remembered that Jack Donohue had placed the kerosene lantern on the floor. We were all standing around it, a circle of ghastly, deeply shadowed faces: eyes sunk in black sockets; chins, noses, and brows highlighted in ocher, but all else in wavery gloom. Everyone seemed to be looking at me. I felt like a head witch in a coven, expected to produce the human sacrifice for the evening’s festivities.
‘Well,’ I said lamely, ‘I guess that takes care of everything. See you all in the morning.’
‘You bet!’ Donohue said enthusiastically. He held his wrist down near the lantern to read his watch. ‘Another five minutes or so and we can take off. We better not all leave at once. Bea, you and Fleming slip out first. Then the rest of us will split at intervals. That’s so no one in the tenements across the street sees a mob coming out of here at one time and begins to wonder what the hell’s going on.’
That was fine with me. The faster I got out of that bone-chilling place, the better. It smelled of grease, damp, and dead things.
‘See you soon,’ Black Jack Donohue said with a smile as Fleming and I departed.
I flipped a hand at him and didn’t look back.
An hour later I was back into my old comfortable Jannie Shean clothes. Dick and I were sitting at one end of the crowded bar at Chez Morris, celebrating our deliverance with vodka stingers. Everyone was watching the TV set behind the bar, yelling at a rerun of football highlights of the week before. Morris was down at the other end of the bar, chatting up a bird who looked so much like Beatrice Flanders that I thought she had swiped my falsies.
‘You notice?’ I asked Dick. ‘Donohue sure slurred over how the four heavies are going to find us wherever we’ve been able to find a parking space on Madison.’
‘Right,’ Dick said. ‘And then having us all walk into the Harding carrying the loot. I don’t care if it’s in shopping bags,
‘Well, it’s not our problem anymore, is it?’
‘Still, it offends my sense of artistic integrity You know what I mean. We had a perfect plan going. Every detail thought out. Now he’s got a gang of bentnoses climbing in and out of a car parked on Madison Avenue, putting on coveralls at 8:30 in the morning.’
‘You’re right,’ I agreed. T guess Jack isn’t the slick operator I thought he was. Screw it. Let’s get drunk.’
‘I’m game,’ he said.
We tried, but it didn’t take. Vodka stingers, brandy stingers, straight brandy, nothing helped. By the time the bar was emptying out, Morris was looking at us anxiously.
‘You going to make it, Jannie?’
‘You bet your sweet patootie,’ I said. ‘I dare you to refuse us another drink.’
‘I refuse you another drink,’ he shot back promptly.
I leaned across the bar and kissed him.
‘In that case,’ I said loftily, ‘we shall take our business elsewhere. Home.’
On the walk across the street to my apartment, Dick Fleming hung on to my arm and I hung on to his. A dizzy waltz.
‘I thought I’d feel a kind of — you know — triumph,’ I said. ‘But I don’t.’
‘I know,’ Dick said, nodding sadly. ‘I thought there’d be risk and danger. Ridiculous. A bunch of rumdums.’
‘Stupid rumdums,’ I said. ‘Jesus. Black Jack Donohue. The Rockettes dancing in and out of the car, putting on coveralls.’
‘Hymie Gore! The Holy Ghost! Can you imagine?’
‘Smiley,’ I added. ‘Clement in his — executive suit. I tell you, crime in America has come to a pretty prass.’
‘Pretty pass,’ he corrected me with great dignity.
‘That’s what I said, diddle I? Now, when I write it, I’ve got to improve it. Fuck reality. Fuck Aldo Binder. It’s all
imagination, Dick m’lad. Better than reality. What do all these wet-brains know about planning a Big Caper? Master criminals, my ass. We did all the planning. The best parts were ours.’
‘Right,’ Dick said stoutly. ‘All ours.’
We went up in the elevator, assuring each other we were the Einsteins of crime. I had a little trouble with the lock to my apartment. I kept stabbing the door. Finally Dick took the key from me, using both hands, finally got the key in, the door opened.
I was very careful. Closed and locked the door behind us. Put on the chain. We went stumbling down the dark hallway. I fumbled around, found the wall switch, lighted the living room.
There was a crowd sitting around.
‘Hi there!’ Jack Donohue said brightly.
IT ALL GOES DOWN
Talk about instant sobriety!
Being a professional writer, I am familiar with, and have used, the entire lexicon of literary cliches. Like: ‘He grew red with rage.’ ‘She turned green with envy.’ ‘Their jaws dropped in shock and disbelief.’ I have always thought they were just motheaten expressions, exaggerated descriptions of ordinary emotions. But I discovered they were cliches because they were true. At least that last one was, because when I looked at Dick Fleming, his mouth was wide open, and I suddenly became conscious of my own unhinged jaw. Shock and disbelief? You know it! I was fish-mouthed.
‘Come on in,’ Donohue said genially. ‘Take a seat. Sample a bite of this nice brandy. Smiley, why don’t you pour the folks a shot? Looks like they could use it.’
I watched in silence as the smiling man poured
Donohue saw me staring at the dark woman.
‘Angela,’ he told me. ‘A special friend of the Holy Ghost. Right, Angela?’
She shrugged. There was plenty of heat in the apartment, but Angela was wearing a ratty sweatercoat that came to her ankles, plus another cardigan under that, plus a knitted cloche that came down over her ears, plus a woolen scarf that went around her neck three times. That woman was all yarn.
‘Angela has special talents,’ Black Jack said, still low-voiced, still pleasant. ‘Show them, Angela.’
I don’t know how she did it, I don’t know where it came from, but suddenly her wrist flicked and there was an open knife in her hand. Either a gravity knife, the blade sliding out of the handle and locking, or a flick knife, the blade swinging out and locking. Whatever it was, the four-inch steel was suddenly there, sharp and gleaming.
‘Wasn’t that beautiful?’ Donohue asked me. ‘Never saw where it came from, did you? A real artist, our Angela is.’
I took my eyes away from the shiny blade with a conscious effort of will. What I saw next wasn’t any better. The black man, Clement, was holding my beautiful little Beretta automatic pistol. Not pointing it at anyone. It was just dangling casually, his forefinger through the trigger guard.
But what was even worse was what I saw on the floor, stacked neatly at Donohue’s feet. Project X. My secret manuscript. The complete record of my Big Caper.
He saw me staring.
‘Black Jack?’ he said, laughing. ‘What a name! Jannie, you could have done me better than that.’
Dick Fleming recovered before I did. ‘What do you want?’ he said hoarsely.
Donohue turned his head slowly to look at him.
‘What do we want?’ he said. ‘That’s obvious, isn’t it? We want
