Big Shots Die Young

by Richard Deming

  The crowd began to disperse reluctantly, but one woman seemed to be giving the chauffeur an argument. She was a tall, well built girl with dark hair to her shoulders.

  When Sam D’Arcy saw her, he said, “Good grief!” and hurried toward her.

  We could hear him say, “A man was hurt, Beth. Go on up to my apartment and I’ll be up later.”

  She shook her head determinedly, but her voice did not carry to us. For a few moments the argument continued, then Sam shrugged resignedly, took her arm and led her back to where we stood near the body.

  “All right,” he said petulantly. “Now you’ve seen a corpse. Your morbid curiosity satisfied?”

  She glanced down at Byron Wade without a sign of horror in her expression, then swung her gaze around the circle of the living and smiled brightly, exposing perfect teeth. She was a lovely girl, with dark, impudent eyes in a smoothly tanned face and a mouth that intangibly gave the impression of having been freshly kissed.

  Sam said, “Inspector Day, Lieutenant Hannegan—my fiancée, Miss McCauley.” He did not introduce me or the chauffeur.

  She nodded acknowledgment to Day’s and Hannegan’s mumbled platitudes, then glanced at me curiously.

  “I’m Manville Moon,” I said. “But I’m in disgrace and you’re not supposed to notice me.”

  She grinned chummily, as though recognizing a kindred spirit. “You do that to him?” She nodded toward Wade.

  “Afraid I did.”

  “I’ve never before met a murderer,” she said. “May I call you by your first name?”

  “Glad I made at least one person happy. Call me Manny.”

  Sam said, “Beth, stop being ridiculous. Will you please go up to the apartment and wait now?”

  Her glance at him was more condescending than I would want a fiancée of mine to glance at me, but she said meekly, “All right, dear.”

  She gave Hannegan and Day a dazzling but impersonal smile, said to me, “Goodbye, Manny. Come buy me a drink if they don’t hang you. My name’s in the book,” and turned to walk away.

  At the side door she turned the knob, but the door would not open.

  “That only unlocks from the inside,” Sam called. “You’ll have to go around front.”

  Smiling back at us once more, she continued on up the alley and disappeared.

  A clanging bell sounded in the near distance and a few moments later the morgue wagon drew up behind the squad car. A man carrying a black medical back climbed from the front seat to walk toward us past the squad car. Two attendants followed with a stretcher.

  The medical examiner stopped just short of Wade, glanced at the dark stain on his chest without bending over and said, “Dead.”

  “Sure,” Day said. “But just feel his pulse to make it official.”

  “Warm, but still dead,” he said. “That all you want?”

  “At the moment.”

  “All right,” the medical examiner said to the stretcher bearers. “Pick him up now.”

  The inspector said, “Not yet. Wait’ll the camera crew finishes.”

  The lab truck arrived just as Day spoke. Under the inspector’s direction the camera crew shot two pictures of the body, one of the ashpit from the alley and another from about where I had fired.

  “You can move him now,” Day said. Laying the stretcher next to the body, the two bearers rolled Wade onto it.

  There was nothing under the body but more alley.

  I had been so sure a gun and silencer lay under Wade, my mouth dropped open in shock. I glanced at Warren Day and got another shock.

  His thin jaw thrust forward in disbelief as he stared furiously at the bare cement. In spite of his frequent observation that catching me in a law violation would make sweet his old age, being confronted with an actual opportunity apparently upset him as much as it did me. With rather pleased surprise I realized that under his crusty exterior he actually liked me.

  But he hid his affection well. “Don’t suppose we can pin first degree homicide on you,” he snarled at me. “But you’re going up for manslaughter.”

  “The gun must be here somewhere,” I said. “Maybe he somehow got it back in the holster.”

  Hannegan bent over the litter and patted Byron Wade’s body in various places. “There isn’t even a holster,” he announced.

  “Then it’s back in the parking lot. He was crouched against the ashpit when I fired.”

