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Authors: P. N. Elrod

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BOOK: A Song In The Dark
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It went downhill from there.

Not inclined to interfere, I watched the domestic drama with an equally unmoved Strome, content to let other guys rush in to bust things up. Several of the bouncers who'd been on the exits moved remarkably fast for their size. That would have been the ideal time for me to make an escape,
just dart to the front lobby, duck around the corner phone booth, and vanish. It was one of my specialties. Instead, I kept my seat and wished I could still drink beer. A cold one would have gone down good about now.

It took three bouncers to remove Jewel Caine: two on her left side for her shoulders and feet, one on her right for her middle. She didn't make it easy for them, bucking and cursing the whole way as they carried her bodily from the room like a log, green purse and all. So far Lady Crymsyn, which was my nightclub, had suffered no drunken rows on this level, only comparatively mild, easily dealt with skirmishes. I could count myself lucky.

Alan Caine, grinning wide, called after her: “Why don't you get a job?”

She heard. “I'll
kill
you, you son of a bitch! I'll cut your throat if you don't pay what you owe me!” The rest was incoherent and, from the tone, likely obscene. Closing doors spared us from more opinions and threats.

One of the chorus dancers trotted up. “Alan, that was awful. Are you okay?”

“Yeah-yeah, Evie.” He waved her off. “Back on your mark, let's get this over with.”

She seemed disappointed he wasn't making more of a fuss over the disruption and visibly swallowed back the load of comfort and sympathy she must have had ready to pour out. Evie was just about the cutest little doll I'd seen in many a week and affected a tiny Betty Boop voice. I thought she could do much better than Caine. “Well . . . if you're
sure
 . . .”

“I'm sure. C'mon, bub.” He turned her around and gave her a light swat on her nicely rounded rump. This cheered her up, and she went trotting back to her envious and/or amused sisters. They formed their line again. Caine called a
cue to the band, and they began in midstanza, this time making it to the end. He cut an exaggerated bow to them.
“Finally!”

“About damn time,” muttered Strome. He wasn't one for offering much in the way of comments. His beer, which he'd drained off, must have loosened him up.

“How's that?” I asked.

“He's been at it all day. If he was a dame, he'd be one of those primer dons. He better pray he don't ever lose his voice. That's all that's keeping him alive. Derner's been busy just holding off people from busting him one.”

“Yet he packs the club?”

“He keeps that mean side away from the audience. With his looks they think he's an angel. People in the business know he's a jerk-off but they put up with it. He's got enough push from bringing in cash to get them fired.”

“Or tossed out.”

Strome spared me a look. He must have thought I was referring to myself, not Caine's ex-wife. “Derner woulda talked him out of it. Caine don't know who's who in this town yet.”

“In my case it doesn't matter.”

His stony face had almost become animated, but shut down at the reminder of why we were here. “It's just the business,” Strome said. This was the closest he would ever get to making an apology to me for whatever was to come.

“Yeah.”

A business where a guy like Strome could come up to me, his former temporary boss, and tender an invitation to take a ride that I had to accept. He'd been so sure of the end result that he'd left the motor running in the car when he walked into Lady Crymsyn to deliver the summons. We eyed each other in the yet-to-open lobby, as though either of
us had options. He had to bring me in, and the gun he carried under his arm was the last word on the subject. I glanced around at my people, who were getting things ready for the evening, oblivious of any threat. Strome shook his head, letting me know they weren't on his list.

He wouldn't use them against me. I liked that.

I got my hat and coat and went along, turning the opening of Crymsyn over to one of the bartenders. There was no point putting things off. This way I had some control over the situation. If the bad guys insisted on killing me for killing Hog Bristow, it would be at a safe distance from friends who could get in the cross fire.

The men who took away the acrimonious Jewel Caine returned, two of them resuming their posts, the third pausing to glare at the empty dance floor. Caine and the chorus line were backstage, getting ready for the night's performance. The third guy shifted his glare toward me, but whatever bothered him was none of my doing, and he got a blank look in return. I was getting good at those.

