Juney’s voice came from next to him, out of the shadows. “Let him move. If he gets too lively, I’ll sock him again.”

Henry Croft lost all desire to move. He even held his breath until he felt his eyes bugging. Then he let his wind out with a deep hissing, and Juney laughed. “He’s being a good boy,” Juney said. “He’s even trying not to breathe.”

“You can Breathe, sucker,” Gwen said. “Help yourself. It won’t be for long.”

“Shut up,” Carley said.

The car went along in the rain; Henry Croft didn’t recognize any of the streets they twisted through. The district was residential, though, and he didn’t know any of the suburbs except his own.

Then Carley said: “There they are,” and started slowing down, “It’s Paul,” he said.

Henry Croft could see him, one of the young men from the bar, standing in the rain, waving his arms. Carley turned the car in behind another, following Paul’s directions, and stopped with his front bumper against the rear one of the parked car.

Juney said: “Watch my sucker,” and got out of the car. He went ahead and got in behind the wheel of the parked sedan, and then disappeared, as though crouching under the dashboard. Gwen twisted around in the front seat, and said: “I’m watching you, Henry.”

Juney reappeared, and waved his hand. Carley let the car go forward in low gear, and Juney’s car went ten or twenty feet along the wet pavement. Then Juney waved his hand again, and Carley cut the motor. Paul came out of the rain, and opened the back door. “Out, sucker. It won’t be long now.” He reached in and prodded Henry Croft, who climbed out, stiffly.

The rain felt good on his battered head.

Carley climbed out and took up a post on Henry Croft’s other side. He and Paul half pulled him to the front car. “Let’s move out,” Paul said. “Even without the starter, sometimes these car-loving citizens wake up when they hear their own motor.”

This time Carley got in the back seat with Henry Croft. He lounged back in the corner, reaching under his coat. He took out a gun, balanced it loosely in his hand, grinning at Henry Croft. In the front seat Gwen suddenly laughed, and said: “Oh, cut it out, Paul.”

Carley said: “Know what this is, Henry?”

Henry Croft nodded.

“Well, then, tell me.” Carley waited a minute, and when Henry didn’t speak, he suddenly lashed out with the pistol, rapping the sights into Henry Croft’s belly. “Speak up, sucker.”

Henry Croft gulped air with difficulty, and said: “A gun.”

Carley nodded wisely, while Gwen told Paul: “That hurts, damnit.” But she laughed.

Carley said: “Kids. Can’t keep their hands off a dame... Yeah, Henry, this is a gun. You know what a gun does?” Again he waited.

Henry said: “It shoots people.”

Carley gave his schoolmaster nod again. “Yeah. A gun. And it shoots people. Dead. So does Paul’s gun, so does Juney’s... You gotta gun, Gwen?”

Gwen said: “If I did, I’d murder this Paul,” still laughing.

“Kids,” Carley said again. “Always I got to work with kids. So Gwen doesn't have a gun. So there will be only three guns. You ever have eighteen holes in you?”

Henry shook his head. Then, remembering, he said: “No, I never did.”

Carley said: “Well, then, I suppose you don’t know how that feels. Well, to tell you the truth, neither do I. But I can guess, and a smart sucker like you, you can guess, too. So maybe you’ll do what we tell you to. Do you think you will?”

Henry Croft said: “Yes. Of course I will.”

“A smart sucker,” Carley said again, and then was silent while the car went around some more corners and through a little park and out again, the water splashing sidewise from the wheels and the windshield wipers squeaking slightly. The wipers on the first car had not squeaked like this.

Then they stopped, and Juney turned the headlights off and said: “This is the place, folks. The sucker know what he’s to do, Carley?”

“No,” Carley said, “but he’ll do it. He’s a very nice sucker.” He laughed. “Listen, Henry. It’s easy. All you do is go up to that house, see there, and ring the bell. Talk nice to them, Henry. They got a heavy chain on the door. Get them to open it.”

Paul said: “Supposing he tells them to call the cops?”

“Why, I guess he will,” Carley said. “That’s about the quickest way I know to get people to open doors. Who wouldn’t trust a sucker who’s calling copper?”

Paul said: “I don’t like it. I like things simple.”

Carley said: “Now he tells me. My strong silent pal. Okay. You go up there. Give them a nice simple look at your face. It’ll make them happy. Or maybe wear your mask. People always open doors for guys with masks on. Especially at night. Especially a guy who’s got a payroll in the house.”

Paul said: “Okay, okay.”

Carley said: “So now you know, Henry. Get going.”

Henry opened the door of the car. He did it slowly, thinking: Now my fingerprints are on a stolen car, and knowing, even while he thought it, that it was a silly thought. His shoes squished across the pavement, and he felt lonesome and chilled and sick. I’ll get pneumonia out of this, he thought, and remembering what Carley had said about the eighteen holes, that was pretty silly too.

