by Jerry eBooks
“Murder isn’t Sunday School stuff,” Bill said.
The words hit the woman like blows. Without a sound she crumpled on the floor. “Water!” the Duke yelled.
Bill brought a towel and basin of cold water from the kitchen. The woman lay on the divan. The Duke rubbed her wrists, then dipped the towel in the water and held it against the woman’s eyes. “You’re too blunt,” he said reprovingly.
“I don’t like a runaround from anybody.”
“You’re too hard. Hate to have you on my trail.”
“Around the night clubs, Duke?”
Mrs. Rugg moaned and sat up. “Teddy wouldn’t kill,” she whispered. “He’s a good boy.”
The Duke said easily: “Tell us where he went.”
There was strength and courage and stubbornness in her frail body. “Teddy’s got a right to a new life! You can’t hound him! He didn’t kill anybody and that’s the truth. I won’t tell you anything.”
“Nobody said he killed anybody,” Bill said tonelessly. “Velinski is dead. He carried a wad of cash. The cash is gone. Teddy was the last person seen with Velinski. Running away only gets him in deeper.”
The woman’s eyes were circles of fear. “Velinski dead? Now I know Teddy didn’t kill him! Teddy’s afraid of blood. Ever since his own father cut his own throat—”
The Duke stood up. “Let’s blow, Bill.”
“An order?” Bill asked.
“Yes.”
They left the house. In the car the Duke said: “Why hammer at a nice old woman like that? Just because her son’s a murderer—” Bill interrupted with, “How do I know she’s so nice? That faint could have been a stall. How do I know for certain that anybody’s okay? You can’t tell what goes on inside a person by listening to them talk. All I know about this case for sure is what I think and I’m checking every angle! Besides, we’ll get Rugg now.”
“How?”
“Simple. She started to say ‘defense job’. To get work in a defense plant Rugg would be fingerprinted and his prints filed with the F.B.I.”
“That’s right, Bill.”
Later the Duke told Captain Reddick: “I got it figured where Rugg is. He blew town, but his mother let slip about a defense job. Rugg’s been fingerprinted. You got his prints from 328 and we’ll check through the F.B.I. to find him.”
“Good stuff,” Reddick said, adding: “Patanelli clammed up when he came to. We brought Velinski’s wife in. Nocker had thirty-six grand cash when he left home this morning. Nothing on his mind, so she said. That leaves it squarely up to young Rugg. Go fetch the kid.”
In normal times the F.B.I. moves entirely too fast for the average crook. After Pearl Harbor, it sprouted the wings of a P-38. Forty-eight hours after Velinski’s murder, the Duke and Bill Frane arrived in Dogwood Valley, Connecticut, site of Whirlaway Motors’ sprawling plant. At 3:45 P.M. they picked up white-faced Teddy Rugg. On the return journey, the Duke drove and Bill sat on the rear seat with Rugg.
Bill suggested: “Come clean, kid. Where’s Nocker’s roll?”
“Y-you got nothing on me,” Rugg mumbled.
“Only murder. You were alone with Nocker, then scrammed.”
“The Patanellis hated Nocker. They killed him!”
“We’d have seen them enter 328.”
Wildly, “They used the fire escape!”
“That’s at the end of the corridor.”
“They ran with the old Gleason gang! They hated Nocker and came back to kill him.”
Bill yawned. “A bedtime story, kid.”
Rugg wet his lips. “You’re trying to frame me!”
“Cut the sob angle.” Bill switched tactics. “Nocker carry much cash?”
“Over thirty thousand that day.”
“Why?”
“Pay offs. Then he always collected the night before when he knew the cops were going to watch from Room 327.”
“Nocker got tips?”
“Regular.”
The sedan slowed and the Duke turned to watch Rugg. “Who tipped Nocker?”
“Nocker never said,” Rugg answered tonelessly.
The sedan picked up speed. Tires hummed on the concrete. Snatches of bird song drifted through the open car windows. Bill spoke softly. “In a way we’re glad Nocker is dead. Only when we find a corpse we got to know how come. Come clean, kid. The D.A. will listen to reason. Or do you want the chair?” Pause, then: “Kid, you clam up and you’ll burn! You’ve heard about the chair. They fasten electrodes to your bare leg. They strap you fast and pull a hood over your face. Someone throws the switch. A rising roar of sound.”
