by Otto Penzler
“Most men take a little dope for this, Mac.”
“Uh!” grunted MacBride through tight lips.
Through the fog, he returned to the station-house, his hand concealed in his pocket, his wound throbbing.
Kennedy was lounging in the office. “You look yellow around the gills, Mac.”
“Liver,” clipped MacBride, and took a drink.
“Hear you got Gertie Case and Midge Sutler.”
“Urn.”
“How long do you suppose you can hold ‘em?”
“Watch me.”
“There’ll be a writ of release here before you know it,” said Kennedy. “How come you didn’t get the gang?”
“Breeze, Kennedy! Dammit, I’m not in the mood!”
Kennedy shrugged and went out.
Alone, MacBride drew out his hand, laid it on the desk. God, how the arm throbbed! He heard a voice outside the door and slipped the hand back into his pocket. The door opened and a big, bloated man, with a moon-face, large fishy eyes, and an air of pompous importance, sailed in.
“Hello, Mac.”
“Hello.”
Captain Bower, plainclothes, a Headquarters “yes man,” and the mayor’s bodyguard. MacBride drew into himself, wary, on guard.
Bower deposited his indecent bulk in an armchair and sent a tobacco shot into the cuspidor. “This latest business, Mac. The Jockey Street fizzle.”
“Fizzle?”
“Well, whatever you like. Anyhow it’s out of your district, and Headquarters is going to handle it. Another thing. We’re also handling the case of Saunders. Of course, there’s nothing to it, and we’ll dispose of it right off.”
MacBride’s jaw hardened. Graft again! Nothing to it! Bah! They knew he was out to riddle their racket. They were cornered, and playing a subtle game. They could not fire him immediately, could not shove him out in the sticks while this thing was hanging fire. But they could take a case out of his hands. Could they?
“It’s my case, Bower,” he snapped. “My men got the clues, did the tailing, and we’ve got Midge Sutter and that Case broad salted.”
“On what charge?”
“Suspicion. That’s enough for any cop.”
“We’ll work it out at Headquarters,” said Bower, very matter-of-fact. “I’ll take the pair along with me, now.”
Color crept into MacBride’s face. “Not before I indict ‘em—tomorrow.”
Bower frowned. “Don’t be a goof. What can you indict ‘em on?”
MacBride was in his last ditch, his back to the wall. He had hoped to conceal this, but—
He drew out his wounded arm, placed it on the table. “This, Bower. The woman potted me.”
Bower’s face dropped, and his mouth hung open. He stared at the bandaged hand. Then he drew his face back into place and got up.
“Good-bye,” he sniffed, and pounded out.
MacBride waited a few minutes, then called in Rigallo. “Riggy, take Sutter in the sweat room. Sweat him.”
“Right,” nodded Rigallo, and went out.
MacBride sat back in his chair and lit a cigar. The pain pounded furiously, shot up and down his arm, reached his neck. Sweat stood out on his forehead, and muscles knotted on either side of his wide, firm mouth. An hour dragged by.
Then Rigallo came in, brushing his hands together. His hair, ordinarily neatly combed, was a bit disheveled.
“Well?” asked MacBride.
Rigallo shook his head. “No go. The guy is little but tough. He’s been through it before. Knows if he squeals the gang will crucify him.”
MacBride held up his wounded arm. Rigallo clicked his teeth.
“Hell, Mac. I didn’t know.”
“The broad got me. Look here, Riggy. You’re the whitest wop I’ve ever known. My back is to the wall, and I need a guy who’s willing to kick authority in the slats and play this game to a fare-three-well.”
“Shoot, Mac.”
“Take the broad and bounce her around from one station to another. They’ll have a writ out for her, or some trick. The idea is, the writ mustn’t find her. When they come here, I’ll say she’s over at the Third. Then I’ll ring you and you take her to the Fourth and so on, and the guys at the Fourth will tell the runner you’ve taken her to the Fifth. Keep ahead of the runner. The precincts will play with us. They’re good guys. Keep moving until tomorrow morning. Judge Ross will be on the job then, and he’s the only judge we can depend on. He’ll indict her. We’ll get hell, Riggy, but we’ll crash this racket.”
