Pulp Crime

by Jerry eBooks

  Maybe—sweat stippled his forehead—

  Morelli had been there already. He pictured the killer slipping into the living room, turning on one of the lamps. He knew Millie well enough to know how heavily she slept. Morelli wouldn’t even have to take off his shoes. If they squeaked, she wouldn’t hear. Then he would be standing at the door of the bedroom, looking: at her. His eyes, with the yellow whites, would grow hard as marbles.

  Morelli wouldn’t kill Millie without waking her up. That wasn’t his style. He would want her to suffer before she died. Nor would he use a gun, because of the noise. He would have a stiletto, one of those thin, razor-edged blades the Siciliani use. When he had listened to her beg for her life, he would cut her throat. She would sprawl across the bed, and the sheets would slowly turn a terrible red. The thought of what might have happened made him sick.

  Slim didn’t know when he had prayed before, but he was praying now, not well, but earnestly.

  The ringing ceased, and a sleepy feminine voice said, “Hello.”

  IT WAS Millie’s voice. Thanks, thanks, thanks, God! Morelli has not been there yet. Now it’s too late for him to get her. She can be out of there in a few minutes, hiding with Mona. For a moment Danzig’s overwhelming relief made it impossible for him to utter a word.

  “This is Slim,” he finally managed to say.

  There was a moment’s silence, as though the girl was trying to shake dreams from her eyes. Slim smiled indulgently. That was the way with her. It took Millie quite a while to get awake, and understand what was going on.

  Then, as if she were mumbling in a dream, Millie said, “Slim ain’t here!”

  There was a click as she broke the connection.

  Danzig stood there looking at the telephone. He began to quiver in every muscle. It couldn’t be true, but he knew it was true. That was the dumb way Millie acted when wakened from a sound sleep.

  He did not have another nickel. Without one he could not even get the operator back. Slim thought of the fifty cents he had given the woman with the violets, the ten bucks to the beaten down fighter, the twenty for the taxi jockey, the eleven thousand he had lost to the Greek. He didn’t worry about anything but the half dollar. He could make ten phone calls with it.

  He had bragged there never was a time he couldn’t get money when he needed it. Now he needed it more than ever before in his life—and there was not one penny in his pockets.

  Weaving from weariness and shock, Slim left the telephone booth, and went onto the platform. He knew he looked terrible. The blood from his cut mouth had coagulated on his shirt and coat. He stopped at the cashier’s cage, and peered at the mousy little man behind the grillwork.

  “Look, buddy,” he said, “I gotta make a phone call. It’s a matter of life and death. I swear it is. Lend me a nickel, and I’ll come back tomorrow and give you fifty bucks. That’s worth a gamble?”

  The cashier did not take the pipe from between his teeth. He talked around it. “Beat it. If I gave a nickel to every bum who asked for one, I’d be workin’ for nothin’.”

  “Wait a minute, pal,” Slim said, fighting down the rage in him and trying to keep his voice level. “You must have heard about Angelo Morelli. The papers are full of him. He’s goin’ to kill my girl. I’ve got to call her.”

  The cashier showed his snaggled teeth in a grin.

  “You’ve been lookin’ at too many movies. Get away from here, you drunk, or I’ll call a cop. I wouldn’t give you a nickel if I had enough to fill Jimmy Durante’s nose.”

  There was such anger in Slim’s heart that if he could have torn the grillwork apart and latched his fingers on the man’s leathery throat, he would have done just that. This mousy little man could save Millie’s life, and he wouldn’t do it. Just for a nickel—just a nickel—and he wouldn’t let Slim have it.

  Slim turned away, shoulders sagging, and climbed the steps to the street. Every moment that was lost might be the moment Morelli would use, but the gambler didn’t know what to do about it.

  He remembered one night at the Lotus Club. The show was over, and the only people left were mobsters. One was “Paint” Murphy, who did a little undercover work as a stoolpigeon for the police. Paint was smart, but not smart enough to cover himself indefinitely. Morelli found out about Murphy, when Paint fingered “South Street” Smith and helped send him up.