A long, long pause. “Where’s the cash?”
Suppressed sobs burst from the kid’s lips. Deep sounds that came from the chest and sounded as if he’d been hurt badly. His body shook. His eyes were wild with fear. “For God’s sake, I don’t want to die! I don’t want the chair!”
Above the purr of the motor and the whine of the tires, the Duke shouted: “Car’s pulling, Bill! We got to stop and check.”
The sedan slowed to a stop. Bill got out and took a look. The rear tire was a whitewall, almost new. A telltale bulge showed where the tire rested on the graveled shoulder of the highway.
“Duck, Bill!” the Duke shouted, piling out of the car.
Bill crouched behind the car. The Duke followed, panted: “He grabbed my gun! The way you hammered at him he’s berserk!”
Bill unsheathed his revolver. He worked around the car until he could see through the left side window. Rugg sat up straight, the Duke’s gun clenched in both hands. The Duke urged: “Plug him!”
Rugg looked toward the left. He swung toward the right. Instantly Bill dropped his gun to the concrete highway and reached in through the window. He gripped Rugg’s wrists, twisted. Rugg screamed and dropped the gun.
“Pick up your gun,” Bill said.
The Duke obeyed. “You took a chance,” he said.
“No chance. He hadn’t taken the safety off.”
“I didn’t think he’d make a play,” the Duke explained.
Bill picked up his own gun. “You never knows what goes on inside anybody.”
Bill climbed in. The sedan gathered speed. The sun sank lower. Long shadows crept across the highway. At Stamford, the sedan crawled through heavy traffic, then re-entered the empty express highway.
The Duke suggested: “Let’s eat. It’s been six hours since lunch.”
“Okay,” Bill answered. He asked Rugg: “Hungry, kid?”
No answer. The Duke parked the sedan alongside a tavern. Bill snapped handcuffs on Rugg’s wrists. “You’ll behave now.”
Suddenly young Rugg reached forward and clawed the rough tweed shoulders of the Duke’s coat. “Don’t let him frame me!” he pleaded.
“I didn’t kill Velinski! I don’t want the chair! Please help me!”
“Relax, kid,” the Duke said easily. “I’m your friend.”
Slowly Rugg relaxed. “You’re a real guy, copper.”
Bill said: “Get out.”
They went inside, sat at a corner table by the rear door. After eating, the Duke stood up and stretched. “I’m a new man.” He strolled to the lavatory and entered.
Rugg sat with downcast eyes at first, then asked: “You want me to—to burn?”
“I want you to tell the truth, kid.”
“I didn’t kill Nocker! The sight of blood makes me sick.”
The Duke came back, said lightly: “Next.” Bill left the table. The lavatory was a cubicle, dimly lighted by the twilight streaming in through a half-opened window. He ran water until it flowed hot from the tap. Bill soaped his hands. A crash of broken glass from the direction of the dining room.
Bill swung toward the door. He tugged at the handle with soapy fingers. It wouldn’t open. He heard the Duke shout: “Come back here, Rugg!”
A door slammed. Steps banged across the dining room floor. And finally Bill Frane got the door of the lavatory open. The table where they had sat was u
pturned. Water dripped to the floor. The back door stood open. Bill ran toward the door.
All the while he expected to hear the blast of Duke’s gun as the kid legged for the safety of the nearby woods. One shot! Maybe the Duke was easy-going, but he could plug a tree at fifty yards! One shot, and Teddy Rugg would go back to the city feet first. They’d have the dickens of a job explaining that to Captain Reddick!
Bill burst into the yard behind the tavern. He saw Teddy Rugg forty feet away, stumbling toward the protection of the woods. He whirled to the left. The Duke stood near the building. He had his gun out, held it level.
One finger tightened on the trigger.
Bill hurled himself at the Duke, at the same time bringing up one fist sharply. The fist struck the Duke’s gun hand just as the gun thundered. Bill ran toward Teddy Rugg, called: “Come back, kid! You can’t get away!”
Within arm’s reach of the sheltering trees, Rugg hesitated. Slowly he turned. Then he walked toward Bill Frane as if he were wading through deep treacherous waters. “I don’t want the chair,” he moaned through clenched teeth.
