“A little late, Connie tells me.”
Nick beamed. “You can never be too late when fifty G’s is involved. Ain’t that right, Danny?” He kept smiling, and I didn’t like the smile or the way his eyes didn’t match his mouth. I watched him, and I said nothing.
“You want the bonds, I guess,” he said.
“You guess right.”
“Well, no sense wasting time, is there?” He walked around to his desk, and opened the top drawer again. This time he came out with a sheaf of bonds, and he dropped them on the desk top and said, “There they are, boy. Nick Trenton never welshes.”
I smiled and walked over to the desk, leafing through the bonds. It was all there, fifty grand worth.
“Okay?” Nick asked. The smile hadn’t left his face.
“So far,” I said. I slipped one of the bonds out from under the rubber band and I examined it more closely. My hand shook a little, and I felt the sweat break out on my brow.
“What are you trying to pull, Nick?”
“Pull? What’s wrong, Danny? Something wrong?”
“You know damn well what’s wrong. I told you to make Johnny beneficiary.”
“Didn’t they? I told them to...”
“You’re listed as beneficiary, Nick. Beneficiary, Nick Trenton. What’s the idea?”
Nick shook his head. “A stupid mistake. You just can’t trust these banks, can you, Danny?”
“You’re dumber than I thought, Nick,” I said.
“Really?” He was smiling again, and the smile burned me.
“This is about as obvious as a rivet. You keep your bargain, but I get cooled the second I step out of here, and. the fifty grand goes back to you. You must think the police are meatheads.”
Nick stopped smiling, and his eyes narrowed with a crafty look. “Can I help it if you like me and list me as beneficiary? And can I help it if you have an accident? Can I...”
“Look, Nick...”
“No, you look, stupid. You think I’m going to do the gunning? You think the police will be able to pin anything on me?”
“Let’s get this over,” Connie said.
“You’re playing in the wrong league, punk,” Nick said tightly. He smiled again, and added, “I’m really doing you a favor, Danny. A punk is liable to flip his wig over so much cabbage. I’m saving you a trip to the nut hou...”
I reached over the desk and grabbed Nick’s lapels with one hand. I brought the other hand back and forward before he had a chance to move, catching him on the jaw and rocking his head back. He was out before I hit him the second time, but I followed through anyway and then let his lapels go. He flopped to the rug like a dead whale, and I scooped up the bonds and turned to Connie.
“Tell your boyfriend I’m going to the bank now. Tell him these bonds’ll be cashed before he comes to. Tell him he can whistle then.”
“You’re not going anyplace,” the voice said.
It was not a familiar voice. I turned rapidly and saw the open door to the right of Nick’s desk. I saw the figure standing in the doorway, and then my eyes dropped to the .45 in the guy’s fist.
My eyes moved up slowly to the guy’s face.
It had changed. It had been boyish the last time I’d seen it, with rounded cheeks, with peach fuzz, with an innocent smile. It had narrowed now, sharpened with maturity. The lips were thin, and a heavy shadow had replaced the peach fuzz. The cheeks were hollow, and the mouth was unsmiling, and the eyes held me most of all, because the eyes were hard and glittering.
“Hello, pop,” Johnny said. He said “pop” bitterly, as if the word burned his tongue.
“Johnny...”
“Don’t move, pop. Don’t move a goddamn inch.”
“Put that gun up, Johnny. What the hell do you think...”
“Shut up!”
“You surprised, Danny?” Connie said. She stood beside me, and she smiled triumphantly, and her breasts heaved in excitement. “You surprised, you bastard?”
“Look...”
“Tell your son what you told me this afternoon. Go ahead. Tell him what a tramp I am. Tell him all about it. Go ahead.” She turned to Johnny. “Listen to him, Johnny. Listen to the bastard talk about me.”
“I don’t have to hear anything, Connie,” he said.
I looked at him, and I was looking at a stranger, and I tried to think of all the things that had happened to him in five years. Connie Blaine had happened to him, and that could have been enough.
“Johnny,” I said, “put up that gun. I’m your father. I’m...”
“You’re a punk,” he said. “You’re a punk who got suckered into taking a bum rap. That’s all you are. A step above Tigo. Good old Uncle Tigo.”
“Johnny, for Christ’s sake, can’t you see what they’re trying to pull? Can’t you see that you’ll be the fall guy? The way I was? The way...”
“You don’t think Connie’s good for me, huh? A punk like you making decisions, huh? That’s a laugh.”
“Johnny, I’ve got fifty G’s. We can get away from here. We can...”
“Get away from Connie? Leave her? You’ve got a hole in your head, old man.”
I looked at Johnny’s face, and I saw the eyes, and they were the eyes of someone who’d killed before. They were the eyes of everything I’d tried to keep him from, and it was too late now because the kid had pulled a real switch on the old man who’d tried like hell to keep him away from it. He’d turned into a real killer, and that was a big laugh. Except that it wasn’t funny because his knuckle was turning white around the trigger, and I thought, Christ, he’s rotten.
The knowledge made me a little sick, but there was no time for crying and no time for thinking. There was only time to grab Connie. I yanked her wrist and whirled her around in front of me, and then the .45 exploded.
She screamed when the slug tore into her chest, and then she dropped to the rug and Johnny’s face went white with hatred. I ran across the room, yanking the knife from my pocket as he brought the .45 up again.
I pressed the stud, and the switch blade snapped open, and it was only three-and-a-half inches long, and that didn’t make it a dangerous weapon as far as the police were concerned. I was close to him now, and I looked into those eyes once more, and I saw everything I had to know there, all the slime and all the filth, and the rotten road that ended bleeding in a gutter.
I ducked under his arm, and the .45 went off close to my head, and I smelled the stench of cordite, and then I brought the switch knife up and sank it into his gut. I twisted the knife and then slashed it across his middle and up and across the other way, and his face tightened in pain, and he screamed, “You punk bastard,” and I knew I was doing the right thing.
His eyes went blank then, and the killer light went out of them as he fell to the rug. I yanked the knife clear of his body, and there were tears in my eyes and. I couldn’t see too well, but I went to where Nick Trenton lay unconscious, and I kicked him in the head to make sure, and then lugged him out from behind the desk.
I called Hannigan then.
When he got there, my eyes were dry.
The bonds were in my jacket pocket, and my knife was in Nick Trenton’s fist.
“I figure they got into a fight over the broad,” I said.
“This is the way you found them, huh, Danny?”
“Yes.”
“I’m... I’m sorry about your son, Danny. I...”
“Skip it, Hannigan.”
“Sure.”
Hannigan stooped down near Nick and said, “He’s going to be mighty surprised when he wakes up. This is the end of him, you know.”
“I know.”
Hannigan looked at the blood-smeared knife in Nick’s fist.
A look of recognition crossed his face, and then he lifted his head and stared at me for a few minutes, saying nothing.