Pulp Crime

by Jerry eBooks

  “And your hood, too.”

  Trauber hesitated, then turned and beckoned his floorman over.

  Sauchelli moved back from the table so he could face both squarely, and his hand rested significantly inside his coat.

  “You can’t buck this outfit, so be good,” he said. “We’re too strong.” Andrews could see that from the floorman, at least, there would be no trouble. A cheap little gunman in a theatrical dinner jacket, his face was paling with abject fear.

  “Now, we’ll all enjoy the little trick Tony’s gonna do to keep Tight-spot amused until everybody else is outta this joint.”

  De Carlo grinned with the pleased happiness of a man who loves to show off, as he said: “Well, I guess it’ll be the good ol’ dollar bill and glass and nickel trick.” He placed an empty tumbler on a dollar bill laid flat on the table; then he carefully balanced a nickel on the rim of the glass.

  “How much you bet, Tight-spot, that you get the dollar out without touchin’ the glass, and without knockin’ the nickel off the edge?”

  Andrews shrugged. He didn’t know the trick; he wasn’t interested in the trick; he was interested only in saving his skin.

  “Oh, couple of sawbucks,” he said. “I’ll bet a couple of sawbucks you can’t do it. I can’t figure any way. You might just happen to miss. I figure my odds are better that way.”

  De Carlo grinned. Carefully, without touching the glass, he rolled an end of the bill against the glass. Holding the ends of the roll between thumbs and forefingers of both hands, and still without touching the glass, he kept rolling the dollar. He did this slowly, evenly, forcing the tumbler to move smoothly along the bill until clear of it, on the table cloth, and with the coin still balanced.

  Andrews accidentally moved a knee against the table, and the nickel tinkled down inside the tumbler.

  “Okay,” he said quickly, “you win. That was an accident.”

  The reporter started to reach inside his coat for his wallet.

  “Hold it, Andrews!” Sauchelli snapped, and glanced around the now empty room. “Frisk him, Tony.”

  Tony did, said: “He’s dean, Joe.”

  “Okay, now case the joint, Tony. And make sure everybody’s gone.”

  They all remained silent, motionless, until De Carlo returned and reported that, “The joint is like a graveyard, boss,” and laughed raucously.

  Frank Adamo laughed, too, and his laugh was even more significant than De Carlo’s.

  Trauber’s face had become stoical, impassive. But his floorman was cringing visibly, although he was silent—knowing that anything he could say could never change whatever was slated to come.

  Sauchelli’s automatic was out now as he ordered: “Tony, do your stuff—the way I told you.”

  Andrews watched Tony’s face turn from a smirk to a sullen scowl as he frisked Trauber and his lieutenant, shoving the guns into his side pockets. Then De Carlo herded them both into the night-club owner’s office, where he turned on a radio—loud.

  Andrews thought to himself: “They’re getting ready fast, and I haven’t thought at a way oat of this one.”

  Adamo grinned evilly, got up and walked across the club to its entrance. He pulled aside an inch or two of lowered blind and stood there looking out.

  Sauchelli kept his automatic lazily covering Andrews, who watched De Carlo, Trauber and the floorman come out of the office. Trauber stopped beside Grade’s glass-enclosed cigarette stand, the fat roll of the night’s take held in one hand.

  “All right,” De Carlo was saying, “hand over fifteen per cent of the night’s business. I’ll count it out.”

  Trauber glared and shouted: “Malone can’t do this to me—we’re old pals!”

  De Carlo didn’t say a word, but his scowling face and steady gun muzzle—his very silence—spoke more than words.

  Boiling anger welled up in Ernie Trauber, and a slow flush of rage crept up the big man’s bull-like neck. Even through a red haze of fury, he tried to reason with himself to pay the cut to the outfit against which it would be impossible for him to pit himself. But anger won out . . .

  Craftily, Trauber held out the money. De Carlo reached, but before his gun-free hand could touch the money, Trauber dropped it to the floor and darted behind the cigarette stand. At the same time, the dapper little floorman started to duck.

  Tony De Carlo was quick for such a big man. He snapped a quick shot that took the little gunman in the throat and laid him out dead on the floor on his back. Ernie Trauber was making a plunging dive toward the inside of the show case, and De Carlo’s gun roared again.

