"This bird's no truck driver," said the man squatted near me. "All this stuff says he is, but 111 lay you odds he's not. You saw how he handled himself."
"Maybe the Mob sent him. That would be a laugh." The big man walked over to me and leaned down. He turned me over and rocked my face with slaps.
Gasping as though I was just regaining consciousness, I opened my eyes wide. I saw a face masked by a stocking, wide shoulders, a neck like a bull's. The hand that grasped my shirt front would have made two of mine and mine weren't small.
The stocking bit had puzzled me at first. Why did they conceal their features when Sheila obviously knew them well? Then I'd realized that they hadn't known who else they would encounter when they broke into the house. The masks were another precaution that labeled them as experts at their trade.
"How you feeling, stud?" the big man asked me.
My hair was damp with blood seeping from a cut near my ear and my head was throbbing with pain. When I spoke, my swelling lip made my voice sound as though I wore a boxer's mouthpiece. "I feel great."
The big man reached inside his coat, pulled his gun out of his belt, and rammed it against my Adam's apple, causing me to gasp. "I've got a crowded schedule and I can only spare you a minute. Are you a hit man? Did the Mob send you here with a contract on the blonde?"
Struggling to draw an even breath, I glanced toward Sheila, who was huddled in a chair, still nude but with the remains of a ripped sheet clutched to her, partly concealing her body. Her fragile face was pale, the dark eyes filled with fright. She was worried not only about herself but about me.
"Speak up or you've had it," Moose told me.
"Yes," I said hoarsely.
Moose nodded and released my shirt front, let me fall. "Hear that, Sheila? You're in trouble with the Mafia."
"You're the one who murdered Abruze."
"But they don't know that. They only know you were there and you didn't get killed, so you must have fingered him." Moose laughed loudly.
The third man appeared in the bedroom doorway. He was dressed like the others. "I pulled all the blinds and made a quick check of the house. The money doesn't seem to be here."
"If it is, she hid it well. Sheila's a bright girl. Aren't you, doll?"
"Too bright to cross you. I didn't steal the money. I've told you that."
"I left it with you. You were responsible for it."
"Moose, if I had it, I'd give it to you. Can't you see I'm scared to death?"
"You're scared, all right, but people will go through a lot for $200,000. Who knows that better than me?" He gestured to the man in the doorway. "Go down the road and get our car and bring it to the house. We may be here for most of the night, but Sheila is going to give us what we want."
"What if she doesn't talk?"
"Sid, I hate for a man to look on the dark side of things. We've spent months trailing the girl and now we've found her. What does it take to get you to realize that matters have taken a turn for the better?"
"Two hundred thousand bucks would help," Sid said.
"If she doesn't tell us, by God, we'll backtrack her through five states. We killed four men for that two hundred grand and it's ours."
Moose snatched the sheet away from the cowering girl. Then he grabbed her by the hair and yanked her out of the chair.
The last I saw of her, they were dragging her from the room.
Four
I heard Sheila cry out and then her voice choked off. They had her in the kitchen. I didn't know what they were doing to her, but I could imagine.
I had to find something to cut my bonds. I remembered the broken lamp that had fallen to the floor when I wrestled one of the killers against the bedside table. By rolling over, I could see under the bed to the other side. The shattered lamp still lay there. I rolled to the bed and under it. When I rolled out the other side, I was within reach of the lamp.
One piece of the lamp's base looked sharp enough to cut the sheets binding my hands. I got up on my rear and squirmed around and felt for the jagged hunk of glass. Since I couldn't see what I was doing, I'd probably slice up my hands, too, but that couldn't be helped.
I was sitting there sawing away when one of the men came back.
"Look at you," he said. It was Sid, the one Moose had sent after the car. "You stupid jerk. It would take you an hour to get loose that way."
I heard Sheila cry out again, pain and terror in her voice. I clenched my teeth and worked at my bonds with the piece of glass clutched in my bleeding fingers. As long as the man in the doorway didn't stop me, I'd keep trying to get free.
"The girl's telling you the truth. There's no sense in torturing her," I said.
"You don't understand Moose. He enjoys this kind of stuff. Even if he believed her, he'd probably do the same thing."
"He must have got himself a lot of kicks down in Florida, when you shot up Abruze's cottage."
"Yeah, the four of them were lying there dead and Moose grabbed the shotgun away from me and gave them another blast. Laughing all the time. He's one crazy bastard, that Moose." Sid said this in the tone of voice most people would use if they said a friend was the life of the party.
I sliced the flesh of a knuckle and winced. "Why did you give the money to the girl in the first place?"
"We had to stash it. We couldn't show up rich overnight, could we? For six months after those killings, any strange dollar that fell in the underworld was going to be reported to the men who run the Mob. You know that."
I had almost forgotten the lie I'd told Moose, that I was a professional hit man sent to take care of Sheila Brant. I said, "I was just carrying out a contract. I'm not in the Mafia."
"We broke two of the Mob's laws. We heisted some of their dough and we knocked off an honored capo. They've been looking for us harder than the cops have. For the girl, too. We thought we had the girl and the money stashed in a safe place, but she disappeared."
The conversation was giving me precious time and I tried to prolong it. "I'd like to know how you happened to find the girl. I thought I had the inside track there."
Sid walked over to me. Matter-of-factly he kicked me in the ribs. "Enough of the stalling. You aren't going to get loose, pal." He produced a revolver and fitted a silencer on it "Moose always gives me the jobs he isn't interested in. He gets the girl and I get you."
I realized that he had come to the room to kill me. Believing that I worked for the Mafia, they weren't going to leave me alive to tell my bosses what I'd learned. I squirmed across the floor toward the man with the gun, determined to go out resisting. He only backed away, scorning my futile efforts to reach him. I saw the barrel of the revolver rise and point at me like a cold and deadly eye. Falling on my side, I rolled toward the gunman, trying to knock him off balance. He backed up again, the revolver unwavering. Then he shot me.
I heard the pop of the silenced weapon and felt the bullet tear into my chest like a blazing-hot rivet. He shot me again. I felt a stab of pain when the second bullet hit my neck, but I seemed now to be a participant in a dream. The shot was like a bee sting, no more.
Lying on my side, my shirt blotted with blood, I watched Sid move in my direction, almost soundless on his sneakered feet. My vision was fuzzy. By the time he reached me, he appeared to be no more than a vague shape.
He put his foot against me and pushed me on my back. I gazed helplessly up at him. He pointed the revolver again. I thought he was going to administer the final coup, a bullet between the eyes, but he lowered the weapon. He had decided to let me bleed to death.
My eyes stared at the ceiling. I was paralyzed with weakness. Sid reached down and flipped open my jacket to look at the chest wound. He seemed satisfied. He went away.