XII
The house was a small one in a row of small houses. We took the big boy out of the car and between us to the door. He could just about make it with our help. The street was dark. No light showed from the house. I rang the bell.
Nothing happened. I rang again, and then once more.
“Who is it?” a harsh voice demanded from the inside.
“Red’s been hurt,” I said.
Silence for a while. Then the door opened half a foot. Through the opening a light came from the interior, enough light to show the flat face and bulging jaw-muscles of the skull-cracker who had been the Motsa Kid’s guardian and executioner.
“What the hell?” he asked.
“Red was jumped. They got him,” I explained, pushing the limp giant forward.
We didn’t crash the gate that way. The skull-cracker held the door as it was.
“You’ll wait,” he said, and shut the door in our faces. His voice sounded from within, “Flora.” That was all right—Red had brought us to the right place.
When he opened the door again he opened it all the way, and Nancy Regan and I took our burden into the hall. Beside the skull-cracker stood a woman in a low-cut black silk gown—Big Flora, I supposed.
She stood at least five feet ten in her high-heeled slippers. They were small slippers, and I noticed that her ringless hands were small. The rest of her wasn’t. She was broad-shouldered, deep-bosomed, thick-armed, with a pink throat which, for all its smoothness, was muscled like a wrestler’s. She was about my age—close to forty—with very curly and very yellow bobbed hair, very pink skin, and a handsome, brutal face. Her deep-set eyes were gray, her thick lips were well-shaped, her nose was just broad enough and curved enough to give her a look of strength, and she had chin enough to support it. From forehead to throat her pink skin was underlaid with smooth, thick, strong muscles.
This Big Flora was no toy. She had the look and the poise of a woman who could have managed the looting and the double-crossing afterward. Unless her face and body lied, she had all the strength of physique, mind and will that would be needed, and some to spare. She was made of stronger stuff than either the ape-built bruiser at her side or the red-haired giant I was holding.
“Well?” she asked, when the door had been closed behind us. Her voice was deep but not masculine—a voice that went well with her looks.
“Vance ganged him in Larrouy’s. He took one in the back,” I said.
“Who are you?”
“Get him to bed,” I stalled. “We’ve got all night to talk.”
She turned, snapping her fingers. A shabby little old man darted out of a door toward the rear. His brown eyes were very scary.
“Get to hell upstairs,” she ordered. “Fix the bed, get hot water and towels.”
The little old man scrambled up the stairs like a rheumatic rabbit.
The skull-cracker took the girl’s side of Red, and he and I carried the giant up to a room where the little man was scurrying around with basins and cloth. Flora and Nancy Regan followed us. We spread the wounded man face-down on the bed and stripped him. Blood still ran from the bullet-hole. He was unconscious.
Nancy Regan went to pieces.
“He’s dying! He’s dying! Get a doctor! Oh, Reddy, dearest—”
“Shut up!” said Big Flora. “The damned fool ought to croak—going to Larrouy’s tonight!” She caught the little man by the shoulder and threw him at the door. “Zonite and more water,” she called after him. “Give me your knife, Pogy.”
The ape-built man took from his pocket a spring-knife with a long blade that had been sharpened until it was narrow and thin. This is the knife, I thought, that cut the Motsa Kid’s throat.
With it, Big Flora cut the bullet out of Red O’Leary’s back.
The ape-built Pogy kept Nancy Regan over in a corner of the room while the operating was done. The little scared man knelt beside the bed, handing the woman what she asked for, mopping up Red’s blood as it ran from the wound.
I stood beside Flora, smoking cigarettes from the pack she had given me. When she raised her head, I would transfer the cigarette from my mouth to hers. She would fill her lungs with a draw that ate half the cigarette and nod. I would take the cigarette from her mouth. She would blow out the smoke and bend to her work again. I would light another cigarette from what was left of that one, and be ready for her next smoke.
Her bare arms were blood to the elbows. Her face was damp with sweat. It was a gory mess, and it took time. But when she straightened up for the last smoke, the bullet was out of Red, the bleeding had stopped, and he was bandaged.
“Thank God that’s over,” I said, lighting one of my own cigarettes. “Those pills you smoke are terrible.”
The little scared man was cleaning up. Nancy Regan had fainted in a chair across the room, and nobody was paying any attention to her.
“Keep your eye on this gent, Pogy,” Big Flora told the skull-cracker, nodding at me, “while I wash up.”
I went over to the girl, rubbed her hands, put some water on her face, and got her awake.
“The bullet’s out. Red’s sleeping. He’ll be picking fights again within a week,” I told her.
She jumped up and ran over to the bed.