  A tiny hole appeared in Trauber’s forehead. But the big man’s dive had already commenced. He kept going, his clawed, outstretched hand seeking the gun hidden among the cigarettes and cigars inside the show case. There was a crash of broken glass, and Trauber lay still; his right fist, clutching a handful of cigars, was poked through a jagged hole in the front glass of the case.

  The radio blared on, an ironic blanket of sound for exploding cartridges.

  De Carlo picked up the fallen money, then glanced back at the cigarette stand. He saw Trauber’s grotesquely grinning face and the outstretched hand holding the cigars. The show-off in De Carlo was irrepressible.

  Grinning, he plucked a cigar from the hand and said, “Thanks, pal,” and then, noticing a streak of blood on the cigar, he threw it away and spat after it in disgust.

  “Cut the horseplay,” came Sauchelli’s sharp voice. “Come here with that . . .”

  De Carlo brought the money over to the table, where Sauchelli had calmly sat and watched the double murder, keeping Andrews covered at the same time.

  Again De Carlo’s smirk turned to a scowl, and he said: “Okay to give this damn scribbler the works now, eh, Joe?”

  “No, you fool,” came Sauchelli’s quick reply. “Why do you think I didn’t do that already. This has just gotta be a regular gang killin’. It’d raise too much stink to have a reporter’s stiff found here—and I don’t aim to have no corpse ridin’ around with us. We’ll tie him up, hold his nose an’ make him drink plenty whisky, till he’s good an’ drunk. Then we’ll just have a good ‘live drunk in the car—in case . . . We’ll take care of him later.”

  Tight-spot Andrews had been doing a lot of thinking during the past few minutes, reviewing in his mind detail after detail concerning the lives of these men, searching desperately for some way out of this, his tightest spot yet. Somehow, his eyes had returned, time and again, to the nickel in the glass on the table in front of him. That glass with which De Carlo had done his trick, and the nickel inside it, seemed to hold some solution to his tight spot. Then, quite suddenly he remembered that other glass with that other nickel in it . . .

  De Carlo, grinning again, started toward the man from the Dial.

  “Hold it!” Andrews suddenly snapped.

  The unexpected imperativeness of the reporter’s tone halted De Carlo. Sauchelli did no more than nod to De Carlo to continue to do a good job of knocking out the newsman. But Andrews’ next words stirred fiery, fierce interest in Joe Sauchelli’s eyes.

  “Sauchelli—you’d like to know who murdered your brother, wouldn’t you?” De Carlo fell back a pace and looked questioningly at Sauchelli, who said: “You—better have something to say—or I’ll use a knife on you.” His voice rose thinly, cruelly: “I’ll—FH cut your damned heart out!”

  Tight-spot Andrews pointed calmly to the nickel in the glass, saying: “That glass with the nickel in it suddenly reminded me of another glass with a nickel in it—and that other was found in the room with your brother Luigi’s body.” Sauchelli’s face was contorted with emotion, and he was speechless.

  De Carlo said, “Say, you tryin’ to—” and stopped quite suddenly.

  Frank Adamo had now come away from his post at the entrance, and he was listening intently a few paces off.

  Finally Sauchelli snarled: “Why, you damn punk, you can’t try to fool me. I searched every inch of that r
oom, looking for something the fool cops mighta missed. There wasn’t no glass in the room with no nickel in it.” Andrews leaned forward, fixing Sauchelli with intent eyes, and said: “The police removed the glass before you came. You see, they took some things down to headquarters for special fingerprinting other than what was done around the room.”

  Joe Sauchelli looked queerly at De Carlo.

  “Joe, you don’t think I coulda—” De Carlo gasped, and got no further as fear lumped his throat.

  Adamo came closer on catlike feet, a strange, tense look in his eyes.

  “I know, De Carlo,” Andrews was saying, “a thousand guys probably know that glass trick. However, who else did Luigi know that did that trick?”

  Andrews knew he was only shooting in the dark, and he waited tensely.

  De Carlo paled at sight of Sauchelli’s blazing eyes, and gulped: “It’s this damn scribbler’s trick. Joe, that ain’t no proof—that ain’t no proof.”

  “You sure you wasn’t there, Tony?” Sauchelli asked, icily.

  “No, Joe, I wasn’t there—I wasn’t there.”

