Pulp Crime

by Jerry eBooks

  She held her head high. “There would have been publicity. Little George would have been disgraced among his schoolmates if the papers had printed that his brother was a criminal, an ex-convict. Gus Frost was always the black sheep of the family.”

  ““Didn’t you realize that you couldn’t keep his identity from us?”

  “I suppose it was foolish.” Her shoulders slumped. “But I had to protect George’s name. His father put him in my care.”

  “When the father died, did he leave Gus any of his money,” Ben asked.

  Mrs. Horton twisted her head to him. “Certainly not. Gus had brought disgrace to the family. His father cut him off without a cent. He left everything to little George. When Gus got out of prison, he came here. He said that he was entitled to part of his father’s money. He had no legal right to it, and I told him so. And little George refused to have anything to do with him.”

  Bordan nodded. Now that he had the picture, his sympathy was for the woman. “I suppose he threatened to kidnap his kid brother unless he was cut in on a share of the estate?”

  “Gus was more subtle than that,” Mrs. Horton said. “He insisted that he wanted his brother to live with him. I wouldn’t hear of it.”

  “Naturally not,” Ben commented dryly. “If George left with his brother, you and your husband could no longer live off the boy.”

  Mrs. Horton shot him an angry look and turned her back to him. She said to Bordan, “I’m sure that Gus didn’t care one bit for his younger brother. He wanted George with him because he thought in that way he could get at the boy’s money. When I ordered him to leave the house, Gus said that if I didn’t let George go with him, he would come back and take him.”

  “That explains why he was so anxious to find out where you’d sent George,” Bordan said. “Who is this man Henry he had with him?”

  “I have no idea. No doubt one of his criminal friends.”

  BORDAN rubbed his hands. “Well, that ties it up. Only you shouldn’t have lied to me last night, Mrs. Horton.”

  “It’s understandable,” Richard protested. “We’re anxious not to have our neighbors know that George’s brother is a criminal. Do you think it can be kept out of the papers?”

  “I’ll do my best, though I doubt it.” Bordan reached for his hat. “There will be a little more red tape, and we’ll continue to look for this man Henry, but for practical purposes I can say the case is closed.”

  He was feeling pretty good. He had disposed of a homicide with no headache and little work. He shook hands all around and left.

  Ben still held Mrs. Horton’s check in his hand. He asked indifferently, “When are you bringing George home?”

  “I doubt if I will,” Mrs. Horton replied. “There is certain to be talk in the neighborhood because of last night. George is extremely sensitive and delicate; he must be sheltered. I believe that Richard and Twill take him for a trip around the world.”

  “That’ll be fun,” Richard said.

  Ben grinned wryly. “Take very good care of that boy. Mrs. Horton. If anything should happen to him, he’d stop being a source of income to you.”

  She scowled darkly. “You’re being impertinent.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ben said. “But you told me a number of lies last night in my apartment. For instance, that you’d received a demand to leave twenty thousand dollars under a tree.”

  “So I did, from Gus Frost. He said for twenty thousand dollars he’d let George alone. Of course, I made up the part about leaving the money under a tree. Gus would have come to the house for it. But last night I was still trying to hide the fact that George has a brother who is a criminal.”

  “A tree in the south corner of your property,” Ben mused, as if talking to himself.

  There was a silence that seemed almost to have physical substance. Richard turned quickly to a window as if he had suddenly seen something outside. Mrs. Horton’s face remained frozen, except for her eyes. Momentarily something crawled in them and vanished.

  “Richard, get dressed and drive Mr.

  Starke home,” she said crisply.

  “Be ready in a few minutes.” Richard said and left the room. He wasn’t quite running. His wife followed him.

  Ben looked once more at the check. His mouth twisted. He slipped it into a pocket and went through the french doors.

  He stood on the terrace, blinking in the sunlight. The sun was directly overhead; he had no idea which way was south.

  The acre of lawn and shrubbery was surrounded on three sides by woods. He walked in a direction away from the road. When he turned the rear corner of the house, he saw the massive oak. It was very old, very gnarled, and stood fifty feet in from the woods.

