The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [269]
Joey read the newspaper disinterestedly.
TWO MORE SHOT IN GANG WAR
Bullet-ridden Bodies of Greasy Jones
and Lefty Loomis Found in Alley.
`They probably didn’t keep their noses clean,” Joey aid.
“That’s a good crack,” Pat said to Studs, Studs shaking his head.
“Get out!” the brother said, in a quavering voice.
“Why, you dirty…”
A surprised punch from the brother somersaulted Joey into a chair. He leaped to his feet, but his mother faced him, in tears, pointing at the door. He picked up the roll of bills from the carpet, shrugged his shoulders, walked out.
“Swell acting,” Pat muttered.
The blond lounged in pajamas on a cot in a large room filled with modernistic furniture.
“Joey, come here,” she called in a cooing, asking voice, and Joey sat in a corner, his head sunken in his hands.
She walked toward him with her abdomen jutting out prominently, and he gazed up at her with disgust when she patted his head.
Studs hoped that it wouldn’t turn into a scrap, because, after all, with a dame like that wanting something, and he wished like hell he was Joey Gallagher folding her into his arms, kissing her in that long, close way, and knew that the next step was to pick her up, carry her to the couch and…
Joey shoved her away from him angrily.
“Say, Joey, what’s the matter?”
“I don’t know. Just let me alone for a while,” he said absently.
“What’s eating you, Joey. Getting a swelled head?”
“Never mind taking any tailspins there, baby,” Joey said in his curt, tough manner.
“Losing your nerve. Gettin’ yellow,” she sneered.
“Why, you dirty..”
He hit her in the chin with the heel of his left hand.
“Keep your hands off me. Why, you, you’re nothing but a small-time gorilla,” she cried, stumbling against a table.
“Look!” he said, pointing behind her.
She turned.
“Just a present from a small-time gorilla,” he said, planting his foot into her buttocks and propelling her into the table, smashing a lamp.
“Small-time, am I,” he soliloquized, getting into his roadster. He cut around a corner at breakneck speed.
Studs wondered why Joey couldn’t have let well enough alone with the blond. But still, that kick in the slats had been funny. The way to treat a high-hat broad like that.
“Come on, Spike, get your coat on,” Joey said, entering a room where Spike sat in shirt sleeves with a baby-faced girl in negligee on his knee.
“Every time I get set, somebody tips the glass on me,” Spike complained, knotting his necktie before a mirror.
“Say, what’s the idea?” Spike said, perplexed, entering the roadster.
“Got to see the King. I got a hunch he’d like a more comfortable life.”
“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 north side mob were coming. Studs sat forward in his seat as if he was tied up in knots. Big touring cars careening through streets. The rat-tat-tat of machine guns, the clash of breaking glass, the King