She'll Hate Me Tomorrow Read online

  When she came out again, he had lighted a cigarette. She frowned at the gun under his arm.

  “You going to make love to me wearing that?” she asked.

  “I guess I don’t need it here,” he said with a smile. Slipping out of the harness, he carried it over to the mantel.

  Immediately she went over and picked it up. “I’ll hang it in the closet with your coat,” she said, and disappeared into the bedroom again.

  When the bedroom door re-opened this time, Ross expected a man to appear with a gun in his hand. But to his surprise only the smiling woman emerged and pulled the door closed behind her. Returning to the couch, she patted the cushion next to her invitingly.

  Tossing his cigarette into the fireplace, he resumed his seat next to her.

  When she moved into his arms, he understood the reason for the delay in fireworks. Whitey Cord, or whichever of his minions had set this trap, believed in taking no chances whatever. Gluing her lips to his and writhing her body against him, her hands moved here and there over him in pretended caresses. Actually, he realized, she was making sure that he carried no additional concealed weapons.

  Her busy hands paused momentarily when she felt the outline of the cartridges in his trouser pockets, but she must have decided that they were bunched keys, or at least weren’t any kind of weapon, for they quickly moved on. She touched every pocket, ran her hands over his legs and, by pretending to massage his back, checked the complete girth of his belt to make sure nothing in the way of a weapon was thrust into it.

  Fortunately it didn’t occur to her to feel the inner sides of his forearms.

  Deciding to act out his role of unsuspecting patsy all the way, he started to slip the negligée down over her shoulders. As it parted to bare her full breasts, she wriggled from his arms and jumped to her feet, pulling the filmy garment around her again.

  He had been wondering what excuse she intended to make in order to leave him alone and get out of the line of fire when the proper moment came. Since last time he had lifted her bodily and carried her into the bedroom, it must have occurred to her that he might do it again, and she would hardly want to be cradled in his arms when the shooting started.

  Her solution to the problem was ingenious but hardly romantic. He almost burst out laughing when she circumvented all possibility of being swept up and carried off to the bedroom by announcing, “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  Abruptly she turned, ran to the bedroom door and disappeared inside, closing it behind her. Ross moved over near the fireplace and stood facing the bedroom door, one eye on the kitchen door.

  Some moments passed before the bedroom door suddenly swung wide open: A pale, powerfully built man with graying hair emerged. In his hand he held a leveled thirty-eight which Ross recognized as his own. Behind him towered the tall, thin figure of George Mott. The bodyguard held a forty-five automatic, but the muzzle drooped downward.

  Because the thirty-eight was pointed straight at him, Ross could see into the chambers of the cylinder. He was pleased to see that the pale man hadn’t checked the gun, for it was still empty.

  Exposing teeth in a humorless grin, the pale man said, “Hello, sucker. You’ve caused me a lot of trouble.”

  “You must be Whitey Cord,” the gambler said calmly. “I thought you might show up in person.” He turned his attention to George Mott. “Aren’t you pushing your luck, George? I told you that you were dead if you ever came back this way.”

  Mott stared at the gambler, a little taken aback at his seeming total lack of fear.

  The voices were a signal for the burly Bull Hatton to appear in the kitchen doorway. He, too, was armed with a forty-five automatic.

  “If it isn’t Beanhead,” Ross said. “You’re pushing your luck, too.”

  Hatton was starting to bring up his automatic when Cord said sharply, “I’ll handle this personally.”

  The muzzle of the forty-five dropped toward the floor.

  “Like you handled Carl Vegas personally?” Ross inquired.

  Whitey Cord’s eyes glittered. “Like I handle everybody who gives me a hard time. You get it with your own gun, sucker.”

  Drawing back the hammer of the thirty-eight, he centered the muzzle on Ross’ chest.

  “It isn’t loaded,” Ross said.

  There was a sharp click, Cord looked surprised, then both Mott and Hatton started to bring up their guns. Ross’ hand snapped forward and the derringer appeared in it as though he had plucked it out of the air. His thumb drew back the hammer as it slid into his palm and he squeezed the trigger.

