It was Stella who answered the question. Her voice was calm and clear. “Don’t hurt him. You’ll get the money.”
Big Larry looked at her. His eyes changed expression. “Now that’s the sort of a broad I like. Tell your new boss where the safe is. Start talking, babe, and remember you go with the place.”
“There isn’t any safe,” George said hurriedly. “I banked the money.”
Big Larry grinned. “You’re a liar. You haven’t left the place. I’ve been casing the joint. Go on, babe, tell me where the hell that safe is. Then Georgie here will give his new partner the combination.”
“Concealed back of the sliding partition in the pie counter,” Stella said.
“Well, well, well,” Larry Giffen observed, “isn’t that interesting?”
“Please don’t hurt him,” Stella pleaded. “The shelves lift out—”
“Stella!” George Ollie said sharply. “Shut up!”
“The damage has been done now, Georgie boy,” Giffen said.
Larry slid back the glass doors of the pie compartment, lifted out the shelves, put them on the top of the counter, then slid back the partition disclosing the safe door.
“Clever, Georgie boy, clever! You called on your experience, didn’t you? And now the combination. Georgie.”
Ollie said, “You can’t get way with it, Larry. I won’t—”
“Now, Georgie boy, don’t talk that way. I’m your partner. I’m in here fifty-fifty with you. You do the work and run the place and I’ll take my half from time to time. — But you’ve been holding out on me for a while, Georgie boy, so everything that’s in the safe is part of my half. Come on with the combination. — Of course, I could make a spindle job on it, but since I’m a half owner in the joint I hate to damage any of the property. Then you’d have to buy a new safe. The cost of that would have to come out of your half. You couldn’t expect me to pay for a new safe.”
Rubber-glove Giffen laughed at his little joke.
“I said to hell with you,” George Ollie said.
Larry Giffen’s fist clenched. “I guess you need a damn good working over, Georgie boy. You shouldn’t be disrespectful.”
Stella’s voice cut in. “Leave him alone. I said you’d get the money. George doesn’t want the electric chair.”
Larry turned back to her. “I like ’em sensible, sweetheart. Later on I’ll tell you about it. Right now it’s all business. Business before pleasure. Let’s go.”
“Ninety-seven four times to the right,” Stella said.
“Well, well, well,” Giffen observed. “She knows the combination. We both know what that means, Georgie boy, don’t we?”
George, his face red and swollen from the impact of the slaps, stood helpless.
“It means she really is part of the place,” Giffen said. “I’ve got a half interest in you too, girlie. I’m looking forward to collecting on that too. Now what’s the rest of the combination?”
Giffen bent over the safe; then, suddenly thinking better of it, he straightened, slipped the snub-nosed revolver into his left hand, and said, “Just so you don’t get ideas, Georgie boy — but you wouldn’t. You don’t like the idea of the hot squat, do you?”
Stella, white-faced and tense, called out the numbers. Larry Giffen spun the dials on the safe, swung the door open, opened the cash box.
“Well, well, well,” he said, sweeping the bills and money into his pocket. “It was a good day, wasn’t it?”
Stella said, “There’s a hundred-dollar bill in the ledger.”
Big Larry pulled out the ledger. “So there is, so there is,” he said, surveying the hundred-dollar bill with the slightly tom comer. “Girlie, you’re a big help. I’m glad you go with the place. I think we’re going to get along swell.”
Larry straightened, backed away from the safe, stood looking at George Ollie.
“Don’t look like that, Georgie boy. It isn’t so bad. I’ll leave you enough profit to keep you in business and keep you interested in the work. I’ll just take off the cream. I’ll drop in to see you from time to time, and, of course, Georgie boy, you won’t tell anybody that you’ve seen me. Even if you did, it wouldn’t do any good because I came out the front door, Georgie boy. I’m smart. I’m not like you. I don’t have something hanging over me where someone can jerk the rug out from under me at any time.
“Well, Georgie boy, I’ve got to be toddling along. I’ve got a little job at the supermarket up the street. They put altogether too much confidence in that safe they have. But I’ll be back in a couple of hours, Georgie boy. I’ve collected on part of my investment and now I want to collect on the rest of it. You wait up for me, girlie. You can go get some shut-eye, Georgie.”
Big Larry looked at Stella, walked to the door, stood for a moment searching the shadows, then melted away into the darkness.
“You,” Ollie said to Stella, his voice showing his heartsickness at her betrayal.
“What?” she asked.
“Telling him about the safe — about that hundred dollars, giving him the combination—”
She said, “I couldn’t stand to have him hurt you.”
“You and the things you can’t stand,” Ollie said. “You don’t know Rubber-glove Giffen. You don’t know what you’re in for now. You don’t—”
“Shut up,” she interrupted. “If you’re going to insist on letting other people do your thinking for you, I’m taking on the job.”
He looked at her in surprise.
She walked over to the closet, came out with a wrecking bar. Before he had the faintest idea of what she had in mind she walked over to the cash register, swung the bar over her head, and brought it down with crashing impact on the front of the register. Then she inserted the point of the bar, pried back the chrome steel, and jerked the drawer open.
She went to the back door, unlocked it, stood on the outside, inserted the end of the wrecking bar, and pried at the door until she had crunched the wood of the door jamb.
George Ollie was watching her in motionless stupefaction. “What the devil are you doing?” he asked. “Don’t you realize—?”
“Shut up,” she said. “What’s this you once told me about a spindle job? Oh, yes, you knock off the knob and punch out the spindle—”
She walked over to the safe and swung the wrecking bar down on the knob of the combination, knocking it out of its socket, letting it roll crazily along the floor. Then she went to the kitchen, picked out a towel, and polished the wrecking bar clean of fingerprints.
“Let’s go,” she said to George Ollie.
“Where?” he asked.
“To Yuma,” she said. “We eloped an hour and a half ago — or hadn’t you heard? We’re getting married. There’s no delay or red tape in Arizona. As soon as we cross the state line we’re free to get spliced. You need someone to do your thinking for you. I’m taking the job.
“And,” she went on, as George Ollie stood there, “in this state a husband can’t testify against his wife, and a wife can’t testify against her husband. In view of what I know now, it might be just as well.”
George stood looking at her, seeing something he had never seen before — a fierce, possessive something that frightened him at the same time that it reassured him. She was like a panther protecting her young.
“But I don’t get it,” George said. “What’s the idea of wrecking the place, Stella?”
“Wait until you see the papers,” she told him.
“I still don’t get it,” he told her.
“You will,” she said.
George stood for another moment. Then he walked toward her. Strangely enough he wasn’t thinking of the trap but of the smooth contours under her pale blue uniform. He thought of Yuma, of marriage and of security, of a home.