  Ben walked around the tree. All about it the grass was neatly mowed and firm. But between the oak and the woods he found the spot. By getting down on his knees, he could barely make out divisions in the grass. Not too long ago somebody had dug here and then resurfaced a small area with sixteen inch squares of sod. In a week more the sod would have grown together, become integrated in the rest of the lawn.

  He got his fingers under one of the squares of sod and pulled. It came up easily. He looked around, found a short pointed branch and started to poke into the earth. He got nowhere. What he needed was a shovel. He straightened up and saw Eleanor Horton coming toward him from the house.

  SHE was wearing a light checked summer coat that flapped open in front, and both her hands were sunk deep in the patch pockets. As she came around the oak, Ben saw Richard, fully dressed at last, come running out of the house.

  “Mr. Starke, what are you doing here?” she demanded. .

  Ben put a match to his pipe. “When you told me that cock and bull story last night about being told to leave twenty thousand dollars, you mentioned this tree as the place. You could .have picked any other landmark, or none at all. Was it because for days your mind was filled with what is buried here? Your subconscious was speaking, blurting out the one landmark that meant so much to you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “All your stories smelled, Mrs. Horton. You changed them a while ago, telling part of the truth when Bordan found out who Gus really is, but they still smelled. I had an idea why and thought of the tree. When I mentioned this tree a few minutes ago, you and your husband both reacted. So here I am.”

  By that time Richard had reached them. He was panting, sweating. He blurted, “Eleanor, he knows!”

  “There’s nothing for him to know,” she snapped at her husband.

  “I think there is, Mrs. Horton.” Ben drew on his pipe. “George Frost is buried here.”

  Mrs. Horton stood indomitable, as unwavering as the oak at her back. But her husband couldn’t take it. He threw his hands up to his face.

  “We didn’t kill him!” he wailed. “George died a natural death. His weak heart—it gave out suddenly.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t kill the boy,” Ben said. “You had everything to lose with him dead. But you did kill Gus Frost, Mrs. Horton. It was deliberate, cold-blooded murder.”

  Mrs. Horton’s gaze lay flatly on Ben. “What do you propose to do, Mr. Starke?”

  “As a starter, dig up the body. Or call the police and have them to do it.”

  “No,” Mrs. Horton said quietly. Her right hand came out of her coat pocket and it held a gun.

  The police had taken the gun with which she had shot Gus; but she had been prepared with a second one. A woman who figured all the angles beforehand.

  Ben’s teeth clamped down hard on his pipe stem. His own gun was in his bag in the house. He hadn’t bothered to carry it because it was bulky and because he didn’t believe in guns. But, again, here was a gun in which he had to believe.

  “This won’t get you anywhere, Mrs. Horton.”

  She said tonelessly, “It will get you a grave beside George.”

  Richard kept his hands in front of his face. He didn’t want to see any of it.

  Placidly Ben struc
k another match for his pipe. That was sheer acting. He had learned how deadly Eleanor Horton could be if driven, and she was driven now.

  He spoke to gain time, though what he’d do with it he wasn’t sure. “Gus Frost got out of jail and wanted to horn in on his father’s estate. That didn’t worry you for he had no legal right to it. Then suddenly George died on your hands. That changed the picture. You were no longer the guardian of the possessor of the Frost money. It would be taken completely out of your hands. Probably Gus, as the boy’s brother, would automatically inherit it all. You had to act quickly and dangerously. George died when there was no doctor present and, I’m sure, no servants. Only you and your husband knew of his death. As long as it was assumed he was still alive, the estate was there for you to dig into.”

  A MUSCLE twitched in Mrs. Horton’s cheek. “You were too nosy, Mr. Starke. You—”

  She broke off. Her eyes bulged.

  A rolypoly man had stepped out of the woods. The gun in his hand was the same one with which he had covered Ben last night.

  “It’s my play, sister,” Henry said. “This shamus is nobody to me, but Gus was my pal. I heard this guy say you murdered Gus.”

  Richard took his hands away from his face and moaned.

