by Jerry eBooks
“What do you say you flunk out tonight?” said the girl sharply.
“Can’t spoil m’record,” said the redhead. “Where to now? I’m tired of following you around in this place. ‘Stoo Chinee-Chinee for comfort.”
“Tough,” said Jed, feeling helpless. Connie got to her feet, looking disgusted. Jed threw down his napkin and joined her. They left in a hurry, Jed throwing down some money for the cashier and telling her to take care of the waiter’s tip. They hurried to a cab and went back across town to the Porterhouse, a pseudo-English beamed-front restaurant off Park Avenue.
Jed paid off the driver, who had to fumble in a cigar box on the front seat beside him for change. By the time the deal was settled Connie had disappeared. He turned to walk on inside after her, thinking that it was awfully dark on this block. He was almost at the entrance when he was aware of a slithering noise behind him, of a figure moving his way.
Acting on reflexes alone, he whirled and ducked as something swished toward his head. The dodge probably saved his life, for the lead-tipped sap that nicked his ear and caught him on the top of the shoulder had not been struck with mere stunning intent. As it was, the shock and surge of pain caused him to black out briefly. He went down on his knees on the sidewalk with a woman’s scream ringing faintly in his ears.
When he came to he was being helped to his feet by strong masculine arms from behind and Connie Lopez was assisting from the front. He was half carried by both of them to a gleaming convertible against the curb, just beyond the Porterhouse parking area. Connie kept telling him to take it easy. She didn’t need to. He was as weak as a kitten from pain. His shoulder felt as if it had been permanently separated from the rest of him.
“Okay, fellow, just sit back.” It was the red-head, Lou Page, speaking. He sounded sober as he set Jed against the seat cushions of the car. “If I hadn’t come along when I did the fellow would have polished you off.”
“Well—thanks,” said Jed. “And thank you too, Connie.” They were in the car on either side of him, Page in the driver’s seat. “Your buggy?”
“That’s right,” said the red-head. “Where to? You’d better see a doc or something. He gave you quite a wallop.”
“You’re telling me,” said Jed. “I guess you’d better take me home.” He gave the address, added, “You didn’t get a look at the Joe, did you?”
“It was dark there, chum, or didn’t you notice?” said the red-head. “All I saw was a guy moving fast after Goldilocks here let out a screech.”
“Screamed, not screeched, please!” said Connie Lopez. Somehow they all felt better after that. Page got the car going and they took Jed to his apartment. They both came into his subleased two-and-a-half and the girl did first aid on his ear and shoulder while Page mixed them up a drink.
“Screwy business,” muttered Jed over his glass. He was beginning to feel a certain vague resemblance to his normal self. “Why pick on me?”
“It’s a big city, chum,” said Page. Jed regarded him gratefully and tried to gather his thoughts. Why had somebody tapped him?
He had no enemies that he knew of and no money to count. He was merely a feature writer on a newspaper drawing a good but not sensational salary. This thought made him remember Arlie Morris. He should call the paper, he knew it, but he decided to let it wait. He didn’t feel up to batting the ball around with the aggressive city editor just yet.
“I should have stood in bed,” he said bitterly. “If that Simon Leschmoe of a boss of mine hadn’t dragged me out of here to get on the Dubois murder I’d be pounding my pillow in peace and sonority.”
“You’d not have met me,” said Connie Lopez. Lou Page, the smiling red-head, chimed in with a “me too.” Jed agreed with both of them and did some thinking while they chatted over their drinks.
True, if he hadn’t gone out for Arlie, he would not have met Connie Lopez—rather she would not have picked him up. He thought about that and wished he had done his thinking sooner. Ray Corbin did not as a rule allow solitary girls to drink at his bar. He was fussy about this point.
True, Connie was a girl who carried her passport with her in the form of poise, beauty and smart clothes. Rules were made to be broken by girls like her. But she had picked him up—and to avoid Lou Page, with whom she now appeared to be on amicable terms. Well, his blackjacking might account for it.
