Murder For Love

Running from Legs by Ed McBain

Mahogany and brass.

Burnished and polished and gleaming under the green-shaded lights over the bar where men and women alike sat on padded stools and drank. Women, yes. In a saloon, yes. Sitting at the bar, and sitting in the black leather booths that lined the dimly lighted room. Women. Drinking alcohol. Discreetly, to be sure, for booze and speakeasies were against the law. Before Prohibition, you rarely saw a woman drinking in a saloon. Now you saw them in speakeasies all over the city. Where once there had been fifteen thousand bars, there were now thirty-two thousand speakeasies. The Prohibitionists hadn't expected these side effects of the Eighteenth Amendment.

The speakeasy was called the Brothers Three, named after Bruno Tataglia and his brothers Angelo and Mickey. It was located just off Third Avenue on 87th Street, in a part of the city named Yorkville after the Duke of York. We were here celebrating. My grandmother owned a chain of lingerie shops she called "Scanties," and today had been the grand opening of the third one. Her boyfriend Vinnie was with us, and so was Dominique Lefevre, who worked for her in the second of her shops, the one on Lexington Avenue. My parents would have been here, too, but they'd been killed in an automobile accident while I was overseas.

In the other room, the band was playing "Ja-Da," a tune from the war years. We were all drinking from coffee cups. In the coffee cups was something very brown and very vile tasting, but it was not coffee.

Dominique was smiling.

It occurred to me that perhaps she was smiling at me. Dominique was twenty-eight years old, a beautiful, dark-haired, dark-eyed woman, tall and slender and utterly desirable. A native of France, she had come to America as a widow shortly after the war ended; her husband had been killed three days before the guns went silent. One day, alone with her in my grandmother's shop-Dominique was folding silk panties, I was sitting on a stool in front of the counter, watching her-she told me she despaired of ever finding another man as wonderful as her husband had been. "I 'ave been spoil', n'est-ce pas?"'she said. I adored her French accent. I told her that I, too, had suffered losses in my life. And so, like cautious strangers fearful of allowing even our glances to meet, we'd skirted the possibilities inherent in our chance proximity. But now-her smile.

The Brothers Three was very/crowded tonight. Lots of smoke and laughter and the sound of a four-piece band coming from the other room. Piano, drums, alto saxophone, and trumpet. There was a dance floor in the other room. I wondered if I should ask Dominique to dance. I had never danced with her. I tried to remember when last I'd danced with anyone.

I'd been limping, yes. And a French girl whispered in my ear-this was after I'd got out of the hospital, it was shortly after the armistice was signed-a French girl whispered to me in Paris that she found a man with a slight limp very sexy. "Je trouve trés sèduisante," she said, "une claudication Légère." She had nice poitrines, but I'm not sure I believed her. I think she was just being kind to an American doughboy who'd got shot in the foot during the fighting around the Bois des Loges on a bad day in November. I found that somewhat humiliating, getting shot in the foot. It did not seem very heroic, getting shot in the foot. I no longer limped, but I still had the feeling that some people thought I'd shot myself in the goddamn foot. To get out of the 78th Division or something. As if such a thought had ever crossed my mind.

Dominique kept smiling at me.

Boozily.

I figured she'd had too much coffee.

She was wearing basic black tonight. A simple black satin, narrow in silhouette, bare of back, its neckline square and adorned with pearls, its waistline low, its hemline falling to midthigh where a three-inch expanse of white flesh separated the dress from the rolled tops of her blond silk stockings. She was smoking. As were Vinnie and my grandmother. Smoking had something to do with drinking. If you drank, you smoked. That seemed to be the way it worked.

Dominique kept drinking and smoking and smiling at me.

I smiled back.

My grandmother ordered another round.

She was drinking Manhattans. Dominique was drinking Martinis. Vinnie was drinking something called a Between the Sheets, which was one-third brandy, one-third Cointreau, one-third rum, and a dash of lemon juice. I was drinking a Bosom Caresser. These were all cocktails, an American word made popular when drinking became illegal. Cocktails.

In the other room, a double paradiddle and a solid bass-drum shot ended the song. There was a pattering of applause, a slight expectant pause, and then the alto saxophone soared into the opening riff of a slow, sad, and bluesy rendition of "Who's Sorry Now?"

"Richard?" Dominique said, and raised one eyebrow. "Aren't you going to ask me to dance?"

She was easily the most beautiful woman in the room. Eyes lined with black mascara, lips and cheeks painted the color of all those poppies I'd seen growing in fields across the length and breadth of France. Her dark hair bobbed in a shingle cut, the scent of mimosa wafting across the table. "Richard?" Her voice a caress.

Alto saxophone calling mournfully from the next room. Smoke swirling like fog coming in off the docks on the day we landed over there. We were back now because it was over over there. And I no longer limped. And Dominique was asking me to dance.

"Go dance with her," my grandmother said. "Yes, come," Dominique said, and put out her cigarette. Rising, she moved out of the booth past my grandmother, who rescued her Manhattan by holding it close to her protective bosom, and then winked at me as if to say "These are new times, Richie, we have the vote now, we can drink and we can smoke, anything goes nowadays, Richie. Go dance with Dominique."

