Free Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye by Horace McCoy

let us get away with this why have Holiday brought out? He was going to turn us in, the bastard, that’s what he was going to do. All right, you son-of-a-bitch, I was thinking, I’ll scream my head off about that dough even if nobody will listen, even if you do work me over …
    Reece and Holiday came out of the bedroom. She had on her tweed coat and skirt and carried her hat and one shoe in her hand.
    ‘Do you mind if I finish dressing?’ she said.
    ‘Why?’ the little one said. ‘You ain’t going nowhere.…’
    ‘Ain’t we taking ’em downtown?’ Reece asked.
    ‘It’s better this way.…’
    ‘In that case,’ Reece said, ‘maybe I better help her get her clothes off.…’
    The little one gave him a chastening look and said to Holiday: ‘Stand over there with him.’
    Holiday hesitated and Reece gestured with the gun he still held in his hand. ‘You heard him. Stand over there…’
    Here it comes, I was thinking; they’re not going to turn us in, after all, they’re going to kill us right here. Holiday moved beside me and I eased back just a little, getting her between me and the gun, watching Reece’s hand, focusing my eyes on his forefinger curled around the trigger, turning my side toward him, slanting my head away from him, reducing the target as much as possible, figuring that when he fired the first bullet I’d dive for the little one…
    ‘…Now, lissen,’ the little one was saying: ‘you get outta town on separate buses. Separate buses, I said. And don’t come back.…’
    ‘Don’t worry. Separate buses,’ Holiday said. ‘Don’t worry. We won’t come back.’
    ‘Let’s go …’ the little one said to Reece, starting out.
    I didn’t believe it, but there it was Reece was following the little one across the floor to the hall door.
    ‘Please, mister,’ I heard myself saying, ‘could I have my automatics?’
    They both stopped and the little one looked around at Reece, who shrugged. The little one took my automatic from his pocket, thumbed the clip out and snapped the cartridge from the chamber. He pitched the gun onto the davenport and Reece handed him the other automatic and he did the same thing with this one. Then they went on out, saying nothing else, closing the door behind them.
    I still didn’t believe it; they were gone, but the feeling of danger still hung in the room, like a concrete cloud. It was like getting away from a ten-armed giant in a bad dream; you rounded a corner and shook him off but you knew that momentarily he would lean down over one of the buildings and grab you. I stood there trembling and then I heard myself breathing and I looked at Holiday and saw that she was staring at me. I sat down but did not have the strength to draw up my legs, letting the whole weight of them rest on my heels.
    ‘I wouldn’t go through that again for a million dollars, not for ten million dollars,’ I said.
    ‘Oh, it could’ve been worse,’ she said.
    ‘No,’ I said.
    ‘It wasn’t too bad.…’
    ‘For an imbecile it wasn’t. For you it wasn’t,’ I said. ‘You had a hell of a time, showing yourself to that swine. Whenever you can wave that thing in somebody’s face you have a hell of a time.…’
    ‘You’re jealous, that’s all.…’
    ‘Nuts,’ I said.
    ‘Is that all you can think of? Never mind the wonderful break we just got, never mind that we’re getting out of this town clean and free, never mind any of that. All you can think of is me showing myself to that cop. Whyn’t you think about how lucky we are to get away with this?’
    ‘I’m thinking about that, too,’ I said, managing, finally, to get my legs up. I got on my feet and picked up the automatics from the davenport and my coat from the floor and went into the bedroom. I put on my coat, and from under a pile of lingerie in the bureau drawer I took two extra clips of cartridges, shoving a clip into each stock and snapping a cartridge into each barrel, in firing position. I dropped