She knelt before him, grotesquely, ludicrously, her expression changing, twisting, registering all the variations of appeal, fear, terror, pity, in an attempt to match those silent words that were sounding only in her mind. It was a pantomime of terror, cajolery, a deaf-mute’s frantic plea of pity.
This was the end of it, Bannion thought, seeing her as only the last obstacle between him and vengeance. When the shot sounded, when this mute, foolishly gesticulating creature was dead, he could put his gun away and call the police. The job would be done.
“No!” Mrs. Deery managed the one hoarse word.
Why did he wait? He had only to pull the trigger, let the firing pin snap forward, and the steel-jacketed bullet would take care of the rest, take care of this soft, perfumed, sadistic bitch, and with her Stone, Lagana, the hoodlums who had murdered his wife and held this town in their big, bitter grip.
“I can pay you,” Mrs. Deery cried.
Why did he wait? They had killed, why shouldn’t he? They had murdered Lucy Carroway, Kate, his life and love, as they’d destroy bothersome insects. Why should he bind himself with morals which they had mocked?
Mrs. Deery stared at him, whimpering now, her mouth working loosely.
Bannion’s arm came down slowly until the muzzle of the gun pointed at the floor. “I don’t have the right to kill you,” he said, in a low, raging voice.
She put her hands to her face, sobbing, and leaned forward until her forehead rested on Bannion’s shoe. He jerked his foot away savagely, and she slumped to the floor, laughing and crying at the same time, her hand stroking the rug in a slow, loving caress.
Bannion looked down at her without expression and put his gun away. He shrugged then, a gesture of immense and bitter weariness, and walked out of her apartment. The sound of her low, wild, grateful weeping followed him to his car.
Chapter 16
Bannion stopped at the first bar he saw and ordered a whiskey. It didn’t touch the coldness inside him. Now he had to start all over, do it the clean way. Force the note into the open, by pressure or cleverness, but not by shooting a helpless woman. He wasn’t as hard as he’d thought; the oath he’d sworn to Kate was just a loud, empty word.
He had another drink and then went to the telephone booth and called Debby.
“Everything okay?” he said when she answered.
“Sure. Shouldn’t it be?”
“I don’t know. One of Stone’s men, I think, was at the hotel asking for you this evening. He knows where you are, obviously.”
“What should I do, Bannion?”
He rubbed his forehead. He didn’t know and didn’t care.
“Why don’t you say it?” she said, laughing shakily. “I’m just a millstone around your neck. I know it, Bannion.”
“Stop it,” he said irritably.
“All right, I’ll stop it.”
“That’s better.”
“How did your lead turn out?”
He sighed. “A dead-end street. This will be Greek to you, but one of our city’s finest left a note and then blew a hole through his head. The note will do what I may never be able to do to Lagana and company. It will be his end. However, Deery’s wife has the note now, and I wasn’t tough enough to bend to the Fifth Commandment even a little bit. If I had — well that’s another story. Don’t worry about it, Debby. There’ll be another chance.”
“You sound cryptic, if that’s the right word,” Debby said.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. He had talked only to relieve the pressure inside him, but it hadn’t helped.
“Okay, I won’t. But what should I do, Bannion? I don’t want to be picked up by Stone.”
“Sit tight, I’ll be along pretty soon.”
“I’ll be waiting for you. It doesn’t mean anything, but I miss you.”
“I’ll be along soon,” he said. He walked back to the bar and ordered another drink.
Larry Smith looked down at the green runway lights as the plane banked into its base-leg circuit of the field. It was nighttime and the rows of parallel lights stretched into a black infinity, mysterious but comforting symbols of order and safety.
Pittsburgh, first stop on the coast flight.
He shouldn’t have run out, Larry told himself hopelessly, despairingly, for about the fiftieth time. Lagana and Stone would have understood. You didn’t keep your mouth shut when a man like Bannion had his hands on your throat and was ready to crush the life from your body. No, you talked. Anyone would. They’d understand that. But he shouldn’t have run. That looked bad...
He remembered Lagana’s eyes and shuddered. The interior of the plane was warm and dim, a strange little haven of safety and comfort, but Larry shuddered...
Max Stone paced the floor of his living room, chewing on an unlit cigar and trying to keep his rage in check. Art Keene stood beside the liquor cabinet, watching him with no expression at all on his lean, blank face. Occasionally Stone glared at the two men who sat miserably together on the couch. Once he yelled at them, “Punks, Goddamn punks, that’s all you are.”
“I don’t think it was their fault,” Art Keene said.
“Well, don’t bother thinking so much,” Stone said, taking the cigar from his mouth and staring at Keene.
Keene shrugged and didn’t answer.
It was nearly midnight, and Stone wore a red silk bathrobe and pajamas. The day in bed had helped his hangover, but with the physical improvement had come an immense need for action. The city was going to hell, he knew; and he wanted to do something about it, anything, as long as it was fast, violent and effective. Take the bastards causing trouble and slap them down hard. That’s what he wanted to do, but Lagana said no, and the old man meant it.
The knock he was expecting sounded, and Stone hurried to the door. Lagana came in, frowning, the big man named Gordon on his heels.
“Okay, what happened this time?” he said, in a low, disgusted voice. He glanced around the room, stripping off his gloves. The two men on the couch seemed to shrink under his eyes, and Art Keene busied himself lighting a cigarette.
Stone glared at the men on the couch, too. “Why don’t you surprise us by something right, you punks?” he yelled.
The man called Creamy moistened his big, slack mouth. There was a cut over his forehead, a streak of dried blood on his cheek, and his eyelids were blinking rapidly, as if he was trying to hold back tears. The man beside him, Danielbaum, was in worse shape. Two of his front teeth were out, and his lips were bruised and swollen. There was a quality of hysteria in his bright nervous smile, his daring eyes, the erratic jerks and twitches of his body.
“You shouldn’t say that, Max,” he said, grimacing, tapping the floor with a nervous foot. “Those guys damn near killed us. There were eight or ten of them, and—”
“The numbers are going up every minute,” Stone said.
“All right, let’s have the story,” Lagana said, staring at Danielbaum.
Creamy began to cry. Danielbaum wet his lips, his eyes bright and senseless with fear. “We did our best, we did our best, Mr. Lagana. You see, we were going to deliver the warrants, and—”
“Stone told me about that,” Lagana said, cutting him with an impatient wave of his hand. “What happened when you got there?”
“Well, we saw a cop out in front, and I recognized him as Cranston,” Danielbaum went on as Creamy continued to provide a sniffling counterpoint to the story. “I thought it was just a coincidence, maybe, so we went around to the back. That’s where this queer jumped us, an Indian he was. Then a bunch of guys piled out of the house. They tore the warrants up and started to work us over.”