The Man who was Murdered Twice

by Robert H. Leitfred

  “You’re swell, Mr. Crole. Why shouldn’t a girl do things for a tenant like you?”

  “I wonder myself at times. But it doesn’t always work out that way. Be seeing you,” he added, plodding up the stairs. “G’night.”

  “Good night,” echoed the girl.

  Alone in his apartment once more, Crole switched on a table lamp and turned off the overhead lights. He removed the empty rye bottle and dropped it in a square hole in the wall. He heard it go sliding down a chute and the distant crash of broken glass as it smashed against another bottle somewhere in the basement.

  He sighed and eased his big body into the chair. Blinking from sleepiness he rolled a last cigarette before going to bed, and looked at his watch. It was long after midnight. He yawned noisily, stretched, and unfastened his collar and tie.

  What a day. One investigation after another. A grilling, a murder, charges and counter-charges. And then, as if that wasn’t enough, an attempted frame.

  A lousy profession. He ought to be a banker or a preacher. Then life would flow smoothly. There wouldn’t be all these treacherous eddies to struggle against. At least his life would have the semblance of honesty. As it was he was always looked upon with suspicion by the police, and quite frankly detested by the District Attorney and his staff of investigators.

  Grand Juries regarded him as an actual menace. His enemies with white hatred. His friends, those he knew would be loyal in any emergency, might be counted on the fingers of one hand—Etta, Matt Ridley, Esther, the girl at the switchboard downstairs. And he’d have one finger left over.

  The cigarette smoke felt good going into his lungs.

  It helped him to relax. Line by line the tenseness went out of his round face as he slumped deeper into the chair. All kinds of thoughts began to march like small figurines across the back of his eyes.

  He thought of the man Leahy, and wondered how far he could trust him. Not too far, just yet. But far enough for all practical purposes. Yes, Leahy was all right.

  His head sagged back against the softness of the chair. Eyes drooped shut. Funny about that insurance policy. No beneficiary named except in the clause of a will. Was it possible that Gillespie, granting that he wasn’t dead, had evolved a scheme of collecting the premium himself?

  If so, figuring the amount of the premium, the cash received for the house in Los Gatos canyon, and the two hundred thousand of outright theft from Anderson’s account, somebody, if not Gillespie was making a haul of close to a quarter of a million dollars. And anyone getting in the path of the murderers was simply flirting with death.

  And what of that smooth attorney, George Baron? Where did he come into the picture of embezzlement and crime? By tomorrow he hoped to have the answer. Matt would phone from Ohio. Esther would have her London report. And Leahy, granting he was lucky and clever enough, might obtain...

  At this point his thoughts left him, and the figurines marching across the back of his eyes disappeared into the limbo of forgotten things on business of their own. His cigarette dropped in a dull shower of sparks from thumb and forefinger, bounced off the chair cushion, smoldered to the carpet and went out.

  Somewhere in a neighboring apartment, a clock chimed a single sweet note—one-thirty. The coastal city was once more preparing for bed.

  Outside there was a full moon overhead, but a wet ground fog had rolled in from the Pacific and dimmed its brilliance. Distant buildings weaved in the fog like pale, half-formed cenotaphs out of some forgotten graveyard.

  Only a thin luminescence pierced the fog. The iron slats on the fire-escape dripped moisture. And the slats stood out in serried ranks of gleaming metal beneath the back window of Crole’s apartment.

  Two men stood on the metal cross-pieces. One of them was doing something with the window catch. The sharp snap of the fastener breaking was gobbled up by the night.

  The window slid upward. The two men straddled the sill. There was a faint rustle of cloth, and they were inside the apartment. They did not close the window.

  Simon Crole roused up. He blinked once. Then all sleep left him, for he was staring into the muzzles of two guns held rigidly on his unmoving body.

  “Who the hell let you in?” he said, crossly.

  Gene Selingo grinned. “Tell him, Ghost.”

  Ghost Mokund grunted a single syllable. “Ummm!”

