The Hess Cross (25 page)

She looked at him sharply. "That isn't what I meant. I'm nervous. I've just made a brazen, forward fool of myself, and you're not helping." She kissed his neck and ran her hand along the flat of his stomach.

"I'm nervous, too, Heather. More than you know. You just go on into your room."

She stepped back quickly, confused by his refusal to take charge of their awkward moment. Her wide eyes reflected her bewilderment, but before she could say more, Crown smiled as best he could and with his free hand turned her shoulders and prodded her into the hotel room. He positioned the gun alongside her head and bent into a crouch as she walked ahead of him. A stupid move. She was probably nothing more than bait. The murderers would shoot through her into him. But maybe her going first would
make them pause for two seconds. That's all Crown wanted, two seconds.

They entered the dark room. Crown flicked the light switch and tensed. A bed, a chair, a nightstand and lamp, and her open suitcase on the floor. Nothing more. Crown thrust the revolver under his coat and crossed quickly to the bathroom. Nothing. He jerked open the closet door. A few hanging dresses, and nothing else. He exhaled for the first time since the elevator, and felt the adrenaline pump quickly fade.

Heather stood near the bed with her mouth open slightly. Crown felt brainless.

"Are you always this jittery when entering a lady's room?" she asked, her voice devoid of the mocking tone it deserved. "I thought I was the jumpy one."

"I'm sorry, Heather. I do that all the time. I guess I've been in the business too long." He didn't think she had seen the gun, now back in his waistband.

She looked at him with her luminous green eyes, and the full meaning of the moment revealed itself to Crown. There was no danger tonight. She hadn't been setting him up for his death, at least this time. He was alone with her in her room because she wanted him like he wanted her. Now was the time to reach for her and hold her, but he was giddy and unsure of himself.

"John," she said with a seductive half-smile, "you're as clumsy as I am."

He could not respond, so he nervously cracked his elbow several times. His throat was dry and tight, and he could feel his temples pounding. He had the sensation of being outside his body watching this romantic melodrama. He was both a player and a spectator.

She crossed the room with the walk of a woman completely in control of her sensuality. Her arms circled his waist inside his coat and lifted the shirttail. Her arm brushed the
Smith and Wesson but ignored it as she rubbed the skin of his back.

Crown felt like he was leaning over the observatory railing of a tall building, deathly afraid of the height, yet pulled by the lure of a beautiful, descending, silent death. Heather was leading him to his death, yet he was powerless to resist, powerless to protest.

They kissed fiercely and he pulled her tightly against him and heard her sharp inhalation. Her hands moved to his shirt buttons, and she said, "You know, there's historical precedent for this."

"Judas," Crown breathed.

"Sure," she whispered as she pulled at the belt. "All you Yankees have come to England to entertain defenseless British women whose boyfriends are away at war. So I've come to America to reciprocate. Fair's fair."

He didn't laugh. No more kidding. No danger. Only her. There was a rush of confused hands and burning desire. No time for exploration or communication. They grasped each other convulsively and made love violently and quickly, taking more than they gave. And after they shuddered to completion, they talked about a future together, and Crown knew there could be no future for them.

The second time was gentle and sweet, looking into the other's eyes all the while, communing with their bodies, reveling in their discoveries, loving each other. Crown's last thought before he drifted into sleep was whether she had been paid to do this, too.

XIII

P
ADDY
F
LANNERY WAS HUNG OVER
before he was awake. An angry throb pulsed his temples and reached through layers of sleep to drag the Irishman to consciousness. He resisted, trying to sink back to anesthetized slumber. Through the film of half-sleep, Flannery knew this was not his current nemesis, the nitroglycerin headache. This was an old archenemy, the rye-whiskey hangover. It thundered Flannery into piercing wakefulness.

He creaked his eyes open. Even this simple movement echoed with pain. He stared at his room's ceiling and blinked several times to draw his eyes together. His nose was plugged. His mouth was plaster-dry. He dry-swallowed and worked his mouth in a futile attempt to generate saliva. His tongue was thick and uncooperative. Undulating pain worked in his eyeballs and ears and brain. There was no difference, he hazily decided, between a cheap-whiskey hangover and this expensive-whiskey hangover.

