Pulp Crime

by Jerry eBooks

  Guido Pichetti had opened the note. His swarthy features flushed with rage, then bleached sallow as he leaped from his table. What he said to Malone, and what Malone replied was not audible above the blare of the music; but Barrett’s expectancy was not in vain. There was an almost simultaneous flashing of hands to shoulder holsters—

  Barrett’s lips relaxed enough to reveal a glimpse of his teeth as two pistols blazed into the satanic bluish moonlight, and their roar, almost a single, prolonged report, bellowed above the brazen clang of the orchestra. Barrett ignored the ensuing uproar and confusion as a glance, before the crowd became too dense about the fallen, assured him that the theretofore bosom friends had killed each other. He sighed deeply, slouched against the back of his chair, and for the first time realized how highly keyed he had been for the past half hour.

  Justice that was beyond the power of the law. Vengeance . . . and the end of the story . . .

  A burly, red-faced, grim mouthed man emerged from the gaping, babbling, hysterical crowd that pushed in as close as it could to the double X’s that marked the respective spots where Guido Pichetti and Spud Malone had become public benefactors. In his hands he had a letter and an envelope, both of which he thrust before Barrett.

  “Dave,” he demanded, “what do you know about this? One look tells me it’s fishy as kippered herring—even if Damon and Pythias were too dumb to realize it.”

  Barrett regarded first the envelope, then the letter, then John Healy, Chief of the Detective Bureau, who was beginning to understand why he had received a tip to be present, though unseen, at Club Martinique.

  “End of the story, John. It’s been a strain, figuring out ways of making these rats kill each other.”

  Healy grunted, nodded, then said, “Pretty good, Dave. Only, it’s not the end of the story by a big damn sight! You’ve not finished something, you’ve started something. Watch your step.”

  Mrs. Barrett might have been right, some thirty years ago. Her lean, broad shouldered son, while far from handsome, in his lighter moments had a pleasant smile, and an engaging friendly manner.

  “Thanks, John,” he said quite affably as he rose from his seat. “Come out to the house some night soon. I have some mighty interesting jig-saw puzzles.”

  And a few moments later, Barrett was at the wheel of his Issotta, driving up Saint Charles Avenue toward Audoubon Place. He was smiling to himself at the gullibility of two dear friends whose lurking suspicion of each other had been detonated by the note Barrett had prepared and planted.

  Two days later—thirty-six hours, to be accurate—Barrett’s smile vanished. What he had called the end of a story had become the beginning of a longer and grimmer tale. His blue eyes were hard as sword points as he paced up and down the wine-red Boukhara rug in his library.

  “Marie,” he demanded abruptly as he halted and faced the girl who sat buried in the depths of an over-stuffed chair, “are you sure Lee hasn’t just left town suddenly on urgent business?”

  Marie Simpson shook her blonde head and dabbed her tear-reddened eyes. She had never learned the art of effective weeping.

  “No, Dave. He’d have wired or phoned me by this time.” She swallowed a sob, then said pointedly, “And I don’t think you believe he’s left on a business trip, either.”

  Barrett’s features tensed. Vengeance was bearing bitter fruit.

  “Suppose you run along home,” he suggested with a gentleness that seemed out of keeping with his rugged features and the usually incisive snap of his voice. “You know I’d go through hell and high water for Lee. And if there’s anything off color about his being missing for the past twelve hours, I’ll tear the roof off.”

  As he spoke, he helped Marie Simpson with her coat.

  “Dave, do you think—”

  “I’m not thinking anything,” he evaded. “But I’m going to see. Now run along, and pull yourself together.”

  As the door clicked closed behind Marie Simpson, Barrett’s eyes flashed to the half opened desk drawer. During the brief interview he had feared that his very effort not to think of what the drawer contained, not to let his eyes stray toward it would betray him to Marie’s intuition. His hand halted midway as it reached for the envelope.

  “Jackass!” he said aloud. “Healy was right.” Barrett’s bitter thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of John Healy. He indicated the chair that Marie Simpson had left but a few moments ago—or how long had it been that he had stared at that desk drawer?

  “What’s new and good, John?”

