Max Collins - Stolen Away

“Okay.”

He scurried under the bed.

“Quiet as a mouse, now,” I said, and got my gun in my hand.

The two men I’d seen were old friends. I hadn’t seen them in a very long time. The last time had been four years ago in a suite at the Carteret Hotel in Elizabeth, New Jersey. When they’d been shooting Max Greenberg and Max Hassel to shit.

I stood just around the corner from the top of the stairs as I heard the front door open.

“Where is everybody?” A high-pitched whiny voice.

“I’ll check the house.” A gravelly baritone.

They were whispering, but I could hear them.

“What should I do?”

“Like the boss said-nobody breathing.”

“Jesus, a little kid, Phil?”

“Yes. Check around outside. Do Heller, the farmer and his wife and the kid and any chickens and cows that get in your fuckin’ way.”

While this was going on, I got on my belly and snake-crawled to the edge of the stairs and soon I could see them down there: Phil was the flat-faced guy with Oriental eyes, wearing a black coat and a gray hat and gray gloves with a great big.45 auto in one mitt; and Jimmy (I remembered his name from our first encounter) was the pug-nosed, bright-eyed, round-faced guy, who I’d winged last time, and who wore a gray tweedy-looking topcoat, and he too had a.45 in one gloved hand. No silencers. Who was going to hear it out here?

Jimmy was opening the door to go out when I opened fire on the fuckers. I got Jimmy in the side of the head and it shook him, made him jump like he was startled, only he was more than startled, because the inside of Jimmy’s head made it outside before the rest of him did, and he flopped sideways on the porch, on his brains, wedging the door open with his dead body.

Phil caught one in the arm, but unfortunately not the arm of his shooting hand, and he was returning fire, and.45 slugs chewed up the world around me, wall and banister and stairs and then he was gone, not out the door, where Jimmy’s body blocked the way, but into the house somewhere.

I didn’t see any other way to play it: I started down the stairs two and three at a time, the nine millimeter pointed off to my left, where Phil had gone, and I was looking at an empty living room when the son of a bitch popped up from behind a chair and fired off one well-placed round, clipping me in the side, sending me tumbling headfirst, clattering my way to the bottom in a jumbled mess of arms and legs, all tangled in my raincoat. I was stunned by the fall more than the gunshot, having hit my head five or six times on the way down; but I didn’t feel pain in my side yet, just wetness, and still on the floor, I fired back at where Phil had been, but he was gone and all I managed to do was put a bullet into the upright piano. It made a little musical ouch.

I wasn’t the only one bleeding: Phil had left a trail, and I followed it. I stumbled through the house, through a sitting room, into the kitchen, where a doorway led, goddammit, to the upstairs. Carefully, hugging the narrow walls of the stairwell, I made my way up the back stairs, and was following the bloody trail when I heard the child yelp.

I ran to his room; now it hurt.

Phil had pulled the boy out from under the bed, obviously, and was clutching the boy to him; the blond-haired baby-faced child looked at me with wide beseeching eyes as Phil hugged the boy to him like a shield and pointed that.45 at me.

I was weak, and I could feel myself slipping, but I steadied the nine millimeter at him and said, “Phil-there’s something you should know.”

Phil, whose face was whiter than the peeled potatoes in the sink downstairs, said, “What, asshole?”

I shot him between the eyes.

“A shot in the head,” I said, “kills all reflex action.”

Phil didn’t hear me, of course. He’d gone where Jimmy went. The little boy dropped himself to the floor, landing nimbly on his toes, as the dead Phil teetered on feet waiting for signals they’d never receive. Then Phil’s corpse decided to land on its face, rather than its ass, and the furniture in the room shook.

“Nice shot, huh, kid?” I said.

“Mister-you don’t look so good.”

“I know…”

“Mister, I’m afraid.”

“Son…your parents…they’re downstairs…in the cellar. They’re tied up…”

Concern gripped his face. “Are Mommy and Daddy hurt?”

“They’re fine, just…you go down there, go out the back way…untie ’em. Bring your daddy…bring your daddy up here.”

He was thinking that over.

I fell to my knees. “Do…do that, son, please…do it…now.”

“Okay, mister,” he said.

And then I flopped on my face.

Vaguely I remember Carl Belliance turning me over, gently, then hovering over me like a homely angel.

I whispered, “They came to…came to kill…you…too.”

“What?” he said.

The boy was with him; the boy was hugging Carl’s arm. I could hear him saying: “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy….”

I said, “Don’t call Ricca…don’t call the Waiter….”

“What?”

Daddy … Daddy…Daddy …

“You’ll die, too, if you do…he sent them…Ricca sent them…call number…in my wall…”

“Your wall?”

Daddy … Daddy … Daddy …

“Wallet. In my…wall…call Nitti….”

I saw my father’s face. I saw my mother’s face. I went to sleep.

I woke up.

My mouth felt thick with the taste of sleep, and with something else, something bitter. Medication?

I was on my back in a bed. Hospital bed. I felt weak.

“Ah, you’re awake,” a woman said. “Good. Let me crank you up.”

The grinding sound signaled my being raised to a sitting position. I was in a private room. I had an IV in my arm. I could feel, or sense, the bandage on my side. Out the window, it was day.

“Where…?”

The nurse was an attractive brunette with lipstick as bright as a cigarette girl’s, but her nose was too big. Italian.

She smiled and it was white and nice and I forgave her her honker. “You’re in Jefferson Park Hospital,” she said.

“How…how’d I get here?”

“Private ambulance, I believe.” She checked my pulse, then brushed hair off my forehead. She gently pulled back the sheets; for a second I thought she was going to blow me, but I was only getting my dressing checked. Just my luck. I drifted away then.

When I woke up again, a small dark man with slicked-back, graying, perfectly barbered hair was sitting in a chair next to my bed, hands folded in his lap, patiently. He was wearing a tailored gray suit and a black-and-gray-and-white knit tie; he might have been attending a wedding, or a funeral.

“Hello, Frank,” I said, having to work to make my eyes focus on him.

“Nate,” Nitti said neutrally, and he smiled. It was a restrained smile.

Out the window, it was night.

“How’d I get here? Don’t tell me an ambulance.”

“That’s not important.”

I started to remember. “Belliance! He called you…”

“Somebody called. Who is not important.”

“Thank God. If he’d called Ricca…what about those torpedoes I shot?”

Nitti glanced around behind him, making sure the door was shut. He scooted his chair closer to the bed.

“You insist on talking about this,” he said, a little bit weary, a little bit irritated.

“What about those guys I shot?”

“Fish food.”

I swallowed thickly. Sleep taste. Medicine taste. The IV was still in my arm, I noticed. “Who were they, Frank?”

“Out-of-state talent. Freelancers. People the Waiter uses…used…time to time.”

“How’d they find me?”

“How should I know.”