by Jerry eBooks
Even though the park was practically deserted, the policeman stationed there didn’t think these recurring visits by Santa Claus were at all strange.
The fact was that the policeman was keeping his eye peeled for the convict who had escaped last night; Santas weren’t bothering him . . .
It was four-thirty in the afternoon. The morgue attendant ripped the sheet back, and Joe Dixon stared down at the dead man.
The roly-poly detective had been to the death alley and he had checked all the bars in the neighborhood and he had talked with a man from the Fingerprint Division, but he still didn’t know who the dead man was.
There was only one break in the case—and that was an important one. At first everyone had thought the victim had been strangled by another derelict in a drunken brawl; but then, gradually, the conviction had crystallized that he had been the escaped convict’s second victim. The guard had been choked to death and so had he, and he had been stripped of his clothes because the convict needed a disguise.
Joe Dixon’s round red face creased into a frown as he stood in the morgue and examined the bruise marks on the dead man’s throat. The dead man’s eyes were still open and their whites bulged like peeled onions; the tongue overlapped the mouth, gray and swollen.
Joe Dixon winced and turned away. He was used to sights like this, but not on Christmas.
“Finished?” the attendant asked. Dixon shook his head and leaned forward again. There was something on the face—faint strips of rawness slanting over the cheekbones that puzzled him. Tenderly he touched the welts with his fingers. Something stirred inside him . . . a fog of memory . . . something that made him bite his lips with anger because he couldn’t see it clearly and express it in words.
He shrugged despondently. This case was getting him down. Maybe he was getting old. There were still miles of leg work ahead, and here he was mooning over some personal memory.
“That’ll be all,” he said curtly to the attendant.
The attendant pulled the sheet back, and Dixon stood by the slab for a long moment, a discouraged fat man in an old wrinkled coat. Then he nodded good-by and walked out into the street.
He kept thinking as he walked. There were still flophouses to check, a million tiny details to follow up—all of which would lead, most likely, to nothing at all—but first he had to go back to Headquarters to make a verbal report to his chief.
He glanced at his watch. If everything had gone well this year, this was the time he’d be picking up his Santa Claus outfit at the costumer’s. He sighed when he thought of the kids asking for him, the way the small ones always perched on his lap and stroked his beard.
He stopped breathing. He froze there on the sidewalk, fixed with an idea that had the force of a bullet.
A moment later he squeezed his way into a phone booth. “Police Headquarters, quick!” he snapped at the operator.
Shortly afterwards, all patrol cars in the city received this terse bulletin over their radios: PICK UP ALL MEN DRESSED IN SANTA CLAUS OUTFITS AND BRING THEM TO HEADQUARTERS. PROCEED WITH CAUTION—MAN MAY BE KILLER.
Benson was getting nervous.
Time was running out, and the city still loomed like a trap around him. Maybe Jenkins, the lawyer, is out of town, he thought, and a dumb secretary got the telegram and laid it on his desk, so he won’t see it till he gets back too late. Maybe Jenkins is sick in the hospital . . .
The picture of the unread message made him moan and want to cringe momentarily against a wall. Stop thinking that way, he finally ordered himself. Then he looked at a store clock and saw it was close to five, and he started walking again towards City Hall.
“Merry Christmas,” he muttered hoarsely as some people passed. He wished suddenly he had time for another smoke.
He felt icy cold, gripped in a vise of wind and fear. He’d spent a night and a day on his feet. How long could he keep it up? If they didn’t come for him soon enough, the holiday would pass, and then his Santa Claus outfit would stick out like a sore thumb.
Maybe Jenkins got the telegram, but the boys in the gang are out of town . . .
Then he saw it—the long black limousine with the New York license, parked with its motor running, near the City Hall.
Relief, like sweet heady wine, poured through him. He flung the cup to the ground and broke into a run.
Lefty Rizzio, good old Lefty, was hunched over the wheel, his hooded eyes shifting from side to side.
“Lefty—it’s me!”
“Boss—what’s the get-up?”
