Young Lonigan - James T. Farrell [289]
“Say, what’s this? We can’t muscle the King out.”
“Keep your shirt on and your head cool and you’ll always land on your toes,” Joey said, turning his wheels quickly to avoid a crash.
“Hi, boys!” Joey said, entering a room full of gorillas.
Studs was getting tense, wondering what was going to happen, thinking would he have the guts to pull the stunt Joey was pulling. Studs Lonigan walking in on Al Capone. Maybe this was his funeral though.
“Well, King, you’re living well, and look at that,” Joey said ambiguously, pointing at the King’s paunch. “I was just sort of reflecting, you know, and I sort of figured out that you might like a nice little house in the country with nothing to disturb your sleep but the cows and chickens.”
Guts. Gallagher had guts, and Studs sat thinking how he wasn’t so much, set up against a guy like Gallagher, and there they were, Gallagher and the King glaring at each other, and that meant trouble. He wanted to see Joey come through it all, and would he. A rap on the door, everybody turning, Detective Sloane sauntering in. He’d seen this fellow act a detective role in some other picture, and he tried to recall it. Would they all get caught with Sloane just dropping them the hint about the shooting of Greasy Jones and Lefty Loomis? Would the picture end with Joey going to the hot seat? He hoped not.
A gorilla rushing in after the dick’s departure. Butch McKee and his northside mob were coming. Studs sat forward in his seat as if he was tied up in knots. Big touring cars careering through streets. The rat-tat-tat of machine guns, the clash of breaking glass, the King’s mob following on the floor with drawn gats. Silence. The King jumping up, telling his gorillas to come on. Joey Gallagher stepping in front of him, breathlessly urging him to wait. The King, unconvinced, rushing out to the street, the mob following. Another car, bullets flaming out of it, Joey wounded in the arm, shooting left-handed.
Studs asked himself could he face guns, and fight like a gangster, and he felt that Studs Lonigan was yellow, and couldn’t be a Joey Gallagher. He sat breathless as the King’s mob rushed in cars to follow up the northside mob. The picture was getting close to the end. He wanted to see how it would turn out. And still he didn’t want it to end. He wanted it to go on for hours. Best picture he’d seen in a hell of a while. Butch McKee’s headquarters in a gambling house. Butch bragging that he was the King now. The entrance of Gallagher, the King, and their gorillas, Joey speaking his piece, telling Butch to get out of town in twenty-four hours.
Studs wished Joey had bumped McKee off then and there. No use taking chances. Joey might be shot. But no, the hero in movies always pulled through. Still, this was a different picture. Joey would come through, he and the blonde would get lined up, and it would end hotsy totsy. But no, he’d read about the picture in the papers, and if he remembered it right, Joey got shot. He didn’t want Joey to get shot.
The reception, Joey at the head of the table as gangland’s acknowledged leader. Joey Studs Lonigan Gallagher laughing loudly as Spike jabbed his fork into a mug’s elbow for taking up so much room. Charlie Chaplin had pulled that in Shanghaied. He’d seen it as a kid, but it was still funny. Joey leaving the reception with the blonde, her apartment, staying for the night. Laying her. Such a woman! Daddy! Sloane again. Just a friendly call. Hadn’t seen anyone who knew about the murder of Greasy Jones and Lefty Loomis. No, just a friendly call, and he’d be seeing Gallagher at the D. A.’s office one of these days. Why didn’t Joey get out of the racket now that he had dough, a woman, and he could pull through. The mother reading of Joey as gangland’s chief, crying, the brother soothing her. Life was tough on mothers, but then, they just didn’t understand. The tightening net of evidence. The blonde squealing, ought to have her puss slapped, couldn’t trust that kind of a whoring bitch. Getting near