William McGivern: The Seven File

“But Duke matters to us.”

Grant stared at him. “I told you he’s okay. I’ve known him for years. I met him in stir, back in ’43.”

“Forgive me, but I don’t consider that last any recommendation,” Creasy said, with a mannered little smile.

“Shut up!” Grant said, spacing the words slowly and deliberately.

“I say, it was only a joke.” Creasy’s smile became strained. “No offense meant.”

“I said shut up!” Grant stood and pounded a fist into his palm. “I don’t like being kidded.” He stared at Creasy, his big chest rising and falling slowly. “Understand that? Fifteen years ago I ran two wards in Chicago. The numbers, horse rooms, everything. I was just thirty then, and I had it made. Dough, cars, broads, a job that was getting bigger every year. I was on the inside of the city. I saw the wheels that ran it, and I watched them turn, fast or slow, the way the big boys wanted. You know where I’d be today if I hadn’t been sent up?” He shook his head disgustedly, as some of the anger drained from him. “I’d be running the city, that’s about all. But I shot a bookie, a thieving little creep, and there was a lot of reform talk in the air, so I got tossed to the do-gooders. Yeah.” He jerked a thumb at his broad chest. “Me, Eddie Grant, the bogey man behind all the dirt in the city. They talked like I was Capone. And I got twenty years. So don’t kid me about making mistakes. Understand that?”

“Yes, of course—”

“And do you think the big boys got a place for me now?” Grant said, staring down at Creasy. “Like hell they have. So I’m on my own. But they’ll hear from me again.” He made an abrupt, dismissing gesture with his hand. “That’s my baby, not yours. Now: you got everything clear?”

“Certainly. We’ve been over it a hundred times, at least.”

Grant was obviously pleased by Creasy’s answer. “That’s right. I planned this job good. We’ve got nothing to worry about.”

A key turned in the front door and a blonde woman with a bag of groceries in her arms entered the room. “Hello, Eddie,” she said, closing the door with her foot. She was in her early forties, with a good but matronly figure and a plump pretty face. Her eyes were large and blue, and hopelessly nearsighted. She narrowed them down to slits as she noticed Creasy. “Oh, it’s you, Howard,” she said at last.

Creasy was standing like a Guardsman. “How are you, Belle? Silly question. I can see you’re blooming as usual.”

“Why, thank you!” Belle put a finger under her chin and made a playful curtsy. “Eddie, can I bring you two a drink?”

“No,” Grant said shortly. “Creasy is just leaving.”

Creasy cleared his throat. “I must be popping off, actually.” Picking up his Homburg and umbrella, he glanced at his watch. “I’m late now, as a matter of fact.” He smiled winningly at Belle. “Do you think she’ll forgive me?”

“Oh, I’m sure of it,” Belle said.

And Creasy made his exit, bowing gracefully to her and bobbing his head at Grant, hurrying off to his customary rendezvous with himself and loneliness.

Grant was methodically performing his setting-up exercises when Belle returned from the kitchen with a glass of sherry. Smiling at him, she sat down in a deep chair and adjusted her skirt to reveal a smooth round knee. She had pretty legs and enjoyed displaying them; flirtation was a habit with her, a reflexive response to men of all kinds. “You’re cheating,” she said. “You’re bending your knees.”

“Like hell I am.”

“I was just teasing. You take this physical culture stuff pretty grimly. Are you aiming at the Mr. America finals?”

Grant didn’t bother answering her. He completed his waist exercises and went into the bedroom. Belle sipped her sherry and picked up a magazine. She was used to his indifference, and rather liked it. In the bedroom Grant was staring at himself in the mirror above the dresser, critically examining the wrinkles that covered his face like fine lace. It was natural enough at forty-five, he thought. He pulled a lock of his gray-blond hair down on his forehead, and then cautiously touched the thinning area at his crown. Plenty of it left... He thought: I don’t look any older than when I went to jail. Harder maybe, but not older. They’d know him when he came back. They wouldn’t frown and say, “Wasn’t that Eddie Grant?” No, they’d know him. He wasn’t one of the slobs who went old and weak in stir. Whining for a handout, broke, old...

“Belle, did you get that face cream I told you about?” he called to her.

“Yes, it’s in the medicine cabinet.”

Grant studied his reflection for a few more seconds, drawing in his breath to accentuate the size of his chest, the hard line of his waist. All right, all right, he thought, and walked back into the living room. “That place in Maine sounds great,” he said. “Duke’s brother’s place. Good fresh air, clean living.”

“Judas! You talk like we’re going on a camping trip.”

“I know where we’re going,” he said, staring at her, suddenly irritable and nervous. “Don’t make cracks like that.”

“What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing. Nothing’s the matter.”

“Which one of them worries you?” she asked in the mild, little girl’s voice she affected occasionally. “Duke or Creasy?”

Grant frowned at her, his eyes sharp and cold. “Don’t talk trouble. They’re both okay. As good as I could hope for.”

“Well, what is it then?” she said plaintively.

Without answering her he turned back to the windows and stared at the sunlight that glinted in the leaves of the little maple trees along the block. Finally he said heavily and quietly, “I’m worried, sure. We’re trying something the biggest mob in the country wouldn’t touch for ten million bucks. That’s something to worry about.”

“But you’re going ahead with it,” she said, turning the sherry glass slowly against her lower lip.

“A kidnapping is different from any other job,” he said, still staring down into the street. “Contacts, cash, they’re no good. You don’t have a friend in a deal like this. We’ll be hot the way no killer or bank robber is ever hot. They can go to the mobs and pay for a hideout, transportation. But no mob would help us. They’d finger us straight to the cops.” Turning, he looked at her then, his eyes curiously flat and pale. “That’s going to work on us, you and me, on Duke and Creasy. That’s what we got to fight. The feeling that we’re all alone, that if we slip we’ll be in the chair thirty days later.”

“But you’re going ahead with it?” she asked him again, moving her foot about in a slow circle.

He nodded at her, his eyes bright and hard and dangerous. “You’re damned right I am. And nothing is going to stop me...”

At five o’clock on the afternoon of the 17th, a black Jaguar pulled up and stopped before the Bradleys’ brownstone on Thirty-first Street. A young man in a leather windbreaker hopped out, closed the door neatly and reverently, then trotted up the stone steps and rang the bell. When the Bradleys’ housekeeper, Mrs. Jarrod, opened the door, he tossed her a mock salute. “One Jaguar, all set to growl,” he said. “You keep an eye on him, I’ve got to get back to the garage.”

“They’ll be leaving directly,” Mrs. Jarrod said.

The young man smiled up at the rectangular section of blue sky and white cloud that was visible from the street. “They got a nice week end coming up,” he said. “They going sailing?”

“I presume so,” Mrs. Jarrod said.

“That’s the life.” He sighed. “When I make my pile, that’s for me. The blue sea, the bounding main, a bottle of beer — living, eh?”