behind the bar, a small automatic level in his hand. Johnny's heart sank as Jim Daddario stood up at the opposite end of the bar and walked around it. “Over here with your friend,” Savino said with a sneering grin, motioning with the automatic.
Johnny slowly approached the bar alongside the wooden-faced Rudy and stood with his back to it. They were standing in the room's best light which came through the half-drawn drapes at the front window. Daddario approached them as Savino covered them with the automatic. Johnny saw that a silk scarf had been wound around his neck and throat Without a word the politician walked up to Rudy and punched him heavily in the mouth. “That'll teach you to even think about crossing me,” he said angrily.
Rudy's body slammed back into the bar, but he showed no sign of going down. He spat impassively but made no other move under the eye of the automatic. “He's a big, brave man, Rudy,” Johnny jeered. His hand closed on a heavy ash tray on the bar. “You should have seen him an hour ago like I did.”
“I'll get to you,” Daddario assured him.
Tommy Savino laughed as he angled out on the floor between Rudy and Johnny and the tavern's front door, the automatic unwavering. “Did you think I wouldn't go up to the penthouse because the elevator wasn't running?” he mocked Johnny. “And it was so nice of you to leave your phone number with the telephone operator.”
“So I'm stupid,” Johnny said. He took a half step out from the bar, raised his arm, and threw the ash tray between the half-drawn drapes and through the tavern's front window. The window vanished in a dull explosion of glass bursting out on the sidewalk. The automatic punctuated the noise with a sharp crack and Johnny felt a hot wind brush at his ear.
Jim Daddario rushed at Savino and knocked up his gun hand before he could fire again. “We've got to make him talk first!” he cried out. “Don't you go off half-cocked again!”
Johnny drew a shallow breath. A girl like Micheline would know what to do when she saw that plate glass come flying out into the street. She'd stand not upon the order of her going. Anything was better than having The front door opened suddenly and Savino pivoted. Dick Lowell dashed in, his white hair flying and his face scarlet. “You fools!” he burst out at Savino and Daddario. “He had them outside in a cab. They just drove off!”
“How do you know?” Daddario pounced.
“I followed them over here!” Lowell shouted. “If it wasn't for you idiots in another two minutes I'd have had-”
But Jim Daddario had recovered his wits. He silenced the mayor with a peremptory wave of his hand. “He'll know where they went,” he said with a look at Johnny. “And he'll tell us. Savino, take him inside. You go, too, Dick.” He glared at the silent Rudy. “You cover up on this. It's your neck now. Tell 'em something fermented in the window and blew out the glass. Tell 'em anything. You let me down and I'll personally see to it you never turn another trick on the east coast. Understand?” Rudy nodded and Daddario turned to the rest. “Hurry it up, everyone,” he said briskly. “Inside.”
Rudy opened the door and they entered the gambling room, Johnny in the lead with Savino's gun trained on his back, then Lowell, and finally Daddario. Rudy flipped a light switch and cold fluorescent light flooded the dark, window-less room, exposing the canvas-covered roulette wheels and the bare green tables. Johnny pulled a stool out from a blackjack table and climbed up on it, careful that a wall was at his back. Rudy closed the door and they all distinctly heard the click of the lock in the silence.
“Has he got us locked in here?” Dick Lowell demanded. His voice was hysterically shrill.
“Don't get yourself jerked off,” Savino advised him comfortably. “Jim's got a key.” The slim, dark man sat at a table two removed from Johnny's, far enough away so that Johnny couldn't rush him, the gun loosely in his hand.
“Where's your knife today, pigstabber?” Johnny gibed at him. Savino smiled unruffledly and touched his cloth-covered wrist. “That the one you used on Carl Thompson?” Johnny continued.
The smile disappeared. “He was dead when I found him, the no-good bastard,” he snarled, glaring.
“Yeah? How'd you get into the room?”
“A maid let me in, that's how!”
