“He doesn’t do things like that, not my Beefy. You’ve got him wrong. They’ve given you a bum steer. Now wait a minute, honey; don’t lose your nice ways! Honest, if I knew where he was I’d tell you. One of his club managers, Bannerman, he might know.” Her loosened hair fell down over her face.
“That’s what I’m thinking too,” Jean said curtly. “I just came from Bannerman, but I didn’t have any — inducement — then, to get him to tell me. We’ll try our luck now — but not from here. Come on. You’re coming with me — back to my own place! Pick up that house phone! What’s the guy’s name down there? Jerry? Say, Jerry, will you come up here a minute? Take the public elevator.”
The gun raised her to her feet like a lever. “Jerry, will you come up here a minute? Take the public elevator.” Then she said craftily, “Yes.”
Jean’s hand sealed the orifice like a flash. “He asked you if there was anything wrong, didn’t he?” She raised the gun. “Make it, Yes, we think we see a man outside on the terrace.” She tore her away from it. “Now, come on!” She began pulling her after her to the waiting private elevator.
“My feet are bare!” the captive wailed.
There was a pair of galoshes standing near the elevator. Jean scuffed them into the car. “Stick ’em in those going down!” Further back, in a recess, a red-glass knob had lighted up warningly.
They started down. Again Jean kept the ball of her thumb on the button. He couldn’t cut them off from above. The lobby was deserted. She pulled Mrs. Borden, in nightgown, galoshes, and mink coat, into the cab after her, “Manhattan!” she clipped at the avaricious driver. “And this time you’re really going to get dough!”
It was getting lighter by the minute now, but was still too early for anything to be open. She stopped him at an all-night drug store down near Borough Hall, hauled her furred freight in after her. “This woman’s real sick,” she threw at the sleepy clerk, and the two of them crushed into one phone booth, Mrs. Borden on the inside.
She didn’t know where to reach Bannerman at his home, any more than her prisoner did (and she believed her), but she was praying he’d stayed on at the Nineties on account of those two smashed doors and to see if she’d lifted anything from his office. She rang the club. He answered himself.
“Now listen, and listen carefully! Get Beefy Borden on the wire from where you are — I don’t care where he is, but get him — and keep the line open, waiting! I’m going to call you again in ten minutes, from some place else. You better have him when I do! And he better have Johnny Donovan still alive for me!”
“I don’t know whatcha talking about,” he tried to say. “Who’s Johnny Donovan? And for that matter, who’s Beefy Borden?”
“He’s thinks I’m ribbing!” she raged at Mrs. Borden. “Tell him about it yourself!”
“Dave, for God’s sake, do what she says!” the haggard blonde croaked into the transmitter. “It’s June, can’t you hear me? June! She’s taken me off with her in a cab and she’s got a gun on me!”
Jean pushed her aside. “Do you know who that was or don’t you? Ten minutes,” she warned him, and hung up. They went hustling out again, Jean’s right fist buried deep in the rich mink, and got back into the cab again.
They lived on Fifty-eighth, she and Johnny; at least he had until two weeks ago. All his things were still up there, and it had broken her heart nightly for fourteen nights now just to look at them. Just one-room-and, but in a fairly slick place, the Parc Concorde.
She brought out all the rest of the Miami money, spread it out fanwise in her hand, offered it to the driver. “Help yourself and forget all about what you’ve seen tonight!” Mrs. Borden was too near prostration by now to budge, even without a gun on her.
“One from each end and one from the middle,” he gloated, picking them out, “and I get a radio put in.”
She crammed the rest of it back into her bag. There was still more than enough left to get them to Miami — the thing was, would she get the chance to use it?
Too late, in the elevator, June Borden came to. “Don’t let her take me in there! She’s — I dunno what she’s gonna do!”
“All this row just because I bring you home to put you under a cold shower! You will mix your drinks!” She slipped a ten into the hallman’s hand.
He grinned reassuringly. “You’ll be all right in the morning, lady.” He gave Jean the office. “Mrs. Donovan would not think of hurting ya, wouldja, Mrs. Donovan? You just do what she tells ya!”
Jean closed the door after them and locked it. “Sit down in that chair and let’s find out if you live or die.”
She got the Wicked Nineties back, calmly stripping off her hat and coat while she waited. She opened her bag with one hand and took the gun out.
Bannerman had a voice waiting for heron another wire, hut they couldn’t connect the two lines. She hadn’t thought of that in time. So near and yet so far! “Plug me through the club switchboard!” she rasped.
“I don’t know how, I never worked it!” He tried it and she found herself talking to a produce market up in the Bronx. She got him back again, her heart turning inside out. “Is he alive — only tell me that, is he alive?”
“I can’t swing it while both lines stay open. Gimme your number, then hang up a minute, let them call you—”
Mrs. Borden came over, starting to cry. “Dave, Dave, do what she says! You gotta get Beefy, I tell you!”
“Listen,” Jean said. “Pull out his plug on your callboard, got that? Then cut mine into the socket you got his out of — that’s all you’ve got to do!”
There was a click, and then another voice came on. It was Borden’s. She knew it just by that one “Who the hell wazzat?” he’d thrown after her in the club alley one night. It echoed hollowly, as though he was in some sort of a big hall or arena. “All right, twist. What’s all this jalappy you’re handing out?”
“You’ve got Johnny Donovan there with you. I’ve got June Borden here with me. Do we swap, or don’t we?”
“Trying to do, throw a scare into me? You’ll wish you’d never been born when I get through with—”
“I know you’re checking this number like blazes while you’re trying to string me along. Listen, you could be right at the door now and you wouldn’t be in time to save her. Matter, don’t you believe I’ve got her here? Don’t you believe Bannerman? All right, help yourself.” She motioned her prisoner over. “Sell yourself!”
“Max! Max!” his wife bleated. “I’m alone with her here — she came and took me out of my bed. Max, don’t you know my voice? Max, you’re not gonna let me — Hou-hou-hou—” She dropped the phone and went staggering around in a sort of drunken circle, hands heeled to her eyes.
Jean picked it up again. His voice was sort of strained now. “Now, wait a minute. Don’t you know you can’t get away with—”
“You’re gonna hear the shot right over this wire—” Then she heard something that went through her like a knife. The scream of a man in mortal agony sounded somewhere in the background, muffled, blurred in transmission. She moaned in answer to it.
Borden said, almost hysterically, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, that wasn’t him, that was one of my own men — he, he got hurt here!”
“Then put him on the phone,” site said. “I’ll count five. Come over here, you! I’m holding the gun right at her!” She began to count, slowly, remorselessly. The woman was half-dead already, with sheer fright.
She could hear his breathing across the wire, hoarse, rasping. The tension was almost unendurable; she could feel her mind slipping.
“Four,” she heard herself say. “Better put him on the phone quick!”