by Jerry eBooks
BY ALL the averages, Steve wouldn’t be that lucky. He couldn’t be. To confront the full force of the Agricola mob would probably mean sacrificing his life—but that was better than standing here helplessly, doing nothing. Badge or no badge, he was still a cop, and would always be a cop. And a cop had to follow the course of duty regardless of risk. For Mike Devlin’s sake, for the honor of the Devlin name and the reputation of the police department, he had no other choice.
He sprang to the door, raced along the corridor, caught an elevator going down. By the time he reached the street he could hear the moan of sirens, an ululant chorus of them as prowl cars and motorcycles converged on the harbor section from every part of the city. Scrambling into his own coupe, Steve Devlin headed in the opposite direction. He roared toward Hespera Street.
Hespera was a short byway just off the main stem, practically a cul-de-sac, lined on either side with jewelry shops. Sweating with the knowledge of what lay ahead, Devlin kept his accelerator cramped against the floorboard. Then, brakes screaming, he double-parked at the Hespera intersection, drew his gun and bounced to the street. He ran forward.
Shots sounded. Sudden shouts and yells rose stridently above the sporadic gunfire. Then Steve Devlin saw something that rooted him in his tracks.
It was like a movie montage, a kaleidoscope of separate and individual scenes merging into one fantastic, implausible picture: a chaotic merger of activity against the Hespera Street backdrop. From store after store, men were emerging with their hands held high while other men followed them, prodding them with revolvers. The armed men were plainclothes cops. Devlin recognized many of them. But why were they here in such numbers? How had they been diverted from the fake general alarm that should have sent them to the harbor area? And how had they managed to stake out in time to nab the Agricola mobsters?
That the arrested men were Agricola’s hoods there could be little doubt. It was equally plain that the police had laid a trap, and had been ready and waiting for the raid to start. As if to prove this, a leathery oldster was standing in the middle of the street, thunderously calling orders. He was Captain Sam Blaine, obviously in charge of the operation and directing it as a general would direct his troops on a battlefield.
Then, even as Devlin’s bewildered eyes took in the scene, two thugs came bursting from an alley, flung themselves into a sedan whose motor was running. The sedan leaped forward like a missile hurled out of a catapult—and it was heading straight for Blaine.
There was no time to shout a warning. Steve Devlin raised his gun, fired at the sedan’s right front tire and scored a clean hit. The tire blew out and the car lurched sickeningly, careened around and missed Blaine with only inches to spare. Then it rammed over the far curb and smashed into a metal street light standard. Devlin sprinted to it, ready to shoot again if its occupants tried a getaway.
They were beyond that. They lay inert in the sedan’s wreckage, either dead or gravely injured. Then Devlin turned—and found Sam Blaine staring at him.
“Thanks, Joe Campus,” the older man said in a curiously quiet voice. “But what the devil are you doing here?”
“I’m a cop. I belong here. When I found out the raid was going to be pulled, I had to come. I wanted to make up for the phony radio alarm my father put on the air. I didn’t know you’d have special details on the job. I thought the whole force was being lured down to the harbor district.”
“And you actually figured to go up against the heist mob all by yourself?” Blaine observed softly. “You didn’t know we had set a trap? You thought your father had turned crooked because of Nick Agricola’s blackmail threats? You fool! You crazy, heroic young fool!”
DEVLIN blinked at him. “So you knew about Agricola threatening my father? You knew it all the time.”
“Certainly I knew it. He told me right away. And as far as his past is concerned, I knew that, too. I’ve known it for years. He made a clean breast of it shortly after he joined the force. It had been a bum rap to start with, and it was cleared up long before you were born. His record was wiped clean. But Agricola didn’t know that. He tried to pull a fast one, and we pretended to let him get away with it.”
“But—but why?”
“Because, you idiot, it was our one big chance to trap his entire organization and to destroy it once and for all.” Blaine peered up and down Hespera Street. “And we’ve done it. We’ve nabbed every last one of them. All but Agricola himself, and he’s next. Come on. You can be with me when I make the pinch.” He tugged Steve toward an official car. “You deserve to be in on the clean-up, lad. You’ve earned it.” Steve didn’t answer that. He didn’t say anything until he and Blaine walked into the offices of the fake Variety Land Development firm. Then he indicated the wounded Larry O’Conner bound to a chair in the outer office, and he showed Blaine the body of Nick Agricola.