Now he was at the steps, four of them, leading up to a little porch, sheltered over so a person wouldn’t get wet waiting for the door to be opened. Lawn on either side of the walk and the steps, nice little house, dark, not a light showing. He took a deep breath and pressed the doorbell. The ringing in the depth of the house was shockingly loud.

He stood there, thinking he was going to be sick to his stomach, was going to faint. Instead, he sneezed. He thought he heard an abrupt movement close to him in the night air when he made the involuntary noise; but he couldn’t be sure. Then he pressed the bell-button again.

A light came on in the hall, a voice said: “All right, all right,” and a peephole opened in the door. All he could see was a bushy brow and the bleary eye of a freshly-disturbed sleep, but the voice was masculine and angry: “What do you want?”

“I’ve been — call the police,” Henry Croft said.

The peephole closed then, and there was the noise of the door being unlocked. But it opened only a crack, and there was a heavy chain, brassily shining, that clinked. “Man, you’re beat up,” the voice inside the house said. It belonged, Henry could see now, to a burly man in ridiculously bright blue striped pajamas. “What happened to you?”

“Hold up,” Henry said. “Taken for a ride. I—”

“All right,” the burly man said. “Sit on the porch out there. I’ll phone the cops.”

The guns in the night were real. If this door closed in his face, he’d be shot. Eighteen holes. Again his mind veered away into ridiculousness, shrinking from the reality of death, and a silent bar from the song Sixteen Tons came back to him.

But he knew what he had to do. He flung himself forward, clawing at the edge of the open door, risking having the heavy wood crush his fingers against the frame. “Let me in. For God’s sake, they might come back.”

The big man hesitated. “I can’t — aw, hell, all right. You’ll the out there, and you don’t look like you could hurt me.”

More noise, the noise of the chain being slid out of the slot that held it, then the door opened a little more, and a blue-striped arm shot out to jerk Henry into the house, shut the door quickly.

It didn’t work. Bodies hit Henry Croft from behind, forcing him and the door and the burly man all to swing back into the hall in confusion; then feet were running outside, and more bodies jammed into the mess, and then the door was closed, and the little entry hall was filled with guns and masked faces and terror.

A purple mask said: “You’re Joe Wheeler.”

The burly man said: “So what?”

Upstairs a female voice called: “Joe, Joe what is it?” and the purple mask made a gesture. Two of the masked men started up the stairs. Henry thought they were Paul and Juney, but he couldn’t be sure. It didn’t matter.

From behind a black silk mask, Carley’s voice said: “You done well, Henry.” The voice laughed nastily. “Somebody give Henry a gun. He done well.”

The third man left in the hall had on a white silk mask, ornamented with sequins; something for a lady in evening dress to wear to a dance. He pushed a gun into Henry’s hands, said: “Help cover Mr. Wheeler there, Henry.”

Wheeler looked at Henry and said: “You had me fooled. You sure had me fooled.” Henry Croft had never been spoken to with such enmity in his life.

He said: “But I—” and a gun barrel slashed his ribs from behind.

Purple Mask said again: “You’re Joe Wheeler. You’re running a little construction job out here. Today you drew your payroll from the bank in the city; you don’t pay off till tomorrow. So the money’s here in the house.”

“Out at the shack,” Joe Wheeler said. “I left it on the job.”

“Yeah?” Purple Mask didn’t sound convinced. “You believe that, Henry?”

Henry said: “I—” but Purple Mask had raised his voice. “Hurry it up there. You guys ain’t here to play around.” He bowed to Joe Wheeler. “Very playful guys.”

Joe Wheeler said nothing. He seemed to have settled down to a policy of quietly hating Henry Croft.

Paul and Juney came down the stairs again. They had a woman between them, a woman about thirty, not bad looking despite her lack of makeup, pretty good figure, with nothing over it but a thin nightgown.

“They wouldn’t let me get a robe, Joe,” she said.

“Don’t worry, lady, we got girls of our own,” Carley said. “Where’s the money, Joe Wheeler?”

“On the job,” Wheeler said. “In the shack.”

“Let her go, boys,” Purple mask said.

On the stairs, Paul and Juney paused, then they pushed, together, and Mrs. Wheeler came down to the hall, fast. She landed on her knees, hands scrabbling on the floor to break her fall. One breast came out of the top of the nightgown, and Joe Wheeler groaned a little.

Paul and Juney followed her down, slowly. She started to rise, and Carley took his foot and pushed her down on the floor, lightly. “The money,” he said.