Is what my grandmother's wink seemed to say.

I took Dominique's hand.

Together, hand in hand, we moved toward the other room.

"I love this song," Dominique said, and squeezed my hand.

There were round tables with white tablecloths in the other room, embracing a half-moon-shaped, highly polished, parquet dance floor. The lights were dimmer in this part of the club, perhaps because the fox-trot was a new dance that encouraged cheeks against cheeks and hands upon asses. A party of three-a handsome man in a dinner jacket and two women in gowns-sat at one of the tables with Bruno Tataglia. Bruno was leaning over the table, in obviously obsequious conversation with the good-looking man whose eyes kept checking out women on the dance floor even though there was one beautiful woman sitting on his left and another on his right. Both women were wearing white satin gowns and they both had purple hair. I had heard of women wearing orange, or red, or green, or even purple wigs when they went out on the town, but this was the first time I'd ever actually seen one.

Two, in fact.

I wondered how Dominique would look in a purple wig.

"Dominique?"

Bruno's voice.

He rose as we came abreast of the table, took her elbow, and said to the man in the dinner jacket, "Mr. Noland, I'd like you to meet the beauteous Dominique."

"Pleasure," Mr. Noland said.

Dominique nodded politely.

"And Richie here," Bruno said as an afterthought.

"Nice to meet you," I said.

Mr. Noland's eyes were on Dominique.

"Won't you join us?" he said.

"Thank you, but we're about to dance," Dominique said, and squeezed my hand again, and led me out onto the floor. I held her close. We began swaying in time to the music. The trumpet player was putting in a mute. The piano player eased him into his solo.

Liquid brass.

Dominique's left hand moved up to the back of my neck.

"You dance well," she said.

"Thank you."

"Does it ever ache you? Your foot?"

"When it rains," I said.

"Was it terrible, the war?" she asked.

"Yes," I said.

I did not much feel like talking about it. I gently steered her away from the ring of tables and back toward the bandstand, sweeping her gracefully past the table where Bruno was grinning oleaginously at Mr. Noland and his two blond bimbos. Mr. Noland's eyes met mine. A shiver ran up my spine. I had never seen eyes like that in my life. Not even on the battlefield. Not even on men eager to kill me. Dominique and I glided over the parquet floor. Drifting, drifting to the sound of the muted horn. There was a gentle tap on my shoulder. I turned.

Mr. Noland was standing slightly behind me and slightly to my right, his hand resting on my shoulder.

"I'm cutting in," he said.

And his hand tightened on my shoulder, and he moved me away from Dominique, my left hand still holding her right hand, and then stepped into the open circle his intrusion had created, looping his right arm around Dominique's waist and shouldering me out completely.

I moved clumsily off the dance floor and stood in the middle of the arch separating the two rooms, feeling somehow embarrassed and inadequate, watching helplessly as Mr. Noland pulled Dominique in close to him. At the table he'd just vacated, the two women were laughing it up with Bruno. I went through the arch and back into the lounge with its black leather booths and its black leather barstools. My grandmother raised her Manhattan to me in a toast. I nodded acknowledgment, and smiled, and walked toward where Mickey Tataglia was sitting at the bar, chatting up a redhead, who was wearing a windblown bob and a liquid green dress the color of her eyes. He had his hand on her silk-stockinged knee. She had in her hand, I swear to God, a long cigarette holder that made her look exactly like any of the Held flappers on the covers of Life. This was a night for firsts. I had never seen two women with purple wigs, and I had never seen a woman with a cigarette holder like this one. I had never danced with Dominique either; easy come, easy go.

As I took the stool on his left, Mickey was telling the redhead all about his war experiences. His brother Angelo was behind the bar, filling coffee cups with booze. I told him I wanted a Bosom Caresser.

"What's a Bosom Caresser?" he asked.

"I have no idea," I said. "Our waiter asked me if I wanted one, and I said yes, and he brought it to me."

"What's in it?"

"Mickey," I said, "what's in a Bosom Caresser?"

"Talk about fresh!" the redhead said, and rolled her eyes.

"Are you asking what I would put in a Bosom Caresser?" Mickey said. "If I were making such a drink?"

"Who is this person you're talking to?" the redhead said.

"A friend of mine," Mickey said. "This is Maxie," he said, and squeezed her knee.

"How do you do?" I said.

"This is Richie," he said.

"Familiar for Richard," I said.

"I'm familiar for Maxine," Maxie said.

In the other room, the band started playing "Mexicali Rose."

"If you want a Bosom Treasure, you got to tell me what's in it," Angelo said.

"Bosom Caresser," I said.

"Whatever," Angelo said. "I have to know the ingredients."

"Mother's milk, to begin with," Mickey said.

"You're as fresh as he is," Maxie scolded, rolling her eyes at me and playfully slapping Mickey's hand, which was working higher on her knee.

"Laced with gin and egg white," I said.

