Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (8 page)

Reece and Holiday came out of the bedroom. She had on her tweed coat and skirt and carried her hat and one shoe in her hand.

‘Do you mind if I finish dressing?’ she said.

‘Why?’ the little one said. ‘You ain’t going nowhere.…’

‘Ain’t we taking ’em downtown?’ Reece asked.

‘It’s better this way.…’

‘In that case,’ Reece said, ‘maybe I better help her get her clothes off.…’

The little one gave him a chastening look and said to Holiday: ‘Stand over there with him.’

Holiday hesitated and Reece gestured with the gun he still held in his hand. ‘You heard him. Stand over there…’

Here it comes, I was thinking; they’re not going to turn us in, after all, they’re going to kill us right here. Holiday moved beside me and I eased back just a little, getting her between me and the gun, watching Reece’s hand, focusing my eyes on his forefinger curled around the trigger, turning my side toward him, slanting my head away from him, reducing the target as much as possible, figuring that when he fired the first bullet I’d dive for the little one…

‘…Now, lissen,’ the little one was saying: ‘you get outta town on separate buses. Separate buses, I said. And don’t come back.…’

‘Don’t worry. Separate buses,’ Holiday said. ‘Don’t worry. We won’t come back.’

‘Let’s go …’ the little one said to Reece, starting out.

I didn’t believe it, but there it was Reece was following the little one across the floor to the hall door.

‘Please, mister,’ I heard myself saying, ‘could I have my automatics?’

They both stopped and the little one looked around at Reece, who shrugged. The little one took my automatic from his pocket, thumbed the clip out and snapped the cartridge from the chamber. He pitched the gun onto the davenport and Reece handed him the other automatic and he did the same thing with this one. Then they went on out, saying nothing else, closing the door behind them.

I still didn’t believe it; they were gone, but the feeling of danger still hung in the room, like a concrete cloud. It was like getting away from a ten-armed giant in a bad dream; you rounded a corner and shook him off but you knew that momentarily he would lean down over one of the buildings and grab you. I stood there trembling and then I heard myself breathing and I looked at Holiday and saw that she was staring at me. I sat down but did not have the strength to draw up my legs, letting the whole weight of them rest on my heels.

‘I wouldn’t go through that again for a million dollars, not for ten million dollars,’ I said.

‘Oh, it could’ve been worse,’ she said.

‘No,’ I said.

‘It wasn’t too bad.…’

‘For an imbecile it wasn’t. For you it wasn’t,’ I said. ‘You had a hell of a time, showing yourself to that swine. Whenever you can wave that thing in somebody’s face you have a hell of a time.…’

‘You’re jealous, that’s all.…’

‘Nuts,’ I said.

‘Is that all you can think of? Never mind the wonderful break we just got, never mind that we’re getting out of this town clean and free, never mind any of that. All you can think of is me showing myself to that cop. Whyn’t you think about how lucky we are to get away with this?’

‘I’m thinking about that, too,’ I said, managing, finally, to get my legs up. I got on my feet and picked up the automatics from the davenport and my coat from the floor and went into the bedroom. I put on my coat, and from under a pile of lingerie in the bureau drawer I took two extra clips of cartridges, shoving a clip into each stock and snapping a cartridge into each barrel, in firing position. I dropped the guns into my pockets and put on my hat and started out. Holiday was standing in the door, watching me.

‘Where are you going?’ she asked.

‘I’ll be back inside of an hour,’ I said.

‘Forget it!’ she said, sharply, blocking me. ‘You start anything with Mason now and we’re cooked. You stay away from him.…’

‘I wasn’t even thinking of him,’ I said.

Then what were you thinking of? Now, look,’ she said swiftly. ‘Jinx’s got money of his own. If they’ve picked him up let him make his own deal.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of Jinx, either,’ I said. ‘We’re broke. We need some money to get out of town.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s too risky. I got a little dough left enough for that. Enough to get us out of town.’

‘How much you got?’

‘Around twenty dollars …’

‘How far will that take us?’

‘Far enough …’

‘Get out of the way,’ I said.

She grabbed me with both hands, shaking me. ‘Are you crazy?’ she said. ‘We
got
to get away from here! There’s a murder rap staring us in the face! We can’t press our luck too far.…’

‘Stop shaking me …’ I said.

She stopped shaking me, but kept her grip on the shoulders of my coat.

‘They’d pull the switch on us in a minute…’ she said, way back in her throat, a little slobber trickling over the edge of her lip.

