by Jerry eBooks
CHAPTER V
Drink to the Devil
Hymie continued to stand in the middle of the room, his thick homely face sullen and malignant, until Nason said: “Just stand right there,” and went around behind him and took his gun. Slipping it into a pocket of his coat, he moved away, added, “Now sit down with your pal—so I can watch the both of you.”
For a few seconds, while Nason studied Alpert and Hymie, he considered the time element. It would take Walcott two or three minutes to find a telephone at this hour; it would take another eight or ten minutes before Fitzpatrick could get here. Say twelve minutes altogether. He decided to use the time to try and plug the gaps in his half-completed theory of what had happened.
“You’ve been pretty lucky tonight,” he said finally, looking at Rita Jordan.
“I know it.” The girl’s voice was jerky, uncertain. “I—I think they were going to kill me.”
“So,” went on Nason, “if I were you, I’d come clean. I want to know where you fit. You and Steig—”
“We were going to be married,” the girl said, her voice flat and hopeless. “Only I wasn’t satisfied. I knew he worked for Alpert, but he always had a lot of money—and he would not tell me where he got it. I was afraid that after we were married, maybe something would happen. I didn’t know what—only I was afraid.”
The girl hesitated a moment, continued in the same low tone.
“But he promised me we could go away. To Philadelphia—I’ve got a brother there. Sam said he’d tell Alpert he was going to leave next week and—”
“Oh—” Nason’s voice held a thin, metallic ring, and a mirthless smile tugged at his lips. “Maybe I get it now.” He looked at Alpert. “I guess you are the reason those other three jewel breaks were so neat.
“You could be your own fence, huh? And Steig was in on it with you—your guard. But you were afraid to let him go. So you figured a way to rub him out. You told him you were going to rob your own store to make it look like you were just another victim. But your real reason was to put him out of the way.”
“You’re nuts.” Alpert licked his lips. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You know, all right,” Nason said ominously. “And I know you put the finger on Steig in the hospital.” He went on to explain how he had checked up with the clerk at the hospital. “And if these two hoods had asked what room Steig had, you’d been clean on this. But when you called ’em at the Greek’s, you gave ’em the room number.”
Nason moved slowly forward, his dark eyes hard and glaring. “One of your punks planted those stones on Donigan.”
“No,” wheezed Alpert. “You got me wrong.” His eyes were shifty now, his forehead moist with sweat. “Why should anybody do that?”
“I can guess that part, too—now,” Nason answered. “You imported Hymie and Leo—you don’t need to worry about him anymore—and you told Steig they’d do the job and leave him tied in a chair. Maybe slug him a bit to make it look better. Only you knew they were going to rub Steig out when they finished.
“Donigan surprised the break. The trouble was”—Nason’s voice thinned out—“he thought Steig would be on his side. He turned his back and Steig, the rat, shot him. It was either that or go to jail when your punks talked. And Steig didn’t know then that he was on the spot.
“Then,” Nason’s lips pulled back, “I’ve got an idea somebody called you and told you what had happened. It would look funny, a cop who was on to that kind of a job being shot in the back. The first thing we’d think of was that somebody he’d trusted shot him—which had to be Steig.
“So you planted the stones and put Donigan’s gun back in his holster to make it look as if Donigan was the crook and Steig was honest—when we found him dead; to make us think just what Fitzpatrick did think. So that—”
A sudden gasp from Rita Jordan that was like a half-stifled scream, tensed Nason’s muscles. Then a rough voice said:
“All right. Drop it!” For a fraction of a second Nason hesitated. The voice came from behind—there was a doorway here, he remembered, which led to the apartment’s other rooms. He glanced over his shoulder. The man in the doorway who held the heavy automatic was thin, swart, black-eyed. A stranger. He was smiling now and perfect white teeth flashed in the overhead light.
Nason dropped the gun. It hit the side of his shoe as it fell, and he forced a smile, spoke to Alpert. “So I was wrong about one part? You imported three hoods instead of two.”
Moe Alpert recovered his composure in a few seconds. A sly smile filmed his puffy face and he stood up, nodding in approval.