"Ick," Maxie said.

"And topped with a cherry," Mickey said.

"Double-ick," Maxie said.

"We don't have any mother's milk," Angelo said.

"Then I'll have a Rock V Rye," I said.

"I'll have another one of these, whatever it is," Mickey said.

"Ditto," Maxie said.

"Hold the fort," Mickey said, getting off his stool. "I have to visit the gents."

I watched him as he headed toward the men's room. He stopped at my grandmother's table, planted a noisy kiss on her cheek, and then moved on.

"Was he really a war hero?" Maxie asked me.

"Oh, sure," I said. "He was in the battle of-"

"Just keep your damn hands off me!" Dominique shouted from the dance floor.

I was off that stool as if I'd heard an incoming artillery shell whistling toward my head. Off that stool and running toward the silvered arch beyond which were the tables with their white tablecloths and the polished parquet dance floor, and Dominique in her short black dress, trying to free her right hand from-

"Let go of me!" she shouted.

"No."

A smile on Mr. Noland's face. His hand clutched around her narrow waist.

Maybe he didn't see her eyes. Maybe he was too busy getting a big charge out of this slender, gorgeous woman trying to extricate herself from his powerful grip.

"Damn you!" she said. "Let go or I'll…"

"Yes, baby, what is it you'll do?"

She didn't tell him what she'd do. She simply did it. She twisted her body to the left, her arm swinging all the way back and then forward again with all the power of her shoulder behind it. Her bunched left fist collided with Mr. Noland's right cheek, just below his eye, and he touched his eye, and looked at his fingertips as if expecting blood, and then very softly and menacingly said, "Now you get hurt, baby."

Some people never learn.

He had called her "baby" once, and that had been a bad mistake, so what he'd just done was call her "baby" again, which was an even bigger mistake. Dominique nodded curtly, the nod saying "Okay, fine," and then she went for his face with both hands, her nails raking bloody tracks from just under his eyes- which I think she'd been going for-all the way down to his jawline.

Mr. Noland punched her.

Hard.

I yelled the way I'd yelled going across the Marne.

I was on him in ten seconds flat, the time it took to race through that arch and charge across the dance floor, the time it took to clench my fists and hit him first with the left one and then with the right one, bam-bam, a one-two punch to the gut and the jaw that sent him staggering back from me. He rubbed his jaw in surprise. His hands came away with the blood from Dominique's fingernail-raking. He looked at the blood in surprise too. And then he looked at me in surprise, as if trying to figure out how some madman had got inside this civilized speakeasy. He didn't say a word. He merely looked surprised and sad and bloody, shaking his head as if wondering how the world had turned so rotten all at once. And then, abruptly, he stopped shaking his head and took a gun out of a holster under his dinner jacket.

Just like that.

Zip.

One minute, no gun. The next minute, a gun.

Dominique took off one of her high-heeled shoes.

As she raised her leg, Mr. Noland looked under her skirt at her underwear-black silk panties in my grandmother's "Sirocco" line, $4.98 over the counter in any of her shops. Mr. Noland then realized what Dominique was going to do with the shoe. What she was going to do was hit him on the side of the head with it. Which was possibly why he aimed the gun right at her heart.

I did the only thing I could do.

In reaction, Mr. Noland bellowed in rage and doubled over in pain, his hands clutching for his groin, his knees coming together as if he had to pee very badly, and then he fell to the floor and lay there writhing and moaning while everywhere about him were dancers all aghast. Bruno rushed to him at once and knelt beside him, his hands fluttering. "Oh, God, Mr. Noland," he said, "I'm so sorry, Mr. Noland," and Mr. Noland tried to say something but his face was very red and his eyes were bulging and all that came out was a sort of strangled sputter at which point one of the women with the purple hair came running over and said, "Legs? Shall I call a doctor?"

Which is when I grabbed Dominique's hand and began running.

"A bootlegger, a narcotics smuggler, a hijacker, and a trusted friend of an even bigger gangster named Little Augie Orgen, that's who Legs Diamond is."

All this from Mickey Tataglia, who hurried us through tunnels under the club, pressing buttons that opened doors into other tunnels lined with booze smuggled in from Canada.

"He also owns a second-floor speakeasy called the Hotsy Totsy Club on Broadway, between Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth streets, that's who Legs Diamond is. You did a stupid thing, both of you. Do you know who arranged the murder of Jack the Dropper?"

"Who is Jack the Dropper?" Dominique asked.

High heels clicking, long legs flashing through dusty underground tunnels lined with cases and cases of illegal booze. Mickey walked swiftly ahead of us, leading the way, brushing aside cobwebs that hung from rafters along which rats scampered.

"Jack the Dropper," he said impatiently. "Alias Kid Dropper, whose real name is Nathan Kaplan, who all three of him was shot dead by Louis Kushner in a trap the Diamonds set up."

"The Diamonds," I said.

"Legs Diamond," Mickey said. "Alias Jack Diamond, alias John Higgins, alias John Hart, whose real name is John Thomas Noland, who all five of him will not like getting kicked in the balls by a fucking dope who shot himself in the foot."

