Rackets, Inc. by John Glasby

Author:John Glasby
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: British, crime, noir, the Mob, hardboiled
ISBN: 9781479409808
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2013-04-30T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

THE BIG FIX

The big room was both empty and dark, the curtain still drawn across the wide windows. Dawn was nowhere to be seen, but they hadn’t taken her without a struggle. A couple of chairs lay on their sides and a framed picture hung lopsidedly on the wall.

I looked through the half-open door. There was a dim light on the stairs. I pushed the door open, kicking savagely at an overturned table that got in the way. There was a shoe on the stairs where Dawn had fought with the hoodlums as they had tried to hustle her off into the waiting car.

I was mad at myself. Mad for leaving her here to face this. Mad for being so stupid as not realising that this would inevitably happen. I had managed to escape the net and was still on the loose.

But how long will that last? That was something I didn’t want to think about. I deliberately put it out of my mind. Dawn was a nice kid. Too nice for a thing like this to happen to her. There were a few like her still around in Los Angeles, fresh, innocent kids with the bloom of youth still on them, before they turned bitter with life.

Me? I’d been kicked about for eighteen years before I become a man and joined the mobs. The windows showed a grey glimmer as the sun began to come up over the city. A car went past and I sat up waiting for it to stop outside, but it just kept going, around the corner and away.

That’s the worst part of sitting alone after pulling a job. Listening for the cars going by, never knowing when one was going to pull up and the heavy footsteps would come climbing the stairs, pausing outside the door.

Curiously, I wasn’t afraid for myself any longer. And that, in itself, was a change for me. But I was mad, and it was a hell of a feeling. I knew what kind of man Clancy Snow was. A man with a big headache now that I knew how to put him and his henchmen on the spot for keeps. But he still had a trump card and I knew he’d use it.

Dawn Grahame.

He was the kind of man who would use every dirty trick in the game to stop me. And for good reasons.

I went into the kitchen and made myself a cup of coffee; black and strong. No sense in rushing into things. Maybe that was what they were hoping I’d do. Throw caution to the winds and go storming in there after Dawn with my eyes shut. If so, they were mistaken.

My face hurt and I felt as though I could sleep for a month. Instead, now was the time for action. I looked at myself in the mirror. My features were a mess. See if you can fix yourself out of this trap, Johnny, I thought bitterly.

I’d been used to eating alone, frequenting clip joints and cheap bars, but in the big room there, it was different.

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