  “About Lee Simpson, and it’s not good,” said Healy as he selected a cigar from Barrett’s humidor and jammed his bulk into the spacious chair. “You’re his number one friend. Where is he?”

  “God knows,” replied Barrett. “And I will if I live long enough. Has his wife—”

  “Uhuh. Run me ragged,” interrupted Healy. “But no sign of him.”

  “Where do I come in?”

  “Simpson’s not got two nickels to click together,” answered Healy. “And no enemies. The way I got it doped out, someone is getting at you for that job you pulled at Club Martinique. Somebody took a tumble.”

  Barrett flinched as at the thrust of a red hot iron.

  “Right, John. I’d rather face a machine gun than this.”

  “Don’t worry. You probably will, before it’s over. Have you gotten any demands for ransom or the like?”

  Barrett shook his head. “You’re a damn liar,” declared Healy with the license of friendship.

  “Have it your own way. And if you’ve any dope, pass it along. I’m on the job myself.”

  “No good, Dave,” said Healy with a peremptory gesture. “That’s the trouble. You’ve been on the job too much. You smoked out so many of these rats—and now they’re pulling your teeth by snatching Simpson.”

  “My teeth,” countered Barrett with an ominous glitter in his eyes, “aren’t pulled yet. I want you to keep your hands off. None of your men following me around when I take the warpath. Will you give me a break? Stand clear?”

  Healy saw Barrett’s glance shift and linger on a rack of firearms that made the library look very much like an arsenal.

  “Sold.”

  “Thanks, John. And remember, I’ve got my reasons for playing a lone hand.”

  Upon Healy’s departure, Barrett re-read for the twentieth time the letter he had received that morning: “Bring $20,000 in new, unmarked hundred dollar bills to the main entrance of the Crescent Compress Company at midnight. If there is any sign of police interference, or if my men do not report by one a.m., we’ll ship Simpson’s head to join his finger. Come alone and unarmed.”

  There was no signature. None was needed. Jake Moroni had made a final counterattack that would not fail as the others had. A small parcel which had accompanied the letter bore witness that the enemy meant business. It contained the fourth finger of Simpson. The blackened nail, recently crushed by a hammer tap, identified it beyond any doubt.

  Barrett knew that the demand for the ransom was camouflage. Moroni had based his coup on the friendship of Simpson and Barrett. He knew that Barrett would willingly and knowingly walk into an ambuscade for the sake of Simpson.

  “The————!” muttered Barrett as he thrust the letter back into his desk. “Using live bait . . .”

  He grinned sourly, and added, “I’ll do the same.”

  At about the same hour of that same morning, Jake Moroni was holding high court in his armored office in an otherwise deserted warehouse near the river front. Moroni’s swivel chair was a throne, and his well-tailored suit of imported worsteds was the imperial purple that had slipped from the shoulders of his predecessor when the muzzle of a .25-3000 reached through a loophole in a brick wall and snapped a tiny slug through a pistol proof vest.

  In front of Moroni was a mahogany desk entirely suitable to an executive whose payrolls were as great as those of the city, and whose revenues were greater. At his left was a gaudy Japanese screen that adde
d to the grotesquerie of the crude office. The screen, however, was no evidence of the house beautiful; it served a useful purpose. The center of one of its painted chrysanthemums had been neatly cut out with a knife.

  Moroni’s swarthy features smiled unpleasantly as his dark eyes bored coldly into the pudgy, evil faced ruffian before him.

  “Orders are orders,” he declared with ominous evenness of tone.

  “I don’t give a——!” exclaimed Moroni’s lieutenant, and commander in chief of the Praetorian guard of hop heads, and assorted assassins, “Tinkering with Barrett is like boxing with a tiger. Shaking him down for twenty grand to save Simpson’s hide is one thing. That’s easy. But trying to grab Barrett when he delivers the jack is plain foolishness.”

  “Mmmm . . . hm,” breathed Moroni. His snake eyes flickered to the right. He seemed for an instant to be peering through and past the thugs who sat on a bench along the wall. “Carver! Are you man enough?”

