Tough as Nails: The Complete Cases of Donahue From the Pages of Black Mask (22 page)

Her hand jumped from the pocket of her blue coat and a small automatic spat sharply. Ames had jumped sidewise. The woman bared her teeth and sent three shots in rapid succession. One of them got Ames. He flinched, and then the gun in his hand banged.

“Oh-o,” the woman grunted. One of her legs buckled, and she slumped to the sidewalk.

Jess roared and blazed away, and Ames staggered backwards, as his own gun thundered. Donahue fell on the gun in the woman’s hand, tore it from her feeble grasp. He whirled on Jess, charged him and jammed the muzzle against his side, press the trigger. The explosion was muffled by Jess’s clothes.

Jess heaved away, groaning. He started running. Donahue streaked after him. Swinging into University Place, Jess twisted and sent two shots at Donahue. One nailed Donahue in the left leg, and he skidded against the building. He clawed his way to the corner and saw Jess running north on University Place. He toiled after him, hopping on one foot, dragging the other. If only he had the long-barreled twenty-two!

Crossing the street, Jess turned for another shot. Donahue heard the bullet snick past his ear, heard it crash the plate glass window of a shop. Donahue fell down, lay panting at the curb. Jess ran on towards a parked car.

Donahue got up and tried to run on both legs. The experiment drew a rasp of pain from his throat that was clipped short by tightened lips. He hopped across the street, his breath clotting in his throat. He heard the cough of a starting motor, saw smoke belch from the parked car’s exhaust. He clamped his teeth and tried to run again on both legs. The pain seemed to stab to his brain. It made him dizzy. But he stuck it out. Stuck it out till he reached the back of the car. But the car was starting.

Donahue grabbed the spare tire, got his arms around it. He was dragged a matter of ten yards before he got his foot clamped in the inside of the rim. He hung on grimly as the car wheeled around a corner. It was a big sedan.

East on Sixteenth Street, past Stuyvesant Square, and then north on First Avenue with the throttle wide open. Donahue hung on, his wounded left leg lying across the tail light, shooting pain through his body with each bump. After a while the car slowed down to a normal rate of speed. It made a left turn into Thirty-seventh Street and rolled past garages and dark-faced houses. Halfway up the block it swung in to the curb and came to a stop.

Donahue was already off the tire. He staggered up the side of the car as Jess pushed the door open and shoved a foot out.

“Come right on out,” said Donahue, “but watch your step.”

“Why, damn my soul—”

“Out Jess, or I’ll finish you right here.”

Jess stumbled out, one hand pressed to his side, pain on his face.

“I gotta get a doc, Donahue.”

“So have I, you big bum.”

Jess was breathing hoarsely, doubling up.

“But you walk now,” Donahue said. He reached out with his left hand and tore the gun from Jess’s hand. “Walk to Lexington Avenue. There’s a hotel up there where I can telephone.”

“I can’t! So help me, I can’t go another step!”

Donahue leaned against the car, his face drawn. He hefted the two guns. “Get, Jess—or I’ll empty both these rods in your belly!”

Jess staggered away from the car. Donahue toiled after him, dragging his left leg, hopping on the right. Jess dragged his heels, bent far forward, both hands held to his side. They crossed Second Avenue, crossed Third and started up the hill towards Lexington. Half way up Jess fell to the pavement, groaning.

“Get up, Jess!”

“I can’t. Honest to God, I can’t! Oh-o…. God…. God!”

Donahue started towards where Jess lay, but he never made it. He dropped three feet short, and lay braced on one elbow. Jess was sitting facing him, hands gripping his side, torso rocking from side to side. The street was dark, deserted; not even a house light shone. At the next corner was the hotel.

For fully two minutes they said nothing. They could hear each other’s labored breathing, see each other’s sweat-smeared and pain-twisted face. Then Jess fell quietly side-wise.

Donahue looked at him through glassy eyes. The street began to fade. Jess became a dark blur lying on the sidewalk. Donahue’s braced arm collapsed, and his head struck the sidewalk. He could not move it. Blackness was sweeping down on him.

His hand tightened on the gun he had taken from Jess. He pulled the trigger, kept pulling it until the hammer clicked. The echoes of the shots hammered violently in the narrow street.

Donahue’s fingers relaxed. He sighed, and then there was nothing but blackness. But somewhere a police whistle shrilled.

