Brett Halliday: Win Some, Lose Some

“Oh, God,” Maye said heavily from the VW, “I don’t think I can make it.”

He came out. Werner moved, and the garage door slammed down.

The plan was for Pam to throw the light switch, and while Eddie was immobilized by the sight of her terrifying mask, Werner would come in from behind and clap the chloroformed cloth over his mouth. But when the light flashed on, Maye was coming back in the space between the two cars, and that little change threw them completely off.

Maye was removing his glasses. He was a plump man with a ruddy face, usually smiling. Werner knew Maye had to be seared, but instead of standing shocked and motionless, permitting himself to be mugged, he went into a flurry of violent motion.

He threw the glasses at Werner and came straight at him, striking him in the face with an extended hand. Werner went backward, and Eddie literally ran right over him. Werner’s head made contact with the hard floor. For an instant, things were fuzzy and confused. He managed to roll.

The light went off. A gun banged in the wrong part of the garage. Maye wasn’t supposed to be carrying a gun. Downey had practically guaranteed. Maye was at the door now, trying to wrench it open. As Werner came to his knees, his hand closed on something metallic. He had no idea what it was, but it was small enough to throw and he threw it. Another shot from Maye went into one of the cars.

Pam, moving, kicked something over. The garage door went up on its overhead tracks. Werner, suddenly furious at this mild-looking man who ought to be surrendering to them quietly, went over the top of the Volkswagen, leaping on Maye from behind before he could get through the door. He had lost the chloroformed pad. He grappled with Maye, who was trying to bring the gun over his shoulder to shoot Werner loose. They came back hard against the Chevy’s fender. Werner shifted his grip. Pam was hitting at Maye’s arm with her gun. They would have him in another moment.

Then Downey, in a mask like a skull, stepped in and chopped at Maye’s head. The impact was sickening. The taut body went limp in Werner’s embrace.

Downey snapped, “Put him in.”

In the narrow space between the cars, it wasn’t easy. Downey had to do most of it, grunting and swearing.

“We’ve got about ten more seconds here.”

Pam came in the opposite door, and together they wrestled the unconscious loan shark into the narrow space behind the tipped-forward seat. Werner and Downey crammed themselves in. Werner ended up on the driver’s side. He fumbled with the switches, and when he had the motor started, he backed out fast. In spite of the shots and the clatter, the neighborhood seemed unchanged.

“Jesus,” Downey said with feeling. “Did you fuck that up!”

“He wasn’t supposed to have a gun,” Werner said.

“You mean it was Eddie doing that shooting? That’s funny.”

“Funny? I’m laughing.”

“Well, we’ve got the bastard. Take off the masks now.”

He stripped off his skull, changing back into Jack Downey, the leathery veteran of twenty-five years in the Miami Police Department.

“So the son of a bitch was carrying a gun. That’s going to cost him another twenty-five G’s. I didn’t even want to be out here, but it’s lucky I came. You’d be dead now. If he got out of there, he would have picked you off one at a time.”

As a matter of fact, Werner thought they had been doing well without help. The shooting was over by the time Downey got there. But Downey needed to take credit, and that was fine with Werner as long as he was out of their lives at the end of twenty-four hours.

“Stop here,” Downey said. “I’ll walk back and get my car. If he’s too heavy for you, wait for me and I’ll help carry him in. Give me about fifteen minutes.”

He fixed the dome light so it wouldn’t come on when the door opened, got out, and walked away. On the back seat, Maye groaned and flung out an arm.

“We’d better give him the Demerol,” Werner said.

Pam rolled back Maye’s sleeve. Werner had the loaded hypodermic in a toothbrush box. He tapped Maye’s arm smartly with the needle and emptied the syringe. Maye subsided.

“Now we relax and collect the money,” Werner said.

They had rented a house in Hialeah, on the other side of Okeechobee Road. Here, too, the garage was attached, but it only had room for one car. There were several “For Sale” signs on the block, and the lawns were baked out and unappealing. Werner was learning that there was no possible way they could foresee everything, and as he got out to open the garage door, a black Labrador frolicked up to pee on the rear wheel.

Werner had trouble making the key work, and before he could get back in the car, the Lab’s owner, a middle-aged woman with her hair in curlers, came out of the shadows.

“Alice! Don’t do that. You baaaad dog.”

The dog leaped on Werner and tried to lick him, glad to find a playmate this late at night. Her mistress scolded her, but so lovingly that she continued to sniff at Werner and slaver on his pants. Werner batted the wet muzzle away.

“Alice, the man doesn’t like that. Stop it this minute.” The woman pounced and, captured the leash. “That’s a cute bumper sticker,” she said, backing off. “Welcome to Hialeah. I didn’t know this place had been rented. It’s been empty for weeks.”

“Yeah, well,” Werner said, trying to conceal how badly the dog had rattled him. “It’s a little far out, but one of the nice things, you can keep a dog. That’s a Lab, isn’t it?”

She said it was, a damn rambunctious one, only a puppy still. Werner said “Well-” again, and backed into the car. Had she noticed the man on the back seat? Maybe, maybe not. He might, of course, be sleeping or drunk.

“Jesus,” Werner said when the garage door was down. “What was that crack about a bumper sticker?” He went behind the car and read: “Mafia Staff Car, Keep Ya Mitts Off.”

“She’ll remember that,” Pam said.

“Now why will she? Nobody’s going to hear about this except the people who pay us the money. She won’t even know a crime has been committed.”

Pam closed with him hard. He felt the gun in her waistband between them and the strange ridges of overlapping cloth under the sweat shirt.

“O.K.,” he said, rubbing her shoulder. “Everything’s under control.”

She whispered, “Werner, let’s walk away. It isn’t our kind of thing. It can’t work for us. Something bad is bound to happen, I feel it.”

He pulled back. “Old man Downey wouldn’t like that.”

“He said there wouldn’t be any shooting. He was wrong, wasn’t he? I don’t trust him. Let’s take the car and leave it somewhere. Keep ya mitts off. That’s good advice.”

He held her so she had to look at him. “You don’t mean it.”

“I do. I do. Let’s get out of this town before we turn into Downey.”

“No chance. But if you want to walk out, go ahead and walk. We’ll go halves instead of thirds. I’m looking forward to having some money for a change. The hard part is over.”

He tipped the Volkswagen seat and began working Maye out. She watched for a moment, then came to help. A dead weight, Maye was hard to manage. They dragged him into the kitchen and on to the back bedroom. There was a mattress here, another in the second bedroom, two folding chairs and a card table in the living room. Maye was breathing harshly, his mouth open. There was a reddish bulge on his forehead where Downey had clubbed him with his gun. Werner tore off a strip of adhesive tape and taped his mouth, then his wrists and ankles.

“He won’t feel so hot when he wakes up, but he’ll be glad to find out he’s still alive. A little poorer, that’s all.”