Pulp Crime

by Jerry eBooks

  “All right, punk,” he growled. “Let’s have your wrists.”

  Foster held them out and nickeled silver clicked around them just as the gray-haired parking lot attendant limped up.

  “Hey, Grady! Hey! I seen you dive past me and. . . . How’d yuh know what was goin’ on?”

  “Gal in a white dress comes sailin’ out uh the Casino to where I’m directin’ traffic, peaceful-like, and tells me someone’s bein’ bumped in here.” Officer Grady plucked the roll of bills from his prisoner’s reluctant grasp. “Listen to them horns blattin’ out there on the crossin’ ! I ought to be out there an’ I ought to be takin’ this lush-roller into the house, and I ought to be doin’ somethin’ about this stew he was friskin’. Now how—”

  “Yuh don’t have to do nothin’ about me, mister.” Cal Carroll sat up, dazedly rubbed his jaw. “I’m not stewed. Not on milk, but—” He gulped, his eyes focusing on Foster. “Hey! Where’s—”

  “Your cash? Here.” The cop held it out but jerked it away from Carroll’s reaching hand and shoved it into his own pocket. “Sorry. Got to hold it for evidence. You’ll get it back from the magistrate in night court, after yuh’ve signed a complaint.”

  “What complaint?” The Texas lumbered erect, big hands fisting. “Yuh can turn this pipsqueak loose, Officer. I’ll take care of him myself.”

  “Nix,” Grady refused. “Nothin’ doin’.” He turned to the lot attendant. “Yuh got a phone in that booth of yours, Pop, I can call the house for a squad car from?” He pulled at the chain linking Foster’s wrists and the little group got moving. Quickly it was hidden from Ted Storme by the black bulk of a limousine. Storme smiled thinly in his cover.

  “I better get distance between me and here before Dorgan puts some more of his hoods on me,” he muttered.

  He drifted along the wall of the shed in whose shadows he had crouched, got past its corner—and stiffened. A sound half-heard, a feel of movement in the shadows, sheathed his body with iciness . . .

  On the sidewalk before the wide, white-painted steps that climbed to the front entrance of the Biarritz, Mimi touched the back of Jock Haddon’s hand with a finger.

  “I couldn’t, Jock,” she said pleadingly. “I just couldn’t let him be killed without trying to do something to stop it.”

  “So you ran out here to call copper.” Haddon’s face was the color of yeast. “With Feet Dorgan himself watching you, three tables away. Here.” He shoved a bundle of electric-blue velvet at Mimi. “Here’s your wrap. If you’ve got any sense at all you’ll grab a taxi and keep going right out of this town, but whatever you do, keep away from me. Do you hear?” His voice became a snarl. Keep away from me. I don’t want that snake after me.”

  He wheeled away, stumped stiff legged back up the stairs.

  “Jock!” the girl sobbed, the gleaming wrap trailing from her arms. “Oh, Jock.” And then what was left of color drained from her small face as the revolving door through which Haddon had vanished disgorged a little man with snow-white hair, a Santa Claus tummy that bulged his starched shirt-bosom, and twinkling, bright blue eyes.

  The doorman flipped an obsequious finger to his cap visor.

  “Your car, Mr. Dorgan?”

  “No, thank you, Bill. I’m not leaving.

  I just want to speak to that young lady.”

  “Feet” Dorgan started down the stairs toward Mimi and she knew it was no use to run. No earthly use. . . .

  The sound that had held Ted Storme rigid came again. A tight sob. Vague reflection of light from the casino’s white-painted side showed him its source. Apprehension drained out of him, was replaced by amazement as he stared at the little girl, scarcely thigh-high to him, whose small grimy face was tear-stained as she twisted in distraught little hands a knee-length plaid of dress.

  “Hello,” he said softly. “Where did you come from?”

  Enormous eyes lifted to him in the dimness. The child’s lips quivered.

  “Don’t be afraid of me, sweetheart.” Storme’s low voice was gentle. “I’m not a boogie man. I’m only Ted, and if you’ll tell me what’s the matter I’ll try and help you.

  The big eyes studied him with vast solemnity. What they saw seemed to content the waif. She spoke, all in one breath.

