Paul Cain - The Paul Cain Omnibus

“Then it’s a deal.”

“No.”

Crotti looked as if he’d found a cockroach in his soup. “You mean it isn’t enough?” he said incredulously.

“Too much.”

“Then why not?”

Kells said: “Because I don’t like it. Because I never worked for anybody in my life and I’m too old to start. Because I don’t like the racket, anyway — l was aced in. It’s full of tinhorns and two-bit politicians and double-crossers — the whole goddamned business gives me a severe pain in the backside.” He paused, glanced at Granquist.

“Rose and Fenner both tried to frame me,” he went on. “That made me mad and I fought back. I was lucky — I took advantage of a couple breaks and got myself into a spot where I could have some fun.” He stood up. “Now you want to spoil my fun.”

Crotti stood up too. He shook his head. “No,” he said. “I want to show you how to make it pay.”

Kells said: “I’m sorry. It’s a swell proposition, but I’m not the man for it — I guess I’m not commercially inclined. It’s not my game.”

Crotti shrugged elaborately. “All right.”

Kells said: “Now, if you’ll ask the man behind me to put his rod away, I’ll be going.”

Crotti’s lips were pressed close together, curved up at the corners. He turned and looked into the big window behind him — the man who stood just inside the doorway through which they had entered was reflected against outer darkness.

Crotti nodded to the man and at the same moment Granquist stood up, screamed. Kells stepped into line between Crotti and the door, whirled in the same second — the big automatic was in his hand, belching flame.

The man had evidently been afraid of hitting Crotti, was two slugs late. He looked immensely surprised, crashed down sideways in the doorway. Crotti was standing with his back to the window, the same curved grimace on his face.

There were pounding steps on the stair. Kells stepped over the man in the doorway, ran smack into another — the man who had been asleep on the cot — at the top of the stair. The man grabbed him around the waist before he could use the gun; he raised it, felt the barrel-sight rip across the man’s face. There were several more men in the big room below, two on the stairs, coming up.

He planted one foot in the angle of the floor and wall, shoved hard; locked together, they balanced precariously for a moment, fell. They hit the two men about halfway down, tangled to a twisted mass of swinging arms, legs. The banister creaked, gave way. Kells felt the collar of his coat grabbed, was jerked under and down. He struck out with the gun, squeezed it. The gun roared and he heard someone yell, and then something hit the center of his forehead and there was darkness.

The fog was wet on Kells’ face. He opened his eyes and looked up into grayness. He rolled over on his side slowly. There was nothing but thick, unbroken grayness. He held his hand in front of him at arm’s length and it was a shapeless mass of darker gray. He sat up and leaden weights fell in his skull like the mechanism that opens and closes the eyes of dolls. He lay down again and turned his head slowly, held his watch close. It was a little after six, full daylight, but the fog made it night.

Then he heard someone coming, the crunch of feet on gravel. He reached for the gun, found the empty holster, noticed suddenly with a sharp sensation in the pit of his stomach that his coat was gone.

Someone squatted beside him, spoke: “How d’ you feel?” It was Borg. Kells could see the vague, thick outline of his head and shoulders.

Kells said: “Terrible. Where the hell’s my coat?”

“God! Me saving his life and he wants his coat!” Borg giggled softly.

“What happened?”

“Everything.” Borg sighed, sat down in the gravel with his mouth close to Kells’ ear. “After you and the navigator went ashore, I went on the wharf and laid down for a while. Then, in a couple minutes, somebody came out and I thought it was you till I seen there was four of them. I ducked behind some ropes and stuff that was laying there, and they came out and saw our boat and jawed awhile in some spick language. Then they lit out for some place and I got up and tailed them and run into the navigator.”

There was the sound of a shot suddenly, some place below and to Kells’ left, muffled.

Borg said: “That’s him now — what a boy!”

Kells sat up.

Borg went on: “He was carrying on about smelling trouble up at some kind of barn, and he wanted a gun. I wouldn’t give him mine, so he said he was going back to the boat and bust open a locker or something where he thought there was one. He—”

There was another shot.

Kells said: “What the hell’s that all about?” He jerked his head towards the sound, immediately wished he hadn’t.

“That’s him — he’s all right. Wait’ll I tell you...” Borg shifted his position a little, went on: “I went on up the path and I’ll be damned if that navigator didn’t catch up with me, and he had the dirtiestlooking shotgun I ever saw. When we got to the house, he said, ‘You go in the front way and I’ll go in the back,’ so I waited for him to get around to the back — and about that time, there was two shots inside.”

Kells rolled over on his stomach. Borg twisted around, lay beside him.

“I went in and you were doing a cartwheel downstairs with three or four guys on your neck. There was another guy there, and he made a pass at me and I shot him right between the eyes...”

Borg leaned close to Kells, tapped his own head between the eyes with a stubby forefinger. Kells said: “Hurry up.”

“God, I’m hurrying. They were tearing hell out of you and I was trying to pick one of ’em off when the navigator came in the back way and started waving that shotgun around. He yelled so much that they had to see him. Then another guy came out on the balcony and I took a shot at him, but I guess I missed — he ducked back into the upstairs room.”

Borg sighed, shook his head. There was another shot below, then two more, close together.

“Well — I got off to one side to give the navigator a chance,” Borg went on, “but he had a better idea — he came over on my side and we jockeyed around till I could get a hold of you, and then we backed out the front — me dragging you, and the navigator telling the boys what a swell lot of hash they’d make if he let go with that meat grinder. When we got outside, I drug you a little to one side—”

Kells interrupted: “Didn’t I have my coat?”

“Hell, no! You were lucky to have pants the way those guys were working you over... We tried to carry you between us but we couldn’t make any headway that way — it was so dark and foggy we kept falling down. So the navigator fanned tail for the boat, and I drug you through a lot of brush and we got up here after a while. A half a dozen more guys went by on the way to the house — the island’s lousy with ’em. If it hadn’t been for the fog...”

Kells asked: “Bernie’s at the boat, now?”

“Sure — and a swell spot. The fog’s not quite so heavy down there and he can pick ’em off as soon as they show at the head of the wharf. Only I thought he’d shove off before this...”

“He’s waiting for us, sap.” Kells rose to his knees.

“Oh yeah? Maybe you can figure out a way for us to get there.”

Kells asked: “Which direction should the side of the cove be?”

“I haven’t the slightest.”

Kells got shakily to his feet, rubbed his head, then started down a shale bank to his left. He said: “Come on — we’ll have to take a chance.”

Borg got up and they went down the bank to a shallow draw. An occasional shot sounded on the far side of a low ridge to their right. The fog wasn’t quite so thick at the bottom of the draw; they went on, came out in a little while onto a narrow beach. There was a jagged spit of rock running out across the sand from one side of the draw. The fog was thinning.