Bill turned toward the building. The Duke made a hopeless gesture with the gun. A curl of smoke sifted from the barrel, swirled upward. “It would have been easier shooting him,” the Duke said. “Cripes, he flung the pitcher of water in my face! He thought he’d get away.”
“He’s going back and face the music.”
A waiter watched from the rear door. “What gives?” he asked.
“We’re police,” Bill explained. He took Rugg by the arm and led him toward the sedan. When the Duke returned from the tavern after paying the bill, Bill and Rugg were already in the sedan.
The sedan sped across the lower end of Connecticut. The soft early night flowed about them. Gradually the glow over the dimmed out city brightened, turned reddish as night deepened. They booked Rugg at the desk in the precinct station, watched as a pot-bellied, elderly policeman led him away to a cell.
“You should have thought of the kid’s mother,” the Duke said.
“I did,” Bill answered.
“Killing the kid could have been called an accident. That way there’d be no disgrace for the mother with her son dying in the chair.” Bill’s eyes were hard. “Let’s report and get it over.”
In Reddick’s office, the Duke sat down in front of the desk. He crossed immaculately creased trouser legs. Black silk socks with neat white clockwork gleamed above freshly shined oxfords. Always the Duke, Bill Frane thought, and listened to the explanation the Duke gave the captain.
“Then the case is almost closed,” Reddick said. “We’ll hand it to the D.A. in the morning.”
“One thing,” Bill Frane said. “So Rugg killed Nocker Velinski. Now who was the rat that kept tipping Nocker when we watched?”
“That’s not important now,” Reddick answered.
“Okay,” Bill said, “but the D.A. won’t like this case.”
The Duke grinned easily. Reddick snorted. “Why not, Frane?”
“The kid’s lawyer can do two things in court,” Bill explained slowly. “Nocker is a rat. He’s better off dead. So the lawyer builds the kid into a hero. You know the angle: Youngster kills black marketeer . . . teen-age hero kills Velinski in patriotic gesture . . . when Rugg learned of Velinski’s real character, he got a job in a defense plant . . . but first he killed the black marketeer . . . That’s a hot poker for any D.A. to handle. And he’ll give us Hell.”
Reddick leaned forward. “What’s the other line for Rugg’s lawyer?”
“Where’s the thirty-six grand cash?” Bill took a slow deep breath. “So the kid tells the truth. He says Nocker was alive when he left 328. Maybe he can prove that. He’ll tell about taking a job at Whirlaway Motors. He’ll tell how we got him, brought him back. Then the defense lawyer will swear me in as a defense witness.”
Reddick straightened. “You?”
“Sure. I’ll have to tell how Rugg took the Duke’s gun away in the car, how the Duke wanted me to shoot the kid. Then I’ll tell about the kid’s break from the tavern, how the Duke was going to shoot the kid and close the case. Sounds damned phoney, don’t it?”
The Duke stood up. His face was white. “Could I help it if the kid tried to scram?”
“Sure, only you wanted the kid dead.” Ugly lines ridged the skin alongside the Duke’s thin lips. “What you hinting at, Frane?”
Reddick ordered: “I want to hear this, Frane.”
Bill nodded. “All along I figured this case was screwy. When Nocker was alone in Room 328, the Duke sent me out for sandwiches. That left the Duke alone across the corridor from Nocker. I didn’t get that angle at first. I didn’t figure that the Duke would play me for a dope. When the bellhop came up for drinks and found Nocker dead, she screamed. The Duke don’t like gun play. He likes me to barge into trouble first. But this time, he races into 328 in the lead. Damned uncharacteristic of him.”
The Duke clenched both fists. “I oughta knock you cold, Frane.”
Bill ignored him. His voice took on force and speed. “While I was out for sandwiches, the Duke went into 328. Nocker wasn’t afraid of the Duke! It was the Duke who always phoned Nocker and tipped him off whenever we watched. It was easy for the Duke to slit Nocker’s throat, steal the cash, and then frame Teddy Rugg.”
