by Jerry eBooks
I waited.
The car doors slammed. There were footsteps, a light flashed briefly, and it was dark again.
I walked along the path out to the rear of Alfie’s. There I came to a huge barn with boarded-up windows. Light showed through the cracks and picked out the coupe alongside it. I went over to the car and tried the door. It was unlocked. I opened it and looked inside. Nothing. I started to turn away when I heard something in the dark beside me.
“Hello,” the voice said. “Lose your way, Dan?”
“Hello, Millie,” I said. “Looks like you’re lost, too.”
“I work here, darling. Remember? You looking for anything in particular?”
“It’s a nice night for a walk,” I said. “It depends what you’re out after.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m looking for a friend of mine. His name is Kenneth Hayes.”
She didn’t answer for a moment. “Never heard of him,” she said finally.
“He came to see you here every Monday night,” I told her. “He was here last night.”
“I can’t place him.”
“You’ve got a short memory. Try again.”
“Sorry, chum. It doesn’t register.” I grabbed her, got my hand over her mouth and twisted her arm behind her back.
“All right,” I whispered. “Where is he? What is he mixed in with?”
She shook her head wildly.
“Nod your head,” I said, “when you’re ready to talk.”
She shook her head again.
“One last chance,” I said. “I’m going to break your arm.”
I heard the step in the gravel near me and let go and whirled around. It was the small, ratty one—the one I had last seen behind the counter. He had a nickel-plated revolver in his hand.
Diving at him, I got him just above the knees. We went down together on the crushed stones. He tried to bring the gun into action but I snapped his fingers back. He screamed like a woman and dropped the gun. His hand scrabbled in the stones, grasping for some kind of weapon. I punched him twice in the mouth as he hunched his knees up and tried to slide away from me.
I reached down, yanked him to his feet by the collar. Then I let go from way back and hit him as hard as I could. His head snapped back as my fist bounced off his chin. He slumped down. I let go of him and he slid to the ground.
The barn door rattled and began to slide back as I rubbed my bruised knuckles. I looked around for Millie.
Something hard pressed into the small of my back, then.
“It’s the gun,” Millie said, prodding me with it. “Go ahead—in the barn. You have company there.”
I looked over and saw Alfie and the tall, dark one standing in the doorway. I went by them and in. I blinked in the glare of a three hundred watt lamp.
“Eddie’s knocked out,” Millie said to the tall one. “Bring him in, Nick.” Nick went out into the darkness and came back with the small one slung over his shoulder.
“More nuisance than he’s worth,” Millie said. “Dump him in the back room.”
NICK walked over to a small door and kicked it open. He went in, and came back alone in a moment. I was looking around at all the merchandise stacked along the walls.
“Take a good look,” Alfie said. “Where’s Ken Hayes?” I asked.
He nodded to Nick. Nick came up and pushed me against the rough planking of the wall. He went through my pockets and came out with my wallet. Alfie stepped over and took it. His fingers pulled cards out.
“Daniel Holden from Eastern City,” he said. “Works in the credit department of Seaboard Brands.”
“How lovely,” Millie said.
“Where’s Ken Hayes?” I asked again. “He’s around,” Alfie said. “He’s playing the big time, now.”
“You’re a liar,” I said. “Not Ken Hayes.”
“Nobody calls me a liar, kid!”
“I said you’re a liar!”
Alfie’s hand opened and closed. He put the wallet in his pocket and reached to the floor for a long, black crowbar.
“Wait a minute,” said Nick. “I don’t like this. The guy may be working for the cops.”
“Shut up!” Alfie grated. “The cops don’t need this punk. If they were wise they’d be looking here themselves. The kid’s got big ideas, that’s all.”
“Tell him where Ken Hayes is, darling,” said Millie.
“He’s dead!” Alfie said to me.
“You mean he’s been murdered!” I cried.
“People get hurt when they snoop,” he said.
