Pulp Crime

by Jerry eBooks

  Whisky jetted up her arm. Mike Breslak shuddered back a step and went down to the floor. Sally stood shivering, panting. He lay still at her feet, the bottle of whisky mostly spilled beside him.

  Faintly through the door she could hear the gaming voices. Unable to think, she picked up her purse and fumbled for a mirror. At sight of her bruised throat and chest, a new pallor blanched her face. Instinctively she pulled her torn dress together and glanced around for the button ripped from her coat. Her hands shook as she patted her hair, fixed her little hat, and used lipstick. Now she dared look down again at the man on the floor. A sharper fear crawled coldly through every bone in her body. Stiffly she knelt.

  “Mike!”

  He seemed not to be breathing. Sally shoved his shoulder, but it resisted merely by its weight. Then her fingers went to feel for his heart. She stared at his face, which was motionless, a brownish waxen coloration to its skin. It seemed to her now that she had known before she knelt down. Mike Breslak was dead.

  IN her two hands, the steel door seemed unusually heavy until it came open with a silent rush against her foot. Sally strove to steady herself. This was Mike’s outer office, no one in it now at eleven o’clock at night.

  “Hello, kid.”

  This was Dorsey, the odd-jobs man for Mike, sitting at the base of a small ladder up the back of the payoff cages. Upon signal, it was Dorsey’s duty to leap up the ladder and man the machine gun back of the velvet curtain there.

  “Hello, Dorsey,” faltered Sally. She hastened past him.

  The casino never seemed so long before, so far to the front door. Some one spoke her name. The smile she gave him was meant to be casual, but Sally felt it a stiff mask on her face.

  She walked past the groups of players and reached the inner doorman, Tom, a narrow-faced man who had formerly been with the Condo gang until they gypped and froze him. Tom’s duty now, was to keep Condo men out at any price.

  “Get the lowdown, sister?” Tom inquired, referring to the suicide of the Bantner girl.

  “Read tomorrow’s paper,” Sally told him. “Mike’s in the clear on it.”

  The door rolled open for her.

  At the middle passage, where strangers were fumbled for weapons, dapper Swede Hanson spoke to her cheerily:

  “Leaving us so early, babe?”

  “Yes. Can’t make any money here,” replied Sally, trying to match his lighthearted tone.

  Hanson reached to click the electric latch. Sally passed by him, fearful lest he observe the condition of her clothing. “Hello, Miss Marsh.”

  This was the new guard at the outer door by the head of the stairway—a dignified, gray-haired man like a country banker—Mike’s front man for bum steers.

  “How do you do?” returned Sally, and she moved by him, aware that he was noticing her dishevelled appearance. He must wonder what had happened. But she was known, and he did not call her back.

  Sally heard her own heels on the stairs, and was grateful for the lack of lights there. Yet her brain told her clearly that she didn’t have a chance. Any moment now, they would find Mike on the floor in there—and remember who had been with him last.

  Two men pressed out of the shadows at the foot of the stairway and came close on each side of her.

  “Keep moving, you little dope—and quiet about it!”

  The breath jerked dryly out of her lungs. Sally stumbled, but they caught her arms. She did not fall until they had thrust her into the door of a sedan at the curb.

  There was a man in the back seat, and she fell across his feet. He grasped her by the shoulder and around the waist, to lift her. The car was moving. Sally glimpsed the butt of an automatic in her companion’s under-arm holster.

  “How’s your old friend, Mike?” he asked quietly.

  Sally was startled, but she forced herself to look at him—a young hard-eyed man. She did not remember him at all, and he was not the type she might forget—strong-featured, with athletic build, a grim mouth, and an inhumanly cold gaze.

  “I don’t know,” replied Sally, fighting for an easier breath. “He’s all right, I guess.”

  At that, the two men in the front seat laughed. Sally looked out the window, that they might not study her shattered nerves.

  “You were with him in his private office,” continued the quiet-voiced man beside her.

  She could not drive a word to her lips in reply. She saw familiar night-streets sliding by as the car wove and slipped through traffic. Like a stranger to herself and the city, she noticed it was time for the theaters to let out. A harsh voice from the front seat jarred her:

  “You look sort of mussed up. Was you drinking with Mike?”