Benson chuckled as he threw himself into the limousine. “I’m Sanny Claus,” he said. “Gimme a gun.”
It took him a moment to see that the chamber was full. Then he lit a cigarette, dragged hard, and puffed out a thick hissing cloud of smoke.
“Let’s go,” he said.
The car leaped forward. Benson grinned and relaxed. “Good boy, Lefty,” he said. “I’d have been cooked if—”
But the words rattled, then died out in his throat as, from the corner of his eye, he saw a police patrol car speeding alongside of them.
“Hey, you!” one of the cops yelled. “Hey, you—stop!”
He grunted and answered by shooting, and Lefty stepped hard on the gas. They whizzed forward, swaying in the snow-packed street, bullets streaming after them, pikpoking the metal frame of their car.
“Faster,” Benson screamed. “Faster!” But another patrol car turned a corner and came at them head-on. Bullets tore through the air, splintering it with whining sounds, forming spider webs as they cracked into the bulletproof windshield.
Suddenly Lefty screamed. They were skidding, swerving toward the curb. They jumped it with a quick thud, then crashed into the wall of an office building.
Benson lay still for a moment, a gray swirling vortex crowding his eyes. He had flung himself over the seat into the rear of the car the moment it had begun skidding. Now, groaning, he willed himself to movement, and looked up front. Too much of the steering wheel was jammed into Lefty’s chest for him to be alive.
Benson stumbled out, ducked as a bullet whizzed by, staggered, and then ran into the office building. He heard screaming as he tore through the lobby, and he caught a quick glimpse of himself in a tall mirror, a wild-eyed Santa with beard awry, brandishing a pistol.
He saw a flight of stairs and he ran up. Then there was a corridor that he stumbled into, and after that a smoked-glass office door that he flung open. He slammed the door behind him.
A young blonde girl was seated alone at a desk. She stared at him, her mouth half open, her fingers poised over a typewriter, clutching handfuls of air. He lurched towards the desk, motioning with his pistol.
“Get over to the door,” he rasped.
She moved slowly, trembling, and when she arrived at the door she spread-eagled herself against the glass to keep from falling. He leaned back on the desk. For the first time he noted a wriggling line of blood on his wrist. He swore and looked up again at the girl, his mouth quivering with rage. They stared silently at each other. Her face was pale, and her chest under the tight sweater heaved with sudden fear.
Now he heard running steps in the hall outside, doors slamming, and men calling out. Then the steps came to the door and they stopped.
Whoever was out there could see the girl’s form silhouetted through the smoked glass; he knew that, and that was what he wanted.
“Benson,” a voice called. “Come out or we’ll shoot.”
He tried to laugh, but the sounds crackled drily in his throat. “Shoot and you’ll kill the kid who works here,” he called back.
“We’ll get you, Benson,” the voice said. “You know we’ll get you—why get the kid hurt?”
The girl sighed. She was chewing her lips, and her eyes were fluttering, the pupils zooming slowly under the lids.
This time he laughed, loud and harshly. “You’ll have to get her first,” he said. Then after a pause, “Unless you wanta give me a break.”
The voi
ce was silent outside, and then there was a whispered consultation, and finally the voice spoke again.
“What sort of break, Benson?” it asked brusquely.
Joe Dixon was wheezing and his jowls were quivering as he mounted the stairs of the building where Benson was cornered. He had flapped a patrol car and heard about the ambush on the car-radio, and now he was here.
While the chief yelled at Benson through the door, Joe looked around, thinking. The door of the office next to the one Benson was trapped in, was ajar. Dixon’s eyes lit up and he walked over to the chief and whispered, “Keep him talking,” into the chief’s ear.
Then he crept into the adjoining office and tiptoed over to the window. Slowly, praying for it not to creak, he pulled it up.
The wind rushed into the office and set all the loose papers flying around. Dixon leaned out and inspected the ledge.
It was narrow, hardly a foot wide. The sidewalk was more than twenty feet below. The block was already cordoned off, and the sidewalk was empty of people. It seemed to be waiting silently for a body to fall.
