by Jerry eBooks
Hanson straightened his cap on his head. “I was just thinking how much I loved you, honey. And how, since Dotty told me this morning that she and Tom Hart are to be married next week and I won’t have to support her any longer, maybe you and I can get married.”
Cary’s fingers bit into his arm. “I’ve been waiting a long time to hear you say that, Pete.”
Hanson patted her hand. “I’ll be up for coffee after the Legion tonight. Meanwhile you figure out a date.”
HE WALKED on feeling fine until he thought of the dying red-head he and Joe had taken out of Mrs. Beven’s boarding house. The red-headed girl had looked something like the little taxi-dancer who’d taken her life last night. And she had died in a charity bed at county, whispering Tom Hart’s name.
And this was the man Dotty wanted to marry. This was the man Dotty intended to marry one week from today in The Church Of Our Blessed Lady.
Hanson looked at his watch as he passed the church. He still had ten minutes until roll call. He still had time for a few minutes in church. Turning in through the doorway he knelt on the prayer rail in a rear pew. He felt no embarrassment with his God. He’d talked to him many times, in Africa, in Italy, in Holland.
“Look,” he began. “You know Dotty. Well, she wants to marry Tom Hart. I think he’s a no good rat. But I can’t prove it. Anything I say will just make a sorehead out of me because we went on the Force together and today he’s a plainclothes sergeant and I’m still a harness bull. So look him over, will you, Heavenly Father? And if you don’t think he’s a right guy, if You think he’s going to bust my kid sister’s heart, do something about it, will Ya?”
Hanson considered putting in a plug for Joe and decided that Joe could do his own praying.
“Thank You. Amen,” he concluded.
The rising sun was warmer than it had been. Joe Gilly was waiting for him outside the station. Hanson felt sorry for the former paratrooper. He liked Joe. He’d like to have him for a brother-in law.
“I hear Dotty’s going to marry Hart,” Joe said without preamble. Hanson asked him where he had heard and the big patrolman said, “Hart. He could hardly wait to tell me.”
The shift bell cut short Hanson’s answer and he and Joe walked in to stand roll call. It was the same thing every morning. It would still be the same, Hanson realized, twenty years from now when he was sweating out his pension. Some guys had what it took to climb into plainclothes. Joe was that kind of a guy. But he would probably always be a patrolman. Not that Cary was over-ambitious for him. As long as he didn’t, have to support Dotty, he and Cary could live fine on a patrolman’s salary.
Hanson realized Captain Engles was still talking. “Just one more thing, men. The down-town boys are still looking for Sammy Guzic. He’s still believed to have at least eight grand on his person. So if one of you boys should spot him, don’t walk to the nearest call-box—run. My mortgage comes due next week.”
Hanson laughed dutifully with his fellow patrolmen. Guzic was getting to be quite a gag around the station. Down-town had been looking for him for two weeks. Sammy had killed a man during his last stick-up. But Captain Engles was only kidding. Engles was a square cop.
When the formation broke up, out of idle furiosity, he asked Desk Sergeant Phillips what disposition had been made of the suicide at the Ninth Street Hotel.
“The usual,” Phillips told him. “She’s on ice down at the morgue. But Hart couldn’t get a thing on her except she was registered as Gwen Jones and she’d told old man Kenny she taxi-danced at the Palais Royal. They didn’t know her over there, though. Probably bury her as unidentified.”
Hanson distinctly remembered seeing a letter on the dresser. And the name on it hadn’t been Jones. It had been Stallis or Stellis. “Oh,” he said. “I see.”
Hart came out of Lieutenant Gunderson’s office then. Pumping Hanson’s hand he apologized for having been so curt the night before, then wanted to know if Dotty had told him the good news.
Hanson debated his answer. He could play up to Hart. With a smart plainclothes sergeant for a brother-in-law he could get out of a lot of nasty assignments. He might even make plainclothes. A lot of guys no smarter than he was were riding around in squad cars because they had a little pull. But if a man wanted to respect himself, he had to call his shots as he saw them.
“Yeah. Dotty told me,” he admitted. “But I wouldn’t call it good news.”
Hart’s smile faded. “Oh. It’s going to be like that, eh?”
“It’s the way I feel,” Hanson said, and walked out of the station.