"Richard did not shoot himself in the foot," Dominique said heatedly.

"I'm sure the Diamonds will take that into consideration when he kills you both. Or if not him, then one of his apes. The Diamonds has a lot of such people on his payroll. I wish you both a lot of luck," he said, and pressed another button. A wall swung open. Beyond it was an alleyway.

"You're on 88th Street," Mickey said.

We stepped outside into a dusky evengloam.

Mickey hit the button again.

The door closed behind us.

We began running.

We got to Penn Station at 8:33 P.M., and learned that a train would be leaving for Chattanooga, Tennessee, in exactly seven minutes. It cost us an additional twelve dollars each for a sleeping compartment, but we figured it was worth it. We did not want to be sitting out in the open should any of Diamond's goons decide to check out the trains leaving the city. A sleeping compartment had windows with curtains and shades on them. A sleeping compartment had a door with a lock on it.

The train was the Crescent Limited, making stops in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Charlottesville, Spartan-burg, Greenville, and Atlanta, before its scheduled arrival in Chattanooga at 10:10 tomorrow night. We figured Chattanooga was far enough away. The total one-way fare came to $41.29 for each of us. The train was scheduled to leave at 8:40.

A black porter carried our bags into the compartment, told us he'd make up the berths for us whenever we liked, and then inquired as to whether we'd care for any kind of beverage before we retired.

The "any kind of beverage" sounded like a code, but I wanted to make certain.

"What kind of beverage did you have in mind?" I asked.

"Whatever sort of beverage might suit your fancy," he said.

"And what sort of beverage might that be?"

"Well, suh," he said, "we has coffee, tea, and milk…"

"Uh-huh."

"And a wide variety of soft drinks," he said, and winked so broadly that any Prohibition agent wandering past would have arrested him on the strength of the wink alone. Dominique immediately pulled back her skirt, took a silver flask from where it was tucked into her garter, and asked the porter to fill it with any kind of colorless soft drink, please. I took my flask from my hip pocket and told him I'd have the same. He knew we both wanted gin. Or its vague equivalent.

"That'll be twenty dollars each t'fill dese flasks here," he said.

"We'll need some setups too," I said, and took out my wallet and handed him three twenty-dollar bills. He left the compartment and returned some ten minutes later, carrying a tray on which were a siphon bottle of soda, two tall glasses, a bowl of chipped ice with a spoon in it, a lemon on a small dish, a paring knife, and ten dollars in change from the sixty I'd given him. He put the tray on the table between the two facing seats, removed the two filled flasks from the side pockets of his white jacket, put those on the table as well, asked if there was anything else we might be needing, and then told us again that he would make up the berths for us whenever we were of a mind to retire. Dominique said maybe he ought to make them up now. I looked at her.

"No?" she said.

"No, fine," I said.

"Shall I makes 'em up, den?" the porter asked.

"Please," Dominique said.

The porter grinned; I suspected he wanted to get the bed-making over with so he could get a good night's sleep himself. We went out into the corridor, leaving him to his work. Dominique looked at her watch.

I looked at my watch.

It was already ten minutes to nine.

"I'm very frightened," she said.

"So am I."

"You?" She waved this away with the back of her hand. "You have been in the war."

"Still," I said, and shrugged.

She did not know about wars.

Inside the compartment, the porter worked in silence.

"Why aren't we leaving yet?" Dominique asked. I looked at my watch again.

"There you go, suh," the porter said, stepping out into the corridor.

"Thank you," I said, and tipped him two dollars.

" 'Night, suh," he said, touching the peak of his hat, "ma'am, sleep well, the boths of you."

We went back into the compartment. He had left the folding table up because he knew we'd be drinking, but the seats on either side of the compartment were now made up as narrow beds with pillows and sheets and blankets. I closed and locked the door behind us.

"Did you lock it?" Dominique asked. She was already spooning ice into both glasses, her back to me.

"I locked it," I said.

"Tell me how much," she said, and began pouring from one of the flasks.

"That's enough," I said.

"I want a very strong one," she said, pouring heavily into the other glass.

"Shall I slice this lemon?"

"Please," she said, and sat on the bed on the forward side of the compartment.

I sat opposite her. She picked up the soda siphon, squirted some into each of the glasses. Her legs were slightly parted. Her skirt was riding high on her thighs. Rolled silk stockings. Garter on her right leg, where the flask had been. I halved the lemon, quartered it, squeezed some juice into her glass, dropped the crushed quarter-lemon into it. I raised my own glass.

"Pas de citron pour toi?" she asked.

"I don't like lemon."

"It will taste vile without lemon," she said.

"I don't want to spoil the flavor of premium gin," I said.

Dominique laughed.

"À votre santé," I said, and clinked my glass against hers. We both drank. It went down like molten fire. "Jesus!" I said. "Whoooo!" she said. "I think I'm going blind!" "That is not something to joke about." The train began huffing and puffing. "Are we leaving?" she asked. "Enfin,"I said.

