Pulp Crime

by Jerry eBooks

  The sergeant stuttered and stammered while the G-man, whose quick deduction told him most of the story, smiled amusedly.

  “Everything’ll be okay now for you an’ the little one,” said Calahan beamingly to Nan Stewart. “That five thousand’ll do plenty.”

  If Mike Calahan had ever boasted before of being a family man, it was nothing to what he spouted from then on. And he got shoved up to Homicide . . .

  DOOM IN THE BAG

  Dale Clark

  Willie the Wolf and Louie the Louse were sure they could beat any rap—for nobody had tipped them off to—doom in the bag.

  The after-the-shows crowd was just starting to come in to the Platinum Bar on 48th Street. Willie “The Wolf” Lugiani leaned against the bar, which was not platinum at all, but merely chromium. Willie the Wolf drained his old-fashioned.

  “Nuh, Joe,” he told the barman. “Nuh, I gotta run along. Gotta pick up Gertie at the Frillies.”

  He crossed the room, nodding to everybody in the spot he knew. And he knew a good many of them. The Wolf’s shining pate had twinkled under a lot of bright lights. Once or twice it had twinkled under the even brighter light of a police line-up. But not this time. Because a score of people would be able to testify that Willie the Wolf had been in the Platinum Bar at eleven-thirty.

  He even had the good luck to bump into Danny Welch—the Broadway columnist—at the door.

  “Howsa boy?” cried the Wolf, sticking out his hand.

  “Well, well, well!” said Danny Welch. So busy giving his hat to the check girl that he failed to notice Lugiani’s outstretched flabby hand. “And how are all the little reefers?”

  Wolf Lugiani scowled. “I hear—” the newspaperman’s chubby face was falsely sympathetic—“your brother got indicted in Chicago for peddling muggles.”

  “Yeah. Some canary sung to the Feds,” Wolf said.

  “Uh-huh. What’s the Louse doing about it?”

  “Louie’s in town, out on bail,” grunted the Wolf. “Well—I gotta pick up Gertie at the Frillies.”

  He climbed into a cab. Gertie stood waiting for him at the stage door. She bawled out Willie the Wolf for being late. She called him “Willie” and “Wolf” loudly. They squabbled about the time. Willie the Wolf asked the hackie what time he had. When they got out of the cab, he handed the cabbie a finnif tip.

  They quit squabbling as soon as they got into the apartment. Gertie had two bags packed—a big Gladstone, and a much smaller zipper, both of yellow leather.

  Willie the Wolf shed his evening clothes and got into a loud, pin-striped sack suit. He stood in front of the mirror and carefully affixed a black toupee to his bald dome. He attached several gold caps to his teeth.

  Turning, he grinned at Gertie. “Well?”

  She cocked her blonde head on one side. “To me, you’re just Wolf Lugiani wearing a stage wig,” she said. “But if I hadn’t seen either of you but a couple of times, I’d swear on a stack of Bibles you was ‘Louie the Louse’.”

  Gertie’s apartment was on the first floor. Willie the Wolf hopped out the window into the paved courtyard. Gertie handed him the bags. It was all she could do to hoist the Gladstone over the sill.

  Willie the Wolf ankled across to another street and hailed a cab. “The airport, and step on it.”

  He inspected the Gladstone. There was a tarnish of white paint where the leather had scraped the window sill. He wiped that off. He wiped the bag entirely, removing finger prints.

  “Reservation for Louis Lugiani?” he asked at the airport office.

  They handed him a ticket to Los Angeles. An attendant took his bags out of the cab. Willie the Wolf carried the little zipper into the plane with him. The Gladstone went into the luggage compartment in the tail of the plane.

  Fifty miles out of New York, Willie the Wolf called the stewardess. He was writing a letter, and he wanted to know if she had a dictionary.

  She didn’t have. “Well,” said Willie the Wolf, “maybe you can tell me how to spell received.”

  She told him. “Here is a little something for you,” said Willie the Wolf, and he offered her a finnif.

  She looked at him. “We do not accept tips, thank you.” But she had looked at him. He grinned at her, showing his gold-capped teeth.

  The orchestra leader looked at the dollar bill, and at the jaundiced face of the little man who offered the bill.

