Heaven Ran Last

Chapter XIV

About five o’clock it started to rain. I went over and looked out the window. The rain would make it hard to see twenty feet, and this was Chicago rain, coming down straight and hard and bringing a misty fog that clouded up windows and put a blanket of steam over everything.

That would help.

I finished the drink I had and made another. I’d been drinking all afternoon but it wasn’t doing me much good. I was wound up tight and it was because I knew that Banghart’s men might recognize the blonde.

The cap wasn’t a very good idea. I picked it up and looked at it for a moment or so, then tossed it back on the bed. She might simply refuse to wear the damn thing.

She never wore hats, just little bows in her hair, and she liked to wear it shoulder length and fluffed out in a big yellow cloud. She was proud of her hair and she wouldn’t see any need to cover it, because she would be driving in a closed car.

I might talk her into wearing it, but there was no way I could be sure she wouldn’t take it off after she left the garage. If Banghart’s men spotted that blonde hair...

She was due at eight and I didn’t know how I’d get by until she arrived. Time was dragging by and the tight feeling inside me was getting worse every minute. I kept drinking and with the rain steaming past the windows and darkness starting to crowd into the room, nothing seemed very real.

I got through it somehow. At eight o’clock she knocked on the door. Then I let her in and saw what she was wearing I almost went weak with relief. She had on a raincoat with one of those hoods that attach to the collar and it covered up everything but her face. At twenty feet, unless you noticed her legs, you couldn’t tell whether she was a man or woman.

And once she was sitting in the car, I knew no one would notice her legs.

She was smiling. “How do you like this? I look just like an Eskimo, don’t I?”

“It’s perfect, honey.”

She came into the room and untied the draw strings that pulled the hood tight under her chin. She threw it back and her fluffed out, long and blonde and shiny.

“I know I look terrible,” she said. “I washed my hair this afternoon and it’s just a mess now. Can I go into the bathroom and fix myself up a little?”

She went in and closed the door after her, and I picked up the checkered cap from the bed and put it back in the drawer. I wouldn’t need that now.

The hood was perfect. With that over her hair and the windows of the car rolled up there was no chance of Banghart’s men spotting her for a girl.

When she came out she had the raincoat over her arm and I took it from her and hung it in the closet. I came back and sat down in the big chair and she sat on the arm and ran her fingers through my hair. She looked cute and young that night, with a white wool sweater that fitted her close and a dark skirt with a lot of pleats across the front. She put her arms around me then and hugged me tightly.

“Gosh, I love you,” she said, and laughed a little.

Her body was soft and slight and she had a clean sweet smell about her like a baby. I felt something crawling in my throat. I tried to push the thoughts out of my head.

“We need a drink,” I said, and got up quickly.

She looked hurt but she took it all right and I made two drinks. Mine was stiff and I needed it bad. After that I asked her about dinner. She decided what she wanted and I phoned room service and gave the order.

She said then, “Johnny, how am I going to recognize this friend of yours at the airport? Does he know I’m going to pick him up?”

“Sure. I called him long distance after I talked to you this afternoon.”

“What’s the best way to go out there?”

My throat felt dry and I took a long swallow from my drink. “Take Archer avenue. Go out Clark Street and you’ll hit Archer about twenty hundred south. It angles out southwest, you know. It’s the best route.”

“All right. Will we have to go out with this friend of yours tonight?”

“Not if you don’t want to.”

“I don’t really care, but I’d rather be with you alone.”

“That’s the way it will be then, honey.”

I couldn’t look at her any more. I made another drink and I kept my eyes on the drink, or the floor, or the window, or any damn place but her soft little face and long shining hair.

The food came up then but I couldn’t eat. She was hungry and kept telling me how good everything was, but the first mouthful I took almost gagged me. I drank some coffee, while she finished her dinner.

When she was through she said, “What time do I have to leave?”

“About ten.”

“It’s only nine now,” she said, with a little smile, and then she went over and stretched out on the bed. I sat beside her and held her hand. She was looking at me and she was still smiling and I knew what she wanted me to do, but I couldn’t. The thought of that made me feel like vomiting.

We talked for an hour. She was happy enough just doing anything I wanted, and all I could do now was talk and I did that to keep from thinking.

About ten minutes to ten I looked at my watch. That was a bad moment. I was tight and dry and there was something that seemed to be crawling in my throat.

She saw me look at my watch and she swung her legs off the side of the bed and stood up. “I’ll put on a new face and be ready in a minute.”

She went into the bathroom and I got her rain coat from the closet. I looked at the hood and it reminded me of pictures I’ve seen of the thing they wrap around corpses. A shroud I guess is what they call them.

When she came out I held the rain coat for her and when she buttoned it up the front, I said, “Better put the hood up. It’s still raining.”

“I won’t need it now,” she said. “I wore it coming down because I took the street car, but I won’t have to wear it driving, it musses my hair up anyway.”

She put her hand on the doorknob, but I took her by the shoulders and turned her around.

“Please wear it, honey. You look cute as hell in it.”

She smiled. “Do I? I never thought it made me look very good. Maybe I’ll put it on at the airport because I’ll probably have to get out and look for this friend of yours. What’s his name, anyway?”

