Tough as Nails: The Complete Cases of Donahue From the Pages of Black Mask (16 page)

When a knock sounded on the door, Irene crossed the room, turned the lock. A big man with polished pale hair looked in, bowed.

“Where is the man, Miss Saffarrans?”

She pointed haughtily. “There.”

The house officer entered heavily, wearing a quizzical frown. He stopped before Donahue.

“Will you go out quietly?”

Donahue laughed in his face. “Sure.”

“Do you want him arrested, Miss Saffarans?”

“No. Just throw him out.”

Donahue started towards the door, looked down at Irene in passing with good-humored contempt. “Okey, sister.”

She was rigid, cold-eyed. She said nothing.

Donahue went out.

They put Donahue out, bags and all. He offered no explanation, no resistance. He moved to a hotel half a block north, on the opposite side of the street. He got a front room on the third floor, lit his pipe and sat down by the window. He had a clear, unobstructed view of the façade of the Hotel Redfern.

At one o’clock he saw Irene appear. A bell-hop carried four bags. The doorman blew a whistle and a taxi drew up before the façade.

Donahue was already on his way out of the door. He ignored the elevator, took the stairway; reached the lobby, sped through it and attained the entrance. He was still behind the glass doors when he saw the taxi bearing Irene go by. He pushed open the door, climbed into a waiting taxi outside and said:

“Follow that checker!”

“Oke.”

The taxi swung around in the middle of the block, and was directly behind the checker at the Forty-second Street traffic stop. When the traffic cleared, the taxi headed north on Lexington, made a left turn into Forty-seventh and then swung north on Park Avenue. At Seventy-ninth Street it turned left again, crossed Madison and took the transverse through Central Park, came out of the park at Manhattan Square, and went on west through Eighty-first Street to West End Avenue. It turned north on West End Avenue and drew up before the West End Hermitage Hotel.

Donahue said, “Go right by and stop at Eighty-fifth.”

He got off at the corner, paid up, shoved his hands into his overcoat pockets and walked south. Entering the small, cosy lobby of the West End Hermitage, he went directly to the desk. There was no one behind it. His eyes dropped to the register, and read the last inscription upside down: Ann Logan, City. Alongside the name was: 810. Just then the clerk appeared and said: “Yes, sir?”

Donahue asked for rates on a suite. The clerk told him. Donahue thought he couldn’t pay the price, thanked the clerk, and strode out.

Opposite the West End Hermitage was a larger hotel which Donahue entered. Off the left of the foyer was a large lounge with curtained windows looking out on the avenue. Donahue found a chair near the window, sat down and was able to peer between the folds of the curtains at the façade of the West End Hermitage. He started a cigar, leaned back. Other guests smoked and drowsed or read around him.

At half-past two he saw a man get out of a taxi. The man carried no luggage. He was the man who had caved in Donahue’s face. He entered the West End Hermitage.

Donahue did not move. He sat back comfortably, showing no surprise, and continued to watch the façade of the hotel opposite. The butt of his cigar was dead in his mouth. He took the butt out, dropped it into a tray. He moved in the chair, a bit restless. But he never took his eyes from the hotel across the street.

At a quarter to four the man came out—alone. He spoke to the doorman, and the doorman hailed a cab.

Donahue got up and swept out of the lounge. He passed through the revolving doors as the man went north in a blue taxi. He crossed the sidewalk and got into a black-and-white cab. The blue one was swinging west into Eighty-third Street. Donahue gave instructions, and the black-and-white got started.

They picked up the blue cab swinging south into Riverside Drive. It turned east at Seventy-second Street, crossed town to Central Park West, south to Columbus Circle, and east on Fifty-ninth Street to Sixth Avenue, when it swung south. At Forty-fifth Street the cab stopped, and the man got out and walked west. Donahue’s cab swung into Forty-fifth and rolled along slowly past numerous cheap theatrical hotels. The man entered the Hotel Brick. It had a faded frescoed entrance, four stone steps from the sidewalk.

Donahue left the cab, drifted past the Brick, turned and came back and entered. It had a small drab lobby strewn with threadbare plush divans and easy chairs. It had a couple of synthetic blondes, and a half dozen young men dressed in the mode, a little beyond the mode.

