Jimmy the Stick (29 page)

Maybe Sammy Spats heard me or maybe he jerked around when the first bullet hit. But he turned to look up, and the big .45 came around fast, and I felt the bullet crack through the air by my face. I fired again and so did Spats. He missed. I didn't. But then, shooting first is a big advantage.

I slipped the warm pistol back into my coat pocket.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 9, 1932

VALLEY GREEN, NEW JERSEY

As the sound of shots faded, Spence dashed across the room to his wife. He snapped open a pocket knife and cut the ropes that held her. She sobbed, and repeated, “It was horrible, horrible, horrible.”

Spence went at the ropes with a will. As soon as Flora was free, she flung her arms around his neck, and buried her face in his chest. I fetched my stick and went downstairs.

Spence had a crazed look in his eyes even as he tried to comfort his wife. “There, there,” he said as if he was talking to a child. “Everything's going to be fine. We couldn't tell you before, but now it's all behind us. You're going to be fine.”

I took the knife from him and freed Mrs. Pennyweight. The rope had left an ugly raw mark on her throat. Ever the lady, she said thanks, and carefully rearranged a silk scarf around her neck to cover it.

I heard a nasty bubbling sound behind me. It was Spats. Looked like the three shots had hit him on top of the shoulder, and in his chest. He lay on his back, eyes wide open, his breathing ragged, with a bloody froth on his mouth. He reached feebly with his left hand for the second .45 in the shoulder holster.

When Spence saw that he wasn't dead yet, he pushed past me and yanked the pistol from its holster. He was angrier than I had ever seen him. The muzzle quivered as he pointed it at Spats. He would have finished the bastard right there but Flora's sobs intensified.

Mrs. Pennyweight held her trembling daughter. “Not here, Walter. Not in front of her. She's been through too much. This wasn't . . .” She looked at me. “I didn't know he would go that far.” I guess she'd been trying to teach her daughter some kind of lesson. Hell of a way to go about it.

Spence stuck the pistol into his belt and grabbed Spats by the collar. He dragged the rat bastard out to the driveway and emptied the .45 into his crotch. No need to splatter blood all over the wainscoting.

I turned to Chink, who dabbed at his nose with a pocket square. When Spence returned, he said, “Sorry, Spencer. Things got out of hand. Spats wasn't supposed to do any of that shit with the ropes and the women. It's just his way, you know. We was only trying to protect our investment. We had to be sure you wasn't trying to fuck us over.”

So Chink figured that if he brought Spats and his four Irish thugs for the dirty work, Spence and Cloninger would be outnumbered and outgunned. Chink also had Flora's chums on the inside. They told him that I was the only threat in the house, and gimpy Jimmy the Stick didn't worry him much.

But now, even after Spats had attacked Flora, nothing had changed. Spence needed Chink to sell his stuff in the city.

And there were still a lot of loose ends.

I said I was going to get a brandy.

I rapped on the bookshelf and said, “It's me. Don't shoot,” before I released the catch and opened the door.

Connie Nix was sitting in the armchair with the rifle tucked under one arm and little Ethan bouncing on her left knee. She looked pretty pissed off. “Can I get out of here? We've been sitting in this chair for hours.”

“Yeah, it's OK now, I think. What happened while I was gone?”

She explained that she first got worried when she was in the kitchen and heard the commotion upstairs. That was Titus blindsiding me, and then Spats laying into him. Mrs. Conway told her to pay no attention because they had work to do. Mrs. Pennyweight had ordered a tray of sandwiches and such for a light Sunday supper and Mr. Spencer's return. She said there might be other guests.

Around seven, right after I left for the airfield, Mr. Mears took the cart upstairs. The old guy looked troubled when he returned and huddled with Mrs. Conway. They didn't say anything to Connie but she could see that something bad was brewing.

Flora, Cameron Rivers, and Teddy Banks came back later. The kitchen staff heard more loud noises from upstairs. But Mrs. Conway claimed that Mrs. Pennyweight had said that none of them were to come up to the main floor unless they were called. No exceptions. Mrs. Conway announced she was going to bed. Mr. Mears agreed.