For a moment he thought of calling for a thinner, more agile man. Then he remembered the corpse spending its Christmas on the morgue slab, and he silently lifted a round leg over the sill.
He perched there, straddling the ledge, thinking. Then he pulled his pistol from his holster, checked the safety, and gripped the barrel between his teeth. Slowly he lifted himself till he was standing on the sill, while the wind tore at his jacket, daring him to start the perilous journey.
Inch by inch, hugging the wall, he moved sideways.
His nails tore with shredding sounds as he sought a grip in the smooth granite wall. The building seemed to be slanting over toward the street, trying to fling him off. He moved another inch.
Now he could hear voices inside—the chief’s and Benson’s. He could hear the girl whimpering too. Sweat felt cold on the nape of his neck. He was a foot away now.
He’d have at the most, two or three shots before Benson would kill the girl. He’d have to shoot through glass, holding on with only one hand. The slightest kickback would send him toppling to the sidewalk that was still waiting below.
He pulled the pistol from his mouth, unlocked the safety, and took the final step.
For one quick instant he looked inside. Benson’s back was to him. The girl’s eyes were closed; her face was a moist plaster color. He aimed and pulled the trigger—once, then again and again . . .
The shattering glass and the recoil spun him backwards. He screamed and there was a tearing gasp as his hand dragged down the wall. He caught the ledge with one hand, and flailed, kicking futilely.
Then he heard more shots above and he groaned and said to himself, “It didn’t work.”
After that, he began giving up. His fingers loosened and he relaxed and his body unhinged, giving itself to the inevitable plunge . . . when the chief and two young policemen leaned out of the window and pulled him in.
A minute later Dixon opened his eyes. He was sprawled on a chair in the office and the chief was smiling down at him. Benson was lying in front of the desk, his white beard soaking up blood from the floor.
“What were those shots after mine?” Dixon asked weakly.
The chief said, “We busted in shooting. But you’d nailed him already. You did a wonderful job, Joe.”
The young girl was sitting in another chair, drinking water from a paper cup. Dixon stretched his aching arms.
“How’d you know to call in the alarm to pick up all Santas?” the chief asked.
“From the marks on the dead old man’s face,” Dixon said. “They were left by the adhesive of the Santa Claus wig. I spotted them because that’s the kind of wig I use when I go to the kids at Xavier’s. It always does that to me—leaves raw marks on my face when I rip it off.”
Then he looked down at the watch on his chubby wrist and smiled sadly when he saw it was only six-fifteen.
“I could still make it at Xavier’s,” he said to himself. “But after all this shooting and blood, I don’t feel like. It sort of wouldn’t be fair, going to the kids with blood still hot on my hands.
“But next year, I’ll make it for sure,” he promised himself.
“What are you mumbling about?” the chief asked.
“Nothing,” Dixon answered. Then he added solemnly, “Merry Christmas, chief.”
KNIFE IN THE DARK
Robert Leslie Bellem
CHAPTER I
Dead Passenger
THE PILOT knew his trade. I scarcely felt the big airliner’s wheels touch the ground. There was no shock, no bounce, no sense of transition from airborne to earthbound. The night was as dark as a pocket in perdition and the storm that had threatened us all the way south from San Francisco was a steady drench now that we had landed in L.A. But at least we had landed, rain or no rain, and presently I would be finding out why the agency had sent me down here in such a hurry to see ex-Senator Cartwain’s nephew.
I waited until the plane had made its taxi run to the passenger apron. Then, as soon as they had rolled the portable steps into place and opened the door, I checked out past the stewardess and made my break for the canopied runway to the depot building. Even with my hat brim turned down and my topcoat collar up, I got thoroughly soaked before I reached shelter.
Southern California never does anything by halves. Rain in Los Angeles isn’t just rain; it’s a feature production. The movie influence, probably.
In the station, a loud-speaker cleared its metallic throat and began telling the arriving travelers where to wait for their luggage. I had none to wait for. The only clothes I had with me were the wet ones I was wearing, so I wasn’t interested in baggage announcements. I came alert, though, when I heard my name crackling out of the horn.