  “He did all the drinking,” Sally answered. “What story am I covering now?”

  “Story is right,” scoffed one of the men. “That’s hot! There’s a piece of news we want you to phone in to your paper.”

  SPEEDING as if all streets were bare, the sedan pressed down Ninth Avenue and the lower West Side.

  “We’re all friends of Mike,” said the harsh voice ahead.

  That brought muffled laughter from the driver. Another minute, with Sally unable to nerve herself for more queries of the man beside her, and the car turned quickly into a parking lot. It rolled on through into a small coal yard flanked by dark wooden buildings.

  “Here comes your story,” said the man beside her, as if nothing in life could greatly interest him. Yet she was aware that his sharp eyes scarcely left her. Experience told her that, of the three, he was the one she must reckon with.

  Now he sprang out of the sedan, turned, and with mock courtesy, took her arm to help her alight. The others left the car. Sally was taken into deeper shadows beside a wooden shed, and a door scraped open. Here, it was very dark until one of them opened a door ahead, into a larger room where a single small light bulb burned.

  A bleary-eyed dock mug with a vicious, unshaven mouth appeared in the doorway with a drawn gun. He grunted and stepped back as the three men and their captive girl-reporter came toward him.

  In the second, dim-lighted room, Sally saw another prisoner, a youth who was tied into a chair, his face bruised and swollen, hair over one eye, the other eye glinting wildly at her. She gasped. This was young Ardi Breslak, Mike’s only son.

  It was the ugly dock mug who grated at the younger man, keeping a grip on Sally’s arm: “You kept the boss waiting!”

  Sally glanced at her immediate captor, saw the distaste that flicked across his face, and followed his eyes to a farther door that was opening. The boss was coming in. Sally saw him and could not understand the odd look on the face of the man beside her. The boss was Joe Condo, slender, olive-skinned, immaculately dressed, younger than his big rival, Mike Breslak. Everyone knew that Condo was the rising power along the East Side. Now he came toward Sally, a faint smirk on his lips.

  “Your paper will thank me for this, Miss Marsh,” he said evenly. “You like to be first. Very well. Here you are a few minutes ahead of the news. Boys, we’ll try the stubborn youngster once more.”

  AT a nod from sleek Condo, the dock mug stooped and pulled off Ardi Breslak’s shoes. The boy, unable to kick, screamed once. A whacking blow across his mouth stilled him abruptly. His head slumped forward, his body supported by its bonds.

  “Young Ardi is about to sell me his interest in his father’s business,” explained Joe Condo to the girl, while his eyes played inquisitively over her bruised throat. “That’s news, isn’t it? No more warfare between the men of Condo and the men of Breslak. All peace and partnership from now on.”

  “I begin to get it,” muttered Sally.

  “Of course you do, a clever newspaper woman. Now Ardi, my young friend, listen to me. Please don’t be difficult. You have no talent for your father’s profession. So you are selling out to me, right now, for one dollar and other good and valuable considerations. Show him where to sign it, boys.”

  “I won’t!” yelled the boy, rearing up, straining his useless
arms. “You can’t make me! My Dad will rub out every damn one of you rats!”

  Words came swiftly to Sally Marsh’s lips. “Condo,” she said. “Are you losing your smart? You can’t make such a partnership stick, and you know it!”

  “I’ll decide that,” said Condo dryly. “Just watch a moment.”

  Sally forgot herself in the tension of this new situation.

  “Oh, I know you can force the kid to sign and sell out,” she said. “But then, what have you got? You know you can’t ever work with Mike and his crowd.”

  “That is a fact,” smiled the oliveskinned man. He turned again to the boy in the chair. “Ardi, I am sure if your father was here, he would advise you to sell to me.”

  “I won’t do it,” persisted the boy, his speech thickened with rage and terror blended. “If Dad was here, he’d cut you down, you dirty scum!”

  “Don’t strike the lad,” interposed Condo to his impatient dock mug. “Listen, Ardi, how would you like to call up your Dad and discuss this with him? I believe, after the call, you will be glad to relinquish your childish rights to the casino.”

