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“Maybe Joe skimmed money to buy you a nice ring, and maybe that’s what gave Gino the idea to use him to take the fall for a bigger theft. Joe didn’t try to kill you. He’s been trying to save you.”
“That’s exactly it, missy,” Riordan called from the lounge. He sounded cheerful.
We looked in. Riordan knelt over Foxtrot Joe, pressing a towel to the wound.
Emma gave an alarmed cry and rushed over. Joe was just this side of consciousness and feebly took her hand. She stroked his hair and whispered to him, tears running down her face.
Riordan grinned up at me. “All the world loves a lover, right, Jacky-lad?”
“Looks it.”
“Help him!” she shouted at us. “Can’t you help him?”
“A doctor’s on the way,” I said. “Any minute now.”
“He’ll be fine, missy,” Riordan assured her. “I’ve seen worse that got better. Give him a week and you’ll be dancin’ at your weddin’, sure enough.”
She moaned and kissed Joe’s forehead, murmuring to him. He smiled at her, and I recognized the look that transformed his hard face: true love. Who’d have thought it?
Riordan continued keeping pressure on the damage as he spoke to me. “Oh, the things I’ve learned from this patient, y’wouldn’t believe, Jacky-lad. Seems our Gino shot this fine fella, an’ let on he was goin’ to do away with the lovely Emma, too. That didn’t sit well with Foxtrot. He played dead, then somehow got himself out of wherever it was Gino stashed him to rot in peace. Poor Joe was supposed to disappear for good, y’see.”
“Taking eight hundred grand with him,” I said. “Gino gets it all and keeps his spot as collector. He should have stopped there and not gotten cute with the grenade. With Gordy dead he must have thought he could move up to the big office.”
“The threat to his lady love kept our Foxtrot goin’. He cabbed over to our Emma’s, an’ followed Gino following her. Poor lad was on his last legs. Lucky for him you twigged to Gino’s game. Just how did that come about?”
“If Foxtrot was guilty of the theft, he had no reason to be here. Gino looked pretty damned surprised about it. He wasn’t concerned about you getting near the cash, either. Wrong reaction.”
Riordan snorted. “A sad underestimation of my talents.”
“It makes sense if Gino’s the only one who knows where the money is. Gino had to kill Foxtrot, and then kill me to shut me up about it. The money stays missing for good.”
“Lucky for you that little slip of a thing lent a hand. Who is she? Where is she?”
“Her name’s Myrna, and she’s shy. I wouldn’t go—”
The lobby door opened and a skinny guy with a doctor’s bag hurried in. He had two other guys with him and a stretcher. They started for the man I’d dragged in earlier, but I called them toward the ladies’ lounge.
Without fuss they went to work and shoveled Foxtrot into a beat-up panel truck. It had the name DUCKY DIAPER SERVICE in faded letters on the sides, along with a winking cartoon duck wearing a diaper. Maybe it was someone’s humor at work, it being a not-too-subtle reference to cleaning up other people’s crap.
Emma Dorsey climbed in the back to take over pressure duty and to hold Foxtrot’s hand. As an afterthought they packed in the guy he had coshed, then drove quickly away.
Just as their taillights winked around the corner, twin beams from another large vehicle swung into the street, followed by three more large cars. I recognized Gordy’s new armored Cadillac in the lead. Things were about to get much, much worse for Gino Desanctis.
“What a night,” I muttered.
The small light behind the bar, the one Myrna liked having on all the time, flickered as though in agreement.
A week later, in my refurbished office, I finished attaching the antenna to Myrna’s new toy. Fifty feet of wire had been strung across the roof of my building by a guy who knew how to do that kind of work. The end of it snaked in through special holes drilled down through the ceiling—elaborate, but the reception would be outstanding.
I’d promised her a radio, said that it was hers and hers alone, and she could play whatever she liked whenever she liked.
I was still humbly grateful about the timing of that thrown bar stool.
She had the best Zenith floor model I could find, guaranteed to pick up foreign broadcasts on its shortwave band. The wood cabinet had a rich, honey-smooth finish, and the speaker was larger than any other in the shop. Open the back and you’d see a cone-shaped covering around the speaker itself, sort of like a lumpy bullhorn. You adjusted it to fix the bass sound to fit the size of the room, or something like that. I’d read the directions some other time.
I plugged it in.
The thing came to life with an enthusiastic hum. After it warmed up, I fiddled with the dial and put it on a station playing dance music. It sounded damned good, almost as though you were there.
