Ричард Деминг - She’ll Hate Me Tomorrow

Ross shook down the youth while Black disarmed the older man. Both had carried pistols in addition to their sawed-off shotguns. Ross thrust the gun he had taken from the pale-faced youth into his own hip pocket and Black followed suit with the one he had recovered from the other man.

Ordering the men to face him, Ross said to the older one. “How many guns are out front, and where are they posted?”

The man merely gave him a surly stare. Then his expression changed from surliness to vacuity as the gambler casually smashed the barrel of his gun alongside his jaw with such force, the jaw visibly shifted sidewise and stayed in that contorted position. Sinking to his knees, the man pitched forward on his face and lay still.

“Now I’ll ask you,” Ross said to the pale youth.

“Just two,” the young man squeaked.

“Where?”

“I don’t know. Honest, I don’t. It was left to them to pick their spots.”

“Any other guns posted anywhere? In the back yard or inside the building, for instance?”

The youthful gunman gave his head a definite shake and said in a tone of eager co-operation, “There was just the four of us — two front and two back.”

“Turn around,” Ross ordered.

Apprehensively the gunman turned his back, attempting to keep one eye over his shoulder. The thirty-eight lashed out again, smashing down on top of his head. He swayed forward like a thin toppling tree and fell atop his prone partner, where he lay inert.

“Ouch!” Black said with involuntary sympathy. “I’ll bet that’ll hurt when he wakes up.”

“We didn’t have time to tie him up,” Ross said. “I have a date in less than an hour.” Slipping his gun back into its holster, he scooped up the two sawed-off shotguns and tossed one to Black. “Let’s go rabbit hunting.”

Catching the shotgun in midair, Black broke it to check the load, snapped it shut again and looked at his employer. “We shoot or take ‘em alive?” he inquired.

“Depends on what develops,” the gambler said indifferently. “You circle the left side of the building and I’ll take the right.”

He walked back to the rear wall to flip off the overhead light. As the stall was plunged into darkness, it occurred to him that if the tenant who parked his car there happened to drive in before the two gunmen recovered consciousness, he might run over them without seeing them.

The thought hardly bothered his conscience.

Together he and Black moved across the alley to the rear yard of the Vista Arms. There they separated, Black gliding away with surprising soundlessness for a man of his bulk, in the direction of the left side of the building. Ross moving the opposite way.

With the street lights in front not functioning, the whole neighborhood was nearly pitch black. Reaching the front corner of the building, Ross peered toward the main entrance. A light in the lobby cast a faint glow through the glass door, but it was only enough to illuminate a circle of about six feet in diameter immediately in front of the door.

It was enough to silhouette the figure of a man crouched in the shadow of a bush not six feet in front of Ross, however. He was on one knee, his back to the gambler, and a metallic glint came from the shotgun resting across the other knee.

Ross’ gaze swept the surrounding area for the other gunman, but except for the bush, there was no place of concealment this side of the lighted entrance. He was silently closing the distance between himself and the kneeling man when there was the distinct thud of metal against flesh from somewhere beyond the lighted doorway. Next he heard a yell of pain, then a second, more solid thud and the sound of a body flopping to the ground.

The man in the shadow of the bush started to come to his feet. Taking two rapid steps, Ross raised the shotgun he was carrying and brought the metal butt plate down on top of his head. Without a sound the man dropped and lay still.

“Sam!” the gambler called warily, then immediately faded around the corner of the building in case he had misinterpreted the sounds from beyond the main entrance and Black hadn’t been as successful with his quarry as Ross had.

“I got mine,” Black called back. “How about you?”

Stepping back around the corner, Ross said, “Yeah, everything’s under control at this end,” and walked toward the sound of Black’s voice.

He found his burly companion standing over the huddled figure of a man lying on the ground about a dozen feet beyond the main entrance. Nearby was a large bush similar to the one the other gunman had concealed himself behind. The cut-down barrel of a shotgun protruded from beneath the crumpled body.

Black said, “I missed his head with the first swing and caught him on the shoulder. Think anybody heard him yell?”

Glancing along the front of the building, Ross saw no evidence of tenants peering from their windows.

“Nobody seems to have. Let’s get these gentlemen around to the alley before anyone comes along.”

Stooping, Black grasped one of the prone man’s wrists, drew the arm across his shoulder and effortlessly lifted him in a fireman’s carry. Shifting the shotgun he held in his left hand to hook a finger through the trigger guard, he stooped again and hooked his thumb through the trigger guard of the other shotgun. Then, not wanting to pass the lighted doorway, he carried his burden around the corner of the building, in the same direction from which he had come.

Ross returned to his victim and picked him up in a similar manner.

When they met in the alley, Ross said, “We may as well use your neighbor’s carport again and hope he doesn’t come home for a while.”

Entering the stall, he unceremoniously dumped his burden to the floor and leaned the two shotguns against a side wall. As he moved toward the light switch, a heavy thud told him that Black had disposed of his load as urgently as he had.

When the light came on, Ross saw that the first two gunmen still lay in the same heap. The other two sprawled on their backs where they had been dumped.

Ross’ captive was a swarthy, black-haired man with a puckered scar on one cheek. Black’s was an elongated, long-nosed character who looked like a farmer dressed for church.

“The dark guy’s name is Bill Sexton,” Black said. “He’s been with Lawson for years. I don’t know Ichabod Crane.”

“I’ve seen him around. Harry something-or-other. He’s a relatively new employee. I don’t suppose you want them left this close to home.”

“It would be a kind of dirty trick on my neighbor.”

The gambler glanced at his watch. “I’m not going to be on time for my date anyway, so I may as well be good and late. We’ll load these two in your car, then I’ll bring mine around from the next street and load the others in it. Back out your car.”

As Black crossed the alley to obey, Ross stooped over the prone men and removed a pistol from each. He lay them on the floor near the four shotguns stacked against the wall.

After helping Black heave the two unconscious men onto the rear floor of his Cadillac, Ross returned to the parked Buick by the same route he had come and drove it around into the alley. When the other two men were stacked on the rear floor, the gambler unlocked and opened the Buick’s trunk. He and Black carefully wiped the four shotguns and four pistols they had confiscated before laying them in the trunk.

Sam Black worked in complete silence until Ross slammed shut the trunk lid and walked into the car stall a final time to turn off the light. Then he said, “Whose Buick?”

The gambler shrugged. “I borrowed it from a couple of guys.”

“Was that blood I noticed on the rear floor when we were loading it?”