Welcome Home, Sucker by Joe Archibald

by Monte Herridge

  Black Book Detective, October, 1945

  Paroled from prison, Jimmy Rohan Is caught in a murder snare while following the grim trail of hidden loot!

  AM getting out tomorrow. I won’t have to good.

  look at this rotten cell any more. It is A guy says a lot of things sometimes I seven feet long and four and a half wide, that he doesn’t mean.

  and has a wash basin painted green, a stool I can’t wait until I see Nora. How that and bunk with three dusty blankets and a girl has fought to get me the parole I One in a burlap mat.

  million, my baby!

  I’m not mad at anybody, not even

  We’ll go to a nice, quiet joint and Detective "Mitch" Hardesty, who was really celebrate. I can already feel my cheek against the cause of my being sent here for from her long black hair. She kept coming to see three-to-ten. I’d told Mitch that when I me for the last three years. Been doing all finished my rap I would fix his wagon but right, too. Got her own little hat shop on a

  Black Book Detective 2

  swell street.

  I’ll get a little drunk!

  You can bet your last red point that Jimmy Rohan won’t ever make a return trip to NORA and Dave Randau met me outside.

  this heap of stone. Easy dough? Huh! There’s What a welcome it was!

  no such stuff.

  They took me to a hotel and gave me a For a couple of years I thought there suitcase full of clothes. The duds were a little was. Things went nice and pretty until they tight for me. Can you imagine a guy taking on sent Mitch Hardesty to the West Side.

  weight in stir? The funniest things do happen.

  He got me cold one night while I was

  "You must be feelin’ pretty good, getting furs out of a loft. He took me to Jimmy," Randau said in the hotel room when I Headquarters and sweated two other jobs out kissed Nora again.

  of me. Mitch also roughed me up some. I was She looked prettier than ever. She

  still burning about that for six months after I wore a short, fur coat over a nifty gray suit.

  came to this prison.

  She’d done her hair up different, an upsweep.

  Nora used to drive the big sedan for It made her look older, and made me feel the mob. The night Hardesty caught up with twice as old as I am.

  us, she had a pretty bad cold and was home in

  “Why wouldn’t I feel good?” I held

  bed. They got nothing on my baby.

  Nora off a little to look at her. “Peaches and The day I said goodby at the railroad cream,” I said. “What kind of hats have they station, I knew from the way she looked at me been makin’ the last couple of years, though?

  that she would play everything straight from Let’s get a drink.”

  then on. She would never have gone along

  “Not yet, Jimmy,” Nora said. “When

  with the boys in the first place if she had not we get back to town. There’s a train in about fallen for me so hard.

  an hour. We thought it would be nice to stop Now I’m on top of the world. I can see here for a while, and let you get your a little rectangle of purple sky from this cell.

  bearings.”

  Tomorrow night I’ll climb a roof and look at

  “I’ll never get lost again.”

  all the stars in the world again. With Nora.

  I poked Dave Randau in the ribs and Maybe I’ll invite Dave Randau to have did a dance step or two. I grabbed Nora and a couple of drinks with us. I went to school circled the room once.

  with Dave. I guess I can thank him for getting

  “What is the job you got for me,

  me out a little ahead of time, too. It is nice to Dave?”

  have a lawyer friend like Dave Randau.

  “Not too big to start, Jimmy. In a

  Sure, I’ll even blow Mitch Hardesty, garage, for a trucking company. A despatcher.

  the copper, to a drink when I meet him.

  You can’t expect to own the business too

  “Mitch, let me buy you a stiff one. I’m quick.”

  the guy you straightened out and maybe saved

  “Give me a year,” I said and kissed From the chair.”

  Nora again.

  There goes the old prison signal again.

  I was not going to tell her yet about my The bars are sliding into place now, and we’re talk with Fleck Maslin. Fleck had been in the all locked in for the night. The last time for same cell with me for nearly five months. The me. I’ll hear the train whistle outside the big little guy had done six years when I got into wall about ten o’clock. Tomorrow, I’ll be the big house. He had a bad cough. The jute sitting on plush. I’ll eat a steak as big as a mill did not do it any good.

  horse, war or no war.

  One day they took Fleck away to

  Welcome Home, Sucker 3

  “pogey,” about a week or ten days after I had tried to get used to the luxury. I thought of saved him from a knifing out in the yard. They being in “solitary” that time, with nothing but took him away while I was in the prison a hard bunk and a galvanized, lye-treated pail library. When I got back to the cell, I found a in the cell.

  dirty, sealed envelope under the mattress

  “Pretty snooty, Nora,” I grinned. “Who where I kept my sack of makings.

  said it doesn’t pay to be honest?”