  A tall, rangy fellow whose bony features wore a warped, perpetual grin, fidgeted for a moment with the brim of his hat. His glance switched from Moroni to the lieutenant on the carpet, and back to Moroni again.

  “Jeez, that ain’t a fair question,” he protested. “I’m workin’ for you, but I’m directly under Schwartz. Ya know—”

  He made a gesture of resignation. “Mmm . . . discipline,” murmured Moroni. “Yes. Discipline is splendid.” Then he snapped a question: “How about you other punks?” The other two on the bench started, frowned ponderously, nodding and rubbing their chins as though a portentous decision was on the verge of birth. The atmosphere of the tiny, sound-proof office became electric from the tension.

  “Yellow from your back bone to your belly!” crackled Moroni. “Just like this slob.”

  The slob on the carpet flushed. “Who’s yellow, you—”

  His hand made a swift gesture; but it was not fast enough. A spurt of flame poured from the loophole of the chrysanthemum. As the pudgy lieutenant reeled crazily and collapsed, a pistol appeared in Moroni’s hand. The three along the wall kept their hands rigidly motionless.

  “You——s gimme a headache,” said Moroni pleasantly. “Mike—Otto! Get the hell outa here while I talk to Carver.”

  As the pair left the office, audibly sighing their relief at dismissal, Moroni beckoned to Sam Carver.

  “I been fed up with him for a long time. You got guts enough to take this job?”

  Carver swallowed just once. “Sure thing. Only I’d like to know just what you want done.”

  “That’s the talk,” approved Moroni as he replaced his pistol. “When Barrett shows up tonight, I want you birds to nab him, tie him, and bring him to the Carlotta. And I don’t want you to croak him—”

  Sam Carver frowned perplexedly. “Jeez, that’s a contract. He’s a fighting fool, and—” He saw Moroni’s eyes shifting speculatively toward the man who lay on the floor. “But I’ll make it—but it won’t hurt to tap him on the nut just to keep him quiet, without really hurtin’ him?”

  Moroni nodded and smiled thinly. “Just remember that a dead man can’t sign an order for fifty grand. But after we get the dough . . .”

  Carver grinned. “Sorta double play, eh, Mr. Moroni?”

  “Right. And just a bit of advice, Sam. You been getting too friendly with my secretary.”

  His voice was low, confidential, and alarming.

  “Honest, I ain’t done—I mean, I didn’t mean a thing. Just bein’ friendly to Nor—Miss Arradonda.”

  Moroni stroked his bluish jaw and smiled affably.

  “I understand that, Sam. But it just don’t look right. She’s nothing to me a-tall, only . . .”

  “I got ya, Mr. Moroni,” Carver hastened to assure his chief.

  “Okay. And no slips tonight. I’m counting on you. Twenty grand, and Barrett in shape to sign an order for fifty more, and then we’ll have no more phoney letters and civil war.”

  Despite his chief’s warning, Sam Carver phoned Norma Arradonda, and after being assured that the coast was clear, called at her apartment. He came to the point at once.

  “You and me are strangers from now on. Positively farewell appearance.”

  Norma was dark and shapely, and lived up to the exotic ear pendants she affected. Her full lips were red as a sabre slash against the transparent, creamy pallor of her skin.

  “Matter, Sam?” Her delicately pencilled brows rose in Moorish arches.

  “Moroni’s set on rubbing me out,” Carver explained somberly. “That Barrett job—”

  “You have been buying me too many drinks at Club Martinique,” mused Norma.

  “So I heard. And here I am.”

  “Still,” resumed Norma, “I think you’re heated up about nothing.”

  Carver shook his head. “Barrett has been on the spot half a dozen times—and each time he’s beaten it, with a surprise party of his own. And when he pulls a dumb one, his luck saves him.

  “I’m scared of that guy’s luck. He’s a hoodoo. And he’s filled a private graveyard with mugs that tried to get him. Snatching his best friend is like spitting in a tiger’s eye.”

  Norma shook her head.

  “Wrong, Sam. Him and Simpson are old buddies. And if you don’t return by a certain time, it’s Simpson’s head. He knows it. That’s going to make a boy scout out of Barrett.”