JOE WAS waiting on the walk. “I ought to pop the guy,” he said.
Hanson was practical. “What good would that do? Besides, like Dotty told me this morning. Why should she marry a flat-foot? One in a family is enough. And Hart is going places.”
Joe named one place he wished Hart would go.
There was nothing about the morning to “distinguish it from any of the other mornings Hanson had spent patrolling Ninth Street, with two exceptions. One was the pellet from an air gun that was fired at him as he passed the Acme Used Car Lot. The pellet, fortunately, went wide of its mark and he’d never have known he’d been shot at if the .22 dart hadn’t starred the windshield of a 1938 Ford.
Turning, he looked across the street. The shot could have come from any of two dozen open windows. There was no second shot. He considered making an investigation but it would undoubtedly turn out to be some kid playing with an air gun he’d gotten for a birthday present. And that would make him look foolish.
“Yes, sir. Fearless Hanson,” he could hear Tom Hart say. “He tracked the desperate ten-year-old desperado to his lair in the family parlor and spanked him with his Daisy.”
Shrugging, Hanson walked on. Daisy or Buck Roger air guns didn’t shoot .22 darts. Still no one that he knew of had any grudge against him. It probably had been some kid who wanted to boast to his gang he had taken a shot at a cop. By keeping his mouth shut and his eyes open, sooner or later he’d locate the kid and take his club to his bottom.
The second incident was Tony. In spite of all the times he had warned him, Tony was letting high school kids hang around his poolroom, and at nine o’clock in the morning. Their plea that they went to the second shift didn’t make any impression on Hanson.
Booting them out of the poolroom, he told them, “Then get on home and study your algebra and history.” He was tougher on Tony. He wrote out a summons for him.
The poolroom owner laughed in his face as he put the summons in his wallet. “Why don’t you smart up, Pete? You’re missing a lot of fives and tens that could go into your own pocket. Why try to buck a system that’s older than both of us put together? Now take Tom Hart. There’s a smart cop.”
“Hart fixed that last summons eh?”
Tony’s grin widened. “I ain’t saying. But I hear it’s all going to be in the family. A pretty kid, Dotty. Yes, sir. As pretty a kid as ever walked down Ninth Street.”
“You keep my sister’s name out of your dirty mouth,” Hanson told him. “Or I’ll drop in some night when I’m not in uniform.”
“Go drop dead, copper,” Tony said.
Hanson walked on, scowling. In every barrel there had to be one bad apple. And Tony was Ninth Street’s rotten pippin. Some day Tony, like Tom Hart, would go too far. But until then all Hanson could do was keep an eye on him.
Cary waved and smiled as he passed the bakery and Hanson’s ill humor left him. It would be nice being married to Cary. They could take over Dotty’s room and when the children came he would build a play-ground for them in the back yard that had one of the few trees that still grew on Ninth Street.
Preoccupied with his thoughts of the future he almost passed Jo Jo Olendorf’s stripped-down hot-rod in the vacant lot between Mr. Kupplemeyer’s grocery store and Charlie Stob’s grill and bar. As Hanson stopped to watch him, Jo Jo fed gas to the hopped-up motor and the back-firing sounded like a General Patton tank going into action. Sha
king his head, Jo Jo climbed out from in back of the wheel and made an intricate adjustment in the dual carburation.
“Can’t get it to suit you, eh?” Hanson asked.
Jo Jo shook his head. “Naw.”
Jo Jo wasn’t quite bright but be was a good mechanic. He’d already won three hotrod races on the salt flat west of the city and his one ambition was to own a racing car.
HANSON glanced at his watch and walked on. The Express Company Armored Truck was on time to the minute. Every Saturday morning at exactly nine-forty-five it delivered enough cash to enable Charlie Stob to cash the checks of the workers from the chair factory and the metal stamping plant. The guards on the truck knew him and waved a friendly greeting. A fresh white apron around his waist, Stob was standing in the doorway of his bar. “Plow’s for a nice cold one, Pete?” he grinned.
It was a ritual between them. “You dog,” Hanson grinned back. “I’ll be around to take you up on that in exactly six hours and fifteen minutes from now.”
He watched the money safely into the bar and the armored truck drive away before he resumed his tour. Money, he thought, was a funny thing. Men worked and fought and turned crooked and died to get it.