Not one of Flannery's limbs had moved since he had
wrestled his shirt off, stumbled out of his shoes, and drunkenly fallen into his bed a few hours before. As he lay staring at the ceiling, he tried to recall where he had drunk his whiskey. Remembering was too painful, so he gave it up. He slowly flexed his left hand and moved it up the side of his pants to feel for his wallet. The familiar lump was there. He had not been rolled. Thank God. All his mailbox money was in his wallet.

Flannery rested his hand on his forehead, wondering whether he was sufficiently thirsty to brave the misery of moving to the sink for water. The foul yellow-brown taste in his mouth had about decided the issue when Flannery heard a sharp metal click from the other side of his room. His eyes twitched wide. It was not his radiator, which had a bass bang when filling with steam. Nor was it the draperies' pull string as it tapped against the window, bounced by the ever-present draft. This was a distinctly foreign sound. Flannery's face tightened with fright. Oblivious of the headache, he swiveled his head to the sound.

Willi Lange sat on the bedside chair with his submachine gun resting on his lap pointed at the Irishman's head. The small gunman was relaxed, and his face was devoid of expression, but his brown eyes surveyed Flannery with professional precision, searching for dangerous movement.

"Jesus," Flannery croaked with terror, "don't shoot."

He slowly rose to a sitting position on his bed, his eyes never leaving the little man's weapon. Lange did not move.

"Get up."

Flannery twisted to the terse command from the foot of his bed. Erich von Stihl stood with his hands crossed, dressed in his hobo's guise. Flannery saw the corded muscles of von Stihl's neck and his tight, curly hair and immediately knew he was not a hobo. Next to von Stihl loomed Hans Graf, a huge, dangerous-looking man a head taller than the speaker.

"Don't shoot," Flannery repeated, his voice quivering.

No one moved in the room. Seconds passed, and he was still alive. Encouraged that they weren't going to kill him outright, he added, "What do you want?"

"We want you to get up and get ready to leave. Now." Von Stihl's voice was level and in complete command.

"You guys can't come in here and boss me around, for Christ sake. I got—"

Hans Graf's arm pumped and thrust his SS dagger into the arch of Paddy Flannery's right foot. With a crunching tear, the blade sank to the hilt, and the bloody tip instantaneously popped through the top of the foot in full view of the incredulous Irishman.

In the second before his brain registered the pain, Paddy Flannery opened his mouth to scream. Graf leaned forward and stuck the stubby end of a Schmeisser almost inside the Irishman's mouth. The big hobo slowly shook his head, and Flannery knew a scream would be the end.

Graf whispered in a voice so menacing Flannery almost forgot the agony in his foot, "Next time I'll stick your throat."

Graf yanked the blade out, and Flannery spasmed with hot pain. Tears of anguish flowed down the Irishman's face as he held his violated foot. It bled over his hands onto the bed sheets. He curled his tongue to the back of his mouth to squelch a sob.

"Once again, get up and get ready to go," said von Stihl. "You have time to wrap your foot if you hurry."

Breathing laboriously through teeth clenched with pain, Flannery stripped the top sheet from the bed. Blood soaked through the sheet as he bunched it around the injury. With one hand on the sheet to keep it on the wound, he hopped painfully to the bathroom. Willi Lange followed and stood near the bathroom door as Flannery tore the sheet into fragments and used them as bandages. With the
mustachioed hobo peering in at him, the Irishman knotted the strips and gingerly placed his injured foot on the bathroom tile. He winced as his foot squished and shot pain up his leg. He gripped the sink to straighten himself for a second step. His entire leg from the knee down seemed on fire as he stepped through the bathroom door. With each step, Graf's blade seemed to pierce Flannery's arch again. The gangster collapsed in the chair vacated by Lange. The first white tinges of shock flushed through Flannery's head. He breathed hard to shake it off. Failure to respond for any reason could be fatal.

