by Jerry eBooks
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything but stand there, my eyes glued to the record. I knew I’d played it like a fool, that the guy had been leading me on, listening to the hum of that damned machine, when I thought I was pulling a fast one.
I’d pulled a fast one, all right. Too fast.
“A smart little kid,” Dietrich said, slowly. “A smart little kid who tried to spoil my game.” He came towards me, grinning, the gun still in his left hand, ready to use. “I’ll take that confirmation, sonny,” he told me. “I’ll take that confirmation, and any copies you’ve got. And then I’ll take care of you.”
The gun was like a club the way he held it, ready to slash out and cut the other side of my jaw.
“No,” I told him. “No.”
“One murder,” he said, softly. “One murder, or two, it doesn’t matter. I’ll take the order, sonny.”
I said, “No,” and threw myself at him. I wanted to get my hands on his throat. If I could just get my hands on him, once, I could handle him. If I could just reach him, get past that damned gun, I’d be all right.
I couldn’t.
The gun caught me across the side of the jaw, hard, and I went back into a corner of the room. I came up, swinging, and the next slash caught me squarely across the face. This time, I didn’t get up.
I felt Dietrich’s arms around me, his hands running through my pockets, finding the slips. Everything that was happening seemed to be way off, in another world. All I wanted was for my head to stop aching. I heard his voice dimly, as if from a distance, and the words only half registered.
“Suicide. Eleven stories down. And that’s the end.”
I felt myself lifted and the bright glare of window glass was in front of my eyes.
I tried to come out of it. I caught Dietrich’s neck with my right and tried to pull myself in towards him, but my muscles wouldn’t pull. He was twisted around, his back to the window, holding me so that my feet just touched the floor, ready to heave me through the glass.
This was it. There wasn’t anything I could do about it; there wasn’t anything anyone could do about it. He had me, and he had it all figured. Like he’d said, his plan was going to work.
Almost.
The shot came from the doorway almost as soon as the chair flew across the room. If it had missed Dietrich, it would’ve taken my head off.
It didn’t miss.
His body jerked with the sound, his arms falling away, letting me slide to the floor. His gun came up unsteadily, pointed towards the doorway, and he triggered recklessly, the bullets ploughing into the wooden frame.
GRADY didn’t trigger recklessly. He fired once more, aiming low, and the bullet smashed Dietrich’s knee cap. He went back with the force of the slug, crashing against the window, his arms flung out to catch the frame.
He yelled once as he went through the glass, and again, shrilly, before we heard the soft thud from below. That soft thud is the last thing I remember.
It was the second time that day I’d passed out cold.
When I came to, Grady was standing over me, frowning a little, the pink order slip in his right hand. He moved closer as my eyes opened.
“Suppressing evidence is a crime, kiddo,” he told me. “A serious crime. If we’d had this order, with Rackman’s name on it, and the time stamp, earlier in the day, we wouldn’t’ve had all this mess. That’s your fault kid.”
I started to grin, but the quick pain changed my mind for me. “Not that one,” I told him. “I made that one myself. Tonight.”
Grady shook his head, his eyes dark. “10:20,” he said, softly. “The clock on the time stamp says 10:20,” and then his eyes lighted suddenly. He was one smart guy, Grady was.
“That’s it,” I told him, risking a grin. “We only use that stamp during the market. It doesn’t say anything about a.m. or p.m. It just stamps out like a clock face. And 10:20 is 10:20 to most people. It was to Dietrich.”
Grady nodded. “Neat, son,” he said, smiling. “Neat but wacky. Where you got the idea you could frame a confession from the guy with that singer sewing machine under the bed taking it down is more than I can see. But it worked, in the end.”
“Yeah,” I said, dully. “It worked. Like a duck. What I can’t figure is how you guys showed up, on the button. Did Rackman tell you where I was?”
Grady was laughing, now, not just with his lips, but his eyes, too. He seemed to think it was funny as hell. “Kiddo,” he told me, choking, “kiddo, when a nineteen-year-old kid can duck out on the New York police, that’ll be the day. We’ve had a tail on you ever since you left the office. Right on your tail, sonny.”
