She put her face close to mine again, and her eyes looked as if they had found something horrible in mine.
“Oh, you’re rotten!” she said. “You don’t give a damn what happens to me. You’re using me as you use the others–that dynamite you wanted. I trusted you.”
“You’re dynamite, all right, but the rest of it’s kind of foolish. You look a lot better when you’re happy. Your features are heavy. Anger makes them downright brutal. I’m starving, sister.”
“You’ll eat here,” she said. “You’re not going to get me out after dark.”
She meant it. She swapped the rose beige dress for an apron, and took inventory of the ice box. There were potatoes, lettuce, canned soup and half a fruit cake. I went out and got a couple of steaks, rolls, asparagus, and tomatoes.
When I came back she was mixing gin, vermouth and orange bitters in a quart shaker, not leaving a lot of space for them to move around in.
“Did you see anything?” she asked.
I sneered at her in a friendly way. We carried the cocktails into the dining room and played bottoms-up while the meal cooked. The drinks cheered her a lot. By the time we sat down to the food she had almost forgotten her fright. She wasn’t a very good cook, but we ate as if she were.
We put a couple of gin-gingerales in on top the dinner.
She decided she wanted to go places and do things. No lousy little runt could keep her cooped up, because she had been as square with him as anybody could be until he got nasty over nothing, and if he didn’t like what she did he could go climb trees or jump in lakes, and we’d go out to the Silver Arrow where she had meant to take me, because she had promised Reno she’d show up at his party, and by God she would, and anybody who thought she wouldn’t was crazy as a pet cuckoo, and what did I think of that?
“Who’s Reno?” I asked while she tied herself tighter in the apron by pulling the strings the wrong way.
“Reno Starkey. You’ll like him. He’s a right guy. I promised him I’d show at his celebration and that’s just what I’ll do.”
“What’s he celebrating?”
“What the hell’s the matter with this lousy apron? He was sprung this afternoon.”
“Turn around and I’ll unwind you. What was he in for? Stand still.”
“Blowing a safe six or seven months ago–Turlock’s, the jeweler. Reno, Put Collings, Blackie Whalen, Hank O’Marra, and a little lame guy called Step-and-a-Half. They had plenty of cover–Lew Yard–but the jewelers’ association dicks tied the job to them last week. So Noonan had to go through the motions. It doesn’t mean anything. They got out on bail at five o’clock this afternoon, and that’s the last anybody will ever hear about it. Reno’s used to it. He was already out on bail for three other capers. Suppose you mix another little drink while I’m inserting myself in the dress.”
The Silver Arrow was half-way between Personville and Mock Lake.
“It’s not a bad dump,” Dinah told me as her little Marmon carried us toward it. “Polly De Voto is a good scout and anything she sells you is good, except maybe the Bourbon. That always tastes a little bit like it had been drained off a corpse. You’ll like her. You can get away with anything out here so long as you don’t get noisy. She won’t stand far noise. There it is. See the red and blue lights through the trees?”
We rode out of the woods into full view of the roadhouse, a very electric-lighted imitation castle set close to the road.
“What do you mean she won’t stand for noise?” I asked, listening to the chorus of pistols singing Bang-bang-bang.
“Something up,” the girl muttered, stopping the car.
Two men dragging a woman between them ran out of the roadhouse’s front door, ran away into the darkness. A man sprinted out a side door, away. The guns sang on. I didn’t see any flashes.
Another man broke out and vanished around the back.