  Morelli had been very quiet and lowvoiced when he accused Paint of stooling, but his eyes were like holes burned in a blanket. He didn’t talk long. He took out a gun. Murphy began to beg for his life, but his voice was drowned in a blast of fire. Morelli hadn’t shot to kill. He hit Paint in the shoulder first, and when the guy fell on the floor, Morelli broke his leg with another bullet. Murphy lay there, crying in a pitiful kind of way, not yelling, and Morelli stood over him.

  “You’ve done enough to him,” Morelli’s best friend, Lucadelli said. “Layoff, will you?”

  Morelli didn’t even turn around. He shot Murphy through the stomach. Even the toughest guys in the mob turned away, sick and white, but Morelli wasn’t bothered. He licked his lips and smiled.

  After several minutes, he said, “It’s time for the payoff,” and shot Paint Murphy through the face.

  That’s the kind of man he was. If he would do that to a stoolie, it was easy to imagine what he would do to a woman who had walked out on him. Slim couldn’t bear to think of it.

  There wasn’t anything to do but get to Park Avenue the best way he could. Walk. Run. Hook a ride if anything came along. He would be too late. Morelli would get there before he did. But Slim could not think of anything else. His mind was confused by fear.

  THERE was plenty of time to think as he hurried along the darkened streets. He had known Millie a long time, even before she became Morelli’s girl. She was pretty and knew how to dress and was quick with wise cracks. But it wasn’t until they jugged the gangster, that Slim went for her in a big way.

  It wasn’t a big way, really, at the start. Some of the boys said he wouldn’t have the nerve, and he wanted to prove them wrong. In his heart, he knew his bravery was rooted in the belief that Morelli never would get out of jail. Then the more he saw of Millie, the more he liked her. There were unexpected depths of tenderness about the girl on occasion. Alone with him, she wasn’t the flip moll of the night clubs.

  But Danzig had never thought he was in love with her. There hadn’t been any love in his life. Interest. Infatuation. Sure, but not love. Love meant a home sometime, and maybe kids, and that sort of thing was out of his line. But the minute he had seen that headline he knew he really did love Millie. It hit him like a hammer. If she were killed, it meant the end of all things for him.

  When he thought of it, he started to run. He hadn’t run much since he was a boy. Too many cigarets, too much bourbon, too little exercise, had softened his muscles and shortened his wind.

  He stopped to catch his breath. He shook all through, and panted, and a knife rammed up through his ribs and into his lungs. He couldn’t stop long, though. He could see Millie sprawled across the bed, her toes touching the carpet, her hair billowed over the sheet, and a gaping wound in her throat.

  Each time he thought of that, Slim retched and felt bitterness in his throat.

  A horse-drawn milk wagon came along, cloppety-clop. Slim begged a ride. The driver was an affable soul.

  “Sure,” he said, “climb in, buddy. I’m only goin’ as far as the bridge, but it may help.” The driver, a man about Slim’s age, began to talk about his wife, and kids, and a little house he had bought in Bayside. They didn’t have much in the way of worldly goods. Probably never in his life had he seen as much money as Slim had lost at the Greek’s. But he was happy and wasn’t afraid of anything, and it seemed to the gambler that the milk man must be the luckiest man in the world.

  Slim didn’t say much of anything. He couldn’t. Fear, and strenuous efforts, had weakened him. He felt let down and flabby inside.

  The streets were dark and seemed to b
e pressed down by a tomb-like silence. Something kept telling him Millie was dead; that, when he arrived, he would not be able to tell her he loved her, that he wanted to get married and live the way other people did. Thinking that way, even an hour ago would have seemed silly, but that’s the way it was. Love has strange ways of coming to people; and it was Slim’s tragedy that it had to come this way, when Millie might already be dead.

  The milk wagon driver dropped Slim at the approach to the bridge. Again Danzig alternated running and walking, but his legs and his lungs petered out at the same time. Heart and mind urged him to keep on, to get to Millie, but his body was incapable of the effort. Hopeless, tired tears leaked down his face. Shaking, he leaned against a lamp post, the thin yellow radiance from above pointing up the sharp, pain-etched lines in his face.

  A nighthawk cab, the first he had seen, pulled to a stop beside him.

