Howland’s desk was in a corner of the outer office near the window. There was a greenshade light over the desk.
“Here it is.” He yawned again. “What am I yawning for?” he said. “Where is the rope?”
Hinch pushed him aside. “Hey, man,” he said. “That’s a mess of bread.”
“Twenty-four thousand. You don’t have to count it. It’s all there.”
“Sure,” Furia said. “We trust you. Start packing, Hinch.”
Hinch opened the flight bag and began stuffing the bundles of bills in. Howland watched nervously. Into his nervousness crept alarm.
“Hey, you’re taking too much,” Howland protested. “We had a deal. Where’s mine?”
“Here,” Furia said, and shot him three times, one-and-two-three in a syncopated series. The third bullet went into Howland no more than two inches above the first two as the bookkeeper’s knees collapsed. The light over the desk bounced off his bald spot. His nose made a pulpy noise when it hit the vinyl floor.
Furia blew on his gun the way the bad guy did it in Westerns. It was a Walther PPK, eight-shot, which he had picked up in a pawnshop heist in Jersey City. It had a double-action hammer and Furia was wild about it. “It’s better than a woman,” he had said to Goldie. “It’s better than you.” He picked up the three ejected cases with his left hand and dropped them into his pocket. The automatic he kept in his right.
“You cooled him pretty,” Hinch said, looking down at Howland. Blood was beginning to worm out on the vinyl from under the bookkeeper. “Well, let’s go, Fure.” He had all the money in the bag, even the rolls of coins, and the bag zipped.
“I say when we go,” Furia said. He was looking around as if they had all the time in the world. “Okay, that’s it.”
He walked out. Hinch lingered. All of a sudden he was reluctant to leave Howland.
“Where’s the rope, he says.” When Hinch grinned his mouth showed a hole where two front teeth had been. He was wearing a black leather windbreaker, black chinos, and blue Keds. He had rusty hair which he wore long at the neck and a nose that had been broken during his wrestling days. His eyes were small and of a light, almost nonexistent, pink-gray. “We forgot the gag, too, pidge,” he said to Howland.
“Hinch.”
“Okay, Fure, okay,” Hinch said. He catfooted after Furia, looking pleased.
“I knew it,” Goldie said. Hinch was backing the Chrysler around.
“You knew what?” Furia had the flight bag on his lap like a child.
“The shots. You killed him.”
“So I killed him.”
“Stupid.”
Furia turned half around and his left hand swished across her face.
“I don’t dig a broad with lip neither,” Hinch said approvingly. He drove across the lot on the bias, without lights. When he got to the turnout he braked. “Where to, Fure?”
“Over the bridge to the cloverleaf.”
Hinch swung left and switched on the riding lights. There was no traffic on the outlying road. He drove at a humble thirty.
“You asked for it,” Furia said.
There was a trickle of blood at the corner of Goldie’s pug nose. She was dabbing at it with a Kleenex.
“The thing is I don’t take names from nobody,” Furia said. “You got to watch the mouth with me, Goldie. You ought to know that by this time.”
Hinch nodded happily.
“What did you have to shoot him for?” Goldie said. In his own way Furia had apologized, they both understood that if Hinch did not. “I didn’t set this up for a killing, Fure. Why go for the big one?”
“Who’s to know?” Furia argued. “Howland sure as hell didn’t sound about our deal. Hinch and me wore gloves and I’ll ditch the heater soon as we grab off another one. So they’ll never hook those three slugs onto us, Goldie. I even picked up the cases. You got nothing to worry about.”
“It’s still the big one.”
“You button your trap, bitch,” Hinch said.
“You button yours,” Furia said in a flash. “This is between me and Goldie. And don’t call her no more names, Hinch, hear?”
Hinch drove.
“Why I plugged him,” Furia said. “And you had a year college, Goldie.” He sounded like a kindly teacher. “A three-way split is better than four, I make it, and I never even graduated public school. That shlep just bought us an extra six grand.”
Goldie said fretfully, “You sure he’s dead?”
Furia laughed. They were rattling over the bridge spanning the Tonekeneke River that led out of town; beyond lay the cloverleaf interchange and the through road Goldie called The Pike, with its string of dark gas stations. The only light came from an allnight diner with a big neon sign at the other side of the cloverleaf. The neon sign said elwood’s diner. It smeared the aluminum siding a dimestore violet.
“Stop in there, Hinch, I’m hungry.”
“Fure,” Goldie said. “My folks still live here. Suppose somebody spots me?”
“How many years you cut out of this jerk burg? Six?”
“Seven. But-”
“And you used to have like dark brown hair, right? And go around like one of them Girl Scouts? Relax, Goldie. Nobody’s going to make you. I’m starved.”
Goldie licked the scarlet lip under the smudge on her nostril. Furia was always starved after a job. At such times it was as if he had been weaned hungry and had never made up for it. Even Hinch looked doubtful.
“I told you, Hinch, didn’t I? Pull in.”
Hinch skirted the concrete island and drove off the cloverleaf. Neither he nor Goldie said anything more. Goldie’s face screwed smaller. She had a funny feeling about the caper. Fure was flying. It never works out the way I plan it. He always queers it some way, he’s a natural-born loser.
Hinch swung the Chrysler into a slot. A dozen others were occupied by cars and trucks. He turned off the ignition and started to get out.
“Hold it.” Furia turned to examine Goldie in the violet haze. “You got blood on your nose. Wipe it off.”
“I thought I wiped it off.”
He ripped a tissue from the box over the dash, spat on it, and handed it to her. “The left side.”
She examined her nose in her compact mirror, scrubbed the smudge off, used the puff.
“Do I look all right for Local Yokel?”
Furia laughed again. That’s twice in three minutes. He’s real turned on. He’ll try to be a man-mountain in bed tonight.
“We don’t sit together,” Furia said to Hinch. “You park at the counter. Goldie and me we’ll find a booth or somewheres.”
“That’s using your tank, Fure.”
“Goldie don’t think so. Do you, Goldie?”
He was sounding amused. Goldie risked it. “Does it matter what I think?”
“Not a goddam bit,” Furia said cheerfully. He got out with the black bag and made for the diner steps without looking back.
That’s what I love about you, you’re such a little gentleman.
The diner was busy, not crowded. Furia went in first and snagged a booth from four teenagers who had been nursing cheeseburgers and malts. Goldie managed to join him at the cost of a few stares. She saw no one she recognized. She slipped behind the partition and hid her miniskirt under the fake marble top. I told Fure I ought to wear slacks tonight but no he’s got to show off my legs like we’re on the town, these studs will remember me.
She was angrier with Furia than when he had struck her.
Hinch slouched in a minute later and settled his bulk on a stool a few feet away. He became immediately enchanted with one of the girls behind the counter, who had just come out of the kitchen. The girl had sprayshine black hair done up in exaggerated bouffant and a rear end that jerked from side to side as she moved.
“You’d better watch the pig,” Goldie said. “He’s already got his piggy eyes on a girl.”
“Don’t worry about Hinch,” Furia said. “What’ll it be, doll? Steak and fries? Live it up.”