"Enfin, d'accord," she said, and heaved a sigh of relief. The train began moving. I thought of the train that had taken us from Calais to the front. "Now we can relax," she said. I nodded.

"Do you think he'll send someone after us?" "Depends on how crazy he is." "I think he is very crazy." "So do I."

"Then he will send someone." "Maybe."

Dominique drew back the curtains on the outside window, lifted the shade. We were out of the tunnel now, already into the night. There were stars overhead. No moon.

"Best to just sip this stuff," I said. "Otherwise…"

"Ah, oui, bien sûr," she said.

We sipped at the gin. The train was moving along swiftly now, flashing southward into the night.

"So you learned some French over there," she said.

"A little."

"Well… à votre santé… enfin… quite a bit of French, no?"

"Only enough to get by on."

I was thinking of the German who had mistaken us for French troops and who'd pleaded with us in broken French to spare his life. I was thinking of his skull exploding when our patrol sergeant opened fire.

"This grows on you, doesn't it?" I said.

"Actually, I think it's very good," she said. "I think it may even be real gin."

"Maybe," I said dubiously.

She looked over her glass at me. "Maybe next time there's a war, you won't have to go," she said.

"Because I was wounded, do you mean?"

"Yes."

"Maybe."

The train raced through the night. The New Jersey countryside flashed by in the darkness. Telephone wires swooped and dipped between poles.

"They say there are thirty telephone poles to every mile," I said.

"Vmiment?"

"Well, that's what they say."

"Turn off the lights," she said. "It will look prettier outside."

I turned off the lights.

"And open the window, please. It will be cooler." I tried pulling up one of the windows, but it wouldn't budge. I finally got the other one up. Cool air rushed into the compartment. There was the smell of smoke from the engine up ahead, cinders and soot on the night.

"Ahhh, yes," she said, and sighed deeply. Outside, the world rushed past. We sat sipping the gin, watching the distant lights. "Do you think Mr. Diamonds will have us killed?" "Mr. Diamond," I said. "Singular. Legs Diamond." "I wonder why they call him Legs." ("I don't know."

She fell silent. Staring through the window. Face in profile. Touched only by starshine.

"I love the sound of the wheels," she said, and sighed again. "Trains are so sad."

I was thinking the very same thing.

"I'm getting sleepy, are you?" she asked.

"A little."

"I think I'll get ready for bed."

"I'll step outside," I said, and started to get up.

"No, stay," she said, and then, "It's dark."

She rose, reached up to the overhead rack, and took down her suitcase. She snapped open the locks, and lifted the lid. She reached behind her, then, and unbuttoned the buttons at the back of her dress and pulled the dress up over her head.

I turned away, toward the windows.

We were coming through a stretch of farmland, lights only in the far distance now, nothing close to the tracks. The single closed window reflected Dominique in black lingerie from my grandmother's "Flirty Flapper" line, rolled black seamed silk stockings, black lace-edged bra designed to flatten her breasts, black lace-edged tap pants.

The blackness of the night reflected her.

"Pour me some more gin, please," she said.

Softly.

I spooned ice into her glass, unscrewed the flask's top, poured gin over the ice. Silver spilled from silver onto silver. Behind me, there was the rustle of silk.

"A little lemon, please," she said.

In the reflecting window, she was naked now. Pale as starlight.

She took a nightgown out of the suitcase.

I squeezed another quarter-lemon, dropped it into the glass. I squirted soda into the glass. She dropped the nightgown over her head. It slid down past her breasts and hips and thighs. I turned to her, she turned to me. In the nightgown, she looked almost medieval. The gown was either silk or rayon, as white as snow, its yoke neck trimmed with white lace. My grandmother's "Sleeptite" line.

I handed Dominique her drink.

"Thank you," she said, and looked at my empty glass on the table. "None for you?" she asked. "I think I've had enough."

"Just a sip," she said. "To drink a toast. I can't drink a toast all alone."

I dropped some ice into my glass, poured a little gin over it.

She raised her glass.

"To now," she said.

"There's no such thing," I said.

"Tonight, then. There is surely tonight."

"Yes. I suppose."

"Will you drink to tonight, then?"

"To tonight," I said.

"And to us." I looked at her. "To us, Richard." "To us," I said. We drank.

"Doesn't this table move out of the way?" she asked. "I think it folds down," I said. "Can you fold it down?" "If you like."

"Well, I think it's in the way, don't you?" "I guess it is."

"Well, then, please fold it down, Richard." I moved everything from the table to the wide sill just inside the window. I got on my knees then, looked under the table, figured out how the hinge and clasp mechanism worked, and lowered the top.

"Voilà,!" Dominique said triumphantly.

I picked up my drink from the windowsill. We both sat, Dominique on one bed, I on the other, facing each other, our knees almost touching. Outside, the countryside rolled by, an occasional light splintering the dark.

"I wish we had music," she said. "We could dance again. There's enough room for dancing now, don't you think? With the table down?"

I looked at her skeptically; the space between the beds was perhaps three feet wide by six feet long.