“Right!”
Five minutes later Rigallo was headed for the Third with Gertie Case.
Ten minutes later a runner appeared with writs for Gertrude Case and Midge Sutter.
“Sutter’s here,” said MacBride, “and you can take him. But the Case woman’s over at the Third.”
And he telephoned the Third.
A little later a doctor from the Medical Examiner’s Office, accompanied by Captain Bower, entered, and the doctor said:
“I’ll look at your wound, Captain.”
Grim, stony-faced, MacBride allowed his wound to be looked at.
The doctor said, “Bad, Captain. You can’t carry on.”
“The hell I can’t!”
“Nevertheless—” The doctor sat down and affixed his signature to a document, scaled it across to MacBride. “You’re released from active duty until I sign a health certificate of reinstatement. Signed by the Commissioner and attested by me. Go home and rest.”
MacBride saw through a red haze. Vaguely, he heard Bower’s words. “Your lieutenant will take charge until a captain can be sent over.”
MacBride’s heart sledge-hammered his ribs. The men went out, and he sat alone, like a man in a daze. Alone against graft, corruption and the very Department to which he had given eighteen years of his life! The blow should have crushed him, sent him storming out of the station in rage and righteous indignation. It should have driven him to ripping off his uniform, throwing his badge through the window, and cursing the Department to the nethermost depths.
But tough was MacBride, and a die-hard. He heaved up, swiveled and glared at the closed door. His lip curled, and challenge shone in his eyes.
“Home—hell!” he snarled.
VI
UT he went out, his slouch hat yanked over his eyes. Night had closed in, half-brother to the fog. And both shrouded the city. Street lights glowed wanly, diffusing needle-like shafts of shimmering radiance. Headlights glared like hungry eyes. Autos hissed sibilantly on wet pavements. Faces appeared, palely afloat, and then disappeared.
Cold and wet and miserable, and MacBride tramping the streets, collar up, hands in pockets, pain pumping through his arm. In minutes he aged years. Why not let things slide? Why go to all the bother? What reward, what price honour? Let Headquarters take ‘em. Let Bower frame their getaway. Cripes, but Bower would get a nice slice of graft out of this! How could a single precinct captain hope to carry his white plume in this city of graft?
He dragged to a stop at an intersection. Well, Rigallo was standing by him. And the State’s Attorney was a square-shooter.
“H’m.”
He suddenly flagged a taxi, climbed in and gave an address. Out of the dark of the street another figure appeared, got into a second taxi.
Ten minutes later MacBride alighted in a quiet, residential street, told the driver to wait, and ascending a flight of brown-stone steps, pushed a bell-button. A servant appeared and MacBride gave his name. A moment later he was ushered from the foyer into a spacious library.
State’s Attorney Rolland, thirty-eight, lean, blond, clean-cut in evening clothes, extended a hand. MacBride shook with his left, and though Rolland’s eyes flickered, he said nothing.
“You look worn, Captain. Sit down. Cigar?”
“Thanks—no. Am I keeping you?”
“No. Dinner at eight.” He leaned against the side of a broad mahogany table, arms folded loosely, eyes quizzical.
MacBride
detailed, briefly, the fight in Jockey Street, the apprehension of Gertie Case and Midge Sutter; the release of Sutter on a writ, the game of hide and seek even now being played by Rigallo.
“I’ll pick up Rigallo and the woman around dawn,” he went on. “I’ll get her indicted. I thought if you could be around there, to take her in hand before her lawyer gets to her— Hell, we’ve got to get the jump on these pups!”
“Don’t know her man, eh?”
“No. That’s why we’ve got to hold her. If she’s faced with twenty years for shooting an officer, she’ll think. She’s thirty now, and no guy is worth enough in her eyes to take a twenty-year rap for him. She’ll come across. Ten to one her boy friend realizes this.”
“And you believe that Saunders chap was poisoned?”
“Yes. Bannon did it. He’s been lying low for a couple years. Always lone-wolfed. That’s why we can’t connect him with the gang he must have hooked with. If the Case woman squeals, we’ll get the gang, and getting the gang means—”
“Ah, yes,” nodded Rolland.
It was politic, in the State’s Attorney’s rooms, not to mention the name both men had in mind.
Then Rolland said, “Good you have the woman. These gangsters laugh at a prison sentence. But a woman—and especially one of her type—looks upon prison as death. I’ll be there in the morning. Take care of your wound.”
They shook, and MacBride departed. The Regime thought they had picked soft clay in Rolland. What a shock when they had discovered cement instead, unpliable!
Entering the taxi, MacBride drove off, and further back, another taxi began moving.
He left his taxi at the Fourth, and discovered that Rigallo and the woman had gone on to the Fifth ten minutes before. He hung around, saw the runner with the writ rush in and start broadcasting to the desk. The sergeant told him where the woman had gone, and cursing, the runner went off and out like a streak.
MacBride followed from station to station, and at the Seventh, just after the runner had gone on, he met Bower.
“Look here, MacBride. What’s your game?”
“What’s yours, Bower?”
“Cut that boloney.”
“Then cut yours.”
Bower scowled. “You’ll get broke for this. Stop that guy that’s got the dame.”
“I don’t know where he is. What’s more, Bower, I’m off duty. Got nothing to say. You find him—and try stopping him. Your job depends on that, Bower.”
Bower worked his hands. He started to say something but bit his lip instead and stormed out.
A game was being played on the checkerboard of Richmond City’s police stations. Rigallo moved from one to another, doubled back, moved across town, uptown, downtown. Midnight passed, and dawn approached, and still Rigallo kept the lead; and Bower blundered in his wake, fuming and cursing; and the man with the writ, worn to a frazzle by the chase, now tottered at Bower’s heels.
MacBride, weary, haggard, sapped by the pain in his arm, sometimes dizzy, met Rigallo in the Eighth at four a.m. Gertie cursed and protested at such inhuman treatment, but no one paid her any attention.
MacBride and Rigallo formulated plans, and then MacBride took the woman and carried on the game. When Bower caught up with Rigallo, the latter wasted half an hour of the other’s time by stalling, kidding and then finally telling Bower that the woman was probably uptown. Bower saw the trick and bowled off in high heat.
When he caught up with MacBride, he discovered that the woman had again changed hands and was now probably downtown. Bower cursed a sizzling blue streak and was indiscreet enough to call MacBride an untoward name.
With his one good hand, MacBride hung a left hook on Bower’s jaw and draped him over a table. Then he went out into the wet gray dawn, and felt a little better.
At half-past eight he met Rigallo in the Third, joined him and the woman in Rigallo’s flivver.
“Cripes, I’ll never get over this!” rasped Gertie.
“You said something, sister,” nodded MacBride.
“You’re a big bum, MacBride,” she stabbed. “And you’re another, Rigallo.”
Rigallo spat. “Three of a kind, eh?”
“And your mother’s another,” she added.
Rigallo took one hand from the wheel and with the palm of it slapped her face.
She laughed, baring her teeth, brazenly.
A block behind, a taxi was following.
Ahead yawned the entrance to Law Street, and halfway down it loomed the Court.
“Here’s where you get indicted, sister,” said MacBride.
“I’m laughing.”
“You don’t look that way.”
On one side of the entrance to Law Street was a cigar store. On the other corner was a drugstore. As the flivver crossed the square, a man sauntered from the drug-store, and at the same time another sauntered from the cigar-store. They looked across at each other, and both nodded and shoved hands into pockets.
Bang!—bang! Bang—bang!
VII
IGALLO stiffened at the wheel. Gertie screamed, clutched her breast. MacBride ducked, and the flivver leaped across the square, slewed over the curb and crashed into the drug-store window.
Pedestrians stopped, horrified, frozen in their tracks. The two well-dressed men who had stood on either corner joined and walked briskly up the street toward a big, gray touring car.
The taxi that had been trailing the flivver stopped, and Kennedy, leaping out, ran across to the demolished flivver. He reached it as MacBride, streaked with blood, burst from the wreckage.
“There’s the car, Mac!” He pointed.
“Where’s another?” clipped MacBride.
Kennedy nodded to the taxi, and they ran over.