  While the stretcher bearers moved off with the body and the camera crew packed its equipment and departed, Hannegan carefully flashed his light over the area ten yards on both sides of the ashpit. Then he put his hands atop the shoulder-high pit, drew himself up to rest his knees on the edge and shined the light inside.

  “It’s just been emptied,” he said “Nothing but a quarter inch of ash dust.” He dropped back to the ground and brushed off his knees.

  “Listen, Inspector,” I said. “I know he had a gun. Somehow someone must have sneaked it out.”

  Judging solely by Day’s expression, every word must have pained him, but his tone was coldly unsympathetic. “Nobody but you and Wade were back here, Moon. This is a dead-end alley, the only way out is the street, and no one came that way because we were looking right at the alley mouth when your gun went off.”

  “How about the side door?”

  Sam D’Arcy said, “It was locked. When I saw the excitement down here from my window, I came out that way if you remember. Even the chain was on. It doesn’t open from this side anyway, unless you have a key.”

  “You turned trigger-happy, Moon,” the inspector said. “You saw a shadow and killed an unarmed man.”

  “Nuts,” I said. “If he wasn’t laying for me, what was he doing back here?”

  Sam said, “Same thing you were. Inspector Day, Lieutenant Hannegan, you and Byron Wade were all invited to the meeting. Wade probably parked his car just before you.”

  “What meeting?” I asked.

  “At my apartment. I figured on doing a little crime prevention. From my questioning of Ned Hassenwaffer, I gathered that Tim Bullock was out to eliminate both you and Wade. The police have the net out for Bullock, and when he was brought in I meant to impress on him that the city frowns on murder. In the meantime I wanted to get you and Wade together to issue the same warning. I invited the inspector over to make it more convincing.”

  I said, “Oh,” which was the most intelligent comment I could think of at the moment.

  “Stick cuffs on him,” Day snapped at Hannegan.

  The lieutenant glanced at Day curiously, as though silently reminding his chief they had both known me for years.

  “I mean now!” Day said.

  Hannegan shrugged, stepped toward me and thrust his right hand under his coat. As I compliantly raised my arms, I glanced at the alley mouth and saw the last of the interested bystanders had departed. At the same time I noticed none of them had guns in their hands, probably because they were more-or-less friends of mine.

  As Hannegan raised the cuffs, I let my left fist jab forward, felt the jab break like a cracked whip on the point of his jaw and, without waiting for him to fall, grabbed Warren Day by the shoulders and hurled him at the chauffeur. They went down in a tangle as Sam D’Arcy rushed at me.

  Instead of taking a swing at me, Sam came in like a wrestler, his arms spread for a bear hug. Wrestlers are suckers for Judo, a science based on converting your opponent’s weight and momentum to your advantage. Sam had lots of both, and I converted it by grabbing one wrist, jerking him off balance and changing his direction of travel by slamming the heel of my free hand into his shoulder.

  The police chauffeur’s struggles to free his gun from its holster were being nullified by Inspector Day’s efforts to drag his gun from a shoulder holster without getting off the policeman’s lap. The struggles of both expired suddenly as Sam D’Arc
y’s two hundred thirty pounds smashed chest first on top of them. Then I converted my own weight and momentum to advantage by heading for the street at a dead run.

  A false leg is not conducive to speed, but the handicap didn’t prevent me from establishing a world record for the half block sprint. Rounding the corner a half-block from the alley, I scooted diagonally across the street and cut through a couple of yards, which brought me to a car line.

  A street car was passing as I emerged from the second yard, and I beat it to the corner. Six blocks later I left it, took a bus to within four blocks of the river front and walked the last four blocks through alleys.

  Keeping my hat low over my eyes in order to conceal a distinctively bent nose and a left eyelid that drooped lower than the right, I drifted along glancing through the doors of waterfront taverns until I found one having a telephone booth right inside the entrance. Unobtrusively I slipped into the booth, dropped a nickel in the slot and dialed an unlisted number. A woman answered the phone.

