Pulp Crime

by Jerry eBooks

  “What’s the matter, Larry?”

  Vince Parker had eased his long frame into the lounge chair and was busy loading a pipe.

  “What’s the matter!” I yelped. “You two have the nerve to sit there and ask me what’s the matter after what happened to Sayler?”

  “Oh, that!” Vince laughed. “A pretty good joke, eh? Were you over there?”

  I don’t know how I kept from slapping the grin off his face.

  “So you were both in on it!” I looked wearily from Parker to Betty. She was still smiling.

  “I got the letters, Larry!” she said. This time I laughed. I pulled the blue ribbon from my pocket and dangled it before her eyes.

  “You forgot to take this along!” I said dryly. “I don’t understand—I’ve got the letters, why should I have taken the ribbon?”

  “Did you ever hear of circumstantial evidence?” I asked hotly.

  “Hey, fella, calm down. The whole thing is just a gag.” Vince Parker laughed again. “Wait till Sayler wakes up—he won’t find that manuscript on his desk. I’ve got it!”

  “Wakes up?” That was a hot one. “What makes you think he’s going to wake up?”

  “Hell, I didn’t give him enough nitrous oxide to kill him—just enough to put him to sleep. He was still pretty groggy from last night and it was easy. You remember Haskell suggested making him die laughing? Well, that gave me the idea.

  “I went over there earlier this morning and dosed him up. He went out like a light. Then I took the manuscript he was going to turn in to Stebber. I left the cylinder there so he’d know I wasn’t fooling. Betty walked in a little after I left, sized up the situation, took the letters she wanted, and came over here. Let’s celebrate!”

  “Who put the bullet in his head?” I asked. They looked at me. The smiles faded from their faces. Parker dropped his pipe and stammered: “Did you say . . . bullet?”

  “He’s dead. Shot through the head,” I said grimly.

  Betty had straightened in her chair. She gave a short unsteady laugh. “Larry, you’re joking!”

  “Sure, I’m joking. It’s a great joke. He’s lying there with a nice hole in his head. I felt like laughing when I saw him.”

  “God!” Vince Parker sank back in his chair. He pulled off his glasses and there was incredulous wonder in his eyes as he looked up at me. “Sayler—dead! Shot! But who did it? You know I don’t have a gun, Larry—and Betty doesn’t . . .”

  His voice trailed off, and suddenly they were both looking at me. I didn’t mind that, but I suddenly realized just what they were thinking. “You have a gun, Larry . . .” Vince said slowly.

  “You think that maybe I could have shot him!” I blurted out. “For God’s sake, you know that I never even kept that old .38 of mine clean—let alone loaded! I don’t even know where the damn thing is—I only used it for a paperweight!” I paused as a new thought struck me. I didn’t like to say it: “Anyone could have bought a gun and used it on Sayler. Anyone with a good reason to want to kill him.”

  “He was alive when I left. Betty saw him,” Vince said stubbornly.

  “He was alive when I left,” Betty said nervously, the color gone from her face.

  “And he was dead when George Weldon found me standing beside the body,” I said.

  “Weldon?” Parker frowned.

  “He came in shortly after I did. Went to see Sayler about another of his story ideas. Incidentally, he took that damned gas tube of yours and ditched it. He made the mistake of picking it up. I thought it might help you at the time. Frankly I thought you killed him, Vince.”

  Parker put his glasses back on and started pacing the room.

  “What are we going to do? They’re sure to perform an autopsy on him, and when they do they’ll find out about the nitrous oxide!”

  “That’s your problem, Vince,” I said coldly. There was something too cocksure about his story, and he could have gone back after Betty left the apartment. And Betty . . .

  “You don’t have to get so damned businesslike about it!” Parker snapped angrily. “After all, I’m not the only one that had a motive and a good opportunity to kill Sayler!”

  I didn’t reply. I grabbed Betty by the arm and high-tailed it for the door.

  “What are you going to do?” Vince Parker called anxiously.

