Pulp Crime

by Jerry eBooks

  “Nothing shady, I assure you.” Squidy waggled his cranium like a semaphore. “Just deliver this package to me at Suite 728, Hotel Commander, sometime tonight.”

  “What’s in the package?” Rick’s blue eyes were hard and bright.

  Horace Squidy’s hands fluttered over his coat buttons like frightened white butterflies.

  “A wastebasket—a rather important wastebasket,” he said.

  “I would think so, for five hundred bucks.” Rick’s voice was dry. “All right, I’ll bite. What’s in the wastebasket?”

  “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.” Horace Squidy’s thin lips quivered. “Please, Mr. Luggan. You can inspect the package. I think the men following me want the wastebasket. I can’t afford to lose it!”

  Rick Luggan stepped abruptly to his desk and ripped the newspaper off the package. The wastebasket was of an ordinary variety, made of twisted rattan, and painted with a design Rick didn’t bother to examine. It was empty. Rick turned it over and over, and finally put it back on the desk.

  “Anything concealed in the rattan?” he demanded. “Jewels—dope—anything?”

  “No.” Horace Squidy shook his balding head negatively. “I know it sounds queer, but I can’t explain any more just now. Just deliver it to me at the hotel.”

  “I heard you the first time,” Rick said tersely. He picked up the money Squidy had counted out and stuffed it into a pocket. Then Luggan opened a desk drawer and pulled out a printed blank. “All right, sign here,” he said pointing to the bottom line. “It’s one of our printed contract forms. Merely shows that you hired me to represent you in this case.” While Squidy scratched a dime store pen across the form, Rick glanced quickly around his office. His own wire wastebasket stood beside a filing case in one corner. Rick gathered it up and wrapped it in newspaper, then put Horace Squidy’s wastebasket in his safe, slammed the steel door, and twisted the combination savagely.

  Horace Squidy looked bewildered.

  “You came in with a package and you leave with a package,” Rick said rapidly. “Otherwise, the guys on your tail will know you dropped it here. You go down, hail a cab and go directly to your hotel. I’ll tail your shadows. I want to know who those birds are.”

  “I—I’m scared,” Horace Squidy stuttered.

  “So am I.” Rick Luggan grinned. “I don’t like delivering an empty wastebasket—especially when big tough thugs are interested in same,” he said shoving the false package into Horace Squidy’s thin arms. “But I like five C’s pretty well. Let’s push, as they say in the Marines.”

  He followed Horace Squidy through the door into the white-walled corridor, and instantly realized his mistake. Two hulking figures lurched from the dark archway leading to the stairwell, and Rick yanked Squidy backward and reached for his gun. Orange flame blossomed in the darkness and Luggan heard his client scream. Squidy spun sideways and the detective glimpsed agonizing horror on the man’s pinched face.

  Rick Luggan was mad. Mad at himself for letting his client step into such a trap; mad at the two gunmen who sought to kill him. The shamus dived downward and slithered across the dirty tile floor to the slim protection of the wall. His gun came free of its shoulder brace and he fired at the black stair opening. The shot echoed thunderously in the narrow confines of the hall, and Rick saw fire lance again and again from the killers’ guns. Squidy had dropped his package seconds before, to stumble back along the wall clutching at his chest, then topple face downward across the doorway to Rick’s office.

  Rick hugged the old tile and grimly fired again. The figures melted back into the stairwell darkness. Once more their guns spat flame, and white-hot pain tore across Luggan’s head. He lifted himself to his knees, ran a hand over his face and felt blood run warm between his fingers. The corridor tilted crazily and the stairwell rushed at him like a black angel of doom. A red mist floated over his eyes and he tasted salty tears of pain on his lips. Dimly he heard feet pounding in the hall. Then, like that other time on Saipan, Luggan passed out. . . .

  THERE was a pinpoint of light in the abyss, and a thousand blacksmiths pounded angrily on a thousand anvils inside his brain, while a torturing devil stabbed blazing pitchforks of pain into his temples. Luggan lifted his hand and brushed desperately at the curtain of unconsciousness. His tongue moistened parched blood-caked lips and gradually the pinpoint of light took shape and became an electric bulb in the ceiling. He turned his head and recognized the battered outlines of his own oak desk.

