Pulp Crime

by Jerry eBooks

  Well, it would be a relief to talk to somebody besides Minnehaha. He’d welcome anything. Anything except another stolen heap that might get past him and give him another black mark in the Ole Man’s book.

  CAP Matthews would reduce him to making up barrack bunks if he slipped up on another “Wanted” car. The blistering scorn of his superior still reddened the Demon’s ears. He could remember the Captain’s vitriolic remarks even if he couldn’t manage to memorize all the license numbers on the Hot List: Called you the ‘Demon’ when you were burning up those motordromes, did they, Ames? Sizzling stuff in those pace races, huh? Hell on wheels stunting up those hill-climb tests? Maybe so, maybe so. But let me tell you something. You may be able to ride that Indian of yours over anything except a lake but you’ll still be a pain in the padukas in this troop unless you can speed up your gray matter when necessary.

  “We need men who can remember from one day to the next that there’s an alarm out for a black ’46 Chevvy with Jersey pads and a crumpled left front wing. If you can’t keep the license numbers in mind, if you haven’t brains enough to check your list, we’ll give you a new name around these barracks, trooper. We won’t call you Demon. Around here you’ll answer to Dumb One, Ames.”

  He’d been set to scrubbing down the patrol jeeps on account of letting that Chevvy get by him. Cap Matthews hadn’t even assigned him to a patrol unit when the news of this jail break at Comstock had flashed in on the shortwave. The Demon had taken a deep burn at that. When the last of the troop had grabbed Thompsons from the armory racks and piled into the cars, he’d protested angrily.

  The Captain had seemed surprised, had stared coldly at him, through him, before swiveling around to the district map. “If you think you’d be able to remember this Medini’s description for more than five minutes”—his pencil had touched the intersection of US 9 and NY 46 on the big scale roadmap—“you might be of some use here. If this murderer slips through the net at Whitehall, that’d be the only place we could pin him in, between here and the border. North of there, there’d be a dozen routes he could take.

  “But I haven’t anyone to send with you. And I can’t order you to take your cyke out on a night like this. If you go, you’re strictly on your own.”

  Naturally, under the circumstances, there had been only one thing for the Demon to say. He’d saluted smartly and said it. Had slithered his Indian sweetheart over nineteen slush-greasy miles to set out his solitary road-block. A gesture, to show his willingness to be a good trooper. And what would he get out of it? The sniffles.

  The headlights of the approaching car slowed, a couple hundred yards down the road. The Demon switched on his blinker and his headlight, kicked down the rest-bar, dismounted. He grabbed his flash, moved into the thin wedge of white light so the driver could see his puttees, and made a “Come Ahead” gesture with the flashlight.

  The car moved up, slowed, stopped a dozen yards from the row of flares. A girl cranked down the window beside the wheel, leaned out anxiously. The Demon pushed up his ear flaps to hear her.

  “What is it, officer? Road under repair?”

  It was a two-tone green ’47 Buick four-door she was driving. Even under its coating of ice it was glossy, shiny with bright chrome. Maryland pads VR 21-744. The Demon couldn’t recall any such car on the Hot List at the moment. But he didn’t have time to take out his mimeo sheet and check, now. There was something more important. He walked over; the girl seemed to be alone.

  “Just checking licenses, Miss. See yours, please?”

  She frowned, irritated. She would have been right pretty, he thought, if it wasn’t for the scowl. Curly blond hair, sort of a pert, snub nose and a mouth that was certainly intended for better things than being turned down petulantly at the corners. He couldn’t tell, about her figure under the beaver coat, but she looked like the sort of cutie somebody’d buy this kind of car for.

  “Here.” She fumbled in her bag, produced a celluloid case, handed it through the window.

  It was a blue Maryland license. One of those lifetime issuances. Kathryn F. Caudle, it read. #938363, 21 McCormick Ave., Baltimore. Underneath were cryptic symbols: W. F. 5/4122-1923. It seemed to check. She was white and female, all right—that Nuit de Passion or whatever she used on her hair was very, very, feminine, the Demon decided. She would weigh around a hundred twenty or so, yeah. And she didn’t appear to be more than twenty-five.