His name was Hoyle, and like the brothers Ruzzo, I was not anyone he liked. He'd resented my taking over for Gordy. Hoyle thought he should have been the one to pinch-hit, but his name never once cropped up. If I'd turned down the job, then Derner would have taken in the slack. Hoyle didn't see it that way, and I heard he'd started blaming me for everything up to and including the Depression itself.

Some people have too much time and not enough to do.

After a minute Hoyle got tired of trying to intimidate me and moved on to the bar, snapping his fingers for a drink.

Strome's partner, Lowrey, emerged from a door with a
PRIVATE
sign on it and came down to us. He was shorter and
wider, with a cast to one eye and few enemies. Live ones, that is.

“Boss wants to see you, Mr. Fleming,” he said.

I was surprised. “Gordy's here?” He was supposed to be anyplace else, resting, healing from his gunshot wounds.

“In the casino.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

The two of them followed as I hurried though the door into the Nightcrawler's illegal but extremely profitable gaming room. The lights were low, the place gloomy and strangely quiet, like an empty church. I spotted Gordy at the far end by the back exit, seated in one of the semiprivate alcoves favored by the cardplayers. He was fully dressed, and his girlfriend—nurse for the time being—was nowhere in sight.

My escorts hung back as I went forward and slipped into a chair on the other side of his table and nearly echoed Alan Caine's question. “What the hell are you doing here?” I kept my voice low, swallowing anger. Shouting didn't work on Gordy.

His skin was sallow, sagging, but his eyes were clear. I didn't like that. His doctor had him on pain pills, and they tended to dull everything about him. Clear eyes meant he was hurting. “It's business,” he said.

“You can deal with things on the phone, and Derner and I do the rest. You're still supposed to be in bed. Where's Adelle?” She'd been looking after Gordy since the shooting.

“She went to the stores to get some stuff, so me an' Lowrey scrammed to here. I had to give her the slip for a couple hours. Makes me crazy, lying around and her playing nursemaid like I was sick.”

Adelle Taylor, actress on stage, screen, and radio, and sometimes a headliner singing at my club and his, would throw a fit when she found out. I said as much to Gordy, who gave
only the smallest of shrugs. He was a big man and didn't have to move much to make a point. “I left her a note.”

“She'll come straight down here. Loaded for bear.”

“I'll be done by then.”

“With what, exactly?”

“You. Maybe.”

“If you wanted to see me, I'd have come over, there's no need to—”

“Wasn't my doing bringing you here. I've been stalling them. They wouldn't stall no more.”

“What? Who?”

“New York. Bristow's friends.”

“You been running interference for me? In your condition?”

“I'm better off than you were, kid.” Gordy knew my real age, which was about the same as his, but sometimes he seemed a lot older. When it came to mob business, he was decades my senior.

“What do you mean?”

“I got from the boys what happened to you. What Bristow did.”

I felt my face go red. Mortification does that to me. “I told them to keep shut about it.”

“They did, until I woke up enough to ask.”

“Gordy, you don't need to be bothering with this. Just go back to bed and get better. I'll take care of things and no problem, okay?”

He just looked at me, eyes sleepy-seeming, but still not dull. “You up to it?”

“Of course I am. I appreciate what you've done, but—”

He raised one hand, shutting me down. “Fleming, I know Bristow put you through something worse than hell. A man don't get over that in a couple days, not even you.”

“I'm
fine,
everything's healed up. Really.”

Another long look and a twitch of his lips. He was usually as poker-faced as they come.

“What's wrong?” I asked.

“There's a hammer about to fall on you. It should have happened days ago, but I put them off.”

“New York?” Gordy's bosses.

“I got my orders. I'm supposed to kill you.”

“Yeah? So?” I'd been half-expecting that for days. If Gordy thought I'd get upset at the idea of him having to kill me, he'd have a long wait to see it. Besides, he knew what I was. Maybe he would have to do his job. It could be arranged. Wouldn't be the first time I'd died.

“I put 'em off, did some talking, bought some time, but stalled them too much. Another guy's doing the job. I gotta stand aside while he deals with you or get rubbed out, too.”

If my heart had been working, it would have stopped. “Another like Bristow?”

“No. Smarter.”