  Rick groaned and heaved himself to his feet. He waggled his head back and forth and staggered to the wash basin. He turned on the faucet and winced with pain as he splashed cold water on his face. The wound wasn’t so bad; the bullet had skimmed his head, gashing out a red welt along his right temple. He cleaned the gash and patched it with adhesive. Then he remembered Squidy!

  Luggan jerked the office door open. The white corridor was mockingly empty and the entrance to the stairwell yawned mutely. There were traces of blood on the tile floor, but it could have been his own.

  Luggan closed the door and went to the window. The clock in the tower said eleven o’clock. Just one hour had passed since his doorknob had rattled. He got a drink from the bottle in his filing case and tried to think.

  One thing was certain—Squidy had been in his office. The wastebasket in his safe and five hundred American dollars testified to that. But why had the killers removed Squidy’s body? And why had they hauled him, Luggan, back into his office? His newspaper wrapped wastebasket was gone but he could understand that.

  The private eye grimly reloaded his stub-nosed automatic. There was a way to find out—Suite 728 at the Commander Hotel ought to supply a few answers. He pulled the hat low over his eyes to conceal the bandage he had applied and went out.

  The Commander was a swank midtown hotel. Luggan rode silently up in the elevator and walked down the gold and orchid corridor.

  Rick pressed the bell of room 728.

  The door opened slowly and Rick Luggan looked into the dark bright eyes of danger. The girl was svelte in a white evening gown that clung lovingly to the sweeping lines of a well-curved figure, and her raven black hair was combed straight back and gathered in a shining bun at the nape of her neck. Her face was a pale and lovely mask. The deep red of her lips curved in a smile that was pure invitation, and long lashes shadowed the purple of her eyes. She was the kind of a girl a man might live for—or kill for. Rick pushed past her into the white and silver living room.

  “All right, baby,” he said, smiling cynically, “you can start talking. I’m Rick Luggan, and I want to know all about the guy who owns this beautiful dump—and maybe you.”

  The girl pushed the door closed and followed Luggan into the room. Her wide hips swayed as she walked and her every movement was rhythm and grace. Rick glanced swiftly around, noting the closed door that led to other parts of the suite. A radio played softly in a corner, and the floor lamps shed dim light on the rose-colored carpets. His eyes took in the flowers in bright pots along the wide windows. The girl shoved a cigarette into a long ivory holder and sank down on the divan.

  “I love to have strange men burst in on me at midnight and insult me,” she said in a husky theatrical voice. “But since you’re here and I’m bored, you can stay.” Her eyes swept over his tall figure. “Not bad, in a crude sort of way. Luggan, you say? My name is Carla Teresi. What are you, a truck driver?”

  Rick regarded her flintily. “You know my business,” he said flatly. “But since you want to play—my being a truck driver wouldn’t make any difference to a dame like you. Come up for air, cutie. Where is Horace Squidy’s body?”

  A slow flush crept into Carla’s smooth cheeks.

  “Straight from the shoulder, aren’t you? Mr. Squidy isn’t here at the moment, but if you’re looking for a body”—she leaned back and stretched and gave him a languorous smile—“why don’t you look under the beds?”

  LUGGAN saw there were two ways to play it—his way and hers. He
sat on the divan beside her and plucked the cigarette from her holder. He took a long drag from the butt and crushed it out in a tray.

  “Okay,” he grinned thinly. “Have it your way. What’s the score, baby?”

  “Score? I don’t even know what game you’re playing. Would you like a drink?”

  “I’d love one,” Rick assured her. He watched narrowly as she strolled to the bar and poured whiskey into amber glasses. He was trying to fit glamorous Carla into the life of pinched-face Horace Squidy. He shook his head as she handed him the drink.

  “I don’t understand it,” he confessed. “What a beautiful doll like you is doing in Horace Squidy’s apartment.”

  “Maybe I polish the furniture around here,” she said flippantly and winked at him over the rim of her glass. “Here’s to you, handsome.”

  Luggan lifted the drink and caught a whiff of chloral hydrate. He uncrossed his legs and somehow his toe tipped over the cocktail table. It crashed on the rug, and the glass top splintered.