  “I’m Susan, and Mom’s awful sick and I took a nickel from her pocketbook and came on the bus to tell Gram, and the man won’t let me in.”

  He squatted down, but even then his head was above hers.

  “What man won’t let you in where?” he asked.

  “The man with the gold flies on his collar. In the Bee—Beer . . . In that place.

  I told him Gram works there but he chased me away and I snaked in this lot and hid, and then the cop came after me. . . . Don’t let him get me, Ted!” She snatched at his sleeve in sudden panic. “Don’t let the cop get me!”

  “Whoa! Whoa up, Susan. The cop wasn’t after you. He was after a bad man and he caught him, but the cop’s still out there by the gate so I guess we better talk low so he won’t hear us. Now, look. Are you sure your Gram works in the Biarritz?”

  “ ‘Course I am. She gave me the paper from the agency for my treasure box, with the address on it and what bus to take, ’cause this is the first time she’s working since I was little.”

  The corner of Storme’s mouth twitched at that. She was no bigger than a minute now. About eight, he judged.

  “Mom an’ me were so happy Gram had work again,” she went on, “that we romped in bed like we used to, and all of a sudden Mom got all white and fell down on the bed and wouldn’t answer me.” A sob caught in the tad’s throat.

  “Steady.” Storme drew the warm little body to him. “Steady, honey.”

  “It’s Mom’s heart, Ted, and Gram wasn’t there to make her better, and I didn’t know what to do.”

  “Why didn’t you call a neighbor?”

  “I didn’t dass’t. We don’t dass’t talk to the neighbors or—or anybody ’cause if we do, They might find us.”

  There was so much of fear implicit in the eerie statement that the nape of Storme’s neck prickled.

  “They? Who?”

  “The—the bad men who took Daddy away.”

  The police? But why should an old woman and an ill one and a child be hiding from the police?

  “Well, Susan,” Storme said, “in that case we’ll just have to get Gram. Look. Go around in back of this big house here and you’ll find the door to the kitchen. You go in there and if you don’t see your Gram—”

  “In the kitchen? What would Gram be doing in the kitchen?”

  “Isn’t she a cook or—or something?”

  “A cook?” There was in the way Susan said it a child’s scorn for an adult who is being more than ordinarily stupid. “ ‘Course not. Gram’s vohdvil’s greatest star!”

  “What’s her name?” Storme demanded. “What’s your Gram’s stage name?”

  “Jennie Wrenn.”

  “Jennie—” Muted by the casino’s wall, the ribald strains of the “Gay Caballero” were just ending in a muffled storm of applause. “Good Lord, I can’t let you hear . . . Listen, Susan!” He caught back what he’d been about to say. “Your Gram can’t be bothered while she’s working, so I’ll tell you what. See that cream-colored convertible over there—the one with the top up? That’s mine. I’ll ride you home in it and we’ll get a doctor.”

  “No. I’ve got to go in there and get Gram.”

  “You can’t, honey. It—it’s a bad place for little girls.”

  “Then you go get her for me.”

  “I wish I could, Susan. I certainly wish I could, but there’s a man in there who . . . Well, I don’t dass’t go in there.”

  “You promised, Ted.” The child’s look was accusing. “You promised if I told you what was the matter you’d help me.”

  The skin of Storme’s face tightened over its bones and his lids narrowed.

  “So I did. I did promise you.” His look drifted to a door in th
e side wall of the Biarritz, much nearer its rear comer than the one from which he had come. “All right. I’ll get your Gram for you.” He lifted erect. “You go and sit in my car till I come back, and remember to keep very, very quiet.”

  His head turned to the black hedge along the parking lot’s outer border, beyond which a police car’s siren wailed to silence.

  CHAPTER III.

  ON THE SKIDS.

  ON The sidewalk in front of the Biarritz Mimi heard the wailing of the police car siren behind her, but she didn’t turn. Watching shiny patent leather pumps come down the stairs toward her she was thinking, with strange inconsequence, that they were too small to explain why their owner was called Feet Dorgan.

  “How small your feet are,” said Little Red Riding Hood.

  “The better to walk on your grave with, my dear.”

  Quite suddenly blue eyes in an applecheeked moon of a face were twinkling merrily into hers.