Nice, that. Very nice. I run around, risking my neck, playing the Lone Wolf, with a police guard parked downstairs in the hotel. I felt like the prize sucker. That is, until Grady’s next crack, I did.
“By the way, son,” he said, carefully. “If you get any good tips down in the Street, well . . . what I mean is, if you hear of anything really hot, how about letting a guy in on it?”
He wasn’t kidding me at all, he was dead serious. He figured I might be able to put him on to something that would clean up. And I’d thought I was the prize sucker.
Can you tie it? Like the guy said, there’s always a new one coming in. Hell, you can’t even kill them off, down there.
HOMICIDE DETOUR
Stephen McBarron
The small-town bank robbery flung Detective Nick Prescott into a big-time . . .
NICK PRESCOTT sat crouched over the steering wheel, his eyes glued to the road ahead. Night, drizzling and black, strove hard to blanket the glare of his headlights stabbing down the highway. Knowlton’s place should be somewhere along here.
Presently Nick turned in between wrought-iron gateposts, rolled onto the gravel driveway. The white house, squat, unlighted save for the two windows on the ground floor, loomed mistily against the blackness.
Nick slid out of his coupe, shrugged his ulster collar up against the drizzle, and stepped to the porch. Tall and hard, deep lines bitten into his dark, brooding face, Nick Prescott presented the picture of a man whom inner wounds had turned coldly shrewder, more dangerous than his thirty-two years warranted.
He pressed the bell, heard its muted buzz deep within the house. Then, as if the pressure of his finger had been the cue, a shot sounded, followed by a shrill yelp of terror.
Nick’s eyes darted to the side of the house. The report had come from somewhere close outside the house. The cry of terror had come from within. Someone had shot at Knowlton through a window.
Nick slid out his gun, scaled the side-porch rail. Too late, he heard pounding feet coming nearer. He landed smack into the running form, was knocked backward to the wet grass.
He looked up into a square, viciously snarling face, then into the mouth of the man’s gun. The barrel was on a direct line with Nick’s eyes. His own gun was somewhere in the grass. His heart in his mouth, Nick swung up a long leg and his foot cracked into the other’s wrist. The man yelped, cursed, as the gun flew from his hand. He kicked at Nick’s head.
From nearby a woman’s voice called: “Quick, Hank! Hurry!”
Nick’s stomach froze. He didn’t feel the kick of the snarling man, who wrenched away from Nick’s surprise-enfeebled clutch. The man darted into the night, and a short while later Nick heard the sound of a car whirring off.
He rose, dazedly replaced his fallen hat, retrieved his own and his attacker’s gun. He must be wrong about that voice, he thought. He must be! Sick with doubt and apprehension, he climbed to the porch and, scorning the bell, pounded with his fist and yelled:
“Open up, Knowlton! It’s Prescott!”
Knowlton opened the door, practically dragged Nick in. Knowlton slammed the door, leaned against it, blood straining the upper arm of his shirt.
“They—they almost killed me!” he gasped. “If you hadn’t come they would have stayed to finish the job!”
“Isn’t there anyone here to help you?”
“I have only one servant, a housekeeper who doesn’t sleep in,” moaned Knowlton. “For heaven’s sake, fix my arm!”
Nick was worried. Suddenly he didn’t want this job. Wounds deep within him, unhealed even after seven years, were throbbing apprehensively, painfully. Could he have been wrong out there by the porch?
He steered Knowlton toward the bathroom. “I don’t get it,” he said. “Surely a bank president who witnessed a murder rates an armed guard!”
“I did have a guard,” wheezed Knowlton. “But when time passed and the bandits made no attempt on my life, I disposed of it.”
The small-town banker screwed up his face with pain. A portly man, though not overly fat, Knowlton now glared wildly and his dank gray hair was stringy on his forehead.
“How was I to know,” he groaned, “that they’d be stupid enough to linger here just to take a shot at me?”
Nick didn’t get that angle either. The robbers could just as well make off to a distant part of the country with their loot and let well enough alone. Unless they were afraid he could identify a possible rogues gallery picture of the woman member of their gang.