It wouldn't take much. Bristow had been dumb as an empty box. Maybe this guy would be sober for longer than five minutes, and I could evil-eye whammy him into changing his mind.

“He's the one who sent Bristow in the first place. One of the big shots. Name's Whitey Kroun.”

The big boss himself. One of them, anyway. “Why should he come here? He couldn't phone?”

“He had enough of you over the phone.”

I supposed he had. Our conversations during the turmoil following the murder attempt on Gordy had been brief and curdling, and I'd not made any friends. Kroun didn't know me from Adam and was already allergic. He'd been one of the brains who, in a fit of idiocy, sent Hog Bristow to shake
things up in their holdings here. The idea was to make Gordy turn over the Chicago operation to Bristow, only that didn't happen. Of course, it was clearly all my fault.

“Kroun . . . he doesn't much like me.”

Gordy almost smiled. “You should try harder to make more friends.”

“Not with my smart-ass mouth. Listen, I'll face the music, get the heat off you, off us both, but you
gotta
get home and let Adelle spoil you for a couple more weeks.” Gordy was doing a decent job of hiding it, but was visibly weak to my eyes. And ears. His heartbeat was up, and a sheen of sweat was on his forehead. He'd gotten out of bed too soon, pushed himself too much, and there was no need. “When's Kroun due in?”

“He's here now. Waiting upstairs. My office.”

Oh, great, fine, wonderful. “Got any advice?”

“Don't get killed.”

Huh. Easy for him to say. “What's he like?”

“Scary.”

He got a double take from me. Gordy using a word like that? “In what way?”

He shook his head. “Just tell him the truth. Play straight with him.”

Strome came forward. “Boss?”

Gordy and I looked his way at the same time. I'd gotten used to answering to the title at Crymsyn and again from being in charge of Gordy's mob. The first time Strome had addressed me as such I nearly told him to stop, but held back. It was a show of respect, for the office if not also for me, and however much I hated to think of how I'd won both, I accepted the dubious honor. Once I completely stepped down he could go back to calling me “Mr. Fleming,” or “Fleming” or, like a few others in the organization, “that creep son of a bitch.”

None of them called me “Jack,” and I was glad of it.

I was conscious of my face shutting down, slamming into the deadpan frown Gordy's kind of job demanded, and replied for both of us. “Yeah?”

“Mitchell's here.” He jerked his chin at the back exit, where a man stood in the doorway.

Who the hell was Mitchell? He seemed almost familiar, but wasn't local. I knew most of the boys here by sight, and he matched their type. He stood motionless, hands in his coat pockets, giving me the hard eye, shifting his hostile gaze for a long moment to Gordy—no love lost there, I thought—then back to me. Not the genial sort, but few of them are.

Gordy motioned him over, moving just his fingers. Saving his strength, I hoped.

Mitchell came close. Hands still in his pockets. If he'd had a gun in each one, I would not have been surprised. He would be from New York and represented the big guys, the serious hoods who gave Gordy his orders.

Strome did the honors. “Mitchell . . . Mr. Fleming.”

“You kiddin'?” Mitchell asked no one in particular. My apparent youth must have been working against me again. On the other hand, it was often a good thing to be underestimated. He stared like I was a bizarre zoo specimen.

Strome, stony-faced, reiterated. “This is Jack Fleming—the guy who took care of Hog Bristow.”

“New York?” I asked. Just to be sure.

Mitchell's gaze flicked in Gordy's direction. “It's time.” He said it like an executioner might. One who enjoyed his work.

Gordy started to get up, but I stopped him. “It's okay, I'll see to this on my own.”

“You sure?”

“Go home. Look after yourself, would ya? I gotta see a man about a hog.”

Easing from the table, I followed Strome to the back hallway, with Mitchell right behind us. Strome looked over his shoulder at me as though trying to figure out a tough problem. I was unafraid when I should have been puking my guts out. It seemed to bother him. I could still feel fear, but not just now. For the last few nights I'd been working at not feeling much of anything if I could help it. That's why pretty-boy Caine had been so unsuccessful at trying to embarrass me. After what I'd been through, his guff was less than a kiddie game.

BOOK: A Song In The Dark
3.34Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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