“Passenger Palmer just in from San Francisco on Flight Eleven. Passenger Palmer just in from San Francisco on Flight Eleven. Attention Passenger Palmer. Will you please call at the Coastal Airways ticket desk on the east side of the rotunda? Thank you.”
When you’ve been a private detective as long as I have, watchfulness and caution become second nature. I headed for the rotunda’s west side, away from where I was wanted, then carefully circled the waiting room. I loitered along casually, as if waiting for an outbound flight.
Passing the newsstand, I dropped a nickel and took a late edition of the Herald-Express, held it up before me and pretended to scan the headlines. Under its cover I delved beneath my left armpit, unholstered my stubby .32 automatic, unobtrusively transferred it to the right side pocket of my topcoat and kept my hand on it.
Then I peered over the newspaper toward Coastal’s ticket desk.
A TALL, thin man in chauffeur’s livery stood there talking to the clerk. In turn, the clerk picked up a phone and spoke into it. Right after that, the loudspeaker repeated its plea. “Would passenger Palmer, just arrived from San Francisco on Flight Eleven, contact Coastal Airways at once? Thank you.” Click.
So it was the chauffeur who was having me paged. I decided he looked harmless and I relaxed, moved forward. Then he turned, so that I could see his face, and suddenly there was no more relaxation in me. Tension took its place, a taut, twanging premonition of danger.
I knew the man. Nixon was his name, Edgar Nixon, and he hated my insides. A year ago he had threatened to kill me.
He hadn’t been a chauffeur in those days. He had been an obscure lawyer representing an equipment manufacturer under Congressional investigation for war contract irregularities. And I had been the special agent for the Cartwain Committee who had dug up most of the evidence that finally got Nixon’s client indicted. It was my last G-job in Washington before I quit and came back to private work out here on the West Coast.
As an unexpected afterpiece to this war contract probe, Nixon himself had been disbarred, fined, and jailed for alleged subornation of perjury. That was a charge with which I’d had nothing to do, and of which I didn’t particularly approve. Somehow it seemed
to me that he had been made a scapegoat, a whipping boy, merely because he had dared to defend a profiteer. While he might have been misguided in accepting such a tawdry case, I had considered him guilty of nothing worse than unwise judgment.
The Cartwain Committee and the courts, however, thought otherwise. And when Nixon was sentenced he had blamed me for it, had shouted that he would shoot me dead as soon as he was free.
So now he was free.
I waited until his back was to me. Then I walked up behind him, let him feel the prod of the gun in my pocket.
“Looking for me, Nixon?”
Red came up his neck, spread to his ears. “My name isn’t Nixon,” he said, without turning. A twitching muscle made his shoulder jump under the formfitting brown whipcord tunic.
“But mine is Palmer,” I said. “Don Palmer, from San Francisco. Just in on Flight Eleven.” Slowly, then, he faced me. He was having trouble with his breathing, and his muddy eyes were protuberant.
“So you’re the Palmer I was to meet!” he choked.
I let that ride. I also let him see it was a gun I had in my pocket.
“You’re caught off base, Nixon. Don’t try anything you’ll regret.”
“I—I don’t—I wasn’t—I didn’t intend—”
The airline ticket clerk was looking at us with too much speculation. I walked Nixon across the rotunda to a spot where we had more privacy. When did you get out?” I asked.
“Out—?”
“Of prison. Don’t spar with me.”
“Two—months ago.”
“Escape?”
“Parole,” he said quickly. “I can prove that. I have papers. I can show you.”
“Later,” I said. ‘Right now I’m more interested in why you were having me paged.”
“I told you. I was sent to meet a Mr. Palmer coming in on the plane from up north.”
“Who sent you?”
“The people I work for. Listen,” he added desperately. “They don’t know I’m Edgar Nixon. They don’t know I’m a jailbird.” Droplets of sweat popped out on his forehead. “I took this job under an alias, and—and—”