  “I don’t care if it’s supposed to make a good Christian of him,” countered Carver dolefully. “I’m bein’ framed—just like Dutch—”

  Carver checked himself abruptly, swallowed, said nothing.

  “Yes?” murmured Norma. “Nothing!” snapped Sam. “I’m doing this job, and then I’m going to the country to raise chickens. There’s no percentage.”

  He reached for his hat. Norma stopped him at the door.

  “Since you’re not going to see me any more,” she said, “you might at least kiss me good bye—you’re a good egg, Sam, and I hope you get the breaks . . . oh, just a minute . . .”

  He paused as she scribbled an address and a telephone number on a slip of paper.

  “Call me here, once in a while—but disguise your voice. Someone might be listening in on an extension. Don’t say too much. Just enough so I’ll know you’re thinking of me. He’s got his guts, trying to keep you from even being friendly in a nice way . . . ‘Bye, Sam.”

  Norma was part of the dictator’s intricate web of evasion and espionage. While terming her a secretary was perhaps a shade too figurative, hers was an important part in Moroni’s system of seeming to be in several places at once, and proving it by answering, from one point, calls to half a dozen offices. Norma was much of the brain of the organization—but Norma was, after all human . . .

  That night Barrett dressed very deliberately, as though for a dinner engagement instead of a rendezvous with kidnappers.

  “Damn your black hide, Amos,” he said reproachfully, as he regarded the tie that his white haired old colored handyman had laid out. “Do you think that goes with this suit?”

  “Yas suh, Mistah Dave! Ah thinks it’s jes go’geous,” the old man insisted with a nod and a grin. Then he turned to the rack to replace his favorite among Barrett’s array.

  Barrett was content with the amendment submitted by Amos. As he adjusted it, he fondly regarded the Colt .45 that lay in his dresser drawer, and regretfully shook his head.

  “That black scarf, Amos,” he said abstractedly, as he detached a gold penknife from his chain. He took the scarf, snapped it several times, whiplike; and all the while, one eye half closed, he pondered as though considering a hitherto unweighed element of the evening’s dangerous work. Barrett finally knotted the penknife into a corner of the scarf, then stuffed several packets of hundred dollar bills into his pockets.

  “Amos,” he said, “here is the key to the Ford. In case I don’t come back, you can have it.”

  The old man’s eyes widened, and his black face lengthened.

  “Whhhh-y, Mistah Dave,” he sputtered. “Stick around a
nd watch the phone,” said Barrett. “And you don’t know where I’ve gone—not even if the President calls!”

  “Yas, suh, Mistah Dave. An’ ain’t nuthin’ goin’ a happen to you.”

  “I wish,” reflected Barrett as he took the wheel of the heavy sedan that was next to the Ford coupé, “that I could be sure Amos is right.”

  Barrett parked near the corner of Munn and Tchoupitoulas Streets. Even by daylight, the vicinity seemed to have been blighted by a lurching vengeance that had doomed to failure the warehouses and ship’s chandleries that line the river front.

  “Munn Street . . . one block long—but it may take me the rest of my life to reach the end of it,” was Barrett’s thought as he sought to accustom his eyes to the blackness. The moon was still so low that the shadows of the buildings on the right blended with black bulk of those on the left. He shivered as the penetrating wind bit like a bayonet. Barrett drew his top coat about him. His fingers, grasping the lapels, touched the hard silk of his scarf.

  “One concealed weapon, anyway . . .”

  A gold penknife. If he had brought a pistol, he might be tempted to use it, and thus surely kill Lee Simpson as well as the one who received his fire.

  “God, but it’s dark . . .”

  Barrett was used to the haunted blacknesses of Asiatic jungles, vibrant with the silent slinking of the eater in search of the eaten; yet Munn Street, which led to the river, was shrouded by an obscurity more malignant than any he had ever penetrated. Barrett shivered again, but this time, not from cold. He smiled, and his gait became fluent as that of the hunter.

  Barrett forced himself to consider the moment at hand rather than the other life which hung in the balance. It was his fault that Simpson was in danger, and his duty to extricate him, regardless of the cost.