She’ll Hate Me Tomorrow

Chapter XIX

Ross’s first impulse was to drive to one of the night clubs in which Bix Lawson had an interest, park the corpse-laden car in front of it and walk away, leaving Lawson the problem of explaining the matter to the police. Two considerations changed his mind.

First, unless the bodies disappeared completely, he would have to dispose of his gun in order to avoid the possibility of a ballistics check tracing the deaths back to him. And he felt much the same way about guns as he did about bedroom slippers: he hated to break in new ones.

Second, while it might be an inconvenience to Lawson to have the dead men found in front of one of his clubs, at least the racketeer would be able to figure out what happened. Ross preferred to give him a mystery to worry about.

Sticking to back streets and alleys, he worked his way to the south edge of town, risked the expressway for two miles, got off it and onto a secondary road for another mile, and finally turned off onto a rutted dirt road which ran for only a hundred yards before ending at an abandoned quarry.

At one time trucks had backed up to the very edge of the quarry pit, but the dirt ramp was now so overgrown with weeds that Ross could get the car no nearer than twenty feet from it. A narrow path through the weeds had been beaten by youngsters who fished for carp in the so-called “bottomless” quarry pool, though. Ross took the path to the ledge overlooking the pool and looked down at the still water, a bare three feet below him.

The pit was square, about fifty feet across each way, and the water filling it from the subterranean spring which had ruined it for commercial purposes was popularly believed to be hundreds of feet deep. Actually, the gambler supposed, it was not more than fifty to seventy-five feet deep. Years back the State Conservation Service had stocked it with bass, but the careless dumping of extra live bait, most of it carp minnows, had eventually led to the breeding of so many carp that all more edible fish were crowded out. Young boys still fished it, for enormous carp scavenged the bottom and could be reached with a long enough line.

Returning to the car, Ross pulled out the body of the tall, bony man and dragged it to the ledge. He made a second trip to drag the body of the barrel-shaped man alongside the other. The third time he returned to the car, he brought back the two submachine guns.

Stooping over the taller man, he loosened his coat and belt, then shoved the barrel of one machine gun down past his belt into one trouser leg. Tightening the belt over it, he buttoned the coat over the stock. He repeated the operation with the barrel-shaped man, using the other machine gun as a weight.

As both machine guns were armed with heavy, round ammunition drums instead of merely clips, they had a lot of weight. They acted like anchors when the gambler rolled the bodies over the ledge, leaving no evidence except a few bubbles and a ripple of widening circles.

Thirty seconds after the bodies sank, the surface of the water was as smooth as ever.

Climbing back into the car, Ross headed back toward town.

It wasn’t until he reached the city limits that it occurred to him that Bix Lawson would have been unlikely to pass a death sentence against him without also including Sam Black. The racketeer would know the burly night club manager would come gunning for him the instant he learned Ross was dead, and that he could never be entirely safe as long as Black lived.

Pulling over to the curb before the first drugstore he saw, Ross went inside and phoned Black’s apartment from a booth. There was no answer.

On the off chance that Black might still be at the deserted club, he phoned there. Again there was no answer.

Glancing at his watch, he was surprised to see it was only a quarter of eight, just forty-five minutes since the machine-gunners had opened fire on him. In all probability Black was out somewhere for dinner.

He didn’t waste time attempting to locate Black by phoning the various restaurants where he might be. He took more direct action. Striding back to the car, he headed for Sam Black’s apartment at top speed.

Black lived at the Vista Arms, a three-story building on Vista Drive between Seventeenth and Eighteenth Streets. There were open car stalls for tenants in a long garage off the alley behind the place, Ross knew, and Black always entered by the back way when he put his car up for the night However, he usually parked his Cadillac in front when he intended using it again and entered the building by the main door. The probability was that both front and rear would be covered by Lawson’s men.

The assassins, if any, would be looking for a new Cadillac, he knew. Ross figured the three-year-old Buick his assailants had used — undoubtedly a stolen car heisted especially for the job — wouldn’t excite their suspicion. Therefore, when he reached Vista, he drove right past the Vista Arms.

He was relieved to see that no Cadillac was parked in front. The hair at the base of his neck prickled, though, when he also saw that the street lamp directly in front of the building was out. Another at the corner of Eighteenth, on the opposite side of the street, was out, too.

Swinging left at the corner of Eighteenth and Vista, he turned left again into the alley behind the building, noting as he did that the street lamp at the alley mouth was dark. Sam Black’s car stall was third from the end. Seeing it was empty, he drove by without slowing, turned right when he emerged from the alley, right again at the next corner onto the street a block south of Vista, and parked in front of the apartment house which had its back to the one where Black lived.

Entering the front door of the apartment building, he strode down a center hallway and let himself out the rear door. Like the building where Black lived, this one also had a long, shedlike garage divided into open stalls facing the alley, quietly but swiftly the gambler crossed the rear yard toward the garage.

Though the alley entrances to the car stalls were open, each had a door giving onto the rear yard. Approaching the closed door of the stall directly across the alley from the one Black used, he placed his ear against it and listened.

For a full minute he heard no sound, then there was a faint scraping noise as someone in the stall shifted the position of his feet. A voice murmured something too low for him to hear.

