The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps

by Otto Penzler

  I switched that talk and turned to McBride’s interest. Finally O’Rourke saw it enough my way to let me flop into the garage first. Once the surprise was over, he’d follow. That seemed fair enough. What I was mostly afraid of were spies. Watchers on the outside, who’d give the alarm as soon as the cops got anywhere near the garage.

  O’Rourke put through a call for the boys to meet us. He had a picked crew waiting and ready, and told me it wouldn’t take five minutes to fill that garage with flatties. I didn’t like waiting for the coppers there in the dark street some six blocks from Ricorro’s Garage. I get restless just before a bit of action, not nervous, you understand, sort of rarin’ to go, and the longer I wait the worse I get. So I spent my time telling O’Rourke all that had taken place in my talk with Michelle Gorgon, and his offer of a hundred thousand dollars for the name of the party behind McBride, the party who rang up Michelle Gorgon. Of the note, “Rose Marie cries out for Vengeance—” with a couple of words erased at the end of it.

  “Yeah, Michelle Gorgon would like to know.” O’Rourke chewed an unlighted cigar. “McBride could tell him, but won’t. I could tell him, but won’t. I—.

  “O’Rourke,” I cut in, “I’ve laid my cards on the table. What about yours? Who is the one who knows so much, and why can’t you get the information from that party?”

  “Because I can’t,” snapped O’Rourke. “And I have passed my—. Well—I can’t tell you who it is—that’s flat.” And suddenly changing the subject, “Who’d think it of Rudolph Myer? Imagine it! The police have been trying to get something on Myer for years and always failed, and finally he mixes himself up with a bit of murder, kidnaping, maybe torture, and what have you, all at once. There’s no understanding human nature, Race. But it’ll just show you what a lad we’re dealing with in Michelle Gorgon. Certainly he must have put the stony, Gorgon look on Myer. And you say Myer was ready to jump the city, bags packed and all. But why? He never guessed you were onto him. He couldn’t know that Jerry saw and recognized him. Maybe he was just leaving for a day or so, on business, business for the Gorgons, Michelle Gorgon.”

  “Not Myer.” I nodded confidently. And I told O’Rourke of the suitcase full of money. “Did that look like a short trip?” I asked.

  “Yeah?” And O’Rourke let his mouth hang open a minute. “One hundred thousand dollars for the name of the one behind McBride,” he said thoughtfully. “For the one who strikes fear in Michelle Gorgon’s stomach, for he hasn’t any heart. One hundred thousand dollars for even a hint of who it might be. One hundred thousand dollars for—” And O’Rourke suddenly clutched me by the arm. “You don’t think—think that bag contained exactly one hundred thousand dollars?”

  “It might. Why? You don’t think—?”

  “But I do think, exactly what you think now. That Rudolph Myer knew, or guessed, and sold the information to Michelle Gorgon. It—. Wait.” And O’Rourke climbed suddenly from the car, went back into that all-night drug store, and following him to the corner I saw him step into the telephone booth.

  “Phew—” he rubbed his forehead when he came out. “At least, no harm has been done yet.”

  “O’Rourke—” I started, and stopped. The riot squad was on the job. Two big cars were coming down the street.

  Now, I didn’t have things my own way. O’Rourke did agree with me that the police cars stay five blocks from Ricorro’s. But O’Rourke trailed along with me to within a couple of blocks of the garage—then I let him out of my boat.

  “I don’t know what you told the cops, O’Rourke,” was my final message to him, “but I’m certain that a police parade will kill the show.”

  “Nothing to worry about,” O’Rourke told me. “They’ve got orders to wait, then surround the block. I’ll sort of keep an eye on you.”

  “Too much interest, and McBride dies.” I took the hand that O’Rourke held out to me. And I grinned as I put the police whistle into my pocket. Why argue over that?

  “You’ve sure got guts, Race,” he said simply, and I drove off.

  CHAPTER XXIX

  JOE GORGON DOES HIS STUFF

  HERE ARE TIMES when I feel that I earn my money. This was one of them. I had an idea that one man, working alone, might get to McBride. One man, driving alone into that garage, would probably not send a signal of warning to Joe Gorgon. One man might—. But I swung the corner, dashed down the main street, spotted the wide open doors of Ricorro’s Garage and drove smack in. I want to tell you it was a big moment.