  Andrews noticed that Frank Adamo’s mouth was twitching more than usual; that the man’s face was drawn.

  “I know that ain’t no real proof,” Sauchelli said, thoughtfully, “but there’s a chance you were there that night—an’ not in Philly. Maybe you an’ Luigi had a fight over somethin’. I dunno about the nickel in the glass, but maybe I oughta—Say, it seems to me that you were pretty sore that time my brother got a bigger cut on a job than you did.”

  Tony De Carlo’s face looked as if it would never smirk again, as he begged: “No—Joe, don’t give it to me just on a thing like that. I was there, Joe, but I never done it. I tell you what I saw . . .” Joe Sauchelli’s eyes were filled with a deadly belief that he had found his brother’s murderer.

  “Put your hands on the table, Tony,” he said, coldly.

  De Carlo’s trembling hands came up, away from Trauber’s and the floorman’s guns he had put in the side pockets of his coat.

  “Stalling now, eh, Tony?” Sauchelli said, sneering. “Gonna make up a story about somethin’, eh?”

  “Better hear what he’s got to say, Sauchelli, before you shoot,” Andrews advised.

  The expression on Frank Adamo’s face was changing from tense anger to puzzlement, to anger again.

  “Yeah—listen, Joe,” De Carlo pleaded, “I went up to see Luigi—I got back from Philly ahead of time—an’ I see a guy come sneakin’ out of the apartment. So I duck into that dark corner of the hall, an’ I watch. He wipes his fingerprints off the knob of the front door an—”

  Frank Adamo stepped a pace nearer and interrupted with: “You don’t say, Tony. Did you see who he was?”

  De Carlo looked up into Adamo’s eyes, which were fixed on him like those of a snake, and stammered: “No—no I didn’t get a very good look at him . . . I got into the apartment through a window from the fire escape. I saw that Luigi was dead. I didn’t tell Joe because I didn’t want to get mixed up in any trouble with him not believin’ me—or somethin’.”

  “You are goin’ to tell me who that man was,” came Sauchelli’s icy tones. “I think you’re Iyin’.”

  Andrews suddenly leaned forward and said: “I hinted at it before, when I asked De Carlo if Luigi knew anybody else, personally, who did the glass trick. Perhaps—ah, Adamo learned it from De Carlo. There was a glass in that room, a glass with a nickel fallen into it.”

  Adamo started forward, viciously. But Sauchelli stopped him with a significant movement of his automatic.

  “Tony,” said Sauchelli with deadly chill, “you’re acting too damned scared and yellow. Somebody killed Luigi for that big cut he got, and I know you were sore ‘cause he got so much more’n you.”

  The muzzle of Sauchelli’s gun rose a trifle, centering more perfectly on De Carlo’s heart.

  De Carlo hesitated, then burst out: “I ain’t never ratted before, but you ain’t gonna give it to me for nothin’, Joe. I know who done it. Frank done it! He’s the guy I saw coming out of Luigi’s room.”

  Frank Adamo leaped to one side, catlike, hand clawing for his gun. Joe Sauchelli slipped to one knee from his chair and pulled trigger. Then the air was filled with the thunder of both men’s guns.

  Tight-spot Andrews backed swiftly away from the table. De Carlo, caught between two fires, grabbed spasmodically at a shoulder when he was hit; then he slumped to the floor. The reporter saw Adamo stagger and fall, mouth gushing blood, after Sauchelli’s fourth shot. Desperately, the reporter launched his long body in a tackle at De Carlo.

  The newshawk’s shoulder hit the table, and it skidded across the dance floor and crashed against a pillar. But Andrews’ outflung hands seized the wounded De Carlo, and the reporter pulled the racketeer’s body up and over. Using it as a shield, he struggled to his feet.

  Joe Sauchelli’s automatic spat—once, twice. Andrews felt the thudding impact of bullets tearing into De Carlo’s big body. Then he hurled the weight from him, straight at Sauchelli.

  Sauchelli went down under De Carlo’s big body, and Andrews threw himself at both of them, fists flailing. Those fists were wasted on De Carlo, as Tight-spot found out afterwards, but one hefty swing put Sauchelli out for a good ten minutes—long enough for the Dial man to telephone the police and for them to arrive . . .