  XIII. CROLE TAKES A RIDE

  Gene Selingo continued to grin, and the grin was like a wide gash extending from ear to ear. “We got in,” he said, “the same way as we’re going out.”

  “You can go any time now,” said Crole. “I don’t need you.”

  “But we need you. See? You’re altogether too smart a dick for this town. You’re beginning to get in people’s way. But maybe you’ve figured this already.”

  “Sore because I busted in the hotel room late this afternoon?”

  “My jaw and face still ache from those wallops you handed me. Why shouldn’t I be sore? Damn right I am. And when I get sore I get mean all over.”

  “I’m that way, too,” observed Crole.

  “The hell with you. Get up out of that chair. You’re going with us—for a nice long ride.”

  “I don’t want to ride. I want to go to sleep.”

  “You’ll sleep, brother. And it’ll be the longest sleep you ever had. In fact there won’t be no end to it.”

  An atavistic craving to knock the heads of these unwelcome visitors together sent Crole lunging to his feet. Gene Selingo moved in close, snarling and eager. His gun was level with the agency man’s chest.

  Ghost Mokund glided sinuously in a half circle until he was behind Crole. They had him covered from two angles. He couldn’t move forward or back without running into a leaden slug.

  “Get the notion out of your head, Crole, that there’s any way you can get out of it. You can’t—except by a stretcher. Coming with us or do we have to mess up the place?”

  Simon Crole was placid once more. The hot uprush of anger at seeing these men left him as rapidly as it had come. In its place returned cunning and guile.

  “What have you boys got against me?” he wanted to know.

  “Never mind,” snapped Selingo, “what we got against you. It ain’t necessary to explain. You’re simply coming with us. See? And you’re coming carefully and without any false starts. We’re leaving the way we came—by the fire-escape. Ghost, you go first. Crole, you stay in the middle and I’ll be close behind you. Got it straight?”

  Crole nodded.

  “Then start moving.”

  “I think,” said Crole, “that there’s a half pint of Scotch in the radio bar. Mind taking it along with us? A guy should be entitled to at least one drink on this long ride you’re telling about.”

  Selingo backed to the radio cabinet and found the half pint of Scotch. “Not a bad idea at all,” he beamed, tucking it in his pocket.

  “I feel better already,” observed Crole, following Mokund through the kitchen window onto the fire-escape.

  If he had expected to make a break while going down the metal structure, he was doomed to disappointment. Never once were their guns pointed on any spot but his body. In single file they moved through the fog in the alley back of the apartment house. At the first corner they turned right and stopped beside a low-slung car.

  The light, in spite of the fog wavering around street lamps, was sufficient to enable Crole to observe the tires. They were new Generals, the same kind of tires as were on the car that had forced Gillespie’s machine from the Iron Mountain road.

  Mokund got in first. Laid his gun handy beside him on the seat and got in behind the wheel. Crole climbed into the rear seat, the barrel of Selingo’s gun prodding him cruelly.

  Sighing, he relaxed and faced the man beside him. “Where you taking me?”

  Selingo sat with one leg doubled under him so that he faced the agency man. His right wrist rested on the knee of the leg that was curled beneath him. The barrel pointed straight at Crole’s side. He made
no answer.

  “Getting tongue-tied, like the punk on the front seat?”

  Mokund, dexterously heading the car out towards a main trunk boulevard, made no comment. Selingo snapped: “We’re taking you to the desert, fellow. And when we get there we’re going to dump you out.”

  “Nice boat,” approved Crole. “What’ll she do on the level?”

  “Plenty.”

  “Mind if I reach in my pocket for the makings? I’m dying for a smoke.”

  Selingo fished a cigarette from his pocket, lighted it and passed it to the detective. “You’ll just about have time to smoke it,” he said quietly.

  Crole puffed contentedly, and watched the road on the right side. His apartment house was well on the outer fringe of the city and the low-slung car was making good speed.

  The car eased into a four-lane boulevard and started up a slight grade. Its powerful headlights cut a wide arc in the roadway. Crole, his eyes noting each familiar landmark, said: “What’ll I do with the butt?”

