Pulp Crime

by Jerry eBooks

  “Yeah? Yeah?” I began walking around the room.

  “They had me in a garage,” Joe said. “They blindfolded me to take me there, but there was a phone there, and I saw the number—Independence 3668.”

  “Good!” I said. I couldn’t stop walking around. Even when I picked up the phone, I kept pacing up and down as far as its wire would let me. A call to the phone company gave me the address, a South Side garage. I hung up the phone and got Joe another brandy.

  HE toughed over it, and said: “I wouldn’t be out yet, only that heel, the one you had up here, crashed the joint. They gunned him out, Van; and while they were worrying about that, I got away.”

  “Yeah?” I said. “Yeah?” I kept on walking, hitting my hands together. “You might as well know the score, Joe: What happened was, a bunch of Chinese gave Lamba a pile of dough to invest in a hot-car racket. They wanted something extra-legal, because it was the profits of a lottery. I don’t think he had any hot-car racket: and as I figure it, he wanted me to lay the money for him down South, and then he could say: ‘Van Eyck was in on it—he gambled your money away.’ See, I have this weakness for gambling; everybody knows it. With Lamba’s connections as an underworld banker, the bookies would probably have returned the money to him as fast as I bet it. Then the horse would never start.”

  “And you’d be on the spot,” Joe said. “Cheest, boss, cheest! What’ll we do?”

  “You’ll go home,” I said, “and try not to scare your wife to death with that face of yours.” I saw him looking down at his vest, and I added: “Take that new tan tweed of mine, Joe. It’s too tight for me, anyway.”

  He didn’t want to, but he was used to taking orders from me. While he was messing around in the bedroom, I used the phone. Harry Leong answered.

  “This is Chief Van Eyck,” I said. “My laundry is all wrong.”

  “Yes sah, yes.” Harry said. “Me no pleak Englis’ velly well. You wait?” The next voice was that of the committee-man who did not carry a cane. “May I assist you, sir?” he said.

  “I need some clean shirts right away,” I said. “I’ll be in my car at the corner of Naples and Main in ten minutes. Could you send some one there?”

  “Yes, certainly, Chief Van Eyck.”

  I hung up, and looked at my watch. It was two o’clock in the morning. I packed my pockets with enough guns to handle a squad, and added a set of brass knuckles and a blackjack for extras. Then I set out.

  The committee-man had taken off his high hat and was wearing a battered old felt one that probably belonged to Harry Leong. When I slowed my car at Naples, he slid out of a shadow and hopped in. I speeded up, and went around a lot of corners fast, in case we were being followed.

  When I finally slowed up, he said: “My, that was quite a ride, Chief Van Eyck. I presume you have a plan, sir? I did not bring my elder compatriots along; but I have their authority to act as you advise us. I must tell you, sir, you made a very favorable impression on them.”

  “That was my wise saying,” I said. He grinned a little, and told me: “Mr. Gow maintains that your remark is from the sayings of Confucius. Mr. Ch’aing says not.”

  “Tell them to look up the five-foot bookshelf of the wise President Lowell.”

  “Oh, now,” he said, “you are attempting to josh me. It is not from there; I have read all the books in the collection, preliminary to attending Harvard, myself.”

  I gulped, and said: “No, I haven’t a plan—to get back to business. I thought I would tell you about—the heat of the moment. I sent my assistant out to follow Lamba. He was captured, and badly beaten. He might have been hurt worse, but a gunman who I believe works for you—I don’t know his name—broke in. Lamba’s men killed him.”

  The Chinese sighed. “Regrettable, but he was well paid. And he was so ugly.”

  “He certainly was . . . Look, we are going to have a showdown with Lamba. This is on the verge of turning into a bad gang war. I don’t want to mix into anything like that, and it wouldn’t get your money back. I suggest a conference with him. Once we have your money back, and you out of the way, I’m going to do a little private revenge work; but I want you out of it.”

  “That shows a tremendous solicitude on your part,” said the Harvard man.

