by Jerry eBooks
There was a scream from upstairs, then running footsteps. Corday raced for the steps and tore up them three at a time, risking his life in the gloom of the place. He almost fell over Glenda. She was sprawled out in the middle of the hallway.
Corday lifted the stricken girl’s head and cradled it on his knee. She was moaning. Then her eyes opened.
“Corday—he suspected me. He hit me with his fist and ran for the back steps. Don’t let him escape!”
Corday helped her up, saw that she was all right and then left her. He ran down the stairs, out the front door and at the top of the stairs he saw it happen.
The man he’d chased and who had escaped by the back stairs, was running up the middle of the street. A car bore down on him. The driver swerved twice but the man kept running in the same direction. Corday shouted a warning. It was too late. Car and fleeing man met head-on with a sickening thud. Corday raced the three quarters of a block to the scene.
The driver was already bending over Frank Farlan. His face was white, horrified. He was a distinguished-looking man of about fifty.
“He’s dead,” he said. “The fool—he ran right into me. I tried to avoid him—”
Corday knelt in the street and slid a hand beneath Farlan’s coat and shirt. There was no heartbeat. He doubted there would be. Farlan’s skull looked as if it had been crushed in.
A police car rolled up. Corday told one of the radio patrolmen to get Homicide Lieutenant Ahern here as quickly as possible. There was a half-hour wait, which Corday spent in a doorway with Glenda Langan. They both smoked cigarettes until their mouths felt as if they were burning.
“He was certainly afraid of me and he did his best to kill me,” Corday said. “Perhaps he saw me that night. He looks like your brother. There could have been a mistake. I’m telling Lieutenant Ahern the whole story. If he believes me, something will be done for your brother.”
Ahern was a sympathetic listener. After twenty odd years on the force with half of them in Homicide, he recognized the fact that strange things can happen in a murder case. He studied the dead man’s profile.
“Okay, he does look something like Langan. If you have any idea you made a mistake, Corday, then Langan deserves the benefit of the doubt. Where did you say this dead man lived?”
“Glenda knows.” Corday summoned the girl. “She’s Langan’s sister. She’s been trying to prove his innocence.”
Glenda told Lieutenant Ahern the address. Ahern sent her to his office at the Homicide Bureau. He took Corday’s elbow and piloted him toward a detective squad cruiser. They rode to the address Glenda had given them, learned that Frank Farlan had rented a room more than four months ago. Id that room they searched bureau drawers, took the bed and two chairs apart and finally discovered the tin box in a cleverly fashioned hiding spot beneath the floor.
Lieutenant Ahern dumped the collection of jewels onto the table. None of them were extremely valuable—maybe their total worth was about three hundred dollars. Jewelers on the street where Corday kept his radio repair shop, didn’t go in for diamonds by the carat but by the point.
“Well,” Ahern shrugged, “this is the jackpot, Corday. All the stuff stolen from Old Jules. The cheap geegaws he tried to protect with his life—and lost. What do you say now, Corday?”
“I don’t know, Lieutenant. I need time to think. Langan doesn’t go until tomorrow night. Give me a few hours.”
“Sure,” Ahern said. “See me any time you like. Only be certain. Absolutely certain.”
Corday nodded and walked out of the rooming house. He went back to his store. Ahern called him there after awhile and reported that the dead man had been identified as a petty thief. Corday thanked the detective and hung up. He sat staring out of the window at Old Jules’ place across the street.
The phone rang again. Lieutenant Ahern this time told him he was letting Glenda Langan go free.
“She’ll be leaving my office in about half an hour, Corday. Just thought you’d like to know.”
Corday dropped the phone down. He walked to the rear of his store and fussed with several slender high precision tools. He put three of these into his side pocket and hurried out.
He entered the Hotel Splendide like any registered guest, told the elevator operator he wanted the eleventh floor. The car whispered its way upwards, let him out and he found Suite 1109 without any trouble. He put a finger against the buzzer, heard it sound inside but nobody came to answer.