He’d almost reached the west end of his tour now and he could see Joe Gilly coming toward him carrying a chattering child of three who was rapidly adding the contents of a double-dip strawberry ice cream cone to the tear stains on her face. It was a shame that Dotty was passing a right guy like Joe by for a heel like Tom Hart.
They met in the middle of the alley separating the Ace Trucking Company from the A.B.C. Laundry and the child that Joe Gilly was carrying promptly offered Hanson a lick at her ice cream cone.
“You know her?” Gilly asked. “She’ll tell me everything but her name and where she lives. She’s got a doll named Molly and a dog she calls Sport. And her mother told her to stay in the yard, but she didn’t.” Hanson thought of Tom Hart’s wise crack, “For drunks and lost kids, you call Hanson,” as he sorted through his file of familiar neighborhood faces. “Yeah. Off-hand I’d say she’s a Fremac. But then she could be a Gillcuddy. What’s your name, dear?” The child shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“What does your daddy call your mama?”
“Gorgeous,” the little girl said. She offered him her cone again and when he shook his head, she pressed it to Gilly’s lips.
Wiping his lips, he asked, “Now what do I do?”
Pete Hanson laughed. “Try the Fremacs first. They live in that little yellow house over on—”
A block and a half back down the street, a burst of staccato sound in the general direction of Charlie Stob’s broke into his instructions. As Joe Gilly instinctively reached for his gun, Hanson said, “That’s just Jo Jo’s hot-rod. He’s working on it in the vacant lot next to Kupplemeyer’s.”
“The hell you say,” Gilly said. He sat the little girl on a Help Keep The City Clean Box. “That wasn’t any back-fire, Pete. That was an automatic rifle.”
As Gilly spoke, Hanson turned and looked back down the street just in time to see a small man race through the swinging doors of Stob’s bar and run, erratically, down the street. A second later Stob appeared in the doorway and took a pot shot at the running man with an old fashioned navy revolver.
As he did the running man stopped and, turning, sprayed the walk with a sub-machine gun.
Running now as fast as he could, Hanson turned to say something to Joe and saw the younger man was gone. Then he saw him on the jump step of a Parcel Delivery truck, his revolver in his hand as he urged the driver of the truck to even greater speed. I should have thought of that, Hanson thought. It was thinking of the right thing at the right time that got a man into plainclothes.
He ran on watching the truck pass the little man who was exchanging shots with Joe, himself protected by the line of cars along the curb. Now he and Joe had the man between them and Hanson recognized him. “It’s Guzic,” he called to Joe. “Let’s take him, boy.”
CAUGHT between the two patrolmen, Guzic flipped a burst at Hanson but shot too low and the lead ricocheted, screaming, off the walk to shatter Charlie Stob’s window. Hanson threw himself back of a parked car and down the street, in front of the station, a squad car siren began to wail.
Panting behind his barricade, Hanson realized with a sick sinking of his stomach that Guzic had probably been holed up on his beat all the time, probably in Tony’s living quarters. And he had stepped out for a last clean-up before blowing the city for good. This was a well-timed job. And someone had paid or threatened Jo Jo to get him to work on his car so any possible shots would be mistaken for back-fire.
Safe back of a car on his end of the trap, Joe Gilly called, “You haven’t got a chance, Sammy. Better throw down that gun.”
The trapped killer cursed him for answer. Then Hanson’s heart stood still as Dotty came out on the walk to see what all the shooting was about. Before either he or Joe could call to her Guzic grabbed one of her arms and, swinging the screaming girl in front of him, used her as a shield as he backed slowly towards the stairwell she had just descended.
“Now come get me coppers,” he taunted, and added a string of obscenities.
The little-man, Hanson realized, was hopped up to the eyes. More, the stick-up of Stob’s had gone sour. Guzic hadn’t gotten a dime. He’d crawled out of his hole for nothing. Now, already wanted for murder, he hadn’t a thing to lose.
The wailing squad car skidded to a stop and Captain Engles and Sergeant Hart got out. “What goes here?” Hart asked.
