by Otto Penzler
“Murder Picture” was first published in Black Mask in the issue of January 1935.
Murder Picture
George Harmon Coxe
It was a picture that spelled dynamite
for Flash Casey, with the fuse all set
and burning
2
ASEY, ace photographer of the Globe, Flash Casey, as everyone from the copy boy to Captain Judson of the Homicide Squad called him, stood scowling down at a photographic enlargement spread on the table before him.
Big shoulders hunched above his lean waist, reddish hair ruffled, eyes narrowed and frowning, he cursed in a steady monotone of disgust.
The little man at the corner desk, busy making records of his prints, stopped work long enough to glance over at the big cameraman and grin.
“Whatsa bellyache, Flash?”
“Plenty,” Casey growled. He rapped a big, bony fist on the barely dried photo. “Here I get an inside tip on that racetrack layout raid and me and Wade crash in just as they are pulling it. I shoot one—this one.” The fist rapped again. “Then Haley and his pals throw us out. I knew there must be something more we missed, so I duck in a back way and shoot another through the washroom door, and this time the cops steal the plate off me before they put me out again.”
“Well, ain’t that one you got any good?”
“A pip, but that other one musta—”
“Hell,” the little man said, fretfully, “Blaine don’t have to know there was another one, does he?”
A slow grin drove the scowl from Casey’s homely, strong features.
“You’re saying something, Tim. He don’t have to—unless he asks me. Guess I better get it in to him.”
He gathered up the print and started towards the door.
“And tell him how good it is,” the little man jeered. “Aw, you guys make me—”
The jangling telephone bell cut him off.
Casey, passing it, took up the receiver.
“Yeah—Casey.”
The voice of Lieutenant Logan of the Homicide Squad answered him.
“Listen, Flash. I just talked with Haley. He tells me you sneaked into the washroom of that race-track dive.”
“What about it?”
“Did you come across the airshaft—from the Blue Grass Products office?”
“Yeah, but—”
“I’m down there now. I want to see you.”
“When? I’m busy and—”
“I don’t care a damn whether you’re busy or not. Get out here right away or I’ll send somebody after you.”
Casey said: “Aw—” and pronged the receiver.
His eyes were thoughtful as he walked into the city room, but lighted up as he approached the city editor.
Casey said: “Boy, this is a honey,” and laid the eight by ten photographic enlargement on Blaine’s desk.
The city editor pushed up in his chair, slid his forearms across the desk top and glanced at the print. It was an exceptionally clear reproduction of the interior of a race-track layout, taken a few seconds after the police had staged a raid an hour previous.
The camera had caught the major part of the room, with its blackboards, loud speaker, cashier’s cage; most of the milling crowd of forty or fifty people, half of them women. Casey, a look of satisfaction on his thick face, leaned down and pointed to specific features of the picture, as though he was afraid Blaine would miss them.
“There’s Captain Judson,” he said, “and Haley, the louse.” He moved his forefinger to a stocky man with a white, fatty face who was just coming out of a door on which the word, Men, was barely legible. “And get a load of Mike Handy.”
Casey’s forefinger moved to a smartly dressed and obviously frightened lady who had thrown one arm around the neck of a plump young man with a tiny mustache: Lee Fessendon, son of the new owner of the Globe, brother of the managing editor. A fellow who, though married, continued to retain his reputation of man-about-town.
“Young Fessendon.” Casey’s voice was humorously disgusted. “Takin’ an afternoon off.” He straightened up, grunted. “Made a hell of a fuss about it, wanted the plate.”
Blaine leaned back in his chair and his clasped hands made a cradle for the nape of his neck.
“This all you took?” he said finally.
“It ain’t all I took.” Casey’s mouth dipped at the corners and his brows knotted in a scowl as he thought of the second picture he had taken, of the trouble he had surmounted to get it.
“But it’s all I got,” he growled. “Haley and a couple of his dicks took the other one away from me.”
His brows flattened out. “But what’s the matter with that one? It’s exclusive—and it’s good, ain’t it?”
