Lay Her Among The Lilies

ears, making a puddle on the floor. The kid with her turned the colour of a fish’s belly and

began to retch.

“Quiet, everybody!” the guy with the Thompson said, raising his voice.

I could see by the look of these Wops that if anyone made a move they would start

shooting. They were ruthless, murderous and trigger-happy. All they wanted was an excuse.

There was nothing I could do about it. Even if I had a gun I wouldn’t have started anything. A

gun against two Thompsons is as useless as a toothpick against a foil, and I wouldn’t have

been the only one to have got shot up.

The two Wops arrived at my table.

I sat like a stone man, my hands on the table, looking up at them. I could hear Stevens

breathing painfully at my side: the breath snored through his nostrils as if he were going to

have a stroke.

The Wop with the dirty cuffs grinned evilly at me.

“Make a move, you son-of-a-bitch, and I’ll drop your guts on the floor,” he said.

Both of them were careful to keep out of the line of fire of the Thompsons.

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The Wop reached out and grabbed Stevens by his arm.

“Come on, you. You’re going for a little ride.”

“Leave him alone,” I said through tight lips.

The Wop smacked me across the face with the gun barrel. Not too hard, but hard enough to

hurt.

“Shut your yap!” he said.

The other Wop had rammed his gun into Stevens’ side and was dragging him out of his

chair.

“Don’t touch me,” Stevens gasped, and feebly tried to break the Wop’s hold. Snarling; the

Wop clubbed him with his fist, caught him by his collar and hauled him away from the table.

My pal with the dirty cuffs stepped away from me and the guy with the Thompson came a

little closer, the gun sight centred on my chest. I sat still, holding the side of my face, feeling

blood, hot and sticky, against my fingers.

Stevens fell down.

“Come on; hurry,” the Wop with the dirty cuffs said furiously. “Get this dumb old punk out

of here.” He bent and grabbed hold of one of Stevens’ ankles. The other Wop caught hold of

the other ankle, and they ran across the room dragging Stevens along on his back with them,

upsetting tables and chairs in their progress to the door.

They kicked open the double doors, dragged the old man across the sidewalk to a waiting

car. Two other Wops were standing outside with machine-guns, threatening a gaping crowd

lined up on either side of the cafe entrance.

It was the coolest, nerviest, most cold-blooded thing I have ever seen.

The two Wops with the Thompsons backed out of the cafe and scrambled into the car. One

of the Wops in the street swung round and started firing through the plate-glass window at

me. I was expecting that, and even as he swung round I threw myself out of my chair and lay

flat under the table, squeezing myself into the floor. Slugs chewed up the wall just above me

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and brought plaster down on my head and neck. One slug took the heel of my shoe off. Then

the firing stopped and I peered around the table in time to see the Wop spring on to the

running-board of the car as it shot away from the kerb and went tearing down the street.

I scrambled to my feet and made a dive for the telephone.

IV

The voice sounded like an echo in a tunnel. It crept into the corners of my room: the

subdued whisper of a turned-down radio. For the past half-hour I had been waiting for that

voice. The jig-saw puzzle spread out on the table before me interested me as much as the

dead mouse I had found in the trap this morning: probably a little less. The shaded reading-lamp made a pool of lonely light on the carpet. A bottle and glass stood on the floor within

easy reach. Already I had had a drink or perhaps even two or three. After an evening like this

a drink one way or other doesn’t make a great deal of difference.

I was still a little jumpy. No one likes to have a whole magazine of a sub-machine-gun fired

at him, and I was no exception. The way those two Wops had dragged that old man out of the

cafe haunted me. I felt I should have done something about it. After all, it was my fault he

was there.

“At nine o’clock this evening,” the announcer said, breaking into my thoughts, “six men,

believed to be Italians, armed with machine-guns and automatics, entered the Blue Bird Cafe

at the corner of Jefferson and Felman. While two of the gunmen guarded the entrance, and

two more terrorized the people in the cafe, the remaining two seized John Stevens and

dragged him from the cafe to a waiting car.

“Stevens, who will be remembered by the city’s socialities as butler to Mr. Gregory

Wainwright, the steel millionaire, was later found dead by the side of the Los Angeles and

San Francisco Highway. It is believed he died of a stroke, brought on by the rough handling

he received from the kidnappers, and when he was found to be dead, the kidnappers brutally

threw his body from the speeding car.”

The announcer’s voice was as unemotional and as cold as if he were reading the fat stock

prices. I should have liked to have been behind him with a machine-gun and livened him up