Hanson pointed to the now empty doorway. “It’s Guzic. He tried to stick up Stob’s. And when Gilly and I closed in on him he grabbed Dotty for a shield and forced her back up the stairs to our apartment.” Hart flipped his cigarette away with a theatrical gesture. “Well, what are you waiting for, Christmas?” He started for the stairwell and stopped as if he’d run into a stone wall as Joe Gilly said:
“He’s got a Thompson sub-machine gun.” Hanson’s grin was wry. “What’s the matter, sergeant? For the dead ones, we call you. Or isn’t he dead enough? There’s quite a difference, isn’t there, between a bum in a fish-bowl and a tough guy with a gun?” The color drained slowly from Hart’s face as the man’s true character came out.
Then a burst of fire from the front windows of the second floor flat scattered policemen and spectators alike. “Come on and get me, you lousy coppers,” Guzic screamed. “A push-over it will be, Tony tells me. There’s only one big dumb Swede copper on the beat. And even if something should go wrong, Sergeant Hart will fix it for twenty per cent of your take.” Spotting Hart behind a car, Guzic loosed a blast at him. “Okay, copper. Fix it.”
“Oh, God,” Tom Hart whimpered. Hanson fired at the man in the window and missed as Guzic ducked out of sight.
Captain Engles wasn’t a coward. Neither did he want to expend life needlessly. “We’ll wait for down-town to help us take him. We’ll need all the guys we can get.”
Hanson reloaded his gun. “To hell with that, sir. Dotty is my sister! Crouched for his sprint across the walk, he thought he caught a glimpse of Cary’s worried face. It would have been nice to marry Cary and have kids. Still, no one had asked him to be a cop. No one had thrown him down and pinned a badge on his chest. He’d asked for this beat and he’d got it. And this was a part of his job.
He sprinted across the lead-sprayed walk and, somehow, made it safely. But he still had the top door to pass. He took the stairs two at a time then fell forward as a burst of shots filled the stairwell.
PETE HANSON wasn’t consciously afraid of death. He did know a mild resentment. Joe might have offered to help him. Joe was supposed to be in love with Dotty. He was only a few feet now from the riddled door.
“Now!” Hanson sparked himself.
He burst through the door and fired, just as Joe Gilly did. Guzic dropped screaming in pain from wounds in his shoulder and thigh.
“And where in hell did you come from?” Hanson asked
Joe Gilly.
Gilly grinned, white-faced, as he attempted to staunch the wound in his own shoulder. “I climbed up a tree in the back yard.”
Then Ninth Street was filled with sirens and the apartment was suddenly filled with men. Tom Hart was the first through the door. Aiming his service gun at Guzic, he blustered, “I’ll kill the son. I’ll—”
Hanson twisted the gun from his hand and pushed him down on the sofa. “You’ll sit down and keep still until it’s time for you to talk. Then I want to know a lot of things. I want to know what punk you egged on to shoot at me with a compressed air gun because I dared to doubt the dame who died last night might not be one of the Jones’ girls. I want to know why you got her on ice so quick after you destroyed all identification. In fact I’m beginning to think you killed her because she threatened to tell Dotty what a class A heel you are.”
Captain Engles said, “Just leave all that to me, Pete. I want to know a few things myself.”
Inspector Able patted Joe Gilly’s sound shoulder at the same time he wrung Hanson’s hand. “Damn nice guts. Damn nice shooting. And damn nice team-work, boys. I can use a pair of lads like you on the gravy squad. We’ll talk about it later. But now, let’s let a doc look at that shoulder.”
DOTTY looked at Joe Gilly wide-eyed. “I’ve been such a fool, Joe,” she said. “Do you think you can ever forgive me?”
Grinning from ear to ear, Joe Gilly held out his sound arm. “Well, I’ll be happy to give it a try.”
Embarrassed by the hand shakes and pats, Hanson slipped his gun back in its holster and wondered if he ought to resume his tour. He hadn’t done anything but his job. Still Inspector Able had mentioned the gravy squad. And the gravy squad meant plain clothes and a nice boost in salary.
Then it all was suddenly very clear. Of course. He’d asked the Big Guy for help and he’d got it. If the little Fremac girl hadn’t gotten lost, Joe would have been at the other end of his tour and he would have been two hundred yards down the alley, wedged in between solid brick walls. The shots would have come to him distantly and he would have passed them off as back-fire.