BACK in the city Nick had read about the Mayville Bank robbery, and he had gotten some inside stuff from Knowlton’s surprise letter. Two men and a woman had engineered the job, making off with forty grand and killing the night watchman in the bargain.
They had been seen in the act by none other than the bank’s president, Knowlton himself. Knowlton, returning to the bank after hours for account books he had forgotten, had actually, from a hiding place, seen the woman of the trio shoot the watchman. Knowlton, unarmed, unsuspectingly having walked into the bank without the bandits’ knowledge, had been able to do nothing toward stopping the robbery.
He had, however, succeeded in slipping out again while the woman, as his story went, was drawing a bead on the unsuspecting watchman’s back and pulling the trigger. He had run to the sheriff’s office and returned with reinforcements, but only in time to see the tail-end of the escaping bandits’ car. There had been shots fired, and a chase, but the bandits had gotten clean away.
Three weeks had passed and the country cops had gotten nowhere, even with Knowlton’s description of the murderess. The bank board had a pretty adamant idea that the robbery had been worked with the aid of a bank employee. The country cops didn’t agree on this; and the board had gone ahead and told Knowlton to get a good private detective and make sure one way or the other. Thus Knowlton, who had heard of Nick Prescott through the Banker’s Association, had sent for the private sleuth.
While Nick dug out gauze from the medicine chest, Knowlton tenderly nursed his bullet-scratched arm, getting blood all over himself. He said:
“I put my hand on my neck and leaned over the desk and bang! the gun went off outside the window. If I hadn’t been tired and leaned over then—” The banker shuddered at the thought.
Taking the last turn in Knowlton’s bandage, Nick, with icy dread coating his stomach, said: “Describe that woman again. Your letter didn’t give a clear picture.”
Then he listened as Knowlton talked, and the old wounds were ripped wide. Nick heaved a shuddering sigh and leaned wearily against the bathroom wall.
“And that’s the picture,” concluded Knowlton. “Except for the limp. A beautiful, slimly mature woman, with a slight limp.”
Nick turned abruptly, stalked into the other room. The limp. Maybe, then, he had been wrong. Everything else fitted but the limp. But it could be she. They had let her out on parole three months ago, though he hadn’t heard from her personally.
“Suppose it had been she?” His thoughts were tiny corkscrews gnashing in to the gray matter. “Suppose she has a limp now, for some reason? If I stick here I’ll find her and she’ll get the chair. This will be the end of her, a two-time murderess. But this is my job, my business. If I flop I’ll never be a detective again. There’ll be no living . . .”
“What’s the matter?” asked Knowlton, squinting at him. “Does blood get you sick?”
Nick smiled as if nothing were wrong, turned to the phone. He called Mayville, explained matters to Sheriff Tom Fowley who promised to send out two guards immediately and place men on all roads.
“I’ll stay at the hotel in town,” Nick told Knowlton. “That way I can start off fresh on this thing in the morning. Fowley’ll have cops swarming all over the county. The bandits won’t get far.”
He wondered if she would escape Fowley’s cordon.
When the guards arrived he drove to Mayville. At the dinky hotel there, he called the State Prison, Women’s Division, and a pleasant matronly voice, while Nick Prescott’s heart temporarily stopped, said, after a slight pause:
“Yes, Rita Jarvis was remanded to the custody of the parole officer in Mayville. I believe she is staying with a sick mother to whose home she went after leaving prison.
“. . . Yes, a laundry basket fell on her ankle, breaking it. Though she limps, it is only temporary and is due to habit caused by the cast . . . If you care for additional information . . .”
Nick leaned back in the booth, the forgotten receiver clutched in his hand. All his sickening doubts were washed away, leaving him cold and empty. And yet, after all she had done to him, he knew he still loved her as wholeheartedly as at first.
Leaning limply there in the phone booth, Nick saw seven lonesome years roll back-back to the time when Rita had been his wife. He had never known such happiness, but like most good things, it had been all too brief.