Corday studied the lock for a moment, took one of those small tools from his pocket and inserted it into the wood beside the point where the bolt socket would be. He leaned on the instrument and felt the bolt forced back. There was a click and the door opened.
The apartment was dark. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. Then, in the jet blackness that surrounded him he saw a pinpoint of crimson fire.
“Turn on the lights, Corday,” a voice said. “I figured it might be you.”
Corday backed up, breathless. He fumbled for the switch, found it and drenched the room with light that made him blink. Lieutenant Ahern, a gun on his lap, sat comfortably in one of the easy chairs facing the door. A cigarette dangled from one corner of his mouth.
“How—what?” Corday gasped.
“Take a look in the bedroom.” Ahern motioned with his thumb. “See what I found hiding in here. I’m betting you expected to find the same rat here.”
EAGERLY, Corday almost ran toward the bedroom door. He wasn’t especially surprised at what he saw. The distinguished-looking man who had driven the car which killed Frank Farlan, lay on the bed. His ankles were tied to the baseboard, his arms were handcuffed around one of the bedposts and there was an efficient looking gag in his mouth.
“A beauty, isn’t he?” Ahern remarked laconically. “You know it was a frame, Corday?”
“Yes,” Corday answered, “I know. I guess I knew all along.”
“I thought so,” said the detective. “That’s why I tipped you, to see if you’d follow my hunch. They roped that poor sap of a cheap grifter into it. Gave him the jewels which Langan had swiped and told him they were hot. He peddled them at the right time and the word got around. He was told to build up his rep by boasting he’d done a job somebody else died for. He didn’t know the man he fronted, was waiting for the chair.”
“And this man in the bedroom,” Corday motioned with a jerk of his head. “He was in on it? Glenda’s job was to convince me I could have been wrong. She must have told the poor fool who got killed, that I was a cop. He ran out of the store. She’d told him where to hide and if I hadn’t found him she’d have worked it so I’d reach the place.
“I figured the sucker had been told I’d probably kill him so he started blasting away at me. Then Glenda came. She gave it away that time. She knew where we were. She said she’d seen us enter but that must have been a lie. The rest of it you can probably guess.”
Ahern smiled. “I didn’t have to, Corday. Our friend in the next room shot his mouth off. Glenda told the fool who died, that if he ran out the back there would be a car waiting for him. He slugged her, as she ordered him to do, so you’d be convinced. The guy tore out of there, recognized the car which he’d seen before, of course. He ran toward it and his nibs on the bed drove toward him. One had escape on his mind, the other murder which would look accidental. So the suspect was dead and couldn’t deny the crime they were trying to switch from Langan’s shoulders to his.”
“Are you taking Glenda in when she arrives?” Corday asked.
“Yes. Want to stay and give me a hand?”
“I don’t think so. Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow night, around eleven. At the Star Bar and Grill near my store. Both of us could probably use a drink about then.”
Lieutenant Ahern walked in at five of eleven. Corday had two filled glasses on the bar, backed up by their respective chasers. Ahern looked at the clock, didn’t touch his drink.
“Glenda talked too,” he said. “You. see, I know that Langan never
had a sister. He was a foundling, raised in an orphanage. He and his girl friend, Glenda, and that corn-man who worked with them, forgot that a careful check is made of any felon’s antecedents.”
“I suppose so.” Corday was watching the clock. “They forgot something else. The man they dug up was a fair ringer for Langan except for one thing. When Langan ran out of Old Jules’ place, he was tail, enough so the awning knocked his hat off. He stopped and picked it up. The ringer—well, he ran out too, but there were a couple of inches to spare between the top of his hat and the awning.”
“Not bad,” Ahern commented. “I read the whole record and never noticed that. Well—they’re strapping him in now.” He raised the glass. “Here’s to Langan. Up to the moment they lead him into that room, he’s a deadly dangerous criminal. A man to fear and do battle with. But right now he’s just a poor slob, all caught up. Just a poor slob, like all the rest of them that go that, way.”
“I’ll drink to him,” Corday said. “Not for your reasons, but for mine. He made a mighty good try. Give him credit for that.”
