Pulp Crime

by Jerry eBooks

  “Queer customer, Blodgett,” I said at the construction shack later. Dade and the mayor were present. Also Parelli, Stroud, Betty and the two watchmen. “He was really public-spirited and sincerely believed a city-owned power plant would be better for Clay Hill than a private one. He was ready to fight for it! But the bridge—that hit his own pocketbook hard. So he meant to wreck it.”

  Gorse snorted contemptuously.

  “Why did he threaten Reliance?” Dade asked me.

  “At first he hoped to scare bidders off this job. Later, when that hadn’t worked, he referred to the first threatening letter in a second. Meant in the end to throw all the blame on Mayor Gorse and to link the first letter with the crime.

  “He stole Parelli’s watch on the ferry. Not to cast final suspicion on him, but to leave the watch in Gorse’s pocket after he’d killed Gorse. At first he intended to dynamite the mayor with the bridge! But Wicker surprised him with his preparations. So he put off dynamiting till tonight and picked on me.”

  “Why did he knock on my window?” Betty asked.

  “He thought I was nearer to catching him than I was. That’s why he tried to kill me last night. He didn’t realize that, until just before he nabbed me, I suspected Gorse and Parelli as much as him.”

  “Just before?” she said. “Did you know that Blodgett was the killer before he captured you on the platform?”

  “Yes, when the bridge lights flashed on. If the mayor was guilty, he’d have prevented that. Because with him lying in wait for me, those lights would have given an advantage to me, not him. The only avenue of escape left to the murderer, after killing me, was the water. There was no boat below so I knew he meant to dive. But Blodgett himself told me that you can’t dive, Parelli. And that left only Blodgett.”

  Mayor Gorse waved his cigar, airily.

  “Next time, wise guy,” he said, “don’t suspect the mayor. I ought to lock you up with Blodgett. Anyhow, he’s through running for mayor. That’s something, eh, Stroud?”

  “Whoever does run,” I predicted, “will beat you very easily.”

  Stroud stared at Gorse, then Parelli.

  “You told!” he screamed, and tried to whip a nasty left hook to Gorse’s jaw. But the Mayor quickly sidestepped the blow. Then I jumped in and quieted the raging banker.

  I faced the Mayor calmly.

  “You’ve been getting bribe money from Stroud,” I snapped at the cowed Gorse, “to pay for your help in keeping his power plant in Clay City. But that’s been hard to prove. Next time don’t take checks on Parelli’s bank for it. If a transcript of the account became public, you’d have difficulty explaining those big items!

  “Parelli brought such a transcript along to use as an axe over Canby, one of your crowd, to make Canby play ball with him on splitting some crop loans. It had you plenty worried and made you and Stroud leave council meeting, go into a huddle with Canby. I forced Parelli’s bag for the transcript today when he left his room. So stop that moonlight saving comedy to capture votes, Gorse. You’re finished politically!”

  After the others left, Betty’s hand squeezed mine.

  “Ed, Mother says thanks for everything,” she said, smiling. “If there’s anything she can do . . . ever—”

  “There is one little thing,” I said. “The bridge won’t need guarding tomorrow night. So if she’d persuade her daughter to give me a date . . .”

  Betty’s hand clamped tighter.

  “I was hoping,” she said, “you’d think of that!”

  TOO TOUGH

  John Graham

  The trouble with some guys is they don’t know the difference between tough and too tough—too smart and just smart enough.

  THE parcel-room clerk in South Station gave Vic Smail a nervous wink at 9:25 o’clock that morning. Then he reached for the travel-stained pigskin kit bag, high on the rack above.

  Vic brushed toast crumbs from his lap, carefully put aside a half-empty container of coffee. He stood up, strolled toward the employees’ entrance, quietly pulled the door shut behind him and rounded briskly into the station corridor.

  Out of the corner of his eye Vic saw the man who was claiming the kit bag. He was tall, about forty, deeply sun-tanned, wearing a pearl-gray polo coat, a gray plaid cap. Vic was sure he had never seen him before.