  “Step on it, and don’t try to pull anything.”

  The detective dropped the butt to the floor and placed his heel on it. “You two guys are strangers in this town.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I never saw you before today.”

  “We move around some,” said Selingo.

  “Making lots of jack?”

  “None of your damn business. We ain’t talking.”

  “Pass through Needles coming into the state?”

  “Listen, Crole. Sure we come through Needles. But it’s no good. Thinking about the cops at the border, hey? Well, they let us through. Why shouldn’t they? We had plenty. It’s only the poor bums that get turned back.”

  The car reached an intersection, hesitated only a bare fraction of a second, then slid across. Beyond the intersection about a mile, a narrow county road ran off to the right. The car swerved onto the narrow road.

  “Made a wrong turn, you at the wheel,” said Crole. “The desert road goes straight ahead.”

  “Ummm!” grunted Mokund.

  “He says to mind your own business,” Selingo interpreted.

  “This road we’re on now,” continued Crole, “used to be the old road before they cut through the new one. And it goes up through Los Gatos canyon.”

  “It’s our road,” said Selingo, “And there’s no use trying to figure it.”

  “If you’re about ready to fill my frame with lead, it’d make it a lot easier if I had an edge on. Maybe you hoods know how it feels to be in a spot like I am. Maybe you don’t. But take my word for it—it’s hell. How’s for a shot of Scotch?”

  Selingo’s free hand fished the bottle from his coat pocket. “Slow down, Ghost,” he ordered. “This is as good a spot as any. No traffic. And no houses.”

  The car slackened its speed to about twenty miles an hour as it crawled up the grade and ran along a fairly level ridge.

  “Drink, Crole. And when the liquor is gone, unless it takes more than three minutes, you’ll go with it.” Simon Crole’s hand shook as he reached for the bottle. “I’m not feeling so hot. I’ll do the best I can. Three minutes is too short a time to properly enjoy a drink. And I don’t like to swill.”

  “Quit monkeying around!” This was Mokund making a long speech from the front seat.

  “Geez!” gasped the agency man. “How that guy scared me! I didn’t think he could talk.” He held the neck of the bottle to his lips and drank long and deeply. Coming up for air he swayed and looked slightly stupid.

  “Sorry,” he apologized.

  Selingo began to cautiously shift his position as he reached for a second cigarette. Again lifting the bottle to his lips, the agency man made a pretense of swallowing. But all he did was to fill his mouth to capacity with the fiery liquor.

  Although facing straight ahead, his eyes were swiveled far to his left where dimly, in the soft glow of the instrument panel light, he could see Selingo making ready to snap the wheel of his lighter.

  The lighter broke into sudden flame. There came a moment of total blindness as the lighter traveled towards the cigarette. Timed to the split second, the whiskey left Crole’s mouth in a wooshing spray. It struck Selingo full in the face, burned into his eyes and drenched the lighter flame.

  With the same movement Crole flung his body in a half-roll. There was thunder in his ears—three sharp peals, mingling with long spurts of flame. The first bullet took a hot chunk out of his arm. The second tore through the sleeve farther up. The third missed completely and made a neat hole through the shatter-proof glass of the rear-vision window.

  And Simon Crole, his back to the front seat, reached out and grabbed at a point in back of those streaking flames. His fingers closed over Selingo’s forearm, slid to the wrist, then tightened down and twisted sharply.

  Selingo’s big mouth dribbled curses. He kicked Crole in the shins, then in the chest and face. Stung with pain, the agency man got his feet beneath him and raised up.

  He smacked Selingo in the mouth and cut his knuckles badly. But he still hung fast to the wrist above the gunman’s fingers. Mokund, steering with one hand, twisted around, grabbed up his gun by its squat barrel and swung with the butt at Crole’s head.

  Crole raised his shoulder, took the blow on bunched muscles, and butted his head against Selingo’s neck. The gunman went limp and began to cough. The detective jerked the weapon from unresisting fingers.