“Too bad your boss never believed you,” Johnny needled. “You know he's gonna toss you to the wolves when the hot breath is on the back of his neck?”
Savino flicked a glance at Jim Daddario and slid from his stool in a smoothly deadly suppleness. “You talk too damn much, Killain,” he said deliberately, stalking Johnny. “I'll fix-”
“Back off there!” Daddario ordered peremptorily. “Can't you see he just wants to get you within reach of his hands? I saw Kratz, if you didn't.”
Savino hesitated but retreated reluctantly to his chair. Johnny turned his attention to Daddario. “How you gonna feel when you're in the death cell as an accessory to a murder committed by that halfwit? You know what you should do?” He cut loose with a flood of rapid-fire Italian at Daddario.
Instantly suspicious, Savino was on his feet. “Talk English!” he hissed, and raised his gun hand as Johnny continued. “Damn you-!”
“Drop it!” Daddario roared. “I don't know what he's saying!” He glared right back at the dark man's skepticism. “If he's saying anything. Are you so stupid you can't see he wants us at each other's throats?” He spun on Johnny. “All I want to hear from you is where that cab went.”
“If that's all you want, come on over an' ask me,” Johnny said agreeably. “Or send him.” He looked at Savino, smiled, bit off a short Italian phrase, and spat on the floor.
Angry dark blood flooded the slim man's features. “Well, make him talk!” he yelled at Daddario. “What the hell are you waiting for?”
“Sure, make me talk,” Johnny said. “Can't you see your killer's gettin' nervous? He'll be foamin' at the mouth in a minute if you're not careful. You want-” He fell silent as a key clicked in the door lock. Rudy stepped inside and closed the door behind him. “Hey, Rudy!” Johnny addressed him. “Where's my thousand bucks Riley left for me?”
“He didn't call me to release it,” Rudy said before he thought. As the sound of his words hung in the air he cut his eyes to Daddario staring at him.
“I'm gettin' goddamned tired of-” Savino began.
“Shut up.” Daddario walked over and confronted an unhappy-looking Rudy. “What the hell is this about Riley and a thousand dollars?”
“If you don't know I don't,” Rudy retorted with a matching asperity. “He put up a thousand in cash for me to release to this big bastard when he called me.”
“For doing what?” Daddario bellowed.
“How the hell do I know?” Rudy bellowed right back. In a rage, Daddario swung a right-hand punch. In a matching rage, Rudy stepped inside it and drilled a short left that sat the politician down abruptly. He looked around, dazed, as Savino started up from his chair.
“Cut that out, damn you!” he shouted at the gambler. He took three or four steps in Rudy's direction as that worthy turned warily to face him.
On his stool Johnny stood up and pulled off a shoe. With not an eye in the room on him he threw the shoe and hit the long fluorescent tube that ran the length of the room dead center.
There was a flash and a puff, and total darkness descended upon the room. The tinkling noise of small, falling glass particles was the only sound as the room seemed to hold its breath.
Johnny had already slid under his blackjack table and was crawling soundlessly in the direction in which he had marked Tommy Savino in the pitch black when Dick Lowell's voice raised quaveringly. “Don't anyone s- shoot!”
A scrambling sound to his right failed to distract Johnny. He wanted to reach Savino before the only man in the room with a gun had time to react. Instinct warned him of a presence immediately in front of him and he slowed. Was it the right man?
“Strike a match, someone!” Jim Daddario's voice ordered suddenly from a corner.
“Strike your own damn match,” Rudy said sourly from the left. With those two placed Johnny took a deep breath and grabbed hard at the thighs of the man before him. There was a startled grunt as he lifted him and catapulted him hard to the floor. Johnny knew he had guessed right when he heard the thud of a metal object hitting the floor and skidding off until it brought up against a wall. He closed tightly with the thrashing body beneath his, knowing he had to immobilize Savino's hands before he could get his knife from his sleeve holster.