“Very good,” said Blaine sardonically. “Very good indeed; only we can’t use it.”
“Can’t use it?” Casey exploded. “Who says we can’t?”
Blaine would have been poor copy for the movies. He did not look the part. He was too well dressed, and he had no eyeshade. Slender, distinguished looking with his prematurely gray hair, he had a lean, hawklike face and small gray eyes that met Casey’s in a cold, contemptuous stare.
“I do,” he said, and his voice was thin, abrupt.
“Oh.” Casey’s eyes narrowed. “So that’s how it is?” He thrust his hands deep in his trousers pockets, brought his chin down on his chest and surveyed Blaine from under bushy brows. “If anybody’d told me this an hour ago, I’d called him a liar.”
“Told you what?” said Blaine irritably.
Casey made no direct answer. Leaning stiff armed on the desk, he made a bulky figure with a thick, upward-arching chest, and tousled hair that was peppered with gray at the temples and too long at the back. A squarish face, set, thin-lipped now, held dark eyes that were narrowed and smoldering.
“The only thing I ever liked about you,” he said flatly, “was that you played ball. You protected confidential channels, but you never squashed a story or picture because it was about a friend of somebody’s Aunt Emma. But Fes-sendon’s got your number, huh? When he cracks the whip—”
“You interest me,” sneered Blaine.
Casey pointed at the picture on the desk. “Lee Fessendon got caught out of school with one of his women. He’s scared to take a bawling out from his wife, huh?”
He made noises in his throat and shook his head. “He tried to talk me out of the plate down there in the hall. But you—you have to humor the boss’ brother, huh?”
“Finished?” purred Blaine. And when Casey remained silent, “Satisfied now, are you?”
He leaned forward in his chair, smiled a smile that held no mirth, spoke in a voice that was brittle.
“I don’t have to make explanations to a camera. But sometimes I like to humor you, Flash. And I’m going to tell you the answer to this one; because you amuse me, and because it helps illustrate my original and permanent contention— that you are a thick-headed sap.”
Blaine reached for one of the telephones on the desk, spoke a few words. When he looked back at Casey, he said:
“You sneaked this picture over on Captain Judson. And the reason we are killing it, sweetheart, is because Judson called Fessendon and told him if we printed it he’d close us out at Headquarters for a month.”
“Judson called—” Casey broke off and a slow flush crept into his lean cheeks. His widened eyes looked chagrined, incredulous.
In another moment, J. H. Fessendon, brother of Lee, son of the new owner, and managing editor of the Globe, swung through the doorway of a corridor behind the desk. He accepted the photograph from Blaine with a manicured hand, studied it.
Casey’s flushed face knotted in a scowl as he watched Fessendon. He did not like him or his pseudo go-getter methods. A plump, baldish man of forty-five: pink skin that looked as if a massage was part of his daily ritual; expensive tweeds, tailored with a tight vest and waistband, as though to control and mold the paunch.
“Yes—yes.” Fessendon s
aid crisply. “This must be the one. Too bad we can’t use it. Where’s the plate?” He glanced at Blaine, who eyed him narrowly, then at Casey. “Get the plate, Casey.”
Casey fastened contemptuous eyes on Blaine, wheeled and left the desk. In the photographic department, he asked Tom Wade if he had made an extra print. Wade said he had, and Casey growled:
“Swell. I’ll paste it in my diary.” At the doorway, he turned. “Put it in my desk.”
Fessendon was pacing back and forth beside Blaine’s desk, followed by surreptitious glances from the crew in the “slot,” the half dozen rewrite men scattered about the city room. Casey handed Fessendon the plate, and he held it up to the light. Grunting in approval, he struck the glass against the corner of the desk. The plate shattered in a dozen pieces. Then Fessendon tore up the print.
“Got to make sure,” he said easily, picking up the pieces and dropping them in a wastebasket, “got to make sure, you know.”
