James Chase - I'll Get You for This

“Cain, I guess,” Mitchell said, pushing Clancy ahead of him. He looked back at me, winked. “Come on, everyone’s to go to B floor. Orders.”

They went running down the passage.

I grinned at Maxison.

“Mitchell let ’em loose. I hope he’ll be all right,” I said. “Come on, we’re going.”

Between as we hoisted the coffin on our shoulders and made for the exit. The coffin weighed a ton, and we were staggering by the time we’d reached the gate of the prison block.

The lone guard stared at us, lifted his rifle.

We stopped.

“It’s okay,” I gasped. “I’ve got a permit to leave. Lemme get this coffin on board and I’ll give it to you.”

He hesitated, and I went on past him into the courtyard, where the hearse was waiting. He followed us.

Maxison and I shoved the coffin into the hearse, slammed the door.

The guard still threatened us with his gun. His round, red face was puzzled.

“Flaggerty said no one was to leave,” he grumbled. “You can’t go, so don’t you think you can.”

“I tell you Flaggerty’s given us a permit,” I said angrily. “Give it to him,” I went on to Maxison. “You got it in your pocket.”

With a dazed expression on his face, Maxison put his hand in his inside pocket. The guard swung the gun away from me, covering Maxison, suspicion in his eyes.

I jumped, hit the guard on the jaw, snatched his rifle from him as he fell. I belted him over the head with the butt.

“Come on,” I said to Maxison, and bundled him into the hearse. I drove across the courtyard, through the first gate which was open, and stopped outside the outer gate which was closed.

Franklin came out of the lodge. He eyed us over.

“Getting out while the going’s good?” he asked, grinning.

“Sure,” I said. “We gave the permit to the guard at the main block. They’ve got a prison break on their hands now.”

He shrugged. “I’m keeping out of it. I’m a man of peace.” He walked to the gate and opened it. “So long, fellas.”

I nodded and drove on

There was only one more obstacle, the barricade. I kept my gun by my side, drove steadily down the sandy track. I could see no guards. The barricade blocked my exit, but no one was there to guard it.

The sounds of shooting and yells came to us from the jail. I guess everyone was too busy to bother about guarding a tree.

Maxison and I got down, rolled the barricade aside; then we got back into the hearse.

We’d done it.

THE Martello Hotel, Key West, overlooked the Atlantic Ocean. From our private balcony, shaded by a green and white awning, we could look down at the Roosevelt Boulevard, which was almost deserted; houses were shuttered and dogs slept on the sidewalks. It was noon, and the heat was fierce. Away to our right we could see low emerald islands in a shimmering, painted sea beneath high-piled lavender clouds. Steamers and other craft worked their way through the old Nor’west Channel, a chartered course taken for centuries.

Wearing trunks, sun-glasses and sandals, I lolled in a wicker arm-chair. A highball, clinking with ice, stood on the chair arm. I relaxed in the heat, stared with narrowed, impatient eyes out to sea.

Miss Wonderly sat by my side. She had on a white swim-suit that clung to her curves like a nervous mountaineer rounding Devil’s Corner. A straw hat, the size of a cartwheel, shaded her face. A magazine lay on her lap.

Minutes went past. I moved slightly to reach my cigarettes. She patted my hand as I picked up my lighter. I smiled at her.

“Pretty nice, isn’t it?” I said.

She nodded, sighed, took off her hat. Her soft, honey-coloured hair fell about her shoulders. She looked pretty nice herself.

We had been at the hotel for five days. The jail break was a distant nightmare. We didn’t talk about it. For the first two or three days, Miss Wonderly had been in a bad shape. She had bad nights, bad dreams. She was scared to leave the hotel, scared ii someone came into the room. Hetty and I hadn’t left her for a moment. Hetty had been wonderful. She was with us now.

We had taken Miss Wonderly from the jail straight to Tim’s boat. Hetty, Tim and I had gone with her, and we had somehow managed to slip through the cordon Killeano had flung round the coast and reached Key West. Tim had gone back to Paradise Palms the following morning with the boat.

friendliness, was a good spot for convalescing. Miss Wonderly had picked up faster than I had hoped. Now she was almost normal.

“All right, kid?” I asked, smiling at her.

“Yes,” she said, stretching. “And you?”

“Sure, this is much more like the vacation I was hoping to find in Paradise Palms.”

“How long shall we stay here?” she asked, suddenly, abruptly.

I glanced at her. “There’s no hurry,” I said. “I want to get you well. We can stay here as long as you like.”

She turned on her side so she could watch me.

“What’s going to happen to us?” she asked, giving me her hand.

I frowned. “Happen? What should happen?”

“Darling, perhaps I haven’t the right to ask, but is it going on between you and me?” Her face flushed.

“Do you want it to go on?” I asked, smiling at her. “I’m not much of a guy to go places with.”

“I could stand it if you could,” she said seriously.

“I’m crazy about you,” I told her, “but I don’t know how you would fit in with my kind of life. You see, I haven’t learned to settle down. I can’t imagine myself settling down. It wouldn’t be much of a life for you.”

She looked down at our hands, joined together.

“You’re going back there, aren’t you?” she said,

“Back where?” I asked sharply.

“Please, darling,” she said, gripping my hands. “Don’t be like that. You are going back there.”

“You mustn’t worry,” I said, smiling at her. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“But you will, when Tim comes. You’re waiting for Tim, aren’t you?”

“Well, yes,” I said, looking out to sea. “I’m waiting for Tim.”

“And when he comes, you’ll go back with him?”

“I might.”

“You will.”

“I might,” I repeated. “I don’t know. It depends what’s happened.”

She gripped my hand hard.

“Darling, please don’t go back. I didn’t think we would get away. When I was in that awful jail I thought I should never see you again. I thought they would catch you and you’d be hurt. But we did get away, and I have you with me. It would be wicked to put all this in danger again, wouldn’t it?”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I have a job to finish. I like to dot my i’s and cross my t’s. It’s the way I’m made.”

“No, it isn’t,” she said. “No one’s made like that.” I am.

“Darling—don’t do this.” Her hands trembled in mine. “Let it go—please—this time…”

I shook my head slightly.

She took her hands away. “You and your pride,” she said, her voice suddenly hard, angry. “You don’t care about this. You don’t care about us.” She drew in a deep breath, burst out, “You’ve seen too many gangster pictures—that’s what’s wrong with you.”

“It’s not like that,” I said.

“Yes, it is,” she said. Her voice was now elaborately controlled. “Yon want revenge. You think Killeano has crowded you, and you have to shake your reputation in his face. You can’t resist doing that. You like long chances. You think it’s big and smart to go back alone against that mob who stop at nothing. Just because Bogart and Cagney do it for a living, you have to do it too.”