Shoot the Piano Player (18 page)

They walked across the snow and entered the house. Then they were in the kitchen and Clifton put a coffee pot on the stove. Eddie took off his overcoat and placed it on a chair. He pulled another chair toward the table and sat down. The chair had weak legs, loose in their sockets, and it sagged under his weight. He looked at the splintered boards of the kitchen floor, and at the chipped and broken plaster of the walls.

There was no sink in the kitchen. The light came from a kerosene lamp. He watched Clifton applying a lit match to the chunks of wood in the old-fashioned stove. No gas line here, he thought. No water pipes or electric wires in this house. Not a thing to connect it with the outside world. And that makes it foolproof. It's a hide-out, all right.

The stove was lit and Clifton came over to the table and sat down. He took out a pack of cigarettes, flicked it expertly and two cigarettes came up. Eddie took one. They smoked for a while, not saying anything. But Clifton was looking at him questioningly, waiting for him to explain his presence here.

Eddie wasn't quite ready to talk about that. For a while, for a little while anyway, he wanted to forget. He took a long drag at the cigarette and said, "Tell me about Mom and Pop. Why'd they leave?"

"Don't ask me."

"I'm asking you because you know. You were here when they went away."

Clifton leaned back in his chair, puffed at the cigarette, and didn't say anything.

"You sent them away," Eddie said.

The older brother nodded.

"You just put them out the door." Eddie snapped his fin.ger. "Just like that."

"Not exactly," Clifton said. "I gave them some cash."

"You did? That was nice. That was sure nice of you."

Clifton smiled softly. "You think I wanted to do it?"

"The point is--"

"The point is, I hadda do it."

"Why?"

"Because I like them," Clifton said. "They're nice quiet people. This ain't no place for nice quiet people."

Eddie dragged at the cigarette.

"Another thing," Clifton said. "They ain't bullet-proof." He shifted his position in the chair, sitting sideways and crossing his legs. "Even if they were, it wouldn't help much. They're getting old and they can't take excitement like this."

Eddie glanced at the shiny black sawed-off shotgun on the floor. It rested at Clifton's feet. He looked up, above Clifton's head, to a shelf that showed a similar gun, a few smaller guns, and several boxes of ammunition.

"There's gonna be action here," Clifton said. "I was hoping it wouldn't happen, but I can feel it coming."

Eddie went on looking at the guns and ammunition on the shelf.

"Sooner or late," Clifton was saying. "Sooner or later we're gonna have visitors."

"In a Buick?" Eddie murmured. "A pale green Buick?"

Clifton winced.

"They get around," Eddie said.

Clifton reached across the table and took hold of Eddie's wrist. It wasn't a belligerent move; Clifton had to hold onto something.

Clifton was blinking hard, as though trying to focus on Eddie's face, to understand fully what Eddie was saying. "Who gets around? Who you talking about?"

"Feather and Morris."

Clifton released Eddie's wrist. For the better part of a minute it was quiet. Clifton sucked in smoke, expelled it in a blast, and gritted, "That Turley. That goddam stupid Turley."

"It wasn't Turley's fault."

"Don't gimme that. Don't cover for him. He's a nitwit from way back. There ain't been a time he hasn't screwed things up one way or another. But this deal tops it. This really tops it."

"He was in a fix--"

"He's always in a fix. You know why? He just can't do things right, that's why." Clifton dragged again at the cigarette. "Ain't bad enough he gets them on his tail. He goofs again and drags you into it."

Eddie shrugged. "It couldn't be helped. Just one of them situations."

"Line it up for me," Clifton said. "How come they latched on to you? How come you're here now? Gimme the wire on this."

Eddie gave it to him, making it brief and simple.

"That's it," he finished. "Only thing for me to do was come here. No other place for me to go."

Clifton was gazing off to one side and shaking his head slowly.

"What'll it be?" Eddie asked. "Gonna let me stay?"

The other brother took a deep breath. "Damn it," he muttered to himself. "Damn it to hell."

"Yeah, I know what you mean," Eddie said. "You sure need me here."

"Like rheumatism. You're a white-hot property: Philly wants you, Pennsy wants you, and next thing they do is call Washington. You crossed a state line and that makes it federal."

"Maybe I'd better--"

"No, you won't," Clifton cut in. "You'll stay. You gotta stay. When you're federal, you can't budge. They're too slick. You make any move at all and they're on you like tweezers."

"That's nice to know," Eddie murmured. He wasn't thinking about himself. He wasn't thinking about Clifton and Turley. His thoughts were centered on the waitress. He was wondering if she'd make it back safely to Philly and return the stolen car to its parking place. If it happened that way she'd be all right. They wouldn't bother her. They'd have no reason to question her. He kept telling himself it would be all right, but he kept thinking about her and he was worried she'd run into some trouble. Please don't, he said to her. Please stay out of trouble.

He heard Clifton saying, "--sure picked a fine time to come walking in'

He looked up. He shrugged and didn't say anything.

"It's one hell of a situation," Clifton said. "On one side there's this certain outfit lookin' for me and Turley. On the other side it's the law, lookin' for you."

Eddie shrugged again. "Well, anyway, it's nice to be home."

"Yeah," Clifton said wryly. "We oughtta celebrate."

"It's an occasion, all right."

"It's a grief, that's what it is," Clifton said. "It's--" And then he forced it aside. He grinned and reached across the table and hit Eddie on the shoulder. "You know one thing? It's good to see you again."

"Likewise," Eddie said.

