by Jerry eBooks
“You got a new chalk cone and stuck this pin through it just far enough so that it would take a dozen or so wipes before the point of it would be exposed on the inside enough to scratch him. Then you exchanged it for the one on the alley where the match was to occur. Kovacs used his own ball, and you had access to it to put the poison in the thumbhole.”
Moody didn’t say a word. His face twisted and he made a grab for the gun in his pocket. Expecting the move, Trent whipped his right hand around in a circular motion, like a softball pitcher. At the bottom of the circle he let go of the snooker ball he’d been clutching. It shot toward Moody like a bullet. He ducked involuntarily away from it, and the slug from his gun went wide. In the split second it took for Moody to collect his wits and shoot again, Trent launched himself forward in a headlong dive, caught Moody around the middle, and they went down with a thudding crash.
Moody was as deceptively agile as a cat. He lurched around, chopping downward with his gun and almost tearing off Trent’s ear. Mad clear through, Trent got his right arm free and threw his shoulder into a short, explosive hook. It traveled barely six inches. But Moody’s jawbone snapped like rotten plaster under the devastating impact of the blow.
Sitting in Cottrell’s office in the Santa Monica City Hall, Jim Trent fussed with the bandage around his head. Cottrell’s eyes were red and watery, and he blinked.
“By gosh, Trent, if the city of Santa Monica didn’t owe you a debt of gratitude for clearing this up I’d sure as shooting throw the book at you for almost blinding me. How’d you get wise to Moody in the first place?”
Trent grimaced. “Forget about your eyes. It’s all over now. I began to get ideas when I went over to search Borio’s room. It was wet out, and it’s a cinch Borio wouldn’t have left his room unless he had a definite place to go. But he came back in time to put the bite on me as I was leaving. Which meant that someone had told him his place was being searched. That someone could only have been Moody, who’d followed me over from the rooming house.”
COTTRELL grinned nastily and said, “Which also constitutes illegal entry. You know you can be held for that, don’t you?”
“Sure,” Trent grinned. “And I also know that your job wouldn’t be worth a plugged nickel if you held me. Anyway, Borio took me out to Joe Reese’s place because he didn’t want to turn me over to the police till he was sure there was nothing at the bowling alley that might tie him in with the killing. He knew I’d been casing his room because I suspected him, and knew also that, having recently graduated from San Quentin, he’d be in one heck of a jam if anything turned up that would cast suspicion his way.
“I happen to know Moody had been playing the gambling games at Reese’s casino. Got himself pretty deeply in the hole and I guess Reese has been pressing him for the cash. Doping Kovacs and laying a heavy bet on Whitbread gave Moody his chance for a quick clean-up so he could pay Reese off. However, I don’t think Moody intended to kill Kovacs.”
“What makes you say that?” Cottrell queried.
Trent shrugged. “Just a hunch. However, the way I look at it Moody had the thing all figured out in case his plan went haywire. If it turned out he’d overdosed Kovacs and killed him, suspicion would point to Reese and Borio. Reese had plenty of motive and if he was saddled with the crime Moody could forget the I.O.U.’s Reese held against him.
As for Borio, he was a known poisoner and had worked with Reese before.
“Getting back to today, Borio left me at Reese’s place and headed for the bowling alleys. Moody beefed Reese and got me out of there, then took me to the alleys where he blasted Borio. That made Moody the hero and me the witness.
“He had a perfect set-up. Even my being dragged in as chief suspect by the cops on account of the insurance I had on Kovacs worked in his favor. Moody might have gotten away with it, too, only he knew too many—uh—”
Trent hesitated, groping for the proper word.
“Angles?” Cottrell supplied.
“That’s it,” Trent said with a grin. “Too many angles!”
BLOOD IN THE RAIN
Edward Sullivan
Secret Service Captain Farrell was a mild little man until the counterfeiters killed his friend—after that he was a tornado!
CAPTAIN FARRELL drew back in the shelter of the doorway as the rain beat a tattoo on his hat-brim. It was one of the wickedest nights he’d ever seen.