  The woman remained rigid, and so did her gun. Henry ignored it; he appeared to have no respect for a gun held by a woman. But then, he had not witnessed how accurately she had put a bullet into the body of Gus Frost.

  “Mr. Starke is lying,” she said.

  “Did Gus know that his kid brother was dead?” Ben asked Henry.

  “He knew something was fishy, but he wasn’t sure what. He wanted the dough, sure, but he wanted the kid, too. After all, he was his own brother.”

  Ben turned to Mrs. Horton. “You planned to go to Europe, pretending to take George with you. Probably you would have taken a boy his age who looked somewhat like him. There you would live on George’s money, and nobody would know that the boy was dead. But Gus was the problem. Chances were he’d have followed you to Europe. You set the stage to get rid of him. You hired me to make your story sound good later. I suppose last night you sent for Gus.”

  “She phoned him after midnight and told him to come right over if he wanted to see his kid brother,” Henry said.

  Watching the woman’s tight, strained face, Ben went on, “You waited for Gus in the living room. Richard played his part. He came downstairs with me. He yelled and leaped into the room, banking on the fact that Gus would be nervous and startled enough to draw his gun. And you were ready, Mrs. Horton. You shot Gus down. And it looked good. You’d carefully plotted it so that the police would believe it was justifiable homicide.”

  “That’s it, shamus,” Henry agreed. “I’m turning her over to the coppers.” He laughed mirthlessly. “That’s rich—me turning somebody over to the coppers. How’s about taking her gun from her, shamus?”

  Ben didn’t move. But he was poised on the halls of his feet, every muscle coiled.

  Mrs. Horton turned her hand a trifle and calmly shot Henry.

  Henry screamed and staggered wildly, clutching his right shoulder. Mrs. Horton’s gun followed him for a second shot. Then she glimpsed Ben coming at her and swung her gun toward him.

  His fist chopped down on her wrist. She cried out in pain. Her fingers loosened reflexively, and Ben had the gun.

  For the space of two heart beats there was no sound. Then Henry started to curse. He was sitting on the ground, holding his wounded shoulder with both hands, and his mouth never stopped working. As a kind of weird accompaniment to the curses, moans dribbled from the trembling Richard.

  Mrs. Horton rubbed her wrist. Her very red mouth was curiously twisted. “Mr. Starke,” she said, “how much money would you want to—”

  “Nuts!” he told her wearily.

  He took the check for one hundred dollars from his pocket and tore it into four pieces and let them flutter to the grass above George Frost’s unmarked grave.

  A BIER FOR BABY

  Dean Evans

  She was all woman, and knew it. As gorgeous a babe as ever got caught in a murder web . . .

  CAPTAIN HART slammed the phone back into its cradle. He cursed and glared over at Detective Lieutenant Sammy Gomez, seated at a desk across the office.

  “Another killing,” he growled.

  Gomez blinked. His dark brown eyes looked old, parchment old, as eyes sometimes can. “Cain’s unwanted legacy,” he said quietly. “Each day brings murder.” He smiled a little at that. “Prose,” he explained.

  Hart grunted.

  “This killing?” said Gomez.

  “Yeah. This killing. A bawdy house—in front of it, I mean. North Angeles Street. Four thousand block. You probably can’t miss it, with a corpse and all hanging out in front. Hop to it.” He looked down, dismissing Gomez, then suddenly looked up again. “And boy? A suggestion. A light little paddy on this one might be indicated. The joint belongs to G. Llewellyn Phipps.”

  “Phipps?” asked Gomez.

  “Yeah. It ain’t exactly on his letterhead, so go easy.”

  “Councilman Phipps?” Gomez was staring.

  “Yeah. Why the surprise? Everybody in the department knows about Phipps. He’s got fingers in a dozen pots.”

  “Everybody but one,” corrected Gomez. “I hadn’t heard of it.” He looked down at his hands and slowly began to rub the fingers together. “I went to high school with his wife,” he said softly. “Laura Mang, she was then. Seems a long time ago.”

  “Well bless my soul,” said Hart. “A memory tucked away like a pickle in a bottle of brine. Maybe when we get over it we can trot out and see about this killing, huh?”

