by Otto Penzler
“My boys didn’t rub out Damon and O’Day.”
“This is politics, Sam.” McFee thumbed a match at a cigarette. “It isn’t what a lad does or don’t do—it’s what his public’ll stand for.”
“How d’l know that file’s planted here?”
“Call Littner—you’ll know then.”
“You found out who killed Damon?”
McFee answered carefully, “Maybe.”
Melrose pulled up in front of McFee. “What you want?”
The racket on the cafe floor had dropped to a backlash of irritation and protest. A door opened. Littner spoke to someone. Joe Cruik-shank’s soprano answered. The Mayor’s platform boom cut in.
McFee said, “Sam, you been running this town long enough. I’m going to take it away from you.”
“Yes?”
“The Mayor’s out there telling everybody what a good guy he is.” McFee spoke softly, pulled out the paper he had typewritten at Irene Mayo’s. “The Mayor’s your man. Your money elected him, keeps him in the City Hall. This is an unsigned indorsement of Luke Addams’ candidacy for District Attorney—”
“A lotta help that’ll give him.”
McFee said gently, “With the City Hall machine and the newspapers pulling for Addams we got a pretty good chance beating Dietrich. Addams in, we work for a new deal in the police hookup—Littner chief. But that’s future. Sam, you are going to tell Hizoner to put his John Henry to this declaration of independence, or I give Littner the go sign.” He smiled. “How ‘bout it?”
Melrose raged, “I will not!” But he was shaken. “I’ll see you—”
McFee cut in, “You want Littner to use his search warrant? This is politics. I’m telling you.”
Jerking at his wilted collar, Melrose walked to the window. McFee slanted his eyes at the washroom door. He kept them there until Melrose faced around.
“I can throw plenty sugar your way—”
McFee said, “You are going to need sugar, Sam.”
Melrose opened his mouth, shut it without saying anything, pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. When he dropped them, his eyes were crazy, and he came charging towards McFee with his hands clenched. Littner entered just then, a brown paper parcel under his arm. Roy Cruikshank was behind him. The Mayor boomed in the outer room. His handsome, silver head was visible for a moment before Cruikshank closed the door. Melrose shook his head, let his hands fall.
Littner sat down, laid the parcel on the floor beside him. He said nothing. His oval head, his cold water eyes said nothing. Cruikshank put a cigarette in his pink mouth, pulled his hat over his eyes and leaned against the wall.
“Do I get that file?” Melrose asked tonelessly.
McFee said, “Sorry. We got to have a guarantee the City Hall’ll root hard enough.” He added reluctantly, “But I’ll give you a break, Sam. I’ll show Littner who killed Damon and his mother.”
Melrose wet his lips. “All right.” McFee handed him the unsigned indorsement. He read it, turned it over, flared out, “None of my boys killed Damon. By God, McFee if this is another frame—”
McFee said, “I never framed anybody, Sam.”
As Melrose went out and shut the door behind him, the Mayor’s platform boom ceased. A low-toned, bitter argument began. Melrose’s voice whiplashed, “I’m still running this town, Mr. Mayor.”
McFee sat down. His eyes moved towards the washroom door, remained there a moment, came back. He wiped his face.
Littner said mildly, “Warm for the time of the year.”
“It’s some of that unusual weather,” Cruik-shank muttered under his hat brim.
“Maybe Sam’11 buy us a highball,” McFee said. He laughed softly, looked at the cherubic Cruikshank, at the politically minded Littner. “Politics is funny. The lad who don’t have to put over more than a couple of dirty ones to pull three good members out the bag has a medal coming to him.”
“Some’dy ought to pin a medal on you, Handsome,” Cruikshank said.
“I’m not through with this town yet.”
Melrose came in then, a dull burn on either wet cheek bone. He handed McFee the indorsement, sat down and shelved his chin on his chest. He did not speak, did not look at McFee. The latter examined the signature. A clock ticked loudly somewhere. In the next room the Mayor was booming, “Luke Addams is a man in whom I have the greatest confidence. It will be a pleasure—” Dutch Louie and His Pals whipped into a jazz.