“The job’s already done,” Steve Devlin said grimly.
Blaine seemed stunned. For a moment he was wordless. But the red-haired O’Conner started yelling as he squirmed against the wires that fettered him.
“Killer!” he squalled at Devlin. “You cold-blooded murderer!”
Devlin eyed the lanky, freckled man. “No, O’Conner. I’m not Agricola’s murderer. You are!”
“What?”
“I admit I came here to kill him. I even fired my gun, an instant before you slugged me. For a little while after I came to, I thought I had shot him. But there were two things wrong with the picture—two things that finally registered, after my mind began working. First, I had been standing directly in front of Agricola when I pulled my trigger but the bullet that killed him went in the side of his head, over his right ear. Mine would have entered his forehead, if it had hit him at all. And, secondly, there was a splintered place on the front edge of his desk that wasn’t there when I entered his office.”
“Meaning what?” the wounded man blustered.
“Meaning that my shot went straight downward and chewed into the desk. The shot that killed Agricola was fired after I’d been knocked unconscious. It was fired by somebody Nick trusted, somebody he allowed to get around to his right side. You!”
O’Conner’s eyes showed fear. “Now listen—”
“You murdered him on the spur of the moment,” Devlin said inexorably. “You saw a chance to knock him off and pin it on me. I heard you telling one of the mob you’d probably reorganize the gang and take over its leadership later. That was your motive for murder. That, and greed for a bigger share of the jewelry loot.” He turned to Blaine. “Okay, Captain. He’s all yours now. I can’t make an arrest. I’m only a civilian.”
Blaine’s tough, leathery face softened. “Like rot you’re only a civilian,” he said gently. “Remind me to fasten your badge back on you before I take you to your old man and tell him how you helped wipe out Agricola and his gang. I want Mike to know it’s been a right fine day for the Devlins.”
YOU NEVER CAN TELL
Jack Kofoed
Gambler Slim Danzig never imagined the night would come when one nickel would mean everything to him!
WHEN Slim Danzig came out of the apartment house, Park Avenue was a locust swarm of automobiles, and the spring night held a touch of rain that mingled with the smell of gasoline and oil.
A dirty woman, with a tray of violets that were faded and almost as shabby as she, whined at him. Slim gave her half a dollar. He handed a bill to a flat-nosed, shuffling man, who had once been a great fighter, but was punch drunk now.
A taxi had pulled out of the rank and was waiting in front of the marquee.
“Hello, sweetheart,” the hackie said.
“Still handin’ out dough, huh? What’s your middle name, anyway—Jock Whitney?”
“It’s only money,” the thin man grinned. “I never saw the time I couldn’t put my mitts on all I needed. How about takin’ me to the Greek’s in Jackson Heights?”
The taxi jockey shrugged his shoulders.
“Why not? But ain’t you a
fraid to leave that dame of yours alone? If I had a cookie like her, you couldn’t chase me out of the house.”
Chauffeurs are all wise guys, Slim said to himself. Everybody knows Millie went for me after they handed Angelo Morelli a forty-year stretch in Dannemora. What of it? Millie Ovitt ain’t the kind to sit around for ten minutes, let alone forty years, waiting for anybody. She’s pretty and young and alive. Why should that ugly ape, Morelli, figure she was hog-tied to him for life? And, doesn’t this free wheeling dope know Dannemora is a pretty tough stir to break out of? As long as Morelli is behind bars, we haven’t a thing to worry about.
“I’m afraid of nothin’,” Slim said. “How about less lip and more foot on the accelerator?”
“It ain’t no skin off my nose,” the cabbie answered. He slid the car into the stream of traffic. “For your sake, I hope Morelli never gets a chance to take a walk. He’s too handy with a gun to argue with.”