  I looked back over my shoulder as I pushed Betty through the door. “Nothing. I’m going to sit tight. If you have any sense, you’ll do the same. You can say a prayer for a little luck too!”

  I slammed the door on him.

  We went to a little bar on Diversey. Betty was still white, and her lips kept trembling.

  I ordered us a couple of straight shots and piloted her to a small booth in the rear.

  “Kitten, tell me something,” I said quietly. “You didn’t—do anything to Sayler, did you?”

  She looked at me with those wide blue eyes, shook her head savagely, and tears streamed down her face.

  “I—I didn’t do anything, Larry. Vince told just what happened—I went there to get those letters back, found Hank unconscious on the floor with the gas cylinder beside him. I searched his desk and found the letters. I left the ribbon on his desk and went right over to Vince’s. I knew that the gas must have come from his place. Larry, you—”

  “No, Kitten, I didn’t kill him.”

  The barkeep brought the drinks and I gave him a bill.

  I didn’t cough when the whisky hit my throat. It would have taken more than that to make me cough. And it didn’t make me warm inside. The police were sure to trace the gas to Parker when the body was found. That would take a day or so, but once they got to Parker, they’d find out about Betty. Not to mention me. I wasn’t worried so much about myself.

  “Larry.”

  I looked up. She had stopped crying and was wiping her eyes.

  “Larry, does Frank Haskell know yet?”

  I had forgotten all about Haskell. Did he fit into the picture? Sayler had lifted some of his stuff, he had admitted as much. And he had no reason to like Sayler. I suddenly was wondering if Haskell had a gun.

  “Larry, you haven’t answered me.”

  “Huh?” I tried to give her a smile. It’s a hard thing to smile when your mind is racing, trying to keep one step ahead of a murder charge. I had written plenty of stuff about corpses. This wasn’t fiction. It was the real McCoy. Somehow I was scared.

  “You better go down to the office, kitten,” I told her. “Tell them you’ve been shopping. And try and forget about this mess for a while.”

  She looked at me with a worried frown. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going home and work on a yarn,” I lied. “Come on, it’s nearly noon.”

  After I put her on a bus for the Loop, I hopped a Broadway car and got off at Irving Park. It was just a short walk over to Haskell’s flat. He wasn’t home.

  I lost track of time after that. I remember stopping in at a few taverns and brooding over some drinks. I walked a lot. And then I suddenly became aware that street lights were on and it was evening. I wondered if the police had found out about Sayler. I wondered if they were checking on Parker and had gotten to Betty Kane.

  I walked up the steps of the rooming house where I lived, entered the dimly lit corridor, pulled out the key to my room, and suddenly found out.

  A cop and a guy in plain clothes were waiting for me at my door.

  CHAPTER IV

  The Trap

  “You Larry Colter?”

  I felt sick all over. I hadn’t expected this. How could they possibly have checked through to me already? I was grateful for the dimly lit hallway. It hid the startled expression that I knew had crossed my face.

  “That’s right,” I said guardedly. “What do you want?”

  The guy in plainclothes spoke. He was a short, stout guy, with a dark fedora pulled down across his forehead so you couldn’t see his eyes.

  “We’d like to ask you a few questions. You don’t mind, do yo
u?”

  “What about?” I asked.

  “I’d rather talk that over inside.” There was nothing else to do. I slipped my key into the lock and opened the door. The cop shoved me aside and elbowed his way in first.

  “Why didn’t you just crawl through the transom and wait inside for me!” I said dryly. Behind me, the plainclothes guy gave me a nudge.

  He followed me into the room. The cop had found the light switch.

  The plainclothes bird perched himself on the edge of my bed.

  “Make yourself at home,” I said. I put enough sarcasm in my voice to let them know I wasn’t nervous. If somebody had said boo behind me just then I’d have probably jumped ten feet.

  “Sit down, Colter,” he waved me toward my desk chair.

  “Thanks,” I replied. “Would you mind telling me what this is all about?”

  The cop was nosing around the room. He had the closet door open and was thumbing through my clothes.

  “My good shirts are in the bureau, if you need one,” I told him. He turned his head around and wasn’t grinning. The dick cut in.