RITA had liked swell clothes, expensive things. It had gone on for a while, but the income of a private dick hadn’t been enough. She had met Bill Jarvis then, Jarvis with his good looks and lavish spending. It hadn’t been long before the final name-calling scene had come.
As soon as the divorce had gone through, she had married Jarvis. And Nick, disillusioned, hurt unendurably, had tried to forget and sever all connections with her. That was why he had never learned—until he had read the newspaper accounts of Jarvis’ murder and Rita’s flight from justice—of the indecent way Jarvis had treated her. The cops and reporters had dished up all that, from neighbors and friends of Rita and Jarvis.
Nick had gone after her, trying to persuade her to surrender and plead for a justifiable homicide rap. But the cops had found her first, cringing in a cheap hotel room. Nick had done everything then, to help her, invested his every cent in hiring the best defense attorney for her.
Thanks to his efforts, she had gotten off lightly. Her lawyer had pretty thoroughly convinced the jury that Rita had shot Jarvis when, after accusing him of drinking and running around with other women, he had insulted her and beaten her unmercifully. Rita had killed a vicious and drunken Jarvis in defense, beyond a doubt, of her life. Rita had gotten ten years; thanks to Nick Prescott, she still had her life.
She was out now, after seven of those years, and this was the thanks Nick was getting for saving her from the chair. Yes, she was out now, the associate of bank bandits and murderers—a two-time murderess herself according to Banker Knowlton’s story.
Nick saw movement out in the hotel lobby, but at first his mind refused to interpret it. He hung up the receiver slowly, clutched the handle of the folding door. His eyes focused even then through the glass panel.
His breath hissed through clenched teeth and his fingers whitened around the enameled handle. He was looking at Hank Crawford, the man who had shot at Banker Knowlton!
The sloppy old man who tended the desk had walked around to the cigarette counter before which Crawford was standing. There was no one else in the lobby.
“He’ll lead me to her,” Nick thought, his face set in granite. “I’ll send her back where she belongs.”
He had seen Crawford’s picture on reward notices. Bank bandit, merciless killer. He had seen Crawford’s face not long ago at Knowlton’s, over the barrel of a gun, had heard Rita call: “Quick, Hank! Hurry!” He hadn’t been entirely sure at that time, hadn’t been able to bri
ng himself to believe that Rita had sunk to such depths as to associate with a blot of obscenity like Hank Crawford.
Now he’d get them all, the other man too. There had been two men and a woman. Two men and—Rita.
Crawford, chunky, powerful, his viciousness masked now behind squarefaced, smug complacence, took his cigarettes and left the lobby. Nick followed carefully and the killer took him in a roundabout cautious way to the edge of town. Nick saw the house then, watched Crawford slip into it.
Isolated, set back in a weedy lot, the frame house was a sagging relic of better days. There were lights on the lower floor, but blinds were drawn and only golden cracks showed.
The creaky porch groaned under him and he cursed silently. Gun in hand, he tried the door, found it locked. Boldly then he knocked, not the least bit unaware that he was barging into a nest of unscrupulous killers. In fact, he didn’t much care, the way things stood . . .
The door opened and light swathed across his bleak face and he forgot the gun in his hand.
THERE wasn’t much light on her face but Nick could see her. Seven years had aged her little. Beautiful, warm, golden—as always. His voice was dry and cracked as he said: “I’m coming in.”
She stepped aside, eyes wide, unbelieving. “Nick!”
“Yeah!” He stepped in, heeled the door shut. His jaws were rusty and his words ground out of his mouth. “Good old Nick!”
“What are you doing here? Oh, Nick, it’s so good—”
He grinned tightly, his face feeling split. “I’ve come to catch me a murderess!”
“Murderess!” Her eyes darted to a closed door, then back to Nick. “Quiet, Nick—please!”
He banged open the door she had glanced at, gun ready to blaze. He saw a gray, old, shawl-covered woman in a wheelchair, her lined face raised inquiringly, wreathed in a habitual kindly smile.
“Yes, Rita? What is it?”
Rita pulled Nick out. “It’s not important, mother. I’ll be in later.” She closed the door, faced Nick, the mellowness of her green eyes turning cold, brittle, questioning.