  He gave the license back. “Which way you going, Miss?” He opened the rear door casually, peered in.

  “Lake Placid. Where do I turn for Ausable?”

  “Westport. Ten miles beyond Port Henry.” He felt beneath the plaid blanket on the floor behind the front seat. Something lumpy was hidden under the blanket. It was a suitcase and a duffel bag.

  “My ski stuff,” she said crossly. “If I ever get to Placid without skiing off the road.”

  “I’ll help you put your chains on, if you want.”

  “No thanks!” Was he imagining it, or was there a sudden panic in her voice? “They make such a horrible racket when the highway is clear of snow.”

  “Yeah. Car skidding into a telegraph pole doesn’t sound very sweet, either.” He guessed he’d been wrong. He was looking for trouble and expected to find it even where there wasn’t any.

  He grinned and it made his homely, wide-mouthed face attractive in a weather-reddened fashion. She smiled back at him, amiably. He closed the rear door, vaguely uneasy about something—annoyed with himself that he couldn’t put a name to it.

  What was there about this dame and her shiny new bus that bothered him?! “They’ll have chains at Hoffman’s Garage at Westport, if you change your mind.”

  “I might.” She blinked long lashes provocatively. “I do, sometimes. Play it safe, that’s my motto.”

  “Good motto. Good night.” He waved her on, watched the Buick’s purplish tail lights dwindle into the darkness up US 9, slow momentarily at the curve an eighth of a mile ahead, disappear. He splashed back to his machine with a disturbed feeling that all was not according to Hoyle in that setup.

  “I’m getting gidgety as an ole woman, Minnie. Just because the Cap bawls me out.” Suppose he’d made that girl get out and unlock the trunk compartment for inspection. She’d have had a right to raise a smell that would really get him a bawling—Wait!

  SMELL! That was it! He’d caught a good, strong whiff of garlic when he’d opened that rear door.

  And the girl had been wearing perfume, so it couldn’t have come from her or he’d never have noticed the garlic.

  Garlic. Italian cooking. Medini. The Demon wondered. Of course a lot of people besides Italians did like garlic. To be sure the odor of those powerful little cloves could hang around clothing or, say a blanket, for quite a while. And the Demon had no certain knowledge that they ever cooked with the onion’s little brother down at the Comstock penitentiary.

  “Urgent! All patrols! . . . Urgent, Urgent!! All patrols!!” Minnie was sputtering a warning. He tuned up her oneway. “Special to Units Seven, Fourteen and Twenty-two . . .!” The Demon’s heart hammered. Twenty-two was Trooper Damon Ames!! “Special to Units Seven, Fourteen, Twenty-two. Fatal shooting on US 9 two miles south Crown Point at Wistor’s Grocery about fifteen minutes ago. Proprietor killed. No details except murderer escaped in car.”

  Brad Wistor, the Demon muttered. The roly-poly little guy who would never take a nickel from a trooper for sodas or an apple. A harmless ole Humpty Dumpty with a heart as big as his fat stomach. Chopped down in cold blood.

  “No identification of attacker. Halt all cars moving away from area, bring to Crown Point for questioning.”

  He kicked up the rest-stand, slewed out in the highway. He’d stop the one car that was moving away from the area past his block, or bust a few of Minnie’s spokes.

  Fifteen minutes ago? He was four miles north of Crown Point. Four and two made six miles. Just about right for a Buick traveling thirty-five.

  She didn’t look like a k
id who might have gunned out a friendly ole geek like Brad. But she might not have been alone in that car. There might have been someone hidden in that trunk compartment. Someone who liked garlic.

  It was only the merest breath of suspicion, but it was all he had to go on.

  He gave Minnie the spurs, got up to seventy on the straightaway. Then he saw the swinging red light at the grade crossing.

  A wild wail of approaching danger shrilled from the locomotive—another.

  He twisted Minnie’s tail into fourth speed; the pickup nearly left him sitting flat in the slush. His Indian baby could do a hundred and ten on dry ground. He kept his eyes off the speedometer as he roared into the crossing.

  It was one of those long freights clattering toward Schenectady and the west. He could beat it to the grade crossing.

  Fifty feet from the oscillating red glare he saw the headlight coming from the opposite direction. The Montreal express coming like a bat.