This is not the dame I saw handling a machine-gun yesterday,’ I said. ‘That must have been somebody else. That was some other dame....’

‘Somebody’s got to shake you, you amateur, you punk,’ she said.

I hit her in the stomach with my left fist, knocking her back against the door facing. She wavered and then fell, pounding on the floor with both fists and sobbing and moaning.

‘Shut up and listen,’ I said, stooping down beside her. ‘Will you please shut up and listen! Listen to me!’

She slowly stopped pounding on the floor and started to lift her head, but before she could look at me there was a knocking at the hall door. I was so dumbfounded that for a moment I was paralysed. Holiday had pushed herself up off the floor and was sitting on her shins beside me and I got a smell of fear from her, cinnamon-pungent and exciting. I rose carefully and crossed to the door, taking an automatic out of my pocket. The knocking came again, and then I realized that this was not a knocking but a rapping, impatient but not peremptory; tranquilizing me a little; surely, I was thinking, the bastards wouldn’t be coming back as meekly as this, they wouldn’t be thumping the door with one finger, which is what this noise is – and I opened the door, standing behind it, not taking any more chances, not being a punk this time, with my gun levelled and my finger around the trigger so tensely that the weight of one additional heartbeat would have caused it to squeeze fire.

It was Jinx. I closed the door with my shoulder. His face was drawn and his eyes were wrathful.

‘Mason put the finger on us, the son-of-a-bitch, it was Mason,’ he said.

‘Goddamn you, Jinx, we know who put the finger on us,’ Holiday said, her voice throbbing, moving to him. ‘If you got anything to settle with Mason, you settle it yourself and stop trying to suck Ralph into help you. We got a hell of a break here and I won’t let you louse it up.’

‘Who’s trying to louse anything up?’ he said, flaring. ‘Why, for Christ’s sake, I came out here to do you a favor and the minute I get inside the door you tear my head off. I came out here to try to tip you off to the cops and I get my head torn off.’

‘She’s been having hysterics,’ I said. ‘Leave him alone,’ I said to Holiday.

‘I’ll take the chances I’m taking to do you another favor sometime,’ he said to her. ‘I was across the street in that secondhand lot,’ he said to me. ‘I saw him come out. The club-footed nance son-of-a-bitch. If I’d had a gun, I’d’ve popped him sitting there in that squad car …’

‘If you want to get even with Mason, you get even by yourself,’ Holiday said. ‘Don’t try to suck Ralph in. We got to get out of here, we got to get out of here fast. And not you, either. You don’t go with us. You go in some other direction, not with us’

Jinx stared at her for a second and then looked at me, frowning. ‘What’s the matter with her?’ he asked.

‘I told you. She’s been having hysterics.’

‘We got to get out of town,’ she said. They told us to get out of town.’

‘Would you believe this is the same dame we knew yesterday?’ I asked him.

‘I sure as hell wouldn’t.…’

‘You see?’ I said to her. ‘Relax for a minute, will you? Take it easy. Everything’s under control. Let me handle this.’

‘You’ve handled it fine so far. You punk.’

‘Please…’ I said.

‘That club-footed nance son-of-a-bitch, he didn’t even tip me off the plainclothes men were coming,’ Jinx said. ‘He lets ’em walk in on me cold. I look up and there they are.’

‘I know exactly how you feel,’ I said. They cleaned us, too.’

‘They didn’t clean me. I didn’t know it was a shakedown then. I don’t know these two cops and think it’s a pinch. I didn’t know it was a shakedown. I wouldn’ta minded a shakedown so much. That…’

‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘What do you mean they didn’t clean you? You mean you didn’t pay these guys off?’

‘I didn’t know it was a shakedown. I thought it was a pinch…’

Holiday lifted her eyes to mine and I dropped mine to hers. Both of us were thinking the same thing –if he didn’t pay off the cops he still had the money.

‘How’d you get loose then?’ I asked.

‘They never did have me. I’m working in the shop when they come in the back way and ask where Jinx Raynor is. I tell ’em he’s in front, and then they go to the front I duck out the alley. I thought it was a pinch. I didn’t know it was a shakedown till I got here, till I saw Reece and the Inspector come out without you. Then it figured.’

‘Inspector?’ I said. ‘The little guy’s an Inspector?’

‘Yeah. Inspector Webber.’

Well, well, I was thinking. Cut yourself a piece of cake, Inspector. Cut yourself two pieces of cake.