No one who chanced to notice the moon-faced, mild-appearing little man huddling in the rain-swept doorway would have guessed that he was the chief of the San Francisco Bureau, United States Secret Service. Most of those outside the law who knew what lay behind that mild and scholarly exterior were safely stowed away in McNeil Island or Alcatraz. A few who had underestimated Captain Farrell’s abilities were even more safely stowed away under six feet of earth.
Despite the pressing fact that he was soaked to the skin, the little Secret Service chief felt a warm inner glow and smiled grimly as he peered down the street through his horn-rimmed glasses.
“All set,” he muttered to himself, “if we’re not flooded out before he shows up!”
This rainy night, if all went well, was to see the culmination of months of effort—the bagging of the gang that had been flooding San Francisco and Los Angeles with counterfeit Federal Reserve notes in such staggering numbers that the Secretary of the Treasury had personally called Captain Farrell on the telephone and ordered him to drop all other matters in favor of tracking down the money plant.
So expertly had the fake money been printed, and so adroitly had it been passed, that not a single arrest had been made—until today.
A bartender, warned by the Federal men, had challenged a twenty-dollar bill presented by a seedy little stranger. He summoned the policeman on the beat. A frisk of the stranger uncovered three other twenties in his pockets—each of them a perfect specimen, but all with the same serial number. The master counterfeiters, with elaborate plates but apparently a small printing press, had not troubled to print different numbers on their bills.
That seedy stranger, who gave the name of George Williams, now sat in a Ford coupe parked across the street from the doorway where Captain Farrell stood in the rain.
UNDER pressure, he had cracked and sung to high heaven—with what few lyrics he had to sing. Every Monday night, he said, he waited on the corner of Washington and Stockton Streets until a man appeared—a man whose name he did not know—and handed him a sheaf of the fake bills, for which Williams paid in good cash, at seventy-five per cent of the face value of the queer. The man had given Williams detailed instructions for the safe passing of the money, which indicated to Captain Farrell that this “middle-man” was high in the councils of the counterfeiters.
“So help me,” Williams whined, “he told me he’d kill me if I ever tried to follow him.”
He was able to add only that the man had once let slip a hint that the fake money was manufactured in San Francisco.
On the promise of leniency, Williams agreed to lead the Federal operatives to the contact man.
The rain fell in sheets, borne before gusts of wind. The face of Williams, behind the wheel of the Ford, was a white blur.
Half a block behind him, a black sedan was parked, with Secret Service Agent Harry Murton crouched in the shadows of the back seat. Agent Matt Brophy sat in a fast coupe, midway down the next block. The Federal trap was set, with the two operatives ready to follow the contact man, at a signal from the captain.
Farrell took off his glasses and wiped them carefully with his handkerchief. His blue eyes blinked owlishly, like those of a baby. Only a few cars moved along the rainy street, their lights making tall reflections on the glistening pavement.
The captain jammed his glasses hastily on his nose and stiffened to attention as a green sedan swung out of the dark side street. There were two men in the front seat, and the rear was a pit of blackness. Cruising slowly, the driver craned his neck, looking at Williams, who sat alone in the Ford.
While Farrell huddled farther back into his dark niche, the car slowed, and the man sitting in the right-hand seat opened the door and jumped out. The car moved slowly on.
Captain Farrell noted the license number of the green sedan—7J7100.
Frowning, he turned his attention to the man.
The contact man’s face was invisible as he stepped to the running board of the Ford. He wore a black overcoat and a green hat, pulled low. Leaning against the car, he put his head in the window and spoke to Williams.
The Secret Service chief looked up the street after the sedan. As he expected, the driver was making a U-turn at the next corner. He was coming back, then, to pick up the contact man.
Farrell held his breath as the big green car came slowly back. Now it was opposite the car where Harry Murton was hidden. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the contact man, still with his head in the window of the Ford.