  “I’m Blaine, of the Homicide Detail,” he said, as if that explained everything I’d want to know.

  “You won’t find any corpses here,” I answered, fishing for a cigarette among the pile of papers on my desk.

  “I don’t expect to. Do you know a fellow named Sayler?”

  I nodded. “Sure. Why?”

  Blaine pushed his hat back on his forehead and for the first time I got a look at his eyes. I’ve seen the same kind of eyes in an eagle down at Lincoln Park. They were hard, close set, and seemed to stare right through me.

  “We got a phone call this noon that said he wasn’t very healthy any more. He’s dead. Shot through the head with a .38. You wouldn’t know anything about it?”

  I was trying to decide how far to push my act when the cop suddenly gave a grunt from across the room. He was leaning over picking something off the floor beside the door. When he turned around I saw what it was. He held it gingerly in a white handkerchief.

  My .38 revolver. I took a deep drag on my cigarette and decided to play ball. They had nothing on me.

  Blaine took the gun, still in the handkerchief, and hefted it slowly in his hand. His eyes never left me. I managed a grin.

  “If you’re trying to say that you think I killed him, and with that gun, you’re crazy. I’ve had the thing for a couple years, but it’s never been loaded. I use it as a paperweight.”

  He raised the barrel to his nostrils and sniffed. The faintest semblance of a smile crossed his face. Then he broke open the cylinder.

  My throat tightened into a knot. I heard the cop chuckle.

  “Never been loaded, eh? Hah!” The cylinder was full. Six slugs.

  They were both looking at me. I felt the blood draining from my face and bit my lips hard. I heard Blaine say casually:

  “One round has been fired, Colter.”

  I tried to think. I was in a spot. I knew as well as I knew my own name that that gun had never been loaded since I bought it in a swap shop down on Madison over two years ago. But it was loaded now!

  “You said somebody phoned you about Sayler. Who was it?” I asked, and my voice was hoarse.

  Blaine kept staring at me. His lips barely moved when he spoke.

  “I don’t know. It was an anonymous call. The party said that Sayler was dead and that you had a good reason to kill him, and a gun.”

  It suddenly hit me. The transom!

  “Look.” I leaned forward and felt sweat rolling down my face. “I’ve told you the truth—that gun has never been loaded. Somebody must have taken it from my room, used it, and thrown it in through the open transom!”

  The cop laughed. “Tell me another one! You had a fight with Sayler last night, didn’t you? You were sore at him for stealing some of your fiction, and he had been monkeying around with your girl!”

  I looked blankly from the cop over to Blaine. He clicked the cylinder back in place.

  “We’ve checked up on a few facts in the past hours, Colter. You had a good motive to kill Sayler. If this gun checks with the ballistics of the bullet that’s in Sayler’s skull—and I have every reason to believe it will—we’ve got you.”

  It was like being in the middle of a nightmare, when you try to wake up and can’t do it. I felt as if somebody were pinning me to the floor while a mechanical sledge-hammer was pounding away into my guts. All along I had been worrying about the others—wondering who could have killed Sayler, and hoping that whoever it was wouldn’t get caught. Now it was me. I had no doubt in my mind that the bullet in Sayler’s head would check with the revolver Blaine was now holding. My friends! It was a perfect frame. And anyone could have lifted that gun any number of times from my room. I was sick.

  “Do you want to confess now, Colter?” Blaine’s eyes might have been those of a vulture waiting to pounce on its victim.

  “I didn’t kill him,” I said.

  He sighed and pushed his hat down over his eyes again. Then he got up from the bed.

  “Okay, Colter, if that’s the way you want it. I’m booking you on suspicion of murder. I’ll have all the evidence I need when this gun is checked. Come on, we’re going downtown.”

  I got slowly to my feet, my mind racing. There was something wrong about this whole thing. And I was getting a one-way ticket to the hot seat. I had to have time to think. There were things to do.

  “Come on. Let’s go.”