  “Not at all,” I said, pushing the car around some more nice corners. “There’s too much Federal heat on you. I want you out of town, and away from me, before I do anything to attract much attention. Now, my suggestion is, we call up Lamba, ask for a meeting. We’ll compromise with him; he’s to give back as much money as we can make him give, and you not to yell about his keeping the rest.”

  “Well, yes, that would be satisfactory. But really, I don’t think he will agree to surrender any of the money at all. Why should he?”

  “He takes me seriously. And I doubt very much if he knows just what would happen if the Federals heard about this. Anyway, let’s try it.”

  “All right, sir. You should know best, Chief Van Eyck.”

  I parked outside an all-night drugstore, and went in. I had told the strict truth; I intended to make serious war on Lamba for what he had done to Joe Lavery; but I wanted the Chinese out first. I didn’t want to get ticketed as helping them to break all those Federal laws.

  My first call was to the night court. I found out the name of the lawyer who had habeased Lamba, and called him. He was still up, from the speed with which he answered the phone. “Van Eyck,” I said . . . “Tell Lamba that I’m in with the Chinese. I’ve got them to agree to a compromise if he’ll meet us tonight.”

  “Really, Chief, I don’t—”

  “Quit the stalling. You know where Lamba is, and you know what I’m talking about. The thing is, there has been too much publicity; Uncle Sam’s boys have heard about it through stool-pigeons, and the town’s filling with Treasury and Department of Justice men. Tell Lamba I said that if either he or I is to save our skin, we have to get the Chinese out of it tonight.”

  He did quit kidding. “I agree with you, Chief. This is a terrible load off my mind. I—The trouble is in getting Mr. Lamba to attend a conference.”

  “We’ll put it in his territory. At his garage on the South Side. Tell him to call there and tell the boys to admit me and one Chinese in ten minutes. The number is Independence 3668, in case you’ve forgotten it.”

  “Hold the wire.” I suppose he talked to Lamba. In a couple of minutes he said: “All right, Chief. We’ll meet you at the place you said in ten minutes.”

  I went back and nodded to the Chinese. “Let me do the talking when we get there.”

  THERE was no great trouble finding the garage.

  It was one of these open-all-night joints: I drove in and stopped on the floor. An attendant came up, looked at the Chinese, and said: “Chief Van Eyck? You’re to come this way, please.”

  We left the car standing there, and went to a car-elevator that had an indicator on it showing that the car could go up two floors. Naturally, it went down when we got into it, the attendant disregarding the regular lever, and just pushing a button. The elevator let us out in a little room mostly filled by a furnace: a door behind the furnace led us to a hall with three or four doors. The boy knocked at one of them, and went away.

  After a couple of minutes the door opened, and a thin fellow in a blue shirt and yellow necktie stared at us unhappily while a cigarette dribbled smoke into his right eye and made it water.

  Then he sighed and let us in. As I went by him, the ash on his cigarette got too long for gravity, and dropped; he jerked his head agilely, and the ash missed his fine blue shirt. He said, “Lamba aint here yet,” and his eye kept on watering.

  I looked at the thin boy, who had gone back to a game of solitaire in the corner, and said to my Chinese: “You see why the white race considers itself superior.”

  HE was too polite to laugh, but a muscle in his cheek jumped. I dragged a couple of chairs up to the table, and we sat down, and watched our host cheat himself by sneaking a queen
from the bottom of the deck.

  I explained: “He takes his coat off so he won’t suspect himself of having the aces up his sleeve.”

  The thin boy did not look around, but he said: “Talkin’ to keep your teeth from rattlin’, Van Eyck?”

  “Not particularly, pal,” I told him. “It’s warm enough in here.”

  He half turned his head. “So you’re the tough Chief Van Eyck! Cheest, an’ I’ve known real men afraid to play your tracks. Tough!”

  “Anything tell you I wasn’t?” I asked. “You came around fast enough,” he said.

  That was what I wanted to know. He was one of the crew who had maced poor Joe up. I bit my lip to keep my real feelings from showing, and grinned. “Don’t play it too hard, pal. Where’s Lamba? We haven’t got all night.”

  “He’ll be along, son, he’ll be along.” The cigarette burned his lip, and he spat it out. It lay smoldering on the concrete floor—which was not so hot, considering that this was a garage, a business which entails a certain amount of gas.

