Pulp Crime

by Jerry eBooks

  Knowing that they had nothing on him, Tony watched with faint amusement and a large sense of virtue while the dicks went through the poorly lighted, smoke-filled room, tapping hips, asking questions, occasionally bestowing a hard, backhand slap on the ugly mouth of some hoodlum who tried to talk back. As he had expected, they made no move to molest him.

  “This kid’s all right,” said a man he recognized as Lieutenant Grady from the neighborhood station. “He’s Ben Guarino’s brother.”

  “That don’t mean anything,” retorted a burly, cold-eyed man whose hard-boiled demeanor identified him as from headquarters.

  “Does to Tony!” snapped Grady. “We’ve never heard of him bein’ outside the law yet, either in this ward or any other.”

  “Thanks, Lieutenant!” smiled Tony. “Can’t I buy a cigar for you and the boys?”

  They all laughed at that. Not a man of them but what was old enough to be his father, yet he called them “boys” and they liked it. With all the poise and self-possession of a judge on his own bench, Tony led the crowd of officers to the front of the poolroom and purchased cigars for them all. Then they exchanged cheery “Good nights” with him and departed. Already Tony had learned the manifold advantage of having a good “rep” with the cops. Also he knew the great power that came from having people in one’s debt, even for such little things as cigars. Tony seldom accepted a favor from anyone, but if he did, he always tried to return one twice as big, thus removing his moral debt to them and making them indebted to him. He had the mind and soul of a master politician.

  Tony suddenly realized that the stuffy, smoke-filled atmosphere of the poolroom had given him a headache, and decided to go home. Except for occasional oases like the poolroom, the neighborhood was a desen of gloom and deserted frowsiness. Street lights were infrequent and those that existed were of the old-fashioned, sputtering type that, like some people, made a lot of noise but accomplished little. It hadn’t rained that night, yet there was an unhealthy dampness about. The dingy old buildings, with their ground-floor windows boarded up like blind eyes, seemed to hover malevolently over the narrow, dirty streets. One street that served as a push-cart market by day was littered with boxes and papers and heaps of reeking refuse. An occasional figure, either hunting or hunted, skulked along. Infrequently, a car raced past, awakening echoes that could be heard for blocks through the quiet streets. Over all hung a brooding stir of everpresent menace, an indefinable something that made sensitive strangers to the neighborhood suddenly look back over their shoulders for no good reason.

  This was the setting of gangland, its spawning place, its lair and one of its principal hunting grounds. It was also Tony’s neighborhood, the only environment he had ever known. But he could not see that a great scheme of circumstances, a web much too intricate for him to understand, had gradually been shaping his destiny since the day of his birth, that it was as difficult for him to keep from being a gangster as it was for a Crown Prince to keep from becoming King.

  Tony reached the little grocery store that his parents owned, and above which the family lived, passed to the door beyond, inserted his key and clattered up the dirty, uncarpeted steps. A light was on in the dining room, which also served as the parlor. Seated in an old rocker which had been patched with wire, sat Ben Guarino reading the paper, his blue uniformed legs and heavy, square-toed black shoes resting on the dirty red and white checked tablecloth. His revolver, resting in its holster, hung suspended by the cartridge belt from the back of another rickety chair upon which rested his uniform coat and cap.

  As Tony came in, Ben looked up. He was a stocky chap in the middle twenties with a brutal mouth and jaw and defiant dark eyes that usually held a baleful glitter. For a number of reasons, all of which he kept to himself, Tony felt that his brother was going to be a big success as a policeman. To Tony, the only difference between a policeman and a gangster was a badge. They both came from the same sort of neighborhoods, had about the same education and ideas, usually knew each other before and after their paths diverged, and always got along well together if the gangsters had enough money.

  “Where you been so late?” demanded Ben truculently.

  “What the hell’s it to you?” retorted Tony, then remembering the favor he was going to ask, became peaceable. “I didn’t mean to be cross, Ben. But I got a nasty headache.”

