James Chase - The Guilty Are Afraid

“Any chance of looking in some of the offices?” I asked. “I’d spring another fifty if I could.”

I could see he was rapidly losing his nerve by now.

“You’re nuts! Come on, get the hell out of here!”

Then the door behind the bar, the one Bennauer had told me led to the offices, opened, and a fat man wearing a white coat on which was a badge bearing a beautifully embroidered bunch of grapes to tell me he was the wine waiter came into the bar.

He was a Latin type with thick, heavily oiled hair and a Charlie Chan moustache. His small black eyes moved from Bennauer to me and the muscles of his face, under their covering of fat, tightened.

Bennauer didn’t entirely lose his head. He said, “Here’s Mr. Gomez now. You’ve got no business to barge in here without an appointment.” He turned to Gomez. “This guy wants to talk to you.”

I gave the fat Latin a servile smile.

“Could you spare me a moment of your time, Mr. Gomez? I’m O’Connor: Californian Wine Co.”

As Gomez moved over to me, I produced the trade card and laid it on the bar. He picked it up with fat fingers and studied it: his face was as expressionless as a hole in a wall. I could smell the pomade with which he had soaked his hair: it wasn’t a particularly pleasant smell. Having read the card, he turned it on its edge and began to tap with it on the counter while he looked me over.

“I have no account with your people,” he said.

“That’s something we want to put right, Mr. Gomez. We have several lines that would interest you. I’ve brought a bottle of our very special brandy for you to try.”

His black eyes moved to Bennauer.

“How did he get in here?” he asked.

Bennauer had got his second wind by now. He shrugged his shoulders.

“I was here and he just walked in and asked for you.”

“I came up in the goods elevator. The guy on the door downstairs told me to come up,” I said. “Did I do wrong?”

“I don’t see any salesman without an appointment.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Gomez. Maybe you could give me a date for tomorrow.” I put the parcel on the counter. “If you could look at this in the meantime, we might be able to talk business tomorrow.”

“We’ll talk business now,” a voice said behind me.

Both Gomez and Bennauer became as rigid as marble statues. Okay, I admit my heart did a back flip. I looked over my shoulder.

A dark man in a faultless tuxedo, a white camellia in his buttonhole, stood about twenty feet from me. He had the face of an eagle, narrow with a big, sharp nose, a thin mouth and black restless eyes. He was thin and tall; the South American type that women rave about and men watch uneasily when they are raving.

I was pretty certain this was Cordez. These other two wouldn’t be behaving as if they were in the presence of a real hot shot unless he was.

The tall man moved up to the bar, held out a brown, thin hand for the card Gomez was holding. Gomez gave it to him. He stared at it, then with no change of expression he bent it in two and flicked it behind the bar.

“That . . .” he said, and pointed to the brown paper parcel on the counter.

Gomez hurriedly stripped the wrapping off the bottle and laid the bottle on the counter so Cortez could read the label.

He read it, then he turned sleepy black eyes on me.

“I said no to this a month ago,” he said. “Don’t you know what ‘no’ means?”

“Why, I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m new to this territory. I didn’t know someone had shown it to you before.”

“Well, you know now. Get out of this club and stay out!”

“Why, sure. I’m sorry.” I made out I was pretty confused. “Maybe if I leave the bottle . . . it’s pretty good brandy. We could supply it on very favourable terms.”

“Get out!”

I stepped away from the bar, turned and started across the vast acreage of black glass. I hadn’t taken six steps when I became aware that three men in tuxedos had appeared. They stood in a semicircle, blocking the way out.

Two of them I had never seen before. They were big, beefy Latin-Americans. Their faces were hard and expressionless. The third man, standing between them, a snarling grin on his broken face, made me feel suddenly a little weak at the knees.

It was Hertz.

III

For a long moment Hertz and I stared at each other. His tongue came out and went over his thick lips, the way a snake flicks out its tongue before it strikes.

“Hello, peeper,” he said softly. “Remember me?”

I remembered him all right.

I hadn’t reckoned on being bounced by Hertz. I had been prepared to be roughed up a little and shot out on my tail on the hard, cold sidewalk, but having Hertz in it as well hadn’t come into my calculations.

I did some rapid thinking. I moved sideways so I could see Cordez while at the same time I could watch Hertz.

Cordez said, in his flat, bored voice, “What is this?”

“The creep’s name is Brandon,” Hertz said. “He’s a shamus. He’s that punk Sheppey’s sidekick.”

Cordez stared at me, his eyes completely impersonal, then he lifted his shoulders, walked around the bar and made for the door leading into his office. There he paused, looking at Hertz.

“Get him out of here.”

Hertz smiled.

“Sure,” he said. “Give me a little room, boys, I want to take this baby on my own.”

He waved the other two hunks of beef aside, and still smiling, his close-set eyes glittering, he came across the glass floor towards me.

There were five against one; six if Mr. Cordez would condescend to join in, and that seemed to me overdone odds. I equalized the situation by sliding my hand inside my

coat and throwing my .38.

“Relax,” I said, and let the gunsight swing in a semicircle to cover Hertz, the two toughs, Gomez, Bennauer and Cordez. “Don’t let’s have any rough stuff or there could be some damage around here.”

Hertz came to an abrupt stop as if he had walked into a brick wall. He stared at the gun as if it were the last thing he expected to see.

Cordez paused, his hand on the doorknob, his eyes on my face.

The two musclemen remained motionless. They were professionals, and they were quick to realize I would shoot if I were crowded.

Cordez moved back to the bar and leaned against it.

“I told you to get out, didn’t I?” he said. “Well, get out!”

“Keep this ape out of my way and I will,” I said, nodding at Hertz.

Then the lights went out.

Maybe that was Gomez’s contribution to the tableau. I shall never know. I heard a quick patter of feet and I squeezed the trigger. An orange spurt of flame came from the gun and the bullet smashed a mirror somewhere ahead of me. Then a wave of bodies rolled over me, taking me to the floor. Hands groped for my throat, my arms, my wrists. I was squeezing the trigger again as the gun was wrenched out of my hand. A fist that felt more solid than a lump of pig-iron smashed against the side of my head.

A boot thumped into my side as someone fell over me.

I hit out blindly. My fist hit a face, and there was a grunt.

Something whistled past my face and made a dull thud on the glass floor. Hands found me. I fought, kicked out and mentally cursed, then a fist slammed me on the side of the jaw and that was that.

Lights came on again.

I lay on my back staring up at the two thugs and Hertz.

One of the thugs had my gun which he held down by his side.

My jaw ached and my head felt as if it were bursting. I heard the sound of footsteps across the glass floor. Cordez joined the happy band. His thin face was still indifferent, still without expression.

I pushed myself to a sitting position, my hand holding my aching jaw.