  Certainly I got service—service one doesn’t expect in a garage.

  A lad sitting on the running board of a truck jumped to his feet and came quickly toward me. He carried a wrench in his hand. Though he was dolled up like a car washer I recognized him as I stepped from the car, and what’s more, he recognized me. He was more or less of a well known gangster. And I had the advantage of him. Where he didn’t expect me I expected him, or one of his kind.

  We faced each other a split second only, as I stepped from the running board. My car protected us from being seen from the little lighted room that would be an office.

  He never spoke, never more than half raised that wrench, when I let him have it. Just a single up-swing of my right hand, and the barrel of my gun crashed home. Yes, I know. If I were real high minded I’d have hit him with my fist. But I’m not high minded, and besides, my knuckles bruise easily and I have yet to see the head that will dent my rod.

  His eyes did a “Charlie Chaplin” as his knees gave. Then he laid down on the floor. So much for that. I don’t waste time on these birds, and I didn’t waste time now.

  Not a soul in that dimly lit garage as I crossed the smeared cement floor to that little office. Boy, what a break! As I pushed open the door, Ricorro’s fat little form was coming toward me. He stopped dead in the center of that office and gaped at me. Then he turned quickly to the roll-top desk.

  “Don’t be a fool, Ricorro,” I told him. “It’s Race Williams. I’m killing tonight.”

  Melodramatic? Sure. Who’s to deny that? But then, in the new underworld of our great city, melodrama is real life—and death too. Anyway, it was the kind of talk Ricorro understood. He stopped dead, chucked up both his hands and stood so. He knew his stuff, did Ricorro; knew my reputation also. Life in the underworld had taught him that the man with the gun talks, and the man without a gun listens.

  A sudden noise behind me and I half swung aside, so as to face both Ricorro and the office door. Then I shrugged my shoulders and let it go at that. O’Rourke was there, slightly out of breath, slightly red of face, but with a gun in his hand. He must have run the two blocks.

  “I’m sorry, Race. I had to—. Look out!”

  A revolver cracked. A figure, or rather, the shadow of a figure fled down the little hall back of the office, where he had been hiding. With a warning to O’Rourke, I dashed into that little hallway. There wasn’t much to fear from a lad who couldn’t shoot better than to miss both of us.

  “Watch that bird, Ricorro, O’Rourke,” was all I said as I got under way.

  I saw the running figure through the glass of the door which led into the garage again. Just another door where Ricorro could go in and out, and miss people he didn’t want to see in the front.

  Now, had this scurrying rat spoiled the party? If Joe Gorgon was in the basement, did he hear the shot? Somehow, I thought not. The motor of my car was still running. The floor was of thick cement. And as I dashed into the dimness of the garage I called out my warning to the fleeing, ducking figure ahead.

  I could have shot him, but I didn’t. I thought I knew his kind, his breed. I thought he’d drop his gun and cry out for mercy at the first warning. But he didn’t. He ducked quickly behind a car, fired once from the darkness, where I couldn’t see him, and I cursed out my big heart, or my assurance that he’d stop when I warned him.

  Now the going was not so good. This lad was bent on warning the others or making his escape. But while he was loose in that garage h
e was a real menace—both to my plans and my life. And I saw him again—far in the rear now, a dim figure between two cars. He was kneeling on the floor, pulling at something. I covered him and again called out. You have to admit I was giving him a break.

  And this time he had to have it. He raised his gun and it spouted flame. And that was enough of that. I only fired once, saw him sort of straighten, clutch at his chest and go down. I don’t go in to miss. It’s not good business.

  I was on him before he could fire again, that is, if he was alive, to fire again. And he was alive, but not in condition to cause trouble. Besides which, he had shown me the entrance to the basement. A great slab of heavy timber in the cement floor, with an iron ring in it.

  I grabbed his gun, took a grip on that iron ring, lifted the trap door and started down wooden steps. Things were as quiet as the grave below. The grave! I wondered. But faint heart never filled a spade flush, or rescued a McBride, and I believe in going after things with a bit in my teeth.