"Without being interrupted this time," she said, and tossed her head and began swaying from side to side.

"I shouldn't have let him cut in," I said.

"Well, how could you have known?"

"I saw his eyes."

"Behind you? When he was cutting in?"

"Earlier. I should have known. Seeing those eyes."

"Dance with me now," she said, and held out her arms.

"We don't have music," I said.

She moved in close against me.

The soft silken feel of her.

"Ja-Da," she sang.

Slowly.

Very slowly.

"Ja-Da…"

Not at all in the proper tempo.

"Ja-Da, Ja-Da…

"Jing… jing… jing."

I thought at first…

"Ja-Da…"

What I thought…

"Ja-Da…"

Was that…

"Ja-Da, Ja-Da…"

Was that a fierce thrust of her crotch that accompanied each…

"Jing… jing… jing."

I was flamingly erect in the tick of an instant.

"Oh, mon Dieu" Dominique whispered.

Whispered those words in that rumbling sleeping compartment, on that train hurtling through the night, speeding us southward and away from all possible harm, lurching through the darkness, causing us to lose our balance so that we fell still locked in embrace onto the bed that was Dominique's, holding her tight in my arms, kissing her forehead and her cheeks and her nose and her lips and her neck and her shoulders and her breasts as she whispered over and over again, "Oh, mon Dieu, oh, mon Dieu, oh, mon Dieu."

We brought to the act of love a steamy clumsiness composed of legs and arms and hips and noses and chins in constant collision. The train, the track, seemed maliciously intent on hurling us out of bed and out of embrace. We jostled and jiggled on that thin mattress, juggling passion, sweating in each other's arms as we struggled to maintain purchase, "Ow!" she said as my elbow poked her in the ribs, "Sorry," I mumbled, and then "Ooops!" because I was sliding out of her. She adjusted her hips, lifting them, deeply enclosing me again but almost knocking me off her in the bargain because the train in that very instant decided to run over an imperfection on the track which together with the motion of her ascending hips sent me soaring ceilingward. The only thing that kept me in her and on her was the cunning interlocking design of our separate parts. We learned quickly enough.

Although, in retrospect, the train did all the work and we were merely willing accomplices.

Up and down the train went, rocketing through the night, in and out of tunnels the train went, racketing through the night, side to side the train rocked, rattling through the night, up and down, in and out, side to side, the train thrust against the night, tattering the darkness with a single searing eye, scattering all before it helter-skelter. Helpless in the grip of this relentless fucking machine, we screamed at last aloud and together, waking the hall porter in the corridor, who screamed himself as though he'd heard shrieks of bloody murder.

And then we lay enfolded in each other's arms and talked. We scarcely knew each other, except intimately, and had never really talked seriously. So now we talked about things that were enormously important to us. Like our favorite colors. Or our favorite times of the year. Or our favorite ice-cream flavors. Or our favorite songs and movies. Our dreams. Our ambitions.

I told her I loved her.

I told her I would do anything in the world for her.

"Would you kill someone for me?" she asked.

"Yes," I said at once.

She nodded.

"I knew you were watching me undress," she said. "I knew you were looking at my reflection in the window. I found that very exciting."

"So did I."

"And getting bounced all around while you were inside me, that was very exciting too."

"Yes."

"I wish you were inside me now," she said.

"Yes."

"Bouncing around inside me."

"Yes."

"That big thing inside me again," she said, and leaned over me and kissed me on the mouth.

Vinnie had bad news when I called home that Saturday. On Friday afternoon, while Dominique and I were on the train heading south, two men accosted my grandmother as she came out of her Fourteenth Street shop.

"In the car, Grandma," the skinny one said.

He was the one with the crazy eyes.

That's the way my grandmother later described him to Vinnie.

"He had crazy eyes," she said. "And a knife." The fat one was behind the wheel of the car. My grandmother described the car as a two-door blue Jewett coach. All three of them sat up front. The fat one driving, my grandmother in the middle, and the skinny one on her right. What the skinny one did, he put the knife under her chin and told her if You-Know-Who did not come back to face the music, the next time he would be looking in at her tonsils, did she catch his drift? My grandmother caught his drift, all right. They let her out of the car on Avenue B and East Fourth Street, right near the Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church. She ran in terror all the way home. Vinnie grabbed a baseball bat and went looking for Fat and Skinny in the streets. He could not find them, nor did he see a single Jewett coach anywhere in the entire 9th Precinct.

"So what do you think?" he asked me on the phone.

"I think I'll have to kill him," I said.

"Who?"

"Legs Diamond."

There was a long silence.

"Vinnie," I said, "did you hear me?"

"I heard you," he said. "I don't think that's such a good idea, Richie."

The wires between us crackled; we were a long way away from each other.

"Vinnie," I said, "I can't hide from this man forever." "He'll grow tired of hounding you," he said.

"No, I don't think so. He has a lot of people who can do the hounding for him. It's no trouble at all for him, really."

"Richie, listen to me."

"Yes, Vinnie, I'm listening."

"What do you want from life, Richie?"

