Earl’s face turned red again. “You had a witness and you didn’t see him?” he screeched, as much of a shout as his high voice could manage. “Goddamnit, what do I pay you for? I want amateurs, I pull one off the street. And what about Freddie? He’s paid to watch-he doesn’t see anyone? Goddamn dumb bastards, all of you!” He was pumping his fat little arms up and down in his rage. I glanced at Ralph; his face was gray. He was in shock. I couldn’t do anything about that now. Jill gave me a little smile. She’d caught the message. As soon as Tony lifted the gun, she’d roll behind the chair.
“See,” I said disgustedly, “you guys have made so many mistakes that piling up three more corpses isn’t going to help you one bit. I told you before, Earclass="underline" Bobby Mallory’s no dummy. You can’t knock off four people in his territory and get away with it forever.”
Earl smirked. “They never hung one on me yet, Warchoski, you know that.”
“It’s Warshawski, you goddamn kraut. You know why Polish jokes are so short?” I asked Masters. “So the Germans can remember them.”
“This is enough, Warchoski or whatever your name is,” Masters said. He used a stern voice, the kind that got him heard with his junior staff. “You tell me where the McGraw girl is. You’re right-Jill is as good as dead. I hate to do it, I’ve known that girl since she was born, but I just can’t take the risk. But you’ve got a choice. I can have Tony kill her, one clean shot and it’s done, or I can have him rape her while you watch, and then kill her. You tell me where the McGraw girl is, and you’ll save her a lot of grief.”
Jill was very white; her gray eyes looked huge and black in her face. “Oh, jeez, Yardley,” I said. “You big he-men really impress the shit out of me. Are you telling me Tony’s going to rape that girl on your command? Why do you think the boy carries a gun? He can’t get it up, never could, so he has a big old penis he carries around in his hand.”
I spoke. Tony turned crimson and gave a primitive shriek in the back of his throat. He turned to look at me.
“Now!” I yelled, and jumped. Jill dived behind the armchair. Tony’s bullet went wide and I reached him in one spring and chopped his gun arm hard enough to break the bone. He screamed in pain and dropped the Browning. As I spun away Masters lunged over for it. I made a diving slide, but he got there first, sitting down hard. He brandished the Browning at me while he got up and I backed away a few paces.
The report from Tony’s shot had brought Ralph back to life. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him move over on the couch toward the phone and lift the receiver. Masters saw it, too, and turned and shot him. In the second he turned, I made a rolling fall into the corner of the room and got the Smith & Wesson. As Masters turned to fire at me, I shot him in the knee. He wasn’t used to pain: he fell with a great cry of surprised agony and dropped the gun. Earl, who’d been dancing in the background, pretending he was part of the fight, moved forward to get it. I shot at his hand. I was out of practice and missed, but he jumped back anyway.
I pointed the Smith & Wesson at Tony. “Onto the couch. Move.” Tears were running down his cheeks. His right arm hung in a funny way: I’d broken the ulna. “You guys are worse than trash and I’d love to shoot the three of you dead. Save the state a lot of money. If any of you goes for that gun, I’ll kill you. Earl, get your fat little body over on the couch next to Tony.” He looked like a two-year-old whose mother has unexpectedly spanked him; his whole face was squashed up as if he, too, were about to burst into tears. But he moved over next to Tony. I picked up the Browning, continuing to cover the two on the couch. Masters was bleeding into the carpet. He wasn’t in any shape to move. “The police are going to love this gun,” I said. “I bet it fired the bullet that shot Peter Thayer, didn’t it, Tony?”
I called to Jill, “You still alive back there, honey? ”
“Yes, Vic,” she said in a little voice.
“Good. You come on out now and call the number I’m going to give you. We’re going to call the police and have them collect this garbage. Then maybe you’d better call Lotty, get her over here to look at Ralph.” I hoped there was something left of him for Lotty to work on. He wasn’t moving, but I couldn’t go to him-he’d fallen on the far side of the room, and the couch and phone table would block me if I went over to where he lay.
Jill came out from behind the big armchair where she’d been crouching. The little oval face was still very white, and she was shaking a bit. “Walk behind me, honey,” I told her. “And take a couple of deep breaths. In a few minutes you can relax and let it all out, but right now you’ve got to keep on going.”
She turned her head away from the floor where Masters lay bleeding and walked over to the phone. I gave her Mallory’s office number and told her to ask for him. He’d gone home for the day, she reported. I gave her the home number. “Is Lieutenant Mallory there, please?” she asked in her clear, polite voice. When he came on the line, I told her to bring the phone over to me, but not to get in front of me at all.
“Bobby? Vic. I’m at two-oh-three East Elm with Earl Smeissen, Tony Bronsky, and a guy from Ajax named Yardley Masters. Masters has a shattered knee, and Bronsky a broken ulna. I also have the gun that was used to shoot Peter Thayer.”
Mallory made an explosive noise into the phone. “Is this some kind of joke, Vicki?”
“Bobby, I’m a cop’s daughter. I never make that kind of joke. Two-oh-three East Elm. Apartment seventeen-oh-eight. I’ll try not to kill the three of them before you get here.”
18
Blood is Thicker Than Gold
It was ten, and the short black nurse said, “You shouldn’t be here at all, but he won’t go to sleep until you stop by.” I followed her into the room where Ralph lay, his face very white, but his gray eyes alive. Lotty had made a good job of bandaging him up and the surgeon at Passavant had only changed the dressing without disturbing her work. As Lotty said, she’d done a lot of bullet wounds.
Paul had come with Lotty to Ralph’s apartment, frantic. He’d gotten to Winnetka and forced his way past Lucy about twenty minutes after Masters had picked up Jill. He went straight from there to Lotty’s. The two of them had called me, called the police to report Jill missing, but fortunately had stayed at Lotty’s close to the phone.
Jill ran sobbing into Paul’s arms when they arrived and Lotty had given a characteristic shake of the head. “Good idea. Get her out of here, get her some brandy,” then turned her attention to Ralph, who lay unconscious and bleeding in the corner. The bullet had gone through his right shoulder, tearing up a lot of bone and muscle, but coming out clean on the other side.
Now I looked down at him on the hospital bed. He took hold of my right hand with his left and squeezed it weakly; he was pretty drugged. I sat on the bed.
“Get off the bed,” the little nurse said.
I was exhausted. I wanted to tell her to go to hell, but I didn’t feel like fighting the hospital on top of everything else. I stood up.