  “Sorry,” he said, contritely.

  Carla bent to straighten the table, and the hired cop calmly poured his drink down the back of her beautiful neck. She jumped to her feet, gasping as the ice rolled down her bare back to the floor. Luggan came off the divan, gun in hand.

  “That’s all I wanted to know, baby,” he clipped. “Knockout drops mean you’re in this, too. Let’s see who else is around.”

  Luggan walked quickly across to the side door and jerked it open. A broadshouldered heavyweight in a tweed suit bowled out, fists flailing. He was almost as big as Rick Luggan, but slower, much slower. He had a moon-round beefy face, with squinty little blue eyes like gimlet holes set close together over a bulbous nose. His hair and ragged mustache were light brown, and on one side of his blunt jaw was the white cicatrix of a past knife slash.

  Rick slipped sideways and clipped the man behind the ear. The big man crashed onto the rose-colored carpet, arms akimbo! Rick spun on Carla. Her lovely eyes were wide now with fright, and she shrank back toward the hall door.

  “Over there,” the detective ordered thinly, and waved his gun toward the windows. “And keep your beautiful mouth shut unless you want to talk to the police.”

  He jerked the heavyweight into a sitting position and slapped the man’s beefy face, rocking it back and forth. The man groaned and opened his eyes. Rick clipped him backhand across the mouth.

  “All right, wise guy,” he gritted. “Your little act is over. You and the girl friend are taking me to the guy who’s running this shindig, savvy?”

  The man glared at Luggan with killer eyes. Rick backhanded him again, gashing his knuckles on the man’s teeth. A thin line of blood trickled from the heavyweight’s thick lips.

  “Savvy?” Rick repeated, cocking his fist.

  The man nodded and Rick pulled him to his feet.

  “Where?” he snapped.

  “Cliffside,” Carla Teresi said from across the room. “I’ll get a coat.” Her shapely shoulders were trembling and she gazed at Rick with a curious mixture of admiration and despair. “It’s right there in the hall closet.”

  They made an odd looking trio as they crossed the hotel lobby—the girl in the silver fox coat and white evening gown, the big man in the tweed suit, glum and downcast, and the tall man walking behind, hand in the pocket of his tan sport coat. They piled into a taxi at the curb, and Carla gave an address in swanky, suburban Cliffside. She leaned back on the cushions as the cab glided out on the deserted boulevard.

  “I don’t know anything about this,” she said, glancing at Rick appraisingly. “I’m just going along for the ride.”

  “It may be a long one,” Rick said to Carla, his gun in the heavyweight’s ribs. “A guy died in the corridor outside my office and somebody’s going to get my receipt for the job. You, beautiful lady, wouldn’t look good strapped in the electric chair.”

  CARLA’S eyes opened wide. “Murder?

  Listen, you can let me out right here. I’m not getting mixed up in any murder!”

  “Shut up!” Heavyweight snarled. “This guy is off his head. Squidy will fix it.”

  “Squidy better be a good fixer,” Luggan said dryly, “and have a direct wire from heaven—or hell!”

  The house at Cliffside clung to a dark mountainside high above the wind-swept ocean. It was just one A.M. by Rick’s wrist watch when the cab pulled up in the drive and he herded his charges toward the door. He told the cabbie to wait. The walls of the massive stucco loomed like the ramparts of a Spanish grandee’s castle, enclosing a sinister silence, through which their footsteps echoed hollowly as they walked down the loggia. Rick hung on the bell, keeping the gun concealed in his pocket.

  The man who opened the door was a squat replica of Heavyweight. His fat jowls overhung his collar and his cheeks were a dark olive brown. Close-set black eyes regarded Carla, Heavyweight, and then Luggan. His gaze was freighted with suspicion.

  “What the blazes you want?” he rumbled. He fixed his gaze on Heavyweight. “What goes on, Al?”

  Al jerked a thumb at Luggan.

  “This guy wants to see the boss.” He leered at Carla. “She came along for the ride.”

  Luggan dug his elbow hard into the big man’s ribs, and Al gasped in pain. His lips drew back from yellow teeth, and he snarled like a cornered fox.