  Mokund, meanwhile, had reversed his grip on the automatic, and his finger was squeezing on the trigger. Crole flattened, and the leaden pellets passed over his head. He pawed for the door handle, found it and exerted a downward pressure. The weight of his body sent the door swinging outward. He got one foot ahead of him. It hit the running board. Lead was singing past his ears, powder burning the back of his neck.

  His right foot left the running board just as his left foot struck the shoulder of the road. And the car was moving just fast enough to throw him off balance.

  For a moment of eternity he hung poised, spun from momentum, and went plunging down into the black abyss that was Los Gatos canyon.

  Ghost Mokund jerked on the emergency brake and leaped to the canyon rim. He pointed his gun in the direction of the falling body and emptied the shell clip of his gun.

  The thrashings of the rolling body came up to him, growing fainter and fainter. And then there was no sound to be heard but the soft purr of the car motor and the retching of Gene Selingo as he became violently ill kneeling in the center of the lonely road.

  Ghost Mokund ejected a short, ugly word and bent over his companion in crime. “Sick?”

  Selingo gagged and made horrible noises. He was sick all right. But not fatally. He’d be all right in ten minutes. He was too tough to be sick longer than that.

  Mokund walked to the edge of the road and again stared down into blackness. Far in the distance he heard the strident voice of a hungry coyote wailing its misery. He shuddered. Reached into his pocket for a thin paper packet.

  He poured the white powder from the packet onto the back of his hand and sniffed it with something like a sob in his breath. At peace once more, he went back to Selingo who was crawling back towards the car.

  “Tough guy,” he said.

  Selingo groaned with misery. “Whiskey. See if there’s any left in the bottle.”

  Mokund poked around, found it and pressed the bottle’s neck to his companion’s slobbering mouth. After a few moments the sick man, still breathing raspingly said: “Which way did he go?”

  Mokund pointed down into the velvety black of the steep canyon wall. He also showed with a slight shrug the empty clip from his automatic.

  “We’ll come out,” gasped Selingo, “early in the morning and make sure. Geez, how my neck aches.

  Turn around and let’s go back to town. I ain’t equal to facing the big guy tonight.”

  Mokund evidently was of the same opinion. Deftly he cramped the car around on the narrow road, and headed it downgrade towards the d
istant lights of the coastal city.

  A new day was graying the sky in the east when Simon Crole plodded through the front door of his apartment house. His face was dust-covered and bloody. His eyes, heavy-lidded and slightly bulgy. The backs of his hands were lacerated from contact with mahogany and manzanita bushes that had checked his sudden descent into the canyon and saved his life. His suit was fit only for carpet rags.

  He tried to smile at the switchboard girl who was staring at him with pained eyes of compassion. “Oh my God, Mr. Crole. You’re hurt. Something awful’s happened...”

  The big body of the agency man swayed. He reached out a hand and steadied himself against the switchboard. But the smile wouldn’t come. He brushed a hand wearily across his eyes. Every bone in his body pulsed with an intolerable ache.

  “Any calls for me while I’ve been gone?” he husked.

  “You poor, stupid man,” wailed the girl. “This is no time to make wise cracks. Get right up to your apartment. I’ll call a doctor. I’ll...”

  “No, dear,” said Crole. “I’m okay. I look worse than I feel. Couple of punks took me for a scenic ride. I got tired of the scenery, hauled out my roller skates and came back home—only I fell down a mountain on account I wasn’t used to the skates.”

  The girl did something to the switchboard. “I’ll help you to your door,” she said. “But I wish you’d let me call a doctor.”

  “Nix on the doctor stuff. Just give me an arm up the stairs, sister, and I’ll be your pal for life.”

  The steps conquered, he fumbled for his key. “What time is it?”

  “Five-thirty.”

  “Swell. I’ll have time for a couple hours’ sleep. You go off duty when?”

  “At seven. But I’ll leave word with the day operator to call you at...”

  “Half past eight.”

  The door pushed inward. “You going to be all right?” she asked.

  “A hot bath, a change of clothes and I’ll be the Adonis of crime and the envy of the police department. Scram, little one, and keep your lips buttoned up.”