She bared her teeth and made the munching louder, looking at him with eyes of hate. Still sitting on the cot, Mike said, “Get off her back, won’t you, Gino? It’s hot enough in here.”
Gino just looked at him. Mike was his big worry. Mike was twenty-one, a year older than Gino himself. Six months earlier Gino had had it out with him and carved him up a little. Even in the dim light the knife-scar showed, livid under his right ribs. Gino could have taken Dora away from him then, but he hadn’t wanted any of Mike’s castoffs.
Mike was the soft spot. While it was Gino who had killed Mr. Fellowes, it was Mike who had fired the four other bullets into an already dying body. The murder had been necessary, once Fellowes spotted Dora. Gino had done it, if not calmly, at least efficiently, as he did whatever had to be done. There was no call for Mike to go berserk, even if the bullets from two guns in the body must be causing a lot of head-scratching among the cops. That part hadn’t come over the air as yet.
Dora belched and threw the last bitten-off radish-top on the floor. She said, “These things always give me a bellyache,” rubbed her flat tummy above the waistband of her panties and sank back on the cot beside Mike.
Gino wondered how long they were going to have to stay in the hideout, if they could stick it out a bit longer without exploding. It was important they show themselves, a while longer, in their regular haunts, so their absence would not make them a magnet for police attention.
Gino wasn’t worried about the police. Not in this city, this beautifully policed city where big-time crime had not been known for years, this city that was known from Coast to Coast as a “safe” spot for important crime figures. That was the deal — in return for a clean community, the syndicate got a sanctuary. The City was full of criminals, but its crime record was a shining example to other towns of similar population.
What held the four of them to this tawdry tenement hideout was the dough — the thirty-two grand piled in neat stacks on the table against the wall. They didn’t dare leave it alone. Worse, they didn’t dare leave any of the others alone with it. They were stuck.
When they did go out, they always split up by twos — and always so Mike and Dora were not together. It was a laugh. They might as well all have been stuck in the same bathroom. The same dirty, hot, stinking bathroom. Nobody dared unlock the door.
There was a break in the program. An announcer came on with a special news bulletin. He said, “City Police have just reported the finding of the maroon convertible sought over five states in the Fellowes killing. It was located on a side road of Highway 1145, where it had been abandoned by the men seen leaving the scene of the crime. A new alarm has been broadcast over a nine-state area.”
Mike rubbed his red hair and said, “Jeest! How do you like that? Maybe this will make the big brass pay attention.”
“Yeah,” said Arne, flicking a fly off his damp chest.
“Don’t get delusions of grandeur, Mike,” said Dora. “We haven’t spent any of the loot yet.”
“On the nose, chick.” Gino permitted approval in his voice. He looked at his wristwatch, with the flexible gold band that was turning green in the heat. He said, “Four o’clock. Mike, you and Arne take a turn out. And Mike — don’t talk. Listen.”
Mike stood up and yawned and reached for his trousers. He said, with mild resentment, “Why pick on me? Arne’s going too, ain’t he?”
“Right,” said Gino. “But when did Arne ever open his mouth?”
Mike was amused. He said, “You got something there, kid. Come on, Arne.” He gave Dora a poke in her bare midriff, added, “Keep it under control, honey.”
“Bring back some beer,” said Gino. “And pay for it.”
“Ha, ha!” said Mike, closing the door behind him.
3
Dora sat down in a chair, facing the back and straddling it, toward Gino. She said, “Give me a cigarette,” and brushed away the fly, which had transferred its attentions to her from the departed Arne. Gino gave her a limp smoke, even lit it for her.
Dora pushed back her hair again and looked at him thoughtfully and said, “How long is this going to last, Gino?”
He thought it over and shrugged and said, “A few days more — a week, maybe. Why? Piling up on you?”
“Maybe a little,” she said. “Mike’s such a jerk.”
Gino looked at her, reading her as he’d had to learn to read people since he was five years old. He said, “Like loves like.”
For a moment, he thought she was going to spring over the back of the chair and stick the lighted cigarette in his face — or try to. Then her eyes fell away and she looked sulky and said, “Maybe that’s not entirely my fault.”
Gino kept on looking at her for a long, heavy moment. It occurred to him, not for the first time, that Dora was nice — physically at any rate. And she was smart. But he had no intention of breaking down at this late stage of the game.
He said, “Use that damn brain of yours, will you, chick? What busts up every big score, sooner or later? How many of the Brinks’ holdup mob ever got to enjoy that two million bucks?”
“I’ve heard that sermon before,” said Dora intensely. “You’ve got what it takes, Gino — you and me. Arne’s a zero, Mike’s a dope. You and me, Gino — together we could run up a real score.”
“Get smart, will you?” he said with a mixture of patience and irritation. “We duck out with the loot and what happens? Mike starts singing and we’re dead. Besides, I got ideas of my own.”
“How far do you think you’re going to get on eight gees?” The girl dripped scorn. “And who’s going to set up your next score if I’m not in the picture?”
“Eight gees can carry one guy a long way,” he said. “And who wants to go on making this kind of score? We were lucky this time — about five ways. It don’t figure to last.”
“So all right,” she retorted. “So we leave the creeps their cut and take off together. We still got sixteen instead of eight. And I don’t have to stay a baby sitter forever to set them up for you. I’m educated and I can look as good as I have to.”
He studied her and nodded and said, “Yeah, I guess maybe you can, chick. But why me? You know I won’t ever go for a girl who’s had Mike.”
“What do you want — some debutante?” she blazed at him. “You wouldn’t know how to pick up the right fork! Why you? Why not you? You’re not bad looking once a girl gets used to you. Maybe I go for you.”
Gino said, “You can turn that on and off like a faucet. For now, turn it off. Do I have to lean on you again?”
“Try it!” she said. “Just try it, you cheap punk.” She dropped her cigarette on the floor and crushed it under a shoe and went back to the cot and flung herself face down.
4
For the hundred and twenty-first time, Gino went over the Fellowes robbery, which had developed into murder and such an unexpected big take. Dora had set it up. Since she began going with Mike, she had learned to turn her career as a babysitter to profit. At one time or another, during her high-school years and since, Dora had baby-sat in just about all of the big houses on Hillside Boulevard and in the whole wealthy Woodvale district.
With the eye of a camera and the memory of a tape-recorder, she had, on deposit in her brain, exact floor and furniture plans of every house she had worked in. More important, she had trained herself to know what was valuable and what was not, to pick up odd bits of gossip as to which families kept cash on hand and which were going to be away on trips.