  I didn’t find blackness below. As soon as I spotted enough light I jumped those steps two at a time and made the bottom. A quickly moving figure is much harder to hit than a slowly moving one. That makes sense, though a lot of people think you must creep up on an enemy to be effective.

  If Joe Gorgon had heard those shots, he wasn’t in the open, waiting. The basement was musty and damp. Perhaps half a dozen cars stood out weirdly in the dim yellowish light. There were barrels, that looked as if they might contain oil; a part of a car here and another part there. Loose lumber, old tires, and great hunks of tin, or what looked like great hunks of tin.

  There were no little side rooms, no locked doors. No doors at all, except two big ones which, I thought, opened into the car elevator, for I had spotted doors like them directly above.

  But you couldn’t tell. The doors might be a blind. I stepped over to them, and stepped back from them again. Low, but distinct, just the same, was the hum of an elevator. Was it going up or down? I thought down, then KNEW down. For, as I raised my gun, those doors opened and—Colonel McBride stood smack before me, right in the center of that elevator. Despite the fact that I was looking from the light into the semi-darkness of the unlighted elevator, I recognized him. His face was white, bruised, and cut too. But he was standing on his feet. Standing alone. And I saw the bulky shadow behind him just as that bulky shadow saw me. It was Joe Gorgon.

  From behind McBride Joe Gorgon fired. No word of warning. Just a spit of orange blue flame, and a sudden icy coldness across my cheek, as if some one had pulled a red hot iron over it. Yes— I mean that. It was a coldness that burnt.

  Joe Gorgon had half turned his great bulk sideways, so that he was completely protected from my fire by Colonel McBride. Joe wasn’t like his brother, Eddie. He didn’t gloat over his kill. And what’s more, he wasn’t going to talk himself out of his kill. He was drawing a bead now over McBride’s shoulder—his head low, his eye down close to McBride’s arm—just a fraction of a sight from under that arm. Joe didn’t hurry, but he didn’t lag either. Maybe a second. Maybe two. Maybe less, even.

  I had to do it. I wasn’t fifteen feet from the standing, staring, sort of lifeless McBride, and the hidden crouching bulk of Joe Gorgon. It was my death, McBride’s death, or—.

  And I did it. I jumped forward and fired, to be closer even when my heavy forty-four found its mark. I fired smack at the right arm of Colonel McBride.

  Just the roar and the flash of my gun echoing upon the roar and the flash of Joe Gorgon’s single shot. It worked. McBride crumpled to the floor. Joe Gorgon jumped sort of in the air, half spun, fired wildly, and I laid my next bullet smack between his eyes. Just a little round hole, ever growing larger. Joe Gorgon waved his hands once. His right foot came slowly up, like a lad in the slow motion pictures. Then he pitched forward on his face.

  Yep, a forty-four is a mighty handy weapon, even if old fashioned. My bullet had gone through the fleshy part of McBride’s arm as if it were papier-mache, and landing in Joe’s shoulder had knocked him back, just as if you’d hit him with a battering ram.

  But it was McBride I was thinking of. He was so white and silent. The blood was pouring from his arm just above the elbow. An awkward place to tackle, but I did the best I could to make a tourniquet with my handkerchief and pencil as I blew frantically upon the police whistle. Police whistle! Imagine it! I never thought I’d have use for one of those things. But now, I was glad O’Rourke had forced it on me. The thing was over! McBride was safe, and Joe Gorgon—. Already his body was cold enough for little devils to be skating on his chest.

  They came. Haifa dozen plainclothesmen, a police surgeon, and O’Rourke leading them.

  “I had a doctor in the car,” O’Rourke said, “though I should have brought an undertaker. Joe’s dead of course. And he got McBride first!”

  “He did not!” I told O’Rourke emphatically.

  Then I explained the necessity of plugging McBride, felt O’Rourke dabbing at my neck with a handkerchief, and for the first time realized that the warm stream running under my collar was not perspiration, but blood, and that the bullet had been closer to doing me in than I thought, for the wound was along the side of my neck and not my cheek. Queer, that? Maybe. But queer or not, it was the truth just the same. I guess it’s much easier to see where you plug another guy than to know where you’re hit yourself. But why bother? After the police surgeon had fixed up McBride I let him play around my neck. And he did. With a gallon or two of iodine, and a lot of conversation as to what might have happened if the bullet had been a fraction of an inch to the right.

