on the taupe rug. Philippi’s foot slammed him hard in the stomach and Philippi’s face, enraged, bent over him.
Philippi said from back in his throat, “So that punk you had with you last night was just a college boy, was he?”
O’Hara’s head was buzzing, his ribs felt as though they’d been caved in. His voice came out dully, “What else would he be?”
“Where’s he holed up at?”
“I don’t know, Philippi — that’s the God’s honest.”
Rig hauled O’Hara up and held him. He said, “You’ll sure wish you knew, fella, before the boss finishes with you.”
O’Hara wagged his head, tried to clear it. He blinked at Philippi’s pallid, menacing face and muttered, “This is all Greek to me, guy. What’s the kid done that you’re blowing your top about?”
Philippi threw his hands in the air. He said bitterly, “He asks what the punk’s done, he asks that! The punk kills my boy Sam and he kills Atkins here, messing up a million-buck deal, and he asks what the punk’s done.”
O’Hara still didn’t quite get it. He said so. He said, “You’re still over my head. Philippi. If he killed Atkins, he probably saved you a lot of dough and trouble. And as for the guy, Sam, it was probably self-defense and, anyway, guys like Sam are a dime a dozen in any racket.”
Philippi bellowed and flung himself at O’Hara. O’Hara blocked with his el-lows, let a punch slide over his shoulder and stopped Philippi with a short right to the belly. His fist was still in Philippi’s vest pocket when Rig cut things short by whamming O’Hara across the back of the head again with his gun barrel.
When he picked O’Hara off the floor and slung him into a chair, he said reprovingly, “You damn fool, that’s no way to talk about Sam to the toss. Sam was the boss’s half-brother, you damn fool.”
Philippi was gagging, catching his breath. He looked at O’Hara balefully, but didn’t make any more moves toward him. After a little he said, panting, “Rig, you and Max go get me that young punk. You go get him if it takes you a week and bring him to me.”
“What about this guy?” Rig said practically. “And what about the stiff?”
“Get rid of them both first. And then bring me the punk. I’ll find out first what makes him tick and then I’ll burn him down personally if it’s the last thing I do.”