sipped his rye.
“Yeah,” he said, “that’s right. But his mobsters have got to operate in the open. We’ll shoot ’em up. We crack down on every guy who pays Shapirro protection money. And if Shapirro doesn’t call it off then, we’ll take the boys up to Montauk Point and start a war. We’ll blast him out with tommy-guns and pineapples!”
He turned to Carla, and said:
“This Waldemar guy, describe him for me.”
Carla described the debonair man with the blue eyes and gold-tipped cane in detail. King shook his head.
“I’ve never heard of a guy like that,” he said. “Have you, Jerry?”
“Naw,” said Jerry. “Sounds like one of Shapirro’s fancy boys to me.”
“You heard of him, Ham?” King asked.
Ham shook his head; his dull eyes registered nothing. Ham wasn’t a guy to waste words when a shake of the head would do.
“I guess he must come from outa town,” King said thoughtfully. “When I’ve finished with him, he’ll wished he’d stayed there!”
No one mentioned Nick. He didn’t count any more. King looked at Jerry and Ham; he said:
“You two beat it. Round up the boys—tomorrow, we start gunning for Shapirro’s mob.”
Jerry lounged across the room and went out. Ham lumbered after him. When the door had closed behind them, King looked at Carla.
“Jeez,” he said, “but you’re lovely.”
He hauled her closer and started to kiss her. King was big and strong and she liked the touch of his rough hands on her smooth skin, liked the savageness of his kisses. She clung to him, kissing him back.
* * * * * * *
The morning was bright and sunny. Carla drove north, out of New York City, taking the main highway and passing everything on the road. She wasn’t in a hurry—she just liked to drive that way. Anything for a thrill. Danger was something she craved.
The sun was bright on the trees lining the road, and on the distant hills, and there was a crispness in the air. But Carla didn’t notice. She had other things on her mind. Like the coming battle between King Logan and Shapirro. And thinking about that brought back the past.
It was nine months since she’d met King and decided he could give her what she craved out of life. Excitement. Carla had always craved excitement—it was in her blood. Blood that went back to the pioneers of the Old West, men who had fought halfway across a continent to make new homes for their families. Carla had been born in the Deep South—her mother had died bringing her into the world—and she’d lived there with her father until she was ten. Then Matthew Bowman had moved north to New York.
Old Matthew Bowman was rich by then; his lands brought him millions from white cotton. He bought a large house on Mount Vernon with the intention of giving his daughter, Carla, the finest education money could buy. He wanted her to mix with high society, to learn to conduct herself like a lady of high birth.
But Carla had wild blood in her. At seventeen, she rebelled, walked out of finishing school, and got mixed up with a fast-living set of city parasites. She gambled away a small fortune, drank more than she could hold. She was in and out of police courts on charges of dangerous driving, assaulting policemen, and generally misbehaving to the public nuisance.
She lived in nightclubs and gambling dens until her father took to his bed with heart disease. The doctor said it had been brought on by worrying over Carla. That stopped her cold. Her father was the only person Carla had any feeling for—she reformed, for a time. Then broke out again.
Matthew Bowman, confined to his bed, knew nothing of his daughter’s current activities. If he had, he’d have died of shock. Carla was determined he should never learn of her association with King Logan.
She had been just nineteen when she met King. Tired of society life, Carla had gone slumming in the Battery, looking for life in the raw. She’d been attracted to King, thrilled when she learned he was a gangster with several killings behind him. This, she thought, was the real thing. Life in all its rawness, exciting, dangerous.
She had become King’s current flame and joined the gang, collecting protection money, learning to use a gun, to hate the law, to live adventurously. King thrilled her, too. She wasn’t in love with him—she’d never loved any man—but she liked it when he took her in his arms. It roused her blood, made her conscious of her beauty, her hold over him. King Logan was tough, a giant of a man, well-muscled, and it gave Clara a sense of power to know that she could control him whenever she wanted.
The car moved swiftly along the broad avenue, carrying her towards Mount Vernon and her father’s home. She visited him once a week, telling lies to account for her absence. Old Matthew Bowman would never learn from her how his daughter was living.
She drove a high-powered, low-slung Chevy, not the armoured Lincoln King kept for the gang’s use. It climbed the hill towards the rambling old house where her father lay dying. The doctor said he would last a good many years yet—if he didn’t have any sudden shocks.
She stopped the Chevy outside the steps leading up to the house, jumped out, and went inside. She was wearing a plain skirt of dark brown that hung below her knees, a white silk blouse that showed off her full figure, and a tweed jacket.
She snapped a greeting to the butler and went upstairs. Old Matthew Bowman was sitting up in bed, his face a wrinkled parchment the colour of faded straw. His eyes were faded too, and grey wisps of hair sprouted from his nearly bald head. His forehead was high and broad, all there was left to denote the proud manner in which he had once carried his lean frame. His gnarled hands shook as he held his daughter.
“Hi, Pop,” Clara said brightly, kissing him with genuine affection. “How’re you feeling today?”
“I’d feel a lot better if you were living here, where I can keep an eye on you,” Matthew Bowman grumbled.
“You don’t have to worry about me, Pop,” Carla said quickly. “I haven’t made newspaper headlines since I turned over a new leaf.”
“I guess that’s right,” her father sighed. “A lively young girl like you doesn’t want to be tied down. I don’t mind you gadding about—so long as you keep out of trouble.”
Carla fussed around, making him comfortable. She had lunch in his room and talked about the good time she was having with a purely fictitious society family. It was a good story and brought a twinkle to Old Matthew’s dim eyes.
Around four o’clock, Carla kissed him goodbye.
“Promised to meet someone this evening,” she said. “See you next week, Pop.”
She went downstairs, out to the Chev, and drove back to Brooklyn and King Logan. If King was gunning for Shapirro’s mob, she didn’t want to miss any of the fun. And her father need never know.…
After Carla had left him, Matthew Bowman sat up. His gnarled hand pressed a bell-push and a man came into the room. The man wasn’t handsome and his clothes were greasy. He licked his lips all the time. His face was shiny,
