The counterman didn’t like people who just came into his place to warm chairs and then walked out again on blank checks. He made the mistake of charging for the eggs which hadn’t been eaten. The girl in the back had gotten up now and was moving with a sort of lazy walk toward the man who had stayed behind. She’d tacked on a bright-red new mouth with her lipstick and suddenly didn’t seem so respectable any more.
“So I’m paying for the eggs, am I?” barked the man at the counter. “Okay, hand ’em over.” He pulled the plate away from the counterman, tilted it upward on his palm, fitted it viciously across the other’s face, and ground it in with a sort of half turn. Egg yolk dripped down in yellow chains, “Have ’em on me, you mosey sap!” he magnanimously offered.
The girl gave a shrill, brazen laugh of approval that sounded like her voice was cracked. “Gee, sweetheart,” she said, “I could go for a guy like you. How does it look for a little lift in your car? I been stemming all night and my dogs are yapping.” She deliberately separated a nickel of his change and skimmed it back across the glass to pay for her coffee, then nudged him chummily with her elbow. “You and me and a flock of etchings, how about it?”, she invited.
“Some other time, momma,” he said tersely. “Got no time tonight.” He pocketed the rest of his change and stalked out. The counterman was shaking Trench fried potatoes out of his collar, but he knew enough not to say anything out loud.
The girl went out after the fellow who had just turned her down, like some sort of a magnet was pulling her toward the car.
He’d already gotten in at the wheel when she got over to it. “C’mon, whaddya say?” she pleaded hoarsely. “Don’t be selfish, just a couple blocks lift would be a life saver.” She put one foot up on the running board, put one hand to the latch of the door. Her face was all damp and pasty-looking, but it took more than that amount of dishevelment to fog its beauty.
The one at the wheel hesitated, with the motor already turning over. He looked over his shoulder into the darkness questioningly, even longingly. Evidently she’d gotten under his skin. “How about it?” he said to the other one. “Drop her off at your place and then come back for her when we’re through?” He wanted the answer to be yes awfully bad.
She had the door open by now. One more move and she would have been on the front seat next to him. The answer did not come from the one he’d put it up to at all. It came from their “guest.” It was Johnny Donovan’s voice that answered, that put the crusher on it, strangely enough. A word of warning, a single cry for help from him, and they would have been compelled to take her too, in self-defense, because she would have caught onto what they were doing. He knew enough not to do that. Instead, he said almost savagely: “Kick her out — or is this part of what I get too?”
There was a vicious slap from the rear of the car, but the remark snapped the driver out of it, showed him what a fool thing he’d been about to do. That twist had magnetism or something. He gave her a terrific shove at the throat that sent her skittering backwards off the running board and very nearly flat on her back, grunting:“Where’s ya manners? Don’t crowd like that!” And a minute later the car was just a red tail light a block down, and then it wasn’t even that.
She was still lurching from the push he’d given her. She said, “Johnny, oh my God, Johnny, you’ve killed yourself!” But she said it very low, so low that the taxi driver who had come out just then and was standing beside her looking in the same direction she was, didn’t even hear her.
They weren’t going to kill him — it was he who had killed himself! Didn’t he know she could have saved him? Didn’t he know she’d brought a little gun of her own in her handbag to this last meeting of theirs? Didn’t he know all she needed was to get into that car with them, and wail for a favorable opportunity, and she could have pulled the trick? She saw where she had made her mistake now; she should have used it right in the cafeteria while she still had the chance. But in there there’d been two of them covering him, in the car only one while the other was at the wheel. That was why she’d waited, used her eyes on them for all she was worth, been within an ace of getting away with it — and then at the last minute he himself had to snatch the chance away from her, cut himself off from help.
She knew why he’d done it, and she cursed that habit in men of sparing their women. Didn’t they know women? Didn’t they know there was nothing on God’s earth could be so terrible, so remorseless, as a woman when the one she loved was in danger? The toughest triggerman was a Salvation Army lassie compared to a woman at such a time.
“They’re not going to have him!” Jean Donovan whispered into the night that surrounded her, eyes hard as mica and so big they seemed to cover her whole face. “They’re not — going — to — take — him away from me!” One look at her expression and the taxi driver, who had been considering taking up acquaintanceship where the other two had left off, changed his mind and slunk away. You don’t try to make dates with a tiger.
He took a deep belly breath of relief as he saw the guy in front push her off the car and nearly on her ear. “Thank God,” he said to himself, “she stays out of it!” They hadn’t, evidently, either one of them recognized her from the Club; Beefy had two or three, and the Long Island City one was where they did most of their hanging out when they did any. It had been chiefly a Long Island outfit from the beginning. But one peep from her just now, one “Johnny!” and she would have been sunk. He’d been scared stiff that she’d give herself away. It was okay now though. She’d look pretty in black, poor little monkey. She looked pretty in anything. He turned his head around and looked back at her through the diamond-shaped rear pane as they zoomed off, then covered himself by grating, “Damned little bum, trying to horn in! I like to die private.”
The one next to him gave him another slap, backhand across the eyes, and they filled with water. “You’re gonna,” he promised.
They followed St. Nick to 168th, cut west, and connected with Riverside. “Y’got pretty far uptown for a Brooklyn fella,” the one at the wheel mentioned, “but not far enough.”
“Is Ratsy gonna be burned!” laughed his mate. “The Big Boy sends him all the way to Buffalo on a phony tip day before yesterday. And Ratsy hates Buffalo, he went to Reform School there! And while he’s gone we snag the son right here!”
There wasn’t a car in sight on the Drive at that hour; the lights of the bridge were like a string of pearls hanging up in the air behind them. They turned south, slowed, and drew up almost at once. “As quick as all that?” thought Johnny, thankfully. “Then I’m not going to get the trimmings! There wouldn’t be time, out in the open like this.”
The one in front cut the dashboard lights, said: “Hurry it up now! We don’t wanna be hanging around here too long—”
“We shoulda brought that dame after all,” the other one said. “She coulda fronted for us.” He took his gun out, turned it, swung back, and brought the butt down on the side of Johnny’s head with a pounding crash. Johnny groaned but didn’t go right out, so he smashed him again with it, this time on the other side, then went on: “That gal coulda made it look like a necking party, while we’re standing still here like this.”
“Get busy, and we don’t need to be standing still!” was the answer. “Got the blanket? Fix it so it looks like he’s soused.”
The one in back took out copper wire from the side pocket, caught the limp figure’s wrists behind him, coiled it cruelly around them. The skin broke instantly and the strands of the wire disappeared under it. Then he did it to his ankles too. Then he propped him up in the corner, took the lap robe and tucked it around him up to his neck. He took out a bottle of whisky, palmed a handful, sloshed it across Johnny’s face, sprinkled the blanket with it. “Let’s go,” he muttered. “He smells like a still. He oughta be good for a hundred fifty traffic lights now!”