Pulp Crime

by Jerry eBooks

  The tipoff came after I pushed Pete off the stool and slid in his place. The market was still backing and filling, trying to push its way up a little, without much luck, and for the first hour I forgot about White’s order. I even forgot there was a chance of a jam-up.

  That’s until I looked down at the slip the boy from the news-ticker had slipped on my file. It was all I needed.

  “SAC—Service Aircraft Corp. plane explodes; crashes in test flight. Details later.”

  Like that, a million dollars’ worth of company blown to hades. And me stuck with 2,000 shares of it without a buyer!

  I said, “Holy cripes,” and flagged the switchboard girl to try White for me again. I just sat there, holding the phone, waiting for it and hoping there wouldn’t be a kickback on this thing. I was still holding the phone when the last SAC price appeared on the tape—5 %.

  Ten points off, at two thousand bucks a point. Nice, that.

  Garson came in on me again, saying, “Listen, Cort, you get that name—” and I said:

  “Take it up with the big boss, Garson. Get Harwarth. It’s supposed to be one of White’s customers, but I dunno which. You better tell the boss.”

  “Me tell him?” Garson said. “What’ll you be doing, kiddo?”

  “Looking for White,” I told him. “And looking hard.”

  I flagged Pete to come back from the front board and take over, and then I moved down the corridor to White’s office, kicking open the door, hoping to hell the guy had come back.

  He’d come back, all right. But not the way I’d been hoping.

  HIS body was a thick blob of fat across the desk, his big head resting on the fat, soft arms. He was in one hell of a condition for a customer’s man.

  I said, aloud, “The drunken wizard,” and cut in close to him, grabbing him by the hair to yank his head back and see if I could shake him out of the fog.

  I didn’t shake.

  I just stood there, holding his hair in my right hand and staring at the dull strip of metal jutting out of his side. I knew what that metal was, all right; I’d seen it before, on White’s desk. It was a dagger-type paper cutter, razor sharp. But it was only two inches of it, and a useless two inches.

  The other four inches was inside Bill White.

  I said, “What—” and the voice behind me said:

  “Forget something, son?”

  I swung around, fast, staring at him. My fingers were still curled in White’s hair and the movement jerked the body sideways, sliding it off the desk towards me. I stayed that way, hanging on to the dead guy’s hair, staring at the man at the door.

  He was slim and dark, with bright little eyes that seemed to dig holes in me, and an easy, sure way of carrying himself, like he knew what he was doing. He said, again, “Forget something, son?” and then I placed him.

  “Cops,” I said, aloud. “You’re from the cops.”

  He didn’t say anything. His little eyes kept drilling into me, like bright little lights, but he didn’t say anything. He was taking his time about it. It was like he was frozen there, not moving, not saying a word, like he didn’t give a damn what was happening.

  “A knife,” I told him. “A paper cutter, stuck into him like a knife. Right into him.” I managed to pull my eyes away from those bright pinpoints, and get a glimpse behind him, into the open hall. There were two men out there, one of them in uniform. Neither one of them said a word.

  “Murder.” The sound of the word, me using it, jolted me. I said it over, explaining it to him. “Murder. Somebody killed him.”

  The little guy said, again, “Forget something, son?” and I shook my head at him, not getting it.

  The two men outside, the cop in uniform and the other one, pushed through the doorway and moved toward me, flanking the little guy. The plain clothes one was built thick, with a short, fat neck, and he lumbered forward in a half-crouch, like a turtle. He was a couple of steps in front of them when he reached me and shot his right hand out to grab my shoulder.”

  “Let him go, buddy,” he said, slowly. “Just let him go. You already killed him.”

  I said, “Yeah. Let him go,” and then I realized what he was talking about and let my eyes drop to the desk.

  White’s head was pulled back, the dead green eyes gaping up at me like dull pools of oil, and it was my fingers that were holding it back that way, like I was getting ready to shave his throat. I’d been standing there all that time, clinging to the dead hair, and not even knowing it.

  I let go, fast, pushing away, and the body seemed to follow me across the room, slumping out of the chair, the big head butting against my chest.