  “Listen, you,” he said. “Go back and tell that yap I will not play ‘Wahoo’ again, not even for ten smackers. I have played it ten times already tonight, and the boss will not stand for any more.”

  “Listen, you!” The little man stuck out his chest. “Don’t you know who that yap is?”

  The orchestra leader glanced across the little, smoky room. He took in the big drunk who lounged in a chair at the corner table, elbows braced beside his whiskey glass. The drunk had a thick shock of black hair, and his open mouth disclosed an assortment of gold-capped teeth.

  “He is just another drunk to me,” the orchestra leader said.

  The little man shrugged, went back to the table.

  “It’s all off, Louie. He won’t play that no more.”

  “Okay,” Louie the Louse said thickly. “Okay for him. We’ll go somewheres else then.”

  He led the way out of the joint, his big pin-striped suited body careening between the tables. “Wahoo!” he yelled. “Past one o’clock—Chicago all closed up—Stickney just beginning to wake up!”

  This for the benefit of the check girl. Outside, Louie the Louse flopped weakly into the cushions of the car. A mosquito drilled the night, found Louie’s fat face. He slapped his nose resoundingly.

  “You better drive, Tony.”

  Tony tooled the machine along the highway. “Where to, boss?”

  “Just drive,” Louie the Louse said thickly. “I don’t feel so good.”

  Tony twisted a sharp, inquisitive face. “How come you gotta come back here to get soused, boss? Ain’t they any liquor in New York?”

  Louie the Louse groaned. “You better slow down,” he muttered. His fat hands went to his stomach. “I’m going to be sick—”

  Tony slowed. To fifteen miles an hour. Not fast enough to bust the car up.

  “Turn in this driveway,” Louie the Louse grated. His hands came from his stomach. His fingers were wrapped around the gat he had pulled out of the waistband of the pin-striped trousers.

  Tony felt the snout of the belly gun in his ribs, and he turned into the driveway. He did not beg for his life; there was no use begging. And there was no use trying to get the gun away from Louie Lugiani.

  Louie let Tony drive up the lane about halfway to the buildings, which were a quarter of a mile from the road.

  “Get out,” Louie said then. “I don’t want rat blood all over me.”

  Tony got out. His feet hit the packed dirt of the lane, and he started to run. There was a field, and if he—

  Louie the Louse triggered. He pushed his foot on the gas pedal at the same, time, and the roar of the racing motor drowned the crack of the shots.

  Tony went down in a heap at the side of the lane.

  Louie the Louse switched down the headlamps. He got out of the car and walked over to the squealer. Tony was dead. Dumdum bullets had opened him up plenty. Louie the Louse adjusted a pair of gloves onto his hands before dragging Tony back in front of the car.

  About four-thirty in the morning, the orchestra leader would be coming home. He would turn into the lane and find the body. He’d remember, then, that the little man had been alive as late as one A.M. He might also remember the big drunk. But that wouldn’t be important.

  He used a handkerchief to slap around in the lane, wiping up his footprints. The car would leave tire treads in the dust, but that wasn’t important, either. It was Tony’s car.

  Louie the Louse backed the machine out of the lane. He drove slowly for quite a while, driving with one hand and occasionally swatting a mosquito with the other. His movements were sure,
firm. He drove through the forest preserves and after wiping his gun threw that into the bushes. He very carefully wiped the dust from his shoes. The handkerchief, fresh from the dime store, had no laundry marks. He threw it away. Only one thing worried him. Suppose something happened to that New York-Chicago plane?

  Nothing had happened to it. The plane, three and one-half hours out of New York, roared down onto the Chicago field. Mail, luggage, and a few passengers transferred to a waiting Los Angeles-bound air Pullman. One of the passengers vanished momentarily from the light. He reappeared, entered the western plane. He wore a pin-striped suit, had black hair and gold-capped teeth, and carried a zipper bag.

  Louie the Louse slept very comfortably in the Pullman plane. In the morning he rose, changed his shirt, and went over his alibi. He expected to be arrested in Los Angeles.

