The following is a continuation of the April 20th, 1949 entry into the Rocky Stone notebooks:
Marjorie's mother hung a photograph of her daughter next to the door. It was a gorgeous piece of work, taken professionally in a studio and shot through softening material to add to her beauty. She couldn't have been more than sixteen at the time, her expression radiant and her hair as yet unbleached, a young innocent any foolish boy would gladly ask out on a date to the movies. Her mother kept the picture there strategically, so that when the day came when her daughter would return, she would recognize her. The day never came, and now, two others stood at the door.
When I let them in, Nine Knuckles pushed Gloria through silently, like it was an old Spanish custom to lead someone into a stranger's mother's house at gunpoint. He grinned menacingly at me, knowing he had the upper hand, and Gloria snorted at Marjorie with contempt the moment their eyes met. This was going to be a fun double-date.
“Hand her over,” said Nine Knuckles as he shoved Gloria with the business end of his piece, “or your girl-friend gets it.”
“Not interested,” I said. “Shoot her if you like, but please, do it outside. After all, this is not your house.”
Gloria's eyes burned at me, but it was just an act. They were working together and it didn't take a trained gumheel to figure that out. It amused Nine Knuckles and he kept the farce going, just to see what I would say next. “So she means nothing to you?”
“Less than nothing. Go on and get rid of her and we can get down to brass tacks.”
She couldn't take it and rushed at me. “Why, you...!”
I grinned. “You honestly thought that would work?”
“Her idea,” said Nine Knuckles. “I think she's holding a torch for you, old son.”
Gloria slumped into the nearest chair like a child caught with her hand in the icebox. The gun that was pressed to her back came facing my way but it wasn't about to get used. His boss wanted my hide every bit as much as he wanted Marjorie's and the last thing Nine Knuckles wanted to do was deliver a damaged parcel. I was safe as long as I didn't try to make a break for it.
“Mr. Blank misses you both terribly,” he said, pointing his gun and his pinky at both of us.
“How did you find us?”
“The trail of blood ended here,” said Gloria. She glared at Marjorie again but she would get no response. Marjorie just sat there, resigned to the fact that one side or the other would end up with her.
Nine Knuckles stepped over to Marjorie and put the gun to her head. “First, the money. Then, we go for a little ride.”
Marjorie sniffed. She reached into a pocket near her waist, pulled out a dime, and dropped it on the coffee table.
Gloria stared at it, forlorn. “You spent it?”
“My mother had no stone for her grave,” she replied. “The money was for her. Maybe I thought it would make up for all the pain I caused her.”
Nine Knuckles just reared back and laughed and I mean loud. Maybe he was thinking about how Max would react to the news and maybe he was thinking about how ridiculous it was that Max footed the bill for some old lady's grave marker, but it tickled him and he couldn't stop laughing.
A shadow passed by a window at the back of the room and I knew it didn't come from an innocent passer-by. I was close enough to Marjorie to protect her when the moment came and a second was all I had to prepare. All at once the window smashed in and I pushed Marjorie to the floor. The room was swallowed up in gunfire and all I could see were the fiery plumes blasting out the end of a pistol. Even Marjorie's screams were covered up by the noise. We felt a weight hit the floor in front of us, like a bag of cement dropped in, and then all of the fireworks stopped.
A man was dead. He had been knocked backwards from the force of the shot and landed against the wall, his head resting against a sideboard. He was the same man who tended bar at the Gehenna Tavern, the same man in the blurry photograph underneath all the headlines: the former police chief Mike Godatz. He wasn't dead yet but he might as well have been. The hole in his belly was plain to see and the pain alone would have killed most men. He just sat there with his face wracked with pain, desperately trying to hold on for one last moment on Earth.
Before the end came, Godatz gave a little gallows laugh in between his groans. He looked at me and said, “You think I got a chance to make it, pal?”
Gloria Hallward stepped before him, the gun in her hand still smoking at her side. He looked confused by the intrusion. “Howdy, Mike,” she said. “This is for Delores.”
One last shot came out of her gun, and it landed right above his nose with pinpoint precision.
What will become of Rocky now? Tune in next week to The Adventures of Rocky Stone!
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