Other shadows were becoming men now, taking the cue from the others. Someone grabbed Merritt’s feet, someone else his arms; and there was a shuffling of running feet back through the dark little office, more orders, more swearing.
You keep people running so they don’t have time to think. No time to get mad, thought Broghman. Keep them excited, keep their eyes fixed on something else, then you fool them.
It didn’t take more than a minute for the body to vanish through the back door into the alley. A car roared outside. A small crowd gathered in the front door of the shop.
“Clear them away!” Broghman flipped his gun through the air. “Catch, Sammy,” he told one of them. Sammy scuttled through the back office with the gun. To the others Broghman gave a brief going over. “Any of you want to pull out, pull now. Any of you don’t like me, say so. I’m in.”
Kelly emerged from back, wheezing, mopping sweat off his huge pink face. “Everything’s okay, Ricky.” He caught himself. “I mean—” He groped for a name.
Broghman gave him one. “If it makes you feel better—call me Ricky, too.”
Kelly felt better. He grinned. “Okay—Ricky. We always did get along, didn’t we?” He stopped and thought about that. “Didn’t we—almost—I guess—” He stood there.
There’d be a cop in a moment. Broghman shook his head, and he and Julie and Kelly went into the back office with two others. Before closing the door, he poked a finger at the young guy named Knight. “For the cops it was all a mistake. Nothing happened. You don’t know anything.”
He slammed the door hard. His hands began to shake so he hid them in his pockets.
Julie was just watching him, all this while, holding onto her purse, examining his face. “It happened,” she said. “It happened when you shot Merritt.”
“What?” he asked.
She didn’t have to answer. A cracked mirror hanging on the dirty wall told him. He saw his eyes there, and shivered.
Out of the past he heard Julie’s voice saying, “You’re no killer. It’s not in your face. Your eyes are open too wide for killing.”
In the mirror, now, they were narrowed to hard slits.
Maybe there was more than one way to be like Ricky Wolfe. Maybe you didn’t have to look like him. But you could act like him. The guts inside made the difference. And—the eyes.
He broke away from looking at himself. “Let’s move. Brent-wood. That’s where my house is, the one with the swimming pool, huh, Julie?”
“Sure,” she said, softly. “Sure it is.”
“Come on, then. You too, Kelly. And you boys. Lots of work for us.”
“Sure, Boss.”
They meant a lot, those two words: “Sure, Boss.”
They all went out together.
CHAPTER THREE
Guns Are Old-Fashioned
It was a big impressive house in Brentwood; you could fall in its swimming pool if you didn’t watch out; the bathrooms had glass doors. It glittered.
Walking around the huge garden surrounding the place, Broghman figured ho
w it had all worked, how Merritt had been an unpopular sort of guy, how Ricky’s spot had been vacant, discounting Merritt, for weeks now following Ricky’s death. Things hadn’t jelled yet.
So a lot of guys had wanted Ricky back. When people want things bad enough, they get them. Even if they have to make believe. So Broghman filled the part. He was near enough to the original, so they made him into a kind of duplicate of the old boss. Something strictly from a psychological text. Something for mind doctors to kick around. Mob instinct, leader instinct, desire to put upon a pedestal.…What the hell. He was IN, now. That counted. No matter how a psychiatrist explained it—the wishful thinking, the acceptance of a new shape from the old mold, he was in!
But, seeing the house and the garden, now after all the excitement died down, he realized that it meant nothing to him. Not a thing. What in hell did he want then? What? Even, there was something about Julie.…
There had to be a party.
So Los Angeles could meet a guy named Broghman.