Donahue bought a paper and took a seat. He spread the paper, watched the elevator. He settled back comfortably, stretched and crossed long, lean legs.

Five minutes later the elevator opened and the man came out. He came out watchfully, his right hand in his overcoat pocket significantly.

Donahue, visibly surprised, since no doubt he had expected to wait much longer, dropped his paper and stared. The man looked straight at him, then started past him towards the door. Donahue put a hand on the arm of the chair and started to get up.

The man half-turned. Flame blew his pocket out. He broke into a run.

The two blondes screamed.

Donahue had his teeth together—hard. He held his left arm away from his side in an awkward position as he shoved up to his feet. He winced and threw startled eyes at his left arm. There was a hole in the sleeve. There was also a tear on the lapel of his coat, where the bullet had touched before striking his arm. The tear on the lapel was about where Donahue’s heart should have been.

The half-dozen young men of leisure were still petrified where they lounged. The clerk behind the small desk was petrified.

Donahue lunged through the door, holding his wounded left arm between chest and stomach. In his right hand was the Colt’s .38.

The man was hurrying towards Sixth Avenue. He had both hands in overcoat pockets. He looked around and saw Donahue running. He broke into a run himself. He looked wild-eyed, desperate. He swung north on Sixth Avenue, taking one hand from his pocket.

Donahue swung north after him, and people stopped and turned and conjectured loudly. Donahue had his left arm pressed hard against him. His face was a little gray, very grim. In his eyes brown fury stormed. His mouth was tight, lips thinned in a taut line against teeth that were vised behind them. He did not yell. He kept running.

The man reached Forty-ninth, turned west. Donahue was half a block behind him. The man turned north into Broadway, and at Fiftieth Street he plunged into a subway kiosk. Donahue plunged down after him.

No train was at the northbound platform. The man jumped to the tracks, crossed to the southbound platform. Donahue jumped down, but a southbound train roared into the station before he could reach the platform. He crouched between two metal pillars. The train was not crowded. He could see the people getting in. He saw the man get in.

As the train started Donahue hauled himself up between the cars, opened a vestibule door, and heaved into a half-empty car. He saw the man at the rear end. The man saw him. The man rose and plunged into the car behind. Donahue raced the length of the car. The passengers gaped. One or two rose and made for the cars ahead. The train thundered through the tunneled darkness, clicked and banged over switches and pounded into Times Square.

The doors opened. Donahue rushed out. He saw the man half-way up a staircase. He climbed after him, chased him through a wide corridor packed with humanity; chased him through turnstiles, past a bootblack, an elaborate newsstand, up a staircase, through the lunchroom in the Times Building, out into Forty-second Street.

For a moment Donahue lost him. The crowd milled around. Donahue could not run. He saw the man crossing Seventh Avenue, heading west. He burst through the crowd, defied a traffic whistle, bounded across the avenue and on down into Forty-second Street.

The man, well ahead, kept looking back. He crossed Eighth Avenue at a fast walk, with Donahue a block behind him. Both were winded. Near Ninth Avenue, the man ahead suddenly disappeared. Donahue broke into a run, trying to keep his eye glued on the spot where he had last seen the man. When he came to the spot he saw a hardware store, a cut-rate sporting goods store, and between the two a wooden door that had a single light, shaped like a lantern, above it.

A speakeasy….

Donahue spent two minutes trying to get his breath. He was chewing savagely on his lower lip, and the storm had not left his brown eyes. His jaw was still set hard, and there was an air of recklessness about him—wild and not altogether reasonable.

He rapped on the door. He waited, his right hand gripping the gun in his pocket, his left arm pressed against his stomach. Blood had come down his sleeve and was congealing on the back of his hand. He took his hand off his gun and knocked again, then returned the hand to his pocket and gripped the gun again.

No answer….

Donahue stepped back six paces. He looked up and down the street. No one was nearby. He bunched himself, took three fast steps, then two running ones, and crashed against the door with his right shoulder. The door splintered, snarled, banged violently inward, and Donahue hurtled into one end of a long, narrow hallway.

At the farther end was a doorway, beyond which was light and three men standing motionless, looking towards him. Then another form appeared in the doorway—quickly. Flame exploded. Donahue flopped. The bullets went over his head, out through the door, across the street and into the plate-glass window of a radio store. Glass crashed.

