Pulp Crime

by Jerry eBooks

  IT WAS a colorless one-room apartment—maple furniture, a hooked rug, framed silhouettes on the cream walls. A bathroom door was at Eddie’s left and beyond it a sleeping alcove. A second man, a giant with bushy blond hair and dull yellow eyes, leaned a shoulder against the alcove doorjamb.

  Vivian Donald stood over between two windows. She wore a chalk-striped gray suit and white silk blouse. The blouse was torn at her neck.

  “You’re a friend of Miss Donald’s?” the little gray man asked cordially.

  “What’s it to you?”

  The other quickly, gracefully, extracted and opened a black wallet, exposing a gold shield. “Lieutenant Garrick—Homicide Squad.”

  Eddie’s throat went dry. “Cops? Why cops?”

  “The way we do it is—you answer our questions first.”

  “Hey!” the scowling, bushy-haired giant said. “He sounds like the guy that tipped off the Long Island bulls.”

  The little gray lieutenant turned friendly eyes on the big man. “I’ll tell you when to speak, Frankie.”

  The redheaded man who had been in the hall below suddenly followed a quick knock into the room and said: “We’ve got hold of that ambulance-chaser that Brickner’s wife had following him around.”

  The lieutenant ran warm eyes thoughtfully from Eddie to the girl, back again. “Bring him up.”

  Across the room, Eddie met the girl’s hollow, desperate eyes. “Miss Donald—whatever this is, I’m on your side.” She swallowed, tried to speak. Her soft little face was set in ghastly lines. The gray-haired lieutenant eyed Eddie sharply.

  “Who did you say you were? Oh, yes. Well, what brought you here at this hour?”

  Eddie stood silent. The door opened to admit the meek little man he had seen up near the garage—the one Rusty had pointed out as McVeigh. His sad, round gray face was puffed with sleep, his mouse-gray toupee slightly askew. He tendered a fold of papers. The lieutenant reluctantly took his eyes from Eddie.

  “Come right in, Mr. McVeigh. What’s this?”

  “I brought along my last three days’ reports on Mr. Brickner’s movements. I’ve already sent the others in to the client.”

  “Good. Which is tonight’s? O.K. Go over there and sit down.”

  The little lawyer slid around onto the sofa just inside the door, as Garrick perused the report. The big, bushy-haired Frankie wandered curiously over and gawked over his shoulder.

  The big man’s lips moved as he read. “Plaktis?” he blurted suddenly. “Joe Plaktis! Hey!”

  Garrick nodded, his eyes still absorbed. “Get hold of Plaktis—phone uptown.”

  The dapper lieutenant flipped the last page, looked somberly at McVeigh. “You know what’s happened?”

  “Yes, Lieutenant. Al told me. The lady knocked him off.”

  “Well—she says she didn’t.”

  “I thought he had one of her hatpins in his eye.”

  “She claims she lost it some time back.” He ran back through the reports. “This says Brickner was bucking Joe Plaktis’ game? How much did he lose?”

  “That I don’t know, Lieutenant. He started playing the joint a month ago at least. I’ve tailed him there a dozen times.”

  The lieutenant read slowly. “ ‘Tonight he ate dinner with Miss Donald, dropped her at the Puritan, went over and played at Plaktis’ till quarter to two. Then he came back and picked her up again. He was drunk and she was crying. They started north on Fifth Avenue.’ Where’s the rest?”

  “I—well, to tell you the truth, Lieutenant, he give me the slip. I still don’t know how.”

  Garrick fingernailed his mustache, lifting his eyes to the girl. “What were you crying about, Miss Donald?”

  “Because he—he insisted—he was going to make me go to Long Island with him.”

  “It says here you got into his car willingly enough.”

  Her voice was a whisper. “He threatened—I—I’d heard that Mr. Plaktis ran an honest game. When Mr. Brickner wanted to gamble, I suggested—well, he went there. He lost a good deal of money.” She swallowed desperately. “Tonight he threatened to tell you that I—I was capping for Mr. Plaktis unless I agreed to do what he asked me to.” A phone rang thinly downstairs.

  GARRICK cocked his ear for a second, then re-focused on her. “And?”

  “Oh, I told you—I told you! I got sick at my stomach when we got to the bridge. He put me out on the street and I came home in a taxi.”

