Tough as Nails: The Complete Cases of Donahue From the Pages of Black Mask (34 page)

The fat man, who looked genuinely angry and indignant, backed to the telephone, kept his gun trained on Donahue, and called a number.

“Hello—hello…. This is Tony—you know…. Well, I’m sorry to get you up, Mike, but listen, do me a favor. There’s a hot shot up here at my girl friend’s, you know—in Fifteenth Street…. Yeah, that’s the place. He’s heeled but I’ve got him covered, and he’s got a pal hanging across the street…. Do me a favor and pick the pal up and then come here and pick up this guy…. Well, he’s got an idea in his nut that me and Beryl bumped some guy off…. Yeah, imagine that!… Will you?… Thanks a lot, old pal.”

He hung up. “Well, big boy, what do you think of that?”

“Swell, for the time being. But what do you think you’re going to get out of it?”

“The satisfaction of seeing you get a rough deal from the cops.”

Donahue looked from the fat man to the girl. Her lips were tight, she was grinding the bent knuckles of one hand into the palm of the other. The fat man looked formidable, lowering, his black fedora pulled down to his thick eyebrows.

“So you want to turn me over to the cops,” Donahue said. “That’s funny, because I like cops.”

He went on talking, rambling aimlessly, wisecracking and chiding the fat man and the woman. He appeared cheerful and nonchalant, but deep in his hard brown eyes two tiny flames burned steadily, warily—and in the set of his neck was tension.

“Oh, shut up, shut up!” cried the woman, a note of hysteria in her voice.

“You wouldn’t turn me over to the cops,” Donahue said, lying his way on and on. “I know you two. I know you from cradles onward. The both of you. I know too much about you. You wouldn’t be fools enough to throw me to the cops. What I know about you, Beryl, would fill a book. And you, Tony, you moon-faced spaghetti-bender. I don’t care if you do know a dick named Mike so-and-so.”

“Pipe down!” growled the fat man.

“Not on your natural, kid. You can’t make me pipe down. You’re yellow, you beef-faced jerk. You wouldn’t dare use that rod. You carry it for show. The only chance I’d have of getting plugged by you would be if the gun went off accidentally. You’re just a punk.”

“Damn you, shut up!”

“Make me.”

The fat man came forward, his eyes muggy, his lip curling.

“I tell you, shut up!” he choked.

The woman beat her temples with her fists and cried:

“Oh,——!…” She threw herself violently on to the divan, picked up a pillow, punched it, threw it down again, clawed at her hair and rose. “For——sake, Tony—”

“Be quiet, Beryl.”

“Tony—”

“Shut up!”

She swallowed hard.

A buzzer sounded.

“Get that, Beryl,” Tony said.

She went numbly across the room towards the door, beside which was an ivory push-button. She arched her back, pressed the button. Then suddenly she choked and slumped to the floor, rolled over and lay in a dead faint.

“Don’t worry about her,” the fat man said.

Presently there was a knock on the door.

“Come in,” the fat man said.

The door swung open. A neat, tall man stood there with his hands in his pockets, chewing on a cigar, half-smiling.

“You look funny with that gun, Tony.”

“Come in, Mike. And collar this bird.”

“I picked up a couple of harness bulls on Lexington and we’ve got the other guy downstairs. What’s it all about, Tony? Oh—oh, Beryl pass out?”

“Can you blame her, with this guy picking on us?”

The fat man talked at length, and the other listened and rolled his cigar back and forth and kept looking from Tony to Donahue with polite interest.

“All right, Tony,” he said, “I’ll take him over to the precinct.”

“Yeah?” said Donahue. “Well, if you take me, brother, you’ll take him too.”

“Now don’t give me any lip. Get your hat and come along.”

The fat man said: “See if he’s heeled, Mike.”

“Ain’t he had his rod out yet?”

Donahue said: “When I pull a rod, I mean it. Not like this guy here.”

“Stick that in his back, Tony, while I take it. This guy sure acts tough. Keep your hands way up, brother.”

He removed Donahue’s gun from its armpit holster, hefted it and unlocked the safety in a kid-gloved hand.

“Get Beryl too, Tony,” he said. “Then you better come around to the precinct and we’ll thrash this thing out. On your way, you,” he said to Donahue.

Donahue scowled at the fat man. “Don’t forget what your boy friend just said.”