  “Jock Haddon’s a heel.” A small red mouth murmured the words. “But that’s no reason you should have to go home so early.” Pudgy fingers were clammy-cool on the hot skin of Mimi’s arm. “Come and join my party, my dear.”

  Mimi’s tongue-tip licked her lips. “I . . . Thank you, but—but I’m not feeling well.” Behind her the police car’s siren moaned again, going back the way it had come and Dorgan was looking past her, his eyes suddenly the color of an ice-covered lake under a winter sky.

  She turned to look, too, saw a green and white car sliding by and in it two policemen and Gull Foster and the big man who had taken Ted Storme out of the Biarritz, but not Storme. He must be . . . No! The cops wouldn’t be taking those two away so quickly if they killed Storme.

  “The best medicine for what ails you,” Dorgan purred, “is a glass of Veuve Cliquot.”

  The cold fingers on her arm urged Mimi toward the steps and she was climbing them beside the man people called Feet for no reason she could figure out.

  They went through the revolving door, past the check-room. Mimi saw Jock Haddon at the bar and he spied them and choked on his highball. Dorgan jerked a chin at him.

  “That phony’s going to find out he’s made one wrong play too many,” he said, loud enough for Jock to hear.

  Jock’s glass slipped from his hand and spilled, and scared as she was Mimi couldn’t help laughing at the way his eyes bugged out of his head.

  On the stage Jennie Wren and Sam Slats were swapping jokes and everybody at the tables was laughing. The fingers on Mimi’s arm stopped her and Dorgan said:

  “Here she is, folks. Say hello to—er—”

  “Mimi,” Mimi filled in for him.

  The two men at the table looked up at her, but the big brunette sitting there, her dusky-red mouth bitter, just kept on looking at the stage.

  “That’s Bert Judson,” Dorgan said, nodding at the younger man, a slim fellow, his close-shaved jaw bluish with hair under the skin. “And the bald-headed shrimp is Judge Ashton Lee.”

  “A judge!” Mimi exclaimed. “A real judge?”

  “No.” Lee’s voice was as pale as his dough-hued face. His eyes were big and scary behind thick glasses, and his smile made Mimi feel crawly. “Just a lawyer.”

  “The best mouthpiece in ten states,” Dorgan said. “The statuesque Juno there is Norma Wayne. Be nice to Mimi, Norma. She isn’t your rival—yet.”

  “I’m not worried.” The brunette’s voice was almost as deep as a man’s, and the slow, velvet-lipped smile that went with it was like a slap in the face. “I know too much about you, Henry Dorgan, for you to put me on the skids.”

  “Watch it, Norma.” The blue-white frost was back in Dorgan’s eyes, and his voice was suddenly deep-throated. “You’ll pull that line once too often. Maybe this is the time.”

  Mimi would have been paralyzed had he spoken to her like that, but Norma merely shrugged her gorgeous shoulders, picked up a champagne glass and sipped from it. Mimi sank into the chair a fussy waiter had brought for her.

  “Oh, Judge,” Dorgan said. “I’ll have to take care of that little proposition by myself. Something’s come up you’ll have to get busy on right away.”

  The lawyer got up and Dorgan took hold of his lapel, moved with him into a clear space nearby.

  “Guess some of the boys got into a jam,” Mannie ruminated. “Well, Lee will spring ’em. He’s some fixer.”

  Mimi was fascinated by the way the lawyer’s long, thin fingers kept writhing over one another while he talked with Dorgan. He nodded, went away toward the wide stairs to the mezzanine, and Dorgan came back to the table and sat down. He didn’t say anything, just sat there chuckling to himself and listening to Jennie Wrenn singing a song about two sailors and a girl and what happened when her father came home unexpectedly.

  Bert Judson took a napkin-wrapped bottle out of the silver bucket on a stand beside him and spilled champagne from it into the fresh glass the waiter had put in front of Mimi. She drank it in a hurry and her nose tickled, but she began to feel a little better.

  Outside, Ted Storme peered in through the half-inch slit he had opened between the stage-door and its jamb. The corridor inside was crowded with chorus girls waiting to go on, so he dared not enter yet.

