“Uh-huh. It wouldn’t save you anyway. You’d get by tonight, maybe, but the cops can’t guard you forever. They’d get to you eventually. I doubt that the cops would believe you anyway. They’d think it was a publicity stunt. And I’m not about to back up your story. Tipping you off is as far as I can afford to go.”
Nervously she lit another cigarette, immediately punched it out again. “What do you think I ought to do?”
“You could save everybody trouble by catching that plane. I wouldn’t even have to turn down the job if you did that. I could just report that you caught it.”
“And miss the best part I ever had a chance at?”
He shrugged again. “My outfit is pretty efficient. You won’t star in anything if you’re in the morgue.”
Myrna paced back and forth. “Suppose I hired you as a bodyguard?”
He gave her a bleak smile. “I might as well commit suicide. They’d just get both of us.”
She stopped pacing, lifted another cigarette from the box, then dropped it back again without lighting it. “You don’t think I have a chance?”
He gave his head a slow shake.
Biting her lip, she considered. “But if I catch that plane, nothing at all will happen?”
“That’s right,” he said tonelessly. “You make your picture in France without a care in the world.”
“All right,” she decided. “Tell your people I’m on my way to France.”
His wooden expression momentarily relaxed into the barest suggestion of a relieved smile. “Thanks, Miss Calvert. That will keep both of us out of bad trouble.”
* * * *
When the tall, pale man entered Max Fenner’s office, the fat, bald-headed producer eyed him worriedly.
“How’d it go, John?” he asked.
“Like shooting fish in a barrel,” the pale man said, sinking into a chair. “She’s catching the plane.”
“She didn’t suspect you were a phony?”
The pale man looked pained. “I told you I do the best gangster act in the business.”
“Yeah, but are you sure she didn’t recognize you?”
“Where would she see me? I’ve been ten years with the Cleveland Players. She doesn’t even catch off-Broadway shows, let alone out-of-towners. I tell you she swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.”
Max Fenner breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s a load off my mind. If she’d ever played those tape recordings for my wife—” He paused to shudder. “John, if you ever carry on an affair with an ambitious actress, make sure her apartment isn’t wired for sound.”
“How could anybody blackmail me?” the character actor inquired. “I can’t hand out parts in Broadway plays.”
“I guess you wouldn’t have the same problem,” the producer agreed. “You’re going to follow up by being at the airport to make sure she doesn’t change her mind, aren’t you?”
“Sure. You can phone me at my rooming house about nine p.m. I’ll be back from the airport by then.”
Max Fenner nodded. “I won’t forget this, John. The minute you tell me she’s on that plane, you’ve got a part in Make Believe.”
When the character actor came to the phone, Fenner asked, “Did she make it?”
“Yeah.” Blake said. “She’s gone. I told you there was nothing to worry about.”
“Good job,” Fenner said with relief. “Drop by tomorrow and we’ll draw up your contract.”
* * * *
“What sort of message is it?” Fenner asked dubiously.
“I told you it has to be delivered personally,” the man said in a patient tone. “May I come up?”
“All right,” Fenner agreed. “You know the apartment?”
“Uh-huh. See you in five minutes, Mr. Fenner.”
When the doorbell rang five minutes later, Fenner found a plump, middle-aged man standing in the hall. The man had a round, pleasant face and a deferential manner.
“Mr. Fenner?” he inquired.
“Yes. You’re Howard Smith?”
The man nodded. Letting him in, Fenner closed the door behind him. Howard Smith glanced around the front room.
“You’re alone?” he asked.
“Yes. What is this message?”
The plump man smiled. “Miss Calvert resented what you did to her today, Mr. Fenner. She was really quite frightened.”
Fenner said coldly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Hiring a professional killer to work on her, Mr. Fenner. She wasn’t sure whether the man actually was sincere when he said he couldn’t kill her because he admired her so, or was merely subtly warning her that he would kill her if she didn’t catch that plane. But she was too frightened to risk not catching it. I suppose you know she’s on her way to France.”