"Coffee's boiling," Clifton said. He got up and went to the stove. He came back with the filled cups and set them on the table. "What about grub?" he asked. "Want some grub?"

"No," Eddie said. "I ain't hungry."

They sat there sipping the black sugarless coffee. Clifton said, "You didn't tell me much about the dame. Gimme more on the dame."

"What dame?"

"The one that brought you here. You said she's a waitress--"

"Yeah. Where I worked. We got to know each other."

Clifton looked at him closely, waiting for him to tell more.

For a while it was quiet. They went on sipping the coffee. Then Clifton was saying something that he heard only vaguely, unable to listen attentively because of the waitress. He was looking directly at Clifton and it appeared he was paying close attention to what Clifton was saying. But in his mind he was with the waitress. He was walking with her and they were going somewhere. Then they stopped and he looked at her and told her to leave. She started to walk away. He went after her and she asked him what he wanted. He told her to get away from him. She walked away and he moved quickly and caught up with her. Then again he was telling her to take off, he didn't want her around. He stood there watching her as she departed. But he couldn't bear it and he ran after her. Now very patiently she asked him to decide what they should do. He told her to please go away.

It went on like that while Clifton was telling him about certain events during the past few years, culminating in Turley's trip to Philadelphia, to Dock Street, with Turley trying to make connections along the wharves and piers where he'd once worked as a longshoreman. What Turley had sought was a boat ride for Clifton and himself. They needed the boat ride away from the continent, far away from the people who were looking for them.

The people who were looking for them were members of a certain unchartered and unlicensed corporation. It was a very large corporation that operated along the eastern seaboard, dealing in contraband merchandise such as smuggled perfumes from Europe, furs from Canada, and so forth. Employed by the corporation, Clifton and Turley had been assigned to the department that handled the more physical aspects of the business, the hijacking and the extortion and sometimes the moves that were necessary to eliminate competitors.

Some fourteen months ago, Clifton was saying, he'd decided that he and Turley were not receiving adequate compensation for their efforts. He'd talked it over with certain executives of the corporation and they told him there was no cause for complaint, they didn't have time to hear his complaints. They made it clear that in the future he was to keep away from the front office.

At that time the front office of the corporation was in Savannah, Georgia. They were always changing the location of the front office from one port to another, according to the good will or lack of good will between the executives and certain port authorities. In Savannah, an investigation was taking place and the top people of the corporation were preparing to leave for Boston. It was necessary to leave quickly because the investigators were making rapid strides, and so of course there was some confusion. In the midst of the confusion, Clifton and Turley resigned from the corporation. When they did it, they took something with them. They took a couple of hundred thousand dollars.

They took it from the safe in the warehouse where the front office was located. They did it very late at night, walking in quite casually and chatting with three fellow employees who were playing pinochle. When they showed guns, one of the card players made a move for his own and Turley kicked him in the groin, then hit him on the head with the gun butt sufficiently hard to finish him. The two other card players were Feather and Morris, with Morris perspiring as Turley hefted the gun to use the butt again, with Feather talking very fast and making a proposition.

Feather proposed that it would be better to do this with four than just two. With four walking out, the corporation would be faced with a serious problem. Feather made the point that tracing four men is considerably more difficult than tracing two. And also, Feather said, he and Morris were rather unhappy with the treatment they were getting from the corporation, they'd be grateful for this chance to walk out. Feather went on talking while Clifton thought it 9ver, and while Turley used an acetylene torch to open the safe. Then Clifton decided that Feather was making sense, that it wasn't just a frantic effort to stay alive. Besides, Feather was something of a brain and from here on in it would take considerable brains, much more than Turley had. Another factor, Clifton reasoned, was the potential need for gun-handling, and in that category it would be Morris. He knew what Morris could do with a gun, with anything from a .38 to a Thompson. When the money was in the suitcase and they walked out of the warehouse, they took Feather and Morris with them.

On the road going north from Georgia to New Jersey, they traveled at fairly high speed. In Virginia they were spotted by some corporation people and there was a chase and an exchange of bullets and Morris proved himself rather useful. The other car was stopped with a front tire punctured, and, later, on a side road in Maryland, another corporation effort was blocked by Morris, leaning out the rear window to send bullets seventy yards down the road and through a windshield and into the face of the driver. There were no further difficulties with the corporation and that night they were crossing a bridge into South Jersey and Feather was handling the car very nicely. As Clifton told him what turns to make, he kept asking where they were going. Morris also asked where they were going. Clifton said they were going to a place where they could stay hidden for a while. Feather wanted to know if the place was sufficiently safe. Clifton said it was, describing the place, the fact that it was far from the nearest town, that it was very deep in the woods and extremely difficult to locate. Feather kept asking questions and presently Clifton decided there were too many questions and he told Feather to stop the car. Feather looked at him, and then threw a glance at Morris who was in the back seat with Turley. As Moms went for his gun, Turley hauled off and put a fist on his chin and knocked him out. Feather was trying to get out of the car and Clifton grabbed him and held him while Turley tagged him on the jaw, just under his ear. Then Feather and Morris were asleep in the road and the car was going away.

"--shoulda made a U-turn and came back and run over them," Clifton was saying. "Shoulda figured what would happen if I let them stay alive. The way it worked out, they musta played it slick. That Feather's a slick talker. He musta known just what to tell the corporation. I guess he said it was a strong-arm deal, that they didn' have no choice and they hadda come along for the ride. So the corporation takes them in again. Not all the way in, not yet. First they gotta find me and Turley. It's like they're on probation. They know they gotta make good to get in solid again."