  “But nobody saw—” He broke off as the redheaded detective opened the hall door from the outside, put his head in again and motioned him to come outside.

  He went out. He came back in after a minute. He asked the girl casually: “Did Mr. Brickner have on a star sapphire ring when he drove you out to Long Island?”

  Eddie’s heart contracted, for fear she would fall into the trap, but she put her chin up and said huskily: “He didn’t drive me out to Long Island. I didn’t see any ring.”

  A sudden silence fell on the room. Garrick said, “Hmmm,” and finger-nailed his mustache again. “Well—we’ll wait a little while.” He nodded the harsh-faced Frank over to him, conferred in low tones.

  Sweat ran down Eddie’s back. With cold, frightening clarity, he saw exactly where he stood. He was gone, the minute they concentrated on him. The minute the shrewd, bright-eyed Garrick thought of peering into Eddie’s background . . .

  He flayed his brain in a panic. Who had killed Brickner? Who was there in the picture that could possibly have done it—apart from the girl? Only Plaktis, the gambler. Or—was it conceivable by any fantastic stretch of imagination that Brickner, caught again in the inevitable gambling crisis, had elected this gruesome way to commit suicide?

  It wouldn’t wash, and he knew it. In his heart, he was perfectly certain that the shifty fat man had died at somebody else’s hand. Of all the scores of ways of committing suicide that there were, it was beyond belief that a man would run a hatpin into his own eye.

  Who? Who had? Eddie swallowed. He was trapped—standing on a tightrope, juggling that question in his hands. If it were not answered before they left this room—if they once got him down to headquarters—even in a routine investigation, his nom de guerre would come to light, and then the inevitable disclosures. Somehow, by some fantastic miracle, the truth had to come out now, before the crazy situation smothered him—and perhaps the girl, too.

  A siren moaned faintly in the street below. The big, bushy-haired Frank went swiftly over and parted the window curtains. “It’s Plaktis,” he announced after a minute. “He must’ve been at the first place they looked.”

  The wooden-faced man with the immaculate curly blond hair with whom the girl had talked in the Puritan supper-room, was ushered through the door a moment later. He was still in the double-breasted dinner jacket. His cold gray eyes were bloodshot.

  “We were wondering,” Garrick said conversationally, “about Billy Brickner. Word comes to us that you were reaming him.”

  The gambler’s eyes jumped, showed a flash of yellow light behind the gray. “Reaming? You’re crazy. I took him for a few bucks.”

  “That’s not the way we heard it.” Plaktis’ cold gaze jerked to the girl and his eyes shrank till they were venomous dots. “What is this? Has that little twist . . .?”

  The big, yellow-haired Frank moved in. “Hell, this rat wants to be straightened out a little first, chief—”

  “Now wait a minute—wait a minute,” Plaktis hurried. “I’m leveling. He lost a little—no more’n he could afford—maybe a grand or two.”

  “Up till this morning.”

  “Including this morning.”

  “Well—we heard you cleaned him out, Joe.”

  The gambler’s chin jutted belligerently. Big Frankie growled, grabbed for his shirtfront and spun him round to face a big pink fist. “Get it out, louse—the McCoy!”

  “Quit it,” the pinioned man choked. “That’s the McCoy.”

  “Lay off, Frankie,” Garrick ordered. “For a minute,
anyway. So he didn’t lose anything much, eh Joe?”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “Did he have a star sapphire on when he was in your place?”

  “Tonight? I don’t know. I didn’t notice.”

  “You’d notice this one. It was worth plenty—three or four grand. I’m wondering why you didn’t get that, too.”

  “Cut it out,” the other said hoarsely. “I guess he didn’t have it on. But I didn’t break him.”

  Garrick seemed to relax into thought. He bent his head a long minute. Then he sighed deeply and turned back to the girl. “Well, Miss Donald—I guess you see how it is. When did you say you lost this hatpin?” Eddie, following his swift glance, suddenly spotted a second blue-agate-headed pin on the dresser—a twin to the one in Brickner’s eye out on the Island.

  “Oh, I don’t know—I don’t know,” she cried brokenly. “I’ve never worn it since the day I arrived. I didn’t know it was gone!”

  Garrick seemed depressed. “Well—get your things on, Miss Donald.”