“He saw that Seaboard truck pull in here last night,” I said. “He knew you didn’t have an account with Seaboard and he knew those two drivers were phonys. He started to ask questions of Millie.”
“This one’s smart,” Millie sneered. “He knows all the answers!”
“I’m not so smart,” I said. “But I know you couldn’t get rid of the truck until tonight. Things were too hot. You had it in the barn here. The cops will be finding it any minute, now.”
“Sure they’ll find it,” Alfie said. “But you won’t be around to tell them anything. We’ve got some woods out back and the ground is soft there this time of the year.”
“One of the boys drove Ken’s car back to Eastern City,” I said. “You thought you had it well covered.”
“When I get rid of you,” Alfie said, “I’ll have the cover on tight again. I killed one, I’ll kill another. What’s the difference.”
“Too bad,” Millie said. Her free hand went up and patted her hair. “Too bad Ken had to be working for Seaboard. He was a lot of fun.”
“Shut up!” Alfie snapped at her.
“Let her talk,” I said. “Maybe I’ll learn something I don’t know.”
“You know enough,” Alfie said.
“You mean your setup here?” I asked. “The free juke box? The good food, the low prices? Sure, I know! You’re losing money on your trade here, but that’s chicken feed. The main idea is to draw a crowd. Because if you stayed open and nobody came here the cops would get suspicious. They’d come around and look in your barn, and you wouldn’t like that. You wanted them to get used to seeing trucks pulling in and out of here.”
“That takes brains, kid,” said Alfie.
“And muscles, too, darling,” Millie said. “Don’t forget Nick and Eddie. You wouldn’t want to hurt their feelings.”
“And we mustn’t forget Millie’s contribution,” I said. “She makes a nice come-on.”
“Millie?” he echoed. “Millie’s my wife.”
I turned and looked at her. She jiggled the gun in her hand and smiled. I spat at her feet.
“You don’t mind,” I said, “but I always spit when I see something slimy.”
Her face went dead-white and her finger tightened on the trigger.
“Wait!” Alfie shouted. “You crazy? You want the cops to hear?”
“Take it easy,” Nick said to her. “If that gun goes off, they’ll hear it for miles around.”
“I want to give him one in the middle,” she said. Her eyes were slitted.
“Better give me the gun,” Nick said. “I’ll give him a going-over for you.”
SHE HANDED Nick the gun and came over to me. She slapped me across the face. I hit her, then. It was the first time in my life I had ever hit a woman. I just reached out and jabbed her square in the nose.
Millie shrieked and went down backward. Blood trickled from her nostrils. I saw Alfie raise the crowbar and I crashed into him, head down. We both went to the floor, the crowbar banging against my side. I got my hands on his thick bull neck, forgetting all about Nick.
Something came down on the back of my head and exploded into white sparks. I sagged over sideways. Through glazed eyes I saw Nick standing over me, holding the gun by the barrel. I tried to get up but my feet wouldn’t work.
Alfie rose slowly.
“The kid’s got a lot of fight,” he panted heavily. “We’ll take it out of him. Tie him up, Nick.”
>
Nick went over to a bench along the wall and came back with a length of clothes line. He pulled my arms behind me and lashed them tight.
“That’s it,” Alfie said, reaching for the crowbar again. “Better put something in his mouth.”
Nick brought out a piece of oil-stained flannel and began stuffing it between my lips. I gagged and retched.
Millie was dabbing at her nose with a handkerchief. Suddenly she cocked her head and held up her hand. She went over to the open doorway and peered out.
“Somebody drove in,” she said. “There are headlights out front.”
“Go out and get rid of them fast,” Alfie ordered.
He moved over to the door and listened Nick stood behind me, with the gun against my side. There were footsteps coming back along the gravel and we heard Millie’s loud voice.
“That’s what happened, Sergeant Rider,” she was saying. “He said something was wrong with the distributor. He got a ride back to Eastern City with another couple.”
“It’s the cops,” Alfie muttered to Nick. “Quick, push him out into the back room and stay with him.”