  Applause died away and Sam Slats and Jennie Wrenn ran off. The orchestra swung into “The Flight of the Bumblebee,” played fast, and girls poured out onto the stage. They wore head-dresses of black fur with great glittering glass eyes and feelers of black ostrich feathers fastened to them so that they looked exactly like bees’ heads. Shimmery wings fluttered from the girls’ shoulder blades. Three not very big patches of yellow silk were all the rest they wore.

  They started dancing and buzzing.

  “Look kids,” Mr. Dorgan said to his party. “I’ve got something to attend to backstage.” He got up. “Take care of Mimi, Bert. Don’t forget I want her to be sitting right here when I get back.”

  “She’ll be here.” Judson chuckled. “Don’t worry, Boss. She’ll be sitting right here at this table.”

  “Make sure that she is.”

  The fat little man started walking away, but somebody called him over to a table and he stood talking to the people there. Norma Wayne’s maroon-enameled fingernails tapped the side of her glass. Her black-lashed, brooding eyes moved to Mimi.

  “Look, youngster,” she said. “If you’re doing this just to spite the boy friend, my advice is to get right up and get out of this.”

  “Nix,” Bert growled. “Lay off that stuff.” He filled Mimi’s glass again, and his own. “The smartest stunt you ever pulled, sweetheart, was to run out on that Haddon heel the way you did and Took such a cute trick doing it.”

  “Did I, Bert? Did I look cute?” Mimi took a big swallow of champagne and wished Jock could hear this. “Was that why Mr. Dorgan came after me?”

  “What else? You don’t think Feet Dorgan chases every skirt he puts his peepers on, do you?”

  “Tell me, Bert Why do they call him that? Feet?”

  Judson’s smirk faded and he looked uncomfortable.

  “I’ll tell you, Mimi,” Norma said, fighting a long, rose-tipped cigarette. “People who cross Harvey Dorgan have a way of turning up with the soles of their feet burned to a crisp.” A slow smile grew around the cigarette between her dusky lips. “See?”

  The champagne glass chattered against Mimi’s teeth. That lawyer, she thought, has gone to take care of Gull Foster and the big gunsel from out of town. He would find out who had sent the cop in to the parking lot to save Ted Storme and when he came back he would tell Dorgan. Feet Dorgan.

  Dorgan had told Bert Judson to keep her there and he would. She would still be here when Judge Lee came back.

  The noise of the band beat against Mimi’s ears, beat into her skull. The bee-girl’s came dancing down off the stage, were dancing among the tables to give the Biarritz’s customers a closer view of their “art”—and their flesh. Bert unwrapped the napkin from the bottle and held it up against one of the spotlight beams
that followed the dancing girls around.

  “There’s just about one drink left,” he decided. “How’s for you killing it, Norma?”

  “Swill it yourself, Bert.” The brunette dragged her sables around her. “I’ve got to see a man about a dog.” As she got up, her bag, a big one of platinum mesh as fine as hair, thumped against the table edge as though it held something heavy. “That is, of course, if you have no objection.”

  Bert shrugged, filling his own glass. “The boss didn’t say nothing about keeping you here.”

  “That’s right. He didn’t.” Norma was taller than Mimi had expected, and her lustrous black gown sheathed a figure Hedy Lamarr might envy. “Maybe that will turn out to have been a mistake.”

  She glided away toward the mezzanine. Something about the way she moved reminded Mimi of the black panther she once had seen in the zoo.

  “Huh!” Judson muttered. “She’s sure taking it hard.”

  “Taking what hard?”

  “Feet going for you.”

  “For me!” Bubbles of laughter prickled Mimi’s tonsils. Or was it the champagne? “Where do I shine in with her?”

  Bert blinked at her owlishly. “Nowheres,” he replied, frankly. “But you’re not a bad piece of fluff and the boss is ripe for a change. The way he stepped on Norma before, when she cracked wise, was the tip-off she’s on the skids. Well”—he shrugged—“it’s no buttons off my vest. Here’s to crime, kid.”

  “Down the hatch.”

  Mimi drank. It didn’t do any good. She was still cold. Awfully cold. Judson’s glass tipped over as he put it down, and his grab for it only knocked it over. He was pretty high. Mimi got an idea.

  “If you’ll order up another bottle, Bert,” she said, “I’ll come around there and sit by you.”

  How was she going to work this? If she could only think. If the drums would only stop pounding at her head!

  CHAPTER IV.