“Get the gun.”
She picked it up and stood there. I pulled him to his feet, threw him over one of the tables, and bent him back. Then I beat him up. When he passed out, I got a glass of water and poured it on him. Soon as he came to, I beat him up again. When his face looked like raw beef, and he was blubbering like a kid in the last quarter of a football game, I quit.
“Snap out of it, Kennedy. You’re talking to your friends over the telephone.”
“I got no friends, Chambers. I swear, I’m the only one that knows about—”
I let him have it, and we did it all over again. He kept saying he didn’t have any friends, so I threw an arm lock on him and shoved up on it. “All right, Kennedy. If you’ve got no friends, then I break it.”
He stood it longer than I thought he could. He stood it till I was straining on his arm with all I had, wondering if I really could break it. My left arm was still weak where it had been broke. If you ever tried to break the second joint of a tough turkey, maybe you know how hard it is to break a guy’s arm with a hammerlock. But all of a sudden he said he would call. I let him loose and told him what he was to say. Then I put him at the kitchen phone, and pulled the lunchroom extension through the swing door, so I could watch him and hear what he said and they said. She came back there with us, with the gun.
“If I give you the sign, he gets it.”
She leaned back and an awful smile flickered around the corner of her mouth. I think that smile scared Kennedy worse than anything I had done.
“He gets it.”
He called, and a guy answered. “Is that you, Willie?”