  CHAPTER XXX

  A LETTER FROM THE DEAD

  McBride came around in that little office up stairs and talked a bit. I listened but didn’t get it at all.

  “I never told him,” Colonel McBride said over and over, until he seemed to get his bearings better. “Joe Gorgon threatened me and struck me with his gun while my hands and feet were bound. And then he decided to go after me in earnest. A hot iron that he heated in the little stove up stairs. It was the shot that saved me, for he stopped and listened. Then untied my feet, and with a gun pressed against my back led me to the elevator.”

  “Yes, we know all that,” I cut in. That wasn’t very important now. “How did they get you here—Rudolph Myer, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, though he may be an innocent party to it. He came to me and said that the girl had decided to talk. That she would tell me everything. That she was waiting in the car on the street behind. That seemed right. She had promised to come to my house. Promised to, at least—”

  “What girl?” I asked quickly.

  “The Flame, of course. She—”

  But O’Rourke was at him—shutting him up— speaking hurriedly.

  I turned on O’Rourke.

  “The Flame? She knows! The voice on the wire that so worried Michelle Gorgon; the cracked voice of a man trying to imitate a woman. The Flame? Why, she’s going to marry Michelle Gorgon. She’s—. Come, O’Rourke, out with it.”

  “Now, now, Race.” And as two white coated lads came in with a stretcher for Colonel McBride, O’Rourke finished, “I guess it’s time you knew everything, but it’s not for me to tell you. I passed my word to The Flame. Come, we’ll go up to her apartment and see her. Tut, tut, don’t look at me like that, Race. She’ll be expecting us.”

  And up to her apartment we did go. And maybe I did look at him “like that.” Like what? Oh, like anything O’Rourke thought I looked like.

  Think! The Flame had said, “Think.” And the one thing I couldn’t do as we made that trip up Park Avenue was—think.

  This time we drove straight to the door of the flashy apartment. The dawn was breaking in the sky. Brophey, the detective who had been at McBride’s house after his disappearance, stepped from the shadows and saluted O’Rourke. O’Rourke explained the dick’s presence before the apartment to me.

  “When I left you in the car by the drug store,” he said, “I made a
couple of calls. One, was to cover this apartment and drag in Michelle Gorgon.”

  “On what charge?”

  “The murder of his wife,” said O’Rourke. “I couldn’t think of any better charge, and even if I couldn’t hold him it wouldn’t look so bad. Prus-sic acid is hard to buy—especially by a crippled, half witted woman who has never been on the street alone since her—her accident.”

  “I think that was a mistake,” I told O’Rourke, and meant it.

  “I had another reason. I had to do it to protect The Flame. Any luck, Brophey?” he asked the dick.

  “Doctor Michelle Gorgon has not come in,” Brophey said, “And The Fla— Miss Drum-mond has not gone out—at least, since I’ve been here.”

  “Good!” said O’Rourke as we passed into the apartment house. “We’ll see The Flame.” And as I started to question him again, “Just a jaunt to the twelfth floor, Race, then it’s up to her.”

  The night man didn’t like the hour we sought The Flame. O’Rourke didn’t argue. He showed his badge, pushed the elevator man, John, back and said, “Twelfth floor, and no lip.”

  Another plainclothesman, who was sitting on the cold stairs beside the elevator, came to his feet when we reached the twelfth floor. O’Rourke was thorough, anyway. But certainly Michelle Gorgon would get wind of the police display and not return. I said as much to O’Rourke.

  “I didn’t want him to return,” said O’Rourke. “I didn’t want to make the pinch unless he came here for The Flame. I’d of had to pinch him to save her. Anything stirring, Cohen?”

  “Not a thing,” said Cohen. “No one in or out of 12-D since I’ve been here.”

  It took time to get into that apartment. At last the colored maid, Lillian, opened the door.

  “Miss Drummond?” said O’Rourke. “Miss—” And the girl didn’t have to tell us. We both read it in her face. But when she came out with it, it startled me just the same. Florence, The Flame, had received a telephone call and left the house, perhaps a half hour earlier.