Brett Halliday - Armed… Dangerous…

“Oh, yes, I can make you. Yes, indeed. What I’m going to do to you, honey, I’m going to lay you six different ways and you’re going to love every minute!”

“Get it through your head!” the man inside shouted. “You’re going to-”

McQuade saw a heavy-set, burly Negro mauling a young white girl with a dense mop of black hair. He pulled the Negro into a right-handed punch that traveled less than a foot and lifted him clear off the floor. The little splat as fist and jaw collided sounded like an egg being dropped.

“Stop it, both of you!” Michele cried.

Her cry went unnoticed. A second man appeared in the archway at the end of the living room. He was smaller than McQuade, with snapping black eyes, a thin two-part mustache and slicked-back hair. He was wheeling a dress rack, a simple contraption of iron pipes running on rubber-tired wheels. A dozen or so identical dresses in plastic bags hung from the central pipe.

He looked from McQuade to Michele, his eyes jumping like furtive animals. He whirled the rack around and thrust it at McQuade.

The Negro landed on the worn carpet with a crash that must have startled the termites in the old beams. McQuade batted at the dresses with both hands. He tried to sidestep, but the smaller man kept pushing the rack at him, keeping him off balance.

Michele cried, “Ziggy, that is truly enough!”

McQuade took a backward step and finally got a grip on one of the uprights. He braced himself. The rack reversed and the smaller man began to retreat. On the floor, the Negro shook his head and gathered himself. Michele stooped beside him and said something urgently, in her agitation speaking in French. He brushed her aside and began to get to his feet, trouble written all over his black face.

“Brownie, you fool, stand still and listen!”

Billy, the boy who had met them at the gate, hurled himself on McQuade from behind. McQuade twitched violently and brought his elbow back into the boy’s midsection. Billy went flying, an anguished look on his face.

The Negro, coming up, dealt McQuade a powerful blow in the kidneys. McQuade spun around and the dress rack went careening away, carrying its manipulator ahead of it. In front of the fireplace, he tripped on a low table and went down. The rack came down on top of him.

The girl, a skinny thing under her wild crown of black hair, grabbed McQuade’s waist and hung on grimly. McQuade chopped at the Negro’s head, and caught him on the ear with a swinging right that took him out of contention again. McQuade turned to meet Billy as he came at him swinging a poker. He went in underneath the poker and caught it as it came down. He twisted, yanking hard. The poker whirled away.

The dress-rack man had untangled himself, but he kept clear of McQuade until the Negro recovered and could come at him again. Then he darted in with a karate chop which McQuade caught on the side of his head. A swinging backhand blow sent Dress Rack reeling. A fat Tiffany glass lamp with a beaded shade fell to the floor.

The skinny girl finally succeeded in working one leg between McQuade’s. The Negro grabbed from one side while Billy leaped on him from the other, and they all four went down, in a flailing, churning knot. Dress Rack moved around the little group with the marble lamp base, waiting to get a shot at the big man’s head.

Michele continued to scream at these impossible Americans to act like civilized people. But suddenly the whole thing struck her as less awful than funny. She collapsed laughing into a tall chair. It was wild, high laughter, and after an instant it reached the struggling group on the floor. Dress Rack peered around in alarm, and lowered the lamp base. The Negro looked up, and McQuade hung a solid right high on his cheekbone.

That was the last blow struck by either side. No one could go on battling in the same room with that cascade of laughter. The skinny girl freed herself, smiling, and came to her feet. Her blouse was in tatters and one strap of her bra had torn loose, but the bra didn’t have much to keep under restraint. Billy, sitting back on his heels, began to grin. In a moment he was hooting as hysterically as Michele.

The Negro, dazed, was flickering in and out of consciousness, but his lips, too, began to move. Only Dress Rack still looked mad.

“Put it down, Ziggy,” Michele sputtered. “I told you. Did I not tell you? Do you remember? I told you it had to work. And the dress rack. You see what a weapon? What you can do with it?”

“I never said you couldn’t,” Dress Rack said stiffly.

McQuade came heavily to his feet. “What are we doing, playing games?” he said, massaging his knuckles.

Michele’s laughter was nearly under control. Catching Billy’s eyes as she started to speak, she was off again.

“Oh!” she gasped finally. “My poor ribs. Brownie, are you all right?”

The Negro waggled his jaw. “If someone will pass me the bottle of Scotch. Who is this gentleman?”

“His name is Frank. He is taking Tug’s place. And this is Brownie.” She pointed. “And Irene. And Szigetti, sometimes called Spaghetti. I spoke of a small disturbance we mean to create on Sixth Avenue.” She spread her hands. “Viola! This is it!”

McQuade touched the side of his face and looked at his hand. There was blood on it. Szigetti, smoothing his mustache with quick flicks of his thumbnail, studied McQuade closely.

“I’ve run into you somewhere,” he said.

“Have you?” McQuade said.

“In Florida or someplace?”

McQuade looked at him with more interest. “I’ve been in Florida.”

“Yeah,” Szigetti said, studying the bigger man specula-lively. He turned to Michele. “We were counting on taking Tug’s split and divvying it up. We were working on the new timing when you came in. My principle is, the fewer the better.”

There was no sign of merriment in her face now. He said quickly, “I’m not griping! I’m no complainer, anybody can tell you that. I thought we could see how it shaped up with just the four of us. And if you still thought you needed the extra man, I had somebody to suggest. A kid I can vouch for over the years, and you could get him for a fraction of what Tug was getting.”

“Did you approach him?” she said sharply.

“No, no, not without getting a go-ahead from you. But I happen to know he’s available.”

“You can forget it, Ziggy. Frank, that blood on your face, do something about it. We don’t want to call attention to you with a bandage.”

“It’s not my blood,” he said.

Brown had picked himself up and was pouring himself a slug of good Scotch. “You’re welcome to it, baby,” he said softly. “For now.”

“Now will everybody please stop this?” Michele said. “It was a stupid mix-up, and all my fault. We are going to be friends for thirty-six hours, because we can do this only if we work together. After that you may fight with knives or guns or anything you please.”

“Blade work?” Brown said blandly. “Not for me. I’m a nonviolent cat. First thing I’m going to do is buy a red Thunderbird and some new threads. Then I’ll accept bids from the chicks.”

“Where’s the bathroom?” McQuade said.

Michele said, “Show him, Billy.”

Billy took him out through a large dining room. The table was littered with aluminum trays, the remains of four TV dinners. He opened the door of a washroom off the kitchen.

“There’s a tub upstairs,” Billy said, “and it’s about three and a half feet long. You couldn’t get in without a shoehorn, Frank.”

“Yeah?”

The boy looked down diffidently, then up into McQuade’s eyes. “That was some fight,” he said, and added, “Paper towels is all there is.”

McQuade grunted. Inside the washroom, he closed and locked the door.