“Jackson,” I said. “Eddie Jackson.”

I was tighter then a violin string, I turned her so she was facing me and started to pull the hood over her hair, but she backed away from me and seemed a little annoyed.

“Don’t, Johnny. I really don’t want to wear it. Does it make any difference?”

“I just want to see how you look in it again.”

“Oh, all right. You are silly tonight.”

She slipped the hood over her head and tucked a few strands of hair out of sight. Then she pulled the draw strings up tight under her chin and made a face at me.

“Satisfied?”

“You look wonderful.”

I took the drawstrings from her hands and pulled them up nice and snug. I tied a knot in them and leaned forward and kissed her, and while I was doing that I made another quick knot and pulled it tight. She didn’t realize what I was doing until I stopped kissing her. She began fumbling with the knot, but her hands were in an awkward position and it was in tight. She picked at it a moment before she said, “Now look what you’ve done with your fooling around!”

“Let me try,” I said. I took the strings and pretended to work at the knot but I pulled it as tight as I could, until I was sure she couldn’t untie it, and then I shook my head and said, “The strings must be wet or something, honey. Hell, wear it that way. You don’t know how cute you look.”

She fumbled with the knot again and I looked at my watch.

She made an exasperated little gesture and said, “Oh, all right, I’ll wear it this way. It’s late, isn’t it?”

“You’ve got enough time,” I said. “I’ll take you down to the car.”

The elevator went all the way down to the garage and I told the mechanic to get my car out. There was a ramp leading up from the garage to the street and we waited at the foot of the ramp.

The mechanic brought the car over and she climbed into the front seat. When she had closed the door and started the motor she looked up at me and smiled. “Your friend will probably think I’m bald headed because I’ve got this hood on.”

“Better roll the windows up,” I said.

“All right. What are we going to do tonight?”

“Anything you want.” My voice croaked in my ears. I wanted her to get out of there, so I couldn’t see her or hear her any more. I couldn’t stand looking at her, and watching her small white face.

“As long as your with me I don’t care,” she said. She pursed her lips in a little kiss and said, “I love you, Johnny.”

I tried to say something, but I couldn’t. The thing in my throat seemed to be strangling me and all I could do was look at her and know that I was going to be sick.

Maybe she didn’t expect me to say anything because she rolled the windows up and that made her face just a white blur inside the car. The mechanic pressed a button that opened the garage doors, then he walked outside in the rain and looked up and down the street. He waved to her to come ahead and she let out the clutch and went up the ramp. She turned right and rolled out of sight.

I walked up the ramp but I kept on one side where I couldn’t be seen from the street. The mechanic pressed the button again and as the doors started to close I saw the blue Nash go by. There were two men in front and one in back. The one in back was sitting forward on the edge of the seat.

I went up to my room as fast as I could. I locked the door and pulled down the shades and turned off the lights. I found the bottle in the dark and fell on the bed and stuck it into my mouth and let the whiskey pour straight into my throat.

I was trying to kill the thing that was there, the thing that was strangling me, and I wanted to burn every thought I’d ever had out of my head.

The stuff went down but it wouldn’t stay. I got to the bathroom just in time. Everything came up and it almost tore me to pieces. After a while I went back to bed. My heart was pumping heavily. What I thought about I’ll never know. Things were just flickering into my mind, little splintered thoughts that made me twist and moan and dig my fingers into my face.

A long time must have passed. I didn’t think about anything going wrong. That was funny. I knew it would work.

The room was quiet and dark but inside my mind there were noises and lights that seemed louder and brighter than anything in the world. I saw the shine of Alice’s eyes, and Harrigan’s tired, thin face and behind them stood Banghart, looking at me with his cold half-smile. Their voices seemed to be all around me, louder and louder, but they weren’t speaking words, and over them I could hear the blonde’s little giggle and underneath everything, swelling up and up, was the splintering chatter of machine guns.

I scrambled up from the bed and snapped on a light. The noises and faces faded away, and I put both hands tightly against my face and sat on the edge of the bed. Time must have passed.

When the phone rang I knew that it was all over. I picked it up and put it to my ear.

“Johnny? This is Harrigan.”

“Yeah?”

“Johnny, I got bad news for you. I hate to be the one to tell you, but — Your girl was killed about an hour ago. She was driving southwest on Archer Avenue in your car.”

I started to cry. I knew it was going to happen. I was the one who had made it happen but I started to cry.

He heard it, I guess, because he said, “I’m sorry as hell, Johnny. I was at the morgue when they brought her in. That’s why I called you. I... I want to talk to you about it.”

“All right. I’ll come down. Was it an accident?” I had to ask that question.

“No, it wasn’t Johnny. That’s why I want to see you. She was killed by some hoods. They let her have it with a machine gun just the other side of Springfield avenue. Can you get down right away?”

“I’ll be out,” I said.

I got up off the bed and I was shaking so I could hardly keep on my feet. For a moment I thought I would be sick again, but it passed, and I went in and got washed. When I dried my face and looked in the mirror I was clean. I hadn’t expected to look clean.