“That was fine, Lascell. And a break—you bein’ in the kitchen after a drink.” He wiped sweat from his forehead. “You shoulda come sooner. I thought you died or something.”
He started towards the inner doorway. “I think I’ll get that drink. I need something.”
Nason, standing a few feet in front of the divan with Lascell at his side and Hymie facing him, watched Alpert leave the room and return a few seconds later with a tray. There were four glasses, a bottle of rye, some cracked ice and a siphon of soda. Alpert put the tray on a little table at one end of the divan, and began to pour whisky.
Looking questioningly at Nason as he siphoned soda, he said: “Have one?”
Hymie growled an oath, said, “To hell with all this crap. When do we lay this guy away?”
“Right now,” Alpert drained his glass and wiped his lips with the back of his hand. “Only you gotta do it without much noise.”
Lascell said: “Get a towel, Hymie.” Nason felt the sweat come out on his lip, and spring from the roots of his hair. He tried to keep his voice level.
“So I had it figured after all.”
“You were close enough,” Alpert said, and his voice got harsh and resentful.
“We had a good set-up for that punk, Steig. He came in handy for a while. Only the doll here”—he nodded to Rita Jordan—“talked him soft. He was going to quit—and he started to get tough about his share. And I hadn’t even got rid of the stuff on the last break.”
Continuing to fight for time, Nason said, hurriedly: “You won’t get away with it.”
“Sure we will,” Alpert said without the faintest trace of emotion. “We’ll dump you. Then we’ll put out the dame’s lights. The boys’ll leave town—”
“There’s still Leo,” Nason lied. “We got him down at headquarters.”
“If you have,” Lascell leered, “he won’t talk. With you gone there’s no witness against him.”
“There’s Walcott.”
“We’ll take care of him, too,” said Alpert. “If we have to.”
Lascell finished wrapping the towel around the muzzle of his gun. Nason glanced quickly about. Lascell was three feet to one side, next to Alpert. Hymie stood over by the white-faced and terrified girl on the divan.
Nason felt the pressure of Hymie’s gun in the pocket of his coat. Whether it was overconfidence, or just plain oversight on Alpert’s part, that gun had not been taken from him. One thing was certain. He had nothing to lose.
He saw Lascell’s gun come up, saw Alpert stand aside. He looked over at the girl who sat rigidly erect, her mouth half-open. Then he said, keeping his voice as level as he could:
“I guess I’d better get my drink while I can.”
“Never mind!” Lascell ordered.
Nason did not dare look at the gunman. Concentrating on his job he picked up a glass, quickly poured whiskey and began to squirt soda from the siphon.
“If this is going to be my last drink—” He glanced up, grinned at Lascell. Then, moving as he talked, he twisted his wrist sharply and shot the driving stream of soda into Lascell’s face. The gunman cursed as the charged water slapped against the bridge of his nose and filled his eyes. Momentarily blinded, he ducked, turned his head.
Pivoting and still holding to the handle of the bottle, Nason hurled it at Hymie and jerked at the gun in his pocket. He saw the heavy bottle smash into Hy
mie’s forehead, heard the crash as it shattered, saw the fellow start to sag. Then his gun was out.
Lascell lost another second trying to free his automatic from the towel. In the final instant that the gun flashed upward, Nason squeezed the trigger. Recoil was a welcome slap at his wrist. The gun roared and Lascell’s body jerked under the impact of the slug, and he fired once, wildly, before he dropped the gun.
Nason kept turning, but before he could face Alpert he saw the compact automatic swing up in the man’s fat hand.
He sensed that he was going to be hit. He felt his nerves instinctively set themselves for the shock, and he tried to twist to one side as he fired. Alpert’s gun crashed first. Nason saw the faint flash of orange flame, felt the searing pain at the side of his neck. Then the roar of his heavier gun blotted out the sound of the little automatic.
Surprise flooded Alpert’s face. He staggered, tried to bring the gun up again. This time Nason fired deliberately. And at the moment, strangely enough, he found himself thinking of Donigan who had died without a chance from a bullet in his back.
