Ричард Деминг - She’ll Hate Me Tomorrow

In the space reserved for the name and address of the purchaser, Ross printed in block letters: Mrs. Christine Franklin, Stowe Point, Muskie Lake .

When he turned the ledger around for the pawnbroker to read what he had printed, Levine studied it without comment.

“There probably won’t be a kickback,” Ross said, “but if there is, she’s thirty-one, five feet five, weighs one twenty-four, has black hair and brown eyes. That’s from her driver’s license. You won’t want to describe that exactly, of course.”

Sol Levine nodded. “I know. The police might wonder how I knew her exact age, height and weight. Around thirty, between five four and six, a hundred and twenty to a hundred and thirty.”

“You catch. If it comes to viewing her in a show-up, which is unlikely, she has a figure which will unfreeze your hardening arteries, and a face to match. Smooth, dusky complexion, a small, slightly flat nose which looks nicer flat than it would more delicately shaped, and almond eyes which give her a kind of oriental look.”

“Hmm,” the pawnbroker said. “I ought to be able to pick her out. I can almost see her now.”

“Yeah, I can tell,” Ross said dryly. “You’d better get that lecherous look off your face before you go home to Rose.”

Sol Levine burst out laughing. “I’m not that old yet, young man. It takes more than a mental picture to give me evil thoughts.”

“Aw, you wouldn’t know what to do with the real thing, you dirty old man.” Ross turned toward the door. “Thanks, Sol.”

“Thank you ,” the pawnbroker said. “You did the buying. Give my regards to Sam.”

“Sure,” Ross said, and went on out.

It was five minutes of six when Ross got back to Olsen’s Shoe Repair Shop. He found his special order ready. Elmer Olsen held up for his examination a leather strap about three inches wide, with a narrower strip of leather stitched to one end of it and a small buckle to the other. Stitched to the center of the strap so that it hung downward was an inch-wide strip of elastic tape, and to its end was tied a three-inch length of shoelace.

“Want to try it on?” the shoemaker asked.

“When you take measurements, things fit,” Ross said. “How much?”

A few moments later, the leather and elastic contrivance reposing in his pocket on top of the box of cartridges, he climbed in his Lincoln and headed toward the center of town to find some dinner before starting to get ready for his date.

By the time he had eaten dinner and had gotten back to the Rotunda it was seven p.m. Daylight Saving Time had ended a week earlier and the days were beginning to get shorter. With sunset an hour old, an overcast sky had already made it quite dark.

As Ross swung the Lincoln into the alley behind the club, he noted that the street lamp at the alley mouth was not yet lighted. He might have passed this off as merely a delay in timing by the powerhouse engineer delegated to throw the switch for street lamps in that area, but as he slowed to swing into the parking lot, he saw that the shaded bulb over the rear door of the club was also dark. As this was controlled by a photo-electric device which automatically turned it on at dusk, alarm bells began ringing in his mind.

His reaction was instantaneous. Pushing the throttle to the floor, he roared on past the parking lot toward the other end of the alley.

There was a harsh, chattering sound as a submachine gun opened up from somewhere on the parking lot. An instant later a second chorused in from near the rear door on the opposite side of the alley. Bits of flying glass stung the back of his head from the car’s shattered rear window, and the right side of the windshield disintegrated before him.

Then he was making a dirt-track left turn from the alley mouth and gunning the Lincoln toward the next intersection at top speed. He made another skidding left turn there, straightened out the wheel, slammed on his brakes and skidded into a parking place at the curb in the center of the block. Leaping from the car, he raced across the street and darted into the narrow areaway between two office buildings. At the far end of the areaway he came out into the parking lot again at the end farthest from the club’s rear door.

Not more than thirty seconds had passed since the machine guns opened up.

Dimly he could make out a single car parked on the lot near the alley. As he ran toward it on tiptoe, his gun in his hand, he heard a hoarse voice whisper, “Think we got him?”

“I didn’t hear his car crash into anything,” another voice answered. “We better blow out of here.”

Ross came to a halt behind the parked car. Hurrying feet scruffed on the parking lot’s rough concrete as two dim figures approached the car. When they were within ten feet, Ross stepped out in the open.

The would-be assassins halted abruptly and both submachine guns started to swing toward him. His thirty-eight cracked twice, the shots so closely spaced they sounded like a single drawn-out explosion.

There was a gasp from one man and a shocked grunt from the other. Then one sat down with a spine-jolting jar, groaned and toppled over on his side. The other emitted a long-drawn-out sigh and slowly pitched forward on his face. Both machine guns clattered to the concrete.

The gambler’s eyes probed the darkness in all directions and his ears were tuned for the slightest sound. When he could detect no evidence of anyone else in the area, he reached through the car window and switched on the headlights. By their glow he examined the machine-gunners.

One was the barrel-shaped driver of Bix Lawson’s car, whom he had kicked in the stomach in front of police headquarters. The other was the tall, lanky man who had been seated in the rear of the car.

Both were quite dead.

So Bix Lawson had issued my death warrant , Ross thought. Well, I just cancelled it — at least for the time being.

It occurred to him, that Whitey Cord hadn’t seen fit to inform Lawson about the trap set for later that night, or the racket boss would hardly have gone to the trouble of setting this earlier one. A case of the right hand not knowing what the left was doing.

Probably another brace of machine-gunners had the front of the club covered, too, he thought. And they could hardly have missed hearing the gunfire. Switching off the headlights, he awaited developments.

When three minutes had dragged by without further action he decided that either Lawson had neglected to order the front covered because he knew Ross always parked in the rear, or the other stakeout had assumed from the machine-gun fire that the job was done and had immediately fled from the area.

Someone was bound to have heard the gunfire and have called the police, however. Within a few more minutes the whole vicinity would be overrun by cops. And while Ross knew he would have no difficulty establishing a clear-cut case of self-defense, he also knew the red tape involved would blast all hope of keeping his appointment at the cottage. And he wanted matters resolved once and for all that night.

Opening the rear door of the car, he heaved the body of the barrel-shaped man onto the floor, then heaved the other body on top of him. The machine guns he put on the rear seat. Climbing under the wheel, he found the keys in the ignition.

As he drove out of the alley, he heard a siren in the distance.

Ross’s first impulse was to drive to one of the night clubs in which Bix Lawson had an interest, park the corpse-laden car in front of it and walk away, leaving Lawson the problem of explaining the matter to the police. Two considerations changed his mind.

First, unless the bodies disappeared completely, he would have to dispose of his gun in order to avoid the possibility of a ballistics check tracing the deaths back to him. And he felt much the same way about guns as he did about bedroom slippers: he hated to break in new ones.