The taxi creaked up Park Avenue and turned right at Fifty-ninth Street, toward the approach of the Queensboro bridge. Slim could feel the bulge eleven thousand dollars made in his coat pocket. The Greek ran the biggest crap game in the five boroughs, and Danzig had a hunch he was going to crack it. He would need all he could get, because Millie seemed to have an idea Schiaparelli’s and Cartier’s were five and dime stores. But Morelli had given her everything she wanted when he was running the rackets, and Slim didn’t want anybody making odious comparisons. So if he had to knock his brains out making money, that was all right with him. Millie was a good kid.
“Here’s the Greek’s,” said the taxi jockey after awhile. “You want I should wait, or come back for you?”
Slim handed him a twenty-dollar bill. He liked to give away money. It made him feel like a big shot.
“Don’t bother, bub. I might be here all night, and it would be a pity to make you lose your beauty sleep.”
HE WATCHED the cab grind toward Manhattan, then turned into the Greek’s. There were no lookouts, or nonsense like that. Slim just went through a shabby cigar store and into a back room where there were two crap tables surrounded by men. The air smelled stale, and on the walls were pictures of Nora Bayes, Lillian Lorraine, and a dame who must have been Miss Legs of 1911. They were fly-specked and dirty.
The Greek was at the front table. He was pot-bellied, and had a black stubble on his jowls. Since he had been a friend of Morelli’s, he didn’t like Danzig, but he never allowed personalities to interfere with business.
He said, “Hello,” in a slurred voice, and turned back to the table. No pretense about the Greek. You knew where you stood with him, and not many people stood well. The clock on the wall noted the time to be eight minutes past eleven.
With the dice cuddled in his palm, Slim forgot Millie and Morelli and everything else. This was his trade, and he loved it. At first everything went his way. By a little past midnight he was sixty grand ahead. That was pretty good. If he picked up and left, there might be dirty looks, but nobody would do anything about it. A man has a right to run his own business the way he sees fit. But, Slim was hot with the feeling that this was his night and nothing could go wrong. When he hit one hundred thousand, he might go back to Park Avenue. It would be plain silly to walk out when luck was running with him.
Nothing, good or bad, lasts indefinitely. The tide began to turn. Then, stubbornly, the thin man began to press his luck. That was silly, and Slim knew it. The sixty dropped to forty, to twenty, to ten. By fourteen minutes past four all he had left of the roll he had brought into the Greek’s were a hundred dollar bill and a nickel.
The Greek picked up the ivories and looked at Slim with his oblique, evil glance.
“Morelli’d like to watch this,” he said. “There’s two grand open. Who wants any part of it?”
Well, a hundred dollars was worth just about as much to Slim as a pair of gum boots to a stripteaser. Nothing to bother about, of course. He’d get a stake and build up another pile. That was the way he lived. He never knew a time when he couldn’t get money enough for his needs.
“I’ll take a yard,” he said, tossing his last bill on the table.
The Greek sneered as much as a man with lips as fat as his could sneer. His greasy skin was damp with perspiration. Obviously he was enjoying himself.
“Right down where you belong, hey Slim?”
He rattled the dice, splayed them on the table. They came seven. The Greek picked up the crumpled wad of bills.
“Get out,” he said. “I don’t like you when you got money. I don’t want no part of you now. Take the air, crumb!”
“Wait a minute,” Danzig broke in. “It’s none of your business if Millie and I run around together. Morelli earned the jolt they gave him, and Millie would’ve been nuts to wait until she was an old bag for him to get out.”
The Greek didn’t answer. He swung a short left hook to Slim’s face, and Slim went down on his knees. Knuckles cut his mouth, and blood dripped down on his shirt and coat. When he scrambled up, he did not look like the dapper man who had left the Park Avenue apartment. He suddenly looked like a bum who had been beaten up in a street fight.
There was no use making an issue of it. Slim was no scrapper, and the Greek was strong as a bull. It would be slaughter, and the big man was looking for something like that. He would get the most intense pleasure from hammering his lighter opponent into a loathesome pulp.
“Get goin’,” he said, “and when you’ve stole enough money to get in a crap game, take it somewheres else. I don’t want no part of it.”