  “You don’t dare let me call him!” snarled the boy.

  Condo turned to the man who stood beside Sally and said: “Hart, get his casino on the wire, and hold the telephone so Ardi can hear well.”

  Sally grasped the irony of this. If Ardi blurted out his misery, the chances were he didn’t know where he was; and by the time the phone call was traced, his captors would have him somewhere else, perhaps in the river. As for the chance of his talking with his father—did these men know Mike was dead? Could they possibly know she had killed him?

  It was sickening to watch the wild, unbelieving eagerness of the boy while the telephone connection was being made with the casino. The man called Hart went about it as calmly as if telephoning for the time of day. Ardi yelled into the phone: “Hello, Patty! Is this Patty Dorsey? Is it Tom? Listen, this is Ardi. They’ve got me! Is this Tom? Is this the casino I’m talking to? Let me talk to my Dad!”

  Bending before the youth, Hart held the phone for him and glanced up at Sally. She could not read his chill eyes. Then Ardi suddenly stiffened within his bonds, his mouth open. “What ? Yeah, this is Ardi! What you say, Tom? He’s—”

  Sally could not have moved a muscle, or waiting to hear his inevitable outcry. It came—a choking wail. Again Hart looked around at the girl. Ardi began shouting rapidly into the telephone:

  “She’s here! She’s right in front of me now! Yeah, the one that killed him! Send for her quick! Come and get me! I don’t know exactly where I am, but it’s—”

  AT this point, Joe Condo smoothly fingered down the connection in the telephone cradle. The unkempt dock mug was sneering at Sally, and the two men who had sat in the front seat of the car began to laugh at her. Condo gave her a long, straight look. Then he spoke to the incoherent boy in the chair:

  “If you sign the lease and the bill of sale, I’ll release you, and you can have the fun of handing Miss Marsh over to the police—after she makes a certain call for us.”

  “And what if I don’t do it?” yelped the boy.

  “Then we release the young lady and let you slip into the deep, cold water, Ardi, my boy.”

  “Ardi,” said Sally, with her old-time boldness, “how do you know you were really phoning the casino? They may be faking all this.”

  “Sure, that’s right!” chattered the youth, and he looked over at Condo. “I dare you slobs to let me dial that number!”

  “Very well,” agreed Condo, and Sally saw she was not getting anywhere.

  Condo himself took the telephone for the boy to use, and indicated to Hart that he was to take the girl on into the adjoining room. Mechanically, Sally’s feet obeyed. Hart closed the door after them and faced her in the dingy illumination of a night-bulb.

  “Did you kill Mike?” he asked steadily.

  “It’s all crazy,” declared Sally, her nerve breaking again. “What’s this about a news story?”

  “Very simple. My boss has a quantity of new money, all hand-made and nicely done, a good job. Yesterday he gave Mike his choice—either swap it for good currency and use the phony in his casino, or else sell out to us for one buck and other considerations, the main one of which is the life of his son.”

  “Mike didn’t know Ardi was kidnaped,” said Sally.

  “No, he didn’t,” said Hart. “And now he never will.”

  “Condo feels pretty strong,” said Sally, watching her man.

  “Yes, and with good reason. Mike and his crew can’t hold out against Condo any longer. But tell me, is it true you murdered Mike a few minutes ago?”

  “Why do you ask such nonsense?” cried the girl.

  “Well, Mike is dead. He was hit on the head with a bottle. You were seen to come out of his private office. Your clothes are somewhat the worse for a struggle. I myself saw you go into that office with Mike, alone. I was at the blackjack table. We had this story for you; and my friends were waiting for you, as you know. The telephone call just now says everybody knows you killed him. Is that nonsense?”

  “You don’t talk like a Condo henchman,” ventured Sally, on an off chance.

  “My mistake,” said Hart, smiling faintly. “And I’d never figure you for the type that kills. But there is a fresh bruise below your throat. And Tom the doorman says the police found the button that is missing from your coat. So it’s open and shut, isn’t it? You must have had a good reason to—”

  There was a horrible masculine scream from the next room.