  “By gosh,” exclaimed the hackie, “it’s Slim Danzig. Butch told me he took you to the Greek’s. I had a late fare over that way, so I stopped by, but the joint was locked tight. It looks like they went over you with a baseball bat. C’m on, get in.”

  Slim wavered into the taxi and fell against the worn cushions. The driver shifted gears, and they started moving.

  “Has anything happened to Millie?” Danzig asked.

  The hackie looked surprised. “Happened? What do you mean?”

  “Morelli got away from Dannemora. The first thing he’d want to do would be to kill Millie.”

  “Gee, Slim, I don’t know,” the hackie said. “I haven’t been around the stand since midnight. There was a drunk wanted to go to Bronxville, an’ then I hadda go to the Liberty Street ferry, and after that, out here. Boy, I hope she’s all right.”

  Danzig touched his swollen mouth with a trembling hand.

  “I know she’s dead,” he said, “and it’s my fault, because I should have been able to help her. I don’t want to see anybody. Drop me off at the corner, and I’ll go in through the service entrance. I’ll pay you tomorrow.”

  “Okay, okay,” said the hackie.

  When they reached Park Avenue, it was not yet dawn, but there was a faint grayness in the sky, and the stars were dimming. Slim stepped out of the cab. He was afraid to go up to Millie’s apartment, afraid to see what he knew was there. But he had to go. No one was in sight. The neighborhood was deserted.

  There was an anemic electric bulb over the service entrance. It threw little light, but Slim didn’t care. He knew every inch of the place. He was afraid to go up to Millie’s apartment alone, afraid of seeing her lying there, afraid of what life would be without her in the future.

  Danzig was barely through the door, when he heard a gravelly voice: “It took you long enough to get here, punk.” It was the Greek!

  “What do you want?” Slim asked. “We’re even. I don’t owe you anything.”

  “You owe me a lot,” the Greek answered, his fat face hardly visible in the thin light. “You pulled a fast one on Morelli, and he never had a chance to pay it back. When I heard he lammed, I figured he might not have time for you, so I ought to do the job myself.”

  QUEERLY enough, no fear for himself stirred in Slim’s tired mind. With Millie gone, it didn’t matter what happened.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “Make it fast. Just make it fast. That’s all.”

  The Greek looked puzzled.

  “I don’t get it. You ain’t got no more sand than one of them Pomeranians.” He took a blunt-nosed .38 from his pocket. “But you’ll get it, whether you want it or not.”

  Slim did not even tense his muscles against the shock he expected, but there was no searing touch of hot lead. A blacker shadow moved out of the gray ones, knocked up the Greek’s gun hand, and flattened him with a vicious punch on the jaw.

  “Well, Slim,” the shadow said, “I never thought I’d see the day when you’d want to take a powder out of this very pleasant world. In case you can’t see who I am, I’m detective Johnny Corrigan.”

  Slim looked in a dazed kind of way at the bundle of flesh at his feet.

  “Maybe I oughta thank you, Johnny,” he said, “but I don’t know whether I will. With Millie gone, nothin’ seems to matter very much.”

  Corrigan stirred the Greek with his foot to see if the big man was ready to get up, and be arrested. He wasn’t. He lay there, breathing like a drunk.

  “What’s the matter with Millie?” Corrigan asked. “The last time I saw her, she looked as pretty and full of ginger as she ever did. Say, I guess you don’t know what’s happened tonight, do you?”

  “No,” said Slim, and shivered.

  “Well,” said Corrigan, taking out his handcuffs and bending down to shackle the Greek, “we knew where Morelli would head the minute he took that walk from Dannemora. So we covered Park Avenue like a blanket. Morelli walked into the trap. He’s on his way back to Dannemora right now.”

  “And Millie?” Slim asked in a thick voice.

  Johnny Corrigan grinned.

  “The only thing she was worried about was whether Morelli might have gotten you first.”

  “But, I called her,” Slim said, “and she was too sleepy to know who I was.”

  Corrigan reached down, and dragged the Greek to his feet. “Sure.” He grinned. “When we got there, it took us ten minutes to wake her up. But she’s wide awake and waiting for you. She’s crazy about you, kid, even if you never knew it.”