“You’re saying nothing which makes sense to me, Mr. Smith,” Fenner said in the same cold voice. “I haven’t hired any professional killer.”
“Of course you did, Mr. Fenner. But I won’t press the point. What Miss Calvert wanted me to tell you was that she has contacts too. You’ve heard of Vince Pigoletti, I suppose?”
“The racketeer?”
Howard Smith nodded. “He’s a great admirer of Miss Calvert. He is one of the numerous men with whom she has had—ah—romantic alliances, I understand. Mr. Pigoletti was kind enough to put her in touch with the organization I represent.”
Fenner frowned. “What organization is that.”
“We don’t advertise its name, Mr. Fenner. But it’s a competitor of the one you engaged. Miss Calvert resented your action so much that she decided to retaliate in kind. Ordinarily we don’t explain things like this, but she stipulated that she wanted you to understand exactly what was happening.”
Fenner’s face gradually paled. “I don’t think I follow you,” he said faintly.
“I think you do,” the plump man said.
He drew a silenced revolver from beneath his coat. Staring at him in fascination, Max Fenner realized that this was no character actor.
Myrna Calvert had hired the real thing.
BLACK BELT
Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, November 1972.
Deputy Inspector Maurice Ireland was thumb-tacking a new duty roster to the bulletin board when the well-dressed man walked into the station house. The man’s dapper appearance, combined with his cultured tone when he spoke to the desk sergeant, caused the precinct commander to turn and examine him. Neither dapperness nor culture were often encountered in the 41st Precinct.
“I wish to report a crime,” the man said.
“All right,” Sergeant Block said agreeably.
The complainant was somewhere in his mid-thirties, rather slight of build and with delicate, almost effeminate features. It crossed Ireland’s mind that he must have driven to the station house, because he couldn’t have walked through Hunts Point from a subway stop without being mugged.
When the man spoke again, Ireland realized he had been.
“It happened on 163rd Street, in front of St. Athanasius Church. This mugger chap exhibited a switchblade knife and demanded my money. In broad daylight, mind you, within sight of several pedestrians.”
Sergeant Block showed no astonishment. The 41st Precinct received between ninety and a hundred assault and robbery complaints a month, and a good number of them occurred in broad daylight before witnesses. The only thing that could have astonished the sergeant would have been for one of the witnesses to accompany the complainant to the station house. Hunts Point residents never admitted witnessing crimes.
Poising a ball-point pen over a squeal form, the desk sergeant asked, “Can you describe this man?”
“Oh, that won’t be necessary. You may just send someone over to look at him. He’s lying on the sidewalk.”
Sergeant
Block stared up at the dapper little man without understanding.
“I’m afraid I killed him,” the man said apologetically. “In disarming him, I flipped him over my shoulder and his head hit the sidewalk. It rather thoroughly dashed his brains out.”
Sergeant Block continued to stare up at him, his pen still poised over the complaint form. Ireland walked over to the desk.
“I’m Inspector Ireland, the precinct commander,” he announced.
The smaller man thrust out his hand and the inspector found himself accepting a cordial handshake. “How do you do, Inspector? My name is Rollin Singer.”
The desk sergeant recovered enough to lay down his pen, pick up the dispatch mike and order a radio car to the intersection of 163rd and Tiffany. Then he picked up the pen again and entered the name Rollin Singer on the complaint form.
“Address?” he asked.
“One-thousand-nine-and-a-half Simpson.”
The sergeant stared up at him again. “You live there?”
“That’s correct.”
Sergeant Block’s expression approached disbelief, but he wrote the address.
Ireland asked, “How long have you lived there, Mr. Singer?”
“I just moved in last evening. I was on my way to work when this mugger chap accosted me.”
“You work around here?”
“Oh, no. I operate Rollin’s Beauty Salon on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. When I say I was on my way to work, I mean I was en route to the subway station at 163rd Street and Westchester Avenue.”
This time both Sergeant Block and Ireland stared. Finally, the inspector asked, “How did you happen to settle in this particular section of the Bronx, Mr. Singer?”