Parading his eyes around the room, McFee blinked at the washroom door, let them idle on the ornate desk. He went to the desk, bent over the wire basket and looked through the papers in it. He stood erect and stared at the end of his cigarette. A couple of overcoats hung on the cloak tree, near the desk. McFee put a hand inside one of them and brought forth a long manila envelope with “Shelldon” penciled in one corner. The envelope was open. He glanced into it.
Melrose lifted his head. Rage had contracted his eye pupils, ground them to points of bitter, fierce light. He did not speak.
McFee handed Cruikshank the Shelldon file and the Mayor’s indorsement. “Stick ‘em in the Tribune vault a while,” he said.
“Right,” Cruikshank muttered.
15
Littner gave McFee the brown paper parcel. “No. 3 trash collection wagon brought them in,” he said.
“Very nice,” McFee answered. He sat down, the parcel on his knees. He looked at his watch. “Twelve-thirty-five. It’s just twenty-four hours since a lady came to see me, at Cato’s. She said the lad she was with, Ranee Damon, had gone into the Gaiety about an hour before. She said he’d followed Sam Melrose—”
Melrose ejaculated, “He did not. I was on Scudder’s yacht. I got all the alibis—” He stopped there, wiped his mouth on the napkin. “You birds got nothing on me.”
McFee proceeded softly, “The lady and I got into the Gaiety. Damon had been shot. He died. Some’dy had stepped on a tube of grease paint. Crimson. Smeared it around. Damon’s body walked out. I found it in Maggie O’Day’s. Maggie was his mother. She had rolled him home in her wheel chair. Maggie was dead—gas. But there was a bruise on her head. Maybe she fell. Maybe she was slugged. I found a smear of crimson grease paint on a newspaper on the floor. There was no grease paint on Maggie’s shoes or Damon’s. Very well. I figured this way: The party killed Damon stepped on the tube of grease paint, in the dark, bust it open, got all smeared up. Grease paint is bad. Maggie saw that party beating it out the Gaiety. The party followed Maggie home, to see how come. Maggie accused the party of murdering her son and got slugged—with her own crutch, maybe. The gas was to make it look like suicide—grief. The party’s shoe smeared the newspaper. The party didn’t know it, went away. Now grease paint is hard to clean off fabric goods, and when the party saw what’d happened to a nice pair of shoes it looked like a good idea to get rid of’em. Sounds easy. Only it isn’t. Littner’s men found ‘em at the city trash collection dump.”
McFee unrolled Littner’s brown paper parcel. A pair of green satin pumps fell out. He held one of them up. The sole, instep, and right side of the pump were smeared with crimson grease paint.
Melrose blurted, “That lets my boys out.”
McFee lighted a cigarette, looked at the match a while. “I said a lady came to see me at Cato’s. She was wearing green satin pumps— these pumps. When I took her home three hours later she was wearing green snakeskin slippers. She beat it out the Gaiety and phoned headquarters around 1:30. I picked her up on Third at 3:15—nearly two hours. That gave her plenty time to tail Maggie O’Day home, kill her, get back to the car, drive to her apartment—taking the Shelldon file with her—change her shoes, and get back to Third.”
McFee rolled a match in his ear. “But I couldn’t figure out why Irene Mayo killed Damon. Wasn’t she going to make him Governor, herself the Governor’s lady? So I went back to the Gaiety and ran a string along what looked like the bullet trajectory. There was a horizontal groove in the door jamb level with the line the bull
et followed—”
A muffled, sobbing sound interrupted McFee and terminated in a wail of despair. McFee wiped his face and throat with a handkerchief. A bitter, silent moment went by.
McFee said deliberately, “Irene Mayo wrote those ‘Mr. Inside’ notes. She planted that Shelldon file here because Melrose’s blonde had taken Damon with five grand. She wasn’t with Damon last night. She tailed him down to the Gaiety. Melrose wasn’t there. Slick little number. She tried to pull a fast one at her apartment this morning with a ‘Shelldon’ envelope full of blanks. Said she’d found it on Damon while I was in Leclair’s room. Said it had fooled her. Well, she pretty near fooled me.” McFee stared gloomily at his cigarette. “Damon must have given her that gun—Metz’ gun. She didn’t intend to kill him—the lad she was going to make Governor. No. She fired at Leclair. Because Leclair was gumming up the works. You can’t figure women. The bullet ricochetted from the door jamb, took Damon—”
That tortured cry came again, McFee got up, walked towards the washroom door.