"Nice work with the dynamite schedule, Flannery," said von Stihl as he sat on the mussed bed, avoiding the pool of blood. He took the black paper from his shirt pocket and tore a small end of it. He delicately peeled the paper, which Flannery saw was actually two gauze-thin pieces lightly glued together. When the sheets were separated, von Stihl discarded the carbon and with satisfaction held the white sheet in the window's early-morning light. Neatly printed on the sheet was a copy of the dynamite-delivery schedule Nancy Harter had typed the day before.

"Do you know where Addison Avenue is, Flannery? Addison Avenue at the intersection of Ridgeland?"

The Irishman nodded mutely.

"How long will it take us to get there in a car?"

Flannery flinched with sudden knowledge. He had suspected his theft of the dynamite route was for a hijacking. Now he was certain that these men, these three men dressed as hobos but who talked and acted like no rail travelers Flannery had ever come across, were the hijackers. The pleasant and distant relationship with the mailbox had ended.

"How long, Flannery?"

"Uh, ten, fifteen minutes. No more."

"Do you have a car?"

"No."

"Can you steal another one for us?"

Still clutching his injured foot, Flannery replied, "Sure, easy." Maybe that's all they want today, a car. Flannery's hopes brightened at the thought of another quick two hundred dollars.

"Put your clothes on and let's go."

Flannery found that if he walked on his tiptoes, the gash through his foot hurt less. He struggled into a white shirt, which smelled of smoke and whiskey from the night before. He grabbed two socks from under the chair and shook dust from them. He carefully pulled one over the bandage. As he cautiously tried on his shoe over the wrap, he asked, "You guys interested in a particular make of car?"

"No," von Stihl answered, "just one that'll get us to the intersection."

"You know," Flannery ventured as he reached for the coat he had dropped on the floor the night before, "I ain't honkin' my own horn or nothing, but I'm a pretty fair car booster."

"So we understand," von Stihl said with a slight smile.

A compliment from one who has ultimate control over another's life is intoxicating with its implied promise of lifesaving indispensability. Flannery swelled with hope and continued, "Well, if you guys need more cars or know any people that do, I'm your man."

"We'll see," said von Stihl easily, "but right now we've more important work to do. You're an old gangland hand, aren't you?"

"I . . . I don't know what you mean."

Of course he was, but it was not a topic of open conversation with outsiders. This was his standard answer to police questions.

Von Stihl asked again, "What I mean is, Flannery, is that you've had a little experience as a gangster, haven't you?"

Who are these guys? Flannery asked himself. They can't be cops. Not even Chicago cops lance a foot with a knife. And they can't be gangsters from any of the Chicago gangs. High-living gangsters would rather be shot than wear clothes as dilapidated as those worn by the three men. Years before, Flannery had sworn on penalty of his life never to talk with outsiders about his underworld activities. If he talked, he could die. If he did not, what would these men do? Hans Graf purposely raised his knife into view and settled the question for Flannery.

"Sure, you might say that. I do a few jobs here and there."

"During Prohibition?" von Stihl asked quietly.

"Yeah, I did some work then. Why?"

"Well, then, you must be an experienced hand hijacking liquor trucks."

How was he prejudicing himself? He was being trapped, and he couldn't see the snare.

"Uh, yeah, maybe. Why?"

"We're looking for a man with a little experience in this sort of thing."

"To help you get that dynamite shipment?"

Von Stihl nodded.

"You know"—Flannery began his protest by raising his hands palms up in supplication—"there's a big diff between knockin' off another gang's bootleg and hittin' a government dynamite truck. Jesus, I wouldn't know where to begin."

"We do. All you need to do is what we tell you. Your part of the script is already written."

Flannery shook his head fiercely. "You may have scoped me out wrong. I talk big, you know, but I'm really a small-timer. Nickel-and-dime stuff."

Von Stihl took an envelope from his back pocket and lobbed it across the room. The Irishman caught it, instantly knowing it was cash.

"Two thousand dollars for an hour of your time. Plus my
guarantee the plan is foolproof. There's no way you can be caught."

Flannery lifted the envelope's flap and flipped through the twenty-dollar bills. It was more money than he had ever seen before.

"And if you play along this time," von Stihl promised, "we'll use you in the future whenever we need a car. At two or three hundred dollars a car, you're set up for life. You can quit your job at the powder company tomorrow and never lift another box or drive another truck as long as you live."