The big sedan slowed to a crawl. Farrell’s hand flew to his shoulder holster with swift premonition.
The night erupted into thunder. Orange flame spurted from the rear window of the sedan. Murton’s car rocked like a boat as the tommy-gun raked it. The gunmen’s car roared away with the throttle wide open. The contact man leaped from the Ford and ran to the center of the street.
Farrell dropped to one knee and blasted at the car with his automatic. But the machine-gunner had no eyes for him. The orange-spurting muzzle swung around, and the contact man rose to his toes, clutching at his chest. His hat sailed off like a clay pigeon.
Williams screamed once, wildly, above the clatter of the tommy-gun, then the glass of the Ford crashed, and bullets thudded into metal.
FARRELL emptied his gun at the rear window of the car. He saw the machine-gunner lurch forward in the seat. The rattle of the gun stopped. Tires screamed as the sedan rocketed around the corner at fifty miles an hour.
The Federal man slipped a new clip into his gun as he ran toward the side street. Headlights flashed in his eyes, a car skidded to a stop. He leaped to the running board and shouted to Agent Matt Brophy. “After them!”
They roared up the street in second gear, following the diminishing taillights of the gun car.
Farrell, clinging to the door frame with one hand, whipped off his glasses and crammed them in his pocket. The rain pelted his face like hail.
The green sedan was two blocks ahead of them. There was power under the short hood of Brophy’s coupe. With a hissing intake of breath, the captain flattened himself against the car as the brakes shrilled. A black hulk loomed directly in front of them.
The car veered crazily, slammed against the curb, knocking a spout of water from the rain-filled gutter. It lurched once, and the motor died. The black truck that had blocked their path lumbered on, picking up speed. Lightless, it was a monster in the dark and rain. The driver shouted unintelligibly.
When Farrell, weak at the pit of his stomach, but still hanging to the door frame, looked up the street, the red tail-lights were gone.
Red-headed Matt Brophy was cursing wildly.
“No lights! He did it on purpose. Let’s—”
“He’s gone,” Farrell clipped, jerking the door open and climbing in beside the agent. “Turn around.”
In silence, they sped back to the scene of the shooting.
A small crowd was gathered in the street. In the distance, police sirens wailed. Ignoring the crowd near the Ford, Brophy drove up to Harry Murton’s sedan. The T-men got out and peered into the bullet-torn car. Farrell’s mouth was set. He opened the rear door.
Harry Murton, his automatic in his hand, was sprawled awkwardly against the farther door. His head was thrown back, his mouth gaped open. His chin and throat were shot away. Another mass of blood gleamed on his shirt-front.
“Dead.”
Farrell closed the door, turned to Brophy, who was cursing in a lurid stream. The captain looked steadily at the redheaded operative. No words were necessary, and Farrell was not given to words. Murton had been in the service far ten years—five of them under Captain Farrell.
Grimly, then, the two Secret Service men sloshed through the rain to the other car—the Ford in which Williams had been sitting. A police car whirled up as they approached, its red spotlight throwing a weird glare on the wet pavement. They recognized Inspector Bill Hanley, a hulk of a man in a raincoat. Farrell told him in a few clipped sentences what had happened, gave him the license number of the gun car. Then they turned to the carnage in the street.
The machine-gunner had done his ghastly work well. Both Williams and the contact man were dead. Williams hung with his arms and shoulders out of the car window, his head a sadden mass of blood and brains and bits of bone. The other man, the middle-man of the counterfeiters, lay where he had fallen in the street. The bullets had cut him almost in half.
Hanley threw the light of an electric torch on the dead man.
“I know him,” he announced. “He goes by the name of Frank Viano. No record on the Coast. Came here a couple of months ago from New York. Supposed to be a racketeer. We gave him a going-over when he landed.”
Farrell listened absently as the big inspector rumbled on. Killing, after all, was police business—but the killing of a Secret Service agent was Uncle Sam’s. The captain took off his glasses and wiped them, blinking with his weak eyes at the car up the street, where Harry Murton lay dead.