  I said, “Jackie Morgan, please.”

  “Who’s calling?”

  “O’Malley,” I said, using the code name Jackie insisted on.

  The place he lived was supposed to be a secret from everybody even remotely connected with the police.

  “I’ll see if he lives here,” the woman said, committing herself to nothing.

  My association with Jackie Morgan developed from a pre-war saloon brawl during which I pried two drunken gorillas from his hundred-twenty-pound frame and used their heads like a set of cymbals.

  At the time I had never met the little man, and my interference was in the cause of fair play rather than concern over his personal welfare. But he never forgot it, and periodically offered to commit physical violence on anyone I designated in order to repay the debt.

  At sixty Jackie was a retired safe cracker who had paid his debt to society with ten years of his life and now lived on an annuity left by a deceased brother. Although no police anywhere wanted him, the little man derived some kind of thrill from pretending he was hot, and vicariously continued his underworld life by rooming in an exclusive crooks’ hideout.

  The other tenants must have known he was now strictly legitimate, and whether his acceptance among them stemmed from his one-time safe-cracking reputation or he was merely regarded as a harmless eccentric, I don’t know, but his contacts ran deep into the underworld.

  Sometimes I used him as a source of information, with the tacit understanding that any use I made of the information would not get his underworld pals in trouble.

  In spite of Jackie’s dramatic offers to commit mayhem in my behalf, he hardly constituted a social menace since he was deathly afraid of all weapons and was too small to whip anyone older than ten with his fists.

  When he came to the phone he whispered a cautious, “Yeah?”

  “Moon,” I said. “I’m in a jam.”

  “Need somebody worked over?”

  “Need a hideout. Can you get me in that place without anyone seeing me?”

  “Sure. Where are you?”

  “About two blocks away,” I said. “Market and Front Street.”

  He said, “Come to the alley door. Third gate from the corner. I’ll wait there for you.”

  I said, “Check,” hung up and left the tavern without anyone having so much as glanced at me.

  * * * *

  Fifteen minutes later I was safely in what Jackie Morgan called home, a twelve by fourteen room furnished with a double bed, a bureau, one easy chair, a small table with two straight-backed chairs and a washbowl having only a cold water tap. Jackie’s was one of the better rooms in the place, since it was right next door to the bath he shared with the twelve other tenants.

  “You’ll be okay here,” the little man told me as he mixed a couple of drinks. “This joint ain’t been knocked over in fifteen years. What put you on the lam?”

  Jackie Morgan is one of the few people in the world I don’t mind telling my business. I said, “The cops are calling it manslaughter.”

  He handed me a glass and sat on the edge of the bed with his own. I tried out his easy chair and found it a nice fit.

  “Know Byron Wade?” I asked.

  “Know of him. The newcomer from Chicago who was crowding in on Louie Bagnell’s gambling rackets before Louie got killed. Wasn’t it Wade’s wife did the killing?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Little while ago Wade took a pot at me in an alley with a silenced gun. I potted back and nailed him dead center. Before the smoke cleared, cops were all over me, there lay Wade dead and the silenced gun had disappeared.”

  Jackie’s birdlike eyes glinted. “A frame? One of the cops palm it?”

  I shook my head. “Not these cops. It just wasn’t there.”

  “So what happened to it?”

  “The answer to that question keeps me out of jail if I find it,” I said. “The whole thing is screwy. In the first place I got along with Wade and there wasn’t a reason in the world for him to jump me—unless he thought I was someone else. In the second place he missed me point blank at ten feet. In the third place I’m beginning to suspect someone staged an illusion and I didn’t even kill the guy.”

  “What you going to do?” Jackie asked.

  “Sit and think a while. All I’m really sure of is that Wade is dead. So I suppose the best place to start thinking is, who would want him dead?”

  “That’s easy,” Jackie said. “Tiny Tim Bullock.”

  I sat up abruptly. “Did you know Tim was in town?”

  “Sure. That kind of stuff always filters down.”

  “Why the devil didn’t you give me a tip?”