  I made sure none of the “screws” were

  “I’m glad you like it, Jimmy,” Nora around when I opened the note. At first, I said. “Excuse me, won’t you? I must get into thought I was seeing things.

  something more comfortable. You and Dave This Fleck Maslin said he was going to have a drink.”

  die and he didn’t have anybody outside he

  “I could use one,” I said.

  cared a darn about. I looked like a nice guy, he I’d never been much of a soak, even in had written.

  the wild days. It interferes with work. I never There was close to ten grand stashed could handle the stuff, anyway. But this was a under the boards of a closet in a small flat on night to celebrate.

  the West Side in the big city. The cops had

  “Here’s to you, Jimmy,” Randau said, forgotten all about where it came from. It was handing me a stiff one.

  all mine for the taking.

  I took it easy. Then the lawyer said Fleck died the next day.

  Nora had arranged a coming-home party with I tore the address out of the sheet of a few people.

  paper, and burned the rest of it in the basin. I

  “Any of my old friends?”

  have a rotten memory.

  “One or two, Jimmy,” Randau said.

  So here I was going to make a nice

  “’Augie’ Dern and Harry Frissel. They’re nice stake. Sure, I’d own part of that garage in a boys now. Work in the war plants.”

  year. Then maybe I’d tell Nora how come I My friends? Augie? Harry?

  made good so fast in business. Right at the I took another sip at the rye. Augie moment, I was not sure how she’d feel about Dern was a spiteful little cuss, who always it.

  hated my stomach ever since the time I had to

  “I saw Hardesty this morning,” Dave slug him over a split on a tire job. Harry Randau told me.

  Frissel used to be very thick with Nora in the

  “Yeah?”

  old days. The fact is, I stole Nora from Harry.

  “He said for me to tell you something,

  “Ought to be a nice party,” I remarked.

  Jimmy. Keep your nose clean during the It was.

  parole period because, if you don’t, he will There was Nora and me, Dave Randau, send you up fo
r plenty on top of what you did Augie and his little blonde, Harry and a dame not serve.”

  who looked like a poor man’s Grable. There

  “Good old Mitch,” I said. “I bet it’ll were two other guys I never met before.

  burn him if I stay legit.”

  We drank the place dry and did some We took the train back to the big town.

  dancing. The last thing I remember was Nora The bright lights never looked prettier.

  telling me to lie down for a while.

  We went right up to her old address, and I saw I never could handle the stuff. This right away that Nora had fixed it up but good.

  time I knew I was going out.

  New furniture and thick rugs and

  drapes that cost real dough. Yes, she had been I WOKE up in the morning on the couch, with doing fine. I settled into an easy chair and a terrible taste in my mouth and a head that

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  felt as if it had been insulated with steel wool.

  the streets, yet it really had not been me. The I couldn’t think too clearly. The room buildings all around looked like they were was a mess as it swam around. Ash trays filled under water.

  with butts, glasses and bottles.

  There were a lot of faces all around, I sat up when Nora came in. Her eyes and they kept changing shape as if they were looked big and scared.

  in one of those amusement park crazy mirrors.

  “Where did you go, Jimmy?” she One of them was in my mind’s eye now.

  asked me.

  Mitch Hardesty!

  “What do you mean, where did I go?

  I looked at Nora.

  No place but here.”

  “You don’t think I outsmarted

  “No? Look at your shoes,” she said.

  myself?”

  “They were nicely polished last night. It Nora handed me something. I had not rained about ten o’clock and did not stop until seen the thing for three years. She told me she early this morning. Look at your hat and your got it out of my raincoat pocket. It was a raincoat.”

  blackjack, and there was blood on it.

  I got up, feeling as if cold fingers were I remembered Nora hiding the jack

  tracing along my spine. The scare was when Hardesty came to talk to me one night.

  knocking a lot of the fumes of the liquor out I looked at Nora. I could figure what of my skull.

  she was thinking.

  “I

  couldn’t

  have

  gone out,” I said. “I

  “You fool!” she suddenly exclaimed.

  passed out.”

  “I couldn’t have gone out and done a

  “You did go out,” Nora said. “We put job!” I cried.

  you in the bedroom when you caved in. When Nora did not say anything. She just Dave went in there later, you were gone. The looked at me.

  window was open. I sent Augie out to look for Sure, that was the way it seemed all you. He came back and said he could see no right.

  sign of you.”

  “What time is it?” I asked.

  I started thinking fast.

  “Eight o’clock,” Nora replied.

  Sure, lots of guys have done things I went a little crazy. I grabbed Nora when they were so drunk they didn’t and told her she ought to have known enough remember. A sleepwalker can even make the not to fill me full of booze. She should have rounds of the neighborhood, and get back to watched me every minute. I pushed her away bed without knowing it. I went into the from me, and she fell against the divan.

  bedroom and looked out the back window.