  “Oh, no, no—I didn’t do it! I didn’t!” She covered her face with her hands, and burst into great racking sobs.

  THE fever of frantic thought had Eddie’s head bursting. Somehow he found himself beside the girl, patting her shoulder. She turned and buried her face in his chest. He mumbled thickly: “Take it easy, baby—take it easy. These blockheads can’t get away with it. I know you didn’t do it.”

  “Well, well, well,” Lieutenant Garrick said. “Now we’re making progress. You’re the boy friend, eh? Well, that makes everything extremely simple.”

  “I’m not her boy friend,” Eddie said through tight teeth. “I only know her from the garage. But if you had half a brain, you’d see she couldn’t do a thing like . . .”

  Light bannered across his roiling mind.

  It was like a lantern slide suddenly focusing. He choked: “Hell and damnation—wait—wait! I—he—” He stood open-mouthed, gasping.

  “Make it good,” the yellow-eyed Frank snarled.

  Eddie took his arm away from the girl. The big vein on his forehead stood out and his eyes drove to the woodenfaced blond gambler’s cold gray ones. He took a rigid step towards him, his hands tight to his trouser-seams.

  “You—” he said huskily. “You’re a liar in spades.”

  “Why, damn you!” the gambler blustered.

  “Shut up. I get it now. Good lord, I get it now. Billy Brickner didn’t lose just a little to you tonight. He didn’t lose a lot either. He didn’t lose a damned thing. You didn’t take him. He took you.”

  The gambler’s face was pasty. “Are you crazy?”

  “No—but you are. Crazy to try to pretend that you won from him, when the truth is that he took a slice out of you—and a substantial one.”

  The lieutenant’s eyes opened and he swayed forward. Eddie slashed a hand without taking his eyes from Plaktis. “Keep away—don’t interfere now.”

  “I wouldn’t think of interfering. I love it. Only how do you make out . . .?”

  “That star sapphire. I don’t know why I didn’t get it the moment I—the moment it was mentioned. Brickner’s been carrying a pawn ticket in his car for weeks. For eighteen hundred dollars. And he never had the star sapphire on him since I know him.

  “He didn’t have it on tonight—early. But he did have it at three o’clock. It was in hock at eight o’clock. He unhocked it sometime between then and three o’clock. It would even cost him extra to get the pawnbroker to open up at that time of night. The only possible answer is that he came into money—a wad of it—enough to toss around. And what’s your guess as to where he came into it?”

  Sweat beaded Plaktis’ dead-white wooden face and his eyes were shiny. He licked his lips.

  “Well?” Garrick bellowed unexpectedly.

  Plaktis licked his thin lips, his eyes darting around. He swallowed, blurted: “All right. So he won. Yeah, he won.”

  “How much, rat?”

  “He—if you gotta know, he cleaned me. He went crazy lucky—twenty-four grand—my roll. O.K. Wait—I’ll give it to you straight: He took my dough and went out giving me the ha-ha.” The yellow-eyed Frank started, a queer rumble in his throat. “And you after him to get it back! You tail him out to the Island—”

  “I didn’t,” the sweating gambler groaned. “I swear to God I didn’t! I knew damned well you’d tag me like that! That’s why I said he lost something.”

  “I see,” Garrick’s silky voice cut in. “And now, Joe, for the punch line: How did you know to think up that little gag. How did you know he was dead?”

  Fever discs of color were in Plaktis’ cheeks. “Some guy—I don’t know who—called me on the phone.”

  Garrick winced. “Oh, Joe! That stinks. Let’s take it over again. How—” In Eddie’s hot head, the lantern slide suddenly whirled, focused again. He caught his breath.

  He burst out: “Wait! Wait! It could be! Some guy could have called—the louse who tried to frame Miss Donald by using her pin.”

  Garrick’s forehead V’d. “Hell, if Plaktis killed him, Plaktis did the framing.”

  “But how would he get hold of the hatpin?” Eddie flung hastily. “It was stolen from this room. If Plaktis made up his mind on the spur of the moment to kill Brickner tonight, he’d hardly know to come up here and prowl the place. Somebody else had a damned sight better chance. Somebody else who was willing to go overboard for twenty thousand dollars—especially when he saw a red-hot chance of getting away clean—”

  He dived sideways, jammed a foot against the barely-opened door, just as the little shyster, McVeigh, tried to scuttle through.

