For a moment a terrible shudder touched her shoulders and the beauty of her face was twisted with anguish.
“Stop it, Ryan! These things you’re guessing...”
I shook my head. “I’m not guessing any more, kitten.”
Her teeth bit into her lip and the tears that made her eyes swim flooded out and coursed down her cheeks.
I said, “Lodo left a line to Billings... a slim one, a deliberate one. Lodo had to maintain that connection to be in on things if they ever developed, yet not enough to be suspicious. That line was the sweet bouquet you sent the departed. The eventuality paid off. I followed it.
“Your next move was easy. On our first lunch date you went to the ladies room as per usual, but made a phone call that had me tailed. You made all the provisions for a tap job in my own apartment using organization punks and sat back and waited.”
“Ryan...” her eyes were pleading, “do you think I could do that?”
“Sure. The kill wasn’t yours directly. You just made the call. Operation tappo went into effect automatically. Trouble was, it didn’t come off. The big second phase began. I was cultivated for information. I was still an enigma. Nobody could figure my part in it at all. Hell, don’t feel sorry about it, I didn’t know either.”
She shook her head, telling me it was wrong, all wrong, but I didn’t watch.
“My friend Art died before I could catch on. He had some great connections, that guy. They went pretty far. He was a big hero in the Italian campaign during the war. He made a lot of friends over there. He called on one to do some poking for him. He found out Lodo was a cover name and was about to find out who Lodo was. So Art had to die.
“Coincidence entered the picture again. You weren’t deliberately set up for it... the gimmick was just there, that’s all.”
“Gimmick?” Her voice was quiet, her face expressionless.
“The tape recorder attachment on the phone. One in the office, one at home. You picked up my conversation with Art, went to his place and while he was asleep, killed him yourself or had him killed.”
“No!”
I shrugged. “It really doesn’t matter who did it. I prefer thinking it was you. By this time your organization had run down the Lisbon kids. One was bumped, one to go. The game was all yours when I figured when the last one would be. You had your stooges there and waiting and when the contact was made they beat me to the guy and the tap cleaned up that end of things.”
I leaned back in the chair and stretched out my feet. “Pretty quick now this outfit of yours will take plenty of lumps.”
“Please, Ryan...”
“You suckered me, kiddo. I’m sore at the whole business now. I’m sore because when things were getting tight you called out the troops. I was on everybody’s kill list. All the big ones were called in, guns from all over the country. Suddenly I’m thinking like fuzz and want the whole damn bunch slammed. Suddenly I know that for a change I can be useful. Suddenly I see that playing hood isn’t the big thing after all because it’s playing with the things I hate.”
I took a big, deep breath. “And suddenly I’m hating those things especially hard because I started to be in love for the first time and now I don’t know if it will ever happen again. Suddenly I have a terrible feeling like when I walked in the room here. It’s all over. Everything’s all over. The mistakes have all been made and now it’s all over.”
And then she showed me how the first part was wrong and the second right. The mistake still to go was mine in thinking I could get my rod out before she could move. I was wrong. It was about to be all over. In that I was right.
I could see the hole in the end of the hammerless automatic she pointed at my head. It was a fascinating thing, a bottomless black eye. I looked over it at Carmen’s smile. It was strained at first, then relaxed.
She was still very beautiful.
“What would you have done, Ryan?”
I shrugged, gauging the distance between us. I’d make the try, all right, but it would be no use.
“You were right, you know.” She tossed her head, making her hair swirl again. “The Peter Haynes Company is a front. Very legal, economically sound. A wonderful place to keep... other records. A good source of income to keep key personnel in funds and in style until their services are needed. My file of personal correspondence there would be very enlightening to a cipher expert, but completely meaningless to anyone else.”
When I gave her a hard smile she said, “That one little fact could break and smash half of the whole organization.”
And now it was too late.
“What would you have done, Ryan?”
“I don’t know.”
“Killed me?”
I didn’t lie about it. “No.”
“Being a hood never became you. The one act of turning me in would have justified you. You could have walked straight again. I think now you really want to.
“Two things would have happened. In this state, the chair... or with a good lawyer, permanently confined to a mental institution. I couldn’t live that way. It would be better to be dead.”
Her face softened and the light glinted on the wetness that lay along her cheeks. “Only you couldn’t kill me, Ryan. Why?”
“What difference does it make?”
I could hardly make out her words. “It makes a difference.”
“I told you. I was falling in love. I was a jerk. So now I pay for being a jerk. A whole lifetime I laugh at the idiots who get tied up in love knots and then it happens to me. Well at least I won’t be hurting for long. I’m going to make you do it to me fast, kitten.”
“Please don’t.” Her lip was tight in her teeth, choking something back. “Did you really love me, Irish?”
“Okay, kid, get the last laugh. Make it loud. It was true. You were the one. I loved you very much.”
Inside my heart was slamming against my ribs because I knew it was coming and I didn’t know whether it would hurt or not and I was scared. I looked at her and tried to see inside her mind but I couldn’t get past the tears. For some reason she smiled and it was like before when I didn’t know all the things I did now and when I could look at her and want and hope. Her eyes were soft and misty and in their depths saw what happened to her... saw the realization come, the analysis, the rejection of the future and the decision. I saw her suddenly love and give the only thing she had to give and with the yell still choked in my throat and before I could move to stop her she said, “I love you, man.”
Then she folded her arms and turned the gun against her heart and said the same words again only this time they were shattered by the blast of the gunshot.
Return of the Hood
First publication in Great Britain, 1964
Chapter 1
Newbolder and Schmidt were decent about it. They came in, nodded and sat down at their table with coffee in front of them and let me alone to finish my supper. Sometimes you just can’t figure cops. But once they made their touch, there was no sense running. Try it and you can get shot down. Go along with the game and you have a chance. Besides, the Cafeteria was a popular place and the owner a swell egg who didn’t deserve getting shook by a big punch right in the middle of his rush hour.
So I nodded back and let them know I was ready when I cleaned my plate and that there wouldn’t be any fireworks or tough talk no matter how big the beef was. And it was a big beef. Real big. I was a murder suspect and in a way it was lucky the cops made the scene first because in the same neighborhood the Stipetto brothers were canvassing the area for me too and with them it meant playing guns.