Anything But Saintly

Chapter 15

As I pushed open the car door to climb out, I got my first view of my kidnapper. He was a tall, bulky man of about forty with narrow eyes, a beak nose and a startlingly soft, rosebud mouth. He wore a wrinkled seersucker suit and a Panama hat. I had never seen him before, which rather surprised me. I thought I knew most everyone in town with any sort of underworld connections, at least by sight. If this was one of Artie Nowak’s hoods, he must have been a recent employee.

I was acutely conscious of the gun on my right hip, but it would have been suicide to attempt to draw it as I climbed from the car. The bulky man had backed off to leave a safe amount of room between us and he had a forty-five automatic centered on my stomach.

“Keep your hands in plain sight,” he instructed.

When I was out of the car and had pushed the door shut behind me, he said, “Now you can put your hands on top of your head.”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw two other men approaching from the direction of the overhead sliding door. I told myself that a second, more thorough shakedown was almost certain to be given me, and that if I was going to use my gun at all, now was the time to make the break.

A few months previously everyone on the St. Cecilia force from detective grade on up was put through the F.B.I. gun course. Among other things we were taught was that you can draw and outshoot a man who has you covered by falling sideways as you draw. The theory is that it takes a split second for him to react to the danger and press the trigger, and even if his reaction is fast, he will almost invariably fire without shifting the position of the gun, so that the shot will pass over your head.

Our F.B.I. instructor demonstrated this technique in the classroom by having one of the class members cover him with an unloaded gun. He suddenly fell sideways and drew his own gun, also unloaded. His gun clicked before the man covering him realized what had happened. However, the instructor happened to be the fastest draw in the F.B.I. Later, when he had each of us try our luck against him, we all managed to draw and squeeze the trigger before he did, but I got the uncomfortable feeling that he was co-operating in order to give us confidence, and in an actual situation every one of us would have ended up full of holes.

I tried to steel myself to test the technique now, but with the big bore of that automatic centered on me, I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it. Particularly since my momentary hesitation caused the man’s eyes to narrow warningly.

I put my hands on top of my head and leaned back against the left front car fender, hoping that with my gun pressed against the fender, it might again be overlooked.

The two men who had let us in now joined the group. One was a gaunt, narrow-shouldered man, also about forty, with a flat, somewhat stupid face. He wore unpressed slacks, a dirty cloth jacket and a holstered revolver on his right hip. There was something vaguely familiar about him, but I couldn’t quite place what. He looked a little worried.

The other man was built like a barrel, with wide shoulders, a huge chest and a magnificently bulging stomach. He had a round head with a bulbous, red-veined nose and black, ropelike eyebrows which went straight across his forehead without any division between them. This one I recognized. He was Whisky Joe Glapa, a professional strong-arm man who at some time or other had worked for practically every racketeer in town. I hadn’t known that he was currently one of Little Artie’s boys, if it was Little Artie who had arranged this deal.

Whisky Joe said, “He clean?”

The bulky man said, “I shook him down in the car, but I want to go over him again. Cover him.”

Whisky Joe drew a thirty-eight caliber revolver from beneath his arm and aimed it at me, standing to one side so that his partner wouldn’t be between us when he shook me down.

The bulky man thrust his automatic into a shoulder holster and went through the routine of patting me beneath the arms, then running his hands all the way down my body, including my legs to the knees.

I had very little hope of his missing my gun a second time, but he seemed to be a master of inefficiency. His fingers patted within a half inch of the hip holster, but he didn’t have enough sense to make me stand away from the fender so that he could get his hands around me. I have to concede that the spot where I carry my gun isn’t common, but I’m sure any cop would have found it on the first shakedown. This clown managed to miss it twice.

“Okay,” he said, backing up and drawing his gun again. “You can drop your arms, copper.”

I took my hands from the top of my head and let them drop to my sides.

The gaunt man wearing the holster said, “Copper? What kind of a deal you got me involved in, Ray?”

The bulky man said, “Why should you worry? You get five hundred bucks just for taking a walk. You better take off now, Veech. Stay away at least an hour.”

Veech is short for Vichek, which is Polish for Vincent. The name suddenly caused me to recognize the gaunt man.

“You’re Vichek Czekanski,” I said to him.

He looked at me in surprise. Still leaning against the fender, I crossed my feet and casually hooked thumbs in my belt. No one made any objection.

“I went to grammar school with your kid brother, Stash,” I said. “Don’t you remember me?”