The way in which Page had followed them was funny too, especially as both of them had pointedly showed him there was no dice in it. Still, that could have been merely the unreasoning stubbornness of a drunk.
“That fellow meant business all right,” Page was reaffirming. “What do you know, Jed, that makes you a target for sap artists?”
“Nothing,” said Jed, “and let’s keep that in the singular.” He shuddered and began to wonder about that sapping. Apparently Lou Page had been right there to pick him up. Wasn’t it possible that he had wielded the blackjack? And Connie—she could have slipped on ahead just long enough to put the finger on him. It could have been either of them—or both.
All at once he felt himself sweating. If they were ganging up on him they had him neatly boxed now. He put down his drink and stared at it and tried to figure out why anyone should be out to kill him or beat him up.
Obviously, it had to be because he knew something; almost as obviously because he knew something about the Dubois murder. Both Connie and Lou Page had made contact with him in the Fighting Cock, and it was outside the Fighting Cock that Dubois had been killed. And that meant—
The only trouble was that he didn’t know anything. All he was doing was following up that crazy matchbook lead to satisfy the ill-tempered Arlie Morris. There wasn’t, there couldn’t be, anything in that—or could there? He sat there, frozen, wondering, flirting with an idea that peered coyly from the recesses of his brain, refusing to come out into the open.
“Poor Jed,” said Connie, coming over to sit on the arm of his chair and stroke his hair. “He’s had a hard night. Lou, you and I had better be going. I’ll call you tomorrow, Jed, if you like.”
“I’d love it, baby,” he told her. This didn’t make sense, their leaving him like this. He struggled to his feet to shake hands with Lou and thank him again. Lou laughed and told him it was nothing. Then the both of them were gone and he was putting the chain bolt across the front door.
Lighting a cigarette, he sat down again, idly fingering the book of matches and trying to work out some water-holding theory. If Lou and Connie were both in the clear it meant that—what did it mean?
He decided to predicate his theory on the matchbooks because nothing else made even that much sense. Whom had he told about Morris’ mad idea? There was Pat Barlick, the detective, but he was out. There was Ray Corbin, who owned the Fighting Cock, and—and Connie Lopez, unless the cigarette girl had overheard his conversation with the club owner and acted on her own. Which was extremely unlikely, he decided.
Ray Corbin—Jed studied the matchbook in his hands as he thought about the genial and well-mannered boniface and, slowly, he felt the lurking idea that had bothered him take form in the front of his mind. He was staring at the matchbook the Fighting Cock cigarette girl had given him. A red and black and gold cockerel adorned its white front—and for the first time in his life he thought of a fighting cock as a bird.
Heretofore, Jed had always regarded them as mere fighting machines, as objects of gambling and, in some sections, sport. Never had he considered them in the same link as birds who could sing and fly-like Orioles, Cardinals, Bobolinks or Mocking Birds, for instance. Another first took root in him; there might, just might, be something in Arlie’s matchbook theory after all. It sounded crazy, but it just could be.
Why should Dubois have a collection of bird-named restaurants from all up and down the East Coast on him at once? Even if he had been to all of the places, it was sheer impossibility that he should have a single book of matches from each of them. He must have got them all at once.
And the Fighting
Cock was one of them. Before Jed realized what he was doing he was up and pulling on his topcoat, a surging excitement rising within him. He told himself that it was probably a lot of eye or hog-wash, but he had to find out for himself. It wouldn’t take long.
Five minutes later, he was back in the Fighting Cock, smiling once more at the check girl. He shook off her offer to care for his coat and hat, explaining that he only wanted to talk to the cigarette girl. A couple left then and the girl was busy getting them their wraps, Jed went to the entrance and peered inside, trying to spot his quarry. He saw no sign of her.
Then he spotted Connie Lopez at a table, once more alone. He wondered what the heck, ducked back from the doorway as she looked his way. He didn’t know whether she had spotted him or not, but he wanted to keep his move simple—and safe.