Nick lifted me to my feet and shoved me through the tiny door and inside. I saw Eddie huddled there but I wasn’t interested in him. There were wide cracks in the boards and through them I could see back into the lighted part of the barn. Nick stood behind me, with the gun jammed into my ribs.
Rider came into the barn with Millie.
“That boy,” he said to Alfie. “We saw his car parked along the road a way. We wondered where he went to.”
“It’s like Millie said, Sergeant,” Alfie answered. “It’s an old car. It broke down. He said he’d be back tomorrow for it.”
“I see,” Rider said. “We just found that hijacked truck in the brush down off the four corners. It was cleaned out.”
“Too bad, Sergeant,” Millie said.
“Yeah,” Rider said. “Too bad.” He looked around slowly. “This is the first time I’ve been in your barn, Alfie. Big one. What do you use it for? Cows?”
Alfie laughed mirthlessly. “No cows, Sergeant. Storehouse for my things.”
“You carry a big stock.”
“I do a big business, Sergeant.”
“You must. Cases of cigarettes. Cases of canned goods. Soap. Must be fifty thousand dollars’ worth of stuff here.”
“I like to carry a big stock,” said Alfie, wetting his lips.
“So I notice,” Rider said. “I imagine the wholesalers have their names stenciled on the cartons.”
“It’s only general merchandise,” Millie said quickly.
“That’s Millie,” Rider said. “She always has an answer for everything. I’ll take a look.”
He walked over to where the cases were stacked. His hand was on his holster. I saw Alfie raise the crowbar behind him and I tried to scream through the gag.
Rider swung around and fired two shots that echoed through the barn. Alfie stopped. The crowbar dropped and his hands went to his midsection. Blood oozed out through his fingers. He rocked on his feet and shook his head unbelievingly. Then he staggered forward and fell, face down, on the wide planking.
I banged my head on the wall and Rider looked over. Nick’s breath rasped behind me. I turned to look at him as he dropped the gun.
Rider stepped over to the little door with his gun raised.
“Hold it!” Nick yelled. “I’m coming out with my hands up!”
“Come on,” Rider said. He kicked the door open with his boot.
Nick came out. I stumbled right out behind him as young Clancy ran into the barn, gun in hand.
Rider came over to me and took the gag out of my mouth.
“I didn’t recognize you with your mouth stuffed,” he grinned. “You ought to get that number plate fixed. It’s still hanging by one screw.”
* * * * *
Alfie died that night. After the trial and the newspaper publicity, they put Millie and the other two away and there was no more hijacking on the old Bayport road. Sometimes I rode by there and saw the overgrown weeds, the boarded windows, and the broken neon sign. The weather-beaten old barn was still there and behind it, in the woods, was the hole where they had dug up Ken Hayes.
Sometimes, on the way back, I’d see a white State Police cruiser. I’d wave to it as I went by.
MURDER COMES HOME
D.L. Champion
There was a safe to be cracked—and fifty grand to gain!
THE TRAIN snaked its way through the flat, rich farmland of the Midwest. The corn was high; the fruit hung ripe in the orchards. Lennison stared through the begrimed Pullman window at the familiar scene, at the countryside where he had spent the first fourteen years of his life.
Suddenly, a half mile distant from the tracks, a lumpy concrete structure reared itself against the sky. Lennison’s eye focused on it and he frowned. This was the state reformatory, an institution in which Lennison had dwelt between the ages of fourteen arid sixteen.
Lennison’s seat companion was a swarthy man with wide shoulders, dark eyes and hair and possessed of a pair of incredibly delicate and supple hands. He took a mangled cigar from his mouth and said, “Well, how does it feel to come back home?”
Lennison turned his head away from the window. He spoke in a hard, clipped tone.
“It feels good, Louis. But not for sentimental reasons. I hate Roxport and everyone who lives there, but it still feels good because we’re going to pick up fifty grand at the end of the line.”