Donahue came to some time later in a white hospital room. He saw two nurses, a doctor, another doctor and he saw sunlight slicing through two windows. Sunlight after darkness. The uppermost thought in his mind, tenacious after hours of riding wild nightmares, had to do with Jess crumpled on the dark pavement in Thirty-seventh Street.

“How are you, lad?”

Donahue saw the fat doctor’s lips moving.

“They get Jess?” Donahue asked.

“Who?”

The other doctor leaned. “He means the gangster.”

“Oh, Jess. Yes. He’s in the ward now.”

“Alive, eh?”

“Quite…. How do you feel?”

“I haven’t felt so rotten in a long time.”

The doctor said, “You were in bad shape, lad. You’ll be on your back for a month… but you’ll get over it.”

“Butt?”

“I wouldn’t—yet, lad.”

“Okey.” He licked dry lips, and the nurse gave him a drink of water. “How’s Ames?”

“Ames?”

“The dick got shot in University Place by the guy I nailed.”

“Oh, yes. Ames is quite all right. Sitting up in fact. He got two wounds, but neither of them was frightfully serious. He said he’d like to see you when you came to.”

“That’s fine.”

The two nurses and the two doctors went out. Five minutes later one of the nurses opened the door, and a white-coated man wheeled in Ames.

Ames was smiling tranquilly. “So you got him, eh, Donny? That was guts, boy. And I got the jane. It was tough. I ducked two of her shots, but when the third got me I couldn’t help cutting loose. I’ve never killed a jane—before. It’s kind of—getting me… you know?”

“Yeah, Billy. Broads. They trick us, cheat us, and try to murder us… and when they get it in the neck, we—get a touch of heart…. How the hell did you ever happen to come over to the hotel? I never thought you’d show up.”

“Well, I breezed down to the place in Waverly, but nobody was in. I hung around a while, and then I thought I’d walk over and get the details from you. I went up in the elevator. When it opened at your floor, I happened to look in the mirror that the operator uses to see if anybody’s coming for the elevator. You know, it’s fixed up on the side near the door.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I saw you and the jane and the guy with the gun. I figured that if I stepped out then I’d have no show… and you’d get rubbed out in the rush. So I told the guy to go down again. Then I saw you hoofing out the side entrance. The papers are having a hell of a gay time about it. One thing that’s got me—”

The door opened and the nurse said, “Mr. Hinkle calling.”

“Sure,” said Donahue.

Asa Hinkle entered with his ambassadorial air, closed the door, turned and stood looking at Donahue. He said nothing. He regarded his aide with mild, curious intensity.

Donahue reached out, lifted Ames’ cigarette from the latter’s fingers and took a long drag. He gushed smoke through his nostrils, said, “Pardon me if I don’t seem to get up, Asa.”

Hinkle chuckled, came forward smiling and laid his soft, fat hand on Donahue’s lean brown one.

“You’re a wonder, Donny!”

Donahue chuckled. “Now come the bouquets.”

“Not,” said Hinkle, sitting down, “exactly.” He leaned forward. “We thought Jess had the ice, but he said you said you’d left it with the precinct skipper in Harlem. Skipper says you’re a liar.”

“I am. Jess told the truth.”

Hinkle wagged his head, drew in his upper lip. “The skipper says—”

“Now don’t worry about that,” Donahue broke in whimsically. “The ice is safe. Go over to my hotel and tell the clerk to give you the letter I had him put away just before I went up to my room—and met the broad and her playmate.”

Hinkle’s eyes widened. “So that’s it!” He placed his hand on Donahue’s again. “Donny, you are a wonder! Take a long rest, boy. The reward is big. I’ll cable our client immediately, deposit your share in the bank for you. It’s been a long road, Donny. And a brutal one. Frankly, I’m surprised to see you alive.

“This last play was a bad one. We’ve got it straight now that Poore sent Tubba Klem after the ice. Poore figured that Friedman had switched it. And we’ve got it straight that Irene Saffarrans had a long talk with her sister and Irene figured that you’d switched the ice.”

Donahue sighed. “Okey, boss… okey. Get the ice and get rid of it. It’s the unluckiest hunk of ice I ever tailed. I’m on my back for a month, and I don’t want to hear about it, don’t want to talk about it. I’m sick of guns and gun-toting frails. When I can walk I’m going to go to the country. I know a guy up in the mountains. He’s got a cabin there. And it’s quiet as hell. God, Asa, it’ll be good to smell the woods and forget all about business!”