Blaine turned in his chair and watched Fessendon through the doorway, as did every other eye in the room. When he turned back, he met Casey’s humid, searching gaze for a moment, and his face flushed. Then he busied himself with some copy, said:
“Don’t stand there gawking. If you got legitimate shots we’d have something to print.”
Casey opened his mouth and rage kept it open. But he did not speak. He could not think of the right thing to say.
2
Tom Wade was talking on the telephone when Casey returned to the anteroom of the photographic department and slid into the chair behind his desk. He lit a cigarette, puffed once, then let it hang from his half opened lips.
The hot anger which streaked through his brain when Fessendon smashed the plate was a smoldering, cancerous growth now. A heaviness that was a mixture of dejection and disappointment weighed upon him. It was not so much the loss of the plate; that had happened before; it was the way Blaine had let him down—and Fes-sendon’s gesture, as though he could trust neither Casey nor the city editor.
Wade talked for nearly five minutes longer, and when he hung up Casey told him what had happened.
“It’s like I told you before,” he finished. “The sheet’s goin’ to seed since Fessendon bought it. And I still think Lee is the guy that gyped us out of the shot. He probably called Blaine and Blaine gave me the song about Judson—”
“That don’t sound like Blaine to me,” Wade said slowly.
“And Fessendon,” Casey rasped. “Bustin’ the plate like we was crooks or something.” He began to curse, and after a moment said: “Who the hell were you talkin’ with so long?”
“Alma Henderson.”
“That tramp that was—”
“Wait a minute!” Wade’s voice was unnaturally harsh. A blond, round-faced youth with a guileless manner and a happy-go-lucky philosophy, Wade’s ordinarily good-natured face was now flushed, his blue eyes snapping.
“Oh,” said Casey and his brows came up. “So that’s the way it is.”
“No,” Wade said doggedly, flushing at his burst of temper, “but she’s no tramp. She’s a good kid and—”
Casey’s mind flashed back to the raid. To get the second picture, the one Haley had taken, he and Wade had crashed into the office of the Blue Grass Products, which was separated from the race-track room by an airshaft. Casey had been in the building before, knew there was an air-shaft and had crossed this to get to the men’s room of the gambling hall.
Alma Henderson was apparently in charge of the Blue Grass office. It had surprised Casey that Wade knew her, because heretofore the youth had but little time for women. But Casey, intent on getting another picture, dismissed his curiosity and had left Wade arguing with the girl while he crossed the airshaft with his camera.
He said: “She’s a good kid, huh? Okey. But she works for the Blue Grass outfit, and Moe Nyberg runs it. A cheap tout, a first-class thug. Why, the heel; everything he touches stinks. He’s probably hooked up with that race-track dive, now that I think of it. And he plays with Mike Handy who runs the biggest gyp stable in the East. So what does that make this Henderson dame?”
“What the hell?” Wade flung out. “A girl’s got to eat.”
“All right, all right. I don’t care. I got troubles of my own.”
Casey lit another cigarette, puffed at it until his head was shrouded in blue. But it wasn’t all right. Wade was impulsive, and he had a lot to learn. To get mixed up with any woman connected with Nyberg might put him on the skids.
He said: “What did she want?”
“She wants me to come over to her place.”
“What for? She knows you’re workin’, don’t she?”
“She’s got a story.” Wade said jerkily. “She wouldn’t tell me over the phone, but she says it’s a job for the cops.”
“Hah!” rasped Casey. “Then why don’t she go down to Headquarters and spill it?”
“Here’s why.” Wade took a newspaper from his desk, opened it, pointed to a single column head on page 12.
Casey read:
GIRL PRISONER FLEES DOCTOR
Brought to the State Hospital in East Concord Street for a physical examination, Miss Mary Merkle, 21, serving a sentence at the Reformatory for Women until 1937, escaped today from the office of Doctor …
Casey looked up. “I told you she was a tramp.”
Wade flushed. “You’re wrong, Flash. She gave me part of the story over the phone. She came down from Vermont three years ago. She got mixed up in a bad crowd, there was a raid, she had no near relatives—”
Wade went on with his story and Casey looked at the date line of the paper. May 17th.
