cry and ran out, weeping. The floor shook. Rico pattered after her, his face bewildered. He was wringing his hands.
Scollay had grown so red his cheeks were actually purple. I half-expected—maybe more than half-expected-his brains to just blow out his ears. I saw that same look of mad agony I had seen in the dark outside Englander’s. Maybe he was just a cheap hood, but I felt sorry for him. You would have, too.
When he spoke his voice was very quiet—almost mild.
“Is there more?”
The little Greek man quailed. His voice was splintery with anguish. “Please doan kill me, Mr. Scollay! My wife—the Greek, he got my wife! I doan want to say these thing! He got my wife, my woman—”
“I ain’t going to hurt you,” Scollay said, quieter still. “Just tell me the rest.”
“He say the whole town laughing at you.”
We had stopped playing and there was dead silence for a second. Then Scollay turned his eyes to the ceiling. Both of his hands were shaking and held out clenched in front of him. He was holding them in fists so tight that it seemed I could see his hamstrings standing out right through his shirt.
“ALL RIGHT!” he screamed. “ALL RIGHT!”
He broke for the door. Two of his men tried to stop him, tried to tell him it was suicide, just what the Greek wanted, but Scollay was like a crazy man. He knocked them down and rushed out into the black summer night.
In the dead quiet that followed, all I could hear was the messenger’s tortured breathing and somewhere out back, the soft sobbing of the bride.
Just about then the young kid who had braced us when we came in uttered a curse and made for the door. He was the only one.
Before he could even get under the big paper shamrock hung in the foyer, automobile tires screeched on the pavement and engines revved up—a lot of engines. It sounded like Memorial Day at the Brickyard out there.
“Oh dear-to-Jaysus!” the kid screamed from the doorway. “It’s a fucking caravan! Get down, boss! Get down! Get down—”
The night exploded with gunfire. It was like World War I out there for maybe a minute, maybe two. Bullets stitched across the open door of the hall, and one of the hanging light-globes overhead exploded. Outside the night was bright with Winchester fireworks. Then the cars howled away. One of the molls was brushing broken glass out of her bobbed hair.
Now that the danger was over, the rest of the goons rushed out. The door to the kitchen banged open and Maureen ran through again. Everything she had was jiggling. Her face was more puffy than ever. Rico came in her wake like a bewildered valet. They went out the door.
Miss Gibson appeared in the empty hall, her eyes wide and shocked. The little man who had started all the trouble with his singing telegram had powdered.
“It was shooting,” Miss Gibson murmured. “What happened?”
“I think the Greek just cooled the paymaster,” Biff said.
She looked at me, bewildered, but before I could translate Billy-Boy said in his soft, polite voice: “He means that Mr. Scollay just got rubbed out, Miz Gibson.”
Miss Gibson stared at him, her eyes getting wider and wider, and then she fainted dead away. I felt a little like fainting myself.
Just then, from outside, came the most anguished scream I have ever heard, then or since. That unholy caterwauling just went on and on. You didn’t have to peek out the door to know who was tearing her heart out in the street, keening over her dead brother even while the cops and newshawks were on their way.
“Let’s blow,” I muttered. “Quick.”
We had it packed in before five minutes had passed. Some of the goons came back inside, but they were too drunk and too scared to notice the likes of us.
We went out the back, each of us carrying part of Biffs drum-kit. Quite a parade we must have made, walking up the street, for anyone who saw us. I led the way with my horn case tucked under my arm and a cymbal in each hand. The boys stood on the comer at the end of the block while I went back for the truck. The cops hadn’t shown yet. The big girl was still crouched over the body of her brother in the middle of the street, wailing like a banshee while her tiny groom ran around her like a moon orbiting a big planet.