  They were standing beside the door. I could see into the hall and the key was still in the lock where I had left it. The cop was to the right of the door beside a cane-backed chair. I picked up my hat and walked toward them.

  “Snap it up!” the cop said.

  I did as I walked past him and Blaine and into the doorway. I hooked my foot under the leg of the chair and kicked back. The chair caught the cop around the knees and threw him into Blaine. Almost in the same instant I switched off the light and slammed the door behind me. Even as I turned the key in the lock they were pulling at the door.

  I heard Blaine shouting threats. The cop was swearing, and together they were smashing at the panel. I knew it wouldn’t hold them long. But it was long enough for me.

  I was out in the street and running. I slipped around the corner and entered the alley. It was dark. I couldn’t see three feet ahead, but I ran.

  There were more alleys. Countless ones. I lost track of them after awhile. And the breath inside my lungs was a burning fire. But I had gotten away. They wouldn’t be able to track me for awhile. And then suddenly it all seemed like a big joke. And the laugh was on me. They would be certain now that I had killed Sayler, now that I had taken a powder. And how long would I be able to stay loose? A day—a week, maybe? Where would I go? I didn’t have more than a couple bucks in my pocket. I leaned against a backyard fence and laughed in wracking sobs.

  Afterward, I started walking again. I walked for blocks, miles, it seemed. There were alleys and dark side-streets. I was tired, thirsty, I wanted a place to lie down. Once a squad car prowled slowly around a corner and I hugged the side of a two-flat, my heart pounding.

  Where could I go? The alarm was probably being broadcast to every precinct in the city. From now on every cop I saw would have my description. It was only a question of time. I couldn’t go to Parker; the cops probably had a tail on him now. Stebber and Lane were out of the mess, no sense dragging them in. Betty? I wondered what she was doing. I wondered if the cops had got to her yet. I couldn’t go there, they’d expect me to. I thought of Haskell. I’d like to see Haskell. I wondered where he was.

  I came out onto a trash-littered street with yellow glowing lamps hanging from corner poles like witch lanterns. I stared up at a street sign. George street. And it suddenly hit me. George Weldon—of course! Maybe he’d help me, the cops wouldn’t be after him, they wouldn’t even know about him yet.

  I looked at the street numbers. Somewhere off in the darkness I heard a f
reight chugging, and then I knew where I was. The Milwaukee Road freight sidings for their Fullerton Avenue offices was close by. Weldon lived just a few blocks away on Southport. I pulled my hat down further over my eyes and strolled along the street to the carline. A few minutes later I pushed the bell in the hall of a dumpy three-flat. Weldon opened the door on the first floor.

  His mouth dropped open when he saw me. I managed a wry grin and walked inside without waiting for an invitation. He closed the door behind me.

  “I—I wasn’t expecting you,” he said. “Got company?”

  “No, no, sit down—here, I’ll take your hat.” I looked around the room. I’d only been over here once before but it hadn’t changed any. There was a large six-foot bookcase on one wall, loaded to the gills with all kinds of magazines. A desk stood before the two windows facing the street.

  There was another smaller book case on the opposite wall, filled with cameras and knick-knacks. I sat down by the desk.

  “Mind if I bunk with you tonight, Weldon?” I asked.

  He was fidgeting around, nervous-like. “Huh? Why, no . . . I guess it would be all right.”

  I looked at him steadily. “What’s the matter? You seem nervous.”

  He plunked himself on the edge of the desk and pushed aside a bundle of clipped manuscripts. “I’ve been on edge all day,” he said. “I kept thinking of Sayler and the way we found him. Do you think the police will be able to trace me?”

  “If I thought so I wouldn’t be here,” I told him.

  “What?” There was surprise in his voice. “Relax, Weldon. They’ve discovered the body and they’re out checking now. That’s all I know.” There was no sense in getting him haywire. I knew he was extremely sensitive, even a little neurotic at times. I didn’t want to be chucked out on the street now. So I didn’t say that they were out looking for me.

  I glanced around the room and lit a cigarette. My hand was still unsteady as I held the match. Over the flame I looked at the small book case with the knick-knacks.