“When she escaped,” Wade went on, “she had no place to go, so she looked up one of the guys she used to know and he got her a job with Moe Nyberg. If she goes to the cops with her story, bingo. Back to the Reformatory.”
“That’s probably where she belongs,” growled Casey, and was half ashamed of his words when he saw the hurt look in Wade’s eyes.
“She’s scared, Flash. And"—Wade hesitated, caught his lower lip between his teeth— ”I think she wants me to help her out of town.”
“You’re nuts,” Casey said. He looked at the youth, read correctly the stubborn set of the jaw. He spread his hand wearily, said:
“Listen. I gotta go back to Roxbury and see Logan. Something’s up. You can go with me. And after that I’ll go and see this Henderson dame with you.”
Wade shook his head. “She told me to hurry.”
“But—” snorted Casey.
“Wait.” Wade backed towards the door and his voice was a bit thick. “She’s depending on me, says I’m the only one in town she can trust. I told her I’d come and I’m not letting her down—not even for you.”
Casey blew out his breath. Guileless as hell. And just as stubborn. Sold on the girl—or her story. He said:
“What’s her address?”
“Seven sixty-three Pratt Street.”
Casey smiled then and the smile was genuine, tinged with a certain admiration for the youth’s earnest loyalty. He said: “Okey, give it a whirl. Only watch your step and remember she works for Moe Nyberg.”
When Wade went out, Casey shrugged and picked up his camera and platecase. “I’d better take ‘em,” he said half aloud. “Logan sounded tough.”
Fifteen minutes later, Casey set his camera and case on the floor in front of a door whose upper panel of frosted glass bore the inscription: Blue Grass Products, and scowled.
The transverse corridor on the third floor of the ancient and deserted looking office building was empty, ominously quiet, lighted by a single bulb at the far end. A half dozen doors, with upper panels of glass, gave on the hall, and in each case they were dark. The one in front of him was dark, and this he could not understand.
Where the hell was Logan?
Casey sucked at his upper lip, pushed his hat forward and scratched his shaggy nape. He swept the tails of his topcoat aside as he jammed his fists on his hips;
then he yanked the hat brim down, said: “Nerts,” and banged his fist on the doorframe.
He waited a moment, banged again. Then, although he heard no sound, he happened to glance at the doorknob. It was turning slowly.
Doubt, chilled and gripping, reared up in his brain. He reached quickly for the platecase, but as he straightened up, prepared to retreat, the door came open a three-inch crack.
Casey froze there, an open-mouthed, wide-eyed statue. Surprise, momentary panic, riveted his gaze on that vertical strip of blackness, on the muzzle of a gun which had been thrust forward in the opening so that the dim light of the hall caught the round barrel, burnished it.
For a second or two there was no sound but the sharp suck of Casey’s breath as it caught in his lungs. Then the door swung open and a low, matter-of-fact voice said:
“Okey, Flash. Come on in.”
Casey exhaled noisily and stepped forward with sweat breaking out on his forehead. The lights of the room went on. Logan moved out of the doorway and Casey cursed, said: “Why you louse!”
He stopped in front of Logan, glared at him, and the lights of the room glistened on the thin film of moisture on his forehead.
“You louse! You scared hell out of me.”
“Couldn’t be helped,” said Logan flatly, making no apology.
“Ah—” Casey brushed his forehead, pushed back his hat. “You knew I was comin’. You called me up, didn’t you? What the hell do—”
“I knew you were coming,” said Logan hol-stering his gun, “but I’m hopin’ we might get some other callers.”
Something in Logan’s cold abrupt tone caught and held Casey’s interest. It was no gag, that gun business. Logan was in dead earnest. And when he got that way—
Casey glanced around. From where he stood, the office was as he remembered it; long, well furnished with a flat-topped desk, a typewriter desk, leather upholstered chairs. The doorway on the right, apparently leading to a connecting office, had been closed this afternoon. It was open now and two detectives stood in the doorway.