Ричард Деминг - She’ll Hate Me Tomorrow

“Could be.”

“Hmm. How’d you happen to arrive like the U. S. Cavalry just in time to prevent me losing my scalp?”

Ross said, “A pair of Lawson’s men were waiting for me behind the club when I drove in a while back. I figured Bix wouldn’t finger me without including you, so I dropped by to check.”

“Oh,” Black said. “The Buick was theirs, huh? What happened to them?”

“Hard to say. They seem to have disappeared.”

This seemed to quell Black’s curiosity, for he dropped the subject with the air of a man who preferred to hear no more about it. He asked, “Now that we have two carloads of emergency-ward cases, what do we do with them?”

“Just follow me,” Ross said.

Climbing behind the wheel of the Buick, he drove out of the alley with Black tailing him in the Cadillac. Keeping to alleys and the darker streets, they worked their way to the downtown area. They were two blocks from City Hospital when Ross suddenly seemed to have a change of mind and backtracked a half dozen blocks.

Behind him Sam Black growled to himself, “He just got some silly idea that’s going to get both of us in trouble.”

Except when crossing streets, they stuck to alleys, working their way toward Fourth and Main. Black began to suspect that they were headed for police headquarters, but a block from it Ross led the way into another alley and parked.

“What now?” Black called from behind him.

Climbing from the Buick, Ross said, “We transfer all four to this car.”

He had Black help him lift the men in the back seat to sitting positions, propping one in each corner. Then they propped the pair from Black’s car erect in the front seat, leaving room enough for Ross to get back behind the wheel.

The pale-faced youth in back emitted a groan and weakly raised a hand to his head. Looking surprised, Ross opened the back door, tilted up his chin and threw a straight jab into it. It hadn’t traveled more than six inches, but still landed with the popping sound of a cork spurting from a champagne bottle. The youth collapsed, his head thrown back against the seat and his face turned straight upward.

“Wouldn’t do to have anyone wake up too soon,” Ross said in explanation.

Opening the trunk, he wrapped a handkerchief around his hand to lift out one of the shotguns, carried it around to the rear car door, and set it, butt down, between the pale youth’s knees. He clamped the lad’s fingers about the barrel.

With an expression denoting total lack of understanding, but willingness to co-operate, Black wrapped a handkerchief about his own hand and moved to help with the other shotguns. When all four unconscious men held cut-down shotguns between their knees, Ross returned their pistols to their holsters.

Climbing back under the Buick’s wheel and adjusting one of the slumping figures next to him to a more erect position, the gambler said, “Follow me and double park next to me when I park.”

Black said dubiously, “I hope we’re not going far. If one of these baboons wakes us, you’ll get your head blown off.”

“Only a block,” Ross said.

They exited from the alley into the heavy traffic of Main Street. But none of the occupants of the cars speeding by so much as glanced at the Buick. Turning right when he emerged from the alley, Ross drove only half a block before being halted by a signal light.

In the rear-view mirror he could see the Cadillac right behind him. He surveyed the situation ahead. In the center of the next block was police headquarters, and while a few pedestrians were walking past it, no one was entering or leaving the building at the moment.

Ross wiped the steering wheel with his handkerchief and kept the handkerchief wrapped around the wheel.

The light changed and the Buick moved forward, its right-turn directional light winking in signal of its intention to park. Smoothly it drifted into the no-parking zone directly in front of police headquarters. The Cadillac came to a halt alongside it. Ross whipped his handkerchief to the door handle of the car, stepped out, and gave the outer handle a quick swipe as he slammed the door.

As he stepped into the waiting Cadillac, two uniformed policemen came from the building and paused at the top of the steps to chat. Neither glanced toward the curb.

Sam Black stepped on the accelerator, squealed his tires around the next corner, and didn’t slow again until two blocks farther on.

Then he said, “Your sense of humor kills me, Clancy. Why’d you change your mind about the hospital?”

“There, they might not have been found for hours,” Ross said. “The guy with the broken jaw needs medical attention. There may be a couple of cracked skulls, too. I thought it was more humane to leave them where they’d be noticed quickly.”

“Yeah. In a probably stolen car, loaded down with illegally cut-down weapons. Bix’s lawyer is going to be a busy little boy.”

“I doubt it,” Ross said with a grin. “Bix doesn’t like inefficiency, and he won’t want any part of explaining to the cops how four of his boys got in that spot. He’ll tell the cops he doesn’t even know them. And they can’t explain things without admitting attempted murder. That quartet should be out of action for a while.”

Looking at his watch, he saw it was five after nine. He told Black to pull up in front of a drugstore he spotted in the next block. From the drugstore booth he phoned the Stowe Point cottage.

When Christine answered in the middle of the first ring, he said, “Hi. Sitting by the phone?”

“Now you know how eager I am,” she said. “Where are you?”

“Phoning from a drugstore. Some business I couldn’t avoid came up. I’m going to be a little late.”

“You’re already a little late,” she said petulantly. “How much longer?”

“It’ll be over an hour. I’m way downtown and I haven’t had a chance to shower and dress yet.”

“An hour? You can shower here. And why do you need to dress? You’re not planning to keep your clothes on after you get here, are you?”

He emitted a chuckle. “I also have to go home to pick up some booze. Expect me about ten or ten-thirty.”

“All right,” she said resignedly. “I’ll wait.”

Back in the car he said to Black, “Were you checking in for the night when you pulled into your garage, or were you planning to go out again?”

“I was through for the evening. After years of working nights, I don’t know where to go when I have an evening off.”

“Then you won’t be needing your car. I had a little accident with mine earlier, and I didn’t have time to check the damage. By now, all the gas may have leaked out of the tank.”

Black looked at him. “It was that kind of accident?”

“Uh-huh. May I use your heap?”

“Sure, if you take me home first.”

Black drove back to the Vista Arms, climbed out and Ross shifted over under the wheel.

“I’ll bring it back in the morning, Sam. Thanks.”

“Sure. If she has a friend, give me a ring.”

“She has a friend, but you wouldn’t like him,” Ross said. “His name’s Whitey Cord.”

He drove off, leaving Black staring after him.

When Ross reached the neighborhood of Club Rotunda, he turned down the street behind the club where he had parked the Lincoln. It was still there, but a police radio car was parked behind it. The gambler drove on without slowing, turned the corner, drove down the alley behind the club and parked on the lot.

He half expected to find police waiting there, too, but none were in evidence. Letting himself in the back door, he took the elevator up to his third-floor apartment.

As soon as he got inside, he phoned the police.