Pulp Crime

by Jerry eBooks

  “Sure, Brad.” Bulldog-jowls reached in and removed the sedan’s ignition keys. Bradshaw pocketed the .32 from the glove compartment. Martha stared at him hotly. “What do you want?”

  He ignored her, except for the automatic trained on her face. He spoke to Jim. “You wouldn’t want anything to happen to her, would you now?”

  Jim’s fingers were white on the steering wheel. He kept his voice carefully free of inflection. “What do you want—?”

  “There’s a little matter of a key. A key you lifted from a dead man two years ago, pal. It belongs to us. We want it.”

  Martha gasped, “What in the world are they talking about, Jim?”

  He shook his head woodenly. “Not now, honey. Th’ less you know about this, the better off you’ll be.”

  Bradshaw’s tooth was showing again. “Smart boy!” he applauded. “Now—the key.”

  Jim laughed. “You’ll have to dive for it, I guess. Because it’s still in that dead man’s pocket.”

  Bradshaw shook his head. “Down there in the river? Oh, yes, we know how you got rid of the body. Blackie was hiding in the bushes. He heard the splash and guessed what must have happened. But you wouldn’t overlook a thing like that key. You knew what it was worth. Blackie heard Lefty mention it to you in the car.”

  Lefty? That must be the. name they’d known Link by. Jim shrugged tiredly. “Just the same, it’s still in his pocket. All I wanted wag to get rid of his body and beat it. What good would the key do me? I didn’t know what bank it came from. I didn’t want any part of it—after what happened.”

  Bradshaw studied him enigmatically for a moment. At last he nodded. “That could be just the truth,” he mused. “Anyway, there’s a way to find out. You know where you scuttled the coupe. If the key was inside it in Lefty’s pocket, it’ll still be there. We’ll take you down right now and let you dive for it. “

  “But the key’ll just be a lump of rust by now!”

  “Not that key. It was plated—rust proof.”

  “Hell, I couldn’t even find the car, much less the key, down there in all that water after dark!”

  Bradshaw grinned frostily. “That’s your worry. Because If you don’t find it, we’ll figure you’re holding out—that you glommed the key before you ditched the body. And that would be just too bad. We don’t like guys who hold out on us. We don’t even like their wives.”® He waggled the automatic meaningfully at Martha. She glared back, bewildered but defiant.

  Jim’s forehead beaded with sweat. “I’ll have to have some kind of light!” he protested.

  Bradshaw considered. “We got a waterproof flashlight in the roadster. Get it, Potts.” Potts did. “Okay, let’s go.”

  He and the pockmarked man climbed into the back seat, Bradshaw keeping the automatic angled at Martha’s neck. Pott’s handed Jim the car keys. Numbly, Jim headed the sedan toward the river.

  Potts and Bradshaw had already killed twice to get that key. And they’d kill again, after they got it—to keep himself and Martha from being witnesses against them later. His only chance was to stall—keep diving as though he were trying to help them, and pray for a break.

  . . . He parked at a point near where the coupe had gone down.

  POTTS and Bradshaw got oat and sandwiched Martha between them. Jim led the way miserably through willow clumps to a rocky ledge overlooking the channel. There he stripped to his shorts. With Potts’ flashlight in his hand, he let himself into the black oily water.

  He was lucky—too lucky. On his third surface dive, he touched the coupe’s rusty top scarcely four feet below water level. He tried not to show it when he came up for air. But Bradshaw must have guessed the truth.

  “One more try, pal,” he warned. “We haven’t got all night. If you don’t make it this time, it’s curtains.” The pockmarked face was rigid, the soft voice brittle.

  Jim cursed. “Okay, so I found the coupe. It’s on its side. But the damned door’s rusted shut. I’ve been trying the last two times to get it open. But it won’t budge. Maybe, if I had some help, two of us could do it. But a fat lot of help I’ll get from you guys! You’d rather let the key go entirely, than get your feet wet. So go ahead—shoot! I give up!”

  He waited, pulses pounding, to see the reaction. He wasn’t disappointed. Bradshaw’s eyes swung speculatively to Potts.