Lascell was already on the floor. Alpert’s hand came down. His fingers relaxed and the gun thudded to the carpet. For another second or two he swayed drunkenly on his widespread feet. Then he went down on his knees and fell over on his face.
Nason jerked his gaze from the picture of death. Rita Jordan pressed white-knuckled fists to the side of her cheeks and stared wildly at Hymie who was lying on his face, with glass fragments scattered about him, his hair soaked with blood and water.
Nason lowered his gun. Powder smoke choked the stale air. He blew out his breath and felt a sudden weakness undermine his tension. He stood there motionless with the sweat coming out on his face and the blood seeping down to wet his collar until a sudden noise broke the silence behind him.
Spinning about with his gun up, he was just in time to see Walcott topple in through the window from the fire escape and sprawl to the floor on top of his plate case.
Nason cursed softly, relaxed. Walcott rose, eyes wide and popping behind his glasses. His mouth sagged.
“Boy,” he breathed. “How you go. I heard the shots and I—” He pulled out his tripod, and his voice was choked with admiration and eagerness as he added: “With what I’m going to get I’ll have a job again.”
Lieutenant Fitzpatrick stood spread-legged in the center of the room until Nason finished his story. Then he shook his head from side to side and said:
“What an idea! If Steig had been finished in the first place, we’d’ve been licked.”
His eyes narrowed as he hesitated. “At that, if you hadn’t thought to check with the hospital girl—” He pursed his lips. “That was smart.”
Nason said, “It took me long enough to think of it.”
He sat in a chair by the door now, a handkerchief pressed to the side of his neck. “But there had to be some angle, because I knew Donigan. He never was a crook.”
Fitzpatrick’s keen eyes held a look of respect. “Okay. You were right and I was wrong. I’m damned glad of it.”
He glanced at the two plainclothesmen who were inspecting the bodies; at the now conscious and glowering Hymie; at the girl.
“Alpert and Lascell won’t give us any more trouble. We’ll get Hymie and this punk, Leo—if he’s still alive—for the hospital kill. And Donigan”—Fitzpatrick shook his head again—“boy, am I glad he was an honest cop.
“Anyway,” he said, “I was right about one thing. You had to show more than personality. It wasn’t personality that got you out of this jam.”
“Personality, hell!” grunted Walcott, slipping another plate holder into his camera. “I think they must’ve got him sore. And when he gets sore he gets tough.”
“I wasn’t sore,” Nason said quietly, in the tone of a man who, unaware of his surroundings, was thinking of other things. “Donigan never had a chance. I had one and I took it.”
MURDERER’S BAIT
Jerome Severs Perry
They wanted Frisco Pete for murder. He didn’t dare show himself to the girl in the next room. Yet—there are times when even a crook hiding out can’t help butting in.
FRISCO PETE CLANCY paced the shabby little bedroom like a caged animal. God, how he hated the very sight of this joint! It was worse than being in stir!
A single unshaded electric bulb cast a sickish yellow glow upon the unkempt bed, the rickety chair, the broken-down bureau. A cockroach scuttled across the bureau-top, gorged on the grease from an emptied tin of sardines.
Sardines! Frisco Pete almost gagged. For a week, now, he’d been living on sardines and soggy crackers and tepid water from the washbowl spigot in the corner of the room For seven days he hadn’t dared venture out for fear the cops would spot him And it might be another full week before things grew quiet enough for him to take it on the lam.
He cursed his luck. He cursed that damned punk of a jeweler’s messenger for having been born with a tissue-paper skull. Frisco Pete hadn’t conked the messenger hard enough to bump him off. Or rather, the blow wouldn’t have killed an ordinary guy. But the jeweler’s messenger had had an egg-shell skull Frisco Pete’s blackjack had smashed that skull like an over-ripe watermelon.
Murder! That’s what it was. Frisco Pete ground his teeth in futile rage. Of all the lousy breaks! And now, here was Frisco Pete Clancy, holed up in a cheap tenement bedroom, waiting for the roar to die down.
IT WAS hell, being cooped up this way. What good was he getting out of those damned unset sparklers? He had them in a leather pouch-belt next to the bare skin of his belly. But he didn’t dare try to fence them. Stolen diamonds were easy enough to dispose of, ordinarily. But not when they’d been stolen after a murder.
