Howdy, folks. Welcome back for Episode 13 of Matt Slade’s adventures. If you’re just tuning in, feel free to start at the beginning.
The big Packard Eight swayed and jerked all over Sansom Street, just a block or two off Rittenhouse Square as the driver clutched at his ear. I’d just put a bullet past it, to get his attention.
“Easy there, killer. Get this heap back on one side of the road, will ya?”
“There ain’t no call for shootin’, Mister!”
“There ain’t no call for lyin, neither, but there you were, lyin’ like a rug.”
“I wasn’t lyin’ I swear!”
“Well, tell me now, and tell me straight. Where is that LaSalle going? Wait. No. I don’t care about the car. Where is Kavanaugh taking Claire Brazelton? That’s the important thing.”
The mook put his bloodied hand back on the wheel. The long hood steadied. “I don’t know for sure. It could be half a dozen places. But if I was to guess…”
“Yes…” I pressed.
“I I was to guess, I’d say the big house.”
I got the .45 automatic ready again. “Maybe you wanna try between the ears? I don’t think there’s much in there to hurt, but we can try…”
“What? No! I mean…”
“What big house? Where’s the big house? Mr. K’s, I assume?”
“Chestnut Hill! It’s in Chestnut Hill, all right?”
“Very well, James,” I said in my best limey talk. “To Chestnut Hill, if you please.”
I suppose it was only half an hour, but the drive seemed to take all night. Pink sunrise lit Peter and Paul. The boathouses peeked through the river mist. Sitting in the back of the big car, I could almost think I was one of the fat cats, myself. Except for the wind whisling through the bullet hole in the roof. The .45 in my fist, and the Thompson at my feet. They reminded me who I was. The city changed around me, the expensively cheap glitz of center city giving way to the real money, the big old money mausoleums with grass and trees enough to keep the riff-raff at a comfortable distance. Riff-raff like me.
Except this was one morning the riff-raff was coming calling.
The long car pulled to the curb. Through the fence, like whiskers that didn’t quite cover an old man’s face, showed one of the biggest stone piles I’d seen since France. “Swanmere,” the sign on the gate said.
“This is as far as I go, bub.”
Even if you hold a heater under a mook’s nose, there’s only so much action you can get. If he drove me the rest of the way in, he’d be dead. Didn’t matter if I pulled the trigger or Kavanaugh did. I pulled some of the folding green Claire Brazelton’s pop had given me to find his murderer, and handed a bill to the wheel-man. I had to find his daughter, first. She was the middle of all this.
“Why don’t you find yourself a bottle to crawl into, James? Keep your head down.”
He didn’t say nothin’. He did take the greenback, and rolled the car back out onto Germantown Rd.
That left me standing on the side of the one of the richest streets in the country, holding a submachine gun, with the sun coming up behind me. Definitely time to do something about that.
The wrought iron fence inside the row of trees was solid and high. Not so high it couldn’t be scaled, just so high it couldn’t be scaled by me. A war wound in the gluteus maximus had not done good things for my athleticism. That left the front gate. If Kavanaugh was an Organization man, and I had no reason to doubt it, after all the night’s hijinks, I expected he’d have at least a couple of bruisers out front.
I expected wrong. The gate stood open, and no Thompson-toting toughs greeted me.
I walked in. I thought my hair might curl, walkin’ up that winding drive in the open, but there wasn’t any other way to get to the house from the gate. It was the drive, or the open grass. I was pretty sure this sort of thing was supposed to happen at night, but what few shreds of darkness were left did little to hide me.
At last I made it to the house itself, and started around it. I couldn’t think of a plausible way to get in. I’d left all my fake mustaches and important looking clipboards in the office. All I had with me was this lousy machine gun.
I stayed away from the kitchens. They seemed likely to be busy, and I didn’t think K & Co. wanted too many witnesses for whatever they were doing with the lady. Around the west side it was. A little darker there, still, too. I passed a dark and empty billiard room, an orangery, and came to an open window. It looked like a study, or maybe a library, from the books and globes. Damn. It’s a lot harder to hate these loaded jokers when they spend their dough on libraries.
I heard voices outside. Two angry men, and one woman. From the deep, rich tones of her voice, it wasn’t hard to peg it as belonging to Miss Claire Brazelton, the bluestockinged Temple scholar in poisons, and heiress who stood to gain much from her father’s impending demise.
If you’re enjoying this serial, consider sharing it with a friend.
Be sure not to miss next week’s episode, subscribe for free to get it delivered straight to your inbox.
If you can’t wait that long, you’ve just gotta have more dark and deadly noir adventures (with a feline twist) by Jesse M. Slater, head on over to Amazon. Pick up a copy of Moggie Noir, from Raconteur Press.
Dang, Jesse. Your description is really putting me there. 💪 Looking forward to the next episode.