“It came over the radio,” Donahue added.
“Yeah?” Sam Beckert droned, his eyes dull.
Donahue nodded. “I understand the Emperor had a long talk with Mike on the phone—out on the Coast, some time ago. The Emperor and Mike were going to hook up, weren’t they?”
Pete Korn spat shreds of the match to the floor.
Beckert rolled out a laugh. “I ain’t ever heard.”
“I did,” Donahue said. “Mike Dolan was killed an hour after the Emperor died.”
Sam Beckert walked heavily across the room, set down his glass and came back heavily. His forehead was wrinkled, his heavy features began to sag dully.
“Look here, Donny. You makin’ cracks or ain’t you? Seems to me you’re gettin’ damned steamed up over nothin’.”
Donahue said coldly: “I’m not half as steamed up as I ought to be. I don’t like having X notes shoved under my door. They scare me and make me sore as hell.”
Pete Korn put another match in his mouth. Helvig’s eyes got rounder.
Sam Beckert’s loose lips flopped as he said: “For——sake, what you talkin’ about?”
“You know what I’m talking about, Sam. We’re all thinking about the same thing—the Emperor Brown. Did he fall or was he pushed?”
Sam Beckert roared with laughter. “Oh, that! Ho-ho! You can’t kid me, Donny. Poor old King just smashed. You oughtta know that from the autopsy report.”
“It’s the first autopsy report I never believed.”
Sam Beckert’s face got heavy again and his brows shot together. “Boy, you’re makin’ them dirty cracks fast!”
Pete Korn got up, chewed faster on the match, flexed his little legs. Helvig’s mouth hung agape, and he mopped sweat from his forehead, drew the handkerchief up under his chin. He crossed the room and took a long slug of whiskey straight.
Donahue said: “Sam, it’s a long story—”
“Shut up!” Beckert growled. “I don’t have to clown around with you and I ain’t. Les Paisley’ll be here any minute and you can talk to him. I’m a plain man and I ain’t up to sparrin’ words with a wise Mick like you.”
Donahue grinned. He grinned first at Sam Beckert, then at Pete Korn, then at Helvig. He said: “You’ll be wasting time, Sam.”
“Huh?”
“Paisley won’t show up.”
Sam Beckert took a loggy backward step. Helvig gulped down another strong shot of whiskey. Pete Korn stopped chewing and closed his dry lips. The stub of the match jutted like a fang. Bracing himself on his huge legs, Sam Beckert’s eyes stared and a cloudy look overtook them.
Donahue said: “Paisley’s down at Headquarters. Kelly McPard picked him up. I turned him over to Kelly. It’s about money, Sam. About a lot of money that was juggled over the fight. And about the Keystone Realty Company—”
Helvig choked, took a drink of water. Sam Beckert turned to look at him, then looked back at Donahue with his wide, foggy eyes.
He roared: “I don’t believe it!”
“Call Headquarters and see. I told Paisley I’d come up here and tell you to come down. He’s in a tough spot and he’ll need you.” He nodded. “We’re going to find out that the Emperor was pushed—he didn’t fall. Better make it snappy, Sam. Paisley’s up against it and he’s expecting you.”
“Yeah?” roared Sam Beckert. “Okey. We’ll all go down. Come on, boys, get your duds on. The janes can stay here.” He stamped across the room, took a big overcoat out of a closet, heaved into it.
Pete Korn lifted an overcoat from the back of a chair, draped it over his left arm. He was chewing on a match again.
Helvig said: “I’ll stay here.” He was very drunk, his face loose and his mouth twisted, his eyes glazed. “I—I’ll wait.”
Sam Beckert was bluff: “Come on; you get your coat on. We’ll go down and show them mugs. All of us.”
Helvig sagged to a chair. “I’ll stay here, Sam. I got to.”
“You’d better come,” Donahue said.
“You hear me!” Sam Beckert boomed.
Helvig’s eyes flashed. He gripped the arms of the chair. “I’m not going down. You don’t need me. I—I’ll stay here and keep the girls company.”
Sam Beckert thumped across the room, reached down and hauled Helvig to his feet. “We’re all goin’ down—you hear!”
Helvig broke away and ran across the room, crouched in a corner, his eyes blazing. “I’m not!” He made a bee-line back across the room, slopped whiskey into a glass.