“We’ll put out the dragnet for that car,” Hanley said, “though it was probably stolen and is abandoned by now. We—”
“All right,” the captain said. “I’ll see you at your office in the morning. I’m going to look up a couple of angles. Come on, Matt.”
BROPHY silently followed his chief to the corner drug store, where the round-faced captain edged into a telephone booth. He emerged shortly.
“I traced the license number of that car,” he said quietly, “though it may not mean anything. Now I want you to go back and work with Hanley, watch what he turns up and meet me at the office in a couple of hours.”
“Right.” Brophy trotted away. Farrell looked after him unseeingly.
Farrell had sent the red-headed young operative away deliberately. One of his young assistants had already been slaughtered tonight, and he meant to sacrifice no one else needlessly. The avenging of Murton he considered a personal job.
His own life didn’t matter, he told himself, for he was an aging man, a lone man and had already had more than his share of luck in dodging bullets. Pulling himself together, he went back into the phone booth—to call Harry Murton’s young wife.
Half an hour later, a cab splashed through the rain, deposited Captain Farrell in front of a brick apartment house on Irving Street, out near the ocean beach. Telling the driver to wait, Farrell stepped into the dim-lighted lobby and consulted the rows of names opposite the bells.
G.E. Berger, Apartment Three.
He compared the name with the one he had scribbled in his notebook, back in the phone booth. Nodding, he took a key-ring from his pocket, quickly found a key that fitted the apartment house door.
As he mounted the dark stairs, he slipped the automatic from his shoulder holster into his overcoat pocket. His mind raced furiously, in contrast to his slow steps. This man Berger was the registered owner of the green sedan that had dealt death to Harry Murton. Usually, stolen cars or stolen plates were used by killers for their jobs, and to trace the owner was futile.
But in this case, Farrell reasoned, how could the gunman have known in advance there was to be a killing? Certainly, if the men in the car had spotted the Secret Service agents or scented a trap when they first rounded the corner, they would have sped on. They would not have sacrificed their own man, Viano, needlessly.
AS FARRELL reconstructed the shootings, all had been well when Viano alighted from the car to make his delivery. Cruising back to pick him up, the driver and the gunman had spotted Murton in his parked car. After killing him, with Farrell himself opening fire on them, they dared not stop to pick up Viano and had
blasted him down to shut his mouth.
The very fact that they had shot Murton and had seen fit to silence Viano, Farrell concluded, indicated that the men in the car were near the center of the counterfeit ring—if not the actual center themselves.
This car was one chance in a million—
Farrell walked down the corridor with catlike tread and stopped beside the door of Apartment Three. No sound from inside. Slipping the safety catch of his automatic, the captain flattened himself against the wall and touched a bell button with his left hand.
Silence was succeeded by hurried footsteps. The door opened a crack. Farrell kicked out with one short leg, and the door flew wide open.
A shrill scream greeted him. Farrell lowered his gun and hesitated when he saw that a gray-haired woman was the only occupant of the short hallway. She was in nightdress. She crouched against the wall, the back of her hand over her mouth.
Instinct, born of long experience, told Farrell to put his gun in his pocket. He took off his hat.
“Pardon me. Mr. Berger—”
Quickly he flipped back his coat and showed his gold badge as the woman drew her breath to scream again.
“What is it, Martha?” came a man’s voice from inside.
Heads were popping out of other doorways. Farrell stepped inside and pulled the door shut.
“Secret Service. Pardon my abrupt entrance. Just a routine matter. I’d like to see Mr. Berger.”
Mutely, with scared eyes, the woman led him down the hall, opened a door. Farrell crowded after her, his hand tensing involuntarily on the gun. In the brightly lighted room, an old man lay in bed, in a dressing gown.
“George, this is an officer of some kind,” the woman told him. “He wants—”
“You have a Studebaker sedan, Mr. Berger,” the Secret Service agent stated. “Where is that car now?”
“My car? Why, it’s in the garage.”
“What garage?”