“Okay,” Carlin said. “Then you know what she’s like. A babe like you think about all day and dream about all night, when you’re doing time. Like I said, I’d been out of Auburn six days, after doing three years. I walked into her apartment and there she was and I guess I went a little crazy.”
“A little crazy,” Velco said scornfully. “A little crazy! That girl, that beautiful girl, only got out of the hospital yesterday, and it’s four weeks since you snatched the stuff.”
Carlin lifted his thick shoulders in a shrug, and a faint reminiscent smile twisted his hard mouth. “She didn’t want to play,” he said softly. “She had on a negligee a guy could push through a keyhole with his thumb, and she must have taken a bath in perfume. I shoved her in the bathroom and when I told her I wanted more than the jewelry, she started to yell. So I clipped her. What else was there for me to do?”
Velco stood up, a big man, thick of waist and chest, with a belly that sagged over his fat thighs. “And your handkerchief came off while you were playing,” he said, moving towards the desk in the corner of the room. “The handkerchief you used for a mask fell off and Miss LaMotte got a good long look at your stupid puss. Guess what, punk?”
Carlin pulled a loose cigarette from the breast pocket of his shabby coat, lit it with steady hands. “Maybe you better tell me, Mr. Velco,” he said, his voice almost a whisper. “I never was good at guessing things. I never liked guessing games, either.”
“A smart piece of goods too, aren’t you?” Velco said. “A fresh punk as well as a creep. All right, Carlin, listen! This afternoon, LaMotte went down to police headquarters. She looked at the mugg books and identified your picture without half trying.”
Carlin let smoke dribble through his nose, and a muscle moved in his flat cheek over the red line of the scar. “I must be a pretty hot article by now,” he said, and the faint smile tugged at his lips again.
“Hot!” Velco said. “Like a homemade machine gun, you’re hot, Carlin. Your picture’ll be in every paper in town tomorrow. It’ll be in the News that’s on the street now.”
Carlin spat a shred of tobacco off his tongue and took another deep drag on his cigarette.
“I should’ve known you’d queer it,” Velco said. “I planned that heist so good I didn’t think even a moron could louse it up. I told you everything you had to know to pull it clean. I did everything but write out instructions.”
“Sure,” Carlin said. “My part was easy. You had the dirty end of it. You had to fence the stuff. You had to carry all that heavy jewelry clear across town in your Cadillac. Tough.”
Velco pulled open a drawer of the massive desk, reached inside and brought his hand out with an envelope pinched between thumb and forefinger. “I’m going to pay you, Carlin,” he said, and his wide mouth smiled. “I got a reputation for being a square guy, a reputation I built up for years. When I say I’ll pay, I’ll pay. Even to a five-and-dime chiseler like you. Your cut in the deal is two thousand bucks.”
Carlin’s lips twitched into a grin that was as mirthless as the smile on Velco’s face. “You said the stuff was worth a hundred and thirty grand. But I guess it was tough to fence, huh, Velco? And besides, what with all the heat I stirred up, I’m in a bad spot to argue, huh?”
“Listen to me,” Velco said. “I’ll tell you things you don’t know, five-and-dime. I could even pick up the phone and call the cops and turn you over. And suppose you told the law I was the top man in this deal? I’ll tell you what would happen, crumb. With the connections I got, the legitimate businesses I got, there isn’t a cop in town would believe you. There isn’t a cop, or a judge, or a jury would believe a man like me would as much as spit on a cheap hoodlum like you, not even for practice.”
The muscle moved again in Carlin’s cheek and his pale eyes darkened as though some muddy fluid had boiled up suddenly in their icy depths. But Carlin made no hostile move. He spread his hands out in a wide gesture of resignation, and sighed.
“Okay, Mr. Velco,” he said. “You’re the big wheel, the high shot, the guy with the weight. Me, I’m just a punk like you said. So pay me off, if you don’t mind. Pay me off and let me go.”
Velco slid a thumb under the flap of the envelope, his belly shaking with silent laughter. “I said I’d pay,” he told Carlin. “I said I’d pay, like I always pay. But did I say how? Did I say how?” From the envelope he took two new one-thousand-dollar bills and fanned them out upon the flat top of the desk.
Carlin stared at the money with his mouth open in astonishment, and Velco’s laughter rose to a rumbling roar that echoed through the room.
“And just how are you going to cash these, punk?” Velco asked. “Just where and how would a petty larceny bum like you bust a grand? Especially a guy with no connections in this town. Especially a guy that’s very hot in every inch of it.”
Carlin swept up the two thousand-dollar bills quickly and put them into a hip pocket, his face impassive, his eyelids lowered like white curtains over the dark fury of his eyes.
“So now, start marching, you punk,” Velco said. “Crawl out of town! And while you’re crawling, think about what it means to put your dirty hands on a girl like Eve LaMotte.”
“So that’s it,” Carlin said. “You’re just sore because you’d have liked to do the same. Only you haven’t got the guts.”
Velco slapped Carlin, hard.
Carlin was quick with his knife, whipping it out of the pocket in which he had tucked the money. But Velco was just as quick with his gun. The .38 came out of a pocket in the dressing gown, gripped in a big fist. Velco fired as the spring-blade of Carlin’s knife snicked out of the handle like a darting tongue and came up in a flashing arc that did not reach its mark.
The bullet tore into the muscles of Carlin’s chest where they curved out below his left armpit. It ripped through sinews and flesh and smashed into the bones of his upper arm. Carlin felt as if a sledge hammer had smashed his shoulder with one frightful, shuddering jolt of pain that turned half of his upper body to sheer ice.
Carlin reeled back, spun half way around, and the knife fell from his hand. He felt sudden illness claw at the pit of his stomach, and nausea rolled over him in a blinding yellow-green wave that had a hard core of sound — the sound of Paul Velco’s voice shouting through the fog in which Carlin reeled, waiting for a second bullet to cut him down.
“If you don’t want one in the head, get out!” Velco said. “Get going before I change my mind.”
There was a door at the end of the room, and Carlin found himself going through it as though by blind instinct, choking back the sour stuff that rose in his throat. Beyond the door, a banister curved sharply into a stair well that was like a deep pool of shadow, and Carlin flung himself toward it, going down with reckless speed, stumbling, falling, rising to reach a frantic hand for the street door of the house.
Outside, the rain fell and Carlin went down the street that was wet and dark and gleaming with misty lamplight, and the wind blew cool against his cheeks. He went at a staggering run, heedless of where he was going so long as his legs carried him away from the house. The rain soaked through his clothes and into his wound, and Carlin felt the first searing, stabbing pain of his torn flesh and bones as numbness gave way to agony.
II
Twenty minutes later, Joe Carlin pushed the ball of his thumb hard against the button beneath the grimy white card that read Arnold Burkman, Attorney at Law, and kept it there until he heard footsteps behind the door. After a while, a voice said, “Who is it?”