“Never mind the details.” Carmody was having trouble controlling his voice. “What happened afterward?”
“They put her in a cab. She said she wanted to go to your hotel. She was kind of wild, still pretty drunk, too, I guess. She did some crazy talking.”
“What kind of crazy talking?”
“She said she was going to put Ackerman and Beaumonte in jail.” Fanzo smiled cautiously. “That kind of crazy talking.”
“Anything else?”
“That’s all the boys told me.”
“Where are the boys now?”
“I could get them here. But it would take a few hours.”
Carmody didn’t want to wait that long. Later, if this lever wasn’t strong enough, he could come back. Turning he started for the door, but Fanzo said, “Just a minute, Mike.”
Carmody looked around. Fanzo was on his feet, holding one hand against the angry red mark on his cheek. “You shouldn’t have hit me, Mike,” he said slowly. “We were friends, but you put an end to it. I’ll come after you some day. Sleep with that from now on, keed.”
Friends? Carmody thought. Yes, he had given Fanzo the right to call him friend. They advanced the same interests, took their crumbs from the same table. They were closer than most brothers. Closer than he had been with Eddie. Why had he let this happen? he wondered. Why had he tossed away the privilege of having Fanzo as an enemy?
Walking back across the room, Carmody slipped the revolver from his holster and hefted it in his big hand. “You won’t come after me, Fanzo,” he said. His voice was soft and the strange cold smile was on his lips. “Because if you do, I’ll feed you six inches of this barrel and then I’ll put a bullet through your head. So you aren’t coming after me, because you’re smart, Fanzo.”
Fanzo sat down slowly, his eyes dilating as he stared at the cold blue barrel of the revolver. Suddenly he felt cold and weak, as if he had just discovered that this grip on life was tentative and slippery. “No, I won’t come after you, keed,” he said, and wet his dry lips.
“That’s very smart,” Carmody said.
He left the room and went quickly down the stairs. A dozen heads turned as he stopped at the door of the smoky bar, a dozen pairs of eyes watched him alertly but cautiously. Everyone knew what had happened; the word had already come downstairs. A crooked cop had gone haywire and slugged Fanzo. But no one moved. The bartender discovered a spot on the bar that needed wiping, and someone whistled aimlessly into the silence. They all knew the legend of this particular cop and none of them was eager to add to its luster. For a moment Carmody let his cold eyes touch every face in the room, and then he walked through the bar and out to the sidewalk.
When the door swung shut a heavily built young man looked anxiously up toward Fanzo’s apartment. “We should have stopped him,” he said. “Fanzo won’t like it that we just let him walk out.”
The man beside him grinned. “Why didn’t you stop him, boy? You lived a pretty full life, I guess.”
9
Ackerman replaced the phone, checked his watch, and then walked slowly down the sunlit length of Beaumonte’s living room. There was an angry glint in his glassy black eyes, but his hard tanned face was expressionless. He glanced at a man who stood at the windows, and said, “Hymie, leave us alone for a few minutes. Go wash your hands or something.”
“Sure, boss,” Hymie Schmidt said. He was a slender, neatly dressed man with a pale narrow face and thinning brown hair. There was a nervous, charged quality about him, although his body was poised and deliberate in all its movements. The tension was in his dark eyes, which flicked nervously and restlessly from side to side as if constantly on the alert for trouble. “I’ll go wash my hands,” he said.
“And don’t call me boss,” Ackerman said shortly. “I’m Mr. Ackerman. Remember that.”
“Sure, Mr. Ackerman,” Hymie said. His dark eyes flicked angrily from side to side, but avoided Ackerman’s. He didn’t like this, but he kept his mouth shut. There was no percentage in being mad at Bill Ackerman.
“Come back if you hear the doorbell ring,” Ackerman said.
“Right, Mr. Ackerman.”
When he had gone Ackerman’s mouth tightened slowly into a flat ugly line. He looked down at Beaumonte, who was slumped on the sofa in a blue silk dressing gown, and said very quietly, “That was Fanzo on the wire. Carmody just left after slapping him around like a two-bit punk. He’s looking for Nancy.”
Beaumonte rubbed a hand wearily over his forehead. The lack of sleep showed in his face; his eyes were bloodshot and tired, and his flabby cheeks and jowls needed the attentions of his barber and masseur. “I’m sorry,” he said heavily. “I’m sorry, Bill.”
“That doesn’t do one damn bit of good,” Ackerman said coldly. “I thought you had more brains than to spout off to a dame. Can’t you impress them any other way?”
“I don’t ever remember telling her,” Beaumonte said, still rubbing his face wearily. “I must have been drunk.”
Ackerman swore in disgust. “We’ve got enough trouble in town without worrying about where she is and who she’s talking to,” he said.
“We’ll find her,” Beaumonte said. “We got a dozen guys on her trail.”
“And how about Carmody? Anybody watching him?”
Beaumonte nodded. “Sammy Ingersoll. But he hasn’t got on him yet. Right now he’s downstairs in the lobby. There’s a chance Mike will turn up here.”
“She’s our number one job,” Ackerman said. “I know she’s been to Carmody’s hotel. A cleaning woman remembered her. But the elevator men played dumb. Carmody’s trained them not to talk about his business. It’s an example you could damn well follow.”
A touch of color appeared in Beaumonte’s cheeks. He looked at Ackerman and said, “Let’s don’t get so mad that we forget business. You think Carmody believed you? About his brother, I mean.”
“I don’t know,” Ackerman said slowly. “He’s hard and he’s smart. I’ll never underestimate him again. That’s why I told him to look for Nancy. I figured he’d reason it this way: if Ackerman wants me to find her, he isn’t worried about her. So to hell with it.” Ackerman shrugged. “I thought he’d think it was just another job and ignore it. But he didn’t. He put aside looking for his brother’s killer to look for Nancy.”
“We’ll find her first,” Beaumonte said.
“We’d better. Remember that, Dan, we’d better.”
Beaumonte got slowly to his feet and smoothed the wrinkled front of his dressing gown. “Just one thing I want clear,” he said, meeting Ackerman’s eyes directly. “She’s not going to be hurt.”
Ackerman grinned contemptuously at him. “You threw her out, remember,” he said. “You gave her to Fanzo.”
“All right, I did it,” Beaumonte said, in a thick angry voice. “But I’m getting her back, understand? And in one piece.”
“All right,” Ackerman said easily. “That’s the last thing in the world I want to do, as a matter of fact; you and I are friends, Dan. When we find her I’ll send her on a vacation to Paris or Rio or Miami. Anywhere, as long as it is far away and she keeps her mouth shut.”
“We understand each other then,” Beaumonte said. “She’ll be sensible, I’ll guarantee that.”
Five minutes later the doorbell rang. Beaumonte started to answer it but Ackerman stopped him with a gesture. “Hold it,” he said quietly.