  “Down to that O’Hara joint again, I s’pose?”

  “Well, a fellow’s got to have some place to go in the evening. And the only other place is some dance hall with a lot o’ them cheap, silly broads.”

  “Gettin’ choosy about your women, now, eh?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that’s right,” answered Ben with a grin. “There’s nothin’ll take a man to the top—or to the bottom—faster than a high-toned woman eggin’ him on.” Suddenly his feet struck the floor and he leaned forward, his eyes boring straight into those of his brother. “Say, what’s this I hear about you deliverin’ packages for Smoky Joe?”

  “Well?”

  “Didn’t you know there was dope in them packages?”

  “No, I didn’t. But now that I do, it’s goin’ to cost him more.”

  “You let that stuff alone.”

  “Oh, all right. I s’pose some cop belly-ached to you about it. Well, he can have that little graft, if he wants it. I got other things I can do.”

  “Yes, I guess you have,” agreed Ben drily, “from all I hear. So you been a lookout down at Mike Rafferty’s gamblin’ joint, too?”

  “Yes. And why not? That’s a decent way of makin’ a few bucks. Would you rather have me out pullin’ stick-ups like the rest of the guys in the neighborhood?”

  “Of course not.” He leaned forward and spoke seriously. “Don’t ever get in no serious trouble, Tony; it would ruin me at headquarters.”

  “I won’t. Don’t worry about me. You got enough to do to watch your own step.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothin’,” answered Tony casually with a smile, enjoying the sudden fear that had come into his brother’s face. “That’s just a friendly tip from a fellow that knows more than you think he does.”

  “Who?” demanded Ben hoarsely.

  “Me.” Tony grinned again and flipped his cigarette ashes on the bare floor. “Say, Ben, can I have your car tomorrow night?”

  “No. I’m usin’ it myself. That’s my night off.”

  “How about the next night?”

  “No. You’d prob’ly get in trouble with it. Kids and cars don’t go together.”

  “All right. I’ll have one o’ my own pretty soon and I’m goin’ to get it as easy as you got that one.”

  With which parting shot, Tony went in to bed, slamming the door shut behind him. How a fellow making a hundred and fifty a month could acquire honestly a car that cost nearly three thousand dollars was too much for Tony. But then all policemen had big cars, and captains had strings of apartment buildings and sent their children to European finishing schools.

  The strange quiet that momentarily descended over the Guarino household at this time of night was balm to Tony. It was the only period of the twenty-four hours that he could spend at home without feeling that he was about to go crazy. The rest of the time it was noise . . . noise . . . noise . . . He wondered if other people’s homes were as uninviting and repellent; all those he had ever seen were.

  He undressed quickly and climbed into the grimy bed which he and Ben shared. He wanted to sleep before Ben came in so that they couldn’t argue any more. But his mind was racing and it kept swinging around to Vyvyan Lovejoy. Even to think about her made him alternately hot and cold all over and left him trembling with anticipation. He would have her; nobody could stop him—not even Al Spingola.

  The fact that the woman he wanted belonged to another made not the slightest difference to Tony. All life was a battle and the strongest man got the gravy. Anyway, she had said she would talk to him if he had a car and some money. Well, he’d get ’em b
oth, and be back at that stage door tomorrow night.

  HOME IS WHERE THE HEARSE IS

  William Knowles

  Typhoon Townsend was the big blow that brought Herbert Hotspur home in a breeze!

  I AM on my way back to my hotel when I stop in at a place called the Friendly Tavern to get a drink. Believe me I need one. Here I have driven five hundred miles into uncharted Northern California to dig up a publicity angle on Herbert Hotspur, Creepy Club’s best selling mystery writer.

  And what do I find? A high school botany instructor who looks like a high school botany instructor. This I did not think possible. I am thinking that if all the Creepy Club authors are like him the Creepy Club Publishing Company will stay right behind the eight ball. Which is where they were before they hired me. Then I happen to glance at a copy of the local paper lying on the bar and right away the idea hits me.