Joe Wheeler said: “Guys, I—”

Carley leaned forward, putting his weight on the foot that pinned Mrs. Wheeler to the floor. His eyes glittered through the mask, watching Joe Wheeler. Mrs. Wheeler screamed once, as Carley’s other foot came up off the floor.

“In the kitchen,” Joe Wheeler said. “The flour bin.”

Carley put both feet on the floor. “Show us, sucker.”

Wheeler went away, Carley following him. Paul and Juney stood at the foot of the stairs, looking down at the half-naked woman, looking up at Henry Croft. Paul bent forward and looked at Mrs. Wheeler more closely. “Not bad,” he said. “For a rainy night.”

“Cut it out,” Purple Mask said. “Cut it out.” He had never taken his eyes off Henry Croft.

“She’s too old, anyway,” Juney said. “She’s stiff in the joints, aren't you, lady?” He cleared his throat, spat on the floor, near the woman.

“You can get up now,” Purple Mask said. “If we need you anymore, it’ll be easy to put you back down.”

Carley came back alone. His hands and the cuffs of his coat were white with flour. The rain in his sleeves was caking it. He carried a sack of something or other; he slapped it against the newel post, and flour whitened the air. Mrs. Wheeler was getting to her knees. Her hands shakingly adjusted the lace V around her breasts. “Where is he? Where’s Joe?”

Carley said: “Who told you to get up?” and the money sack whirled in his hands. It landed across the back of the woman’s neck and she fell back down to the floor, hard. Henry thought he heard the bones in her nose break, but he couldn’t be sure, because Carley was looking at him now. “I slapped the old man down,” he said.

“He’s in the kitchen, but he ain’t cooking. Let’s roll.”

Henry Croft stepped aside to let them — in God’s name — roll. Roll out of the house, out of the street, out of his life. But Carley made a gesture with his gun. “Out, Henry.”

They had made a very good boy of him. He went out. Out into the cold, the dreary, but not the lonesome rain. He had plenty of company.

Gwen was behind the wheel of the second car, now. Carley motioned Henry into the right-hand front seat, slid behind the wheel, crowding Gwen over against Henry. He dropped the flour-stained sack into Gwen’s lap.

Other guys jumped into the back, they took off fast; Gwen had kept the motor running. Henry leaned back against the cushions, shivering.

Gwen’s hand was back on his thigh. She was breathing hard. “That was kicks,” she said. “That was joy, way up. Ohhhh.” She let out her breath in a long sigh.

Carley said, as he had said before: “Kids. I gotta work with kids. Bopsters... Henry!”

Henry said: “Yes?”

“We gonna have to bump you off, Henry?”

Gwen’s fingers worked up and down Henry’s thigh ecstatically. “Let’s,” she said. “Let’s bump Henry off, Carley. We don’t need him any more.”

“Shut up,” Carley said. “You had your kicks for the night, Gwen... Henry, while you were out, we went through your wallet. We know you, we know where you live. Pictures in the wallet, a wife, a kid.”

“Squares,” Gwen said.

Carley said: “Give him back the wallet, Gwen. You can keep the money.”

She said: “I want the pictures. For my album.” But Carley growled, and she reached into her bra, got the leather out, slipped out the money and gave Henry the wallet. Then she put her hand back on him.

“Leave him alone,” Carley said. “Henry, we’re letting you out. Near your house. You know Polacks, Henry, Polish people?”

“Some,” Henry said.

“They got a custom. They prop stiffs up in their coffins, and take pictures of them. That’s the kind of snapshots you’ll be carrying if you talk, Henry.”

He skidded the car around a corner, then another one. “You get me, Henry?”

Henry Croft said: “Yes.”

Gwen said: “Ah, the river, Carley. In the river with him. We could tie the car jack to his feet.” Her busy hand dug in.

Carley said: “I’m gonna ditch you someday, Gwen. And Juney on accounta you. You got no business sense. We’re cool now. Kill this mark, and we’re not.”

“I like being hot,” Gwen said simply. “It’s living, when you’re hot.”

Carley slid the car to a stop, silently, expertly. “Out, Henry. You’ll keep your mouth buttoned. A guy away from home all day, a salesman, with a wife. And a kid. You’ll keep right on being good, Henry, like you was all evening.”

Henry opened the door. He was sure it couldn’t be over, that the nightmare wasn’t ending, that there’d be a shot from the car, a blackjack out of the night. But all that happened was Gwen’s taunting voice drifting back to him: “You didn’t kiss me good night, Henry—” and then they were gone.

Gone to some unknown rendezvous, where they’d ditch the cars, back to the bar on Slack Street... One street he’d never walk down any more, one neighborhood he’d avoid. The Merser account would have to go unserviced, some other company could have that business.