  The last thing I remember is the dick’s words registering in my brain.

  He hadn’t repeated them—my brain had just suddenly picked them up and said them over for me.

  “You already killed him.”

  For me that was the curtain speech.

  THE cop was sitting at Harwarth’s desk when I came out of it, smoking one of the boss’s favorite cigars. He blew a cloud of smoke my way, squinted his eyes, and said, heavily: “You little punks always fold.”

  I swung my feet off the couch, starting to get up, and then I changed my mind. I half crouched that way, my head in my hands, until some of the blackness cleared up, and then I managed to straighten, leaning back against the wall.

  “I never passed out before,” I said, slowly. The words seemed to hang back in my throat, like I was drunk. “It’s the first time,” I told him.

  The cop scowled. “You maybe never killed a guy before,” he suggested. “And you maybe didn’t expect Grady to be waiting for you, like that.” He took another drag on his cigar and spit the smoke towards me. “You ain’t got your feet wet, buddy,” he told me. “You better give before Grady gets tough.”

  Grady would be the small one, I figured. I remembered how he’d stood there in the doorway saying, “Forget something, son?” Not moving a muscle, not giving me a lead, just waiting for the break. Grady could be tough, all right. But there’d be no reason to hound me. No reason at all.

  I told the cop that and he grinned at me through the smoke. “Grady don’t see it that way,” he said, evenly. “He thought maybe the hot-head who done the murder would come back, thinking maybe he slipped up somewhere. When your boss found the stiff and called him, he gave a hush order on it, just waiting for you.”

  I said that was a sweet idea. But the way I saw it, they didn’t have a damn thing on me, and they knew it. I said: “You can’t hold a guy for finding a body.” The cop said: “That ain’t all they’re holding you for.” And then he clammed up on me. I figured I had him, that they were just fishing around, trying to see what they could get on me.

  I never figured that they already had it.

  Even when Grady started painting the picture for me later, after they’d hauled me back to White’s office, I didn’t realize how black it was.

  They’d moved the body, but they had a room full of people, this time. Harwarth shook his white shock of hair at me as I came in and said: “Feeling better, Ramsey?” I didn’t answer him. I was too busy sizing up the crowd.

  They hauled all of White’s big customers in, all those from whom he might take a thirty-grand order without wanting cash on the line.

  Old man Rackman was seated in a corner of the room, tapping his cane against the arm of the chair. His smooth, high-priced secretary, George Dietrich, stood behind him, half-lounging against the wall. Mrs. Mabel Bedding, the exFollies queen who’d married a richbucks, kept running her diamond-crusted fingers along the window sill, following the bright reflections with her eyes.

  That, with my boss, Harwarth, and the two cops, made up the crowd. A mixed enough group, all right; and even more mixed than they figured. One of them—excluding the dicks—was a murderer.

  Except for Harwarth, not one of them spoke to me. They just stayed the way they were, the dame staring out the window, Rackman and Dietrich together in the corner, and the two detec
tives at the end of the room.

  I said, to Harwarth, “Did you find out who bought the SAC?” and the boss shook his head, not answering.

  Grady came into it, keeping his voice low, conversational. He wasn’t fooling me a minute. I had him figured, all right. The quiet kind, who goes along waiting for a hole in your story and then plows right through it, spreading it out big enough to fit the death chair in.

  “Here’s how we stand,” he told me, easily. “None of White’s customers gave him that order for Service Aircraft. We can’t find any indication that he put in a 2,000 share bid.”

  He had me too tense, that guy did. Just the way he was talking, I got my fur up.

  That’s why I missed the big point of what he’d said. And I shouldn’t have missed it.

  It was the opening gun. And I treated it like a dud.

  I said, “He put the order in, all right. And I slapped it right through to Garson. It was around ten-thirty.”

  “Ten twenty-five,” Grady told me. “We’ve checked with Garson on the time the order went to the floor. But that’s all you gave him. Just an order.”

  “That’s all I had,” I explained, carefully. “I was busy, juggling a slew of orders around, when the private wire from White’s office flashed on my desk. I picked up the phone and he says, ‘Buy two thousand SAC,’ and clicks off on me. So I shoot the order through.”