Flora came in. She had washed and had changed her bloodstained black gown for a green kimono affair, which gaped here and there to show a lot of orchid-colored underthings.
“Talk,” she commanded, standing in front of me. “Who, what and why?”
“I’m Percy Maguire,” I said, as if this name, which I had just thought up, explained everything.
“That’s the who,” she said, as if my phony alias explained nothing. “Now what’s the what and why?”
The ape-built Pogy, standing on one side, looked me up and down. I’m short and lumpy. My face doesn’t scare children, but it’s a more or less truthful witness to a life that hasn’t been overburdened with refinement and gentility. The evening’s entertainment had decorated me with bruises and scratches, and had done things to what was left of my clothes.
“Percy,” he echoed, showing wide-spaced yellow teeth in a grin. “My Gawd, brother, your folks must of been color-blind!”
“That’s the what and why,” I insisted to the woman, paying no attention to the wheeze from the zoo. “I’m Percy Maguire, and I want my hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
The muscles in her brows came down over her eyes.
“You’ve got a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, have you?”
I nodded up into her handsome brutal face.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s what I came for.”
“Oh, you haven’t got them? You want them?”
“Listen, sister, I want my dough.” I had to get tough if this play was to go over. “This swapping ‘Oh-have-yous’ and ‘Yes-I-haves’ don’t get me anything but a thirst. We were in the big knock-over, see? And after that, when we find the payoff’s a bust, I said to the kid I was training with, ‘Never mind, Kid, we’ll get our whack. Just follow Percy.’ And then Bluepoint comes to me and asks me to throw in with him, and I said, ‘Sure!’ and me and the kid throw in with him until we all come across Red in the dump tonight. Then I told the kid, ‘These coffee-and-doughnut guns are going to rub Red out, and that won’t get us anything. We’ll take him away from ’em and make him steer us to where Big Flora’s sitting on the jack. We ought to be good for a hundred and fifty grand apiece, now that there’s damned few in on it. After we get that, if we want to bump Red off, all right. But business before pleasure, and a hundred and fifty thou is business.’ So we did. We opened an out for the big boy when he didn’t have any. The kid got mushy with the broad along the road and got knocked for a loop. That was all right with me. If she was worth a hundred and fifty grand to him—fair enough. I came on with Red. I pulled the big tramp out after he stopped the slug. By rights I ought to collect the kid’s dib, too—making three hundred thou for me—but give me the hundred and fifty I started out for and we’ll call it even-steven.”
I thought this hocus ought to stick. Of course I wasn’t counting on her ever giving me any money, but if the rank and file of the mob hadn’t known these people, why should these people know everybody in the mob?
Flora spoke to Pogy:
“Get that damned heap away from the front door.”
I felt better when he went out. She wouldn’t have sent him out to move the car if she had meant to do anything to me right away.
“Got any food in the joint?” I asked, making myself at home.
She went to the head of the steps and yelled down, “Get something for us to eat.”
Red was still unconscious. Nancy Regan sat beside him, holding one of his hands. Her face was drained white. Big Flora came into the room again, looked at the invalid, put a hand on his forehead, felt his pulse.
“Come on downstairs,” she said.
“I—I’d rather stay here, if I may,” Nancy Regan said. Voice and eyes showed utter terror of Flora.
The big woman, saying nothing, went downstairs. I followed her to the kitchen, where the little man was working on ham and eggs at the range. The window and back door, I saw, were reinforced with heavy planking and braced with timbers nailed to the floor. The clock over the sink said 2:50 a.m.
Flora brought out a quart of liquor and poured drinks for herself and me. We sat at the table and while we waited for our food she cursed Red O’Leary and Nancy Regan, because he had got himself disabled keeping a date with her at a time when Flora needed his strength most. She cursed them individually, as a pair, and was making it a racial matter by cursing all the Irish when the little man gave us our ham and eggs.
We had finished the solids and were stirring hooch in our second cups of coffee when Pogy came back. He had news.
“There’s a couple of mugs hanging around the corner that I don’t much like.”
“Bulls or—?” Flora asked.
“Or,” he said.
Flora began to curse Red and Nancy again. But she had pretty well played that line out already. She turned to me.
“What the hell did you bring them here for?” she demanded. “Leaving a mile-wide trail behind you! Why didn’t you let the lousy bum die where he got his dose?”
“I brought him here for my hundred and fifty grand. Slip it to me and I’ll be on my way. You don’t owe me anything else. I don’t owe you anything. Give me my rhino instead of lip and I’ll pull my freight.”
“Like hell you will,” said Pogy.
The woman looked at me under lowered brows and drank her coffee.