  Much later that morning, Tight-spot Andrews and Captain of Detectives, Bert James were drinking coffee and munching rolls in a dog wagon. Both were well pleased—although the captain was a bit irate because Andrews had been taking delight in holding out on him about the mystery of the glasses with the nickels in them.

  Captain James growled: “Come on, sorehead, just because I haven’t had a chance to read your old newspaper story, why hold out on a fella?”

  John Andrews smiled and explained: “When I went up to Luigi’s apartment with Lieutenant Doyle, it happened that neither he nor the boys with him had a nickel to feed the pay phone in the hall to get the corpse doc and the fingerprint crew. I was fumbling with my change, and I dropped one of my nickels in a glass that happened to be on a table. He wouldn’t let me fish it out for fear of disturbing any prints. I remember looking down at it and making a wisecrack about somebody getting graft. Somehow, at the Red Parrot, my memory kept asking me where I had ever before seen a glass with a nickel in the bottom of it. Foolish—but then I have a theory that similarities—”

  The captain broke in with: “All right, all right, John—just let it go that that great crackpot, Tight-spot Andrews, got out of another impossible jam.”

  FORTY GRAND FADEOUT

  Benton Braden

  Snatch artists were so clever they had a bank sewed up to safely pass ransom thousands. And G-man Jim Forde stuck his neck out so far that he was left to rot in a treasure trap.

  Jim Forde moved slowly, apparently aimlessly, down the short main street of the village of Clayville. At each step his feet seemed to move more sluggishly. His relaxed figure indicated complete lack of purpose. Yet not for an instant did his eyes waver from the front doors of the First National Bank of Clayville.

  The bank was across the street, on the corner, and in exactly three minutes it would close. Jim Forde was timing his steps so that he could cross the street and enter the door just a few seconds before it was scheduled to close.

  Forde, although almost a stranger in the village, knew a great deal about that bank and the young man, named Bert Orton, who managed it. It was a one-man bank. It never carried more than five thousand in cash. Five thousand was ample to care for the ordinary needs of the few business houses in the village. The bank shipped its excess cash to banks in nearby cities where it could be drawn upon when needed.

  Forde’s eyes glittered a little as Sam Weisner, who owned and operated two of the local stores, emerged from the doors of the bank. An empty bag swung from Weisner’s wrist. He had just made his last deposit for the day. He hurried on up the opposite side of the street.


  Forde reached the corner. He glanced at his watch and moved his left arm a bit to assure himself that his gun and holster hadn’t slipped out of place. Then he crossed the street, still walking deliberately. It was fifteen seconds to three o’clock when he pushed open the door of the bank and stepped inside.

  As he closed the door he unobtrusively threw the inside bolt so that no one could enter behind him. A quick glance told him that Bert Orton was alone in the single cage that the bank boasted. Orton appeared not to notice that the bolt had been thrown, but he thrust his head through the opening in the grille and looked sharply at Forde.

  The questioning look in his eyes was natural. Bert Orton had never seen Jim Forde before. But there was no threat in Forde’s pleasant features. He was smiling.

  “What is it?” Orton asked quickly. “The bank is closing—right now.”

  “I guessed as much.” Forde’s smile widened as he spoke. “I took the liberty of throwing the bolt as I entered. I wanted to make sure we wouldn’t be interrupted.”

  Orton looked startled, took a step backward.

  “You needn’t be alarmed,” Forde held up the-palms of his hands reassuringly. “It’s not a stickup. I only want to ask you a few questions. I closed the door so that a late customer couldn’t interrupt us. My name is Forde—Jim Forde. Here’s my calling card.”

  He took a small leather case from his pocket as he advanced to the window, opened it, held it up for Orton’s inspection. Orton took a very deep breath as he looked at it, then expelled slowly.

  “You—you,” Orton stammered and he lost a little color in his face, “you’re what the papers call a—a—”

  “A G-man?” Forde chuckled. “Right. I’m from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

  “What—what business could you have here?” Orton asked weakly.

  “I’ll explain that,” Forde replied, his tone a little brisk now. “But suppose I step into the space back there behind the counter where we can sit down and talk things over.”

  Without waiting for Orton’s consent he moved past the cage toward the rear and swung open the gate in the railing. His eyes were very alert now. There were two other exits from this space. One led into the cage and the other was a door that obviously led into a room in the rear of the bank. There was also, of course, the door that led into the vault. The vault door was still open.