They took me under the arms, where it hurts, and both of them shoved guns into my ribs. When Lomac heard my grunt, he turned. The oily smile was back on his face. I couldn’t see it because of the darkness, but I could see the gleam of his white teeth and knew he was smiling, and knew the smile was oily.
“Nice work, boys,” he said. “Nice timing.”
I felt mean, but there was nothing I could do about it. Nothing at all. One of Lomac’s lads relieved me of my gun, thumbed out the clip and put the empty weapon back in my pocket.
Lomac said, “Take him over to the club.”
They shoved me down the steps, and Lomac stepped aside as we went by. He was grinning. He said something about the average mentality of detectives and I had no come-back. He was right. If I was any example, the average mentality of detectives was low as hell.
The car door was open and they marched me up to it. Lomac tagged along so as not to miss any of the fun. He said, “Maybe you hadn’t better take him to the club after all, boys. Just chauffeur him out into the sticks some place and — lose him. You know.”
They nodded. One of them climbed into the car. The other pushed me in beside him. Then something happened.
He’d been waiting, I suppose, for me to get into the machine, where I wouldn’t be in the way if fireworks developed. At any rate, I was no sooner ensconced in the back seat when the guy stepped out from behind a clump of Lomac’s elegant shrubbery and snapped in a voice you could hear for ten miles: “That’ll be all of that! You’re pinched!”
It was like a thunderclap at a funeral. Lomac jerked around, scared stiff. The gorilla standing beside him acted the way most of those guys do — by instinct. He went for his gun,which, like a damn fool, he’d dropped back into his pocket.
Bill Donahue — it was Bill Donahue — blasted him from a distance of ten yards, and didn’t miss. The mugg folded.
Lomac was too scared to move. But the two dogs in the car, the one beside me and the one at the wheel, had no intention of being taken that easily. The one at the wheel said, “Get him, Frankie,” and jabbed a foot at the starter button. Frankie shifted sideways and whipped his gun up to the rear window.
Bill Donahue was doing a foolish thing. He was striding toward the car and making a target of himself.
It was up to me. I still had my gun. It was empty but still useful. I grabbed it, and before my pal Frankie knew that I was up to any mischief, he had a face full of gunbutt. I didn’t aim. I didn’t have time for any aiming. All I did was swing.
Frankie’s gun exploded and the bullet went into the upholstery. Frankie sagged. I swung clear of him, in time to toss up my left arm and slap a gun out of the hand of the driver, who whirled to blast me.
We mixed it, hands and elbows doing the work. The car shot across the street, bounced up on the curb and kissed a lamp post. Bill Donahue came running.
But I didn’t need Donahue. I may have been born without brains, but the Lord granted me a fair pair of dukes, and at in-fighting I’m remarkable. In a phone booth I could probably lick Joe Louis.
When Bill Donahue got the door open I was still throwing punches, but the guy wasn’t aware of it. He was out, cold. I untangled him and shoved him away from me, and got out.
“Lomac!” I muttered. “He’ll get away, Bill!”
Bill shook his head, and I looked across the street and understood. Lomac was sprawled out on his elegant lawn. I hadn’t seen Bill bop him, but he certainly wouldn’t do any running for a while. I blinked at Bill and said warmly: “You got here just in time.” Then I added: “What’s the matter?”
He didn’t look so good. His face was sort of yellow, as if he were seasick, and he swayed a little on his feet. I remembered that he’d been in a hospital. His heart again.
I grabbed him, but he shook his head, told me he was all right. “It’ll pass,” he mumbled. “Can’t be sick now, Thompson. Too much to do.”
I shot a glance at the two guys in the car, to see if they’d be apt to give us any trouble. They wouldn’t. Not for quite a time yet. I steered Bill across the street and sat him on the steps of Lomac’s mansion. “What brought you here?” I asked.
“The Chief came over to the hospital. Told me what’d happened. I skipped and came over here quick as I could.”
“Why? Why here?” I said. “You seem to know a lot about this mess.”
He gave me a queer look. “You better find Evans,” was all he said.
He was right. I went into the house and used Lomac’s phone, called Headquarters. The Chief answered and I told him what was up, where we were at. “You send some men over here to pick up Lomac’s gorillas,” I begged, “and send a raid gang over to the Dexter Social Club on Dexter Street. I’ll be there with Lomac.”
He said he would. I went outside and Bill Donahue was bending over the mugg he’d blasted. I got Lomac into my car, but Bill wouldn’t come. “I’ll stay here and wait for the boys,” he said. He still had that queer look on his face, like he was going to be sick, awful sick, and was fighting to stay on his feet until the bell rang.
So with Lomac slumped on the seat beside me, I drove over to Dexter Street, parked at the corner and waited. In a little while the boys arrived.
The Dexter Social Club is a basement joint on the south side of the street, under a hotel. The Dexter Hotel. One is a hangout for thugs, big and small, and the other is a flop-house of the lowest order. I had half a hunch, even when we paraded down the steps and into the club, that we’d wind up in one of the frowsy rooms in the hotel.
As it turned out, I was right. The club was practically deserted. A couple of guys were shooting pool. A couple more were drinking beer out of bottles and watching them. They were all plenty scared when they saw so many uniforms.
We rounded them up and went through the place in search of others, but it was wasted effort. So then we hiked up into the hotel.
A thin little guy at a desk turned white as a sheet when he saw us. He shriveled up and his teeth chattered. I grabbed his necktie. “You know what we want,” I said.
“I... I don’t!” he wailed.
“No? Well, maybe you don’t. Maybe you don’t. Who’s living here right now?”
He didn’t shove the register at me. He had one, but it was a laugh; a guy would be a sap to scribble his name in a dump like that. No. He just let his teeth chatter for a while and then said, “We... we got a guy on the top floor, a sailor, I think he is. And a couple of girls that... that—”
“Work here?” I snapped.
He nodded. “Yes. Work here, sort of. And then there’s two men in 419. That’s all.”
We hiked up the stairs to 419, and went the last few yards along the corridor on the soles of our shoes, making no noise to warn the occupants of that room of our arrival. I had a gun in my right hand and knocked with my left.
A voice said: “Who is it?”
“Lomac,” I said.
The door opened. Before the guy even had time to widen his eyes, my foot crunched against his shin. He bent double and ran his chin straight into my fist. The fist knocked him back into the room and he fell with a crash. Even if I do say so myself, that was nice timing.
I barged in, and a flock of uniforms barged in behind me. “Move,” I snapped, “and you get it!” They didn’t move. It would have been suicide.
There were three of them, and I knew them all. Knew them by name. Shorty Macrae was a greasy, sawed-off monkey with a face as grimy as his record. Tony Partucci was tall, built like a wrestler, and reputed to be dangerous as hell with a gun. The third one, Buddy Carver, was just a tough kid doing his best to graduate into major crime. Three bad babies.