  “Let’s not be hasty, pal,” he called. “If you’re really that close, Potts’ll help you. Won’t you, Pottsy?”

  The short man’s black eyes flickered. “You help him, Brad,” he protested. “You can swim better’n me.”

  “Now, Pottsy—” Bradshaw’s voice was cajoling, but the gun he swung to cover both his partner and Martha made his words a command. Pott’s jowls tightened, but he nodded sullenly and shucked off shoes, shirt and pants. “I’ll take the light.”

  Jim handed it to him. “Jump in right here.” He marked the spot on the overhanging ledge with his toe. “Then, when you get down, turn right. The coupe’s about two yards over. Dive deep—straight down. You’ll have to get down at least ten feet to reach the door handle.”

  Potts shook his head, thrusting the flashlight into the band of his shorts. “Uh-uh, pal. You go first.”

  Jim nodded and inhaled prodigiously. He dived so that his body started straight down, but flattened out as soon as it touched the water. He felt the sunken coupe top scrape his belly directly beneath the spot where he’d told Potts to aim. He scissored forward, grasped the ledge above the windshield, and waited.

  He heard the splash above, felt the car rock as Potts’ plummeting head thudded into it. He grinned. Satisfied by Jim’s apparent example, Potts had followed instructions implicity. If the impact hadn’t knocked him completely out, at least it had stunned him enough to keep him out of action for awhile—even if he should reach the surface before he drowned.

  Jim breast-stroked up, broke water and pulled himself panting up the bank. Bradshaw regarded him ominously from behind Martha. “Where’s Potts?”

  Jim shook his head. “Dived too deep, I guess. And I couldn’t find him down there in all that blackness. But I got the key!”

  He opened his outstretched palm, let the thin bright piece of metal glisten beneath the moon.

  Bradshaw’s eyes gleamed, too. Like new dimes in the half-light. “Fine, pal! Too bad about Potts. But things like that happen.” He was obviously glad not to have to split the take—if he’d ever intended to. “Just give me the key, and we’ll call it quits.”

  Again Jim’s head shook. “Not till you release Martha and give her a chance to get away.”

  He closed his fingers over the key and drew back his arm like a quarterback about to rifle a pass. He nodded toward the water. “Sure, you can shoot us both. But not before I could throw this thing into the river again. You’d never find it, then. Not without Lefty’s body as a marker.”

  Bradshaw’s eyes dulled venomously. “Wait a minute, pal,” he purred. “We can make a deal. Hell, it’s the key that’s important—not you kids. Just promise not to mention this to the cops, and I’ll let you go right now. You can toss the key down there on the sand between us.”

  He began to inch sideways, furtively, as he talked, jockeying for position, Jim realized. Bradshaw was hoping to nail him dead center with a surprise shot, before he could get the key away.

  “Hold it!” Jim barked. “One more move and I toss this thing!”

  Jim laughed harshly. “You’d better let her go, Bradshaw. You won’t want to stay around here long. Cops have ways of tracing hit-run cars. And your roadster’s tire marks were on Blackie Mallin’s clothes.”

  Bradshaw sneered. “Those hick cops’ll never think about that. Besides, I’ll be gone by dawn, if you’ll only trust me.”

  Things had reached an impasse. Plainly, Bradshaw wanted to make no move which might lose him that key. But neither did he want to leave any live witnesses behind him. They stood there, glaring at each other m the moonlight, each waiting for the other to break first, f
or what seemed a long time. Then a muffled curse sounded somewhere off in die darkness.

  Potts! Somehow the dark man must have managed to struggle ashore!

  “You’d better call your pal off, too,” Jim warned. “I’ll hear him sneaking up behind me long before he can grab my pitching arm.”

  Bradshaw remained silent, poised and immobile as a statue, at Martha’s shoulder. A twig snapped to the right, and Jim’s arm tensed for the throw.

  “Hold it, Potts!” Bradshaw yelled suddenly. “We’ll figure out some other way!”

  But it wasn’t Potts that answered. The voice belonged to a wizened little man in jeans. “Suppose you hold it, stranger!” it snapped. “Ever’thing but the gun. You’d best drop that.”

