Lawrence Sanders - McNally's caper

‘We’ll!’ he shouted.’ We’ll do this. We won’t do that. Who the hell voted you the great brain? I call the shots!’

‘In a pig’s ass you do!’ I yelled, spluttering in an effort to get it all out. ‘You really did a swell job of calling the shots, you did! Heading for Miami when every cop in the country knew it was your home base. Getting Hymie and Dick killed because of some nutty dream that you’d be treated like King Tut once you got to Miami. And then you discover they don’t want to know you.’

‘You think I couldn’t have made it if it hadn’t been for you?’ he screamed, white with fury. ‘Fucking woman! I had to nurse you along, hold your hand while you jumped a roof a ten-year-old kid could have stepped across. You’ve been a goddamned jinx. You and Fleming. All the way. Without you two schmucks, I’d have been out of the country right now, living high off the hog. What an idiot I was! I should have known better. I should have ditched the two of you in New York. Left you for Rossi to take care of. You’ve been nothing but trouble. You junked me up. And now you’re telling me how to run things? Take off. Go on, beat it. I’m sick of the sight of you.’

‘You shithead!’ I said. ‘You’re going to get yourself killed. Go ahead. I couldn’t care less. You’ve got no goddamned brains. Go on. Take all the stuff to Garcia and just hand it over. “Here it is, Mr Garcia, and I hope it’s enough.” And don’t forget to kiss his ass. But include me out, you fucking … peasant!’

We stood there trembling, glaring at each other. I think if one of us had said another word, we would have been at each other’s throats. Perhaps we both knew it, because we said nothing. Just bristled. Then Jack turned away. He walked to the window. He thrust his hands into his pockets. He stood there, staring out at the rain-whipped night.

I slumped into a chair, leaned back. I stretched out my legs. I lighted a cigarette with shaking fingers. I wasn’t thinking straight. I wasn’t thinking at all. Just trying to regain control. Telling myself it was nerves. That’s all: just nerves. But I hadn’t cried, I reminded myself grimly. I was proud of that: I hadn’t wept.

Jack Donohue spoke first. He was still staring out the window, his back to me. And he spoke in such a low voice I could hardly hear him.

‘That week at Mrs Pearl’s,’ he said. ‘You and Dick and me. Together. That was the happiest time I ever had in my whole miserable life.’

I stubbed out my cigarette. I rose and went to him. I took him by the shoulders and turned him so that we were facing. Close. Staring into each other’s eyes.

it was the happiest time for me, too,’ I told him. ‘Absolutely the happiest. No matter what happens we had that, didn’t we?’

‘Yes,’ he said wonderingly. ‘That’s right. We had that. No matter what happens.’

He sighed deeply. ‘We’ll do it your way, Jan. Weil go down there tomorrow with just the one necklace. Fuck ‘em. Weil get on that goddamned plane when we want to. We’re paying for it.’

‘Whatever you say, Jack,’ I said gently. ‘You’re the boss.’

The rain had stopped by Thursday morning, but a clumpy fog had moved in. It was like living in a murky fishbowl. We could hear the ocean but couldn’t see it. When we walked down to Atlantic Boulevard for a pancake breakfast, we saw a dead pelican on the road, all bloodied and muddied. A great way to start the most important day in our lives.

Back at the motel, Jack cleaned and reloaded the guns we’d take: a pistol in his raincoat pocket, a revolver in his belt. Another pistol concealed in the car. I would carry a pistol in my raincoat pocket and a small revolver in my shoulder bag.

‘Babe,’ Jack said, ‘if you have to blast — you won’t, but if you have to — don’t, for Christ’s sake, take the time to pull the iron out of your pocket first. Just aim as best you can and blow right through the raincoat. It may catch fire, but that’ll be the least of our worries. Keep your hand on the shooter in your pocket every minute we’re in there. Got it?’

‘Got it.’

We started out at noon, paused to gas up, then went south on Federal Highway #1. Jack was driving, leaning forward to peer through the murk. Traffic was moving very slowly; most of the cars had their lights on.

After we got below Golden Shores, I couldn’t follow the twists and turns Donohue was taking, except that I knew we were off Federal and generally heading eastward. There were no road markers. We seemed to be passing through an area of tidal flats, vacant fields, and fenced lots choked with palmettos, scrub pines, and yellow grass.

‘You’re sure you know-’ I began.

‘Don’t worry,’ Donohue said tensely. ‘I know.’

He did, too. We finally turned into a single-lane road. It might have been tarred originally, but now it showed bald patches of sodden earth and weeds sprouting from cracks. We followed the lazy curves going slowly. Then, on the right-hand side, I saw a chainlink fence, bent, dented, and rusted.

‘That’s it,’ Jack said. ‘This is the only road in, the only road out.’

We came up to the sagging gate and stopped.

‘Take a look,’ he said.

I looked. In that swirling fog, the hotel was a ghosts’ mansion. It was silvered with age, glistening with damp, and it loomed. That’s the only way I can describe it: It loomed through the mist, enlarged and menacing. I saw black birds circling and darting into upper windows. I saw the nude grounds, puddled, still shining from the past two days’ rain.

I tried to imagine how it had been, white and glittering, a place for ladies in long gowns with parasols and men with straw boaters and high, starched collars. People laughing and moving slowly along brick walks under lush palm trees. I tried to imagine all this but I couldn’t. It was all gone.

‘Think they’ve got a suite for us?’ I said, laughing nervously. ‘Two rooms with a view?’

‘Let’s go take a look.’

We got out of the car and crawled carefully through a cut in the fence. We tried to avoid the puddles, but the ground squished beneath our steps. My shoes were soaked through before we got to the porch.

We stepped up the rotting stairs, keeping close to the sides where the sag wasn’t so apparent. Then I smelled it.

‘Jesus!’ I breathed.

‘Yeah,’ Donohue said. ‘And it’s worse inside. Breathe through your mouth.’

We went in through one of those broken French doors. It was just as Jack had described it: soaked garbage, offal, all the detritus of a dwelling place abandoned and left open. We went up to the fourth floor, the top except for an attic that appeared open to the lowering sky.

We sent colonies of birds into a flurry of activity. I was certain I heard the scamper of rats. And once I did see a small snake slither behind a baseboard.

We looked hastily into every room, not a difficult job since most of the doors had been removed. There was evidence, as Jack had said, of pot and bottle parties, of fires and wanton destruction, of the terrible inroads age makes. On buildings. On people. Everything goes.

Back on the ground floor, we wandered about until Jack selected a large, high-ceilinged chamber that had probably been the dining room. Broken French doors opened out onto the sagging porch and a side terrace. Most important, from two sides we had a good view of the access road. We could see our own car dimly, parked at the gate.

‘This is where we’ll meet,’ Donohue decided. ‘I’ll do the talking. I mean,’ he added hastily, ‘if you want to say anything, you say it. But mostly you keep an eye on that road beyond the gate. You see another car pulling up, or anything fishy, you let me know.’