‘Then you still got the money?’ Holiday asked.

‘Sure, I still got it. Two gees. I got it right here,’ he said, slapping the right-hand pocket of his trousers.

‘That’s wonderful!’ Holiday said, and I knew she was thinking that now we could get out of town, that now I wouldn’t have to pull another stick-up.

‘That’s wonderful,’ I said, thinking about something else entirely.

‘I’d rather’ve gave those guys half of it and stayed here than to keep all of it and have to leave. I was just getting started good in this town.’

You don’t know how well you are started in this town, I wanted to tell him.

‘You can get started good in some other town,’ Holiday said. ‘We can all meet somewhere. Denver. Dallas. Kansas City.’

‘Now she wants to meet you somewhere,’ I said. ‘Now she likes you again.’

‘Will you shut up, you punk, you amateur,’ she said.

‘I may not be the punk, the amateur, you think. I may surprise you,’ I said to her. ‘Maybe you won’t have to leave town,’ I said to Jinx. ‘Maybe I can make a deal for you.’

‘Look who’s talking about making a deal for you.’

‘Please,’ I said.

‘Big Stuff. Old Master,’ she said. ‘He knows all about how to handle cops. Yeah. You should of seen him handling ’em.’ Her hysterics were getting better. The vinegar was rising once more. She knew she could have a helping of Jinx’s two gees, and she was beginning to feel fine. ‘“Maybe I can make a deal for you.” Get him to tell you about the one he made for himself. Old Big Stuff. Why, for Christ’s sake, he was so scared …’

‘All right, I was scared. I admit it. I
was
scared. But not any more. Not, by God, any more.’

‘You should’ve seen him five minutes ago,’ she said.

‘A lot can happen in five minutes,’ I said. ‘A lot has happened in five minutes. I got an idea now a good one.’

‘You ever hear such a lot of crap in your life?’ she said to Jinx.

‘Of course, you can’t understand it,’ I said. ‘This is just one of the tragedies of a superior intellect – not being able to transpose his thoughts to a level low enough for an imbecile to understand.’

‘Why don’t you stop trying to act so important, for Christ’s sake?’ she said. ‘Why don’t you get wise to yourself? You’re just a punk.…’

‘But a punk with a few small distinctions,’ I said slowly and quietly and clearly; ‘including a Phi Beta Kappa key and a university degree and a collection of pyschoses for which Doctor Lombroso would have given his left arm, and a passion for the minor snobberies of life as symbolized by Charvet ties and Brooks Brothers shirts and Peal shoes …’ You fools, you mere passers of food, I was thinking; I shall not be saddled with you for long, I shall not be saddled with you for longer than is absolutely necessary, and then, swiftly, exploding that, and the color of the fragments was mauve, came the image of Holiday naked in bed, in the tub, in the shower, on the floor, in the car, in the open, pulsing with a lust straight from the cave, and my navel fluttered, mocking me, and I knew that what I was thinking was indeed crap, truly crap, that if only for this she would always be absolutely necessary.…

‘… Let’s stop this squawking, let’s start getting out of here,’ she was saying, moving on into the bedroom.

Jinx was staring at me, frowning.

‘You listen to her and she’ll have you thinking I can’t get in out of the rain,’ I said. ‘You’re sure this guy’s an Inspector?’

‘Sure, I’m sure …’

‘He’s left himself wide open, pulling a shakedown like this,’ I said. ‘He’s an Inspector, maybe we can do some business. Maybe I can fix this. Maybe you won’t have to leave town. Maybe we can stick around here for awhile. Maybe we won’t have to start running away as soon as we thought. Would that be all right with you?’

‘Sure. That’d be fine…’he said.

‘Well, what can we lose?’ I said.

Holiday came out of the bedroom wearing a hat and carrying a coat on her arm and a big purse in her hand.

‘The thing now is to decide where we’re going, where to send the suitcases,’ she said.

‘Leave this to me,’ I said to Jinx. ‘We’ve decided where we’re going,’ I said to her.

‘Where?’

‘Nowhere,’ I said.

She looked at Jinx as if she thought I was joking, but when she looked back at me she saw that it was no joke. I handed Jinx one of the guns.

‘We’re staying right here,’ I said. ‘And this time I don’t want any argument.’

‘I won’t argue.…’ she said heavily. ‘I won’t argue with you any more. You’re crazy man and I want to get just as far away from you as I can.’ She looked at Jinx. ‘Will you let me take a hundred dollars?’