  “An account without a name,” Grady said softly. “You take an order without a name, and don’t even send a confirmation through on it. That’s against regulations, they tell me.”

  “Look,” I explained. “White’s a big shot. Me, I’m an order clerk. He shoots through a buy order, and I buy. He’s supposed to give me the account name, sure—but he doesn’t do it. So I have to hold up the confirmation until I get the name. He pulled a lot of that stuff, White did.”

  HARWARTH said, “Highly irregular. Against all the rules,” as if he didn’t know White had been doing it right along, but I didn’t call him on it. He was in a tough enough spot, the way I looked at it, with the SEC ready to hop on his tail about this. And jabbing at him wouldn’t pull me out of the rut.

  “How the hell was I supposed to know the guy’d get killed?” I asked. It was the wrong thing to ask.

  Grady’s voice was like steel. “That’s what I’ve been wondering, kid,” he said sharply. “That’s what I’ve been wondering. And here’s how I add it up.” He stopped a minute, weighing me in, as if wondering how much he should give out. He decided to give plenty.

  “You got an order from White for Service Aircraft, all right. And you figured you’d coast along with him. You doubled the order, and when the stock broke, you were caught without money to cover. You stalled the man on the floor, ducked out for lunch, entered White’s office, stabbed him, and then came back and tried to pass the whole order off on a dead man.”

  I said, “You’re a damn fool.”

  Grady shook his head, his eyes dark. “You’re the fool, kid,” he told me. “I’ll draw a map for you. Opportunity—you were seen coming out of White’s office. Motive—to cover the extra thousand shares by throwing the whole business in White’s lap. There’s a lot of dough involved, Ramsey. Maybe not to some people, but to me and to a kid like you. And it’ll, sound damned big to a jury.”

  The guy was talking in circles. “Listen, mister,” I told him. “You can’t make up a gag like that. Where the hell’d you get the idea I doubled the order?”

  “Here.” Grady picked a piece of paper off White’s desk and held it out to me. “Here’s where you slipped, kid. And if we hadn’t been here when you came back, you might’ve found it.”

  I reached for the paper and Grady drew back, then shrugged his shoulders. “It’s been photostated, kid,” he told me.

  It was a strip torn from the DJ machine, beginning with a series of prices . . . “National Electric, off 2½ , General Westinghouse, off 3, Hydropower, off ½ . . .” But it wasn’t the prices that interested me, or Grady. There was a note scribbled in pencil across the bottom of the strip—in White’s handwriting.

  Buy 1,000 SAC.

  I just stood there, staring at it. I couldn’t say anything for a minute. I just stood there, staring at the “1” in from the three zeros. That was a mistake. It had to be a mistake.

  “Two thousand,” I told Grady. “Two thousand shares, he ordered.”

  “You ordered,” Grady said, softly. “One thousand for White, and one thousand for you. And then the stock fell apart on you, kid. There’s the murder motive, Ramsey. You didn’t have ten grand, and you had to cover the loss, some way. You took the hard way—murder.”

  The way he said it, I could feel the sweat breaking out on me. He didn’t say it like he was just telling me, or even accusing me. The way he said it, it was a verdict.

  Murder. And then the judge would stare down at me from the bench and go on with it. It is the judgment of this court that you, Cort Ramsey, shall be sentenced to death in the electric chair on . . .

  That’s what Grady was saying to me, saying it in one word. And the rest of them were standing there and drinking it in, their eyes suddenly bright with excitement.

  “Your fingerprints are on the knife.” Grady said it calmly, easily, and for a minute it seemed as if he was talking to someone else. “The papercutter has your thumb mark on it, and nothing else. We’ve got plenty on you, kid.”

  I said, weakly: “You can’t frame me, like this.”

  “We don’t have to frame you kid. We got all we need right now.” Grady took a step toward me, motioning to Dolan, and the two of them closed in on me, walking slowly.