Donahue, twisted on the floor, fired and knocked out one of the three lights in the room beyond. The doorway was vacant. The three men—the fourth man who had fired—were not in sight. Gun smoke drifted down the corridor towards the street. Across the way, the radio dealer was yelling:

“Police! Police!”

The man heaved in the doorway again, firing. The hallway shook. Bullets splintered the wall. Donahue, crouched way down, pulled his trigger and sent two bullets into the man as the latter came thundering towards him. No doubt he had heard the call for help. He was cornered. He was trying to crash his way out to the street.

Donahue rose as the man banged into him. The man’s gun went off. The powder blast singed Donahue’s cheek, and the bullet walloped the ceiling. The man was a tower of strength, of mad purpose. He carried Donahue six feet towards the door by main strength, and then Donahue laid the barrel of his .38 across the man’s head.

It didn’t stop the man. He was caged and he was fighting for the freedom of the street and the chance of a running fight. Somewhere a police whistle blew. The man groaned and hurled himself and Donahue towards the door, which was still a matter of four feet distant. Donahue had only one hand, one arm, to use. He gave ground, but he gave it slowly.

Faces appeared and disappeared in the room beyond the hall. That was the bar. The gunsmoke filmed the doorway. There were oaths back there, startled cries, groans.

The two fighting men were nearing the front door. The killer had the strength which comes with insensate rage. Donahue had the spring-steel strength of fierce purpose. Now he was using his wounded left arm to keep the killer’s gun high. No easy task. The killer was keeping Donahue’s gun clear with his left hand. While they heaved, swayed, tore up the carpet with grinding, relentless heels.

Minutes… that had the semblance of hours. Seconds of chaotic agony. Both wounded….

They whirled out through the door, on to the sidewalk. People had come close. Now they retreated—rapidly, with frightened little sounds. Some took to their heels and did not stop. Others chose convenient recessed doorways.

“Police! Police!”

There was a cop coming, a block away. He had a nightstick in one hand, gun in the other. There was a man tearing along behind him. Plain-clothes.

Donahue’s teeth were grinding together. The killer was forcing down his wounded arm, bringing the gun nearer Donahue’s head. Donahue could see the black muzzle.

He knew he had no more strength in that wounded arm. He knew the killer would bring that muzzle in line with his brain.

He bent his head sidewise as far as he could. He put all his strength in his right arm, bent at the knees to drop lower. His left arm gave way—so abruptly that the killer’s gun-hand smacked against his shoulder, the pistol scraping Donahue’s ear. The gun boomed at the same instant. The shot crashed the window of the store on the right of the speakeasy. The killer heaved, roared—broke loose as the cop skidded on the sidewalk. The killer swung towards the cop. His gun blazed, and the cop was turned halfway around.

Donahue fired. The bullet tore through the killer’s side. The killer whirled on Donahue. The plain-clothes man, sliding along the store-fronts, raised his gun. Four explosions banged in the dark street. Four bullets hammered the killer. The killer fell backward against the impact, crashed to the gutter.

The cop sat on the sidewalk saying, “Cripes! Cripes!” over and over.

Donahue stood in the center of the sidewalk, hatless, his hair plastered over his forehead, his gun hanging at his side, smoke dribbling from its warm mouth.

The plain-clothes man came towards him with gun leveled.

“Oh… hello, Ames,” Donahue said.

The plain-clothes man squinted. “So it’s you, Donahue.”

“Yeah. Little old Donahue.”

Ames was a small, oldish man, with a small, round face. He turned the face towards the man lying in the gutter.

“Who’s he?”

“I figure he’s the guy killed Adler.”

“That Village job?”

“Yeah.”

“How come you’re in on it?”

Donahue shrugged. “Dunno. I guess I just got in on it.”

More cops were coming from the direction of Times Square. Ames walked to the gutter, rolled the killer over, picked up his gun. He pocketed the gun and laid his hand on the man’s chest.

“Alive,” he said, “but not for long, I imagine.”

He rose and came back to Donahue quickly. “How many shots you put in him?”

“Three. Two in the hall. One when he went for the cop.”