“Get,” said the laconic boy friend.

Donahue jabbed him with a contemptuous look, then strode out of the room and down the corridor.

“Hey, take it easy.”

Donahue stopped short at the head of the staircase and spun around. “Listen; use your head. You’re not getting anywhere by hauling me over the coals. I’m a right guy, copper.” He began gesturing with his hat.

“Get down them stairs.”

“On the up and up now, give me a break. You’re just wasting your time by dragging me over. No kidding. I tell you, I’m strictly kosher. Tony’s the guy you want. The fat boy and the jane. Not me.” He tapped the man’s chest with a forefinger. The man stiffened. “Listen, copper. Honest. Don’t arrest me. Please. I ask you in a nice way. And don’t press that gat in my stomach that way.”

He winced and put his hand on barrel of the gun. The gun pressed harder, the men’s eyes locked.

“You fool, take your hand off that gun or I’ll let you have a bellyful!”

Donahue’s forefinger shot forward almost imperceptibly, closing the safety. At the same time he gripped the gun hard and heaved it and the man’s hand outward and upward, his finger tight on the safety.

The man snarled in his throat, tussled. Donahue hit him, with a hard short left to the point of the jaw and both went tumbling down the stairs. They landed sprawling at the bottom.

“You will, will you?” rasped Donahue. “You will try to fake you’re a cop! What a laugh you hand me!”

“Let go this rod!”

They heaved up, wheeled around, crashed against the wall. Donahue cut loose with his left again. The blow caught the man on the jaw and slammed his head against the wall. He cursed and Donahue planted a hard left in his stomach, followed with another to the jaw and a third between the eyes.

By sheer force he tore his gun from the man’s hand, flattened him against the wall with the gun jammed against his stomach. With lightning-like speed he took the man’s own gun, a .45, from its armpit-holster, released the safety.

“Now get downstairs,” he said.

The man hesitated.

Donahue clouted him with one of the guns and booted him along. People in the house were stirring. Donahue drove the man down to the main hall and kept prodding him towards the lobby. He made him open the inner door. He planted him against the wall of the lobby with his two guns.

“Now, you poor dumb heel,” he rasped, “what about the other guy standing across the street?”

“Hell! Go out and find out!”

“Listen, you! So help me living—!”

“It was a stall. There wasn’t any guy out there. I didn’t see any. It was just a stall. I was fooling you.”

“It was, eh?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, pipe this, sweetheart. I don’t fall for that. I want it straight.”

“I told you straight.”

Donahue cracked him across the jaw with a gun-barrel. “Did you?” he said, all playfulness gone from his manner. “Did you? No, you didn’t, you louse! No, you didn’t!”

The man crouched against the wall, his teeth drawing blood to his lips, murder and hatred and fear toiling in his eyes. He did not look so neat now, nor was he as laconic as he had been.

Sounds increased in the house. There were voices in the corridors and a bell ringing somewhere.

“Get it out,” grated Donahue. “Give it to me straight.”

Blood dripped from the man’s cheek, from the lips he had bitten.

The inner door whipped open and a group of men in bathrobes bunched there. Before Donahue could say a word they sailed upon him.

“Here—here!” Donahue snapped. “Let go! I’m—”

From the hall yelled the fat man: “Get him! He tried to waylay me in the hall! The two of them!”

The man who had been laconic—and wasn’t now—ducked out through the swing doors. The fat man barged through and tore after him.

“You damned fools, let go!” roared Donahue.

Anger in him became fury. Fury gave him wild, devastating strength and cyclonic speed. He tossed one man clear over his head, floored another with a swung gun, kicked another, drove a fourth reeling back into the hall. He still had the two guns. He gripped them hard. He kicked open a swing door and poised outside, hefting his guns.

The top of his hat was crushed in. The wind caught his baggy coat and ballooned it, flapped his upturned collar. He saw the fat man and the other running side by side; saw the latter receive the fat man’s gun. Beyond, near Third Avenue, was a parked car, with no tail-light. The fat man and the other ran across the street towards it.

Because the men in the lobby were picking themselves up and gathering for a new attack, Donahue ran out to the sidewalk and slid along the house-fronts. He saw the fat man and his boy friend reach the parked car. They looked back. Donahue was hiding in the shadow of a façade. His hands were hard on the guns.

