In about ten minutes, the light went out and I could hear voices coming towards the car. I sat down on the floor. The three of them stood outside for a minute talking about “a call from Harry” — then Stokes and the other man went off towards Stokes’ car, and McCary squeezed into the front seat and stepped on the starter.
I waited till we had burned through the gate and were halfway up the block, and then I put a gun against the back of McCary’s neck. He straightened out in the seat and eased the brake on. I told him to go on to the old man’s house.
We sat in the big room upstairs. The old man sat in the big armchair by the table, and Ben sat across from him. I was half lying down in another chair out of the circle of light and I had the gun on my lap.
The old man was fit to be tied. He was green with hate and he kept glaring at Ben out of his little red-rimmed eyes. I said: “Well, gran’pa — if you’ll make out that check now, we’ll finish this business.”
The old man swallowed.
“You can give me your twenty-five hundred in cash,” I went on to Ben. “Then I’ll put the chill on both of you — and everybody’ll be happy.”
They must have thought I meant it. Ben got rigid, and the old man cleared his throat and made a slow pass at the humidor.
I fiddled with the gun. I threw a pack of cigarettes on the table and said: “Smoke?”
The old man looked at the cigarettes and at the gun in my hand, and relaxed.
I said: “Still and all — it don’t quite square with my weakness for efficiency, yet. Maybe you boys’ll get together and make me an offer for Stokes. He’s the star — he’s been framing both of you.”
I don’t think Ben was very surprised — but the old man looked like he’d swallowed a mouse.
“He’s been in with Ben on the truck heistings,” I went on. “He’s been waiting for a good spot to dump you — working on your connections.”
The old man said: “That’s a goddamned lie.”
“Suit yourself.”
I went on to Ben: “He made the five-grand offer for your hide, in Luke’s name, tonight — and he gave me the Four-mile steer...” I hesitated a moment. “Only you wouldn’t try three in the same spot, would you?”
Ben finally got his smile working. He started to say something but I interrupted him: “Stokes told me you rubbed the two boys on the trucks, too.”
Ben’s smile went out like a light. He said: “Stokes shot both those men himself — and there wasn’t any need for it. They were lined up alongside the road...”
Something in the soft way he said it made it sound good.
I said: “He’ll be around your place — no?”
“He went home.”
Ben gave me the number and I called up, but there wasn’t any answer.
We sat there without saying anything for several minutes, and then the door downstairs opened and closed and somebody came up.
I said to Ben: “What’ll you bet?”
The door opened and Stokes came in. He had a long gray raincoat on and it made him look even taller and thinner than he was. He stood in the doorway looking mostly at the old man; then he came in and sat down on a corner of the table.
I said: “Now that the class is all here, you can start bidding.”
The old man laughed deep in his throat. Stokes was watching me expressionlessly, and Ben sat smiling stupidly at his hands.
“I’m auctioning off the best little town in the state, gentlemen,” I went on. “Best schools, sewage system, post office... Best streetlighting, water supply...”
I was having a swell time.
The old man was staring malevolently at Stokes. “I’ll give you twenty-five thousand dollars,” he said to me, “to give me that pistol and get out of here.”
If I’d thought there was any chance of collecting, I might have talked to him. Things happen that way sometimes.
I looked at my watch and put the gun down on the arm of the chair where it looked best and picked up the phone.
I asked Ben: “Where’s the business going to be pulled off tonight?”
Ben wanted to be nice. He said: “A coffee joint about six miles north of town.” He glanced at Stokes. “This bastard tried to swing it back to Four-mile when he thought you’d be there sniping for me.”
“The boys are there now?”
He nodded. “The trucks have been stopping there to eat lately.”
I asked the operator for long distance, and asked for the Bristol Hotel in Talley, the first town north. The connection went right through. I asked for Mister Cobb.
When he answered, I told him about the coffee place, and that I wasn’t sure about it; and told him he’d find the stuff that had been heisted in the sheds of the yard on Dell Street. I wasn’t sure of that either, but I watched Ben and Stokes when I said it and it looked all right. Cobb told me that he’d gotten into Talley with the convoy about midnight and had been waiting for my call since then.
I hung up. “There’ll be some swell fireworks out there,” I said. “There’s a sub-machinegun on every truck — double crews. And it don’t matter much,” I went on to Ben, “how good your steer is. They’ll be watching out all the way.”
Stokes stood up.
I picked up the gun. “Don’t move so far, Skinny,” I said. “It makes me nervous.”
He stood there staring at the gun. The water was running off his raincoat and it had formed into a little dark pool at his feet.
He said: “What the hell do you want?”
“I wanted you to know that one of the kids you shot up last week at Four-mile was my boss’ brother. He went along for the ride.”
I don’t think Stokes could move. I think he tried to move sidewise or get his hand into his pocket, or something, but all he could do was take a deep breath. Then I shot him in the middle of the body where he shot the kid, and he sank down on the floor with his legs crossed under him, like a tailor.
The old man didn’t get up. He sat a little deeper in his chair and stared at Stokes. Ben moved very fast for a fat man. He was up and out the door like a bat out of hell. That was OK with me — he couldn’t get to the coffee place before the trucks got there. I had the keys to his car, and it was too far away anyway.
I got up and put the rod away and went over to the table and picked up my cigarettes. I looked down at the old man, said: “Things’ll be a little quieter now, maybe. You’ll get the dough for haulage through your territory, as usual. See that it gets through.”
He didn’t answer.
I started for the door and then there was a shot out in front of the house. I ran on down to the front door. It was open and Ben was flat on the threshold — had fallen smack on his face, half through the door.
I ducked back through the hall and tried a couple locked doors. When I came up through the hall again, the old man was on his knees beside Ben, and was rocking back and forth, moaning a little.
I went through another room and into the kitchen and on through, out the back door. I crossed the backyard and jumped a low fence and walked through another yard to a gate that led into an alley. I sloshed along through the mud until I came to a cross street, and went on down to the corner that was diagonally across the block from the McCary house.
A cab came down the street and I waited until it was almost to the corner, stepped out in front of it. The driver swerved and stepped on the gas, but he had slowed enough to give me time to jump on the running board.
I stuck my head in to the light from the meter. That turned out to be my best hunch of the evening because in another second, the driver would have opened up my chest with one of the dirtiest looking .45s I ever saw, at about two feet. It was the kid who had picked Lowry and me up. He hesitated just long enough when he saw who I was.