  DOLAN’S arms were hanging loose, like ropes, ready to lash out if I made a move. And they were going to have to lash out, all right. Once the guy got his hands on me I’d be in the clink. And it would be a one-way trip. I could see it in the cold, sure brightness of Grady’s eyes, in the tight grain around Dolan’s mouth. They were closing this case—and they were using me as the cover.

  I said: “That came when the body fell against me. That’s when my hand hit the knife.”

  Dolan’s jaws clicked. “I was watching you, buddy, I’d’ve seen it.”

  The woman’s voice was high-pitched, sharp. Sharp enough to freeze Dolan in his tracks and make Grady turn his head, staring at her. “I’ll bet you did see it, mister.”

  Her diamonds were still flashing in the sunlight, like big chunks of glass, but she didn’t look cheap, now. Not to me, she didn’t. She was Lady Liberty, in person.

  She said, again, “I’ll bet you did see it, mister,” and then: “The D.A. is a friend of mine.”

  Grady’s eyes were black, dangerous. “So?” He lashed the word at her.

  “No railroading, boys.” She pushed herself to her feet and moved forward. And that girl could really move. She was carrying extra weight, maybe, but she knew how to carry it. And there was still plenty of fire left in her.

  There was fire in Grady, too. It was in his eyes, in the sudden scowl that creased his face. “I don’t railroad kids.” He said it very slowly, very carefully, as if that settled it.

  Mrs. Bedding let her lips smile at him. “Not you, maybe. But your pal does. You haven’t got a thing on this boy. You haven’t even got a motive.”

  “Fifteen grand,” Dolan sneered. “Fifteen grand, and she says we ain’t got a motive. Holy cow.”

  “It’s real money,” Grady said evenly. “Over ten thousand bucks is a lot to a kid like this.”

  “Too much,” the dame told him. “That’s the whole point!” She swung on me, smiling. “How much dough you got, kid? In the bank, stuck away, any place?”

  “Ninety bucks,” I told her. “Not counting maybe ten bucks in bad debts. That’s all.” I didn’t follow her, didn’t see where she was getting. Grady had me in that much of a daze.

  “And there’s your motive,” she said. “There’s your motive, shot to hell. You say the kid bought a thousand shares for White and then a thousand for himself, figuri
ng to grab the profits. But you don’t know Wall Street.”

  Dolan said, “Who does?” but the Bedding dame went right on, skipping him.

  “There are no more free rides down here, mister. The SEC stopped that. You used to be able to buy something without putting up the cash, and if it went up, you sold out before anybody saw the color of your money. But no more.”

  Grady was still scowling, but it wasn’t the same scowl. He was puzzled, not sore. He just stood there, waiting for her to finish, seeming to realize she had something on the ball.

  “You’ve got to prove good faith, now,” she finished. “They hooked me on that one, once. No matter how big the profit is, you’ve got to lay the cash on the line to close a deal. This kid would know that—he’s an order clerk. And he had about as much chance of getting dough enough to close a deal like that as you have of railroading him to the chair.”

  Like I said, Lady Liberty.

  Mr. Harwarth said: “She’s right, Grady. The firm would’ve refused to turn over the money, and the boy knows that. He could never have expected to put a deal like that through.”

  I could see Dolan wilt. And the Bedding dame followed through, belting him hard. “I wouldn’t be too sure his hand didn’t touch the knife, copper,” she warned him.

  Dolan pushed his lower lip at her, like a kid sulking, but he didn’t say anything. Grady was staring at her, nodding his head. “Smart,” he said, finally. “Smart. That’s something I didn’t know, lady.”

  I said, “Mrs. Bedding, I—” and the woman let her lips smile at me.

  “Forget it, kid,” she said, lightly. “Forget it. I’ve handled these coppers before. There was a couple of ’em back in K. C. tried to toss me in the can for a strip tease because—” She stopped, grinning at old man Rackman’s expression. “Anyhow, forget it,” she finished. “They can work on the rest of us now.” She grinned maliciously at the others as she said it, getting a kick out of the idea.

  Dietrich said nervously: “Mr. Rackman told you he didn’t see White today. He was trying to make an appointment to discuss his account, but neither of us managed Jo get in touch with him.”