“I can’t wait around forever,” he told the check girl. “I’m doing a feature story on this place, focussing it on you girls who work here. Could I have a look at where the cigarette girl keeps her stock?”
The girl, who had just returned from deep in her coat closet, smiled and opened the half-door for him to enter. “It’s this way,” she said, She led him to the rear of the closet, nodded at a small door which opened on the opposite side from the cabaret itself.
“That’s it,” she added.
Jed went through, found himself in a comfortable little room, obviously a dressing room for some of the girls who worked in the club. Clothes hung neatly on hangers along one wall and there was a two-place vanity table. On another wall were shelves stocked with smoking supplies and favors.
He went to them, found the paper boxes in which book matches were kept, fifty to a box. He opened them, one after another, and his lips compressed as he found what he had half expected to find. There were books not only advertising the Fighting Cock but five other restaurants from Miami to Baltimore—restaurants named after birds. They were the book matches that had turned up so puzzlingly in Tony Dubois’ pocket.
“Okay, you can put them up,” said Lou Page’s voice behind him. Jed heard a door close softly and turned around. The redhead was facing him with a short-barrelled pistol in his hand. He didn’t look particularly vicious—just tired and a trifle disgusted.
“Set-up, eh?” said Jed. “I should have figured it.”
“You should have,” said Lou. “You should have figured a lot of things, Jed. We couldn’t have attention drawn to the chain—not after Tony Dubois got it right out front.”
“Why advertise it at all then?” said Jed curiously. “I don’t get it.”
“It was a mistake,” said Joe. “I always thought so, But Ray Corbin figured it would give the whole works a respectable front—besides, it paid to advertise, and Ray’s a fast man for a buck.”
“But what was the racket?” said Jed, wallowing back in the ruck.
“Be your age, newsboy,” said Lou. “Come on, let’s go—no, not that way.” His voice rose five notches as Jed, instead of moving toward a door away from the cafe, deliberately turned the knob on the one which had been Lou’s port of entry. He flung it open quickly and dodged as Page tried to bring his weapon down on his head.
The barrel of the pistol slivered wood from the door jamb and Jed leaped through into a secluded ell of the main dining room—to find himself staring into another pistol, held steadily in the fist of Connie Lopez. For a moment he gave himself up as a dead duck.
Then the girl was motioning him to a one side imperatively. In no mood for a further defiance, Jed obeyed and a bullet barely cleared his clothing as the girl fired into the dressing room behind him, fired twice, three times before she allowed her gun hand to drop.
A gasping, gurgling cry sounded and then Lou Page pitched forward through the doorway to lie on his face in a widening pool of blood. Connie Lopez put the pistol back in her handbag. She was quivering and her lips were trembling. Jed, feeling not much better, put an arm around her and she rested her blonde head on his shoulder.
“That was close—too close,” she said with a half-sick sigh.
Slowly, as he held the girl close to his side, Jed became aware of much noise and confusion around them. Then a trio of men in overcoats came around the corner of the ell just as somebody broke through one of the other dressing room doors. One of the plain clothes men was Pat Barlick.
“Phew!” he said. “You’re all right, Jed?” He looked relieved, then gave his attention to the very dead Lou Page, said, “Well, there’s one more heroin hot shot who won’t be peddling his wares.”
Jed began to get it, then—the chain of restaurants up and down the coast. They must have been key points in a tremendous ring, so secure in their apparent respectability that they could afford to advertise. He looked down at Connie, who was talking to one of the newcomers. He nodded and muttered something, and she looked up at Jed.
“Come on,” she said. “I need some coffee. Let’s get out of here. I don’t spend my evenings this way as a rule. As a matter of fact that’s the first time I ever shot a man—or anything else alive for that matter.”
“My place?” he asked. She nodded and they got a cab outside.
Later, over coffee and brandy, he looked at her inquiringly.
“Then Dubois,” he said, “was a Federal Narcotics agent?” She nodded.
“Tony had finally broken down the approach to the whole thing,” she said. “He was picked to get concrete proof at the Fighting Cock with my help. It was Tony Dubois I was waiting for.” She paused, her face drawn.
