trying to choke the words out, he’d just point, wave with his carbine, and run forward. It broke the tension, made the guys crack up a little the second or third time it happened, even when shells were going off.
Glancing over at Constantino, Brogan saw the thick overcoat over his chest rising up and down faster, too.
The show crowd started to come down the street, laughing and talking about the comics, gesturing about the shapes of the strippers, and firing up smokes.
“Shit!” Lou said, watching three more men enter, one slapping the lookout on the back. “We wait any longer and they’ll lock the door and not let anyone else in. Let’s go now. The D & D boys’ll be here any minute and know what to do. Go!”
Brogan went out the door, going upstream against the crowd and around the corner, to the front of the building.
Constantino waited a few moments, his foot tapping the car floor, then slid out the driver’s door, tugged his overcoat on tight by the belt, and went across the street to the mouth of the alley, slipping through the show crowd. The lookout was glancing back and forth to both ends of the alley, and Constantino approached the back door, a disarming smile for the lookout. Constantino moved towards him, then saw two guys come up the alley from the other direction on Chippewa, also headed for the back door. The lookout turned and gave a look of recognition to the two men, both in overcoats with the collars turned up, both taller than Lou. One glanced down the alley, spotting Lou’s natty attire then knitted his brow in recognition. Cop! The lookout had already opened the door and looked inside, nodded, and was ready to let the two guys go in, when Constantino put his head down and charged the three of them like a lineman breaking up a kickoff wedge. Arms outstretched, he grabbed the lookout with one hand, and with his head between the bodies of the other two, took them all down to the pavement, knocking his hat off onto the dirty cement. Jumping up, he spun around and saw a pair of hands pulling the door closed from the inside. Charging the door and yanking it wide open, Lou pulled the hands loose from it. He turned to see the bared teeth of the doorman, his face flushed with anger and growling, extended hands reaching for him.
Lou knocked his attacker’s right arm to the side with his left and threw the hardest punch he could with his right, connecting solidly with the man’s big teeth. Stunning him, Lou grabbed the doorman’s right shoulder with his left hand, pulling the man behind him onto the three guys in the alley, who were trying to get him from behind as he jumped inside. He saw the cellar stairway to his left, and there was heat, cigarette smoke, and noise coming at him from down there. Right in front of him was the barstool where the doorman with the big teeth had sat, up against a plaster wall with the wood lath exposed in spots and stacks of beer cases filled with empty bottles. To his right he looked into the bar, and despite the dimmed lights, he could see a lot of people, standing and sitting at the bar and at tables. Most of them were turned to him with What the hell is this? looks on their faces.
Ah shit, I better announce myself, before this gets real ugly, he thought, But I don’t know if we’re gonna make this work myself, Paddy Boy, and just where the hell are you, anyway? He heard glass shattering from the front.
Brogan moved easily through the show crowd, turning his shoulder and avoiding eye contact, and got right in front of the bar: a brick-faced front painted red, two big picture windows with beer signs, specials written on cardboard, and a neon one advertising cocktails in red and a stemmed glass in white. There was a stainless steel door with glass, and the foyer floor was set with tiny, black and white, octagonal tiles spelling out the address. Keeping his head down, Brogan pushed through the door and stood right in front of it inside, blocking the way out. He looked up, and slowly let out a breath as he sized up the place. Lights dimmed, red neon light framed the bar’s mirror on his left. Crowded, must be twenty, maybe thirty people, he thought. There were wooden tables on his right, people two deep at the bar in some places.
Two guys he spotted, right off, at the bar. They were two of the four guys who had knifed the Indian. One was talking to the bartender, and the other faced him, squinting at him in vague recollection through the cigarette smoke that came from the long Pall Mall that dangled from his mouth. He nudged the other guy. The other guy turned and the bartender looked up at Pat, as well.
This ain’t good, Brogan thought, reaching with his left hand for his badge, and feeling for his sap in the right overcoat pocket.
Just then the uproar caused by Constantino’s entrance started at the rear, and Brogan could dimly see several bodies in violent motion a good thirty feet away from him there.
Oh shit, he’s in trouble, he thought, I gotta get to him. To hell with that not needing help crap, he thought.
The guys at the bar slid off their stools with their hands reaching into their pockets. Gotta get a patrolman’s attention the old fashioned way. He looked to his right and saw a petite woman with silver-blonde hair piled up high, a strand of fake pearls hanging down on an oversized bosom, and glitter on her eyelids. She was sitting on a barstool with her legs crossed, smoking a cigarette in a holder. Stripper. There were three guys standing around her with their hands in their pockets, jolted from their reverie by the sudden violence. There was a midget with a big smile sitting on a stool next to the girl. Dressed in a white Union suit, he was smoking a cigar and enjoying a martini.
No empty chairs, gotta go with the dwarf ’s, Pat thought. He took his hands clear of his overcoat pockets and grabbed the little man’s stool. The midget’s eyes went wide, and he grabbed onto the seat with a death grip as Pat pitched him and the stool through the front window, onto the street. Pat then turned to the stunned crowd, pulled out his sap, and slugged the guy with the Pall Mall, as the thug pulled out a switchblade. Swinging back, he caught the other thug across the face and drove him back, raising an arm to shield his face.
XYZ
Patrolman Joe McAvoy rubbed his eyes as he stood outside the back of the Palace Theater on Pearl and adjusted his hat securely forward on his head, having finished a nap in the back row of the theater. He was there ostensibly checking for overcrowding, pickpockets, and perverts, as he would report, if anyone asked. The manager was swell with this deal, and if there was any trouble in the theater, he’d wake Big Joe. Joe looked at his watch and hoped the rest of the shift would go quietly. He planned to take the wife out on the town to Ma Broderick’s Club Deluxe on Seneca after he got off. Then, he heard a crash and saw a kid in his pajamas rolling on the street and moaning.
The crowd on the street stopped in their tracks. What the…, McAvoy thought. He pulled out his nightstick and ran to the front of the bar, where he spotted Scotty, the midget acrobat from the Palace, on the ground, the front window of the Talon Inn smashed out, and all hell breaking loose inside. He ran in and recognized Brogan, in civilian clothes, ready to swing his sap at two guys with knives, the toughs having rallied from the sap’s first blows. Before they could react to their new opponent, McAvoy grabbed his stick top and bottom and rammed it into Knife One’s stomach, and when he bent over from that blow, McAvoy slammed it over his head, swinging the billy club with both hands as hard as he could. When Knife Two hesitated, Brogan stepped in with the sap, and this time belted his target across the ear, sending him to the floor.
McAvoy swung his stick back and jabbed a man in the chest who was headed for the door and shouted, “Nobody move, or by God, I’ll give the lot of you an all mighty crack!”
Brogan rushed to the rear, scattering tables, bottles, and glasses to the sound of women’s shrieks, and spotted two guys holding Lou’s arms from behind.
Lou furiously kicked his powerful legs at a third guy coming at him from the front, and had another sprawled before him. “Goddamitt! I’m the police! You fuck up my clothes and I’ll kill you bastards, every one of you!”
Brogan grabbed