Frisco Pete clenched his fists. Everything had gone haywire! The stones would have brought him ten grand, easy. And with ten grand, he could have had a hell of a gay time! Whiskey. Glad rags. Dames—
Dames like the broad in the adjoining room, for instance. She’d just moved into the joint day before yesterday. A young, red-haired bimbo who looked hard as nails.
Frisco Pete went for red-haired dames. And it had been a long while since he’d held one in his arms!
Thinking about her had caused Frisco Pete to whittle a peep-hole in the thin door that separated his room from that of the girl next to him. He tortured him self constantly by watching her through that peep-hole. Just seeing her powder her nose did things to him. Made his blood pound; filled him with raging frustration.
Several tunes he’d been on the point of knocking on that intervening door, walking in on her. But he couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. She looked like the sort who was after the dough And Frisco Pete had no dough to offer. All he had was those damned unset sparklers, and he didn’t dare flash them.
If only he could lay his hands on enough jack to pay his fare to the coast! Out there, he could fence his stolen sparklers with impunity. Again Frisco Pete Clancy cursed his luck.
Then he heard voices drifting from the next room. The red-haired jane evidently had a visitor—a man visitor.
Bitter jealousy flooded Frisco Pete’s heart What right had that red-headed floozie to entertain a man in her room when he, Frisco Pete, was all alone and starving for a woman’s kisses . . .?
“Damn them both!” Frisco Pete muttered savagely. He switched off the light in his own room, crept toward the door in which he had whittled a peep-hole.
THE red-haired girl was standing in the center of her blowsy room. She had a sleek, smooth body, generously curved, that showed plainly through her sleazy black negligee in the glaring light from her unshaded electric bulb in the ceiling.
She was wise beyond her years. It showed in her eyes. Sullen, heavy-lidded eyes that flashed scornfully and somehow fearfully at the man The man was big, broad-shouldered, yellowhaired. He was grinning. He said: “So you recognize me, eh, baby?”
The girl said; “Yes. You’re Del Nelson, private dick.”
In the darkness of the
next room, Frisco Pete felt his hands getting clammy For God’s sake—the guy was a shamus! What the hell did that mean?
He watched, listened, every nerve taut and tense The red-haired girl was saying “You needn’t think you can get heavy with me, snoop. I don’t have to take any of your damned lip. You haven’t got anything on me, and you damn’ well know it!”
Frisco Pete saw the big, blond man take a step toward the girl, heard him say: “Baby, what’s the use of handing me the run-around this way? Let’s get together. I like you. I could go for you in a great big way. You’ve got what it takes.”
The girl sneered “Lay off! Lay off, or I’ll see to it that you get a slug through your stinking guts just as sure as my name’s Marie Sloane!”
Frisco Pete stirred Her name didn’t mean anything to him; but somehow he was glad to learn it Again he glued his eye to the peephole in the door. He could see the dick reach out, catch Mane Sloane’s wrists with a grasp whose pressure was so tight that the girl’s fingers went white.
“Think you’re a hell-cat, don’t you’ ?” the detective rasped “Well, have another think I’d just as soon ram my knuckles down your kisser as look at you!”
“Hard guy!” the girl tried to jerk loose.
“Sure. Hard. And tough. The toughest private snoop this side of hell. But I’m human I like broads Especially when they’re built like you!”
In the darkness of the adjoining room, Frisco Pete felt himself trembling with rage. The big blond private detective’s frigid, Arctic-blue eyes were wandering greedily over the swelling curves of the girl’s figure . . . To Frisco Pete, it was almost like seeing a play on the stage. Only this wasn’t a play. This was life.
The red-haired girl was saying: “I wouldn’t let you near me if you were the last man on earth!” Then her annoyer grabbed her, hauled her against himself. “Now, get this, you red-haired floozie,” he barked, “I’m making you an offer, see? A chance to get out from under the axe that’s hanging over your noggin. Play ball with me and we’ll both be in clover Get goody-goody on me, and you’ll wind up in the hoosegow for a nice long stretch Take your choice.”