Some readers tell me it wasn’t nice to leave Miss Claire in literary limbo. As such, we’ll resume our noir serial, “Murder by Installments.” If you’d like to catch up from the beginning, Episode 1 is here.
Episode 12
I ran uselessly down the alley, chasing the car speeding off with Claire Brazelton inside.
She wasn’t my girl, but she was a “person of interest,” as the rozzers say. She was the daughter of the man who’d hired me to find out who’d murdered him, as he put it. A very slow acting poison. She was a bluestocking, a scientist at Temple, who studied poisons. Damn right she was a person of interest.
What I didn’t understand was why the Organization, in the person of Seamus Kavanaugh, was interested in her. He’d said, just before his goons tossed me out of his speakeasy off Rittenhouse Square, “Everybody knows Augie,” Augustus Brazelton, “but I don’t know the dame.”
Under a minute later I was pounding the pavement, and see a dame answering that dame’s description being hustled into the back of a LaSalle by more goons. The LaSalle, even pulling into Philly traffic was faster than my two tired dogs. It was long gone when I hit the street.
Another car was roaring up behind me. I turned, big .45 automatic still in my fist. A .45 ain’t much use against two tons of Detroit iron, and it wasn’t stopping. There was no place to hide in the narrow alley, blank brick walls on either side. I staggered around to keep running and almost fell.
Every hair on my back stood up. The big straight eight roared behind me. I ran, fast as I ever had, or at least ever had since getting half my ass shot off in France. I gasped, probably my last few breaths of life. The headlights narrowed down on the walls around, as the car got closer.
But there! Up ahead! A doorway! Sacred haven, carved out of the brick. I grabbed the edge and spun inside. The big black car screeched as sheet metal met brick, then it was past in a rush. I tried the door, but it wouldn’t budge. The heap’s brakes howled behind me. I peered around the brickwork, just in time to see a back door open. A big, beefy character stepped out and crouched behind the trunk.
One glimpse of the drum mag dangling from the chopper in his hands and I ducked back into the sheltering brickwork. Not a moment too soon. A burst cut right across. I’d hoped he’d just empty the thing, but he was too smart for that. He stopped firing and waited.
I did not have time for this clown and his tommy. I lay down as best I could in the cramped alcove of the door, feet in the air. The stink of alcoholic piss seared my nostrils, but I hung my hat on one foot, and let it peek around the edge. When the chopper opened up again, I rolled out at ground level and plugged the mook four good ones from the .45.
I rolled up and ran for the car. The driver was turned halfway round, gawking at the busted up brickwork. I grabbed the fallen Thompson and rolled the dead goon out of the way. My .45 I jammed in the driver’s neck.
“You know where that LaSalle was going?”
“What LaSalle?” he asked.
“Don’t play dumb with me, gonsil.” I set the safety catch and ground the rod into him for emphasis.
“Oh, that LaSalle.”
“Right, that La Salle. Where’d it go?”
“I don’t know! We wasn’t told nothin’ bout that part of it.”
“Get this buggy in gear. What was you told?” Hanging around this close to the scene of the action was bad news.
“Just that some nosy dick was pokin’ around, askin’ questions. We was supposed to run you off.” The punk got us out on the road, looked like Sansom.
“With a Thompson? I’d hate to think what Kavanaugh would do if I really annoyed him.”
“Mr K don’t like snoops.”
“Alright,” I said, tiredly. “I don’t like guys that don’t like snoops. Makes me want to snoop harder. Where would Mr K be taking a lady to get her away from a snoop?”
“He don’t like stoolies, neither.” The man seemed to be getting some confidence back, driving down the road. Couldn’t have that.
I popped the safety catch again, and swapped the big automatic to my left hand. I held the muzzle about an inch or so from his ear and pulled the trigger.
“What the hell!” The car lurched as he clutched the side of his head. The hole in the roof over his head made a soft whistling noise. “What are you, some kind of maniac?”
“I don’t like you very much, either.”
“What?”
“Let me say it in your good ear. Mr K may not like stoolies, but I don’t like you. And I’m right here. Maybe you should tell me what I wanna know and worry about how Mr K feels about it later. Get me, punk?”
Slowly catching upon "Murder by Installments," but I'm still hooked. Though, I caught one typo. "gonsil," I'm pretty sure is "gunsel," though you have to be careful because it has sexual connotations that may get the speaker shot.