"I want to marry Dominique," I said. "And I want to have children with her."

"Ah," he said.

"And I want to live in a house with a white picket fence around it."

"Yes," he said. "And that's why you mustn't kill this man."

"No," I said, "that's why I must kill this man. Because otherwise…"

"Richie, it's not easy to kill someone."

"I've seen a lot of people killing a lot of people, Vinnie. It looked easy to me."

"In a war, yes. But unless you're in a war, it's not so easy to kill someone. Have you ever killed anyone, Richie?"

"No."

"In a war, it's easy," he said. "Everyone is shooting at everyone else, so if your bullet doesn't happen to kill anyone, it doesn't matter. Someone else's bullet will. But killing somebody in a war isn't murder, Richie. That's the first thing a soldier learns: killing someone in a war isn't murder. Because when everyone is killing someone, then no one is killing anyone."

"Well…"

"Don't 'well' me, just listen to me. Killing Legs Diamond will be murder. Are you ready to do murder, Richie?"

"Yes," I said.

"Why?"

"Because I love Dominique. And if I don't kill him, he'll hurt her."

"Look… let me ask around, okay?" Vinnie said.

"Ask around?"

"Here and there. Meanwhile, don't do anything foolish." "Vinnie?" I said. "I know where he is. It's in all the newspapers."

I heard a sigh on the other end of the line. "He's in Troy, New York. They're putting him on trial for kidnapping some kid up there." "Richie…"

"I think I'd better go up to Troy, Vinnie." "No, Richie," he said. "Don't." There was another long silence on the line. "I didn't think it would end this way, Vinnie," I said. "It doesn't have to end this way." "I thought…" "What did you think, Richie?"

"I never thought it would get down to killing him. Running from him was one thing, but killing him…" "It doesn't have to get down to that," Vinnie said. "It does," I said. "It does."

Five hours and thirty-one minutes after the jury began deliberating the case, Legs Diamond was found innocent of all charges against him.

When he and his entourage came out of the courthouse that night, Dominique and I were waiting in a car parked across the street. We were both dressed identically. Long black men's overcoats, black gloves, pearl-gray fedoras. It was bitterly cold.

Diamond and his family got into a taxi he had hired to chauffeur him to and from the courthouse during the trial. The rest of his party got into cars behind him. In our own car, a maroon sedan, Dominique and I followed them into Albany and then to a speakeasy at 518 Broadway. We did not go into the club. We sat in the car and waited. We did not talk at all. It was even colder now. The windows became rimed with frost. I kept rubbing at the windshield with my gloved hand.

At a little after one in the morning, Diamond and his wife Alice came out of the club. Diamond was wearing a brown chinchilla coat and a brown fedora. Alice was wearing a dress, high-heeled shoes, no coat. The driver came out of the club a moment later. From where we were parked, we could not hear the conversation between Alice and Diamond, but as he walked with his driver toward where the taxi was parked, he yelled over his shoulder, "Stick around till I get back!" The driver got in behind the wheel. Diamond climbed into the backseat. Alice stood on the sidewalk a moment longer, plumes of vapor trailing from her mouth, and then went back into the club. We gave the taxi a reasonable lead and then pulled out after them.

The taxi took Diamond to a rooming house on the corner of Clinton Avenue and Tenbroeck Street. Diamond got out, said something to the driver, closed the door, and went into the building. We drove past, turned the corner, went completely around the block, and then parked halfway up the street. The cab was still parked right in front of the building. We could not have got by the driver without being seen.

Diamond came out at 4:30 A.M.

I nudged Dominique awake.

We began following the taxi again.

Ten days ago, a man and a woman named "Mr. and Mrs. Kelly" had rented three rooms in a rooming house on Dove Street -for themselves and their relatives, a sister-in-law and her ten-year-old son. I learned this from the owner of the rooming house, a woman named Laura Wood, who gave me the information after she identified some newspaper photographs I showed her. She seemed surprised that Mr. Kelly was in fact the big gangster Legs Diamond who was being tried "over in Troy." She told me he was a respectable gentleman, quiet and well behaved, and she had no real cause for complaint. I gave her fifty dollars and asked her not to mention that a reporter had been there.

The taxi took Diamond there now. Sixty-seven Dove Street.

Diamond got out of the taxi. It was a quarter to five in the morning. The taxi drove off. The street was silent. Not a light showed in the rooming house. He unlocked the front door with a key, and went inside. The door closed behind him. The street was silent again. We waited. On the second floor of the rooming house, a light came on.

"Do you think the wife is already here?" Dominique asked.

"He told her to stay at the club."

"What will you do if she's there with him?"

"I don't know," I said.

"You will have to kill her, too, no?"

"First let me get in the building, okay?"

"No, I want to know."

"What is it you want to know?"

"What you will do if she is there with him."

"I'll see."

"Well, I think you will have to kill her, no?" "Dominique, there is killing and there is killing." "Yes, I know that. But if you go in there, you must be prepared to do what must be done. Otherwise, his people will come after us again and again. You know that." "Yes. I know that." "We will have to keep running." "I know."