The dapper little man raised his eyebrows. “I’m afraid I don’t understand the question. Or your disapproving tone.”
“I didn’t mean to sound disapproving, Mr. Singer. I am merely curious. You look and act like a man of some affluence, and the 1000 block of Simpson is hardly one of Hunts Point’s better neighborhoods.”
Rollin Singer shrugged. “I find the area quaint. And the rent is certainly reasonable.”
Sergeant Block said sourly, “You won’t find it so reasonable after you’ve been mugged a few times. We estimate that nine out of ten kids in that block are on smack, which makes it a pretty dangerous place to live. During the past three weeks the block you live in has had eighteen assaults and robberies, one rape, one murder, three overdose deaths and a baby suffocation.”
“My, my,” Singer clucked. “So short a distance from the station house too, and on the same street.”
Ireland felt himself flushing. “The high crime-rate in Hunts Point stems from drug abuse and substandard living conditions, Mr. Singer, not from inadequate policing. We make plenty of arrests.”
“Oh, I’m sure you people do all you can,” Singer said with an indulgent smile. “But you really don’t have to worry about me. I’m quite adept at self-defense. I hold a black belt in jujitsu; from Japan, not one of the meaningless black belts handed out like popcorn by American schools. And in real jujitsu, not the adulterated version taught here. Do you know the difference?”
“No,” Ireland admitted.
“What is taught as jujitsu in America is merely another simple variety of self-defense similar to judo, karate and aikido. But in its original form, as devised by the samurai and secretly handed down from generation to generation, it is a whole way of life. It involves rigid mental and emotional training as well as physical skills. And it encompasses all the techniques of unarmed combat. Judo, karate and aikido are all merely simple segments of jujitsu as taught by the samurai. I could easily tie in knots any American-trained wearer of a so-called black belt in any of those three techniques.”
Inspector Ireland looked him up and down with what started out as skepticism but turned to belief when he remembered the dead mugger lying in front of St. Athanasius Church. He said, “That still doesn’t explain why you choose to live in the heart of a high-crime area.”
The smaller man looked Ireland up and down too. It took him longer because the inspector stood six-feet-four.
Eventually he said, “Are you implying that police permission is required to live in this neighborhood?”
Ireland felt himself flush again. “Of course not,” he answered shortly. Then, because the little man kept putting him on the defensive, he took it out on Sergeant Block. Glaring down at the desk sergeant, he snapped, “Make sure this matter is thoroughly investigated before you release Mr. Singer, Sergeant.”
Sergeant Block gazed up at him quizzically, his expression suggesting wonder at why the precinct commander felt it necessary to instruct him that a man who just confessed to homicide had to be held for investigation, even though presumably it was justifiable homicide. Doing an about-face, Ireland stalked into his office.
This occurred Wednesday morning. On Wednesday afternoon Sergeant Block informed Ireland that the medical examiner and the homicide team that had investigated the death of the would-be mugger in front of St. Athanasius Church had agreed it was justifiable homicide and that the circumstances didn’t merit a formal inquest. The dead man had been a twenty-five-year-old drug addict named Edwin Garth, with a long record of arrests for assaults and robberies.
Both muggings and homicides were too common in Hunts Point for the incident to interest the news media. It wasn’t even reported in the newspapers.
Inspector Ireland took Saturdays and Sundays as his days off. When he logged in Monday morning, the desk sergeant informed him that Rollin Singer had killed another mugger Saturday night, this time in the first-floor corridor of his apartment building. Again the M.E. and the investigating homicide officers had agreed it was so clearly justifiable homicide that no inquest was required. This time the assailant had been a thirty-year-old man named Harry Purvis, who had three convictions for robbery with violent assault.
“Purvis was waiting under the stairs when Singer arrived home from having dinner out,” the sergeant reported. “He jumped out and tried to brain Singer with a lead pipe. Singer gave him a karate chop between the eyes and it killed him.”