  He could slide Minnie through a lot of tight places where a car wouldn’t be able to squeeze by—but he couldn’t ride the cinders between two trains. He wrenched the handlebars blindly, rocketed off the road onto the side of the railroad embankment.

  For one heart-stopping moment Minnie’s momentum carried them sliding and slipping right up the grade into the white beam of the express train’s headlight. There was a bedlam of frantic whistles, the scream of steel brakes biting into steel, the hiss of escaping steam.

  Then he was bouncing and jouncing along beside the cab. An instantaneous glimpse of the peak-capped engineer. The orange flash of the firebox. A cloud of blinding vapor. He jerked on the chromium reins again. Minnie plunged down the embankment, hit the gully, threw him.

  He spraddled her again, hobbled through a briar thicket into a dump of tin cans and rusty wire, circled back to the road.

  “Hate to dish it out to you so raw, Minnie. But you got to expect a few scratches at roundup time.”

  He might be held up another couple of minutes by the freight; with the time he’d already lost, the chick in the Buick might have a two or three-mile lead. It wouldn’t make any difference until she got to some cross-road where she could switch off and leave him guessing which way she’d gone. But that would only be ten miles away at Port Henry.

  Now that he’d had a few seconds to mull it over, he was pretty sure he wasn’t up against any dumb Dora. Except for that spasmodic indication of panic when he’d suggested getting chains out of the trunk compartment, she’d played the part of a typical traveler made grouchy by villainous driving conditions.

  The more he chewed on it, the less certain he was that there had been anyone in that luggage compartment of her car. He remembered—now that it was too late—the momentary slowing a few hundred yards before she got to his roadblock. That could have given a man like Medini plenty of opportunity to open one of the rear doors and drop out into the darkness. She’d have closed the door before she came on to answer the Demon’s beckoning “Come ahead.”

  Then she’d slowed again, up the road, thirty seconds or so after he waved her through. The time he’d spent questioning her would give an active man enough leeway to circle around in the blackness and cut back to the road so she could pick him up on the north side of the road-block. That would explain the stench of garlic!

  The one bloodshot eye of the caboose loomed into view. Minnie hurdled the tracks close enough for the Demon to have grabbed the brakeman’s lantern off the rear end. He bent low behind the windshield, slurring over on the curves, his blinker light winking furiously as he tore along the deserted road.

  If that blond bambina was Medini’s gal, there’d be a shortwave in the dash of that Buick. She’d know the news of Bud Wistor’s shooting was being broadcast over the countryside. She’d not be loafing along at thirty-five now, glare ice or not. With any luck, she’d tear into Port Henry ahead of him. There wouldn’t be anyone there to stop her; no troopers, no deputies—and the lone cop wouldn’t be on the job this time of night.

  It was even steven she’d get through the sleepy little burg without anyone knowing which of the two possible routes she’d chosen north from the fork at the village green. There wouldn’t be any tire marks to show the Demon which way she’d gone, either. Even if he’d taken pains to notice what kind of treads she had on her 6.50 x 16s, the Port Henry streets were black asphalt. They held the sun’s heat longer than the white concrete of US 9—and the sleet would melt soon as it hit them.

  One route went to Plattsburg and Rouses Point—the border. The other, to Ausable and ski country. She’d told him she was going to Placid. She’d expect him to think she was trying to throw him off the trail. He decided she would head for Placid. Via the Ausable fork.

  It wasn’t quite a toss-up. If she laid her course due north, there’d be another ninety miles in which to catch her—and whoever the garlic-eater was, with her. If she took the Placid route, the Demon knew a short cut that would save him five or six miles and possibly—just possibly—bring him back into the highway ahead of her to cut her off.

  It wasn’t a road he’d have picked for Minnie to negotiate on a slick night. It was steep, narrow and as full of curves as a spiral staircase. But it was shorter.

  He passed an ambulance going full clip—lost the long white car in his rearview mirror within half a mile. Port Henry was a flash-bulb view of huddled stores, one lighted building—the engine house.

  A DOG raced alongside him as he swerved into the Ausable-Placid road at the green, nipped at his heels. He twisted the throttle grip, startled the dog into a backflip. Three miles out of town, at the foot of the mountain, he swung right, began to climb.

