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

Then Carley said: “There they are,” and started slowing down, “It’s Paul,” he said.

Henry Croft could see him, one of the young men from the bar, standing in the rain, waving his arms. Carley turned the car in behind another, following Paul’s directions, and stopped with his front bumper against the rear one of the parked car.

Juney said: “Watch my sucker,” and got out of the car. He went ahead and got in behind the wheel of the parked sedan, and then disappeared, as though crouching under the dashboard. Gwen twisted around in the front seat, and said: “I’m watching you, Henry.”

Juney reappeared, and waved his hand. Carley let the car go forward in low gear, and Juney’s car went ten or twenty feet along the wet pavement. Then Juney waved his hand again, and Carley cut the motor. Paul came out of the rain, and opened the back door. “Out, sucker. It won’t be long now.” He reached in and prodded Henry Croft, who climbed out, stiffly.

The rain felt good on his battered head.

Carley climbed out and took up a post on Henry Croft’s other side. He and Paul half pulled him to the front car. “Let’s move out,” Paul said. “Even without the starter, sometimes these car-loving citizens wake up when they hear their own motor.”

This time Carley got in the back seat with Henry Croft. He lounged back in the corner, reaching under his coat. He took out a gun, balanced it loosely in his hand, grinning at Henry Croft. In the front seat Gwen suddenly laughed, and said: “Oh, cut it out, Paul.”

Carley said: “Know what this is, Henry?”

Henry Croft nodded.

“Well, then, tell me.” Carley waited a minute, and when Henry didn’t speak, he suddenly lashed out with the pistol, rapping the sights into Henry Croft’s belly. “Speak up, sucker.”

Henry Croft gulped air with difficulty, and said: “A gun.”

Carley nodded wisely, while Gwen told Paul: “That hurts, damnit.” But she laughed.

Carley said: “Kids. Can’t keep their hands off a dame... Yeah, Henry, this is a gun. You know what a gun does?” Again he waited.

Henry said: “It shoots people.”

Carley gave his schoolmaster nod again. “Yeah. A gun. And it shoots people. Dead. So does Paul’s gun, so does Juney’s... You gotta gun, Gwen?”

Gwen said: “If I did, I’d murder this Paul,” still laughing.

“Kids,” Carley said again. “Always I got to work with kids. So Gwen doesn't have a gun. So there will be only three guns. You ever have eighteen holes in you?”

Henry shook his head. Then, remembering, he said: “No, I never did.”

Carley said: “Well, then, I suppose you don’t know how that feels. Well, to tell you the truth, neither do I. But I can guess, and a smart sucker like you, you can guess, too. So maybe you’ll do what we tell you to. Do you think you will?”

Henry Croft said: “Yes. Of course I will.”

“A smart sucker,” Carley said again, and then was silent while the car went around some more corners and through a little park and out again, the water splashing sidewise from the wheels and the windshield wipers squeaking slightly. The wipers on the first car had not squeaked like this.

Then they stopped, and Juney turned the headlights off and said: “This is the place, folks. The sucker know what he’s to do, Carley?”

“No,” Carley said, “but he’ll do it. He’s a very nice sucker.” He laughed. “Listen, Henry. It’s easy. All you do is go up to that house, see there, and ring the bell. Talk nice to them, Henry. They got a heavy chain on the door. Get them to open it.”

Paul said: “Supposing he tells them to call the cops?”

“Why, I guess he will,” Carley said. “That’s about the quickest way I know to get people to open doors. Who wouldn’t trust a sucker who’s calling copper?”

Paul said: “I don’t like it. I like things simple.”

Carley said: “Now he tells me. My strong silent pal. Okay. You go up there. Give them a nice simple look at your face. It’ll make them happy. Or maybe wear your mask. People always open doors for guys with masks on. Especially at night. Especially a guy who’s got a payroll in the house.”

Paul said: “Okay, okay.”

Carley said: “So now you know, Henry. Get going.”

Henry opened the door of the car. He did it slowly, thinking: Now my fingerprints are on a stolen car, and knowing, even while he thought it, that it was a silly thought. His shoes squished across the pavement, and he felt lonesome and chilled and sick. I’ll get pneumonia out of this, he thought, and remembering what Carley had said about the eighteen holes, that was pretty silly too.

Now he was at the steps, four of them, leading up to a little porch, sheltered over so a person wouldn’t get wet waiting for the door to be opened. Lawn on either side of the walk and the steps, nice little house, dark, not a light showing. He took a deep breath and pressed the doorbell. The ringing in the depth of the house was shockingly loud.

He stood there, thinking he was going to be sick to his stomach, was going to faint. Instead, he sneezed. He thought he heard an abrupt movement close to him in the night air when he made the involuntary noise; but he couldn’t be sure. Then he pressed the bell-button again.

A light came on in the hall, a voice said: “All right, all right,” and a peephole opened in the door. All he could see was a bushy brow and the bleary eye of a freshly-disturbed sleep, but the voice was masculine and angry: “What do you want?”

“I’ve been — call the police,” Henry Croft said.

The peephole closed then, and there was the noise of the door being unlocked. But it opened only a crack, and there was a heavy chain, brassily shining, that clinked. “Man, you’re beat up,” the voice inside the house said. It belonged, Henry could see now, to a burly man in ridiculously bright blue striped pajamas. “What happened to you?”

“Hold up,” Henry said. “Taken for a ride. I—”

“All right,” the burly man said. “Sit on the porch out there. I’ll phone the cops.”

The guns in the night were real. If this door closed in his face, he’d be shot. Eighteen holes. Again his mind veered away into ridiculousness, shrinking from the reality of death, and a silent bar from the song Sixteen Tons came back to him.

But he knew what he had to do. He flung himself forward, clawing at the edge of the open door, risking having the heavy wood crush his fingers against the frame. “Let me in. For God’s sake, they might come back.”

The big man hesitated. “I can’t — aw, hell, all right. You’ll the out there, and you don’t look like you could hurt me.”

More noise, the noise of the chain being slid out of the slot that held it, then the door opened a little more, and a blue-striped arm shot out to jerk Henry into the house, shut the door quickly.

It didn’t work. Bodies hit Henry Croft from behind, forcing him and the door and the burly man all to swing back into the hall in confusion; then feet were running outside, and more bodies jammed into the mess, and then the door was closed, and the little entry hall was filled with guns and masked faces and terror.

A purple mask said: “You’re Joe Wheeler.”

The burly man said: “So what?”

Upstairs a female voice called: “Joe, Joe what is it?” and the purple mask made a gesture. Two of the masked men started up the stairs. Henry thought they were Paul and Juney, but he couldn’t be sure. It didn’t matter.

From behind a black silk mask, Carley’s voice said: “You done well, Henry.” The voice laughed nastily. “Somebody give Henry a gun. He done well.”

The third man left in the hall had on a white silk mask, ornamented with sequins; something for a lady in evening dress to wear to a dance. He pushed a gun into Henry’s hands, said: “Help cover Mr. Wheeler there, Henry.”