SHIELD FOR MURDER
William P. McGivern
This is a story of the exception that proves the rule that most police officers are courageous and honorable men . . .
THE MAN NEELAN PLANNED TO KILL CAME OUT of an all-night taproom about one in the morning. He stood for a moment, taking a few last drags from his cigarette, and glancing idly across the gleaming, wet street. His name was Dave Fiest, and he was a gambler: not the biggest in the city, but far from the smallest.
Neelan watched him from the shadow of a building entrance about twenty yards away. His hands were deep in the pockets of his suit coat, and there was a dead cigar in his mouth.
Dave Fiest flipped his cigarette away and strolled south on Broad Street, the collar of-‘his camel’s-hair sport coat turned up against the fine misting rain that was falling.
Neelan spat the cigar from his mouth and moved out from the shadow of the building, traveling fast for a man his size, and came up behind Fiest at the corner of Crab Street.
“Hold it a second, Dave,” he said.
Dave Fiest turned and regarded Neelan with surprise. “What’s up, Barny?”
“I’m taking you in, friend.”
“Taking me in?” Dave Fiest turned his palms up and smiled. “What’s the gag? I’m an honest citizen, Barny.”
“Yeah, sure,” Neelan said, and reached inside Dave’s coat and fished into an inner breast pocket. He brought out a roll of papers and looked at them with an expression of satisfaction. They were horse bets and numbers slips. “Honest citizen, eh?” he said, staring at Dave.
Dave Fiest shrugged slightly. He was a small man, with narrow shoulders, and a pleasant, alert face. His hair was graying at the temples.
“I’m all right with the vice-squad boys,” he said.
“That’s their business,” Neelan said. “Let’s go.”
“Barny, wait just a second. I don’t get this.” Dave Fiest smiled good-naturedly. “Supposing you let me buy you a drink, eh?”
“Let’s go.”
“Barny, what’re we going to prove? You slate me as a gambler, and I make a call to Delaney, and he has me out on a copy in an hour. We’re just making work for everybody on a rainy night.”
Neelan took Dave Fiest’s arm and walked him down Crab Street. They passed an all-night diner, a closed cigar store, a gas station, then crossed an intersecting street and kept walking.
“Say, Barny, is there heat coming?” Dave Fiest asked, a new interest in his voice. “I read they shifted some house sergeants around in South Philly. Is that the angle?”
“The Lieutenant doesn’t want gamblers hanging around,” Neelan said.
Dave Fiest laughed shortly. “Ramussen should be leading a cub scout pack. Does he expect to clean things up by locking up a few gamblers?”
“I don’t know what he expects,” Neelan said.
Dave Fiest stopped at the intersection of Ellen’s Lane and Crab Street and put a hand on Neelan’s arm.
“Now, listen to me just a minute, keed. I know you haven’t worked downtown long, but you must have heard by now that I’m okay. And here’s the pitch: I don’t want to hang at the Sixty-fifth even for the hour or so it’ll take Delaney to get a copy. The point is, I’ve got to meet Mike Espizito in about fifteen minutes, and you know how he feels about people being late—especially when they owe him money.” Dave Fiest smiled as he said this, and watched Neelan’s big square face hopefully.
“No deal.” Neelan said.
Dave Fiest shrugged. “So what’re you going to charge me with?”
“Common gambler, maintaining an illegal lottery, pool-selling, loitering.”
“No arson and murder?” Dave Fiest said.
Neelan didn’t answer. He glanced back toward Broad Street, scanning both sides of the dark, quiet block, and then looked in the other direction.
“Come on.” he said, and turned Dave Fiest into Ellen’s Lane.
“Hey, what’s up? The Sixty-filth’s the other way.”
“Walk ahead of me.”
“Are you nuts?” Dave Fiest stared at Neelan, suddenly suspicious. “What’s the deal, chum?”
“Turn around,” Neelan said. Fiest obeyed slowly.
“Now walk,” Neelan said, and glanced up and down the street once more. A bright patch of red light Irom the diner lay on the wet sidewalk, and two blocks away, on Broad Street, a couple were shouting let a cab. Neelan could hear their voices clearly in the still night.