Bill whirled on the Duke. “You dirty louse! With Nocker dead you had to phone the office to have scotch sent to 328 so I’d be with you when the girl found the corpse! That’s where you slipped up. I checked that call with the desk clerk. The call went through at 4:19 P.M. What’s more, that thirty-six grand made you excited. The clerk told me the liquor call was for Room 328, but that the call was made from our room, 327! That’s how I knew you were in on it. You had to be the tipster. You had to be the killer!”
The towering Duke stood to the right of the captain’s desk. His eyes were glazed with fright. He made a play swiftly. One hand shot inside his smartly tailored coat. A revolver butt showed inside his right hand. Bill Frane took two eager steps. His fist lashed out and caught the Duke on the point of the jaw. The Duke tottered, stumbled backward. Slowly he sagged to the floor.
Bill Frane stood over him. “Get up! Framing a kid! Get up!”
Reddick came around the desk, bent over the Duke. “Out cold,” he said heavily. Suddenly his eyes were tired. “I—I trusted DeRoche. He made a mistake and phoned from 327.”
Bill said: “No, he phoned from 328 all right. I tricked him, but he knew I had him hooked. He wanted me around when Nocker was found. That’s why he phoned. Remember the call was made at 4:19 P.M.?”
Reddick’s fist hit the desk viciously. “I get it! If Rugg had killed Nocker before Rugg left the room at 4:14, there’d have been no phone call for scotch.”
Bill nodded. “It’s quite a trick for a dead man to make phone calls.” Bill stumbled toward the door. “You take over Captain. I got to make a phone call. That kid’s mother—she’ll be worried stiff.”
“The voice of the dead,” muttered Reddick.
I DIDN’T DO IT!
Cliff Campbell
The guy kept on repeating his story, over and over, like a phonograph record.
LASGOTZ’S voice started again in that awful whining sing-song. “I didn’t do it, I tell ya,” his voice led off. It was like a phonograph record, I’d heard it so many times. “Ya gotta know that—that I didn’t do it,” the voice went on.
I didn’t even look over at the bunk; didn’t so much as encourage it with a nod. That didn’t deter him though, not him and his bellyaching alibiing endless tale. Never varying, always the same, like an accurate echo of the time he’d told it before. His voice went on, scratching dully at the walls of the cell. Somewhere in the prison block above a gong sounded dully. He said again:
“But I didn’t do it. It was this way. Just like I told it in court but they wouldn’t believe me. It was this way.”
God Almighty, how that voice could repeat itself. I knew what he was going to say
before the sounds formed on the air, just like I was saying it all myself in my own mind.
“It was this way,” the voice went on again. “We’d cased this job perfect—this bank in this little whistle-stop burg.”
There it was again. “This little whistle-stop burg.” Just as he always told it, by rote, word for word, parrotlike even to every last inflection. As if a whistle-stop burg could be big.
“We had everything worked out right down to the switch of cars ten miles out on the turnoff from the State highway. It couldn’t fail. Just couldn’t; and it wouldn’t of if that dizzy teller at the cage hadn’t been such a crazy jerk. Crazy—pure crazy, that’s what he was.”
I still didn’t turn my head to the bunk across the way. Maybe if I did I’d choke that voice off forever. Yet somehow I felt I never could do that. Somehow—it would have been impossible. Still, each and every time, did that bank teller have to be pure crazy?
The voice went on with it, “We walks in. Everything and everybody was covered. Links was on the submachine gun. And then that crazy teller, wit’ death looking him right smack in the kisser, he has to give the alarm, Not that anything happened in the bank itself; nothing did. He touches off the foot button that tells ’em down at the police headquarters. We didn’t guess nothing was wrong till a dame screams out in the street and we look around to see the police cars turning the corner.
“We had to fight our way out. Me, I’d already gone around behind the cage. And when I see Links go down, I figure it’s time to make tracks. I found a door out the back and slammed it behind me. There was the blank wall of the building backing from the next street just a few feet away. No way out there. I ran around to the side and jumps into the alley—and plump into the arms of a copper.”
That inane dry little laugh rattled around the cell; I tried not to hear it. It always made me want to open my mouth like I’d made the laughing sound myself. Out through the tiny grille of the door I could see a faint refracted beam of wan sunlight that somehow had made its way in through the barred door at the end of the corridor.