Page 10 of Passion's Wicked Torment

“Oh ... no reason. I was wondering if there’s someplace close by where I could get some coffee.” “There’s coffee upstairs at the party. Why didn’t you ask for it then, before I brought you down?”

“I didn’t know I wanted it then.”

He sneered and finished rolling his cigarette. “Dames,” he muttered. He put the cigarette in his mouth and lit it.

Kristin could hear the sounds of the party still going strong upstairs. There was raucous laughter and music coming from a phonograph, the new Rudy Valle hit. She became nervous. What if the party ended soon and Rooney came down before she had a chance to open the doors to Hunter, and to escape? She’d have to go with Rooney to his hotel then. There would be no getting out of it. Perhaps she could plead sickness. Perhaps she could. . . .

Oh, dam it! she thought. If it reached that point, it almost wouldn’t matter what she did. Her plan would be mined. If she failed, she would never have a chance to learn from any other gangsters where Chad was being kept. If she didn’t find out soon, it would be hopeless. Even if Chad were still alive, how much longer would his captors keep him that way? She didn’t even know what they wanted with him in the first place.

“Listen,” she said in a pleading voice, which she tried to make sound sweet and sexy. “Would you go get me some coffee? Please. I’d be really grateful.”

“Yeah? How grateful?”

I’d ... I’d keep quiet about anything you might want to ... do to me, so Rooney wouldn’t find out.” “Come here.”

She hesitated. Then she moved to him and came up close. He pushed open the coat she was wearing and put his hand on her throat, slowly moving it down to cup her breast. She did not move back or flinch, though she had an intense desire to do so. She saw him grining at her leeringly, and she felt revulsion.

“Please?” she said. “The coffee?”

“Can’t. Rooney wouldn’t like it if I left you alone down here.”

She pulled back sharply.

He laughed. “I just want to have my cake and eat it too.”

“Well, why can’t you leave me alone for a minute? What do you think I’m going to do? Drink up all of your precious whiskey?”

Marty frowned and stared at her. “How’d you know that’s what we got down here? Everything’s crated up. You can’t see nothing.”

She became frightened under his suspicious stare. “The crates. They say—”

“They say ‘Near Beer,’ that’s what they say. In big black letters. Take a look.”

“Oh, don’t be so serious. You act like it’s a capital crime that I know you men are bootleggers. What did you think I thought you were? Kindergarten teachers? Or is that supposed to be a convention of plumbing salesmen upstairs?”

His suspicions were not lessened. Members of the underworld knew that Rooney and the mob were bootleggers. But pains had been taken to make sure everyone else thought they were legitimate Near Beer importers and that this was a legitimate warehouse for the legal beer, which contained less than one-half of 1% alcohol.

Marty came up to her and took her arm, holding her roughly. “You and me better go upstairs and get you some of that coffee you want. And while we’re at it, maybe you can tell the boss about how you happen to know so much.”

“The baker told me! He said I was to jump out of a cake at a party for—”

“For bootleggers? Pierre, he don’t have loose lips like that. He knows what happens to people with loose lips. You better come with me, doll.” He started pulling her with him as they went to the creaky wooden stairs and began ascending to the upper story.

Kristin was frightened. She didn’t know what to do. When they were near the top, she became desperate. She fell to one knee on the stairway, pretending to trip. He released his grip on her arm so that he would not trip also. He reached a hand back to her to help her to her feet. “Come on, come on. Ain’t no use trying to stall me. I know something’s going on here.”

She took his hand, and then, suddenly, she pulled forward with all her might.

“Hey!”

Still kneeling on the stairway, she put her shoulder against his knees as he came stumbling forward. He tripped over her and tumbled, rolling and banging his way down the stairs. He ended up on the bottom, sprawled on his back, moaning. “Ohhh.' Ohhh. I’m gonna . . . I’m gonna kill you for this.” He didn’t have any wind in him to yell, and he was too hurt to get up.

Kristin scurried down the stairs quickly, went to the barnlike doors and pushed back the horizontal wooden bolt holding the doors closed. She tugged at one of the doors, trying to pull it open. When it was open only a few inches, someone from the other side pushed it farther. A head popped in and looked quickly around, surveying the scene. A hand appeared below the head, holding a pistol.

“Dallas! He’s . . . he’s there, at the base of the stairs. He’s not unconscious. If he screams. . . .”

Hunter rushed past her, not asking who she was talking about. He reached Marty just as the injured thug was trying to rise to a sitting position, and at the same time pulling a pistol from his shoulder holster. Marty pointed the gun at Hunter, but Hunter was near him now and kicked it out of his hand.

“Don’t scream, kid. Don’t make a sound. I don’t want to plug you. But I will if I have to.”

“You rotten bastard.”

Hunter saw the folded square of handkerchief in the pocket of the man’s coat, which Kristin was wearing. She was right next to Hunter, having followed on his heels. Hunter grabbed the handkerchief from the pocket and wadded it up. “Open wide, kid.”

Marty hesitated. His eyes narrowed. He opened his mouth to yell, to alert the men upstairs. Hunter smashed him in the temple with the barrel of the gun. Marty’s eyes closed, and his head dropped. He lay unconscious on the floor.

Others from Hunter’s band had entered the warehouse and stood around them now. Kristin was surprised to see that all of them carried weapons, either pistols or Tommy guns.

“I thought there’d be no killing!” she exclaimed. “I thought the object of this whole thing was to go through all this deceit of letting you in quietly so you wouldn’t have to shoot things up and start a gang war?”

“We won’t shoot if we don’t have to,” Hunter said.

Ironman entered the warehouse now, in a double-breasted pinstripe suit and a white fedora pulled low over his forehead. Behind him were men Kristin had not seen before. The were from Ironman’s own gang, not Hunter’s. They carried sticks of dynamite banded together in clumps of three, with fuses attached.

Kristin was shocked. She had not thought they would blow up the place. She had naïvely thought they would bring axes and would destroy the bottles. Of course, now that she saw how many crates there were— hundreds!—she realized that that would take hours, which they didn’t have. And it would cause noise while they did it, which would bring Rooney’s men.

Dynamite could cause even more noise, but by the time the blast occurred, it would be too late for Rooney’s men to do anything about it. And Hunter’s and Ironman’s bands would be in their cars and screeching away.

Hunter grabbed one of Ironman’s henchmen. “T.J., move this lug outside.” He nodded down to the unconscious Marty.

“What for?” said the shark-faced thug. “Let him drink a booze and dynamite cocktail. One less of these guys is fine with me.”

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