  Meanwhile, Wolf Lugiani had driven Tony’s car away from the airport. He had left it, claimed another machine at a garage, and gone on to a private landing field. He worked hastily, but not in such haste that he failed to go over Tony’s car against the chance of a fingerprint or two. The waiting plane was a fast ex-smuggler of dope. The pilot could be trusted. It was the same pilot who had brought Louie out of New York the previous afternoon. Over the forested hills of Pennsylvania, Willie the Wolf managed to change clothes in the tiny space available. He wrapped his pinstriped suit and the toupee in a bundle, poured acid on them, and baled them out; Acid would not destroy the gold tooth-caps. He threw those out one at a time.

  Next morning when the police came to the door, Willie the Wolf greeted them in pajamas.

  “Tony Risso bumped off?” He blinked, surprised. “Between one and five Chicago time—probably around one? Well, you can’t hang it on me. Plenty of people, and I don’t mean mobsters, seen me in New York as late as eleven-thirty last night. That’s twelve-thirty Chicago time—”

  “Ten-thirty!” a detective interrupted.

  “Okay, but there’s no way I could get out to Chi, anyhow. And I spent the night with Gertie.”

  “Sure he did!” said Gertie, giving the officers an eyeful of what her silk dressing gown had.

  “Well, wait until we start accusing you,” the detective said. “What we want to know is, where’s the Louse?”

  “He hopped a midnight plane out for the Coast,” said Willie the Wolf. “I don’t mind telling you, he was going to Mexico. But if Tony’s dead, Louie might as well save his bail bond. Because they can never in this world hang that muggles rap on him in Chi now.”

  A man named Lars Cosgrove stood on the Los Angeles landing field. He was lean and brown, and he wore his clothes well. His eyes were steadily gray, watching the air liner drop out of the sky, taxi up the runway, stop. Cosgrove kept his hand in a slightly bulging pocket. He let Louie the Louse get clear of the plane before he spoke. Louie, with a lot of innocent bystanders behind him, might make gunplay.

  “Never mind calling a cab, Louse. I got one waiting for you,” Cosgrove said.

  “Yeah?” Louie Lugiani’s face changed a little when he looked at the badge in Cosgrove’s hand. It was an F.B.I, shield. The Louse had expected cops. Not a G-man.

  “Yeah?” he said again. “What for?”

  He was scared. A cop—a cop would pick you up just because he didn’t like your face. But these G-men—they generally made their pinches stick!

  Cosgrove herded Louie and his luggage into the waiting cab. “Police headquarters,” he told the hackie.

  His eyes stayed steady, watching the Louse. “The police want you, too. About this.”

  Louie the Louse took the newspaper-which Cosgrove handed him. The paper, stuck in the seat of the cab, had been opened before.

  “This is no skin off your nose. Fed,” he said, “Murder—that ain’t a Federal rap.”

  Cosgrove shrugged. “It interests me, though. Tony would have been a witness in the Department’s case against you.”

  Lugiani shut his mouth, and kept it shut until they had walked into headquarters. Into the office of Charley Mansfield, Chief of Detectives.

  Mansfield, big and red-faced, gave the Louse a hard look. “Well, Lugiani, you don’t mind paying us a little visit?”

  “Like visiting a sewer,” Louie sneered. “The company’s about the same, copper.”

  “Okay. You can hold your nose while I go through these bags,” Cosgrove said evenly. “Just in case you’re carrying any dope.”

  Louie the Louse laughed in relief. “While you plant a rod on me, you mean. Go ahead, Fed. You’ll have one sweet time matching the slugs out of your plant with the lead in Tony Risso.”

  Mansfield started firing questions at the hoodlum.

  “Nuts!” Louie said wearily. “What if this guy in that Stickney joint with Tony did look like me? Tony got his between one and two A.M. according to this paper. Well, I got on a plane in New York at midnight. That’s eleven Chicago time. I didn’t hit Chi until an hour after Tony was bumped off. On top of that, there was only a five minute wait between planes. You ain’t got a thing on me.”

  Cosgrove wasn’t listening. He turned out the contents of the zipper bag first There was a razor, shaving lotion and powder, the soiled shirt Louie had discarded, a stack of handkerchiefs, some stationery, and a pair of towels. He found no dope, and no gun. His gray stare lingered thoughtfully on the other things.