  A BREATH OF SUSPICION

  Stewart Sterling

  Motor cop Demon Ames proves he knows his onions when he chases a car with a garlic odor!

  IT really was one devil of a night, “Demon” Ames told himself bitterly. Stinging cold, pitch black—with a gale from the Adirondacks to whip freezing rain off the lake with biting force. Just the kind of night a gun-crazy killer would pick to blast his way free from the Great Meadow pen.

  Bad enough for the Demon himself to have to be out in this devil’s brew of sleet and slush—a lot worse for Minnie, his motorcycle, to be here with him. He should have come without her. The ole gal wasn’t used to this rugged exposure. It wouldn’t take much to lay her up for a few days. He patted her rear, consolingly.

  “We’ll stick it out five minutes more, Minnie.” He pulled up the cuff of his sheep-lined jacket to glance at the radium dial on his wrist. “If we don’t pick up any scent by ten o’clock, we’ll scoot back to barracks. This Medini gunned his way out of that mess hall at suppertime. Say around six-thirty. Comstocks’ seventy-five miles south of here. If the creep is making his getaway in anything speedier’n an ox cart, he’d be long gone past Crown Point, hours ago.”

  He broke an icicle off Minnie’s tail light; removed one leather mitten, warmed the lens to dissolve the film of sleet. Across the road, the three red flares he’d set out flickered fitfully in the gusts lashing westward from the Champlain bridge along NY 46—died momentarily to thin scarlet tongues tasting the witches’ broth of swirling air, ice and water.

  There’d been no traffic for his one-man road block to halt, anyhow, the last half-hour. It was too early for the big sixteen-wheelers thundering through freight up from the south—too late for stray vans or empty tank trucks to be rumbling down US 9 from Plattsburg up north. And nobody with sense enough to shift gears would be crossing the lake into Vermont in weather as foul as this.

  The Demon would have put out the flares an hour ago, except his was the last road block between Comstock and the border. If Medini, by any combination of luck and ruthlessness, should get past this point, he might escape clear to Canada.

  But the killer would figure the state troopers would expect him to make a dash for the line. Naturally he wouldn’t try to run the blockade by the most direct route. It was silly for the Demon to be freezing his whiskers like this, waiting for nothing. Even supposing Medini was heading this way, the Demon had no idea what the getaway car would look like. And not too much of a picture of Medini.

  All the shortwave had given out was a staccato description:—F
ive-nine, hundred fifty, thirty years, black hair, dark eyes, narrow face, long nose, small mouth, olive skin, no scars, voice high and squeaky.

  He wouldn’t be wearing any striped con suit by now, obviously. A hat would be covering that clipped prison haircut. Most likely he’d timed his break to synchronize with outside help, so there’d be somebody with him—maybe several somebodies. Trooper Demon Ames touched his holster by way of reassurance, but the odds were against his needing the .45 tonight.

  The troop’s patrol at Whitehall, down at the foot of the lake, would use a finetoothed comb on everything bigger’n a tricycle that tried to roll northward tonight.

  The sheriff’s deputies from Glens Falls and the town constables at Ticonderoga would flag down everything that came their way in case the Whitehall check missed. There really wasn’t any sense in the Demon’s putting on this solo patrol at a godforsaken crossroads that even the Greyhounds avoided.

  “It’s my own fat-headed fault, Minnie.” He revved her motor in apology; she answered with a surly backfire. “I know. I know. No trooper is required to take his motorcycle out in rain or snow, unless he volunteers to risk his skull. That’s what the book says.” He slapped mittens against puttees to beat blood into his chilled fingers.

  “If I hadn’t been hellbent on squaring myself with the Cap, I’d be warming my feet back at barracks right now—waiting to go out on relief in one of those cozy patrol cars. Yeah. An’ you’d be toasting your mudguards against that big radiator in the garage.”

  He pushed his goggles up under the brim of his pinseal cap to squint at distant yellow eyes which winked blurrily at the crest of the hill to the south.

  There were no top lights; it wasn’t a truck. The eyes disappeared, took a count of seven to reappear after the dip. That meant the vehicle would be traveling about thirty-five. Probably some farmer bringing the family back from the movies at Ti.