Ричард Деминг - Manhunt. Volume 1, Number 2, February, 1953

We hit the rocks with a splintering crash, and my gun was out of the waistband almost before we struck. He screamed and tried to turn the wheel, and then he remembered he had a passenger aboard. He whirled rapidly as the boat tossed to starboard, the .32 coming up automatically, the crazy light still in his eyes. The smile had vanished from his face now, and his lips were drawn tight across his teeth. I let him bring the .32 all the way up.

I fired then, and the gun flew out of his hand as the bullet struck it. I saw bone splinters pierce his skin, saw the blood suddenly appear in the palm of his hand like a squashed tomato.

I was breathing hard. I took a step closer to him, and he backed up against the wheel, terror in his eyes.

“All right,” I said. “All right.”

I fired again, right at his face. He brought his hands up an instant after the bullet smashed the bridge of his nose. I kept saying, “All right, you bastard, all right,” and I kept yanking on the trigger, the .38 bucking in my hand, the blood bursting out of his eyes, spilling from his mouth. I kept firing until the gun was empty, and his face was a wet sponge that splashed against the deck as he toppled forward.

He was lying in the bottom of the boat when I left him, his white flannels dripping with red. I walked back on top of the breakwater, finally reaching the beach, and padding across the wet sand to the cabana.

She lay on the bed while I packed. She lay very still.

I put the .38 back into its holster, and then I took my police shield from the drawer and shoved it into the suitcase beside the gun. The boys would be surprised to see me back so soon. I was supposed to have two weeks. They’d be surprised.

I didn’t bother taking any of my things out of the drawer. I just snapped the lid of the suitcase shut and looked at the writing scrawled across the top.

Just Married, it said.

I stared at it until it began to blur. I looked over at Eileen just once more, and then I left the cabaña.

Joe Boyle — with all eyes still on him, and with murder still dogging his footsteps. The reason? Vetter!

WHAT HAS HAPPENED BEFORE:

JOE BOYLE, a young kid working for a junk dealer, delivers a note to MARK RENZO, local big-wig racketeer. The note reads, “COOLEY is dead. Now my fine fat louse, I’m going to spill your guts all over your own floor.” It is signed, VETTER. Renzo’s boys work Joe over, trying to find out more about the man who gave him the note. When he tells them all he knows, they throw him outside, beaten and bruised. HELEN TROY, feature attraction at Renzo’s Hideaway Club, finds Joe, takes him to her apartment. She bandages him, tells him she had been in love with Cooley who’d figured a way to make money from Renzo’s gambling tables. She thinks Vetter was a friend of Cooley s. Together, they go to CAPTAIN GEROT of the police. They learn from him that Vetter is a professional killer responsible for the death of many hoods, a mystery man about whom practically nothing else is known. Gerot also tells them that it’s suspected Cooley crossed Renzo, and that he was somehow mixed up in narcotics. They leave headquarters, find BUCKY EDWARDS, Joe’s reporter friend, who opines that Vetter will either kill Renzo, or Renzo will come out of it stronger than ever. When they get back to the apartment, JOHNNY, Renzo’s gunsel is waiting there, ready to work Joe over again. Helen gets the drop on Johnny, and Joe beats him unmercifully. They bundle him in a cab and send him back to Renzo’s club. Joe is anxious to leave before Renzo sends more of his boys after him.

I waited until midnight before I left. I looked in her room and saw her bathed in moonlight, her features softly relaxed into the faintest trace of a smile, a soft, golden halo around her head.

They should take your picture like you are now, Helen, I thought. It wouldn’t need a retoucher and there would never be a man who saw it who would forget it. You’re beautiful, baby. You’re lovely as a woman could ever be and you don’t know it. You’ve had it so rough you can’t think of anything else and thinking of it puts the lines in your face and that chiseled granite in your eyes. But you’ve been around and so have I. There have been dozens of dames I’ve thought things about but not things like I’m thinking now. You don’t care what or who a guy is; you just give him part of yourself as a favor and ask for nothing back.

Sorry, Helen, you have to take something back. Or at least keep what you have. For you I’ll let Renzo push me around. For you I’ll let him make me finger a guy. Maybe at the end I’ll have a chance to make a break. Maybe not. At least it’s for you and you’ll know that much. If I stay around, Renzo’ll squeeze you and do it so hard you’ll never be the same. I’ll leave, beautiful. I’m not much. You’re not much either. It was a wonderful day.

I lay the note by the lamp on the night table where she couldn’t miss it. I leaned over and blew a kiss into her hair, then turned and got out of there.

Nobody had to tell me to be careful. I made sure nobody saw me leave the building and double-checked on it when I got to the corner. The trip over the back fences wasn’t easy, but it was quiet and dark and if anybody so much as breathed near me I would have heard it. Then when I stood in the shadows of the store at the intersection I was glad I had made the trip the hard way. Buried between the parked cars along the curb was a police cruiser. There were no markings. Just a trunk aerial and the red glow of a cigarette behind the wheel.

Captain Gerot wasn’t taking any chances. It made me feel a little better. Upstairs there Helen could go on sleeping and always be sure of waking up. I waited a few minutes longer then drifted back into the shadows toward the rooming house.

That’s where they were waiting for me. I knew it a long time before I got there because I had seen them wait for other guys before. Things like that you don’t miss when you live around the factories and near the waterfronts. Things like that you watch and remember so that when it happens to you, it’s no surprise and you figure things out beforehand.

They saw me and as long as I kept on going in the right direction they didn’t say anything. I knew they were where I couldn’t see them and even if I made a break for it, it wouldn’t do me any good at all.

You get a funny feeling after a while. Like a rabbit walking between rows of guns wondering which one is going to go off. Hoping that if it does you don’t get to see it or feel it. Your stomach seems to get all loose inside you and your heart makes too much noise against your ribs. You try not to, but you sweat and the little muscles in your hands and thighs start to jump and twitch and all the while there’s no sound at all, just a deep, startling silence with a voice that’s there just the same. A statue, laughing with its mouth open. No sound, but you can hear the voice. You keep walking, and the breathing keeps time with your footsteps, sometimes trying to get ahead of them. You find yourself chewing on your lips because you already know the horrible impact of a fist against your flesh and the uncontrollable spasms that come after a pointed shoe bites into the muscle and bone of your side.

So much so that when you’re almost there and a hand grabs your arm you don’t do anything except look at the face above it and wait until it says, “Where you been, kid?”