  He hobbled and straddle-walked up the steepest part, hopped and joggled to brake his speed on the precipitous down pitch. Halfway down he let Minnie feel her gas on a looping U-curve, realized his mistake the instant he saw the faint amber gleam of a lantern bobbling along in the middle of the narrow road.

  A chicken wagon, going to the freight shed at Westport—two ancient Percherons hauling a cart piled high, wide and handsome with crates full of clucking hens.

  There was no room to pass, no time if there had been room. He pulled onto the shoulder. There wasn’t any shoulder. It was a ditch, full of water, frozen over. Like stepping on a piece of soap in the bathtub!

  Minnie slipped sideways, kept going in spite of the power the Demon poured to her. They went off the road, through the remnants of a low rail fence, into a plowed field saw-toothed with ruts. The Demon took a header.

  The farmer on the chicken truck swore at him. The horses shied. The chickens made the night hideous. Minnie backfired like a three-inch rapid fire.

  The Demon wiped the blood off his nose, spat out a mouthful of dirt, made sure no bones were broken. Then he lifted Minnie, examined her with more care than he had himself. She had a bent crashguard and a smashed headlight. But her wheels were in alignment. She would take him where he had to go.

  He dragged her back to the road, lit out again. When he hit the Placid through highway, he saw a wrecker towing a Model T coupe that had mashed its radiator against a narrow bridge.

  “Seen a green ’47 Buick sedan come past, last few minutes?”

  “Ain’t seen a single soul,” the garageman answered. “Not for the last half-hour.”

  The Demon whacked Minnie’s gas tank. “We’ve caught her,” he whispered. “We’ve got her in a trap.”

  But before he’d covered two miles toward Port Henry he was mentally booting himself. The Buick couldn’t have been more’n five or six miles ahead of him before he shot up over that short cut. By now, the girl would have caught up with him, even counting the time he’d saved on the cut-off.

  Maybe she’d had a blowout or something. Maybe.

  More likely she’d crossed him up, taken the straight road to the border. Nothing for the Demon to do but find a phone and report in.

  He didn’t like the idea much. When Cap Matthews found the Buick had slipped through the bottleneck
, one goose would be cooked. For keeps!

  “Whoa!” He scuffed to a drag stop.

  A dirt road branched off at a sharp angle, almost paralleling the highway back toward Port Henry. A signboard at the turn said Trout Landing—Lake Resorts. The signboard glistened.

  He dismounted, touched it. It was wet. Spattered slush that even now was freezing, silvering like Christmas tinsel.

  The sign was at least twelve feet off the concrete. The car that had splashed slush as far and wide as that must have been taking the turn at fairly high speed.

  The gruel of sleet and water on the roadbed wasn’t deep enough to have sprayed to that distance if the vehicle had kept to the straightaway.

  The Demon used his flash on the cement. A car had slurred around there. In a three-quarter circle. The marks of the tires hadn’t been obliterated by the steady sleet, either. They’d been 6.50s, he figured.

  The stuff splashed on the sign would have frozen solid if it had been there more than a few minutes. If the car was the Buick, it couldn’t be far ahead. Quite an “if,” he realized.

  He nosed Minnie along cautiously. Around a bend lurid neons quivered in a St. Vitus invitation:

  ONE-EYED JACK’S

  Grill & Bar

  Fill Up Ur Car

  The vibrating vermilion illuminated a half-dozen parked cars—but no ’47 Buick.

  Beyond were gas pumps, a glow of bluish fluorescence. In the garage a man in a mackinaw lay on his back under the sedan with the Maryland pads.

  “Little trouble?” The Demon saw no sign of the girl.

  “Chains.” The man swore wearily. “Lady oughta be chained up herself, if she insists on driving tonight.”

  “Where is she?” The man rolled out from under. “Eatin’, I s’pose. Anything wrong?”

  “Just checking.” He couldn’t say more, with only a whiff of garlic to go on, could he? “Use your phone?”

  “Right there. Help ‘self.”

  The Demon got through to headquarters. Cap Matthews wasn’t there. Russ Drake was on the board. He repeated the message, as per regulations.