42 Days For Murder

Chapter Twenty-Three

THE shot from the front of the place, where Kirby was holding forth, started the thing off, and from there on things went like a flash of lightning. It came smashing out from the front room, sounding like a big gun, and it galvanized Rucci into action. His hand flashed into Macintosh’s sight and Macintosh shot him. All he’d been waiting for was the excuse. At the same time I saw this I jumped for the booth at my right and slammed the man there across the back of the head with my gun, just as he brought his own up over the edge of the table and in sight.

And then I twisted, so I could see what the three in the booth were doing.

It was plenty. One of them was already out of the booth with a gun in his hand. The second also had a gun but he was still sitting down and trying to get a good solid aim at Macintosh, who was standing in the door and swinging his own gun up. The third man was having trouble; he was sitting in such a way his gun was hanging in the clip and he was dragging gun and holster and all out from under his coat.

I took all the time I needed to make sure and let go at the second man of the three. He was all I could see, at the time, but during the second it took me to get him centered right and squeeze the trigger, I heard a little gun go off three times and a damned big one crash once. The little gun sounded like a kid’s cap pistol against the noise of the cannon. My own gun’s recoil threw my hand up but the second man of the three was out of the picture. I was sure of it. I’d seen his shoulders lined up against the front sight just as I shot and knew he was all through. I saw the one that had managed to get out of the booth down on the floor, saw Macintosh still standing in the doorway, and then shouted at the third man: “Drop it, you dope!”

He couldn’t have dropped it if he’d tried. The damned thing was still hung in the clip. But he quit trying to get it out and lifted both hands above his head. If he’d lifted them up any faster I think his hands would have kept on going up through the ceiling. He’d have thrown them right off his wrists.

I called over to Macintosh: “You all right?”

He called back: “See about Kirby.”

I remember the two old timers about then and looked at their booth and didn’t see them. Then I saw a grey head poke up from below the table and figured I’d been right in thinking they knew what was coming. I turned and started for the front room and right as I did Spanish hit me from the side and started climbing all over me and screaming:

“Shean! Shean! Are you hurt! Are you hurt!”

I said I wasn’t hurt and tried to tear her loose. I couldn’t, without clipping her in the chin doing it, so I started out in the front room with her draped around me like a shawl. I got through the door and got my first sight of the front room just as more action broke out. Kirby was standing right in front of the bar, with his back to it, and he had his gun out and lined on five men now, against the wall. Another was on the floor, rolling around as though he’d heard the call. One of Rucci’s pretty boy bar men had a bottle in his hand and was just getting ready to smack Kirby over the head with it and Kirby was beautifully unaware of what was coming.

I might have called out but I still had my gun in my hand and used it instead. I got my left arm around Spanish and held her tight for the second it took me to get set, then shot the bar man through the knee.

He went down and around in a spin. The heavy flat nosed bullet knocked the leg out from under him and threw him around the other, making it the center of his whirl. The back bar had a lower case, with a swell display of bottled goods, and his head went crashing through one of these windows at least eight feet back from where he’d been when I shot. And he’d made two complete circles before he hit.

Kirby had swung, to see what was behind him, and I said: “It’s okey back there.”

Then Macintosh’s friends piled in through the front door. Five of them. The first one held a sawed-off shotgun as though he wanted to use it, and the rest of them all had guns in their fists and the same idea in their minds.

I said to Spanish, who was now a dead weight on me: “For Christ’s sake, will you lay off me now? I’m not playing.”

She laid off. She let go all hold of me and slid down to the floor and I let her stay there, figuring she’d be out of the line of fire if anything more broke out. I went back in the back room and saw Macintosh still standing in the door and still holding his gun in sight. Just as I got there he called out to the room at large: “Everybody be quiet and nobody will be hurt. This is police.”

Macintosh’s five friends kept order and we went through the crowd. Fast. We got two more that Mac thought might be friendly with Rucci, and that made eight good ones altogether. The one I’d smacked across the back of the head was breathing as though he had asthma and that meant a good chance of a fractured skull. The one in the front room that Kirby had shot through the shoulder didn’t warrant a full count either, any more than the bartender I’d busted through the knee. The one I’d shot in the booth had died before his head had hit the table, and Macintosh had shot Rucci through the chin with the slug ranging out halfway down his back. Rucci had been looking up when he’d made his play but had still been crouched on hands and knees. The one that had shot three times at Macintosh and missed all three was just as dead. Mac had shot him through the side of the neck. So I said:

“Let’s call it nine and a half on the score and not figure the three stiffs. They’re out of the picture.”

Mac said: “That’s fair. How much time have we got?”

I looked and said: “Thirty minutes.”

Lester was in by that time. He said, in an awed voice: “My God! All this happened in ten minutes!”

I said: “It all happened in less than that many seconds after it started. We’ve just wasted the rest of the time in cleaning up.”

Macintosh said: “We’ve still got time,” and went over to the third of the three young fellows that had been in the booth. The only one left. The kid was standing against the wall with the other prisoners, and Heinie was watching them with the riot gun and a mean look. Just wishing for one of them to make a break. Mac reached out and took a hearty cuff at the kid’s face and said:

“Where’s Luigi Rucci? Quick now, punk.”

The kid stammered: “He’s... he’s with Crao... Crandall.”

Mac turned and looked at me and grinned and I said: “Be right with you. Can these boys of yours keep this crowd here for another hour? We don’t want this tipped.”