  The man took the bag from the counter, counted out some change for the clerk and started toward the taxicab runway. Vic moved abreast of him, weaving through a late rush of commuters. Across the broad station floor he caught a glimpse of Ben Girsh, his friend and fellow operative, sauntering into the lunchroom. Vic smiled to himself, glanced back at his quarry. The man in the polo coat appeared to be in no hurry and Vic beat him to the platform doors by a dozen steps. He hesitated, saw the man was still coming and pushed on through.

  The platform was deserted save for the starter, who lounged against a pillar rolling a cigarette. The only cab in sight was on the opposite side of the runway and driverless. The starter looked at Vic, wet the edge of the cigarette paper with his tongue and grinned. He said: “No good, mister. Don’t you read the papers?”

  “What’s up?”

  “Strike.”

  “Again?”

  The starter nodded. “The third tie-up in two months. Can’t say as I blame the boys.” He paused to light the cigarette. “They walked out at six o’clock this morning.”

  Vic looked across the runway. “Whose hack is that?” he asked.

  The starter shrugged. “Independent. Musta got scared off. He drifted in, messed around with what he said was engine trouble. Pretty soon he went inside.”

  The man in the polo coat came toward them, a puzzled frown on his face. “Aren’t there any cabs?” he asked the starter.

  Informed of the taxi strike he said: “Damn nuisance. I suppose I’ll have to walk. How far is the Hotel Everlyn?”

  The starter calculated. “Clifton Avenue at Twenty-third. . . . A good four miles.”

  Vic Smail chimed in. “I’ve a car parked down the street a couple of blocks. If you’d like a lift. . . .?”

  The man’s face was so brown that his blue eyes seemed almost colorless as they studied Vic. He smiled bleakly, said: “I guess not. Thanks just the same.” He turned back to the starter. “Hasn’t that cab a driver?” he asked, pointing across the runway.

  “He’s gone inside,” the starter said. “And it might not be safe. . . .”

  “Nothing is these days.” The man handed the starter a folded bill. “Will you see if you can find him? I’ll wait in the cab.”

  Vic started hurrying along the platform toward the street and his own car. The man in the polo coat was crossing the runway. Vic glanced back and saw him turning the handle of the cab’s door.

  An instant later there was an ear-blistering crash. Vic toppled, landed on hands and knees. The building rocked, the concrete runway cracked and buckled. The air was filled with choking fumes, flying bits of metal, broken glass. A woman’s scream echoed from the corridor of the station. Vic knelt, shaking his head to clear it.

  When he turned he saw a twisted mass of wreckage, the glimmer of flame, a pall of smoke. There was no sign of the man in the polo coat.

  VIC leaned forward on the edge of the desk, mopped his round red face, smoothed back still damp wisps of hair. “That’s all there is to it, boss,” he said. “He was there one minute—then boom!”

  Les Stoddard, head of the Aetna Agency, sat looking out the office window, chin down, unspeaking. He was a little man, almost frail in appearance, with sloping shoulders, delicate hands. His face was solemn, deeply lined, somewhat melancholy. Among the things you first noticed about him were his eyes, deep-set, a smoldering brown, speculative yet kindly—and his hair, snow-white and very thick. He remained motionless, as if listening intently to the ticking of the office clock and Vic Smail’s labored breathing. After a while he shifted slightly and asked in a dull voice: “How about the kit bag?”

  Vic shrugged. “He took it with him.”
Without changing expression, Stoddard said: “That’s one way of blowing fifty thousand bucks.”

  “Fifty thou. . . .!” Vic jerked back. “You mean he had it in the bag?”

  “What did you think was in it? Old newspapers?”

  “I didn’t know,” Vic confessed. “Nothing was said to me, except that I was to relieve Ben Girsh in the checkroom at nine o’clock and watch that bag.”

  Stoddard’s eyes narrowed as he turned from the window to face Vic. “By the way, who was it told you to do that?”

  “Cora told me,” Vic answered.

  “Why?”

  “Cora Winters?”

  “Naturally. I wouldn’t be taking orders from anyone else. She’s your own secretary, and when she phoned. . . .”

  “What time was that?” Stoddard cut in.

  “About one o’clock. I was in bed at the apartment when she called. She said you told her to.”

  “It’s damn funny,” Stoddard mused. “Do you happen to know where she is now?”

  Vic looked puzzled. “No, I don’t know anything about her. Why?”