Sam Beckert punched the glass off the table. Helvig sucked in a breath, rasped: “It’s a trick! It’s a trick this fellow’s playing! I don’t believe Paisley’s down there! I won’t go!”
“You’re drunk,” Sam Beckert said. “The air’ll do you good. I tell you we’re all goin’ down!”
A glassy, cunning look came into Helvig’s eyes. He cackled. “You can go. But”—he shook his head—“not me. I tell you it’s a trick! You don’t know if Paisley’s there, do you? It’s just this fellow’s say-so. I tell you it’s a trick! It’s a frame!”
“Shut up!” Sam Beckert roared; he growled to Pete Korn: “Come on, Pete. We got to take Doc down. It’s for his own good.”
“Take Doc down,” Pete Korn muttered.
They started for him. But Helvig reeled backward across the room, hit the wall hard. A slab of iron-gray hair jumped down over his forehead. A gun jumped into his hand.
“I’m not going,” he said.
Beckert snarled: “You dope, put down that rod!”
“You heard me, Sam. You and Pete go. But not me. Go on!” he grated. “Get out of here!” And to Donahue: “And you, too!” His breath pumped hoarsely from his wide-open mouth. Sweat shone on his contorted face.
Donahue said: “You’re going, too, Helvig.”
“Am I? No, I’m not! For——sake, get out! Get out!”
Sam Beckert’s face was white, grave. “Doc, pull yourself together. You got to go with us. You got to. Don’t you understand you got to go?”
Helvig’s eyes shimmered. “Sam, for the love o’ gawd get out. Get out before I let you have it!”
There was a moment of silence, and then Sam Beckert said: “I guess we got to go. Come on, Pete.”
But Pete was chewing viciously on the match, and his eyes looked almost shut. His dry voice crackled: “I know what that baby’s up to! I know! And if you think I’m gonna stand for it—”
“Pete!” roared Sam. “You’re all goin’ nuts! Pete!”
Pete Korn drew fast. Helvig fired first, but missed. Pete’s shot drilled him, crashed him to the floor. There were screams in the other room.
Pete Korn whirled on Donahue, snapped: “And you hold everything!… Sam, frisk him.”
“I’m not heeled,” Donahue said, holding up his hands.
“Frisk him, Sam.”
Sam Beckert crossed to Donahue went through his pockets. He said: “He ain’t heeled, Pete.”
The match bobbed in Pete Korn’s mouth. He rasped: “Doc’s croakin’. Donahue did it, Sam.”
Sam Beckert gaped.
“Donahue did it,” Pete Korn repeated, making the match bob. He snapped to Donahue: “Turn that radio louder, you!”
Donahue took three steps, looked at the dials. He turned one. The radio blared, screeched. Pete walked over to Helvig, toed him. Helvig was rolling to and fro on the floor, moaning; a wild, steady stare in his eyes. Donahue picked up his hat from the top of the radio, turned. With his left hand he switched off the radio. His hat dropped from his right, and he held his gun.
“Don’t drop it, Pete,” he said. “Hold it—and hold that pose, darling. There’ll be no prints on the gun but yours. Stay where you are, Sam. Move, Pete, and you’ll get jarred.”
Donahue moved sidewise, three steps. With his left hand he picked up the Continental telephone. The hotel operator answered. Donahue said: “Send up a flock of cops to Lester Paisley’s apartment. A lot of people went nuts up here.”
&nb
sp; Kelly McPard stood behind his desk, with eight fingertips resting on it. The nails were pink, clipped, clean. Rosebuds bloomed on Kelly McPard’s cheeks; his eyebrows were arched high, his blue eyes twinkling. A chuckle began deep in his throat, rose and flowed out liquidly.
“Good old Donny,” he said.
Donahue was eating a banana, the skin peeled in four strips and draped down over his hand.
“Helvig started it,” he said. “It was funny. You can’t always tell about liquor. Helvig kept taking slug after slug—to brace him up, I guess. Instead, it let him down. He became a raving maniac, raving with fear. He was afraid to come down here. He lost all his reason. Then Pete Korn figured Helvig was making to pull a fade-out and a double-cross—and so Pete lost his head. Sam Beckert never had any head to lose, so it remained where it was. Nice people.” He took a bite of banana, chewed.