A pistol shot reverberated in the room.
McFee took three strides forward. The door leaned open. He caught the redheaded girl in his arms. He carried her to a chair, laid her in it. Littner, Melrose, Cruikshank stood around. People came rushing in, the Mayor booming …
McFee said, “I had a notion she’d do it.” And then, huskily, “I never was much of a lad for hanging a woman.”
The City of Hell!
Leslie T. White
BARELY REMEMBERED today, Leslie T. White (1901-1967) was a lifelong member of the law enforcement community, beginning as a ranger on some of the large private estates that dotted the landscape in the California of the early part of the twentieth century.
He moved to jobs in the sheriffs office and police department before becoming one of a few highly paid investigators attached to the District Attorney’s office in Los Angeles, where he became a largely self-taught expert in fingerprinting, electronic eavesdropping, trailing suspects, photography, and other nascent tools of crime fighters.
He had headline-making experiences in the tong wars, battles with communists, helping to solve the Doheny murder mystery, and numerous other major criminal activities in California. These experiences served as the basis for his autobiography, Me, Detective, and such novels as Homicide (1937), Harness Bull (1937) and The River of No Return (1941).
His 1943 novel 5,000 Trojan Horses was filmed in the same year by Warner as Northern Pursuit with a screenplay by Frank Gruber; it was directed by Raoul Walsh and starred Errol Flynn. Ten years later, Harness Bull was made into the famous motion picture Vice Squad (released in Great Britain as The Girl in Room 17) with a screenplay by Lawrence Roman; it was directed by Arnold Laven and starred Edward G. Robinson.
“The City of Hell!” was first published in Black Mask in October 1935.
The City of Hell!
Leslie T. White
Four honest cops and a city of gunmen and graft
HE PIERCING SCREAMS of a woman filled the awed hollow of silence left void by the chatter of a sub-machine-gun and acted as a magnet of sound to suck the big squad car to the scene. Even before the police driver braked the hurtling machine to a full stop, Duane and Barnaby debouched from either side of the tonneau, balanced a moment on the running-boards, and hit the pavement running. Then while the doughty sergeant restrained the hysterical mother, Captain Barnaby went down on his baggy knees beside the broken little body.
It lay across the curb, feet and knees in the street, rag-covered torso flattened on the sidewalk: a tot of three, chubby, with light olive skin and eyes black as a starless night. There were three welling holes staggered across the tiny back and from somewhere beneath rivulets of scarlet inched along the dusty cement like accusing tentacles. A chubby little fist moved convulsively, aimlessly. Barnaby laid one of his great calloused hands over the baby hand, squeezed it, then looked up.
A sea of sullen faces met his frowning gaze; haunted faces with frightened eyes that stared. They formed a thick circle around him, ringing him in with the dead baby, with Sergeant Duane and the crazed mother whose agonized wails stabbed his consciousness.
“What happened here?” he demanded. “Come on, can’t anybody speak?”
He saw they were afraid; their silence showed that. They stared dully at him, then looked at each other. It made him mad. He rocked back on his haunches and grabbed the arm of a little urchin of some eight years.
“You saw it, kid,” he snapped. “Tell me about it!”
The youngster squirmed, rolled his eyes and, when he saw he could not escape, opened his mouth to speak. A sudden wild shriek from the hysterical woman froze the words in his tiny throat. Barnaby turned his head and met Duane’s eyes.
“Take her inside!” he commanded.
As Duane dragged the woman away, the cop on the beat panted up; a moment later the police driver joined them. They drove back the sickened audience and Barnaby once more turned his attention to his child witness.
“Now tell me what happened, kid,” he urged quietly.
Sweating and trembling the little chap stuttered out a vivid word-picture of the tragedy. Barnaby absorbed it in dribbles, disconnected fragments that years of bitter experience had taught him to assemble….