  Jackie raised one eyebrow. “Why?” Then he looked shocked. “Jeepers! I forgot you were the guy booted him out of town after that Garson girl killed herself. Think he framed you?”

  I sank back in my chair again. “Maybe. He’s gunning for me and he also wants to move in on the gambling rackets here. Mighty convenient for him to have the main competition out of the way and me up on a manslaughter rap at the same time.

  “But I’m not even sure I was framed, and if I was it’s a more subtle job than I’d expect from Tim. His speed is hiring some hood to pull the trigger while he makes himself an alibi in a night spot. Know where he’s holed up?”

  Jackie said, “No, but I’ll find out for you.”

  “Do that. But first I want the lab reports on Wade. Got any connections at the morgue?”

  “I’ve had lots of friends stop there,” Jackie said. “But they wasn’t in condition to exert much influence.”

  “Then we’ll have to risk using my own connection. Tomorrow morning see an intern at City Hospital named Tom Halleran, tell him I sent you and get Wade’s autopsy report. I think he’ll come across, but if he turns you in, overplay your connection with me by reciting everything that appears in the morning papers and being dumb about everything that doesn’t. You might get away with being typed as a crank.”

  “I gotcha,” Jackie said.

  “Tell Halleran I want a paraffin test of Wade’s palms. And mention a hundred dollar gift next time I see him.”

  “Maybe I better slip him that first.”

  I shook my head. “That you couldn’t explain as the act of a crank. He’ll go on credit if he goes at all. Know anyone in ballistics?”

  “A technician named Roberts. His evidence sent me up when he used to work in the fingerprint department.”

  I said, “Doesn’t sound like a friendly connection.”

  Jackie held two fingers together. “We’re like that now. I drop around every so often just to keep the connection.”

  “Good,” I said. “If autopsy shows Wade died from a bullet, see if you can find out if it came from my gun.”

  “Gotcha,” Jackie said.

  There was nothing more to be done
that night.

  We breakfasted on eggs and coffee prepared by Jackie on an electric plate he kept on his dresser. Afterward he left me to browse through his library of detective magazines while he embarked on his various errands.

  At noon he returned wearing a grin and carrying three newspapers.

  “Part of the story is here,” he said, handing me the papers. “The rest is in my head.”

  I got the impression it wasn’t Wade’s killing that rated the left hand column of the front page, but what the press referred to as my “spectacular escape” while surrounded by three police officers and the district attorney. Beyond the bare statement that I had shot Wade in a dark alley, the crime wasn’t even mentioned. Inspector Warren Day of Homicide promised my early arrest.

  Flipping the papers onto the bed, I said to Jackie, “All right. What’s in your head?”

  “I got feelers out on Tim Bullock,” the little man said, “but I won’t get reports until tonight. About Byron Wade—you killed him all right. He died by a slug from a German P-38, and the bullet came out of the gun they took away from you. Inspector Warren Day thought of the paraffin test before you did. Wade hadn’t fired a gun.”

  “Sure you got the straight dope?” I asked.

  Jackie only looked offended.

  “Then that leaves only two possibilities,” I said. “Either I’ve gone laugh-happy and get hallucinations about people shooting at me, or this is the cleverest frame I ever heard of.”

  “Maybe you got delayed battle fatigue,” Jackie offered helpfully.

  I looked at him coldly. “We’ll stick to the frame angle. Only Tiny Tim Bullock hasn’t enough brains for a frame as good as this.”

  “So look for a guy with brains.”

  I said, “You wouldn’t know who inherits Wade’s interest in the bookshops and in North Shore Club, would you?”

  “Sure. Rex Davidson. At least I’d guess him.”

  “Who?”

  “Rex Davidson,” Jack said. “A professional strong-arm organizer from Chicago. Wade imported him two weeks ago to put starch in his organization. The talk is Wade was more a business type guy, and got sort of confused when opposition with guns threatened to move in on his territory. So he hired Rex to manage the strong arm angle.”