The door opened and Alex Karssen came in, swinging a stick. “I heard briefly over the phone,” he said, “that fireworks broke out in an uptown hotel.”
Kelly McPard sat down, shook with chuckles. “Pinwheels, rockets, Roman candles….”
“You see, Alex,” Donahue said. He paused to swallow a lump of banana, went on: “As far back as a month ago they planned to frame the Emperor into losing not only this fight but his life as well. I think I got an inkling then that something wrong was in the wind, because Paisley started going around town making cracks against the Emperor. Up until then, Paisley had always said good things about King Brown.
“The facts now are these: The Emperor was to chuck Sam Beckert and throw in with Mike Dolan. Sam and Paisley and your Commission’s doctor, Helvig, talked it over. They were going to needle the champ. Helvig was to get a cut of ten grand.
“When that Hollywood gossip column ran that item, Sam Beckert went to Mike Dolan and called him, but Mike admitted nothing. However, Sam was sure, and not without reason, that Mike Dolan was to get the champion. In a heated argument Sam said to Dolan: ‘You’re muscling in, Mike. If ever you get the champ away from me, you’ll get him dead. I won’t give him up.’ So when Sam confronted the Emperor, the Emperor beat about the bush, but Sam knew. The Emperor was a bum actor.
“And finally Sam managed to bribe the hotel telephone operator who had overheard Mike’s and the Emperor’s conversation, and then he knew. Sam started out for revenge, and meanwhile he planned to rake in a lot of dough while getting his revenge. The trouble was, in order to do away with the Emperor he had to do away with Dolan—because he had promised Dolan the only way he’d get the Emperor would be dead.
“Of course, Sam Beckert couldn’t be caught openly betting against his man. So what? So he turned over a pile of dough to Paisley. Paisley would bet against the champ, clean up. But then it would be risky to turn the winnings back to Beckert through open banking channels. They got the idea of a front and so formed the Keystone Realty Company.
“When Paisley cleaned up on the fight, he wrote out a check to the Keystone Realty Company for the amount he had received from Beckert to bet with plus the amount he had won. Later, the money was to dribble back to Beckert. All this we got from Paisley’s lips. Down at the hospital, we got the rest from Helvig, your Commission’s honorable doctor who okeyed the Emperor just before he went into the ring.”
“But the autopsy,” broke in Karssen, “proved that nothing had been done to the Emperor.”
Donahue said: “Nothing had. All these plans I mentioned had been laid a month before the fight. Gunmen were hired to go West and camp on Dolan’s trail, to be ready for the go-signal. The Keystone Company was formed. Beckert was all primed to bring vengeance against Dolan and at the same time make a big winning. Then a week before the fight Helvig discovered something wrong with the Emperor’s heart. He didn’t tell the Emperor but he told Beckert. The Emperor was through training and had been ordered to rest. Helvig told Beckert that any exertion would kill the champ. He told Paisley. None of them told the Emperor.
“It was Beckert who said that there was no need then to do away with Dolan. But Helvig was scared. He knew he would examine the Emperor before the champ entered the ring. He wanted not the slightest suspicion to fall on him. He figured that if Dolan lived he would come out with the news that Beckert had threatened to turn the Emperor over to him dead. This would bring down a lot of investigation and cross-examination, and the only examination Helvig wanted was an autopsy, which he knew would be safe. So Helvig refused to send the Emperor into the ring unless Dolan was taken care of. He was afraid of Black Harlem as well as the law. Beckert knew of only one way to take care of Dolan and he gave the word. If Brown keeled over, that was to be the signal!”
“My——!” said Alex Karssen.
“The Emperor was okeyed by your Commission’s doctor and went into the ring to die. He fought like a madman. It got him.”
Karssen rasped: “I’ll see that those fellows get life!”
“They will,” Kelly McPard said cheerfully.
“They’d better,” Donahue said. He tossed the banana peel into a basket, added: “Black Harlem’s honing its razors, Alex, and it’s life or”—he was wiping his mouth—“else, Southern style.”