Connie was tempted to do the same until she heard more yells and stuff banging around upstairs. She ran up the servants' stairs to the second floor and found Ethan in his crib, alone in Mrs. Pennyweight's room. She knew they were in trouble, so she grabbed the boy and went back down the servants' stairs.

When she got to the first floor, there were loud voices coming from the ballroom. She heard Mrs. Pennyweight telling Flora to do what the man said. She couldn't tell what Flora was saying, but she sounded angry and then frightened. After Connie got Ethan into the reading room, she could make out more thumping noises and yelling right outside. That would have been Spats immobilizing Flora and Mrs. Pennyweight, probably with help from Cameron and Teddy.

After that, she waited, rifle close at hand, and didn't really hear anything else until the shooting started.

We took the boy out into the library and I said, “You did all the right things. Whatever they're paying you, it's not enough.”

“Hah! I haven't been paid in two months. Mrs. Pennyweight keeps saying that the ‘household funds have been frozen' until the new oilfields are producing. And as soon as Mr. Spencer returned, I'd get a big bonus.”

She needed to know the truth. “That's not quite right. Spence says he's done some good business with the oil wells. But the real reason he flew down there was to pick up a load of heroin, cocaine, and morphine in Mexico. With Cloninger's help, he's gonna sell it. After that, sure, you and everyone will most likely be paid.”

Connie Nix was struck momentarily speechless. Finally, she said, “That's crazy.”

I slid open the doors to the main room, and pointed to the wooden crates. Spence and Chink had pried one open, spilling out the excelsior they'd used for padding on the floor. Cloninger was examining a fist-sized cube of morphine, one of hundreds packed in neat little cardboard boxes inside the crates. They looked suspiciously like little Ethan's imported food. Spence and Chink were talking in low, tight voices. Spence jabbed the smaller man in the chest, and Chink nodded in agreement with everything he said.

The scene reminded me of the first thing I saw when Oh Boy drove me to the house a week ago, with Spence, Cloninger, and Dietz huddled together in the driveway. Was it only a week? Seemed more like a year.

Connie Nix stared openmouthed at the stuff. The boy wriggled around, saw Spence, and waved his fat little arms as he yelled, “Dah!”

Spence glanced quickly at his son, smiled, then returned to Chink.

Mrs. Pennyweight untangled herself from Flora, still huddled in a chair. She walked over to the child. “Very good, Nix. Let's get him back to my room. Ignore the bleeding man on the balcony.” They went upstairs.

Cameron Rivers and Teddy Banks were still unaccounted for, along with Titus. I found them gathered by the Electrola in the ballroom. Titus sat with his head in his hands, leaning over a wastebasket. His face had been cleaned up, but both his shirt and ears were still bloody. He bent over the wastebasket and dry-heaved. It sounded awful. Teddy held a cloth to his friend's forehead and fretted. Cameron was back into the champagne. The three of them looked like hell.

“I don't know what kind of deal you've got with Chink,” I said. “But if I was you, I'd scram out of here, PDQ.”

Cameron Rivers said, “Chink owes us money. We get a cut.”

Teddy didn't care. He fretted, “Titus is hurt. He's cold. We need to get him to a hospital.”

“Yeah, after we talk to—” Cameron stopped and stood up, suddenly terrified. “Flora, Flora, darling, it's not what you think.”

“You were supposed to be my friend!”

Flora stood in the middle of the room, with one of Spats's nickel-plated automatics in her hands. It was the one Spats had been using when he shot at me. That meant the hammer was cocked and there was a round in the chamber. All she had to do was pull the trigger. Flora stalked forward, still crying, her nose running, her voice ragged and hoarse.

I got out of the way.

“All that damned flattery and lies. ‘Flora, they all treat you so badly.' ‘Your mother is using you.' ‘Your husband doesn't understand that a young woman has her needs.' ‘If he really loved you, he'd stay.' Lies, all lies. And you helped that monster. You helped him attack me.”

“No, Flora, darling, you don't understand,” Cameron was talking fast, the words tumbling out over each other. “They made me do it, Teddy and Titus and that other man. They threatened me, they beat me, they swore that—”

The .45 sounded really loud in the echoing ballroom. The bullet caught Cameron high on the right side of her chest. She staggered back a step, and flailed gracelessly falling to the floor.