Drawing his gun, Ross closed his fingers over the doorknob and turned it very slowly. Luckily the latch was well oiled, for it made no sound. He eased the door open a bare crack and put his eye to it. He could see nothing because it was pitch black in the car stall, but again he heard the bored shuffling of feet.

Then there was the sound of a car engine and the alley suddenly glowed with the light from automobile headlamps.

“Maybe it’s him this time,” a low voice said.

From his visits to Sam Black’s place, Ross recalled there was a light switch to the left of the door. Hoping that this stall had one situated in the same place, he thrust the door wide open and reached his left hand in that direction. His fingers found the switch and flicked on an overhead light just as a Cadillac swung into the carport directly across the alley.

Two men armed with sawed-off shotguns stood with their backs to him. As they glanced over their shoulders in startled surprise, Ross snapped, “Hold it right there!”

After staring into the barrel of his leveled thirty-eight for a moment, both men let their shotguns fall to the floor and elevated their hands. Across the alley the headlights of the Cadillac went out, the engine died and a car door slammed.

Ross called, “Sam!”

Sam Black stepped from the carport and peered across at him. When he saw who had called, he crossed the alley, stared from Ross’ leveled gun to the two men with raised arms, then at the sawed-off shotguns lying on the floor.

“Well, well,” he said. “I know these guys. They work for Bix Lawson. A reception party for me, eh? I’m flattered.”

“Don’t be,” Ross said. “Bix sent submachine guns after me.” To the two gunmen he said, “Hands against the wall and feet back, gentlemen. You know the position.”

The two men obeyed. Ross, like Black, knew both of them by sight, though he couldn’t recall their names. Both were hatchet men for Bix Lawson, one a thin, pale-faced youth in his early twenties, the other a scarred veteran of many brass-knuckle and broken-bottle fights.

Ross shook down the youth while Black disarmed the older man. Both had carried pistols in addition to their sawed-off shotguns. Ross thrust the gun he had taken from the pale-faced youth into his own hip pocket and Black followed suit with the one he had recovered from the other man.

Ordering the men to face him, Ross said to the older one. “How many guns are out front, and where are they posted?”

The man merely gave him a surly stare. Then his expression changed from surliness to vacuity as the gambler casually smashed the barrel of his gun alongside his jaw with such force, the jaw visibly shifted sidewise and stayed in that contorted position. Sinking to his knees, the man pitched forward on his face and lay still.

“Now I’ll ask you,” Ross said to the pale youth.

“Just two,” the young man squeaked.

“Where?”

“I don’t know. Honest, I don’t. It was left to them to pick their spots.”

“Any other guns posted anywhere? In the back yard or inside the building, for instance?”

The youthful gunman gave his head a definite shake and said in a tone of eager co-operation, “There was just the four of us — two front and two back.”

“Turn around,” Ross ordered.

Apprehensively the gunman turned his back, attempting to keep one eye over his shoulder. The thirty-eight lashed out again, smashing down on top of his head. He swayed forward like a thin toppling tree and fell atop his prone partner, where he lay inert.

“Ouch!” Black said with involuntary sympathy. “I’ll bet that’ll hurt when he wakes up.”

“We didn’t have time to tie him up,” Ross said. “I have a date in less than an hour.” Slipping his gun back into its holster, he scooped up the two sawed-off shotguns and tossed one to Black. “Let’s go rabbit hunting.”

Catching the shotgun in midair, Black broke it to check the load, snapped it shut again and looked at his employer. “We shoot or take ‘em alive?” he inquired.

“Depends on what develops,” the gambler said indifferently. “You circle the left side of the building and I’ll take the right.”

He walked back to the rear wall to flip off the overhead light. As the stall was plunged into darkness, it occurred to him that if the tenant who parked his car there happened to drive in before the two gunmen recovered consciousness, he might run over them without seeing them.

The thought hardly bothered his conscience.

Together he and Black moved across the alley to the rear yard of the Vista Arms. There they separated, Black gliding away with surprising soundlessness for a man of his bulk, in the direction of the left side of the building. Ross moving the opposite way.

With the street lights in front not functioning, the whole neighborhood was nearly pitch black. Reaching the front corner of the building, Ross peered toward the main entrance. A light in the lobby cast a faint glow through the glass door, but it was only enough to illuminate a circle of about six feet in diameter immediately in front of the door.

It was enough to silhouette the figure of a man crouched in the shadow of a bush not six feet in front of Ross, however. He was on one knee, his back to the gambler, and a metallic glint came from the shotgun resting across the other knee.

Ross’ gaze swept the surrounding area for the other gunman, but except for the bush, there was no place of concealment this side of the lighted entrance. He was silently closing the distance between himself and the kneeling man when there was the distinct thud of metal against flesh from somewhere beyond the lighted doorway. Next he heard a yell of pain, then a second, more solid thud and the sound of a body flopping to the ground.

The man in the shadow of the bush started to come to his feet. Taking two rapid steps, Ross raised the shotgun he was carrying and brought the metal butt plate down on top of his head. Without a sound the man dropped and lay still.

“Sam!” the gambler called warily, then immediately faded around the corner of the building in case he had misinterpreted the sounds from beyond the main entrance and Black hadn’t been as successful with his quarry as Ross had.

“I got mine,” Black called back. “How about you?”