  “It’s air-tight,” Louie the Louse was saying. “You can read it in the paper yourself. The stewardess on that ship out of New York identified my picture.”

  Cosgrove walked across the room and looked steadily into Lugiani’s eyes. Louie flinched a little.

  “Save your breath, Louse,” Cosgrove said. “We know the whole story already. Gertie talked.”

  Louie the Louse suddenly seemed to get smaller inside his clothes. To shrink.

  “She talked,” Cosgrove went on. “She’s been two-timing Wolf, see? She had another guy in her apartment last night. And the guy was a stoolie. Get it? Gertie told this stoolie he didn’t have to be in a hurry about going, because Wolf had put on a wig and was stooging for you on that plane. While you went ahead and bumped off Tony. She told the stoolie how you and him were trading places at the Chicago airport—”

  Louie the Louse was on his feet. Screaming. “Why, that little tramp! I’ll wring her neck!”

  Mansfield poked a button, and two uniformed officers came in.

  “Lock him up,” Mansfield said. “And take off his shoes,” Cosgrove added. “No matter how carefully he wiped them, there’ll be a little dust in the stitching from the lane where Tony was killed. Enough to send him to the chair.”

  They took off his shoes, and Louie the Louse hobbled out in his sock feet, swearing what he’d do when he got his hands on that two-timing blonde frail.

  Chief of Detectives Mansfield stared round-eyed at G-man Cosgrove.

  “Holy smoke, Cosgrove! I never knew that dame had cracked to a stool pigeon.”

  The G-ace smiled slightly. “She didn’t. But I knew as soon as I turned up the Louse’s shirt that he’d spent a lot more time than five minutes between planes in Chicago. He spent several hours there, swatting mosquitoes most of the time. His shirt is thick with them.”

  The chief puzzled. “Yeah? And just how do you tell a Chicago mosquito from any other kind?”

  “That’s easy. They’re colored. Red, green, blue—”

  “What?” Mansfield leaped across the room, stared at the shirt. At the flattened specks of color there.

  “Sure. I swatted a few of them in Chicago last week myself. You see, the Government has had relief workers going through those swamps around the city with paint spray guns. The idea is to check up on how far a mosquito will travel from its home swamp. Judging by the insect rainbow Louse picked up, he must have put in an hour or two driving all over the Forest Preserves.”

  “But why—”

  Cosgrove laughed. “Why would he be riding around like that? It hit me like a flash. He was waiting for something. That plane! With Wolf on
it. I looked at him, and at the pictures of both brothers in the paper. Wolf with a crop of hair would look almost exactly like Louse. And of course Wolf would have to fly back in a private ship—they had one for dope-running, I knew—in order to be there this morning.”

  Mansfield gulped. “You guessed right. And cracked Louie wide open! Only—well, suppose the dame didn’t know what was going on? You took a chance there—”

  “She knew. She packed this zipper bag.” The G-man grinned. “A cheap crook is a crook all the way through, and there’s nothing cheaper than the muggles racket. Either Wolf or the Louse wouldn’t have put towels in the bag—they’d have figured on swiping from that Pullman liner!”

  THE HEAT OF THE MOMENT

  Richard Wormser

  A race-track detective handles his strangest and toughest case in characteristic fashion.

  THIS egg across the table struck me as probably the ugliest man I had ever seen. I said: “There are just two things wrong with your proposition: In the first place, five grand is too much for one week’s work. In the second place, I want to die in bed when I do die. I’m in no hurry to celebrate the event.”

  He blinked his little brown eyes, and attempted a smile that added nothing to his looks. He told me: “There’s nothing dangerous about the proposition.”

  “You can hire a messenger-boy, in that case, for a lot less than five thousand. So long!”

  I got up and walked down the restaurant. I had gone to lunch with him. But it sounded too easy. People expect you to work for any five grand they give you.

  Almost to the door of the restaurant were two city dicks, just finishing their lunch. They might have been there by coincidence, but the place was too expensive for me to use much. They were rolling dice for the check. I leaned over their table, picked up the check—which said four eighty-five—and said: “I’ll pay it if I can’t roll six.” That was giving them six to five, but it was worth it to pump them.