Max, who had been standing at the other side of the tall, bony figure on the floor, said, “What’ll we do with the lug and the stiff, Vic?”
“Do I have to tell you everything?”
“I’ll handle it, boss,” Rig said soothingly. “Max, you go empty Seena’s wardrobe trunk and bring it here. And, boss, you better get Seena away from the door into bed. We ain’t got time now to cart her down to the Turkish baths.”
Philippi was getting hold of himself. He nodded, went out to the foyer. Max went through another door, humming, “It’s off to work we go,” and Rig wagged his head at O’Hara.
He said, “That blond pal of yours is a killer-diller, guy. Two bump-offs in a couple of hours is pretty near a amateur record.”
O’Hara cursed Eddie Mullen in his soul and wished he’d never seen, never even heard of, him. He said, “What makes you so sure he killed Atkins?”
“We practically seen him do it. He was standing over Atkins with the gun still in his hand when we got here. Naturally it was a nice, big surprise, us not expecting anything like that, and he had the drop on us so he got away. And is the boss burned up! He thought a lot of Sam and then Atkins getting himself bumped here messes things up, too.”
“What was Atkins doing here?”
Rig shrugged. “I dunno. We found the back door unlocked but you could open that with a hairpin anyway. Maybe he sneaked over here to see the boss without any of his boys getting wise to it. He was going to sell out the numbers racket here to Vic and maybe he didn’t figure on cutting the deal with any of his boys. What I’d like to know, fella, is where this pal of yours comes in. What’s his angle in knocking off Sam and Atkins?”
“I don’t know,” O’Hara said and meant it.
“Close-mouthed, huh?”
Philippi came back from the foyer. The redhead was like a sack of flour across his shoulder, passed out cold. He carried her into the bedroom and then he and Max came out with a wardrobe trunk bulkily between them. They put the trunk down on the floor beside Atkin’s body and Philippi came across to Rig, took Rig’s gun.
He said, “I’ll watch him.”
He watched O’Hara silently, with cold virulence. Max and Rig worked fast, ripping drawers, hangers, partitions, out of the trunk. Rig got the body by the feet. Max by the head, and they jackknifed Atkins into the trunk very neatly, tucked in a trailing arm and slammed the halves of the trunk shut, locked it. Max tossed a Chinese throw rug over the bloody stain on the large rug while Rig carried the debris from the trunk back into the bedroom.
When Rig came back, he said, “We’ll lug this one down the back way to the car and come back for the live one. You can handle him, Vic?”
“What d’you think?” Philippi said, his eyes darkly on O’Hara. “If we had another trunk, I’d handle him here and now.”
Max said, “Uh-uh, boss. He looks pretty heavy. Why should we lug him around if he can walk?”
Max hummed some more about “Off to work we go” while Rig wedged open a swinging door between dining-room and kitchen and they carted the trunk through the door, out of sight.
Philippi’s pinpointed stare made O’Hara sweat gently between the shoulder blades, down the length of his spine. There had been lots of times when he had stuck his chin out, asking for trouble and finding it, but at least on those occasions he’d been prepared for it, had had an even chance of blocking it away from his chin. But this time all he’d been was the big-hearted sap, a dumb Good Samaritan, trying to get a screwball kid out of his jam, and he’d succeeded only in messing himself up.
There wasn’t any misreading the vengeful purpose in Philippi’s eyes, his tight mouth, and if O’Hara sat there passively until Rig and Max came back, it would be too late, quite a bit too late. He couldn’t handle three of them; he didn’t even think he could handle Philippi who stood a dozen feet away with the gun like a rock on his hip.
O’Hara thought, “Damn Eddie Mullen!”
He put his hands tight over his knees to keep them from shaking. He said, “Look, Philippi, suppose the kid did kill your brother and Atkins, why take it out on me? I didn’t do it, did I?”
“Try to talk your way out of it. I think you know plenty about it and I’ve got a hunch you ain’t even a newspaper guy.”
“Look me up, ask anybody about me.”
“Turn it off,” Philippi said coldly. “I’m going to get the punk — it’s personal with me, now — and I suppose I should let you go so you could shoot off your face about that?”
There was an odd noise at the bedroom doorway and O’Hara looked, saw the redhead standing there unsteadily in nothing more than pink panties, a brassiere. She said, “I’m gonna... I’m gonna—”
Philippi barked, “Seena, get back in there.”
Seena started to run blindly out into the room, reeling and stumbling. She burped. “Look out, I’m gonna be... be sick. Where’s the... the...”
She weaved into a table, upset it and stumbled away. O’Hara got springs in his knees but he didn’t move because Philippi still didn’t take his eyes off him for a moment.
“Seena, you little tramp,” Philippi snapped, not looking at her, “get back in there. Damn it, get back in—”
The redhead gurgled incoherently and unseeingly she ran into the end of the divan, caromed off it in front of O’Hara. O’Hara’s foot shot out, caught her on the hip. She went sidewise as though she had been sprung from a catapult and tangled with Philippi as he tried to duck her, tried to get the gun centered on O’Hara again.
O’Hara was on his feet instantly. He caught the back of the chair he had been in and skated the heavy piece of furniture across the rug at the pair. It slammed into Seena just as Philippi was getting clear of her and snarled them both up again while O’Hara whirled, flung toward the velvet draperies between the living-room and the foyer.
Philippi’s gun blasted as he cleared the draperies and he knew he wouldn’t have time to get the hall door open before Philippi would be on him from behind. He dived to one side of the draped arch, spun and poised himself. The draperies whipped aside and O’Hara uncorked one from his knees. Philippi literally drove his chin into the punch. He had been coming so fast that the blow didn’t quite halt him and he came on forward, falling as he did so.
He was out like a light, in mid-air. He rolled over twice on the floor before he came to a stop.
O’Hara scooped the gun off the floor where it had fallen from Philippi’s hand. He swung back into the living-room and picked up his hat. The redhead was climbing to her feet and she must have had a stronger stomach than she’d figgured on because she hadn’t been sick yet.
O’Hara said, “Thanks, babe,” and she said. “Ol’ handsome brute again.”
O’Hara went out into the foyer and found that Philippi was coming out of it so he tried the sedative effect of a kick on the chin. Philippi very promptly relaxed and O’Hara opened the hall door, headed for the stairway.
The party in the front apartment had reached the quartet stage and you couldn’t hear yourself think, even out in the hallway.
At the second floor O’Hara heard the elevator rumble up the shaft beside the stairway and when he reached the lobby, the doorman in the elegant uniform wasn’t in sight. O’Hara was glad of that; not that he couldn’t have handled an argument with the guy but he was temporarily tired of arguments.
He went down the block toward the red tail-light of the cab in which he’d left Tony Ames not thirty minutes before. It seemed closer to thirty days. He stuck his head in the open window, didn’t open the door.
He said, “Hi, Gadget.”
“Don’t gadget me, you trifler,” Tony Ames said. She laughed a little but she sounded as though she had been worried. “I saw you trailing after that redhead.”