The recoil knocked the pistol out of Flora's hands. She looked quite surprised at what she'd done as she watched her friend die. Then she fainted.

Teddy jumped up and bolted from the room. But he was about six days too late. Spence met him at the door, and laid him out with a forearm to the throat.

He knelt down to cradle his wife, and turned to look at me. “What the hell was going on with these three?”

“They showed up with Flora. The big one there”—I pointed at Titus, who hadn't moved or reacted to the gunshot in any way—“said that they palled around with Chink at the Swanee Club.”

“We saw them there. They know Flora.”

“Chink hired them to hang around with her while you were gone. I guess he was worried that you might fly the coop with his dough and the drugs.”

Just goes to show you how much Chink had misjudged Spence. Spence wouldn't leave his wife and the life that he'd so carefully built for himself in Valley Green. Those were a hell of a lot more important to him than money.

“So, now what?” I said.

Spence stroked his wife's face. “Will you help? This isn't finished yet.”

He didn't have to ask.

Dr. Cloninger came in and asked Flora how much she'd had to drink. Well, he tried to ask her but she couldn't really answer. He whipped out his trusty leather case and selected a syringe. Spence helped pull down Flora's torn blouse over her shoulder. The doc swabbed it and gave her a shot. When Spence tried to get her to stand, her legs went rubbery and he had to carry her upstairs.

After they'd gone, Cloninger turned his pop-eyed stare to me. “Once again you walk away from a confrontation without harm. That is a remarkable facility, Mr. Quinn. I hope we can rely on your continued assistance.”

He pulled another syringe out of the case, and jabbed the unconscious Teddy in the neck without benefit of an alcohol swab. Then he went back to the big room and up to the balcony, where he bandaged the Mick's head wound. The guy appeared to be delirious—but who knows, that might have been the booze. Cloninger got him to his feet and led him downstairs. By then, Chink had rounded up the other three Micks, who'd run when the first shot was heard. If they were curious about who'd shot their fourth, they didn't say anything. They just loaded him into the back of the truck and left. Their headlights revealed Spats's bloody body on the wet snowy grass.

Spence had another conversation with Chink, who drove off in the other Model A.

“We're almost finished,” Spence said. “We just have to get the goods over to Cloninger's sanatorium. Oliver is bringing the car around. Once we've got that squared away, we'll call Sheriff Kittner and he'll take care of everything else.”

Headlights hit us and Oh Boy pulled up. Spence and I carried the crates from the house and loaded them into the backseat of the Duesenberg. Oh Boy stared straight ahead, trying not to see anything that was going on. Spence paused with the car door open. “I can't thank you enough for everything you've done. You know that, and you know I'll make it worth your while.”

I watched the taillights recede down the drive and thought about everything that had happened since Spence left a week ago, and everything that had happened since he got back. I tried to make it all fit together, but logic failed me.

I heard the sputtering of a small engine and turned to see Dietz riding up from the garage on his motorcycle with its homemade sidecar. A length of stout wire and two heavy angle-irons rattled around inside it. He stopped beside Spats's body and fired up his briar.

“Some of your handiwork, I take it, gunman.”

“Actually, Spence did the honors. Not that it matters. The world is a better place without Sammy Spats.”

“Don't speak ill of the dead.”

“I knew him better than you did.”

Dietz laughed. “Help me load him up, then. I'll see that he gets a decent burial at sea, in a manner of speaking.”

We lifted the body into the sidecar, and Dietz trundled down the slope to the boathouse and the lake.

I shivered. It was cold out there without an overcoat and hat. I went back inside to the library but it was chilly there, too. The fire had gone out some time before. I found a clean glass at the bar, took it into the reading room, and poured another tot of Mr. Pennyweight's good brandy.

Sitting in the threadbare armchair, I wondered if she would show herself or if, after spending a week in this crazy place, I'd gone a little nuts myself. I drank, closed my eyes, and waited. Maybe I dozed. Maybe I only dreamed what happened next.

When I looked up again, there she was, a shape at the edge of the light, just as she'd looked when I saw her the first time from my window.