“They can keep ’em here all night,” he said, keeping the grin.

I said: “Fine,” and went back to see how Spanish was making out. I’d put her back in a booth, with Hazel to look after her.

She was feeling better. She had big black eyes and she stared up at me and said: “Honey, I thought they were going to kill you. I was sc-scared.”

I said: “It’s all over now. You stay here until the boys let you go and then go home. I’ll see you tomorrow, for sure.”

“Why can’t I go back with you?”

“I’ve still got some business.”

“Please, honey.”

The shooting had knocked hell out of my nerves but I hadn’t realized it until that minute. I snapped back at her: “Did you hear me tell you I had business? Now stay here like I tell you. Don’t give me these arguments all the time.”

She said, like a little girl: “Yes, honey.”

I said: “I’m sorry, babe. It’s just that I’m nervous. You stay here like a good girl.”

She said again: “Yes, hon’. I don’t mean to be a pest.”

I said to Mrs. Wendel: “But you, lady, you’re coming with me.”

She put her nose in the air and said: “I refuse. I will not speak to my husband under any circumstances. If you persist in annoying me I’ll be forced to ask Mr. Kirby to make you stop.”

“Ask him, why don’t you?”

Kirby was standing about ten feet away, talking to Macintosh. She called out: “Oh Mr. Kirby. Will you come here a moment?” He came over and she said: “This man insists on annoying me. He now wants me to go back to town with him.”

Kirby swung back to Macintosh and said over his shoulder: “Then I’d go if I was you. I don’t think he feels like fooling.”

Macintosh said: “You ready, Connell. We are.”

I said to Mrs. Wendel: “You’re holding up the parade. Let’s get going.”

She stood up, came over to me, and said: “Damn you, I’m not going.”

I took her by the arm and said: “Now be nice. I don’t want to get rough.”

She reached out for my eyes with the hand I wasn’t holding and I got my head away just in time to save the left one. As it was, I could feel her nails rip down my cheek. She panted out: “You can’t talk to me like that.”

Then Spanish took over. She’d managed to rip off one shoe, and she went in past me like a streak of light and started nailing away at Mrs. Wendel’s face with the high heel. She got home with it three times before I could catch her and before Kirby could grab Mrs. Wendel and get her away, and I said to Kirby: “Let’s go, for God’s sake.”

Spanish, when I left, was sitting in a booth with her head down on the table and crying as though her heart was breaking.

Just a bundle of nerves. Both of us.

We got to the hotel at ten minutes of twelve and I got out and said: “I’ll go up and get them.”

Macintosh said: “I’ve been thinking. It would make it better if he talked to Crandall without her being along...”

He jerked his head at Mrs. Wendel.

I said: “What are we going to do with her?”

He said: “Now look! Both Kirb and I know that building. Suppose he and Lester and I go up there now. We’ll stake out and be handy. We’ll take her with us. Then you come up with Wendel and Mard. How’s that?”

I said: “It’ll be swell, if you don’t leave me on any spot. That’s liable to be tough.”

“We’ll be there.”

I said okey and went inside. I stuffed fresh shells in my gun, going up on the elevator, and the boy gave it a goofy glance and said:

“Gee, mister, that’s a regular cannon, ain’t it?”

I said: “Why fool around and expect a boy to do a man’s work,” and started down the hall toward Wendel’s room.

And met him right at the door. He was coming out with his head turned back toward the room, and he was saying to Mard: “I certainly shall keep the appointment after I made it. I tell you Connell is crazy.”

I stuck my finger in his ribs and said: “BOO!” and back he went, caroming into Mard and almost knocking him down. He was shaking so he could barely stand. I said:

“That stubbornness of yours is going to get you in trouble, Mr. Wendel. Are you ready?”

He got himself together and said he was. I said: “Okey then, let’s start. We’ll go in my car.”

“Where... where is Mr. Macintosh?”

“He went home and went to bed. He decided the whole thing was a fake, right from the start. That I’m crazy, just like you thought.”

He said he’d known I was wrong and that he’d tried to tell me but that I wouldn’t listen. Then the door across the hall opened and Joey Free came out of it and saw us and said: “Hi, Shean! What’s going on?”

I said: “I’m crazy, that’s all. Wendel, here, is going up and talk settlement with Crandall. After all, Crandall got him out of jail after I put him in. Maybe Crandall is really okey, after all.”

Wendel said: “You have to expect him to do his best for a client. After all, he’s my wife’s lawyer, not mine. He’s bound to look after her interests.”

I said: “You bet. Even if he has to frame you with an assault charge against a minor to blackmail you into a settlement. He’s a fighter, that man.”

Wendel shut up and I could see Mard’s grin. Joey said:

“Should I come along? After all, I’m Tod’s friend.”

I said: “Sure, why not? You and Mard can go in your heap and Wendel and I will ride in mine.”

“Tod and I can ride together. We’ll meet you; we’ll just stop at the Rustic and have one drink.”

I said: “Tod’s going with me, because he’s late now. You follow us.”

I got Wendel by the elbow and started him out the door, which stopped the argument. He told me, all the way down in the elevator, and all the time it took for us to drive to Crandall’s office, just what a fool he’d been to try and fight the divorce. That if his wife didn’t think enough of him even to talk it over with him he was better off without her.

The talk didn’t fool either of us. He knew and I knew that he was as crazy about her as ever and that the only reason he was agreeing to a settlement was because she wanted it. I felt sorry for the poor duck... a man in love is always a pitiful thing.