  The shot caught George Mott in the Adam’s apple, driving him backward through the open bedroom doorway.

  Ross was falling sidewise even as he fired, and his left hand was sliding into his pocket to pluck out two more shells. Bull Hatton’s forty-five boomed and the slug cut air where the gambler had been standing an instant before. Then the derringer sounded again, a little round hole appeared in Hatton’s forehead and he toppled over backward into the kitchen.

  Whitey Cord dropped the empty thirty-eight and clawed at his left armpit. Ross bounced to one knee, snapped open the derringer, ejected the spent shells and was thumbing new ones into the twin breeches as Cord’s hand reappeared with a forty-five automatic in it. The derringer clicked shut as the forty-five swung toward Ross. It was leveled at the gambler when the miniature gun cracked twice more in rapid succession.

  The automatic sagged in Cord’s grip; he took an uncertain step toward Ross and pitched forward on his face.

  Ross picked at the knot in the shoelace tied to the metal ring of the derringer’s butt, loosened it and felt the elastic tape slide back up his sleeve.

  Walking into the bedroom, he drew out his handkerchief, carefully wiped the gun and tossed it on the bed.

  The bathroom door was closed and there was no sound from beyond it. Christine-Vanita was waiting for the all-clear signal before she came out.

  Ross’ gun harness was lying on the dresser. Slipping it on, he returned to the front room to pick up his thirty-eight, loaded it and thrust it into his holster.

  He found his coat and tie hanging in the closet. When he had put them on, he knocked on the bathroom door.

  “Is it all over?” the woman’s voice asked fearfully.

  “Yeah,” Ross growled in a husky voice.

  The lock clicked, the door opened and she stepped out. Her face drained of all color when Ross grinned at her sardonically. Her hand flew to her throat when she saw George Mott lying on his back in the bedroom doorway, his eyes staring vacantly upward and his throat a blob of crimson. Then she gasped when she saw the body of Whitey Cord lying beyond Mott’s in the front room.

  “Beanhead is laid out in the kitchen,” Ross informed her.

  She gazed at him in terror. “He made me,” she whispered. “He would have killed me if I hadn’t done as he said.”

  “Sure, Vanita,” he said reassuringly. “I understand.”

  Her eyes widened. “You know who I am?”

  He merely grinned at her. “That’s the gun which killed all of them,” he said, pointing to the derringer on the bed. “If the cops ever get hold of it, they’ll trace it to a pawnshop where, according to the gun register, it was bought by a woman giving her name as Mrs. Christine Franklin and her address as Stowe Point. The pawnshop proprietor has a detailed description of you and is prepared to pick you out at a showup.”

  She was staring at him unbelievingly. “You knew the whole plan,” she said in a bare whisper.

  “Of course,” he told her cheerfully. “Your love pats weren’t thorough enough. I had the derringer up my sleeve. You’d better dispose of it. You’d also better dispose of the bodies, because I doubt that you could explain them to the police. It wouldn’t do you any good to tell the truth, because the gun would make you out a liar and you could never convince them that I’ve been here.

  “Within thirty minutes I’ll be at a chicken farm where three reputable witnesses of a ty
pe the cops believe will be willing to testify that I spent the whole evening there. I suggest you phone some of your gangster friends in Chicago and have them catch the next plane here to help you dispose of the bodies. Unless you’re afraid they might not believe your story either and would hold your responsible for the death of your lover.”

  “They’d kill me,” she said in a nearly inaudible voice. “You do have a problem,” he agreed. “Maybe you can find a spade around here somewhere. I’ll leave you to work things out your own way.”

  Walking into the front room, he lifted the two glasses from the cocktail table and polished their exteriors with his handkerchief. Skirting the dead George Mott, she followed to watch him.

  “In the remote event that you call the cops and try to convince them of the real story, I don’t want to leave any proof that I was here,” he explained.

  Going into the kitchen, he replaced the bottles he had brought in their paper bag, wiped off a couple of spots he recalled touching in the kitchen and returned to the front room carrying the sack. He glanced around contemplatively.

  “I’m sure I didn’t leave fingerprints anywhere else during either visit,” he said. “Except on the door latch.”

  He went over to the door, carefully wiped the latch and opened it with his handkerchief over his hand. Wiping the outer knob, he smiled back at the woman, stepped outside and pulled it closed with his handkerchief over the knob.

  Back in town, he stopped at a drugstore and phoned Bix Lawson’s penthouse. When he got the racket boss on the phone, he said, “Evening, Bix. Get you out of bed?”

  After a moment of silence, Lawson growled, “You’re getting cuter every day, Clancy. That was real cute, parking those dummies in front of police headquarters.”

  “You guessed it was me who did that?” Ross said in pretended awe. “I suppose your mouthpiece explained everything to the cops.”

  “You suppose wrong,” Lawson said shortly. “Dummies that stupid can hoe their own rows. What do you want?”

  “Missing any other boys?”

  There was another period of silence, then Lawson said heavily, “You just call up to gloat?”

  “To extend sympathy,” Ross said. “Must be tough lying awake wondering what happened to a couple of your key men and thinking maybe you could vanish the same way.”

  Lawson said nothing.

  Ross said, “I’ve got some news for you, Bix.” “What?”

  “Whitey Cord just dropped dead.”

  After another silence, the racketeer asked, “How?”

  “Seems his girl friend shot him at a cottage out at Stowe Point. She must have gone berserk, because she knocked off George Mott and Bull Hatton, too. It’ll probably never come out in the papers, though. I have an idea she’ll arrange for the bodies to disappear. Change the picture any?”

  For a long time there was no sound except Lawson’s breathing. Then he said slowly, “I guess it takes your cloakroom girl off the hook. She was only a threat to Whitey. If he’s really dead, the Syndicate won’t care a hoot about her.”

  “He’s cold as a carp,” Ross assured him. “So it’s your move.”

  Silence fell again. Finally Lawson said, “I never wanted this war, Clancy. I was pushed into it by Whitey. I’ll call it even if you will.”

  “Then you can go back to just one bodyguard,” the gambler said. “We’re quits.”

  Hanging up, he went back out to the Cadillac and headed for the Tobins’ chicken farm.

  The End

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  Hit and Run

  1

  By two thirty A.M. the custom at the Haufbrau had been reduced to three patrons at the bar and four couples in booths. The bartender, a lean, angular man with narrow cheekbones and a high forehead, surveyed the house, decided no one would want drinks during the next few moments, and relaxed with his elbows on the bar across from the big man seated at its end.

  “Nightcap, Barney?” he asked. “On the house, I mean.”

  Barney Calhoun shook his head. He was a powerfully built man in his early thirties, with square features and thick, dusty-blond hair. Despite his size there was a suggestion of litheness about him, as though he could move with amazing speed if he had to. There was an aura of recklessness about him, too, only partly tempered by the deep cynicism that showed in his eyes. He was the sort of man all women would give at least a second glance, and many couldn’t take their eyes off. At the moment his expression was morose as he stared at the nearly empty glass with which he was making circles on the bar.

  “What’s your trouble, buddy boy?” the barkeep asked. “Women?”

  “Money,” the big man said. “Always money, Joe.”

  “Need a fin or two?”

  Calhoun gave him a brief smile. “It’s not that bad, pal. No pressing bills. It’s just the whole goddam bleak future. I can’t see anything but hamburgers in the next ten years.”

  Joe poured a shot of bourbon in the big man’s glass despite the previous refusal, added ice and soda. “Maybe you shouldn’t have left the force,” he suggested.

  Barney Calhoun snorted. “How many cops you see eating steak? I’m no worse off.”

  Joe leaned his elbows on the bar again. “Maybe you play it too straight, Barney. Some private eyes clean up. If they’re willing to shoot angles.”

  Barney took a sip of his drink. “Don’t fret about my ethics, Joe,” he said cynically. “Show me an angle and I’ll shoot it.”

  “Yeah?” Joe said. He eyed the big man speculatively. “How far will you go?”