Asa sat back with a reflective smile. “You know, Donny, I’d like to go with you.”

Donahue glared. “Nix. You couldn’t get enough newspapers, and you couldn’t go an hour without talking about your life’s work. Nix, boss. Just nix.”

Hinkle chuckled. “I guess you’re right, son.”

Tough dick Donahue is taken for a buggy ride.

When Donahue came into the office Asa Hinkle, the pontifical-looking head of the Interstate Agency, looked up from the stock quotations he was frowning over.

“I thought you’d be at Tony’s,” he said.

“I was learning some card tricks.”

“Well, I don’t suppose that could be any worse than playing the market.”

“I told the boys I’d be right back.”

Asa Hinkle sat back and pulled a memorandum from the drawer. “You have a reservation,” he said, “on the Pennsy tonight—for St. Louis. You’d better take plenty of clean shirts.”

Donahue stopped a lighted match half-way to the cigarette that hung from his lips. Then he grunted, put flame to tobacco, and snapped the match into a cuspidor.

“Who the hell wants to go to St. Louis?” he said.

“Boy, the way my finances stand now, St. Louis is as good as any place. You’d better take along some Scotch, too. I hear they’re having a cold snap out there and you can only buy gin and thrice-cut bourbon.”

“Listen, Asa, the last time I went to that burg I almost got fogged out. Not only that, but there was a shyster there named Stein who double-crossed us.”

“This is simple,” said Hinkle. “It looks to me like nothing more serious than being a bodyguard. The client’s name is William Herron. He’s at the Apollo Hotel, in Locust Street—room 804. I think your train gets in at five tomorrow evening.”

“What’s the matter, haven’t they got any private dicks in St. Louis?”

“That is neither here nor there. Herron called us on long distance just before noon today. I told him that it seemed a little irregular and that I didn’t think we could send a man out there unless we had a retainer. He said that would be given as soon as you arrived. I said that it was possible to send money over the Western Union. Half an hour ago I collected three hundred dollars that he sent by telegraph. I just wired him that Mr. Donahue would arrive about five tomorrow evening.”

Donahue tipped back his Homburg. “Providing you supply the Scotch.”

“I have two bottles here in the desk.”

“Suppose I get in Dutch out there?”

“Go to Moss Garrity, in Olive Street. And remember, tip no more than ten per cent. And don’t include any money lost in those East St. Louis gambling joints.”

“I’ll be good.”

“I seem to have heard that before. But anyhow, start packing.”

The sound of wheels rattling over switches, the slow lurching of the Pullman, the muted jangling of bells, woke Donahue up. He looked out of the window and saw railroad yards: red lights, green lights, many steel rails shining in the gloom.

He picked up a book that had fallen to the floor, stowed it in the Gladstone, took a flat black automatic from beneath a suit of pajamas and shoved it into his pocket.

The train crawled into the shed. Donahue put on raglan and Homburg, submitted to the porter’s ministrations, tipped him, grabbed up the Gladstone and got off. He defied porters on the way up the platform, went through the barn-like station and came out in Market Street. He took a taxi and it rushed him to Twelfth, north on Twelfth, east on Locust. He got off at the Apollo Hotel.

He had wired ahead for a room on the eighth floor. They gave him number 812, and a black boy took the key and the bag and piloted Donahue aloft; opened a window in the room, opened the closet door, grinned with white horse teeth in a sooty black face.

“Anything else, suh?”

“I brought my own.”

“Thank you, suh.”

The boy left and Donahue stood for a moment staring down into Locust street, where a pall of smoke and fog dimmed the lights. Then he took off hat and topcoat and sat down at the small metal desk. He took up the telephone receiver.

“Give me room 804,” he said. Presently he heard a man’s voice, and said: “Mr. Herron?… This is Donahue, the Interstate man from New York. Should I come right over?… I’m down the hall from you in 812…. All right, I’ll be right over.”

He hung up and sat staring blankly at the instrument for a full minute. Then he rose, wagged his head dubiously, frowned with his lean-cheeked brown face. He looked like a man reacting visibly to a vague inner instinct; to an intangible warning against which his better judgment was as nothing compared with the force of circumstance. With a hoarse sigh, begrudgingly philosophical, he went to the door, opened it and locked it from the outside; went down the corridor with a shadowy forehead and slow deliberate footsteps.

Herron let him in after a moment’s scrutiny through big horn-rimmed glasses.