"So if the woman is there with him, you will have to kill her too. That is only logical, Richard. You cannot leave her alive to identify you." I nodded.

"If she is there, you must kill them both, it is as simple as that. If you love me."

"I do love you."

"And I love you," she said.

The light on the second floor went out.

"Bonne chance," she said, and kissed me on the mouth.

I left her sitting behind the wheel of the car, its engine running.

I tried the front door of the rooming house.

Locked.

I leaned hard on the door. The lock seemed almost ready to give. I backed away, lifted my left leg, and kicked at the door flat-footed, just above the knob. The lock snapped, the door sprang inward.

Silently, I climbed the steps to the second floor. Mrs. Wood had innocently told me that Diamond and his wife were staying in the room on the right of the stairway. "Such a quiet couple," she'd said. The steps creaked under me as I went up. A night-light was burning on the second floor. Almost too dim to see by. A shabby carpet underfoot. I turned to the right. The door to Diamond's room was at the end of the hall. I took a gun from each pocket of my overcoat. I had loaded both pistols with soft-nosed bullets. Dum-dums. If I was going to do this, it had to be done right.

I tried the doorknob.

The door was unlocked.

I eased it open.

The room was dark except for the faintest glow of daybreak beyond the drawn window shade. I could hear Diamond's shallow breathing across the room. A leather traveling bag was on the floor. His chinchilla coat lay beside it. So did his hat. His trousers were folded over the back of a chair. I went to the bed. I looked down at him. He was sleeping with his mouth open. He stank of booze. My hands were trembling.

My first bullet went into the wall.

The next one went into the floor.

I finally shot Diamond in the head three times.

I came tearing down the steps. The front door was still ajar. I ran out into a cold gray dawn. A man coming out of the building next door saw me racing across the street to where Dominique was standing outside the car on the passenger side, the engine idling, the exhaust throwing up gray clouds on the gray dawn.

"Was she there?" she asked. "No," I said. "Did you kill him?" "Yes." "Good."

Across the street the man was staring at us. We got into the car and began driving north. I was behind the wheel now. Dominique was wiping the guns. Just in case. Wiping, wiping with a white silk handkerchief, polishing those gun butts and barrels in the event that somehow, in spite of the gloves, I'd left fingerprints on them. As we approached St. Paul 's Church, a mile and a half from Dove Street, I slowed the car. Dominique rolled down the window on her side, and threw out one of the guns, wrapped in the silk handkerchief. Five minutes later, she tossed out the second gun, wrapped in another handkerchief. We sped through dawn. In Saugerties, a uniformed policeman looked up in surprise as we raced through the deserted main street of the town. We were free again. But not because I'd killed Legs Diamond.

"What do you mean?" I asked Vinnie on the phone. "It's okay," he said. "Somebody talked to the goons who scared your grandmother."

"What do you mean? Who? Talked to them about what?"

"About you and Dom."

"Who did?"

"Mickey Tataglia. He went to see them and convinced them you're not worth bothering with."

"But Diamond is dead. Why would they…?"

"Yeah, somebody killed him, what a pity."

"So why would they be willing to forget…?"

"Well, I think some money changed hands."

"How much money?"

"I don't know how much."

"You do know, Vinnie."

"I think maybe five thousand."

"Where'd the money come from?"

"I don't know."

"Whose money was it, Vinnie?"

The line went silent.

"Vinnie?"

More silence.

"Vinnie, was it Grandma's money? The money she's been saving for another shop?"

"I don't think it was her money. Let's just say somebody gave Mickey the money and he gave it to the goons, and you don't have to worry about anything anymore. Come on home."

"Who gave Mickey the money?"

"I have no idea. Come on home."

"Whoever's money it was, Vinnie… tell him I'll pay it all back one day."

"I'll tell him. Now come home, you and Dom."

"Vinnie?" I said. "Thank you very much."

"Come on, for what?" he said, and hung up.

When I told Dominique about the phone conversation, she said, "So you killed him for nothing."

I should have picked up on the word you.

But, after all, she hadn't killed anyone, had she? "I killed him because I love you," I said. "Alors, merci beaucoup," she said. "But money would have done it just as well, eh?"

A week after we got back to the city, Dominique told me that what we'd enjoyed together on the way to Chattanooga had been very nice, bien sûr, but she could never live with a man who had done murder, eh? However noble the cause. En tout cas, it was time she went back to Paris to make her home again in the land she loved.

"Tu comprends, mon chéri?" she said.

No, I wanted to say, I don't understand.

I thought we loved each other, I wanted to say.

That night on the train…

I thought it would last forever, you know?

I thought Legs Diamond would be our costar forever. We would run from him through all eternity, locked in embrace as he pursued us relentlessly and in vain. We would marry and we would have children and I would become rich and famous and Dominique would stay young and beautiful forever and our love would remain steadfast and true-but only because we would forever be running from Legs. That would be the steadily unifying force in our lives. Running from Legs.

We kissed good-bye.

We promised to stay in touch.

I never heard from her again.