  THERE was a corpse, the usual thing. It was a man, head jammed down on the concrete in front of the steps of the house on North Angeles Street. It was no extraordinary man, just a man. About five eight and a half. Dark hair with shots of gray above the ears.

  Gomez stood against an iron rafting that went up the steps. He waited until the M.E. had finished and cocked an eye at him. Then he went down on the concrete with the dead man again.

  “A little messy, whoever did it,” commented the M.E. “Through the left eye. There’s a swell term for it, if you care to listen.”

  Gomez eyed the doctor, said, “No,” briefly, and went to work. There was a wallet, and in it a little money. Identification in the form of a little packet of business cards. Driver’s license made out to the same man.

  Gomez stood again. A couple of cops were shoving along late pedestrian traffic. Woodenfaced, businesslike, as though this thing happened everyday on their beats. Some of the more curious—or avid—of the passersby suddenly remembered they hadn’t lit up a cigarette for days. One asked detailed directions about reaching a street in a distant part of town. And then didn’t listen. Secondhand thrill seekers. Gomez sighed and went up the steps of the house, knuckled the doorknob and entered.

  The room had a wall-to-wall rug of undertaker gray. Against the back wall was a small bar. The other walls were ringed by long sofas, the kind you separate and make corner chairs with. Small wall fluorescents here and there. Long coffee tables in front of each and on them arty magazines. Six or seven big ash receivers.

  “You’re wanting me, I suppose,” somebody said.

  Gomez turned. The woman facing him was in her late forties. She was large and tall at the same time. Her hair was a blond compliment to the shop that had rinsed it last. Her skin was getting to the point where it needed tucking here and there. She wore gold-decorated glasses.

  “Madame,” said Gomez. His lip curled.

  The woman ignored it. “A break for the papers,” she grunted. “Nine juicy days of scandal. And the usual pain in the abdomen for us. Okay, come along. The girls are all up back.”

  Gomez stared at the woman. Just like that? A man is murdered outside on the steps and we treat it just like that? He ran his tongue over dry lips and remembered Captain Hart’s admonition. Surprise flooded him anew
at the recollection.

  The woman led him up a flight of steps that was carpeted like the big room downstairs, and then down a carpeted hall. Off the hall were doors, seven or eight of them. At the end, a recreation room that was occupied.

  “The girls haven’t dolled up, Lieutenant. Didn’t have time. Besides, I thought it might be against some department rule or something?” She grinned at her little joke. “Girls, this is a Joe from Homicide about the—ah—accident outside.”

  Eight women faced Gomez, eight pairs of eyes wise with the wisdom of these places. Eight women in flesh.

  Gomez took a breath. “Which one of you women?” He asked quietly.

  There was no answer.

  “He was coming out of this place when he was shot?”

  The large woman grunted loudly. “Don’t be scared, kids. This is routine. Incidentally, Lieutenant,” she tipped her head to the left. “It was Paula there.”

  “You are Paula?”

  “Me, sir. Yes.”

  Gomez turned to the large woman. “Will you all leave? I’d like to speak with this woman.”

  The large woman grinned. “Paula’s room’s down the hall. She’ll take you. You can check with me on the way out.”

  Gomez’s mouth tightened. He followed Paula from the room. He left behind a few snickers, a chuckle.

  PAULA led him into a small, very warm room.

  A steam radiator in one corner near the only window was giving off a hissing noise. Gomez took in the heavy scent of some perfume that hung in the air like a steeplejack on a slippery spire. He snorted through his nostrils and then went over to the window and tried to raise it.

  The woman sat down on the bed. “It’s stuck. Been stuck a long time.”

  Gomez turned. He looked down at her, at the heavy breasts that sagged unhidden beneath the flimsy nylon of her robe. “You knew the man?”

  “No. He was just—just one of them, you know.”

  “I see. He came here often?”

  “I guess. I know I seen him once before that I remember.”

  Gomez looked around at the untidiness of the room. How do you say it to this girl, in a place like this? How do you say, was anyone in here jealous—the word seemed incredible—of this man, and of you? Instead, he said only: