The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Original)

by Unknown

  It was like that now. The Adjutant-General said: “Well, take a rest. California, Florida. Any place.”

  “Nope, Galveston.”

  “Galveston?”

  “Yep, Galveston. Unfinished business.”

  The Adjutant-General nodded. He didn’t understand; he didn’t want to understand. Captain Frost had come through. That was the code of the Rangers. It had been that way when the Conestogas squeaked their way through the Indian country, and it was that way in the day of science and aviation. When all else fails, when there is a knotty problem, when there’s dirty work—the Rangers. Yesterday and today and tomorrow, to the ends of the earth—get him!

  Merely Murder

  Julius Long

  JULIUS W. LONG (1907–1955) was born in Ohio, received a law degree, and was admitted to the Ohio bar, where he practiced. He was a collector of guns (at one time he owned the only Tokarev 7.62 ever offered for sale in The American Rifleman), and his extensive knowledge of firearms was often apparent in his articles for Field & Stream as well as in his crime and mystery stories.

  Long wrote many different types of fiction for about thirty magazines, most importantly ghost and fantastic stories for the top magazine in the genre, Weird Tales, to which he was a regular contributor in the 1930s, and mystery stories for Black Mask, Detective Story, Dime Detective, Dime Story, The Shadow, and Strange Detective Tales. One of his Black Mask stories, “Carnie Kill,” was selected for Best Detective Stories of the Year (1945). He wrote only one novel, Keep the Coffins Coming (1947), a murder mystery involving a beautiful woman, her millionaire father, a Communist leader, a German scientist, and several gorillas.

  One of his short stories served as the basis for the motion picture The Judge (1949); it was released in Great Britain as The Gamblers. The story of a crooked lawyer who blackmails his client into killing his wife, it was directed by Elmer Clifton, produced by Anson Bond, with a screenplay by Samuel Newman, Clifton, and Bond, and starred Milburn Stone, Katherine DeMille, Paul Guilfoyle, and Stanley Waxman.

  “Merely Murder” was published in the July 1944 issue.

  Merely Murder

  Julius Long

  A BEN CROCKETT NOVELETTE

  “If I ever get my hands on the guy …” Peterson had mumbled. Well, he—or somebody—sure got his wish, because Shorty Waxman, the shifty little shyster, now looked like something only Homicide could love.

  CHAPTER ONE

  WARRANT FOR LIFE

  COULD TELL FROM Keever’s stride when he came into the office that someone was in for trouble.

  “Come in here, Ben. I’ve got a little job for you.”

  I looked sadly at Miss Spain, Keever’s confidential secretary, and followed Keever into his inner sanctum. It was Monday morning, and the week was getting off to its usual lousy start. Being special investigator for Burton H. Keever, the dashing D.A., had never been a picnic, but now that a couple of sensational cases had inspired some loose talk of a governorship, he drove me like a slave.

  There was a gleam in his eyes as he drew a document from his pocket and tossed it across his desk.

  I picked up the document. It was a warrant. The man named was Sam Peterson. The charge was violation of the Habitual Criminal Act. The penalty, if Peterson was convicted, was life imprisonment. I eyed Keever.

  “Holding out again, huh? When did you find out that Peterson had three more raps against him?”

  It took four raps to rate a conviction under the Habitual Criminal Act, and the only thing against Peterson to my knowledge was his conviction of a little more than a year before. He had been tried then on two counts, breaking and entering and grand larceny. At the time he had been employed as a gardener at the Riverside Road estate of Jimmie Harmon, son of the late great realty king James D. Harmon Sr. There had been one of those cute wall safes in Harmon’s bedroom, and Peterson hadn’t been able to resist the temptation.

  “Peterson’s an old hand at burglary,” Keever confided. “Late Saturday afternoon I got a tip that he had a record out West. I wired the warden of a western penitentiary, and, sure enough, they had Peterson’s prints. He’d been in twice for burglary and once for grand larceny. So I got a warrant for him the first thing this morning, and I want you to pick him up. No slip-up, understand?”

  “Sure, no slip-up. You’re sure the prints are Peterson’s? We checked with Washington when Peterson was on trial before. They didn’t have any.”

  “I know, I know. Seems Peterson had some drag with the trusty in charge of filing prints in that joint, and they were never sent in. It’ll be quite a shock to Peterson when he finds out his past has caught up with him.”

  I took the warrant and went down to my car. I remembered Peterson’s address, for I had checked up on him a few weeks ago when he had been let out on parole. He lived in a southside apartment with his mother. I could recall pleasanter jobs.

  I hadn’t had to ask Keever why he had wished it off on me. He could easily have used someone from the sheriff’s office or the local police department, but by sending me, his personal flunky, he could reserve all the credit for his own office. I could see the headlines: KEEVER GETS CONFESSION!

  Of course, Peterson would have no alternative if he really had done three stretches in that western can. And I had a sickening feeling that he had, all right, though the idea had given me quite a jolt. I would have sworn that Peterson had been on trial for his first offense when Keever had got him convicted a year ago. He wasn’t quite thirty, clean-cut and clear-eyed. But you never can tell.

  Peterson’s mother answered the bell at their apartment.

  “Why, it’s Mr. Corbett! Won’t you come in? But I suppose you want to talk to Sam again. He isn’t here now. He’s got a wonderful new job in a war plant!”

  “I did want to see him. It’s rather urgent. Will you tell me where he’s working?”

  She did. I think she worried a little about having a district attorney’s investigator showing up to embarrass her son, but she appeared to have no greater worry. I decided that if Peterson did have a western record he had kept it from his mother.

  My badge got me through the gates at the war plant and into the office of the head personnel man. I showed him the warrant.

  “I was afraid of something like this!” he moaned. “Of course, we knew Peterson was on parole, but we need men so badly we can’t be too particular. Well, I’ll have him for you in a minute.”

  Peterson was slightly pale when he walked in. His pallor increased when he saw me. I showed him the warrant. He accepted it with trembling fingers and read the charge. His face lost all color.

  So it was true—Peterson was a four-time loser. He handed back the warrant and said listlessly: “I guess my luck will never change.”

  “Then you are the guy?”

  “What’s the use of denying it? Prints don’t lie.” He turned to the personnel man. “I’m sorry, sir. I hope this doesn’t make any trouble for you. I sure liked my job here. If there’d been jobs ten years ago, I wouldn’t be in this jam now. I hope they give me a job in the pen—a job making stuff to smack the Japs the way I’ve been doing here.”

  I didn’t handcuff him. He got his stuff, and we walked out to my car. He was beginning to recover from the shock of his arrest, and now his brow was furrowed in thought.

  “Would you mind telling me how Keever got wise to those prints? I happen to know they were never sent to Washington.”

  “You’ll think I’m kidding you, Peterson, but I really don’t know. The first I heard about it was when Keever handed me the warrant this morning.”

  Peterson did think I was kidding.

  “O.K., you don’t have to tell me. I think I know. If I ever get my hands on the guy …”

  He clammed up then. I drove away from the factory and turned downtown. Then Peterson said: “Will you do me a favor? I want to tell my mother about this before she hears it some other way. She doesn’t know about my record. It’s going to be terrible.”

&n
bsp; I drove two blocks without answering; then I made a U-turn in the middle of the street.

  “Damn you, don’t try anything!”

  When we got to his place, he asked: “Will you let me break it to her alone?”

  I gave him a sidelong look, and he shrugged. We went into his apartment. His mother came out of the kitchen with a worried look. She also held a revolver, and I could see that its hammer was cocked.

  “What is it, son? I knew something was wrong, the way this man acted. I’m not going to let him take you away again!”

  think Peterson was even more astonished than I was. But he recovered more quickly. In one leap he was across the room. He took the revolver from his mother’s hand and covered me.

  “I didn’t ask for this break, Corbett, but I’m taking it. Don’t try anything—so help me, I’ll let you have it!”

  “Relax. I’m no hero.”

  “You’ve got a gun. Hand it over—butt-first.”

  I minded like a little lamb. He took my thirty-eight and thrust it under his belt. Then he turned to his mother.

  “I’ll never see you again, Mom.”

  She stood there looking at him and trembling. He started for the door. It was touching. I could have kicked the dear old lady’s teeth right down her throat. I didn’t even dare to think of what Keever would have to say when I gave him the lowdown on this deal.

  Peterson slammed the door behind him, and I heard him racing down the stairs. I faced his mother.

  “Have you a phone?”

  She didn’t hear me. I didn’t see any phone and decided there wouldn’t be one. I went downstairs and into the street in time to see Peterson taking two dollars’ worth of rubber off my tires as he rounded a corner. There was a drug store on the corner. I phoned the cops. Then I took a deep breath and called Keever.

  Somehow I forgot to mention the part Peterson’s mother had played, and that didn’t help my story. Keever emitted something that sounded like a death rattle; then he roared: “You blundering fool! You’ve made a laughingstock of my office! Get back here, and get back here fast!”

  He hung up. That was all that kept me from telling him what he could do with his job. Of course, I could have called him back. I walked out of the booth instead. I knew deep down that this was one time when Keever had a legitimate beef. If I had been in his shoes, I’d have taken them off and thrown them at me.

  It was well after eleven, so I hopped a streetcar and got off at Mike’s, my favorite eatery. The place was beginning to fill up. Not until I had squeezed into a wall bench did I discover that the man in the adjoining seat was Shorty Waxman.

  “It’s a small world.”

  Waxman looked up from his lunch.

  “Oh, hello, Ben. What do you mean, it’s a small world?”

  “I just left one of your former clients—rather, he just left me, borrowing my car and my gun. Sam Peterson.”

  Waxman’s face twitched.

  “Oh, yes. I remember Peterson. What’s he been up to?”

  “Habitual Criminal Act. Keever just discovered that the Harmon job was his fourth. I went out to pick him up but had a bad case of butter-fingers.”

  Waxman suddenly looked as if he needed a blood transfusion. His round little eyes widened until they seemed about to pop from their sockets. He choked on his food.

  “Let me out of here, Ben! I just remembered something I forgot to do. Excuse, please!”

  He fairly fought his way over me before I could slide out of the seat. At the cashier’s desk he threw down a bill and ran to the phone booths without waiting for his change. He was in a booth for about two minutes; then he raced out again and made his exit. I regarded the lunch he had left. It was virtually all there. I ordered and took my time eating. Waxman had left not only his lunch. He had left food for thought.

  CHAPTER TWO

  WHERE THERE’S A WILL THERE’S A SLAYING

  It was one o’clock when I walked into the Criminal Courts Building, which housed Keever’s office. I had intended to duck Keever until he cooled off, but curiosity gave me courage. I wanted to find out why news of Peterson’s pick-up and escape had sent Waxman on the run. But I didn’t get to Keever’s office. Pop Martin, the elevator starter, stopped me the moment he spied me.

  “Gee, Ben, am I glad to see you! Keever’s had everybody on your trail. You’re to meet him at the Mercury Tower—Waxman’s office.”

  “Waxman? What’s with Waxman?”

  “Murder. Somebody got him half an hour ago!”

  I used a cab. Half a block from the Mercury Tower I had the driver stop. I got out and crossed the street to a crummy-looking coupe on which a patrolman was placing a ticket. It was my coupe. It was in a parking meter stall, and the flag was up.

  “Hold it, pal. That’s my car.”

  The cop recognized me. He grinned gloatingly.

  “It makes no difference to me that you’re from the D.A.’s office, pal. I seen my duty, and I done it.”

  “Oh, you did? I suppose you reported finding my car. There’s been a circular out on it for a couple of hours and—”

  The ticket was snatched from under the windshield wiper and torn to bits. The cop almost burst into tears. “For the love of Mike, don’t tell anyone about this! It’d break me!”

  I regarded him thoughtfully. “I think I’ll take your advice.” I walked on to the Mercury Tower, took a kidding from a couple of patrolmen on guard at the door and paused to scan the list of tenants. My memory had been correct. Jimmie Harmon’s real estate office was in the same building, a couple of floors below Waxman’s.

  There was a mob of reporters outside Waxman’s office.

  “Give out,” begged Lou Byrd of the Globe. Like the others, he was too desperate to rib me about my stolen car. “That bird-brained boss of yours won’t give us a line, and this case is the hottest thing in years. A lawyer getting bumped is something that happens seldom.”

  “Too seldom,” I said, and shrugged my way through them. Waxman’s reception room was deserted save for a patrolman posted at the door, but his private office was so packed that there was hardly room for the corpse.

  It was an all-out case. Dain Carrothers, Homicide’s smartest cop, had a whole army at work. They milled over Waxman’s body like a gang of females over a new baby. The body lay on its face in front of the safe, the door of which was closed. The arms were flung out, and there was an ugly slit in the back of the coat. There was no doubt about how the job had been accomplished—Shorty had been done in with a shiv.

  “Well, thanks for coming around!”

  I turned to face Keever. He spoke from across the room, where he was buttonholing an old guy in an elevator starter’s gold braid. He beckoned me over.

  “This is Corwin, the starter. He saw everybody who came into the building. You may be interested to know that he has identified this man as a visitor.”

  Keever exhibited a rogue’s gallery set, complete with fingerprints and profile and full-face photos of Sam Peterson. I asked Corwin: “When was he here?”

  “He came into the building at about a quarter to twelve. About fifteen minutes after that Mr. Waxman arrived. Then, about twenty minutes passed, and this man left the building.”

  Keever looked me up and down. His eyes were accusing slits. “I hope you’re satisfied, Ben. When you let Peterson escape you cost a human life—the life of my colleague and a member of the bar!”

  I laughed in Keever’s face, and he reddened, for he knew why I laughed. During Waxman’s lifetime, he had called him every kind of shyster that ever breathed, denouncing him on more than one occasion to the grievance committee of the Bar Association. But now that Shorty had passed out of this world, Keever would probably show up at the Bar Association meeting to read his eulogy. Among lawyers the only good lawyer is a dead one.

  “Your theory of this case interests me,” I told Keever. “What if Peterson did show up here? Wasn’t it natural for him to come running to his lawyer? Waxman defended him before�
��he must have wanted to hire him again.”

  “Hire him, my eye! He didn’t want to hire Waxman; he wanted revenge! He guessed that Waxman had spilled the beans about those three raps out West. He was positive it was Waxman, for his own lawyer was the only person he had told. That takes care of the motive angle. And when we nail Peterson, we’ll take care of him!”

  I remembered Peterson’s threat with regard to the man who had turned him in. He had said: “If I ever get my hands on the guy …” And I had to admit that this time Keever’s theory made sense. It was logical that Peterson had told his whole record to his lawyer, that Waxman would be the first and probably only man he would suspect. I nodded toward the corpse.

  “Where’s the shiv?”

  “A fingerprint man’s got it—took it over to the lab. It was a paper knife from Waxman’s own desk. One of those things the patent lawyers send out.”

  “How about the safe? Was it opened?”

  “It’s locked, but that doesn’t mean anything. Waxman could have had it open, and Peterson could have locked it after he knifed him.”

  “Haven’t you checked the contents?”

  “We’re waiting for Waxman’s secretary. She probably has the combination.”

  I looked at my watch. It was one-twenty. I looked at Keever. He rolled his eyes. A couple of minutes later, when Waxman’s secretary sauntered in, I caught on. When they’re built like that they rate two hours for lunch in any man’s office.

  Her name was Mickey O’Hara—she lived at 1109 West Crawford, and she immediately stole the show from everyone including Waxman. The entire Homicide detail promptly forgot the existence of a corpse as they began drooling over Miss O’Hara in the pretense of acting in the line of duty. But Keever, as usual, was equal to the occasion. He grabbed her by the elbow and took her into the library. I thought he needed help, so I trailed along.