  “Ardi is about to sell out,” said Hart.

  “What are they doing? Burning his bare feet?”

  “Yes. You see, Condo dislikes murder very much. He prefers neater methods, such as a bill of sale—plus a news story in your next edition saying that the redoubtable Mike Breslak has been murdered by an unknown woman, and Ardi the weakling son has sold out all the Breslak interests to Joe Condo. Even if Mike were alive, a newspaper story of his selling out would ruin his prestige forever, wouldn’t it, Miss Marsh? Protection, even if he could pay its increased cost, would be worthless to him, wouldn’t it? Such is the power of the press—and your splendid reputation as a news gatherer.”

  “Who are you?” demanded Sally, staring into his face.

  “Never mind,” he parried quietly. “You’re a most attractive girl—in every respect, if you’ll pardon my saying so—and you’re in a spot. Tell me honestly, did you kill Mike?”

  She tried to think. That was impossible. Ardi screamed again beyond the door. Sally saw only Hart’s steady, cold eyes before her. Experience taught her that some mobsters seem like white men. Hart appeared to be the least hardened of this lot. If she had any chance at all, it was here and now with him—away from Condo and his torture crew. So she held fast to her ebbing nerve and replied:

  “Yes, I did.”

  THE athletic man with the cold eyes made a curious half-gesture toward her. It was incredible that this could be shyness on his part. Sally tried to understand, but unconsciously moved back from him. Then, behind them, the door opened, and the voice of Joe Condo said: “Miss Marsh, I need you to witness the boy’s signature. He’s twenty-two years old and in his right mind—the sole heir of the late Mike Breslak. Then you will telephone your paper.”

  She turned and met his insolent dark eyes.

  “Suppose I do that?” she parried.

  “Do it, and my friends here are prepared to alibi you. They were with you elsewhere at the time Mike met his death. You cannot say that I am not generous—a scoop for your newspaper, an alibi for yourself in a murder inquiry.”

  “A lot of coincidences around here,” remarked Sally. “Suppose I don’t telephone the news?”

  “In that case,” said Condo softly, “we show the signed bill of sale to the other newspapers—have them feature it. Great piece of news. Also, we saw you go racing out of Mike’s casino, your clothes torn; your face red, marks on your throat—simple justice.�
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  Through the open door came the sobbing of young Ardi as Hart led Sally to the telephone.

  “Go ahead, call your paper,” he commanded.

  She glanced up into his face, but found no escape. Dumbly she grasped the instrument. He held it while she dialed her boss. Condo walked up to them.

  “I wouldn’t try anything fancy, Miss Marsh,” he warned. “You realize that your life has very little value left in it.” In a nightmare state, Sally heard her call go through the switchboard of her newspaper, heard the familiar sarcastic snarl of her boss’s voice—just now more precious than heaven, and farther out of reach. She felt the eyes of Condo and his men upon her. The bruises exposed on her chest seemed to blaze with guilty radiance. Suddenly the boy in the chair screamed at her:

  “You killed my Dad!”

  The blow that silenced him was echoed, somehow, by a thudding sound in the forward small office. From the darkness there, she heard a swift splintering of glass. Then the curtained window near Condo’s elbow crashed in. She saw Condo himself fade to one side of the window, wheeling to plow a hand for his gun. Hart stood alert beside her.

  “Reach!” came a command through the broken window. “You’re surrounded! One move, and you’re all getting it. This is the law, Condo.”

  Hart spoke one tense word in Sally’s ear: “Drop!”

  The place went completely dark. Sally dropped to the floor, guessing that Hart had caused the sudden darkness. His hand fumbled to grasp her wrist. He was crawling, and she had to crawl with him.

  Before her ears could register, she saw the pinkish splay-fingers of flame from guns at the window and across the darkness just above her head. The police had come.

  Hart was rudely dragging her after him, below the level hail of slugs that roared and snapped across the room, the rapid fire of a Tommy-gun. Hart yanked on her arm—and she realized why, when a wounded figure collapsed on her. She wriggled free and kept crawling.