I looked at her and grinned. “Not satisfied at all, kitten.”
Her smile came back fast. She reached over with her hand and pulled my head toward hers and suddenly there was a fire on my mouth that was alive and wet and a little shocking.
When she stopped it was too soon and she said, “I never kissed a hood before, either.” She touched my mouth with a finger. “Satisfied now?”
“No,” I said, and I grinned.
“You’re cool, big boy, real big and ugly and cool, man.”
“That’s not VP talk, sugar.”
“I thought maybe you’d understand it better,” she mocked.
“Talk punk language then,” I said.
For a moment she was serious. “You’re no punk. I’ve known punks before.”
“Oh?”
“I could get to like you, big man. But never a punk.”
The cab had stopped. I said, “We’re here.”
“Will I see you again?” Her eyes wanted me to say yes.
“If you say please.”
She smiled and touched my mouth with her finger again. “Please.”
“I’ll call you.”
“I’ll be waiting. Will you be long?”
“When I find a guy named Lodo.”
“Be careful.”
“Sure.”
She got out and walked away. Her legs were long and her hips wide and with each stride her thighs would play against the fabric of her dress and it was almost as if she had nothing on at all.
I had the cab take me back to DiNuccio’s. Art wasn’t there, but Joe told me he had called my place a couple times without any luck, then went out.
I grabbed a quick beer, waved to Joe and went out to the corner hoping to catch a crosstown cab.
That was when I knew I had picked up a tail.
He was a small guy in a plastic raincoat with a folded paper sticking up out of the pocket. He hadn’t been on the ball and when he first spotted me, his involuntary start tagged him. To make sure, I hesitated on the corner, then turned and walked west. He stayed with me, checking over his shoulder for a cab.
When one came, he caught it, rode to the corner and stopped. I knew he was waiting for me to get the next one and when I passed him he’d hang on. It would’ve been fun if I had more time. Instead, I turned, went back to the corner and picked up a hack just letting out a passenger. The Brooks Brothers Boys were determined to get their progress report the hard way.
The drizzle turned into a hard rain before I got to the apartment. The street was empty and even Pete-the-Dog was gone to hawk his papers around the bars. I paid off the driver, got my key out and ran for the entrance. I went inside, flipped the light on and knew I had it.
The two sitting there had their rods out smashing slugs over my head and swearing at the dive I had made to one side which put one guy in the way of the other. I rolled once behind a chair, kicked it at them and saw the top rip off it from a slug, then I had my own gun out and cocked and the chubby little guy in front caught a fat .45 dead in the chest. The other one ran for the door and I got him through both knees and he lay there screaming his lungs out until I cracked him across the mouth with the muzzle of the automatic.
He kept saying over and over again. “Marone, marone!”
Behind me the other one coughed once, then was still.
I said, “It doesn’t really hurt yet. Give it a couple hours.”
He pulled his hands away from his knees, looked at the blood and tried to reach for the rod he had dropped. I kicked it out of the way. His eyes were terrible things trying to kill me all by themselves.
I raised the .45 and pointed it at his gut. “Who sent you, bud?”
“Go...”
“Watch it. I’m no sweet law-abiding citizen. Knocking you off wouldn’t be a bit hard. I even got a license for my rod. Figure it out quick, buddy, because you haven’t got much time left at all.”
He looked at his hands again and gagged, then fell over on his side. “I need a doctor...”
“You’ll need an undertaker more.”
“Look...”
“Talk.” My hand started to go white around the butt.
“Ryan... it was orders... it was...” Somehow he knew it was coming. He threw one wild look around before the blast from the doorway caught him. I got out of the line before it could happen to me, then the lights went out and the door slammed shut.
I might have made it at that, but the dead guy in the doorway tripped me and I went down. When I threw the main fuse lever back in place and got outside, there was nobody on the street at all.
The shadows across the street moved a little bit and I went over. Razztazz, the crippled guy, was hunkered back in his basement doorway his shoulders twitching. I said, “You see him, Razz?”
“Went to the corner, Ryan. Soon’s you went in a car was standing by. Picked him up.”
“You make any of them?”
“One I knew.”
“Who?”
“Lardbucket Pearson, the fat guy.”
“How’d you know him? You can’t see faces from across here now.”
“Not by that. It was his big butt and the way he walked. Cop shot him in the behind once. He ain’t never walked right since.”
“I don’t know him, Razz.”
“Part of the Jersey crowd where I come from. Always was in the rackets around the docks.” He wiped his hand across his face. “They... still there?”
“Yeah. Dead.”
“Couldn’t hear anything from here at all. The fuzz coming along?”
“Let me work it out. Keep it quiet.”
“You know me, Ryan.”
I stuck a folded bill into his pocket and slapped his shoulder. He grinned and nodded and I went back into the rain.
Neither one of the punks had anything on them at all. No wallets, no labels, no papers of any kind. In their own way they were farsighted pros — but they’d finally walked into the inevitable occupational hazard.
I reloaded the .45, threw a handful of shells in my pocket and looked at them. Things were beginning to look up. It takes a while, but the pattern gets set and starts to look like something. When I had the idea rounded out, I flicked off the light and went out to the vestibule. The rain had made an effective muffler for the sound. There were no curious faces in the windows... no movement anywhere, and no sounds of sirens hanging in the air.
At the corner I hung back in the folds of darkness that draped the building there. Traffic was light, nothing more than a few occupied cabs moving with the lights. Nobody was on the sidewalks.
For five minutes I stayed there, watching, then across the street somebody hacked and vomited then painfully unfolded from being a doorway bundle to one of the bums you see around occasionally. He edged toward Second Ave., leaning against the building, then got on his own and wobbled off the curb and started across the street.
Down the block a car pulled away from the curb, flicked on its lights so the beams spotlighted the guy. Just as quickly it cut back to the curb and doused them.
They were waiting for me. Behind me on First would be others.
I was on a kill list now. Someplace along the line I had gotten big enough and important enough to be in somebody’s way. Someplace I did something, or I saw something, or I thought something. Someplace I had reached a conclusion that made me ready for the big bed.
Mamie Huggins never bothered to lock her basement entrance. I took a chance on not being seen and went back and down through her basement. There was one low fence to cross and I came out the alley between Benny’s grocery and the building they were tearing down.
When the block was empty, I crossed again and used the alley where Jamie Tohey kept his laundry pushcarts. I went all the way through, turned west when I reached the street and went back to Second again. Up near my own corner the car still waited. I grinned at it and walked south to Hymie’s drug store.