  “She’s not here is all. Hasn’t shown today. And her home phone doesn’t answer.”

  “Maybe she’s sick,” Vic suggested. Les Stoddard looked back at the window. “I thought of that. Still, she ought to call in.”

  “She might have stopped at a doc’s. Be in later.”

  Stoddard nodded. “We’ll see. Now tell me anything else about the affair at the station that occurs to you.”

  BEN GIRSH came into the office while they were talking. Heavy-set, dark, and usually immaculate, Girsh looked mussed and puffy-eyed from his all-night vigil.

  “Pick up anything?” Stoddard asked.

  Girsh shook his head. “I didn’t have a basket.”

  “How about the cops?”

  “It was a job for the fire department. They needed a hose to clean up that mess.”

  “I don’t get it,” Vic Smail said. “Particularly since he had all that dough in the bag. With robbery for a motive—”

  Stoddard silenced him with a gesture. “There’s more to this than robbery.” He got to his feet, paced the office slowly. “I’m going to let you mugs in on it, although I admit I don’t want to and will probably regret it. I planned to manage this case alone. It needs special handling and care. No rough stuff will do. And knowing you two and your tactics . . .”

  Vic, fidgeting, interjected: “Never mind the preaching, boss. What’s up?”

  “It’s got to be kept dead quiet,” Stoddard warned. “Benton Meade, president of the Gray Stripe Cab Company, was snatched day before yesterday.”

  He paused to let this information sink in, noting-the astonishment on the faces of Vic Smail and Ben Girsh.

  “Meade was on the way home from his office in a limousine,” Stoddard resumed. “Someone slugged the chauffeur at a traffic-light stop, disappeared with Meade and the car. The chauffeur came to in a ditch about eight miles out of town. He reported to no one but the family. They came straight to me.

  “You probably can guess why we have to keep the hush on the whole business. Meade had a strike impending—it’s here today—the third in a row. Maybe the strikers had something to do with this job. On the other hand, maybe they didn’t. But it’s the wrong kind of news to get circulated at a time like this. That’s why it’s a case that has to be handled with kid gloves.

  “The chauffeur says he didn’t see anyone. He got smacked down before he had a chance to turn his head. The limousine was abandoned that night down along the waterfront. The cops picked it up—but only as a stolen car. It’s back in the Meade garage. Naturally, the family’s in terrible shape. Meade’s wife and daughter are on the verge of collapse. But they’re dead game, and in full accord with my ideas for handling the case.

  “Yesterday they got a note from the kidnapers, who demanded fifty grand cash, directed them to put the money in a bag and have the chauffeur check it at South Station. There was the usual stuff about no cops and no new bills. Then—and here’s the joker—the check for the bag was to be turned over by the family to someone from out of town—anyone they wanted to pick as long as he was a stranger here—who was to claim the bag, get a cab at the station and start for the Hotel Everlyn.”

  Vic remarked: “Now I see why the guy didn’t want a lift.”

  “You mean,” Ben Girsh demanded, “that you offered him one?”

  “Sure. How was I to know. . . .?”

  “The note stated further,” Stoddard went on, “that the man in the cab would be stopped enroute to the hotel, relieved of the bag and allowed to go his way unmolested. And that was all.”

  “Jeeze!” Vic exploded. “That’s enough!”

  “You’d think so,” Stoddard agreed, “but apparently the kidnapers don’t. Now it’s murder in broad daylight, fifty grand blown up and Meade still missing.” He glanced at the office clock. “Come to think of it, so is Cora.”

  “What’s this?” Girsh inquired.

  “She must have exhausted herself waking up Vic on the telephone in the middle of the night,” Stoddard said. “Incidentally, Vic, I didn’t tell her to call you.”

  “You didn’t!” Vic Smail sat up again, his eyes widening with surprise.

  “Don’t be alarmed. Stranger things have happened—and may very well continue to happen.” Stoddard reached for his misshappen felt hat on a wall hook. “I’m going out for a talk with the Meade family. There’s a couple of angles to this. . . .”

  Vic said: “How about strike headquarters, boss? I know those union birds from the last tangle.”

  “Not a bad idea,” Stoddard agreed, “if you’ll keep out of trouble and not tip your hand. And, Ben, much as you need sleep, I’m afraid you’ll have to keep the office open for a while.