Ireland sat at his desk and thought about this for nearly an hour. Finally he got up and went out to the squeal desk.
“Did this make the papers?” he asked Sergeant Block.
Since their conversation, the sergeant had recorded complaints of five muggings, two rapes, seven burglaries and a homicide. “Did what make the papers, Inspector?” he asked.
“This Singer fellow killing another mugger,” Ireland said edgily.
“Oh. I don’t think so. Why should it?”
“No particular reason, I guess,” the inspector said in a glum voice. “Get in touch with Singer and ask him to drop by to see me.”
“He’ll be at his beauty salon in Manhattan now, Inspector.”
“Well, phone him there and find out when he can get here. If he can’t make it until evening, schedule an appointment anyway, and I’ll either stay over or come back after dinner.”
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant said.
A little later he stuck his head in Ireland’s office to report that Rollin Singer said he customarily got off the subway at 163rd and Westchester about a quarter to six, and he would come straight from there to the precinct house. The inspector decided to stay over to wait for him instead of leaving at five and coming back.
The man showed up at five minutes to six. Ireland asked him to be seated and got right to the point. “Although you’ve resided in this neighborhood less than a week, Mr. Singer, already you have been forced to kill two assailants in self-defense. Aren’t you by now convinced that Hunts Point is a pretty precarious place to live?”
“Thousands live in Hunts Point, Inspector. Do you give them all that advice?”
Ireland made an impatient gesture. “Your appearance is an invitation to at
tack, Mr. Singer. You look prosperous and you look easy. It’s inevitable that you’ll be subject to more attacks if you stay here.”
“I can defend myself, I assure you.”
“What if the next mugger has a gun?”
Rollin Singer smiled. “I’m not foolhardy, Inspector. Unless he made the mistake of getting too close, I would never offer resistance to a robber with a gun. Since I seldom carry more than a few dollars, it really wouldn’t be worth it.”
After gazing at him in silence for a time, Ireland said, “Even if you survive all future attacks, the police are going to look with a jaundiced eye at any more dead muggers. Are you aware that self-defense is a legally acceptable plea only when no more force than necessary is used to repel attack?”
“Oh, yes. You don’t for a moment believe I deliberately killed either mugger, do you? Both deaths were quite accidental, because my intention was merely to protect myself.”
The inspector said bluntly, “If you protect yourself so thoroughly a third time, you may find yourself on trial for murder.”
The smaller man hiked his eyebrows. “Do you really think any jury would convict me, Inspector?”
“I think one might, if we established that you were deliberately inciting these attacks.”
Rollin Singer looked astonished. “You know perfectly well I have done no such thing, Inspector. If I had been walking around deliberately flashing a roll of money, you might have some justification for such a charge. But both attacks on me occurred with absolutely no provocation on my part and in places where it seems to me I should have the right to feel safe from such attack. The first was in front of a church, in broad daylight, before witnesses; the second, in a corridor of my own apartment building. I suspect that if a jury were called upon to consider the matter, it would conclude that the real culprit is the 41st Precinct, for failure to keep residents safe from such attacks.”
Inspector Ireland examined the dapper little man sourly for a long time before heaving a resigned sigh. “All right, Mr. Singer. Just remember what I said about using only enough force to repel attack.” When the week passed with no further word of Rollin Singer, Inspector Ireland almost forgot him, but on Monday morning the inspector learned that a third would-be mugger had died and a fourth had been seriously injured during another attempt to rob Rollin Singer. The attempt had been made in mid-afternoon on Sunday at the intersection of Simpson and Westchester Avenue, a scant half block south of the police station, by two eighteen-year-old addicts, one armed with a hatchet and the other armed with a machete. Singer had spun the hatchet-carrier in front of his partner’s descending machete with the result that the youth had been nearly decapitated and had died instantly. The jujitsu expert had then flipped the machete-wielder into the path of a passing truck, putting the second teen-ager in the hospital with a number of broken bones and internal injuries.
The Richard Deming Mystery Megapack Page 17