  “I’ll do the talking,” the shamus clipped. “You—Apple-nose,” he addressed the man in the doorway, “get your boss down here fast, unless you want your teeth kicked in.”

  Apple-nose looked the hard-faced private eye up and down, then retreated a step. For a moment, Rick thought he would close the door.

  “My name’s Joe,” the squat man mumbled. “All right, come on in.”

  Rick entered last. Joe motioned the trio into a huge, beamed living room opening off the foyer, where the embers of fire still glowed in a stone hearth.

  Luggan motioned Carla and Al to chairs, and put his back to the fireplace. He fixed his eyes ort the entrance. He was ready for anything, fingers wrapped around the butt of the automatic in his pocket. Ready for anything, that is, except the man who walked into the living room.

  It just couldn’t be Horace Squidy! Luggan saw that same pinched up face and bulging forehead, egg-shaped dome, and retreating chin. But there was a difference; the detective could see it now. This man wasn’t Horace Squidy, much as he looked like him.

  This man was at least five years younger than Horace. He was dressed in a tan suit much like the one Horace had worn, but his hair was dark brown; Horace’s fringe had been almost black. This man had bright blue eyes; Horace’s eyes had been a slate gray. No, this wasn’t the same man. But at a casual glance he looked enough like Horace Squidy to be a twin; he certainly was some relation.

  Rick shrugged. If this man wanted him to believe he was Horace Squidy, let him go ahead. Maybe he could learn something that way. Horace Squidy was dead, shot to death before his eyes in the corridor outside his office.

  “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Luggan.” The pinched face widened in a smile. “You didn’t have to come out so late. Our business could have waited until tomorrow.”

  “Nothing waits till tomorrow,” Luggan growled. “What kind of an act is this? First you’re dead—then you’re alive. A couple of things need explaining, and quick!”

  Squidy stopped on the other side of a massive mahogany table. His blue eyes were impassive.

  “You were paid to deliver a wastebasket to me,” he said, “not to ask questions. Do you have the package with you?”

  So that was why he was trying to pass himself off as Horace Squidy.

  “I’m not a complete fool,” Rick assured him. “The wastebasket is put away in a safe place. You get it when I get an explanation.” He tipped his hat back from his temple, exposing the bandage. “Maybe you’re a ghost, but there was nothing spectral about the slug that clipped me tonight. What kind of game are you playing, Squidy? I don’t like being a sucker.”

  JOE moved threatening
ly into the room, but Squidy waved the heavy-jowled man back.

  “It’s simple enough,” he said imperturbably. “I returned to the hotel and when you didn’t bring the package, I came out here to my home for the night.” He glanced at Carla. “Are you all right, dear?”

  “Don’t call me dear.” The brunette’s dark eyes sparkled angrily. “The man is talking about murder, and that’s something I want no part of. I go no further than handing a nosy investigator knockout drops.”

  “My secretary is a little upset.” Squidy moistened his lips with a nervous tongue. “Since you are here, Mr. Luggan, we might as well arrange for delivery of the package. I’ll send my men with you into the City and you can deliver the wastebasket to them.”

  “I don’t think so,” he said. His voice was deadly quiet. “You don’t seem to remember the shooting in the hall. Why you aren’t dead, I haven’t figured out yet, but I’m not your fall guy.”

  Rick glanced sideways as Al’s chair squeaked, but the big man was just shifting position. When he looked back at Squidy, the private detective was facing a gun. The dome-headed man’s eyes were hard.

  “Better be reasonable, Mr. Luggan,” he clipped. “I want that package bad enough to”—he waggled the gun suggestively—“go to any lengths to get it. Al, take that weapon from his pocket.” Heavyweight rose with a leering smile, and removed the automatic from Rick’s coat pocket.

  “Blast you!” he snarled. “This is for the slapping around you hand out.” He balled his hamlike fist and slammed Rick across the jaw. The private detective’s head jerked back and he staggered against the table. Al swung again, and pile-driving pain drove into Rick’s ribs. Squidy waved the gun.

  “None of that,” he ordered sharply. He spoke in an undertone to Joe. “All right, take him along. You stay here, Carla. And Mr. Luggan”—his voice was freighted with warning—“we want no foolishness. Just that wastebasket.”