  “Hey, Mac,” I call to the bartender.

  He comes down the bar and gives me the once over. Though he tries to conceal his envy by grinning, I can see that he is impressed by my Hollywood sports clothes.

  I poke the headline with my finger. “What’s the angle on this local murder?”

  “No angle,” he says, “this guy Hinkle was found in a ditch with ninety-two slugs in him. The facts are in the paper.”

  Not for nothing have I seen all of Humphrey Bogart’s movies. Right away I know my next move. I take out fifty cents and spread it on the bar in front of him. (It is in dimes.)

  “I don’t want the facts,” I say, “I want the inside story.” It has been my experience that bartenders usually know most of what goes on. In small towns they know all that goes on.

  “Well,” says Mac—that was really his name because it was inked on his shirt—“well, seeing as how you’re a stranger, I guess I can talk freely.” He pockets the fifty cents and then glances nervously up and down the bar. All this, you understand, is just to make me think I’m getting my money’s worth. But I am patient and wait for him to go on.

  “This Hinkle,” Mac says, “was one of Juke Box Joe Denton’s boys. Juke Box Joe is a big man in Santa Rosita. Owns every slot machine and juke box in town.”

  “He’s the local crime king, huh?” I enquire.

  MAC shakes his head. “No, I guess you’d call Big Jim Murphy that. Place a bet in Santa Rosita and you place it with Big Jim. Maybe you think it goes to a barber or a bell hop, but it gets back to Big Jim. You can call him top dog around here. But not in front of Juke Box Joe. They don’t exactly get along.

  “For a small town,” I say, “you seem to be topheavy with low life.”

  Mac frowns. “Santa Rosita isn’t such a small town. Twenty-two thousand. But I guess we do have more crooks than we need. If Juke Box and Big Jim don’t get together they’re going to give the town a bad name.”

  I pay Mac for the drinks and ask him the way to the Clarion’s office. That is the name of the local paper. Here I spend a pleasant hour talking to the editor whose name is Fink or Finch. I do not quite catch it. I get back to my hotel around midnight and right away hit the sack. Believe me I am dead.

  The next thing I know it is nine o’clock and the phone is ringing and someone is pounding on my door. I put the phone under my pillow but pretty soon the door bursts open and in rushes Herbert Hotspur. He is holding a newspaper in his hand and looks like he has been dead three days, what with being unshaven and having a funny glazed look in his eyes.

  “Look!” he croaks, thrusting the paper at me. I look and right away I can see that this Finn fellow has done a good job. Smack on the first page is a box with the headline:

  GANG WARFARE STILL RAGES.

  An open letter to the police chief of Santa Rosita from Herbert Hotspur.

  “Read it, Mr. Townsend,” he says. That is my name—Townsend. He wipes his brow with a pale blue handkerchief. “Read what it says I said.”

  “I don’t have to,” I tell him, “I wrote it.”

  He pulls at his collar and stares at me kind of wild like. “Why?” he whispers, “why?” I can see there are drops of sweat on his face, which is strange as my room does not get the sun and consequently is not warm.

  “Why?” I repeat. “Why because you are a public spirited citizen, aroused at the ineptitude of corrupt public officials, determined to rip the mask of evil from your home town. Singlehanded if necessary.”

  Much of this I am quoting from the open letter.

  Hotspur looks a little sick. “But I don’t know anything about crime or criminals,” he says weakly.

  “Mr. Hotspur,” I say sternly, “all Creepy Club authors are experts in their chosen field. How can the author of 4 Funeral Too Frequent and Gory Be have no knowledge of crime?”

  “But,” says Hotspur, waving the paper in front of me, “what about right here where I call the mayor a pork barrel politician and the police chief a reputed crook?”

  I put a hand on his shoulder in a brotherly fashion. “When you go racket busting in a big way, Herbert, someone is bound to get hurt. It’s tough, but it’s life.”

