I put my arm around Julie’s thin shoulders and put my head against hers. “Can you look around the end of the booth and take a gander at the two men Reilly was talking about?”
Julie turned her head casually, looked around and then turned back to me. “I saw them,” she said.
“What do they look like?”
“They’re in their late twenties, maybe early thirties. One’s about five-ten, the other’s a little taller. Musclemen. They’re standing at the end of the bar near the door looking this way. They give me the shivers. Real bad vibes, if you dig what I mean!”
Reilly came back and slid into the booth again. He said quietly, “It’s taken care of, Nick. As soon as the action begins, get the hell out of here.”
He passed me a small cardboard box. “Thirty-eights,” he said. “A favor from a friend of mine.”
The bartender went over to a group of three men talking together at the middle of the bar. They looked like regular customers. Work shirts and high-laced work boots. He spoke briefly to them. They looked quickly at the two newcomers and nodded. The bartender moved off.
I put the cartridges in my pocket along with the .38 revolver. This was no place to load it.
“Give the man my thanks, John.”
“Just buy me another bottle,” Reilly said sourly. He touched his split cheek gingerly. “How many do you owe me now?” That was the thing about Reilly. He always talked about buying the bottle, but he never drank anything harder than beer.
I never got a chance to answer. Halfway down the bar one of the three drinkers — a short, square-set middle-aged man — pushed aside his beer glass and strode pugnaciously toward the two men at the end of the bar.
“What’d you say about this place?” he demanded in a loud voice. “If you don’t like it here, get the hell out!”
The two men straightened up. One said in surprise, “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I heard you! You come into a place like this and make remarks about it! If it ain’t good enough for you, then get the hell out!”
“Look,” said the other placatingly, “whatever we were talking about, it wasn’t that.”
“You’re calling me a liar?”
“For Christ’s sake—”
I heard the crash of a beer bottle being smashed against the bar and the sudden shout, “Duck, Charlie!”
Reilly leaned forward. “Now, Nick! On your way!”
Julie and I scooted out of the booth and made a run for the kitchen. Behind us there was the crash of a table being overturned and more shouting. As we went through the swinging door to the kitchen, I took a quick look behind me. The short middle-aged man had been joined by his two drinking friends. Those three and the two on my tail were throwing punches at each other.
Someone shouted, “They’re getting away, Charlie!”
Charlie tried to break free of the fight. He made it to the end of the bar. The barman rapped him with a sawed-off billiard cue and he went down.
Then the swinging door slammed behind us, and Julie and I were racing through the kitchen. The door at the back of the steamy white-tiled room opened onto a hallway barely illuminated by a twenty-five watt bulb hanging naked on the end of a black electrical cord. We ran up the flight of stairs to the first landing. To our left, at the far end of the corridor, I made out a grime-covered window. We ran toward it. Like the rest of the building, the window was warped and dirty. Julie pushed fruitlessly at the frame.
“Stand back!”
I lifted my right leg and kicked out the glass. Two more kicks cleared out the broken shards still remaining in the woodwork. “Now!”
Julie clambered out. I followed right behind her. The fire escape was rusty and soot-covered. Below was an alley. I heard a shout come from the street end.
“I’ll go first,” I said to Julie. “We don’t know what’s up there.”
As quietly as we could, we mounted the metal rungs. The shouting grew louder.
Black against black, the dark shadows of the fire escape melted into the soot-blackened bricks of the building. As long as we were on it, we couldn’t be seen from below.
Three stories down, the kitchen door burst open. One of the men who’d come into the bar after us ran out into the alley. In the spill of light from the open door I could see him clearly as he peered both ways.
He shouted, “Did they come your way?”
Someone yelled back at him, “Try the fire escape!”
I heard the screech of rusting metal as he leaped up and caught the bottom rungs of the vertical ladder at the lowest stage of the fire escape. It descended protestingly under his weight.
I urged Julie on. We were now on the fifth landing and that was it. The roof was in front of us. I lifted Julie over the edge onto the asphalt-tarred surface. Pausing to catch my breath, I looked around. In the starlight I could make out a cluster of half a dozen vents and chimneys from the building’s heating system.
“Over there!” I pointed them out to Julie. “Wait for me over there!”
Julie picked her way across the rooftop. The ledge across the edge of the roof was about two and a half feet high, with a stone coping topping the bricks of the building. I ducked down behind the ledge and waited. He was in a hurry — and he was careless. As he came scrambling over the top of the ledge, I straightened up and hit him along the jaw with a sidearm swing, my two fists clenched together. It was like pole-axing a steer.
I ran toward Julie.
“Let’s go,” I panted.
Together we stumbled our way across the rooftops toward the end of the row of adjoining buildings. Every forty feet or so, we crossed from one roof to another, scrambling across the low partitions. We made it to the far end. Cautiously I peered over the edge.
Down on the street below, silhouetted by the lamplight, a man waited by the alley entrance.
Julie touched me on the arm. “How are we going to get by him?”
I looked around. In the middle of the roof of the building was a shed-like structure. I knew that the door inset into it had to lead to a stairwell.
Crossing to it, I pushed against the door with my shoulder. It didn’t budge. I smashed against it. It gave way slightly. I slammed full force into the door and the lock gave way.
“Can you see?” I asked Julie.
“Barely.”
“Then follow me.”
Step by step, putting our feet down on the inner edge of the steps to keep them from creaking, we descended four flights of stairs. I stopped. Julie leaned against my back. “What’s the matter?” she whispered.
“I think it’s time I loaded Reilly’s gun,” I told her.
It took me only a moment to break open the cardboard box and push six bullets into the chambers. The rest of the cartridges I dumped into my pocket. I started down the steps again. In a moment we were at the foot of the stairs, around the turn from the front door. I held Julie back.
“Stay here out of sight until it’s quiet. Don’t come after me. Just get to your car and get the hell out of the neighborhood! Got it?”
Julie didn’t try to argue with me.
I left her standing there, hidden by the bend of the stairs, and made my way to the front of the corridor. There was a door leading to a pocket-sized vestibule. The upper half of the door was stained glass except for a small center panel of clear glass. The outside door, I could see, was solid oak. I wondered who was waiting beyond that door for me.
Well, I couldn’t wait forever. With Reilly’s gun in my right hand. T opened the inner vestibule door — and almost jumped ten feet! The vicious snarl scared the hell out of me because it was the last thing in the world I expected.
The cat was a big one. He was an old torn, scarred by years of alley fights, with one ear hanging down, almost severed by some rival who must have been as tough as he was. He crouched in the corner of the vestibule, spitting at me angrily, mad because he couldn’t get in or out. God knows how long he’d been waiting there.