Then, silence — sudden, intense. Not a movement, except the slow, curling smoke over the still bodies below.
Kate tore her eyes, mad with the lust of battle, from the bloody floor, and whirled on the man beside her. Her voice shrilled through the deadly, waiting silence.
“A damn good fight, McCann, while it lasted!”
The curtain of a booth below stirred. Another voice broke the silence — a high pitched, nasal whine. “There’s the damn hell cat that double crossed us, Hogan!” It screeched. A yellow gloved hand thrust itself through the curtain. Red flame spurted swiftly toward the crimson figure at the railing above.
A dozen shrieking bullets from the balcony pierced the curtain through which the chamois glove had appeared, but Kate was not there to savor the stench of their burning powder, or hear the single nasal whine of agony that came from the booth. For Kate was a grotesque heap on the floor of the balcony.
The man she had double crossed bent over to lift her from the pool of blood in which she lay.
Death spewed into what was left of Hogan’s mob. More bodies joined the gory spectacle which J. F. McCann had staged for the woman who wanted blood. And J. F. McCann lay gasping beside that woman, with a gold fountain pen clutched in his chilled fingers and a bullet under his heart.
“You got what you wanted, Kate,” he breathed into the dead woman’s ear, and spoke no more.
A Long Chance
By Bill Beyer
Racketeer Stories, June-July 1930
Her name was Take-It-Easy-Sal, and there wasn’t a twist or a rod in gangland who didn’t call her “Jonah” Sal! But this was one job she couldn’t muff! What is better protection than a snapshot, a long evening, and the U.S. Mail?
“And remember, Al, it’s a fifty-fifty split,” and the girl eyed the man opposite her at the little wooden table coldly.
“How come?” The man’s eyes shifted under her gaze. “If I pull the job alone, the haul don’t split that way, Sal.”
“Whatda you mean, it don’t?” The girl’s temper was roused. “If I out the lay and cinch it for you, I git half. If you’d tackled it alone without my info, where’d you be? I’m tryin’ to put you in on big business, right. And ain’t I gonna be hanging around in a car to help with the getaway? There’s gonna be five single grand notes at the place tomorrow and I want half of ’em. See!” Sal banged her fist down on the table with a vicious thud.
Shifty Al looked back at her with a sheepish grin. He could hold his own against a skirt’s temper, better than face that cold hard stare from her eyes. He looked her over slowly and critically. The emerald green dress she was wearing was a little shabby. But she had told him she had been against her luck lately. The dress didn’t matter anyway. Sal was about his speed — small, well-rounded, seductive. Devastating might have been the word used to describe her, but that word was not in Shifty’s vocabulary. He leaned closer to her across the table.
“Maybe, Sal, we won’t need to split. Whatda you say?”
The girl’s eyes were narrowed as she too leaned closer, but the eyes were smiling beneath the heavy lids. She cupped her chin in her hand as her face almost touched his. He could feel the warmth of it.
“Maybe, AI,” she spoke slowly and did not move her face away, “maybe that’ll be O.K. with me. But I just gotta be sure of the business details in case it ain’t. I haven’t worked with you before. This is your try-out.”
“Oh, this racket’s gonna come through O.K., baby. You trust me for that, and afterwards—”
“Afterwards you come straight down the drive to the gate and turn to the left on the same side of the street. I’ll be waitin’ with a car I’m gonna hire, about a block down.”
“That ain’t what I meant, Sal.”
“Well, that’s what I meant. I want to be sure you got the lay of the getaway straight. After that—” She left the rest of the idea to be carried by a flash of her dark eyes. AI could understand that as he wanted to.
She rose from the table, flung on her coat and started for the door. AI was beside her.
“I’m takin’ yuh home, baby.”
“Not till you pull the job, you ain’t.” And she walked on through the dismal room that was the main portion of the dive, and was out through the door, leaving him where he was standing.
Another twist passed Shifty Al. She stopped and looked him over.
“Ain’t gettin’ mixed up with Jonah Sal, are you?” she asked.
“I sure am.” Al was ready to defend his new partner. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Wrong? Say, kid, she’s always gettin’ a new pal and every damn job they tackle goes wrong. Can’t yuh see from her duds that she ain’t pulled a job since the new styles have been in. That’s some time to be without cash.”
“I don’t care about her rags, sister. She’s class just the same. And this is one job she’s not gonna be Jonah Sal on. It’s a great streak o’ luck she hitched up with me.”
By this time Sal was speeding away in a taxi. Farther uptown she stopped at a hotel and when she came out half an hour later to hail another taxi, she was dressed in a chic evening gown of iridescents. Just now it was covered with a fur coat in the latest mode. She looked about her guardedly, then gave an address to the chauffeur.
At 138th Street she alighted and hurried into one of the smaller negro cabarets on the block, the Silver Slipper. She glanced around the interior, then walked swiftly over to a table where a man was sitting. This man was apparently waiting for her.
“All set, Sal?” was his greeting.
“And how, Jim! We’ve got it cinched. In that dive in Bleecker Street, they’ve never heard of Take-It-Easy-Sal. I’m still the Jonah.”
“And you sure you picked a guy that works alone? I ain’t going to have you mixed up with no mob, kid, and have you bumped off. Everything’s fair, takin’ swag from a crook. But it ain’t safe it he’s got a push in back of him.”
“This bird I’ve landed, Jim, is just another o’ them dumb yeggs. Never could handle a big job unless somebody like me stepped in and helped him. So he ain’t missin’ nothin’ when you relieve him of it. He’s fell for me hard, too. Thinks I’m the goods.”
“And he ain’t wise to what he’s in for?”
“Say, Jim, I put it over great. Why, I could get a job on the stage if this racket fell through, I’m so good at it. I handed him a hot argument about a fifty-fifty split. He never thought for a minute I expected to get it all. Didn’t even tumble to the racket when I outlined the getaway for him. He just thought I was so crazy about him that I wanted to be sure he’d come through safe. But say, what did you want to meet me up here for instead of the usual hangout?”
“It’s gettin’ a little risky at Joe’s. Some of ’em know us a little too well and we don’t want to be seen together too much. It might queer the act and, what I’m thinkin’ of most, it might get you in trouble.”
“But why did you pick this dump?”
“Well, here it’s a cinch to spot the whites and give ’em the once over to see if they’re somebody we pulled the trick on before.”
“You got brains, Jim.”
“I just want to look after you, Sal, so you don’t get plugged with a hunk o’ lead. You know I’m keen about you.”
There was no need for Jim and Take-It-Easy-Sal to discuss further the job for the next night. It was set. Some dumb crook was lined up to take the chances and get the cash. All they had to do was to be ready to take the swag away from him as soon as he got it.
The two spent the rest of the evening dancing. When they left, they went in separate taxis. The next night they would have money and plenty of it.