He examined my face doubtfully. “That was eighteen, twenty years ago,” he said. “You would of been just a kid.”

“Uh-huh. Mateusz Rudowski.”

His surprise grew. “I’ll be damned. Little Matt Rudowski. I ain’t seen you since you was ten. How the devil you recognize me?”

It was because he wore the same stupid expression he had at twenty, but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. I said, “You haven’t changed much.”

“You sure have,” he said, looking me up and down. “You put on a lot of muscle.”

“I hate to break up this old home week,” the bulky man called Ray interrupted. “But we got work to do. Veech, take off.”

I was in no hurry. In order to delay things as long as possible, I said before Veech could answer, “Why are you wearing a gun right out in the open like that, Vichek?”

“I got a permit. I’m the night watchman here.”

I frowned at him. “You let jokers like these use your place as a slaughterhouse?”

“Ray’s my brother-in-law,” he said apologetically. Then he did a double take. “Slaughterhouse? What you got in mind to do, Ray?”

The bulky man said, “Keep him covered,” took Veech by the arm and hustled him toward a street door next to the big sliding door.

Whisky Joe Glapa kept both his gun and a watchful eye on me. I shifted the thumbs hooked in my belt slightly sideways.

At the door Vichek Czekanski was protesting, “This guy’s from my old neighborhood, Ray. What you planning to do?”

“Get out of here,” Ray said. Drawing open a bolt, he pushed the watchman outside. “And stay away a full hour.” Pulling shut the door again, he slammed home the bolt and strode back to us.

“Think you can trust him?” Whisky Joe asked in a worried tone. “Suppose he goes chicken and yells cop?”

“He won’t yell cop,” the bulky man assured him. “And he won’t talk later. If he gives me any argument, I’ll threaten to tell my sister I paid him five hundred bucks. That’ll clam him up. She lets him keep two dollars a week out of his salary. You bring all the necessary stuff?”

“Uh-huh,” Whisky Joe said. “A five-gallon bucket, fifty pounds of plaster of Paris — it’s over in the corner by the water spigot.”

“How about the boat?”

“It’s anchored right in front of the warehouse.”

“Then we might as well get it over with,” the bulky man said, and leveled his gun at me.

I was about to take the outside chance of testing the F.B.I. technique, when Whisky Joe deferred the necessity of it at that precise moment.

“Not here,” he said. “I got papers spread on the floor over in the corner. Follow me.”

Reholstering his gun, so that I was now covered only by one gun, he walked toward a rear corner of the room. The bulky man gestured with his automatic for me to follow.

Once we reached that far corner, I knew it would all be over. With Whisky Joe’s back to us, this was the last opportunity I was going to have. Despite the F.B.I. instructor’s exhibition, I knew I’d never be able to draw and outshoot my opponent unless I could somehow get my hand on my gun butt before he suspected my intention. In desperation I put on a rather silly act.

Straightening away from the fender, I touched a knuckle of my left hand to my nostrils, then looked down at it.

“That whack on the head started my nose bleeding,” I said.

The bulky man gave me a cold grin. “In a minute a little nosebleed won’t make no difference. It’ll be coming out several places.”

Unhurriedly I pushed back my coattail to reach in the direction of my hip pocket. I hoped he would think I was reaching for a handkerchief. Apparently he did, for though his expression indicated he didn’t like me making such motions without permission, it didn’t make him suspicious enough to fire.

My hand closed over my gun butt. I took a deep breath, wondering if it were going to be my last. Then I swept out the gun, pulling back the hammer as I drew. At the same time I threw myself downward and sidewise. I had my gun pointed at him and was squeezing the trigger as I fell. His automatic roared first, my gun a micro-second later.

It didn’t work, I thought with a vast sense of resentment at the F.B.I. I hit the floor vaguely puzzled that I hadn’t felt the impact of his bullet. Rolling, I bounced to my feet and swung to pump out another shot.

I relaxed my finger on the trigger in the nick of time. A second shot wasn’t necessary. The bulky man’s rosebud of a mouth was formed into a surprised pout and blood was gushing from the center of his chest. His gun muzzle drooped downward. He toppled forward slowly, like the last bowling pin of a sloppy but lucky strike.

I spun toward Whisky Joe, then relaxed again.

The F.B.I. technique had worked after all. The bulky man had fired before I had, but as our instructor had told us, he hadn’t shifted the position of his gun. The shot had passed over my head and had caught Whisky Joe Glapa squarely in the back. He lay face down, unmoving.