  Bradshaw’s eyes jerked frantically as he hesitated. That was his mistake. A squirrel gun barked from a nearby thicket, and he tumbled back, the automatic roaring futilely at the sky. He twisted to the sand, twitched once, and lay still, blood oozing from a hole beside his ear.

  JIM stumbled forward circled Martha in his arms to still her trembling. Billy Beam stepped from the thicket, black eyes snapping. “What’s goin’ on here anyhow?” he demanded.

  Jim grinned shakily. “You showed up just in time, oldtimer,” he countered. “How’d you find us?”

  Billy patted the rifle in his hand proudly. “I figgered something was wrong when I finally called the sheriff myself and found out you hadn’t reported that dead blind man. So when I come across your car parked yonder on the road, as I was drivin’ home afterwards, I decided to get my old Winchester outa the tool kit and scout around a little. I heard your voices and snuck up real quiet till I c’d see that skunk gettin’ ready to shoot ye. What’d he want, anyhow?”

  Jim sighed and told him, beginning with that night two years ago but identifying Link only as “Lefty,” a soldier he had met before going overseas.

  “I suppose it was crazy, hiding his body that way,” he finished. “But I was thinking what it would do to his family if the truth came out. They’d been mighty good to me on some of my furloughs when I couldn’t come clear home. They didn’t know he’d been one of the Mallin gang before he was drafted. And he admitted killing Buck Mallin for the key, after he got drunk that day while on leave. I didn’t see what good it would do, saddling his family with the bad name of a murderer, now that he was already dead.”

  Billy seemed to understand. He nodded judiciously. “We c’n tell the sheriff this Bradshaw was just tryin’ to hold you up and kidnap Martha when I come along and shot him,” he mused. “But what about the other one, Jim—that Potts? You reckon he got away?” Jim shook his head. “His skull hit that coupe top mighty hard,” he said soberly. “His body’ll probably turn up somewhere downstream in a day or so.”

  Billy thought about that. “Well, there ain’t no way they can tie him to you. We’ll let ’em think he just died in a swimmin’ accident—which-he did. . . . What I can’t understand is how in tarnation you managed to find that key they wanted, down there in all that water after dark.”

  Jim grinned. “I didn’t The key I let Bradshaw catch a glimpse of came from my own key ring. I slipped it off while I was undressing and held it between my fingers until I needed it. I figured that if they wanted a key so bad, it might be smart to have one handy to show ’em in case worse came to worst!”

  NOW I LAY ME DOWN TO DIE

  Anthony Tompkins

  A Keen-Eyed Hospital Orderly Named Bill Matches Wits with a Diabolical Murderer!

  CHAPTER I

  Without Money

  TWO men stepped into the seventh floor room of General Hospital. They were prosperous-looking men and one had a large package under his arm.

  “Orderly!” he called.

  The white-clad attendant, who occupied a chair beside the bed, looked around and jumped to his feet.

  “Yes, sir,” he said.

  “How is the patient?” one of the two men asked, with a smile.

  “Doing fairly well, sir,” the orderly advised. He dropped his voice as he stepped up to the visitors. “She has been here a week now and there should have been more of an improvement. Poor kid. She isn’t suffering any longer from that bump on the head, but she’s still frightened half to death. Her memory is about the same, which means she has none.”

  The younger of the two visitors shook his head sadly. “Whatever frightened her must have been something pretty ghastly. By the way, my friend is Larry Larkin. He’s in business with my uncle who is the patient in the next room. I’m Tom Girard, in case you have forgotten and I think your name is—”

  “Bill,” the orderly said, and smiled.

  He was a tall, well-built man. There was gray in his temples and he had a firm chin and clear brown eyes.

  “Just Bill, Mr. Girard,” he repeated. “How is your uncle, by the way? I helped to check him in last night and today, I understand, they kept him quite busy with blood tests, X-rays and all the rest of the routine.

  Girard sighed deeply. “He’s none too well. They diagnosed his trouble today. They’re going to operate on him in the morning. I was called back to town. Larkin made all the arrangements when the old boy became ill.” The orderly stepped aside and the two men walked over to the bed. On it lay a tow-headed girl about eight years old. Her eyes were glued on the big package which Tom Girard carried, and which he extended toward her.