  Calhoun’s eyes narrowed. He said dryly, “I should have suspected a drink on the house. What’s on your mind?”

  “Nothing in particular. Just occurred to me, I see a lot of stuff going on on the other side of the bar. You got a license, know how to investigate things and so on. We might make a team.”

  “Doing what?”

  Joe shrugged. “Different stuff. I give you a steer. You follow it up. We split the take.”

  Calhoun circled his glass a time or two. “Give me a for instance,” he said finally.

  The bartender dropped his voice to a confidential whisper. “See the couple in the corner booth?”

  The big man didn’t turn. He searched out the reflection of the indicated couple in the bar mirror. The man was about forty, tall and sleek and handsome, with prematurely gray hair and a small gray mustache. The woman was ten years his junior, a slim, lovely, perfectly groomed brunette. Raven-black hair outlined a pale, delicate face whose skin was so clear it was nearly translucent.

  “Uh huh,” Barney said.

  “Harry Cushman,” Joe said.

  Calhoun looked thoughtful. “The café society Harry Cushman?”

  “Yeah. Two million dollars, two ex-wives. The doll with him isn’t either ex.”

  “Sor?”

  “She’s wearing a wedding ring.”

  Calhoun took a sip of his drink. “Maybe she’s number three.”

  The barkeep shook his head. “It would have been in the gossip columns. The saloon-beat boys stick to his tail like hounds after a fox. She’s somebody else’s ever-loving.”

  The big man shrugged. “About half of them stray, according to Kinsey.”

  “Look at her again,” Joe suggested.

  Calhoun studied the woman’s reflection in the mirror. Aside from her wedding band and an engagement ring that looked like a small emerald, she wore no jewelry. Her plain blue dress was of conservative cut. Yet she somehow managed to convey an impression of wealth. A certain poise, and the unconscious grace of her movements in doing so simple a thing as picking up her drink or leaning across the table for a cigarette light, stamped her as a woman of breeding as well as wealth.

  “Ummm,” Calhoun said. “Expensive.”

  “You’re not fooling,” Joe said. “That’s no chorus cutie. I’ve looked across this bar at too many phonies not to know the real thing when I see it. That’s class. There’s as
much money behind that dame as there is behind Cushman.”

  “Maybe,” Calhoun conceded, and gave the barkeep an inquiring look.

  “Do I have to spell it out for you?” Joe asked. “There’s a guy who’s loaded, out with a married gal who’s probably loaded. Find out who she is. Somebody ought to be willing to pay off for something—Cushman to protect the gal, the gal to protect her happy home, or her husband for a tip that she’s straying.”

  The big man wrinkled his nose. “I haven’t sunk to blackmail yet. I might nudge the cue ball to get a better shot, but I don’t batten on people’s troubles.”

  Joe straightened up and poured another shot. “Well, you asked for an angle.”

  “Try another one.”

  Joe shrugged. “Mostly what I had in mind was stuff like that. You’d be surprised how many guys I spot in here playing footsies with other guys’ wives. Think it over.”

  He moved up the bar to tend to one of the two other remaining bar customers. Calhoun thoughtfully studied the corner-booth couple in the bar mirror.

  Cushman and the woman rose from the booth as he watched them; the man dropped a bill on the table and helped the woman into a light coat that had been hanging on a hook next to the booth. They headed toward the rear door of the barroom, which gave onto a parking lot in back of the building.

  Calhoun glanced sidewise as they passed the end of the bar, within two feet of him. The woman’s figure was as beautiful as her face, he noted. But there was no warmth to her beauty. Her lovely features were absolutely expressionless. The absence of any lines of any sort in her smooth face-even the tiny laughter lines that the most well-preserved woman of thirty is likely to have developed at the corners of her eyes—suggested that if she ever felt an emotion, she wasn’t accustomed to showing it by facial expression.

  Her gaze briefly touched Calhoun as she passed, but there was no reaction. He was used to women noticing him, but she showed about as much interest in him as she might in a piece of cooked salami. On impulse he deliberately looked her up and down.