Тэлмидж Пауэлл - Manhunt. Volume 5, Number 1, January, 1957

Wheeler looked at Henry and said: “You had me fooled. You sure had me fooled.” Henry Croft had never been spoken to with such enmity in his life.

He said: “But I—” and a gun barrel slashed his ribs from behind.

Purple Mask said again: “You’re Joe Wheeler. You’re running a little construction job out here. Today you drew your payroll from the bank in the city; you don’t pay off till tomorrow. So the money’s here in the house.”

“Out at the shack,” Joe Wheeler said. “I left it on the job.”

“Yeah?” Purple Mask didn’t sound convinced. “You believe that, Henry?”

Henry said: “I—” but Purple Mask had raised his voice. “Hurry it up there. You guys ain’t here to play around.” He bowed to Joe Wheeler. “Very playful guys.”

Joe Wheeler said nothing. He seemed to have settled down to a policy of quietly hating Henry Croft.

Paul and Juney came down the stairs again. They had a woman between them, a woman about thirty, not bad looking despite her lack of makeup, pretty good figure, with nothing over it but a thin nightgown.

“They wouldn’t let me get a robe, Joe,” she said.

“Don’t worry, lady, we got girls of our own,” Carley said. “Where’s the money, Joe Wheeler?”

“On the job,” Wheeler said. “In the shack.”

“Let her go, boys,” Purple mask said.

On the stairs, Paul and Juney paused, then they pushed, together, and Mrs. Wheeler came down to the hall, fast. She landed on her knees, hands scrabbling on the floor to break her fall. One breast came out of the top of the nightgown, and Joe Wheeler groaned a little.

Paul and Juney followed her down, slowly. She started to rise, and Carley took his foot and pushed her down on the floor, lightly. “The money,” he said.

Joe Wheeler said: “Guys, I—”

Carley leaned forward, putting his weight on the foot that pinned Mrs. Wheeler to the floor. His eyes glittered through the mask, watching Joe Wheeler. Mrs. Wheeler screamed once, as Carley’s other foot came up off the floor.

“In the kitchen,” Joe Wheeler said. “The flour bin.”

Carley put both feet on the floor. “Show us, sucker.”

Wheeler went away, Carley following him. Paul and Juney stood at the foot of the stairs, looking down at the half-naked woman, looking up at Henry Croft. Paul bent forward and looked at Mrs. Wheeler more closely. “Not bad,” he said. “For a rainy night.”

“Cut it out,” Purple Mask said. “Cut it out.” He had never taken his eyes off Henry Croft.

“She’s too old, anyway,” Juney said. “She’s stiff in the joints, aren't you, lady?” He cleared his throat, spat on the floor, near the woman.

“You can get up now,” Purple Mask said. “If we need you anymore, it’ll be easy to put you back down.”

Carley came back alone. His hands and the cuffs of his coat were white with flour. The rain in his sleeves was caking it. He carried a sack of something or other; he slapped it against the newel post, and flour whitened the air. Mrs. Wheeler was getting to her knees. Her hands shakingly adjusted the lace V around her breasts. “Where is he? Where’s Joe?”

Carley said: “Who told you to get up?” and the money sack whirled in his hands. It landed across the back of the woman’s neck and she fell back down to the floor, hard. Henry thought he heard the bones in her nose break, but he couldn’t be sure, because Carley was looking at him now. “I slapped the old man down,” he said.

“He’s in the kitchen, but he ain’t cooking. Let’s roll.”

Henry Croft stepped aside to let them — in God’s name — roll. Roll out of the house, out of the street, out of his life. But Carley made a gesture with his gun. “Out, Henry.”

They had made a very good boy of him. He went out. Out into the cold, the dreary, but not the lonesome rain. He had plenty of company.

Gwen was behind the wheel of the second car, now. Carley motioned Henry into the right-hand front seat, slid behind the wheel, crowding Gwen over against Henry. He dropped the flour-stained sack into Gwen’s lap.

Other guys jumped into the back, they took off fast; Gwen had kept the motor running. Henry leaned back against the cushions, shivering.

Gwen’s hand was back on his thigh. She was breathing hard. “That was kicks,” she said. “That was joy, way up. Ohhhh.” She let out her breath in a long sigh.

Carley said, as he had said before: “Kids. I gotta work with kids. Bopsters... Henry!”

Henry said: “Yes?”

“We gonna have to bump you off, Henry?”

Gwen’s fingers worked up and down Henry’s thigh ecstatically. “Let’s,” she said. “Let’s bump Henry off, Carley. We don’t need him any more.”

“Shut up,” Carley said. “You had your kicks for the night, Gwen... Henry, while you were out, we went through your wallet. We know you, we know where you live. Pictures in the wallet, a wife, a kid.”

“Squares,” Gwen said.

Carley said: “Give him back the wallet, Gwen. You can keep the money.”

She said: “I want the pictures. For my album.” But Carley growled, and she reached into her bra, got the leather out, slipped out the money and gave Henry the wallet. Then she put her hand back on him.

“Leave him alone,” Carley said. “Henry, we’re letting you out. Near your house. You know Polacks, Henry, Polish people?”

“Some,” Henry said.

“They got a custom. They prop stiffs up in their coffins, and take pictures of them. That’s the kind of snapshots you’ll be carrying if you talk, Henry.”

He skidded the car around a corner, then another one. “You get me, Henry?”

Henry Croft said: “Yes.”

Gwen said: “Ah, the river, Carley. In the river with him. We could tie the car jack to his feet.” Her busy hand dug in.

Carley said: “I’m gonna ditch you someday, Gwen. And Juney on accounta you. You got no business sense. We’re cool now. Kill this mark, and we’re not.”

“I like being hot,” Gwen said simply. “It’s living, when you’re hot.”

Carley slid the car to a stop, silently, expertly. “Out, Henry. You’ll keep your mouth buttoned. A guy away from home all day, a salesman, with a wife. And a kid. You’ll keep right on being good, Henry, like you was all evening.”

Henry opened the door. He was sure it couldn’t be over, that the nightmare wasn’t ending, that there’d be a shot from the car, a blackjack out of the night. But all that happened was Gwen’s taunting voice drifting back to him: “You didn’t kiss me good night, Henry—” and then they were gone.

Gone to some unknown rendezvous, where they’d ditch the cars, back to the bar on Slack Street... One street he’d never walk down any more, one neighborhood he’d avoid. The Merser account would have to go unserviced, some other company could have that business.

Thinking about the Merser account, thinking about business brought him back to reality a little. He looked around. He wasn’t more than three blocks from his home.

Excitement died in him, and so did the last tail-ends of his energy. The three blocks were endless, and later he couldn’t have said if he’d walked them in the rain, or if the downpour had stopped.

Then he was on his own porch, fumbling at the lock with his own key, a little surprised that the key had been in his pocket all this time, but home. He got into the hall, and he closed the door after him. He would have to get a chain like Joe Wheeler’s. Everybody ought to have a chain on his front door...

And there was Peggy, his wife, coming down the stairs, in a long house coat, holding it up a little, her eyes anxious and black-circled in her pale face. “Henry. Oh, Henry, thank God you’re home.”