Ghost of a Chance
Tough dick Donahue struck him behind the ear with a hard left fist
Chapter I
Donahue pulled open a side door of the Hotel Coronet and came into the arcade with a gust of raw wind that kited the long skirt of his blue ulster round his rangy legs. He went swinging on past smart shops towards the lobby, one hand pocketed, the other rapping a newspaper against his thigh at each step. From the breast pocket of his ulster a handkerchief protruded in two overlapping triangles. He wore a gray hat well off his face.
As he neared the lobby entrance, he heard the sound of Cuban music at the thé dansant in the Flamingo Room and picked up the tune with a whispered whistling. He reached the lobby and was cutting diagonally across towards the elevator bank when Phalen, the Post Express legman, turned from trying to date the brunette at the cigar counter and called out:
“Hey, look at Handsome.”
“Poison in your soup, Red,” Donahue said cheerfully, on his way.
Phalen tossed a wise-eyed wink at the brunette, popped a cigarette butt into a sand-filled urn and set off after Donahue.
“What’s the rush, Donny?”
“Date.”
“Who is she?”
“What’s the matter; did little beautiful at the counter give you the air?”
Phalen was pacing him. “Me, I’m her everything, bo.” His thin face was the color of sand and it was dry like sand. His smile was slow, twisted, and his eyes were sharp, brazen, and he had a dandified way of wearing his clothes. He spoke glibly: “No kidding, Donny. I’ve been trying for hours to stir up news.”
“So what?”
“So news is where you are, usually. You wouldn’t kid me, would you, pally?”
They stopped in front of the elevator bank and Donahue said in a mock-confidential voice, “Keep it under your hat, Red, but”—he put a hand significantly alongside his mouth—“there’s a blonde upstairs who doesn’t want to be alone.”
One of the elevator doors opened and Donahue swiveled away from Phalen and strode into the car.
“I mean,” Phalen said, following, “on the level.”
Donahue chuckled with rough good humor, said, “Don’t be a horse’s neck, Red,” and straight-armed him out of the car. And to the elevator boy, “Shoot me up, will you?” And when the car had started—“Five.”
Number 545 was at an L in the corridor and Donahue used a small bronze knocker shaped like a crouching cat. In a moment the door was opened by a short, heavy-set man dressed in a dark, speckled-gray lounge suit. He was holding a pair of rimmed nose glasses chest high, and with a slight inquisitive dip of the head he said:
“Mr. Donahue?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Come right in.”
Donahue entered a small foyer and laid his hat on a smal
l table there. He saw, beyond, through the Lancet arch, a girl standing sidewise to him; her chin was tilted upward and she was peering into a small vanity mirror and adjusting a brimless dark hat. She wore a three-quarter length black lapin coat, and as Donahue followed the middle-aged man into the large living-room, she made a quarter turn, gave him a brief, hesitant smile of greeting and turned again to her mirror.
The middle-aged man led him to a far corner of the room and said: “Pardon me just a moment, Mr. Donahue.” And Donahue nodded, unbuttoned his overcoat and stood gazing down on to the boulevard below. There were several apartment houses and a tall, lean hotel across the street. He heard the man and the girl talking in the foyer but did not catch what they said; he did not try. The sound of the door being opened and closed was followed shortly by the man’s return.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Donahue.”
“Not at all, not at all, Mr. Loftman.”
“There; take a seat, please; that one, any one.”
He looked fifty-odd and wore his snow-and-iron hair like a plume, unparted. His clothes were loose, sack-like, but obviously expensive, and when he replaced his glasses upon his nose he looked scholarly and a little older.
He said: “I’ve had occasion to use other branches of your agency and found them all dependable. That’s why I telephoned you to come over. What I really want this time, however, is a messenger. I wanted to get you here and make tentative arrangements with you. The messenger is not to be sent yet, but when the time comes I want to be certain of having him ready—instantly—to board a plane for the East. He will fly, meet my wife at a bank I shall name. She will turn over to him a certain amount of money and he will fly back with it and deliver it to me at this hotel.”
Donahue leaned forward. “It might be simpler and less expensive for you to have it wired here.”
Loftman gazed down absently at his unlit cigarette. “Possibly you don’t care to undertake it?”
“It was just a suggestion. I can have a man on call, any time you say. There’s always at least one man on reserve. No retainer’s necessary.”
Tough as Nails: The Complete Cases of Donahue From the Pages of Black Mask Page 53