Slim went out through the door without answering. He was entitled to cab fare, but the Greek wouldn’t offer it unless he was asked, and Danzig would rather croak than humiliate himself by asking. The game was over. In five minutes the place would be locked tighter than a pawnbroker’s heart.
Slim looked at the picture of Miss Legs of 1911. Somehow she reminded him of Millie, but by this time Miss Legs must be something out of the ashcan. Age did something to even the best looking dames. Wonder what Millie’ll look like in 1984? Slim kind of twitched. He didn’t like to think of that.
When he reached the sidewalk, a steady trickle of rain dripped on him. He took out his handkerchief and wiped the blood from his mouth. His lips had puffed up and were sore. He wished there was a taxicab in sight. It didn’t matter that he had only a nickel in his pocket. The doorman at the apartment house would take care of the cab. But there were no taxis, and that meant the subway. Slim didn’t like subways, and trains at this time of the morning were few and far between.
The station was several blocks away, but Danzig was in no hurry. He wasn’t going to Millie’s apartment, because he’d have to do some explaining, and he was in no mood for that.
A NEWSSTAND leaned against the entrance to the subway station. The old man who owned it had gone home, leaving a small box for coins beside the stack of papers. It would have been easy to take one, but New Yorkers have a horror of doing that. The box itself was empty.
Slim stopped under the arc lights to have a look at the headlines, because the nickel was his only passport to Manhattan. A black headline jolted him.
MORELLI ESCAPES FROM
DANNEMORA
Danzig felt a sudden cold lump in the pit of his stomach and a sour taste in his mouth. A portrait of Morelli rose before him. The man wasn’t big but he was all bunched, hard muscle. His face was sallow and pointed; his mouth was like a thin red gash across a piece of cheese. But it was the eyes that got you. They were blocked out under bushy brows. The whites had a yellow tinge like a mule’s, and the irises were wide—the eyes of a hophead. Maybe Morelli was one. There was no doubt that he was as cold and merciless as the men who had made a charnel house of the Belsen concentration camp. He not only killed; he liked killing, even people he didn’t even know. Destroying one he hated gave him a horrible, sadistic pleasure that brought out sweat all over his body and made him jerk like a puppet on a string.
Morelli must hate Millie as he had never
hated anyone else in his life. Morelli’s code was the gangster’s code. They could cheat as often and carelessly as they liked; but if their women went out of line, they and their paramours were marked for death. The fear of this happening had always been with Slim, and now fear became reality. Morelli would have only one target for tonight. That would be Millie’s bedroom, and he would bring a lethal weapon for her.
I mustn’t get panicky about this, Slim thought, although he had never been so panicky in all his life. The thing to do, of course, is to get her out of the apartment, and hide her somewhere. There’ll be a dragnet out for Morelli. He’s too hot for even the Greek to hide. It won’t be more than a few days before the coppers pick him up and maybe give him ten years extra for escaping. But, even a few hours will be enough for him to kill Millie.
It’ll take too long for me to get there, Slim said to himself. I’ve got to warn her. The dumb little witch never reads the papers. She won’t know Morelli is out. She can throw on a coat and go to Mona Sweet’s apartment. Morelli won’t find her there. He don’t know Mona. I’ll telephone Millie. She can get out right away.
Slim ran down the subway steps, fumbling for the nickel. That little coin meant more to him than the eleven thousand dollars he had just lost at the Greek’s.
The gambler was so nervous his hands felt like boxing gloves. He had trouble dialing the numbers. Twice he put his finger in the wrong slots and had to start over again. He thought how golden Millie’s hair looked under the lights, how red her lips. How could Morelli kill her? How could any man hurt her? But he knew Morelli would do it, if he could, and nothing stood between Millie and death but the nickel Danzig had put in the slot.
He heard the dial tone, then the ringing of the bell in Millie’s apartment, and his heart jumped with happiness. The bell kept ringing, but nothing happened. The cigaret burned his lips, and he threw it away. Millie slept like a corpse. Wake up, Millie, for the love of heaven, wake up! This is Slim. C’m on, answer. Answer me, do you hear? Curse it, answer, answer, answer.
