This time, their mother’s recital was briefer than usual. As she closed, she wrote, “We’re seeing so many wondrous places that Dad and I’ve dreamed about since we were first married, but sometimes I wonder if it’s worth taking six weeks out of our lives with you, when we have such little time to enjoy you before you grow up and are gone. Our hearts are with you every day, no matter where we go. We love you all so much, and being away seems to make the love a little more precious, until at times it hurts.”
When Patti finished, they sat quiet a long moment, deeply moved. Then Patti said briskly,“Let’s get dinner. They haven’t died, you know.”
Mike cleared his throat.“The minute they get back, I’m going to hit them up for a bicycle, before they forget how much they love me.”
Ingrid turned on him.“You’re horrible. Absolutely horrible. Isn’t he horrible, sis?”
11
Sammy left at seven to pick up the morning newspapers from the large stand at the corner of Ventura and Van Nuys. They bought the newspapers religiously. They remembered a friend, old Al Bricker, a smalltime gangster, who had been apprehended because he failed to read the night before that an informant had tipped off the police. Dan had said,“I read it someplace, knowledge is power, and that’s a truth if there ever was one. We’ll play it the way the big shot executives do. They read everything they can get their hands on about their competitors.”
To date, their reading had provided them with little knowledge. The police, and hence the newspapers, apparently knew nothing beyond the bare facts concerning the commission of the crime. Knowing this gave the two a sense of security and eased the tension.
This morning, however, when Sammy returned, he was chewing his gum hard, they way he did when he was shaken.“That dame up front,” he said, referring to the landlady. “She stopped me, and I know she’d been waiting for me to come along. I could tell ‘cause the door opened real quick-like. Not like when somebody’s going out.”
“Get to the point,” Dan snapped.
“Cripes, give me a chance. Well, she stopped me with a good morning, and I tried to hurry by but she asked me before I could, how was your wife. Getting better, I told her. She said she’d cooked a chicken and had some broth and would bring it in. I said she was on a diet. What kind of a diet,she asks me. Never heard tell, she says, of a bronchitis patient being on a diet. I said she’d gone into something worse, and she asked me what, and I said the prethers, and we had to be careful what we gave her.”
“What else?” Dan demanded impatiently.
“That was it. We got to move fast. We’ve got to get rid of the broad before that dame comes around.”
“I can’t understand it,” Dan said. “Something must’ve happened. She’s never shown any interest in us before.”
They had canvassed this entire area to find a landlady who looked as if she would mind her own business, and an apartment on an alley, so they could come and go without passing through a foyer. The day they rented the place she had been extremely impersonal, almost curt. She had let them know she would not disturb them if they left her alone. “The rent’s eighty-five a month furnished as is. If you wear out a broom, you buy another. I don’t want no tenants pestering me.”
They told her they were brothers, and then when they seized the bank teller they had a problem. Dan solved it by telling the landlady,“My wife and me, we’ve been having trouble. I figured when I moved in here we’d broken up for good but she shows up today and we got everything settled. I know you’ll want more money, now there’s three of us.”
“Ninety-five for three.”
“That sounds reasonable.” He added, “I want you to meet her soon as she feels like it. She’s got a bad spell of bronchitis and taken to bed but she’ll be up and about soon.”
The landlady had offered no comment. Her attitude was that if she never met his wife, that would be all right with her.
Now Sammy said,“I got a brain storm in the night.”
Dan showed no interest. He was pacing about, thinking. Sammy continued,“If we forced forty or fifty sleeping pills down her, it’d look like she conked off on her own.”
Dan’s look stopped him. “What’re we going to do, hang around while they pick up her body and find out who she is?”
“No, we’ll powder out.”
“And leave a trail a mile wide? The landlady’s seen us, and she’ll pick us out when the cops bring their little album around, and then they’ll plaster our pictures in the papers, and we won’t be able to stick our heads out the rest of our lives.”
Sammy squirmed. They both had records, and hence mug photographs on file. They had been caught within hours after their first job together, the heist of a Yuma , Arizona , bank. A clever attorney, though, had upset the witnesses to such an extent that the bank manager, who had been positive in his identification of them, had become confused. To their amazement, the jury acquitted them.
Dan continued,“What’re you trying to do, Sammy, make the ten-most-wanted list?”
They quieted at the sound of water running in the bathroom, and fell into their usual places in a couple of easy chairs with the newspaper divided between them.
A quarter hour later she emerged with heavy gray circles under lifeless eyes.
” ‘Bout time you were getting out here,” said Sammy, checking his watch. “What you trying to do? Starve us to death?”
She started for the kitchen. He was on his feet like a springing tiger, and grabbed her. “When I say something, you listen, you hear me?”
“I heard you. I didn’t think an answer was needed.”
Dan said,“Make it ham for me. I’m hungry enough to eat a bear.”
Sammy let her go.“Go on, you heard him. Get in there.” He cuffed her on the rear.
Controlling her anger, she asked calmly,“What do you want me to do? Blow up, so you can slap me around? Is that what you want? I’ve played ball, haven’t I?”
“Cut it, Sammy,” Dan said.
She continued, addressing herself to Dan,“My dad’s got a birthday today. He’s sixty-seven, and very sick. He hasn’t got much longer to live, and if he doesn’t hear from me, if he thinks I’m dead
what I’m getting at is, could you telephone him and say I’m all right’”
Dan put down the paper while Sammy watched for a cue.“Sweetheart, you know they’ve got a tap on your old dad’s phone, and the minute I call him, the cops pick me up. You wouldn’t want that to happen, would you, because you’d be all alone with Sammy.”
“Hey, Jenkins,” put in Sammy, “what about that?” He turned to Dan. “No, I don’t think so. I like ‘em hungry-looking. No hips, no ? “
“Okay, Sammy. Let her get breakfast.”
In the kitchen, she got the eggs, bacon, and ham from the refrigerator, and began the monotonous daily routine. In the beginning, when they had insisted she cook for them, she had balked, then realized she would anger them without accomplishing anything. It was then, that first night, that she decided she would never cross them. She would act submissive in the hope she might catch them off guard.