RED HARVEST by Dashiell Hammett

“Now hop to it,” I said. “And don’t kid yourselves that there’s any law in Poisonville except what you make for yourself.”

Mickey said I’d be surprised how many laws he could get along without. Dick said: “So long,” and they departed.

After breakfast I went over to the City Hall.

Noonan’s greenish eyes were bleary, as if they hadn’t been sleeping, and his face had lost some of its color. He pumped my hand up and down as enthusiastically as ever, and the customary amount of cordiality was in his voice and manner.

“Any line on Whisper?” I asked when we had finished the gladhanding.

“I think I’ve got something.” He looked at the clock on the wall and then at his phone. “I’m expecting word any minute. Sit down.”

“Who else got away?”

“Jerry Hooper and Tony Agosti are the only other ones still out. We picked up the rest. Jerry is Whisper’s man-Friday, and the wop’s one of his mob. He’s the bozo that put the knife in Ike Bush the night of the fight.”

“Any more of Whisper’s mob in?”

“No. We just had the three of them, except Buck Wallace, the fellow you potted. He’s in the hospital.”

The chief looked at the wall clock again, and at his watch. It was exactly two o’clock. He turned to the phone. It rang. He grabbed it, said:

“Noonan talking…. Yes…. Yes…. Yes…. Right.”

He pushed the phone aside and played a tune on the row of pearl buttons on his desk. The office filled up with coppers.

“Cedar Hill Inn,” he said. “You follow me out with your detail, Bates. Terry, shoot out Broadway and hit the dump from behind. Pick up the boys on traffic duty as you go along. It’s likely we’ll need everybody we can get. Duffy, take yours out Union Street and around by the old mine road. McGraw will hold headquarters down. Get hold of everybody you can and send them after us. Jump!”

He grabbed his hat and went after them, calling over his thick shoulder to me:

“Come on, man, this is the kill.”

I followed him down to the department garage, where the engines of half a dozen cars were roaring. The chief sat beside his driver. I sat in back with four detectives.

Men scrambled into the other cars. Machine-guns were unwrapped. Arm-loads of rifles and riot-guns were distributed, and packages of ammunition.

The chief’s car got away first, off with a jump that hammered our teeth together. We missed the garage door by half an inch, chased a couple of pedestrians diagonally across the sidewalk, bounced off the curb into the roadway, missed a truck as narrowly as we had missed the door, and dashed out King Street with our siren wide open.

Panicky automobiles darted right and left, regardless of traffic rules, to let us through. It was a lot of fun.

I looked back, saw another police car following us, a third turning into Broadway. Noonan chewed a cold cigar and told the driver:

“Give her a bit more, Pat.”

Pat twisted us around a frightened woman’s coupé, put us through a slot between street car and laundry wagon–a narrow slot that we couldn’t have slipped through if our car hadn’t been so smoothly enameled–and said:

“All right, but the brakes ain’t no good.”

“That’s nice,” the gray-mustached sleuth on my left said. He didn’t sound sincere.

Out of the center of the city there wasn’t much traffic to bother us, but the paving was rougher. It was a nice half-hour’s ride, with everybody getting a chance to sit in everybody else’s lap. The last ten minutes of it was over an uneven road that had hills enough to keep us from forgetting what Pat had said about the brakes.

We wound up at a gate topped by a shabby electric sign that had said Cedar Hill Inn before it lost its globes. The roadhouse, twenty feet behind the gate, was a squat wooden building painted a moldy green and chiefly surrounded by rubbish. Front door and windows were closed, blank.

We followed Noonan out of the car. The machine that had been trailing us came into sight around a bend in the road, slid to rest beside ours, and unloaded its cargo of men and weapons.

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