  “What the hell ails Cora?” Girsh grumbled.

  “You might try to find out,” Stoddard told him. “It’ll help you keep out of trouble.” He pushed the telephone across the desk and walked out quickly.

  VIC shouldered his way through a crowd of idle hackmen on the sidewalk in front of strike headquarters. It was a bad-tempered crowd, hard-eyed and ominously quiet. Vic half expected a rap on the head as he made his way toward the stairs of the loft building. All he got was a couple of surly looks.

  The stairs were deserted as was the meeting-room above. A gray light filtered through the dirty windows. Newspapers and cigarette butts littered the bare floor. Vic crossed to a hallway at the back of the room, pushed open a door marked Private.

  Ed Holohan, red-headed, thick-necked business agent of the hackmen’s union, started up belligerently.

  “Can’t you read, you————!”

  “Easy, Ed,” Vic counseled. “Your blood pressure.” He moved into the room, faced Holohan across the desk. “Just a social call. I dropped in to see how you and the boys are doing.”

  Holohan eyed him coldly during a long pause. Finally he said: “Drop out, Vic. On your way. What we’re doing is none of your business.”

  Vic shrugged goodnaturedly and seated himself on the desk-edge. “You’d rather have me than the law, wouldn’t you?” he asked.

  “No!” was the prompt reply. “We got nothing to be afraid of unless you’re stooling for the fleet-owners again.”

  “You’ve got me wrong, Ed.”

  “Not this time. You helped to glom the last strike for us.”

  “Don’t be childish. You didn’t have the strength to swing it last time. I saw that and said so. If that was spoiling your strike . . . O.K., I did it.”

  “We got the strength this time! There won’t be a hack on the streets until the employers meet our demands! Now run out and peddle that around!”

  “Sure I will . . . if it’s true. You guys deserve a break.”

  “Never mind the sob stuff. We’re making our own breaks this time. We’ve got them on the run. Benton Meade’s so scared he won’t even see us.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “I
’ve tried for two days to fix a conference. His office is stalling. They say he’s busy.” Holohan laughed harshly. “I’d like to know what doing!”

  “So would I,” said Vic, glancing sharply across the desk.

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing.” Vic riffled the pages of a telephone book, pushed it away. “Maybe he’s lining up some new drivers.” Holohan’s jaw shot out, his color mounted. “Let him!” he yelled. “And if you were sent to tell me that, you take back word that we know what to do with scab drivers when they hit the street!”

  “My! My! You wouldn’t resort to violence, would you, Ed?”

  “You figure it out. If Meade is running in scabs—yeah, and private dicks—we’ll show him what fight means!”

  Vic nodded, then asked: “Who’s running in the bombers?”

  Holohan barked angrily: “You tell me!”

  “I’m asking you,” Vic persisted.

  “Anything else you’d like to know?”

  Vic straightened, got to his feet. “There is,” he said, “and you’ve got all the answers.”

  “So what?”

  “So you’d better start telling me before I start beating them out of you.”

  “Why, you————!” Holohan came up with an obscene snarl, flinging over the heavy desk as if it were cardboard. Vic jumped back, snapping the door lock with one hand, whipping out his automatic with the other. Holohan stood rooted, tense, his eyes on the gun.

  Vic said: “If you’re not heeled, Ed, we’ll do it this way.” He stepped forward, tossing the automatic into a wastebasket in the corner of the room. His left fist lashed out, crashed Holohan’s jaw.

  THE big red-head went back a step, then hunched his shoulders, charged. Vic poked another hard left to Holohan’s nose. Blood spurted. Holohan came on, hurling ponderous blows. Vic ducked and sidestepped, shooting short punches at his opponent’s head. Suddenly Holohan closed, smothered him in a bear-like grip. Together they thudded to the floor.

  Holohan freed one arm, clubbed at Vic’s face. Vic covered, gouging with his elbows. He squirmed desperately as Holohan reached for the wastebasket. He saw the man’s fingers claw at the edge, heard the basket topple. With a quick twist he came up, pinioning Holohan’s outstretched arm beneath his knee. As Holohan rolled, Vic rolled with him, locking his other leg around the trapped arm, putting on the pressure with both hands.