“You said that before,” said Louis. He paused as if in thought and gave the impression that thought was a difficult process for him; then he added with a touch of truculence, “You ain’t given me details and I got to have details before I go to work.”
“I want you to case the job yourself,” said Lennison. “In daylight. It’s so easy you won’t believe me if I tell you about it.”
Louis’ suspicion was not assuaged. “Then why don’t you do it yourself? What are you bringing me along for?”
“Because,” said Lennison patiently, “you’re the best safe man in the business. And the fastest. With you and me working together, we can break in the joint, crack the safe, pick up fifty grand and be out of town, eight hours before the coppers know anything has happened.”
Louis grunted, replaced his cigar in his mouth and ruminated in both senses of the word. The train steamed through the suburbs of Roxport.
FIVE minutes later it came to a halt in Roxport’s new and proud Union Station. Lennison, tall, with sandy hair and wearing Broadway’s newest clothes, led the way through the waiting room to the taxi stand. He got in, Louis following him. He said to the driver, “The Latham Hotel.”
In the office of the Roxport Chief of Police, Curt Harford sat at his desk, thumbing through a sheaf of onion-skin reports. He was a young man, not quite thirty. His body was lithe and erect. His hair was blond and sandy; his eyes, blue and honest, but with a certain mature shrewdness in their depths.
At the moment his concentration was not of the best. His mind wandered from the task in hand and persisted in conjuring up an appetizing vision of a thick steak and a cooling glass of beer. Harford pushed the papers away from him, glanced at his wrist watch and decided it was time for lunch.
He stood up, donned his cap with its glinting golden badge and strode into the outer office. He said, “Back in an hour,” to his secretary, and went out into the street.
He was a block from the English Tavern when he noticed the taxicab. It was pulled up close to the sidewalk waiting for the light to change. His first glance was casual. Then his pulse picked up a beat as he thought he recognized one of two passengers in the rear.
The light changed and the driver put the cab in gear. Harford stepped from the curb, put his hand on the window sill and said, “Hold it.” He thrust his face through the open window.
He said in a tight, hard voice, “Lennison! I thought it was you.”
Lennison looked innocent. “I know they got the b
omb,” he said. “But I didn’t know they’d already taken us over.
Harford said, “Lennison, get out of town. I’ll give you twenty-four hours.”
“What are you talking about?”
“This is still America, ain’t it?” demanded Lennison. “I can go where I like, do what I like. If you think you got anything on me, make the pinch. If not, let this hackie take me on my way.”
A flaming and impotent anger beat within Harford. There was but one man in all the world that he hated and that man was Lennison. Moreover, Lennison was a crook with a record. He was, in fact, quite notorious in police circles.
But in one respect Lennison was dead right. This was America. Legally, Lennison had as much right in Roxport as the Chief of Police, himself. Harford controlled his rage. He stepped back to the curb, signaled the driver to go on. He heard Lennison’s mocking laughter behind him as the cab moved away.
Harford did not enjoy his lunch. His mind occupied itself with Lennison, with what to him was the puzzle of Lennison and a thousand others like them.
He had gone to grade school with Lennison. They had played the same games. Their parents had been the same solid middle class kind of people. They had read the same books, eaten the same breakfast foods. Yet Lennison was a hoodlum and a killer. He had been a professional thief since his fourteenth birthday.
Harford recalled that evening when Lennison had begun his criminal career, remembered it far more clearly than Lennison himself.
In those days Harford’s mother was already dead. His father owned and operated a small barbershop down by the railroad station. On that Saturday night ten years ago, when the elder Harford was alone in the shop counting the day’s receipts, Lennison had entered, a crude home-made mask on the upper part of his face and a slingshot in his hand.
In response to his demand for the contents of the register, old man Harford had laughed. He said, “Go on home before you get into trouble.”
Lennison mouthed an astonishing oath and let fly with his slingshot. The stone with which it was loaded cracked into Harford’s temple. He dropped to the tiled floor, staining its whiteness with his blood.