  “Something for you, Susie,” Girard smiled. “For being a good little girl and doing as the doctors say.”

  She took the box, but didn’t try to open it. Instead, she just stared at the two men, then looked at the orderly who nodded and winked. Susie at once went to work on the cord, raised the lid of the box and lifted out a large doll. It was easily worth thirty or forty dollars, and it quite took her breath away.

  “Like it, Susie?” Larry Larkin asked. “I helped pick it out.”

  “I love it.” Susie held the doll close. “Thank you very much. I won’t mind what the doctors do to me now. It’s such a nice a doll.”

  “Almost as big as you are,” Larkin chuckled. “But not nearly as pretty.”

  GIRARD walked over to the door where the orderly waited.

  “Larkin told me a little about that girl,” he said, “but I had no idea it was this bad. What in the world happened to her?”

  “No one is certain,” Bill replied. “She was found, unconscious, near the river a week ago. Quite apparently she had been struck on the head, but before that she must have been horribly frightened. When she regained consciousness, she couldn’t remember what happened, but by the stark horror in her eyes you could tell it must have been bad.”

  “Hitting a child like that,” Girard grunted. “Whoever did it ought to cut rock for about ten years. Has she been identified?”

  “Oh, yes,” Bill replied. “The Missing Persons Bureau did a neat job on that. Susie’s parents are hard-working people employed in a war plant. They haven’t the remotest idea of what happened to her. They work nights and Susie often played near the piers after dark, though she had been warned not to . . . Oh say, since you and Mr. Girard are here, I think I’ll go down and get a tray of medicines. Susie has a mild opiate scheduled. She doesn’t sleep. I imagine that somewhere, far back in her mind, are traces of whatever ghastly experience she went through. It keeps her awake.”

  Bill went to the elevators, rode down to the pharmacy and met another orderly who was just coming out, carrying a tray of medicines. Two loaded hypodermic needles were on the tray.

  “Hi, Bill,” he said. “This is your tray. I was just going to take it up. Hypo labeled Number One is for that kid. Number Two is for Mr. John MacKenzie, next door.”

  “Thanks, Cooper,” Bill said.

  He didn’t like this pimply-faced youth much. Though he had nothing definite against him except for Cooper’s shifty expression and his incessant wise-cracking.

  Back on the seventh floor, Bill encountered the resident physician, who was making his rounds. They entered the room where Joh
n MacKenzie lay. MacKenzie was a man of about sixty, but with the constitution of a man much younger. He nodded curtly when the two men entered.

  “What kind of stuff do I get now?” he complained. “I’ve been tapped, jabbed, dosed and photographed so much I feel like a laboratory specimen.”

  The resident doctor was young and confident. “Just a mild opiate, Mr. MacKenzie. To relax you a bit for the operation in the morning. Bill, alcohol swab.”

  Bill soaked a bit of cotton in alcohol, handed it to the doctor, then picked up Hypo Number Two. He passed this over. The doctor made a deft insertion and shot the plunger home. There was some good-natured kidding back and forth, then they left.

  Larkin and Girard were saying good-by to Susie. Bill closed the door behind them. Susie took her shot cheerfully, snuggled closer to her big doll and closed her eyes.

  Bill and the resident doctor went into the hallway.

  “Doc, do you believe that girl will recover her memory?” Bill asked.

  “Of course,” the doctor nodded. “Children her age can be frightened into a shock which resembles amnesia and probably is true amnesia, but they always come out of it. She’ll recover any day now, and probably give up all the details of whatever frightened her almost to death. Just the same, keep an eye on her. I’ll give the night nurse definite instructions. And be sure MacKenzie goes to sleep. I ordered a pretty stiff shot for him, but some of those burly boys resist the stuff.”

  “I’ll look in later,” Bill said. “Thanks for everything—about Susie, I mean. I like the kid. Worry about her too. You see, I keep wondering if the people who scared her are afraid she will recover and talk. Whatever she witnessed must have been bad. Perhaps a murder. Those people might not want her to get better . . . Oh, go ahead and chuckle. It’s probably foolish enough to rate a laugh.”