Paul Cain: Seven Slayers

Something in the soft way he said it made it sound good.

I said: “He’ll be around your place — no?”

“He went home.”

Ben gave me the number and I called up, but there wasn’t any answer.

We sat there without saying anything for several minutes, and then the door downstairs opened and closed and somebody came up.

I said to Ben: “What’ll you bet?”

The door opened and Stokes came in. He had a long gray raincoat on and it made him look even taller and thinner than he was. He stood in the doorway looking mostly at the old man; then he came in and sat down on a corner of the table.

I said: “Now that the class is all here, you can start bidding.”

The old man laughed deep in his throat. Stokes was watching me expressionlessly, and Ben sat smiling stupidly at his hands.

“I’m auctioning off the best little town in the state, gentlemen,” I went on. “Best schools, sewage system, post-office... Best street-lighting, water supply...”

I was having a swell time.

The old man was staring malevolently at Stokes. “I’ll give you twenty-five thousand dollars,” he said to me, “to give me that pistol and get out of here.”

If I’d thought there was any chance of collecting, I might have talked to him. Things happen that way sometimes.

I looked at my watch and put the gun down on the arm of the chair where it looked best and picked up the phone.

I asked Ben: “Where’s the business going to be pulled off tonight?”

Ben wanted to be nice. He said: “A coffee joint about six miles north of town.” He glanced at Stokes. “This — tried to swing it back to Four-mile when he thought you’d be there sniping for me.”

“The boys are there now?”

He nodded. “The trucks have been stopping there to eat lately.”

I asked the operator for long-distance, and asked for the Bristol Hotel in Talley, the first town north. The connection went right through. I asked for Mister Cobb.

When he answered, I told him about the coffee place, and that I wasn’t sure about it; and told him he’d find the stuff that had been heisted in the sheds of the yard on Dell Street. I wasn’t sure of that either, but I watched Ben and Stokes when I said it and it looked all right. Cobb told me that he’d gotten into Talley with the convoy about midnight and had been waiting for my call since then. I hung up. “There’ll be some swell fireworks out there,” I said. “There’s a sub-machine-gun on every truck — double crews. And it don’t matter much,” I went on to Ben, “how good your steer is. They’ll be watching out all the way.”

Stokes stood up.

I picked up the gun. “Don’t move so far, Skinny,” I said. “It makes me nervous.”

He stood there staring at the gun. The water was running off his raincoat and it had formed into a little dark pool at his feet.

He said: “What the hell do you want?”

“I wanted you to know that one of the kids you shot up last week at Four-mile was my boss’ brother. He went along for the ride.”

I don’t think Stokes could move. I think he tried to move sidewise or get his hand into his pocket, or something, but all he could do was take a deep breath. Then I shot him in the middle of the body where he shot the kid, and he sank down on the floor with his legs crossed under him, like a tailor.

The old man didn’t get up. He sat a little deeper in his chair and stared at Stokes.

Ben moved very fast for a fat man. He was up and out the door like a bat out of hell. That was OK with me — he couldn’t get to the coffee place before the trucks got there. I had the keys to his car, and it was too far anyway.

I got up and put the rod away and went over to the table and picked up my cigarettes. I looked down at the old man, said: “Things’ll be a little quieter now, maybe. You’ll get the dough for haulage through your territory, as usual. See that it gets through.”

He didn’t answer.

I started for the door and then there was a shot out in front of the house. I ran on down to the front door. It was open and Ben was flat on the threshold — had fallen smack on his face, half through the door.

I ducked back through the hall and tried a couple locked doors. When I came up through the hall again, the old man was on his knees beside Ben, and was rocking back and forth, moaning a little.

I went through another room and into the kitchen and on through, out the back door. I crossed the backyard and jumped a low fence and walked through another yard to a gate that led into an alley. I sloshed along through the mud until I came to a cross-street, and went on down to the corner that was diagonally across the block from the McCary house.

A cab came down the street and I waited until it was almost to the corner, stepped out in front of it. The driver swerved and stepped on the gas, but he had slowed enough to give me time to jump on the running-board.

I stuck my head in to the light from the meter. That turned out to be my best hunch of the evening because in another second, the driver would have opened up my chest with one of the dirtiest looking .45’s I ever saw, at about two feet. It was the kid who had picked Lowry and me up. He hesitated just long enough when he saw who I was.

We nearly ran into a tree and I had time to reach in and knock that cannon out of his hand. He stepped on the brake, and reached for the gun, but I beat him to it by a hair and stuck it in my overcoat pocket and got in beside him.

I said: “Shame on you — almost crashing an old pal like me.”

He sat tight in the seat and got a weak grin working and said: “Where to?”

“Just away.”

We went on through the mud and rain, and turned into a slightly better lighted street.

I said: “How did you know Ben shot Lowry?”

The kid kept his head down, his eyes ahead. “Lowry and me have lived together for two years,” he said. “He used to be in the hack racket too, till he got mixed up with McCary...

“Lowry won a lot of jack in one of Ben’s crap games a couple day ago, and Ben wanted him to kick back with it-said everybody that worked for him was automatically a shill, and couldn’t play for keeps. But Lowry’s been dropping every nickel he made in the same game, for months. That was okay with Ben. It was all right to lose, but you mustn’t win.”

I nodded, lighted a cigarette.

“Ben shot Lowry tonight at the joint on Dell Street. I know it was him because Lowry’s been afraid of it — and that’s why he said ‘McCary.’”

“Did you know it was Lowry when you picked us up?”

“Not until I used the light. Then, when we got to Ben’s I saw him get out of his car and go in just ahead of you — then I was sure. I took Lowry up to his pa’s after you went in.”

The kid drove me to the next town south. I forget the name. I got a break on a train — I only had to wait about ten minutes.

Shane pressed the button beneath the neat red 71. Then he leaned close against the building and tilted his head a little and looked up at the thick yellow-black sky. Rain swept in great uneven and diagonal sheets across the dark street, churned the dark puddle at his feet. The street-light at the corner swung, creaked in the wind.

Light came suddenly through a slit in the door, the door was opened. Shane went into a narrow heavily carpeted hallway. He took off his dark soft hat, shook it back and forth, handed it to the man who had opened the door.

He said: “Hi, Nick. How is it?”

Nick said: “It is very bad weather — and business is very bad.”

Nick was short, very broad. It was not fat broadness, but muscled, powerful. His shoulders sloped heavily to long curving arms, big white hands. His neck was thick and white and his face was broad and so white that his long black hair looked like a cap. He hung Shane’s hat on one of a long row of numbered pegs, helped him with his coat, hung it beside the hat.