  The door was driven tight on the hand that the meek-looking, evil little schemer had wriggled through it. He screamed in agony—and his free hand flashed to his armpit, whipped out. The gun in his hand exploded fire and roared downwards at Eddie’s foot—and white fire creased the edge of his calf.

  He stumbled back hastily, gasping—and McVeigh darted through the door. Furious, Eddie plunged after him. The little lawyer, scurrying down the stairs, whirled back to fire one shot over his shoulder—and Eddie launched himself in a dive. The bullet whistled past his ear and McVeigh screamed as Eddie’s rawboned bulk hit him, smashed him from his feet, and they rolled and tumbled to the foot of the stairs.

  As they hit, a cascade of bank notes sprayed from McVeigh’s pockets, fluttered all over the floor, and as Eddie picked himself up from the unconscious schemer, Garrick stood a few steps above looking down. “Not bad. Not bad at all,” he said thoughtfully. “He figured he was safer from a search of his clothes than from a search of his room. So he packed the loot right on him.”

  EDDIE stood in the quiet room a half-hour later, alone with the girl. She was huddled in a chair, half-sick from reaction. He noticed, for the first time, the empty closets in the alcove, the packed bag on the bed, and looked quickly down at her tear-ravaged face and sick, shining eyes.

  “Uh—you going somewhere?” he asked her.

  She swallowed, blurted, “Oh, yes—yes—if they’ll let me come home. They—the men are all going to war—maybe they’ll need me. Oh, Eddie, I didn’t imagine what a fool I was . . .”

  “Well,” Eddie said worriedly, and sat on the edge of a chair. “I’m personally, myself, going to war. But there’s—uh—a couple of things I’d like to talk to you about, first.”

  HOURS OF GRACE

  Marion Mitchell Morrison

  The reporter had earned his reputation for scoops by leaping before he looked. A nose for news, or hunch, he might have called it. But when he leaped into a case 6f slow death, he began to wish he had looked first!

  ALL-OF-A-SUDDEN CASSIDY was in Trent Street because of a mysterious ring from Gyp Martin. Trent Street at midnight was a deserted backwater in the Cosmopolis whirlpool. Some of the city’s finest residences stood there, many inhabited by wealthy Gold Coasters and others by higher class professional men.

  The home of the district attorney,
Milton Yarrow, was in Trent Street, and when Sudden Cassidy swung his fast little coupe around so the pencil from its spotlight could pierce the black shadows under the trees, he discovered he was directly in front of the Yarrow home with its funny Bingen-on-the-Rhine kind of tower at the corner.

  Sudden hadn’t given complete credence to Gyp Martin’s somewhat incoherent information over the telephone. It might have been one of Gyp’s dreams based on a lapse into marijuana. But Cassidy hadn’t earned his name “All-of-a-Sudden” by analyzing tip-offs before he leaped.

  Gyp had called him, he said, because he couldn’t have called the police. That would have involved explaining first why Gyp had been prowling fashionable Trent Street at that hour. And Gyp remembered the favor of an alibi Sudden had furnished for him that time the dicks had decided it would be easier to frame Gyp for a pent-house job than to follow a formula of deduction that might fail and leave them with an undesirable outcry from the press.

  In one way and another, Sudden had done favors for many who, like Gyp, could and did tip him off ahead of the police to sundry bizarre happenings here and there. Such contacts, Sudden had discovered, were a source of copy worth having.

  Yet nothing had come his way before with such boundless possibilities of a long continued first page spot. Gyp’s words had suggested a crime so incredible that even Sudden had doubted its authenticity.

  For out of Gyp’s stammering incoherency had come the information that District Attorney Yarrow was lying dead under a tree on his own front lawn, horribly so, if Gyp’s gulping description was to be believed.

  Well, someone was lying there. The spotlight pencil picked out the dark huddle against the smooth green of the grass. Gyp must have been crossing the unfenced lawns, for dubious reasons of his own, to have stumbled upon the body. It was well back from the street and, in the darkness, invisible.

  Leaving the spotlight playing upon the body, Sudden jumped lightly from his car and ran up the walk. Ten seconds later he was holding his chin in place with long slender fingers and fighting down an almost overwhelming desire to get back into his car and go far away from this place.