He exploded with a brief laugh of self-appreciation, and then his voice went harsh.
“Still too fast for yuh, Walsh? Well, I’ll tell you another way. Lefty made a collection to-day — got the dough for that load of fancy stuff that went out on the North Shore Saturday. Five grand he should ’a’ turned in. And would you ask me what he tried to turn in instead? His resignation!”
Lefty Byrne, who had turned several colors directly before Walsh’s intrusion, was all scarlet.
“Listen, Jimmy,” he appealed hoarsely, “is a fella tied to any racket with a ball an’ chain? Can’t he do a fade-away when he wants to — if he can walk out clean? Sam owes me that five grand, every dime of it. Breakin’ with him, why shouldn’t I hold it?”
Walsh blinked and shrugged, deferring to Coats.
“Don’t ask me,” he said. “I’m not the big shot in this racket. Sam runs the mob.”
“Tootin’ right I do,” Coats grimly affirmed. “And anything you got comin’ from me, Byrne, is paid when I’m ready to pay. You don’t snatch it, see? Fork over!”
Lefty Byrne swallowed hard and forked. Five crackling notes went on the desk and were swept casually into a drawer.
“I’ll put ’em in a better place,” Coats said, “after I’m done with yuh. I want to hear some more. My mind was somewheres else, so maybe I didn’t get you straight the first time. I’m sittin’ back here safe, am I, grabbin’ the kale while the boys take all th’ risk? I ain’t gave you a fair break, ain’t I?”
He had put down the pistol; and Byrne, taking that to mean the passing of his crisis, drew a deep breath. The film that had dulled his eyes passed away; blue and steady, they met Coats’s glare.
“Be reasonable, Sam,” he urged. “If I got on my ear, it was your fault. I brought th’ dough in, didn’t I? And wasn’t I on the up-an’-up with you, sayin’ I wanted to junk the booze runnin’ game an’ buy that gas station up in Yonkers, an’ settle down?”
“Sure,” grinned Coats. “You as much as told me, ‘Here’s your five grand, Sam, only you don’t get it!’ Then you went up in the air because I couldn’t see it that way.”
Lefty Byrne shook his head.
“Now, wait!” he protested softly. “What happened, you made a rotten crack about — about a certain party. A lady friend a’ mine.”
“Which,” murmured Coats, with a wink for Walsh, “was Dorcas O’Donnell. Right? Be a good guy, Byrne, an’ tell Jimmy what you’re goin’ to do to me if I ever look cock-eyed at that dizzy dame a’ yours again!”
“Oh,” Walsh said, and smirked. “Her!”
“We’re goin’ to get married,” Byrne told him quickly. “Married — regular. Get that.”
“I got a picture a’ Dorcas O’Donnell sittin’ home and darnin’ socks!” crowed Coats. “Say, unless she married a bank roll big enough to buy her all the excitement on Broadway she’d be back to the hostess racket in th’ Gold Slipper before the weddin’ flowers faded!”
Walsh saw something ominous in the tautening of Lefty Byrne’s jaw and the swift hunching of his shoulders.
“Well, I dunno,” he interjected hurriedly, attempting a diplomatic diversion. “She’s got a domestic streak at that, Dorcas has. I mean, you got to hand it to her. She does her own laundry. I know!”
“Whose business is it,” Byrne demanded truculently, “if she does? Let’s just drop her out of th’ conversation, Walsh.” He transferred his frown to Coats. “Now that you’ve got the money, Sam, and a portion of my sentiments along with it, I guess I might as well take the air.”
Coats put out a big hand and dropped it significantly over the two pistols lying side by side on the desk.
“Guess,” he snapped, “again! You’re not walking off, Lefty, as free an’ easy as all that. You know too much to be let stroll out a’ here sore head. Beat it upstairs an’ take a nice peaceful nap for yourself.”
He threw a nod to Walsh.
“Take him up, Jim. Put him in his own room, and turn th’ key on him. His case is goin’ to take some heavy thinkin’!”
II
For one instant Byrne hesitated, weighing his chance for a break against the dubious aftermath of acquiescence. Once he was upstairs Coats had him in the bag. If big Sam made up his mind that way, they could put him on the spot right here — use that rod of Sam’s that had the silencer on it, and bump him without a sound getting to the street. Or if they wanted to make a fancy job of it, they could pile him into a machine and take him for one of those quiet little one-way rides into the country.
As he stared past Walsh, poised for a dash, the square of the outer twilight up in front was already narrowing, the steel garage door rumbling on its rollers. It closed with a clank — and that was that. His only choice then was to give in, to play to Coats.
“Okay, Sam,” he said. “I’ll chase on up — but, say, get that funny idea out a’ your bean, won’t yuh? Whether we split or whether we don’t, I’m no squawker. You ought to know me better’n that by this time.”
For a little Coats studied him, and again the red lids dropped over his eyes. When he spoke there was a note of concession in his voice — a straw that Lefty Byrne snatched at gratefully.
“Oh, hell,” he said. “Forget that. The reason I’m holdin’ yuh, Lefty, I don’t want yuh goin’ out mad. We’ll talk about the money end later, when we’re both feelin’ better. Go on along, now. Hit th’ hay. Maybe you’ll wake up with different notions about givin’ the mob the go-by.”
The three riders who had arrived in the big touring car with Walsh looked curiously after Byrne as he started up the stairs back to the office. Evidently they had overheard enough to know he’d had a falling out with Coats, and their chill silence told him plainly enough whose side they’d be on at a show-down. The fact that they’d all been pals, that they’d fought side by side in a dozen skirmishes with hijackers — all that would be overboard if Sam ever turned his thumb down.
Walsh himself said nothing until they were on the second story, threading through the dusty and idle machinery that camouflaged the Big Shot’s diversions of government-doped alcohol by way of his withdrawal permit for Beautiful Doll Boudoir Preparations, Inc.
Up there, remote from Coats’s ears, Walsh deplored:
“Somethin’ must ’a’ rattled loose in your head, Lefty, you tyin’ into Sam that way. A wonder he didn’t turn the smoke on you, instead a’ just the gas.”
“I guess it is,” Byrne agreed moodily. “But there’s a limit to what a guy can take, Jim. He shouldn’t ‘a’ brought in the Kid — that’s all. I think he’s beginning to see it that way himself.”
“Yeah; he’ll be all right now,” Walsh opined. “All you got to do is tell him you changed your mind about jumpin’ the racket, and everything’ll be hotsy-totsy again. That was his main grouch — don’t you see it? He’s short-handed now, the way things are openin’ up.”
Another stairway took them out of the powdery precincts of the Beautiful Doll Preparations to the third and uppermost floor of the garage building. The “cell-block,” the mob called that particular department of the Coats ménage. It had been partitioned by bleak walls of hollow tile into half a dozen sleeping rooms, and each was furnished with a good bed and a dresser.
Lefty Byrne walked directly into a cubicle at the rear. That had been “home” to him for the last couple of years — all the home he’d thought he would ever want, until he’d discovered Dorcas.