When Gino had taken charge of the group, he had taught her how to spot burglar alarms and other precautions against intruders. It was information Gino had acquired two years earlier, in reform school in another state. For he was a young man who had long since forfeited his home. He was a waif, a wanderer, a seeker after a way of life neither he nor the others had ever known.
In short, a punk.
He had come to the City riding a freight car, with two dollars and sixteen cents in a ragged pants pocket, less than a year before. He had known about the City, of course, like every other youth who had ever spent time in a reform school. He had taken a succession of jobs while he looked around and learned the local ropes — bowling alley pinboy, bellhop at the City Hotel, copy boy on the Gazette. None of them had offered him a promise of the future he sought, a future in which Miami sands and fifty-dollar-a-day suites and luminous blondes and Las Vegas gaming tables loomed large.
It was impossible for a local boy to make a good connection. All such contacts belonged to the upper-bracket businessmen and politicians, and these plump citizens had them sewed up tight.
The City was out of bounds.
That was why he had decided on the Fellowes job, when Dora revealed the opening. He wanted a stake to get out of town, enough to set him up in business elsewhere. It had looked open-and-shut. Fellowes’ wife and kids were going to Canada for a month. The old man was going up there with them to spend the first few days. Dora had learned about the safe and got the combination from the younger kid.
They hadn’t expected Fellowes to come back so soon — and they hadn’t expected to find the thirty-two gees in the safe. Fellowes was dead — Gino would never forget the stupid look on his face when he sat up in bed and saw Dora opening the safe. He had turned on the light and said, “Why, Dora, what’s the idea?”
So Gino had shot him. And Mike had fired more bullets into him. And they had taken the dough and let the silver alone.
A perfect job. No one had seen them coming or going. They had the money. In a day or two, a week at the outside, they could make their split and take off. If Mike didn’t do something stupid or Dora didn’t make trouble.
Gino looked at her, lying curled up on her side, breathing softly, innocent as the gold chain with the cross on it around her neck. In the dim light, he could see the red spots beginning to appear on her face. Radishes gave her an allergy.
She had discovered this as a kid, used it to fake measles when she was a kid in school and wanted a few days off. She ate radishes now, before she went baby-sitting. “They feel a lot happier if you look unattractive,” was her logic. “That way, they’re not so afraid of a girl’s boy-friends coming to call.”
For a moment, Gino was tempted to wake her up and say, “Come on, chick, let’s grab the loot and take off.”
But Mike would howl like a banshee and they wouldn’t get far. Gino yawned and scratched his damp chest and sat there, half-listening to the radio, making half-cooked plans toward what he would do when he got out of here.
A long, hot afternoon.
5
It was after five when Mike and Arne came back, sweating out the beer they’d been drinking. Arne had a bag filled with cans of ale and an opener. He put it on the table with the rest of the food and Mike said, as if he’d brought it, “Open up, characters. Fresh from the big yeast cow.”
Dora sat up and yawned and stretched. Mike squinted at her and giggled. He said, “Gawd, honey, you’re a mess.”
Dora gave him a look of contempt, pushed back her hair and spurned the can he offered her. “You crazy?” she said mildly. “I can’t keep a date reeking of beer.” She was covered with spots now, all over.
Arne sat down again in his chair by the window. Except for his daily outings, he might have taken root there. He even slept in it, rather than taking his shift on the cot. He said, “Town’s white hot,” then lapsed into habitual silence.
“What’s cooking — outside of us?” Dora wanted to know.
Mike took over, standing in the center of the floor, a beer-can in one hand, a cigarette in the other. He said, “Arne’s not kidding. We got it from Ozzie himself. Philadelphia, Chicago, Kansas City — even some of the boys from Las Vegas and the Coast. They must be setting up a big shift or something.”
Gino said a sharp, hard word. Here he was, successful boss of a big score, a clean score, a score that would be bound to make any of the boys sit up and take notice of him. And he had no way of letting them know it. He wondered what you had to do to stop being a punk.
The news came on again. There was nothing about the gathering of the criminal clans in the City. There wouldn’t be. More important, there was nothing new on the Fellowes murder.
The announcer was giving the ball scores when the radio went dead. “That damn box!” He went over and banged it. Nothing.
Gino said, “Try the light switch.”
Mike did and again nothing happened. Dora looked at him and said, “Mike, what’d you do with that dough I gave you to pay the electric bill last month?”
Mike opened and closed his mouth three times, like a goldfish. He looked around him, wildly. He said, “Jeest, so I blew it on a filly at Aqueduct. And then forgot to tell you. So what? Have I committed a crime or something?”
Dora just looked at him. She was barely half his size, but she dominated him like a tugboat dominating an ocean liner. Then she said, “I got to use the bathroom to get ready.” She picked up her dress from one of the chairs, and her bag, and went out to the hall. Seconds later, Gino could hear the banging of the pipes as the water came on in the bathroom that served the floor.
A glance at his watch told him it was too late to pay the electric bill until the morning. They could manage without lights — candles or electric lanterns were available at any drugstore. But they needed a radio, not only to keep increasingly frazzled nerves down but for the news broadcast. There was always the possibility that something might break that would affect their security.
It might, Gino decided, even be turned to their advantage. If he could somehow pick up a portable with a police broadcast band... He decided to talk to Ozzie, the fence, wondered briefly what Mike had had occasion to talk to him about during his afternoon outing. Before he had time to ask questions, Dora came back.
She looked about fourteen years old, with her broken-out face, her hair clubbed back and clipped with a rubber band, her little red dress and white patent-leather belt. He got up from his chair and began putting on his own outer clothing — trousers and a red, brown and yellow aloha shirt. He said, “Let’s get going.”
“Hey! What about the lights?” Mike wanted to know. “It’ll be dark in here real soon. You want Big Stupe and me to sit around without seeing each other?”
“It should be a relief — for both of you,” said Gino. “Come on, Dora.”
6
She said nothing till they got outside. Hot as the room had been, the radiations from pavement and sidewalk struck them like a blow in the face, as they emerged from the tenement door. Dora said, “Damn, it’s murder!” Then, “What a birdbrain — can’t even be trusted to pay a lousy bill. Aren’t you afraid to leave him there with Arne?”
“Maybe — but not as afraid as I am of having him outside,” Gino told her. In the late-afternoon sunlight, Dora’s induced-allergy complexion was ghastly.
He waited with her for the bus that would take her to her job. She said, “Any chance of you changing your mind, Gino?”
He shook his head, told her, “Forget it, chick. You and me, we’re going places, all right, but not together — not now. Maybe we can hook up later when we’re both in the clear. But we got too much dead wood hanging to us.”