Dave Fiest had walked ten feet into the lane. He glanced over his shoulder and said: “You aren’t God, chum. I got rights, remember.”
“Keep walking.”
When Dave Fiest had gone another ten feet, Neelan pulled out his gun and followed him into the dark lane. The gambler heard his footsteps and turned around suddenly. He saw a splinter of light break off Neelan’s gun.
“Hey!” he said, the word nothing more than a soft gasp. “What’s this, Neelan? Listen, you don’t need to make a stick-up out of it. I got dough with me, Barny.”
“Turn around.”
“Neelan, please—”
“Turn around.”
Dave Fiest turned his back to Neelan, and his body moved stiffly, jerkily.
Neelan yelled: “Halt! Stop, you!”
And then he fired twice—once in the air, and once into Dave Fiest’s slender, neatly tailored back.
The shots went banging down the lane and into the quiet night, and Dave Fiest’s last sob was lost in their shattering echoes.
Neelan ran swiftly forward and bent over the sprawled figure. His hands moved swiftly, surely, through Dave Fiest’s pocket, and found the thick wad of money. He stripped three bills from the roll anti pushed them back into Dave’s pocket, then straightened and walked toward Crab Street. But a powerful impulse caught him suddenly, and he wheeled and ran back to Dave Fiest’s body and kicked it twice, savagely, furiously.
Then, confused by his action, he ran out of the lane and crossed the street to a police call-box. He pulled out the phone that was connected to the house sergeant’s room at the Sixty-fifth, and when Sergeant Brennan answered, he said, casually: “Neelan, Sarge. I just shot a guy here at Crab Street and Ellen’s Lane. Send over a wagon, will you?”
“Is he dead?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
Neelan put the phone back in place and closed the door of the call-box. Several people were in the street now, and two young men were running along the sidewalk.
Neelan walked back across the street and stopped at the entrance to Ellen’s Lane. When the two young men came panting to a stop before him, he said: “Okay, boys, everything’s taken care of. just drift on about your business.”
“We heard some shooting,” one of them said. “Two shots.”
Neelan took out his wallet and flipped it open. The light from a street lamp danced on Ids shield.
“No kidding?” he sai
d, and stared at them until they turned and walked hesitantly back toward Broad Street. They stopped after about twenty yards and stood talking in low voices and watching Neelan’s big bulky figure.
Chapter Two
FOR WELL-WORN STONE STEPS LED FROM THE street to the Sixty-fifth police station. Above the steps hung a single white electric globe. The district occupied a three-story brick building that seemed sturdy, and a trifle smug, in a block of luncheonettes, shoe-shops, curio dealers and unpainted frame houses.
The Thirteenth Detective Division had its headquarters on the second floor of the building, in three high-ceiling rooms separated by wooden partitions. A card game was going on in one of these rooms the night Neelan killed Dave Fiest.
Detective-Sergeant John Odell and three of his shift were playing poker, while a reporter, Mark Brewster, lounged in the doorway smoking, and watching the game without any particular interest. Sergeant Odell slapped cards down on the desk with a steady voluble continent on the caprices of fortune.
“Ten a possible straight; nine, possible nothing; K-boy, nothing yet: and I get a miserable damn deuce. K-boy bets.”
The king was owned by George Lindfors, a thin man of about forty with gray skin and tired eyes.
“A nickel. And I wish you’d stop announcing cards as if you were dealing in a home for the blind. We can see.”
“The dealer’s got to call the cards,” Odell said cheerfully. “If I didn’t, you’d be crying about that.”
Mark Brewster yawned, and glanced at his watch; One-fifteen. The beat had been quiet since eight.
From the center room of the Division the police radio blared monotonously. Mark listened to it automatically.
(“Car 393 . . . report. Car 75 . . . Disturbance highway, Lancaster Avenue at Forty-third. Car 64 . . . Hospital case. Olney at Sedgemore. Car 71 . . . Holdup. Sixth and Edgeton. Car 72, car 73, car 74. Holdup. Car 548, Smithton and Banks. Local fire . . .”)