“You know what happened. Lou Page—he was a sort of traveling manager for Ray Corbin and covered the whole chain—spotted him from one of Tony’s visits to the other restaurants and knocked him off. He didn’t know about me, praise Allah.”
“Selah,” said Jed. “What about you, Connie? How come you’re in this?”
“It was mother,” she said. “She had to have a lot of operations after I was born and got into the habit of drugs. It made an old woman of her before her time, finally killed her. I feel somehow responsible. It isn’t the first time I’ve worked with the bureau.”
“I hope it’s the last,” he told her, and the message in his eyes was deeply personal. She hesitated before going on.
“When Tony died I stuck around to see if I could nail anybody for it. Nothing happened except that Lou began to pester me. I didn’t think he knew who I was, so I didn’t mind. Then you came in and spouted off to Corbin about matchbooks with birds’ names and said you were going to follow them up. I figured you might need a nurse.”
“Feature writing, here I come,” Jed said solemnly. “No more crime work for me. I’m a babe in the woods.”
“You were just unlucky,” she said. “Anyway, I picked you up and brother Lou tagged along. I got careless at the Porterhouse, and he would have killed you then if I hadn’t screamed. I decided I’d better stay with him after that to keep you safe. It worked until you came into the Fighting Cock the second time. Then he got a call and, when I spotted you, I followed him. I didn’t make it by much.”
She shuddered and he drew her close to him on the sofa.
“It’s okay now, honey,” he said. “Everything’s going to be—”
The angry shrill of the telephone interrupted him. He made a face at Connie, who wrinkled her perfect nose in return, and let it ring. But it kept on ringing with a dreadful defiant insistence, and finally Jed reached for the handset.
Even before the rasping voice of Arlie Morris assailed his right eardrum he knew who it was going to be. The worst of it was that he was going to have to tell the city editor his matchbook hunch had paid off—even if it had paid off on a freak bit of luck. Morris was going to be unbearable after this.
“Jed Thurston speaking, you big baboon,” he said.
DEATH ENDS THE YEAR
Johnston McCulley
For Detective Lieutenant Larry Ogden it was D-Day and H-Hour—with D for Danger and H for Homicide!
DELIBERATELY he took a cigarette from the box on the
table. He thumbed the lighter, inhaled the smoke. He could not be blamed because his hand shook slightly as he put the lighter back upon the table. A man could be expected to show nervousness when a sentence of death hung over him, when he had been told that he had less than three hours to live.
Detective Lieutenant Larry Ogden was no fool. He was honest enough to admit to himself that he felt a measure of fear. He knew the power of his enemies. One reason for his success in police work was that he never underestimated an antagonist, never laughed a threat aside, always took it for granted that there was a possibility of a weak adversary getting in a lucky blow.
He glanced at the clock again. It was two minutes after nine, on New Year’s Eve. Two minutes less than three hours!
He glanced around the living room of his small bachelor apartment in which he had been so comfortable for three years. It was strictly a man’s apartment.
He had bought every bit of furniture, every picture and book, every ash tray. He had taken time to buy them piece by piece, getting exactly what he desired.
He was sitting in an easy chair in which he always relaxed after he got home from a tour of duty. The floor lamp beside the chair was the only light burning in the room. At his elbow was a table, and on the table were a book, a couple of new magazines, a tobacco jar and a rack filled with pipes, the cigarette box almost empty, the table lighter.
He sighed as there flashed through his mind the thought that he had planned to give up all this, and gladly. In a couple of months he was going to marry Laurie Carr, whose father was a police captain, and move to a larger apartment. He smiled as he remembered how she had declared that he must have a den all for himself to which he could move his favored furnishings from this place.
LARRY OGDEN got up and paced slowly around the room and inspected his defenses.
The apartment was on the third floor, on the side of the building. No window had a fire escape landing. Every window had been locked securely and the shades were drawn. Ogden moved about the room so his body would not cast a shadow on a shade and invite a long-range shot from outside.