Хал Эллсон - Mink Is for a Minx

A cop was bending over the body of the man Maxie had killed. Little Maxie searched the faces in the crowd. He spotted his man. He could not be certain, but the man was trying to get close and yet not too close.

Maxie walked close up to the man. He touched the man’s coat under the left arm. The man whirled, his right hand inside his coat. The man saw Maxie and his hand came out and there was a gun in it.

Maxie smiled and stabbed the man expertly. The man slumped into Maxie’s arms. No one in the crowd had seen any of it. Little Maxie staggered away with the man until he reached an alley. Then he dropped the man and ran.

No one saw him arrive in New York. There had been no one waiting at La Guardia. But it was only a matter of time. The moment he checked into the flea-bitten West Side hotel it was even money the cops would know he was in town within three hours, the Syndicate maybe an hour earlier. They would find him tomorrow at the latest.

Maxie figured he had maybe fifteen hours if he changed hotels every five hours and never stayed in the same place more than two hours. That was the way it was; Maxie liked to face facts. He had to move fast. Fast and careful. You had to balance them just right to beat the Syndicate and the cops.

His first stop was Eddie the Wasp’s cigar store. The fat stool pigeon took one look at Maxie and began to sweat. “They’ll kill me for even talking to you! They got the word about Chi.”

“Walter Midge, Eddie,” Maxie said. “The cops after him?”

The fat man sweated in rivers in the cold. “They rousted him two months ago. I don’t know why. I put out an ear but I got no message. Three days they had him inside. Gimme a break, Maxie, that’s all I heard.”

For Little Maxie it was enough, it all fitted now. “Where is Walter?”

“Who knows? He’s been playin’ in Big Frank’s game, you know? And he moved like. Maxie, what’d he do? I mean, once in a while he talks about a big job, how he’s in the know. He’s spendin’, you know?”

“The cops don’t know, how should I know?”

“Cops’re dumb,” Eddie said.

“So dumb they got to use a stoolie as stupid as you,” Maxie said. “Okay, now you get a message to Walter. You tell him Little Maxie wants to see him about a big job, a driving job, got that? You tell him it’s me and a big job. And, Eddie, if anyone except Walter knows I’m in town I’ll be back for you.”

“Sure, Maxie,” the fat stoolie said.

“Okay. You get Walter here, and you get him to call me and ask for Alice, just Alice. That’s all.”

Little Maxie gave Eddie a Chelsea number, and turned on his heel and walked out. He did not have to worry about Eddie yet. Later, when Eddie thought he was safe, but not yet.

Maxie walked across the city to the Sixth Avenue bar that had the number, the Chelsea number, he’d given Eddie. He waited back in a dark doorway across the street until he was sure Eddie had called no one else. Then he crossed the street and went into the bar.

There were two men in the bar, and the bartender. Maxie covered his face as he passed the two men. He ordered a beer. A clock above the bar read ten o’clock. The little killer figured he had maybe ten hours left. He began to smile to himself. He was going to make it. With a break. He was on his third beer when he noticed that there was only one man sitting at the bar now.

Little Maxie jumped up and headed for the door. The telephone rang. Maxie hesitated, he did not know how long the man at the bar had been gone. It was a chance he would have to take. If he missed Walter this time it would take hours to make another contact, and Maxie did not have many hours. He went for the telephone.

A deep voice said, “Alice?”

“Okay, Midge, meet me in the alley behind the Belden Hotel in a half an hour. Come alone, I’ll be watching.”

The voice seemed to hesitate. Then the voice said, “Is this Maxie Lima? The hired gun?”

“Yeh, Midge, so be quick. It’s a big job.”

Little Maxie hung up and ran for the door. He was a half a block away when he looked back and saw the car drive up to the tavern. Two men got out and went into the saloon. In the distance Maxie heard sirens coming closer. The man from the bar had called everyone. Little Maxie walked faster and smiled in the night. His luck was holding.

He waited in the dark of the alley for Walter Midge. From where he stood he could see the mouth of the alley lighted by a street lamp. There was a blank wall behind him. The doors into the alley were all unlocked; Maxie had checked that. He had his escape route, and no one could sneak up on him. He lighted a cigarette as he waited, sure he had checked everything as usual.

The big man appeared at the mouth of the alley. Midge was almost a giant, and as broad as a wrestler. Little Maxie watched Midge walk down the alley. The big man seemed to move slowly as if afraid of something, hesitant. Little Maxie stepped out and shined a quick light on the big man.

“That’s far enough, Walter.”

Midge stopped. The big man’s eyes blinked in the light There was a thick cigar clamped in Midge’s mouth. The big man’s suit was good and pressed. His shoes were shined. Midge looked prosperous enough. Maxie shut off the light.

“You said you got a job,” the big man said in the dark.

Maxie stepped close to the big man. “A driving job, Midge. A bank, you drive the get-away car. You can handle that kind of job, right?”

The big man seemed to hesitate again. Then his voice from the dark said, “Maybe I can, maybe I can’t.”

The tone of the voice had changed, become, suddenly, arrogant. Midge’s voice was arrogant and wary, the voice of a man who is not sure how much he should admit, but who didn’t care if someone guessed what he had done. Midge was saying, “Maybe I can, maybe I can’t.”

“I know all about it, Walter,” Maxie said.

“All about what, Lima,” the hard voice said.

Maxie laughed. “Don’t try to con me, Midge. The robbery, I know all about it. What was your cut, ten percent? That’d be one hundred grand more-or-less, right? You ain’t been spending that much, you been taking it real easy. I figure you got most of it left.”

The big man’s voice was harder, cagy. “You got big ears, maybe you know too much.”

Little Maxie said, “Don’t try it, Midge! I got a gun in my hand, and a knife in my pocket. You know who I am. I could kill you ways you never heard of, and no one the wiser.”

“What do you want from me?” Walter Midge said.

Little Maxie smiled to himself. “Let’s say you got seventy-five grand left, I’ll take about twenty thousand bucks of that. I’m being good to you, that’s less than half.”

“Why should I pay you?”

“Because I know about the robbery. I figure it’s worth ten thousand dollars I don’t tell the cops; they’d listen to Maxie Lima, believe me. You fooled them once, only this time they’d have the tip from me, and this time they’d keep you inside until you rotted.”

Maxie went on: “The other ten grand is for not telling the Syndicate boys. You don’t pay, I tell the cops and the Syndicate boys. If the cops don’t lock you up and throw away the key, someone in the Syndicate is gonna get the idea of helping you spend that dough, right?”

There was a long silence this time. Little Maxie took a tight grip on his .38 and waited. At last the voice of Walter Midge said, “You’ll tell them? The cops and the Syndicate?”

“I will,” Maxie said. “And don’t think about knocking me off. In the first place you couldn’t do it, in the second place that’s a murder rap and twenty grand ain’t worth a murder rap to a guy like you.”

The silence was longer this time. The little killer went over the whole thing in his mind. The kind of man who drove a get-away car for ten percent of a big robbery was not the type who would kill anyone if he could help it. Maxie knew all about killers, and robbery drivers were never killers if they could help it.