A group of children had been playing in the street, happy to be free of school. They hadn’t heard the big car until it was almost on them. Then, laughing, they had darted for the sidewalks. Nipper was the dead baby’s name. There had been a man walking along the sidewalk in front of little Nipper; it was apparent that he was the object of gunfire. But he had vanished between two buildings just before the hail of lead came to chatter little Nipper’s life away. The car hadn’t stopped; nobody had taken the number. It had all taken place so quickly….
Captain Barnaby released his grip and the little boy shot from his hand like a freed arrow to vanish into the black maw of a tenement. Barnaby rose, removed his battered fedora and combed his unruly hair with gnarled fingers. His lips moved in a bitter curse that was half prayer. Then the ambulance swerved around a nearby corner, so he left the broken baby and tramped into the house where he had seen Duane take the mother.
He had no trouble locating the room on the third floor; he simply charted his course by the compass of sound. He made his way up finally to stop at the entrance of the poverty-stricken room.
Duane stood with his back to the door, one hip resting against a square table, fists doubled, his face turned towards the sobbing woman in a chair. On one side of her stood a tall, gaunt man, his features twisted in grief as he sought to console her. Opposite was an aged woman whose snow white hair and dark skin reminded Barnaby of looking at a negative. He squared his shoulders and barged inside.
Duane turned, saw him. “It’s their only kid,” he jerked. “They don’t know a thing about it, except that their kiddie’s gone.”
Barnaby swore softly, turned to the trio. “We’re the police … ”he began, but stopped at a scream from the mother.
She jerked out of her seat and faced him, wild-eyed, savage.
“Police!” she shrieked in his face. “You’re just like the gangsters wat kill my baby! You know who did it, but you won’t do nothin’! We’re only poor people, nobody care if my baby …” Her voice trailed into a sob and the gaunt man pulled her back into the chair.
Barnaby swiveled and walked into the corridor. At the head of the stairs, the man overtook him.
“Captain,” faltered the man, “could you just forget what my wife says? She ain’t in no condition…. I’m workin’ for the city, see, an’ I can’t afford to lose my position ‘cause she lose her head….” He stopped in anxious embarrassment.
Barnaby turned slowly and gave him a cold stare. “Your wife’s opinion of the police of this particular town,” he growled, “is about the same as mine.” Without enlarging on the statement, he left the astonished man and clumped down the three flights to the street below. Duane caught up with him when he re
ached the squad car. They seated themselves in the tonneau and Barnaby waved the driver into motion.
He was silent a long time, then he said: “I wish some of the sob-sisters that romance about thesedamn’ killers could have seen that! You know me, Sam, I’m not sentimental, but there was an awful loneliness about that poor little kid. Damn!”
Sergeant Duane passed a rough palm over his bald head. “It was probably some of Swarm’s boys after one of Antecki’s mob. Not that it helps us much with not a shred of evidence to go by.”
Barnaby nodded stolidly. For several minutes he was lost in thought; at length he spoke.
“They didn’t get the guy they came for, so they’ll be back. Perhaps if we cruise around—”
Duane shrugged. “You’re the doctor,” he grumbled, “but I can’t see what good it’ll do. We don’t know ‘em, an’ if we did we couldn’t make it stick.”
Barnaby called to the driver. “Hey, Murray, cruise around this district for a while. Take it easy, but be ready to roll when I bellow.” He leaned back against the cushions and began to muse aloud: “We got a hell of a department, Sam! I been on it a long while; I didn’t know a department could get so rotten.”
“It’s no worse than the other departments,” Sam Duane growled. “They take their orders from the grafters just like we gotta.”
Barnaby sighed, then asked: “Their only kid, you said?”
“Yeah. The father drives a garbage truck for the city—that’s what he made the crack about— scared of losing his job. The old woman is the granny. Didja see how she took it?”
Barnaby nodded sourly. “I didn’t like it. I hate to see people act like they had to take stuff like that. Poor devils! We got a hell of an outfit, Sam.”
“Funny, but suppose we did run in those killers—a jury’d probably turn ‘em loose.”
“If they ever got to a jury,” Barnaby said insinuatingly.