Vengeance Is Mine

Rainey retched and moaned again. I picked myself up slowly and Rainey said, “Gimme the gun. Lemme do it. Goddamn it, gimme that gun!” The skinny guy put his arms around his waist and lifted him to his feet so he could hobble over to the wall where I was.

The guy with the automatic in his hand grinned and took a step nearer. It was close enough. I rammed my hand against the slide and shoved it back while his finger was trying like hell to squeeze the trigger. It didn’t take much effort to rip it right out of his hand while I threw my knee between his legs into his groin. He hit the floor like a bag of wet sand and lay there gasping for breath.

Someday the people who make guns will make one that can’t be jammed so easily. The skinny guy holding Rainey let go and made a dive for the .32 on the table.

I shot him in the leg too.

That was all Rainey needed. The toughness went out of him and he forgot about the hole in his thigh long enough to stagger to his chair and hold his hands up in front of him, trying to keep me away. I threw the automatic on the table with the .32.

“Somebody told me you boys were pretty rough,” I said. “I’m a little disappointed. Don’t forget what I told you about Emil Perry.”

The other guy with the hole in his leg sobbed for me to call a doctor. I told him to do it himself. I stepped on a pack of ten-dollar bills and they tore under my shoe. The little guy was still vomiting. I opened the door and looked back at the three tough guys and laughed. “A doctor’ll have to report those gunshot wounds,” I reminded them. “It would be a good idea to tell him you were cleaning a war souvenir and it went off.”

Rainey groaned again and clawed for the telephone on the table. I was whistling when I shut the door and started back toward my car. All that time gone to waste, I thought. I had been playing it soft when I should have played it hard.

There had been enough words. Now the fun ought to start.

Chapter Eight

I was in bed when Joe called. The alarm had been set for eleven-thirty and was five minutes short of going off. I drawled a sleepy hello and Joe told me to wake up and listen.

“I’m awake,” I said. “Let’s hear it.”

“Don’t ask me how I got this stuff. I had to do some tall conniving but I got it. Emil Perry has several business accounts, a checking account for his wife and a large personal savings account. All of them except his own personal account were pretty much in order. Six months ago he made a cash withdrawal of five thousand bucks. That was the first. It’s happened every other month since then, and yesterday he withdrew all but a few hundred. The total he took out in cash was an even twenty thousand dollars.”

“Wow,” I said. “Where did it go?”

“Getting a line on his personal affairs wasn’t as easy as I thought. Item one, he has a wife and family he loves almost as much as his standing in the community. Item two, he likes to play around with the ladies. Item three, put item one and two together and what do you have?”

“Blackmail,” I said. “All the setup for blackmail. Is that all?”

“As much as I had time for. Now, if there’s nothing else on your mind and I hope there isn’t, I’ll be seeing you never again.”

“You’re a real pal, Joe. Thanks a million.”

“Don’t do me any more favors, Mike, hear?”

“Yeah, I hear. Thanks again.”

There was too much going on in my head to stay in bed. I crawled under the shower and let it bite into my skin. When I dried off I shaved, brushed my teeth and went out and had breakfast. Fat little Emil scared to death of Rainey. Fat little Emil making regular and large withdrawals from the bank. A good combination. Rainey had to get dough enough to throw in the kitty to build that arena someway.

I looked out the window at the gray sky that still had a lot of snow in it, thinking that it was only the beginning. If what I had in mind worked out there ought to be a lot more to come.

The little .25 was still in the pocket of my jacket and it slapped against my side as I walked out to the elevator. The streets were clear and I told the boy to take off the chains and toss them in the trunk. He made himself another couple of bucks. When I backed out of the garage I drove across to Broadway and turned north pointing for the Bronx.

This time the big sedan with the gold initials was gone. I drove around the block twice just to be sure of it. All the blinds on the upper floor were drawn and there was a look of desertion about the place. I parked on the corner and walked back, turning in at the entrance.

Three times I lifted the heavy bronze knocker, and when that didn’t work I gave the door a boot with my foot. A kid on a bicycle saw me and shouted, “They ain’t home, mister. I seen ‘em leave last night.”

I came down off the stoop and walked over to the kid. “Who left?”

“The whole family, I guess. They was packing all kinds of stuff in the car. This morning the maid and the girl that does the cleaning left too. They gimme a quarter to take some empty bottles back to the store. I kept the deposit too.”

I fished in my pocket for another quarter and flipped it to him. “Thanks, son. It pays to keep your eyes open.”

The kid pocketed the coin and took off down the street, the siren on the bike screaming. I walked back up the path to the house. A line of shrubs encircled the building and I worked my way behind them, getting my shoes full of snow and mud. Twice I stopped and had a look around to be sure there weren’t any nosy neighbors ready to yell cop. The bushes did a good job. I felt all the windows, trying them to see if they were locked. They were.

I said the hell with it and wrenched a stone out of the mud and tapped the glass a good one. It made a racket but nobody came around to investigate. When I had all the pieces picked out of the ‘frame I grabbed .the sill and hoisted myself into the room.

If sheet-covered chairs and closed doors meant what it looked like, Emil Perry had flown the coop. I tried the lamp and it didn’t work. Neither did the phone. The room I was in seemed to be a small study, something where a woman would spend a lot of time. There was a sewing machine in the corner and a loom with a half-finished rug stretched out over nails in the framework.

The room led into a hallway of doors, all closed. I tried each one, peering into the yellow light that came through the blinds. Nothing was out of place, everything had been recently cleaned, and I backed out a little bit madder each time.

The hallway ran into a foyer that opened to the breezeway beside the house. On one side I could see the kitchen through a small window in the wall. On the other side a heavily carpeted flight of stairs led to the next floor.

It was the same thing all over again. Everything neat as a pin. Two bedrooms, a bathroom, another bedroom and a study. The last door faced the front of the house and it was locked.

It was locked in two places, above and below the knob.

It took me a whole hour to get those damn things open.

No light at all penetrated this room. I flicked a match on my thumbnail and saw why. A blackout shade had been drawn over the other shade on each of the two windows. It didn’t hurt to lift them up because nobody could see in through the outermost shade.

I was in Emil Perry’s own private cubicle. There were faded pictures on the wall and some juicy calendar pinups scattered around on the tables and chairs. A day bed that had seen too many years sagged against one wall. Under one window was a desk and a typewriter, and alongside it a low, two-drawer filing cabinet. I wrenched it open and pawed through the contents. Most of it was business mail. The rest were deeds, insurance papers and some personal junk. I slammed the drawers shut and started taking the place apart slowly.