The Tough Guys

me.

She didn't call me boy though. From the doorway where she had seen the whole thing start and end she half whispered, "Cat!"

My love, my little love, only now she wasn't small and frail. Darkly blonde still, but luscious and beautiful with those same deep purple eyes and a mouth that had given me my first kiss. Her breasts accentuated the womanliness of her, dipping into a pert waist and swelling into thighs and calves that were the ultimate in sensuous beauty.

"Hello, Anita," I said.

Even the pair on the floor, the blood or the gun in my fist couldn't stop the headlong rush she made into my arms and hold back the tears. I laughed, grabbed her close a moment and held her back so I could look at her. "I'll be damned," I said, "How you've changed."

Through eyes that were wet and streaking mascara she looked at me. "Cat . . . where did you come from? You were supposed to be dead. Oh, Cat, all these years and you never wrote . . . we never heard a thing. Why didn't . . ."

"I never left anything here, kid." I tilted her chin up with my hand. "Except you. I wanted to take you along but I couldn't have made it then."

"Anita!" Vance Colby was snubbing his cigarette out in an ashtray. He was the only one who seemed calm enough to speak up.

"At ease, friend. We're sort of kissin' cousins. Take it easy until we've said our hellos."

She seemed to see the others then. Like them there was a tension that came back over her, and eyes that were happy, clouded, and her finger bit into my arm. "Please . . . can we go outside . . . and talk?"

I looked at Colby and felt a smile twist my mouth. I put the gun back and said, "Mind?"

"Not at all."

I pointed toward Gage and Matteau. "Better sober up your friends."

CHAPTER TWO

The summerhouse had always been a place where we could find each other and we went there now. She sat in one of the big wicker chairs and I perched on the railing and said, "Okay, honey, spill it. What's going on here?"

"Cat . . . nothing. Really, I . . ."

"Since when do a pair of hoods sit in the Bannerman mansion? Grandpop or my old man would have thrown them through the nearest window and there was a time when Miles wouldn't let anybody in the front door who wasn't listed in the social register. So what gives, honey?"

"You . . . you knew those two, didn't you?"

"Sure I did. They're Syndicate men they call 'watchers.' They come in while an operation is being set up with Syndicate money to make sure it gets spent right."

"How did you know them?"

"Why?"

"You . . . had a gun."

"So I'm in the same business, that's why, but don't worry about it. What's the score here?"

"I can't tell you," she said simply.

"Swell, so I'll find out myself."

Even in the darkness I could see her hands tighten into hard knots. "Please don't."

"I'm the curious type. Maybe I can stick something up Rudy's tail. He did it to me often enough."

"They're . . . not like they used to be."

"Neither am I, chicken. Now, do you explain?"

"No."

I slid off the rail and stood in front of her. "So tell me and I'll blow," I said. "I don't want anything from those creeps."

Anita shook her head slowly, not wanting to look at me. "I'm afraid, Cat. They did . . . too much to you. Nobody can forget what they did. But please . . . don't make it worse."

"You make it sound interesting." I reached out, lifted her to her feet and put my arms around her. I tried to make it casual, a thing that cousins might do, but it didn't quite work that way. My fingers kneaded the firm structure of her back, my palms pressed her close and some crazy thing went through my head and down through my body and was happening to her too. She said something I couldn't hear because my face was buried in the fragrance of her hair, then my mouth was tasting her and feeling the wild response and fiery dart of her tongue and I had to shove her away with arms that wanted to shake.

"Cat . . . I waited. I never believed what they said . . . about you being dead. The night you left I told you I'd wait."

"We were just kids, honey."

"You said you'd come back for me."

And I remembered. It was why I had turned off the road into the driveway.

"I'm too late, kid."

Her eyes, were misty and she leaned her face against my chest. "I know. It can't be changed." She looked up at me. "Take me back, Cat . . . please?"

I left her at the door without bothering to go in. The black Caddie that had been in front of my Ford was gone now, the Buick still there. I got in the car, turned the engine over and drove out the way I had come. Culver City was six miles east and I had nine days before I had to do the job in New York and get back to the coast.

Outside of town I stopped at a second rate motel, put down nine bucks and signed the register. I said I didn't need a receipt, got the key, the guy didn't even bother to look at the name and never commented on it, so I drove down to my room.

After a shower I lay on the bed staring up at the ceiling wondering just how badly I'd like to plaster Rudy and Ted all over their palatial mansion. I laughed at the thought because now it was ridiculous. I could take them both with one hand. I would have settled for a swift kick in the tail or a belt in the puss, dumped old Miles in the cistern out back and called it square.

Except that now a new note was added. The boys from Chicago were on the inside and the fun might be too much to miss out on.

I got up at seven A.M., grabbed breakfast downtown and at eight-thirty when I knew I'd get my party, made a call. Marty Sinclair came on the line with a gruff hello and I said, "Cat Bannerman."

"You in New York?"

"No, Culver City. I'm going to stick around a while."

"You and them crazy broads! When . . ."

"Come on, Marty. I used to live here."

"So why the call?"

"I don't know . . . something cute here we might tie in with. Look, work it easy, but see if you have a line into the local situation."

"Hell, man, Culver City is wide open. Gambling is legal, the horses are out of season but . . ."

"Can you do it?"

"Sure. Take ten minutes."

I gave him the number of the phone booth. "Call me back in fifteen."

He was right on the dot. Fifteen minutes later I knew of a Sid LaMont, had his address and was on the way.

Five sixty one River Street was a sleezy building on the end of a line of apartments with a painted sign advertising a popular beer facing the water. On the ground floor was a printing jobber, a top floor with smashed windows, which put Sidney LaMont right in the middle.

The guy who answered the door was about thirty but looked fifty. He came up to my shoulders, peering at me with a ratty little face, hands fiddling with a dirty undershirt. These guys I knew how to handle without wasting time so I just pushed him back in the room and watched the sweat start forming on his forehead.

They always try a little bull at first. He said, "Look, mister . . . don't you come bustin' in here and . . ."