  The boy stole another card from down under, and then his game went faster. There was a knock at the door. He did not get up or look up, but turned over cards, rapidly. He slapped the last card down, and got up as the knock came a second time.

  “It came out,” he said. “It almost always comes out for me.” He unlocked the door, and let Lamba and the mouthpiece in.

  The lawyer said good evening. Giuseppi Lamba said nothing at all.

  I waited till they were seated. The thin boy had lit another cigarette and was starting a second game of solitaire. Finally, I said: “All right. We’re here for the showdown, Lamba. I might as well tell you that I have been retained by the Lee Chow Far to regain some money they had given you to invest for them.” I waited, but Lamba said nothing. He just looked at me out of his ugly face.

  “They have decided to invest it elsewhere,” I said. I stopped. Nobody said anything. I took another breath. “Of course, you have been put to some trouble, and they are willing for you to take a commission, part of the money—” Lamba spoke at last. “What money?” he asked. He asked it very simply.

  I laughed. “Oh, swell!” I said. “Now I know what tone the interview’s going to take. Pal, you’re considered smart; the biggest financier of. the underworld. O.K. Then you know just, how hot Federal heat can get. Did you know, pal, that this money was being given to you to handle to avoid a Federal income-tax, that it was made by violating the Federal lottery laws? Or that it was being withdrawn from a fund set up to do a little smuggling?”

  LAMBA said: “You’re telling it, Van j Eyck.” His eyes reminded me that I had manhandled him earlier that evening. Evidently he didn’t like me.

  “I’m telling it,” I agreed. “That’s right. What is called G-heat,” I said. “Though, technically, I don’t think the Department of Justice men are in on it. But all the other Government employees are. Alcatraz, Lamba! I don’t want to see it; neither do you. So here’s what I’m selling! Give these boys back part of their money, and then all of you get out of my town.”

  “And the cop we—the cop that was killed?” Lamba asked.

  “I’ll handle that,” I said. I meant it, too, but not the way they were supposed to think I did.

  Lamba shrugged. “What does that get me? The Feds don’t mind what town they’re—”

  “I told you this was the showdown, Lamba,” I said. “Why keep kibitzing around? You know you were scared of what the hatchet-men or what-not would do to you. That is why you wanted me to go South with you—so I could be the fall-guy. with my gambling reputation. So the tong—though they don’t like that name—would think I was the double-crosser, and not you.”

  The lawyer said something to Lamba.

  Lamba shrugged, and said: “How much? And what guarantee the Chinkies will take it and leave me alone?”

  I said: “Forty grand; and Mr.—”

  “Lee,” the Chinese said. “My name is Lee.”

  I took out my fountain-pen, shook it on the floor to make it write, and scribbled a written guarantee that the Lee Chow Far Company was satisfied.

  “Mr. Lee’s personal guarantee that he speaks for the whole committee. Right?”

  “Quite correct,” Lee said.

  Lamba said: “Too much.” And I knew I had him.

  We bickered for fifteen minutes. Finally we arrived at thirty grand. I shook more ink into the pen, and Lee signed. Lamba turned to the blue shirt, and said:

  “Go get me twenty-five G’s, Tony. Van Eyck, there’s eve thousand in your safe.”

  “The cops have it,” I said.

  “You can get it.”

  I argued a few words to give the thing color, and finally nodded. “O.K. I take that as my fee. All right, Mr. Lee.”

  Lee was good. Oh, he was swell. He acted just reluctant enough, then let me talk him into it. And I had not rehearsed with him, at all; he had no idea what I was up to. But his elder colleagues, as he called them, had said to trust me.

  TONY went out. I didn’t think he’d be long; Lamba’s racket depended on never being very far from plenty of ready cash. He was back in about five minutes. Lamba counted out the money and returned it. Lee and I were taken up to the street. I drove him back to Leong’s. He never asked a question.

  As I let him out, I said: “I really want you and your colleagues to get out of town. And remember this: you don’t know me. We had no dealings. I think I’ll be able to get the rest of your money for you, and of course, the five grand is yours too. That was just an act.”