He heard the roar of the motor as the fat man and the other climbed in. Donahue knelt down on one knee, raised his left arm, laid the gun in his right hand across the crook of his elbow, aimed. Three times the black muzzle spewed jets of flame, and the echoes banged violently in the street.

He saw the car start to limp off. He had ruined the rear left tire. Still kneeling, still aiming, he fired again—broke an unlighted spotlight attached to the left of the windshield. The car turned north on Third Avenue and Donahue broke into a long-legged, bounding run. He saw it bouncing up the avenue on its flat tire, swinging among the Elevated pillars. Donahue knelt between the street-car tracks, took aim again over his left arm, cut loose with the remaining three shots in his gun. He blew out the right rear tire, switched the .45 to his right hand and raced up the sidewalk.

He was half a block from the car when it swung east into Eighteenth Street. He stopped short, raised the .45 and put five shots through the long hood. He piled in a doorway as a half dozen jets of flame issued from the tonneau; slipped a fresh clip into his own gun, switched it to his right hand, gripped the .45 in his left and started off again.

Turning the corner, he saw the car half-way down Eighteenth Street. But he didn’t hear its motor, and he saw men piling from its door: four men. He let fly with a shot from his left hand, and the men pounded for the sidewalk. One of them didn’t reach it; he plunged headlong into the gutter. Donahue flattened against a house as one gun spoke twice and two bullets whistled past and shattered a window.

The neighborhood crackled with the dying echoes of gunshots. Somewhere far distant a police whistle shrilled. Donahue heard the pound of running feet again and saw three men racing towards First Avenue. He left the house wall and broke into a run. He had gone but a dozen steps when he saw gun flashes at the end of the street. He stopped in his tracks, saw the darting figures of three men; saw other figures—cops, uniformed cops.

He went on at a fast walk until he came to the form of the man in the gutter. He bent down. The man was on his face. Donahue turned him over. It was the man who had been laconic. He was dead, his gun frozen in his hand—the gun the fat man had passed him in Fifteenth Street.

Donahue looked up. Over on First Avenue the guns were still banging. Donahue shoved his guns in his pockets and started off on the run. He reached the intersection and looked north. He saw two cops crouched behind a truck on the west side of the street. They were firing across towards the opposite sidewalk, and jets of flame spat from a dark doorway, bullets rang in the metal of the truck.

A taxicab was parked nearby, its driver crouching in a doorway. Feet hammered up the avenue and two more cops came on the run, guns drawn. A few windows grated open but no lights appeared. Donahue leaned at the corner and watched the exchange of shots across the street. The two running cops slowed down, held their guns out, advanced cautiously. In a brief lull they broke into a run and joined the two behind the truck. The firing opened again.

The taxi driver in the doorway said: “Jeeze, those guys mean business!”

“Yeah,” said Donahue.

Stray shots broke windows. Glass rained down, wood splintered, brick chipped off.

A siren moaned up the avenue and the headlights of a police car rushed through the darkness. It pulled up at the northwest corner of Fifteenth Street. Uniformed men jumped off, and two carried sub-machine guns, one carried a riot gun. The men behind the truck yelled instructions. The men from the riot car got a line on the doorway from which the flame issued and two sub-machine guns began to hammer. One kept hammering while the man with the other ran up to join the men behind the truck. Then it opened fire, its mad stutter raising unholy bedlam in the street.

Cops began to appear from all directions. Another police car arrived. People appeared warily, got bolder. Soon a crowd was formed, and the policemen had to drive them back. Nightsticks waved, commands were harsh and urgent. The machine-guns poured stream after stream of lead into the doorway. A powerful searchlight was thrown on the doorway. It revealed brick pockmarked with bullets, glass shattered, wood splintered and shining in long tears. And mixed with the bedlam of the guns were the cries and exclamations of women, the excited shouting of policemen, the arrival of more cars and the wailing of sirens.

A cop reported to a sergeant within earshot of Donahue: “A guy dead in the gutter up Eighteenth—and a car with two flats and a busted hood.”

“Go up there and watch it. Anybody in the car?”

“No.”

“All right, go up there.”

Donahue lit a cigarette, turned and walked away. He pushed through the crowd, reached the fringe of it and headed south. The wind blew sparks from his cigarette, and there was a brown grim look about his mouth. He reached Fifteenth Street, turned east, crossed Second Avenue on the south side of the street.