“Nossir,” barked the driver, “I ain’t chasin’ them guys.” He climbed out. “You guys go ahead.”
“I’ll drive,” said Kennedy casually.
“Kennedy,” said MacBride, “you stay out of this.”
“What! After tailing you all night! Coming?”
He was beside the wheel, shoving into gear. MacBride clipped an oath and hopped in, and the taxi went howling up the street.
He muttered, “Pups—got—Riggy! Step on it, Kennedy!”
“The broad?”
“Dead.”
“They made sure you wouldn’t indict her.”
“Pups! Watch that turn!”
“Yu-up!”
Kennedy took the turn on two wheels,
knocked over a push-cart full of fruit, and jammed his foot hard down on the gas.
“Applesauce!”
“And crushed pineapple!”
Bang!
A cowl-light disappeared from the taxi.
Bang—bang—bang! went MacBride’s gun.
People scattered into doorways. Moving cars stopped. Heads appeared at windows.
The gray car swung into a wide street set with trolley tracks. It weaved recklessly through traffic, heading for Farmingville Turnpike, where speed would count. It roared past red traffic lights, honking its horn, grazing other cars, swerving and swaying in its mad, reckless flight.
The taxi hurtled after it no less recklessly. MacBride was leaning well out of the seat, twisting his left arm to shoot past the windshield. Kennedy swung the machine through startled traffic with a chilling nonchalance.
MacBride fired, smashed the rear window in the tonneau.
“Lower, Mac. Get a tire,” suggested Kennedy.
“Can’t aim well around this windshield.”
“Bust the windshield.”
MacBride broke it with his gun barrel. He dared not fire again, however. People were in the way, darting across the street in panicky haste. A traffic cop was ahead, having almost been knocked over by the gray touring car. MacBride recognized him—O’Day. He leaned out, and as they whanged by, yelled:
“O’Day—riot squad!”
The gray car reached Farmingville Turnpike, a wide, macadam speedway, and its exhaust, hammer
ed powerfully. The taxi was doing sixty miles an hour and Kennedy had the throttle right down against the floor boards.
“Faster!” barked MacBride.
“Can’t, Mac. This ain’t no Stutz!”
Bang! No shot that time. The rear left had blown, and the taxi skidded, bounced, and dived along like a horse with the blind staggers. Kennedy jammed on his brakes as a big powerful car slewed around him and slid to a stop ten yards ahead. It was a roadster, and out of it jumped Bower.
“Well, MacBride, see what you’ve done!”
“Pipe down, Bower!” clipped MacBride, starting for the roadster. “Come on, Kennedy. This boat looks powerful.”
Bower got in his way. “MacBride, for cripes’ sake, lay off! You’ll get broke, man!” His voice cracked, and he was desperate.
“Out of my way!” snapped MacBride.
Bower tried to grasp him. MacBride uncorked his left and sent Bower sprawling in the bushes. Then he ran toward the roadster and Kennedy hopped in behind the wheel.
“Step on it, Kennedy!”
Kennedy stepped on, and whistled. “Boy, this is my idea of a boat!”
Inside of three minutes he was doing seventy miles an hour. MacBride’s hand dropped to the seat, touched a metal object. He picked it up. It was a pistol fitted with a silencer. Kennedy saw it out of the corner of his eye.
MacBride opened the gun. A shell had been fired.
“Now,” said Kennedy, “you know how we got a flat.”
MacBride swore under his breath.
Soon they saw the gray touring car, and Kennedy hit the gun for seventy-five miles an hour. They were out in the sticks now. Fields, gullies, occasional groves of sparse timber flashed by. Curves were few and far between. The road, for the most part, ran in long, smooth stretches.
The roadster gained. MacBride screwed open the windshield, fired, aiming low. He fired again. The touring car suddenly swerved, its rear end bounced. Then it left the road, hurtled down an embankment, whirled over and over, its metal ripping and screeching over stones and stumps.
Kennedy applied his brakes, but the roadster did not stop until it was a hundred yards beyond the still tumbling touring car. MacBride reloaded his gun, shoved the one with the silencer into his pocket, and started back. Kennedy was beside him. As they left the road and ran through the bushes, they saw two figures staggering into the timber beyond.