Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 51, No. 2, June 28, 1930

It called for a flawless technique, the handling of that day’s wild whoopee party in Sam Coats’s garage, for it was a party epic in its potentialities. The Scotch, as plentiful as powerful, early proved a distillation not only of bagpipe music, but of stout Highland combativeness. Twice the thick-shouldered Mr. Walsh had to separate two of his partners of the touring car crew, and once Walsh himself was at the verge of a clash with Coats.

Ardently wishing they’d slaughter one another, but uncertain whether they would, Dorcas O’Donnell vindicated herself as an accomplished mistress of ceremonies by directing the removal of the radio from the office to the garage floor.

“I love to dance,” she shrilled, “when I don’t have to. And what a stag line!”

Coats, maudlin by then, claimed her first.

“When th’ rest a’ you dance,” he hiccoughed, “is when I’m too tired. Whose liquor is it, anyhow? And whose joint — an’ whose dame?”

“You ought to ask Lefty,” some one suggested.

“Shut up!” Coats roared then. “Lefty ain’t here, see?”

But Dorcas O’Donnell had marked the source of the jeering invitation, and that was the man she danced with next.

“What’s the joke about Lefty?” she asked him when they were at the far end of the floor.

Her partner’s tongue was almost, but not quite as loose, as she had hoped it would be.

“Joke?” he said. “Well, if you call it that. Him an’ Sam had an arg’ment about some coin — and Sam’s got the coin. Playin’ close to his vest with it; I’ll say he is. Under his vest. It’s in his money belt now, next to his skin.”

“Yes?” the girl breathed. “And what about Lefty?”

The well had run dry.

“That’s somethin’,” the rum runner told her, belatedly cautious, “that you’ll have to ask Coats.”

When she danced next with Coats, she did try again. But, “He’s gone on erran’ — a long erran’!” was all he told her.

A while after that, Coats went into the office and called one of his men — the straightest one, except for Walsh, of the crowd. The girl, close to the door, overheard an interchange that froze her heart.

“Now, lissen here, Buck,” Coats was saying in a hoarse whisper. “This goes. My mind’s made up. I’m tired a’ hearin’ that broad with her Lefty this and Lefty that, an’ ‘Where the hell is Lefty?’ ”

“Yeah?” said Buck. “It goes — but, what?”

“The works!” snarled Coats. “You’re goin’ to take him out in the ear to-night, and you ain’t goin’ to bring him back. Give him a water ride, see? Take him ’way out an’ sink him. I told the skirt I might be sendin’ him to Florida. Well, I will — inside a shark!”

He came from the office, weaving, to find the life of the party faint and white.

“What’s the matter, kiddo? Gettin’ sick? An’ me just after openin’ another case!”

She rallied bravely.

“No; I’m just beginning to have a good time. But we need more girls. I was just thinking — there’s a couple over in my house. Hostesses. They’d love to come over.”

“Fine!” endorsed Coats. “Phone ’em.”

“I can’t. They haven’t a phone. I’ll have to go after them.”

The host glowered and grunted.

“You wouldn’t come back!”

“I will. I promise. Won’t you believe me — Sammy?”

“All right,” Coats said. “I believe you. But I’ll send Walsh with you, just for luck.”

Walsh went, but the girl left him waiting on the sidewalk when they had turned her corner. Breathless, she flew up the stairs to her own small flat and to the rear window.

She wasn’t disappointed. Lefty was over there, looking out — looking for her, patient after the hours.

“Honey boy!” she screamed at him. “You’ve got to get out of there!”

He didn’t get it. Didn’t get a word of it. Didn’t get the frantic signs she made. With only a couple of hundred feet between them, they were a world apart. Precariously close, she realized with a dry sob, to two worlds apart!

And then at the height of her desperation, she thought of her stratagem of another day, and saw a way, thought of that trick of hers to explain to Lefty why she wasn’t meeting him one afternoon after a big night uptown, and went flying to — her laundry bag!

V

She kept her promise. Within a half hour after she had left big Sam Coats, she had returned to him, Walsh at her side.

“Too bad,” she told him, as she had told Walsh. “One of the girls didn’t get home last night, and her sister isn’t feeling well. I stopped to freshen up for a lone woman’s struggle.”

“Your funeral,” grinned Coats. “You missed a lot of drinks. Want to catch up?”

“And how!” cried Dorcas O’Donnell. She stooped to bring up the amplification on the radio until the music was a boiler shop roar, and caught big Sam’s arm. “Come on,” she urged. “Take one with me. My first in a long while.”

“Tootin’ I will,” Coats said, and stumbled after her into the office.

She closed the door, and shook her head at the bottle.

“No, wait,” she breathed. “What about that fur coat, Sam? What about — being in back of me? Did you mean it?”

“I said it,” he told her. “You treat me right, I’ll treat you right. I always do business that way.”

She nodded.

“Then I’ll tell you something. I know where Lefty is!”

“Huh?” Coats stared.