  I had to get out. Whether I had been in Nora’s little apartment was only one flight up.

  possession of my right senses or not last night, A man could leave by the fire escape, all right.

  it wouldn’t matter with the cops. I grabbed my

  “Think,” Nora said. “Jimmy, what hat and coat, put them on and got into the happened?”

  muddy shoes.

  I went back to the living room. My

  “Jimmy, if you run away, they’ll be shoes were near an easy chair. A lot of the sure to suspect.”

  shine was off them, and there was mud on the I looked at Nora.

  soles. My brown felt hat had been wet. The

  “You sure believe it, don’t you?” I raincoat was thrown over a chair-back.

  said. “You’re sure of it.”

  Then something came to me. A kind of

  “What else could have happened?

  nightmare I’d had. I had been running around Look, Jimmy, let’s face it.”

  Welcome Home, Sucker 5

  “I haven’t a chance,” I said. “You slugged him. A subconscious mind? It would know it. I want all the dough you can give me, be nice, I thought, if a guy could have one and quick!”

  while he was burning.

  “All right, Jimmy.”

  I kept back-tracking inside my head.

  She got her bag, dug into it, and came The last I remembered about the party was up with a bunch of bills. I grabbed them and that I was as happy as a lark and not mad at a went out of there, but not by the front way.

  single person or thing.

  I dropped off the fire escape, scaled a Yes, you’d have thought Nora would

  fence, came out on the next block, and then have watched me close after being away from went into a subway.

  me three years. She had taken only a couple of I did not know where I was going. I drinks. She’d danced a lot, mostly with Dave wasn’t thinking too clearly. All that mattered Randau. But I had always been a rotten at the time was that the chair was waiting for dancer.

  me, if what I thought was true. Then I I had to stop thinking.

  remembered I had not taken the blackjack. But I couldn’t go back.

  TWO hours later, the news came out. I read it There was a place I remembered in the first edition of an evening paper, when I uptown, where a guy could hide out. It was a sneaked out to the street to get something to cheap hotel run by a man with plenty of law eat.

  violations behind him. For dough, he would The cops had found Mitch Hardesty in hide Hitler away.

  an areaway near a tavern on the upper East It was about nine o’clock when I got Side. His skull had been stove in.

  there. There were a couple of morning The cops were looking for a guy who newspapers on an old table in the second-floor had just been paroled. His name was Jimmy lobby. I grabbed one up. There was nothing Rohan. That made me forget about being about a murder in it.

  hungry.

  “I want a room,” I said to Lew Fraser.

  When I went back to the hotel, Fraser

  “I don’t want no visitors.”

  looked at me out of the corner of his eyes. I

  “Rates are high,” Fraser said.

  was in my room fighting the jitters when he

  “Sure. Here’s fifty bucks,” I snapped.

  knocked on the door.

  “I get privacy?”

  I told him to come in.

  “Yeah,” he answered. “For a couple of

  “I was reading yesterday where you

  weeks.”

  got out, Rohan,” Fraser began.

  “I got more dough comin’,” I said.

  “That

  so?”

  I took the key and went upstairs. I sat

  “I need some dough, Jimmy,” he said.

  down on the bed and tried to reason it all out.

  “I understand. You’ll get your dough.”

  Only a few hours out of the big house I felt icy fingers down my spine again.

  and I had blood on my hands. I looked at You’re never safe when you’re hot; not even them, but they were clean. Even so, I washed from the crooks. I had to get out of town, and them in the basin.

  there was only one way to get out.

  I must have gone out of the apartment, Just after Fraser closed the door behind all ri
ght. I was one of those drinkers who can him and I was sure he’d gone downstairs, I be blotto and still move around without grabbed my hat and poked inside the knowing my brain is working.

  sweatband. I wanted to make sure of an I must have met Mitch Hardesty and

  address. The number was there all right.

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  It would take a little time to get dough.”

  Fleck’s dough. Somebody would be in that I did not leave my room for the next flat, maybe some mug worrying about the two days. I lived like a rat, eating whatever rent. It was funny. Ten grand under the floor Fraser could rustle up. I could not sleep a of a closet!

  wink, thinking of the corner of hell I’d got The

  sweat

  began

  oozing out of me.

  into.

  What if that building had been torn down?

  Finally I made the try.

  I had to take a chance and play hare-I left Eraser’s place one night about and-hounds with the cops. One Shamus from eight o’clock, figuring a hunted man has more Headquarters in particular would be after me chance during an hour when the streets are with all he had, day and night. Al Ford had practically empty.

  been a good pal of Mitch Hardesty.

  I ducked into a subway, expecting to The dragnet for me would soon be out.