  “Of course, sir. We have a car; we shall be outside your State within two hours. You know where to reach us.”

  I said I did. He got out of the car, and I drove around to think. When I had gone three blocks, I realized I was being followed. I made a sudden U-turn, and that brought me alongside Inspector Wellwater and his staff, sitting in a police sedan. I could not tell how long they had been following me.

  Adam ranged his bony figure out of the car, and came over to me. Shiny metal dangling from his hand caught the light from a street lamp, and shone into my eyes, so that I blinked.

  “Morris, drive this car,” Wellwater said. His voice was absolutely dead, without inflection of any sort. “Van Eyck, you’re under arrest. Put out your wrists, please.”

  I got out of the car, and said: “That isn’t necessary, Adam. I’ll give you my parole.”

  “And last night,” he said, still in his dead voice, “I would have taken it. Your wrists, please, Van Eyck. I don’t want to use force.”

  And then, suddenly, I got it. He was sorry: he was all broken up. For years be had disliked me, had done everything he could to curb me; but he had always believed I was on the level in my intent, if not in my methods. Now he didn’t believe that any more, and it hurt him.

  I said: “I don’t blame you for nabbing me, Adam. The money in the safe, and some of the things I have done, some of the places I’ve been tonight. I don’t think I can get clear in a court; but I want you to know this, Adam: I really am on the up-and-up.”

  He looked down at the pavement, and his voice was sulky. “I’d be a poor cop if I didn’t pinch you and hold you; but if there’s anything or any place that one of my men could—”

  “You’d only involve the whole police force,” I said. “The Federals are probably on our heels now.”

  Lieutenant Morris, who was in my car behind me, snapped his fingers. Wellwater looked at him, and Morris said, in an odd voice: “Van, has the contact been made? Are we blocking—”

  Morris had always been on my side. In his efforts to think the best of me, he thought up an entirely new story. It began to clear.

  “I hope so, Morris,” I said. “The contact-man left me ten minutes ago.” The old Van Eyck brain started turning over again, and I saw my way out. “Look, Adam,” I said. “After all, compounding a felony isn’t so awful. I’ll take my rap if I have to, but I’m merely crazy with anxiety. May I make a phone call?” Adam said: “I was a hee
l not to think of this before, Of course. Van, go ahead. Morris, drive him to a phone.—Your parole, Van?”

  “I won’t try to escape.”

  IF you don’t understand what had happened, I don’t blame you. I was a little mixed up myself. But look: the money in my safe could have been ransom money. Lamba’s knowing the serial numbers could mean that there had been a slip-up at a bank or office some place, and he was telling us that his gang wouldn’t accept listed money.

  And all my slipping around and refusing to talk to the police could mean—a contact! Now do you see? The word “Federals” was what started Morris on that interpretation.

  A kidnaping! I had been trying—according to the way Morris and Wellwater read my actions—to redeem a kidnaped person, and I couldn’t talk to the cops for fear there would be a leak, and the hostage would be killed.

  My hands were slippery with sweat as I grabbed a receiver in an all-night drugstore and rang Harry Leong’s shop again. Mr. Lee answered. I guess Harry had finally gone to bed; even Chinese laundrymen must sleep some time.

  “It’s you,” I said. “They let you go!” He said: “Is this Chief Van Eyck? Please, sir, I do not quite understand.”

  I said: “The police have got me. I had to let them figure out it was a kidnaping. They want to raid the Lamba place, but first we had to be sure you were out.”

  Golly, I don’t know whether all Chinese are as smart as that man, or only Harvard Chinese. Anyway, he was the quickest to catch on of anyone I’ve ever known. I’d found that out when we were dealing with Lamba.

  He said: “Oh, yes, thank you; I am quite safe.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. I could see Morris grinning through the glass. “Are your uncles pleased?”

  “Yes, they are very pleased,” he said.

  “Of course, they mind losing the twenty thousand dollars.”

  “They have complete confidence in you, Chief.”

  “Wait there.” I said. “The police may let me come around to see you. It’ll do my eyes good to see you safe and free.”