  Hotspur still looks unhappy. “It just isn’t fair to say that ‘one more hideous crime has been added to the growing list of unsolved murders in Santa Rosita.’ Hinkle was the first murder we’ve had in forty-five years—and he was shot only two days ago.”

  “Herbert,” I tell him, using his first name, “if you want to back down on this crusade, that’s your affair. If you want to forsake the ideals your ancestors fought and died for, go right ahead. Turn your back on your city’s hour of need, wash your hands of justice, clutch your thirty pieces of silver and go.”

  Herbert has a choking spell and I slap him fondly on the back. He is not a bad little guy even if he is kind of rabbity looking. “Mr. Townsend,” he asks kind of feeble-like, “why do I have to be a remorseless man hunter like it says in the paper?”

  “Herbert,” I say, “look at it this way. Why do you go to a movie? Because it’s good? No. Because it’s had good publicity. Creepy Club Mysteries were in the red for years. Nobody buys mystery novels. They borrow them from their friends. And their friends borrow them from other friends. So what does Creepy Club do? They hire the best publicity man they can afford. Me.” This is true. In Hollywood I am known as “Typhoon” Townsend, though my first name is really Tyrone.

  I see I have Herbert’s interest now, so I go on. “First I started a Find the Clue contest. Then I put whodunnit commercials on the radio and got testimonials from famous criminals, telling how they got helpful tips from Creepy Club mystery books. Now I am ready to start my most inspired campaign: glamorizing Creepy Club authors. You are the first. To the public you are now a dashing amateur criminologist putting his theories into blazing action.”

  Herbert is beginning to chew on his fingernails so I calm him by saying: “All you have to do, Herbert, is poke around town, ask a few people if they know who killed Hinkle. If you find out, wonderful. If you don’t, the cops will most likely get his killers in a few days, and you’ll get credit for goading them into action.”

  THE phone rings again which makes Herbert jump violently. It is possible he has been working too hard. I answer it and it is the local editor, Flynn. He says he’s contacted the news services and they are giving Herbert’s crime campaign full coverage. I tell him great and to come on up and we will discuss Herbert’s next utlimatum to the police.

  As soon as Herbert find out the press is coming he groans and bolts for the door. I do not stop him as I have to get dressed, and besides it is clear that Herbert is not going to be of much use in planning his campaign.

  I order breakfast to be sent up and when Flint arrives we spend an hour or two making plans for Herbert. Then I call the L.A. representatives of a couple of picture magazines and they both say they will send photographers. After that Mr. Plunket, who is president of Creepy Club, calls and says he has read the news services reports and it is great stuff, great.

  So what with one thing and another it is lunch time before I get a
round to remembering Herbert. Just then the phone rings again and who should be calling but Herbert himself. He starts right off calling me unpleasant names, which is unusual because Herbert is a very meek little man and aside from writing mystery novels has no vices.

  After he calms down he says: “And then they shot at me.”

  “What!” I shout, moving the earpiece out a little so Flink can hear.

  “Just as I was driving back to school,” he goes on. “I’d already missed my nine o’clock class and was running past an open lot in back of the High School when bang! You should see the hole in my hat.”

  I am not certain but I think I can hear Herbert’s teeth chattering. Fisk is making notes like mad on the back of an envelope.

  “Now listen Herbert,” I tell him, “go straight to the police. Demand protection. Tell them no citizen’s life is safe when—”

  “I did,” Herbert says. “I’m phoning from outside the police station. They laughed at me. They thought it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard. One of them gave me an apple to replace the hat. Said it made a better target. It was that bit in the open letter where I call them the scrapings of three states’ underworld that annoyed them, I think.”

  I see Herbert has a point there so I tell him to go straight home and sit tight. He says he is going home to get tight, but I figure that is about the same thing so I hang up.

  Fitch leaves to get an extra on his paper, but not before I give him a copy of Herbert’s latest book, Cant You Hear Me Killing Caroline? He says he will run a review of it right away. Just in case he doesn’t have time to have anyone read it, I give him a review which I have already written. It is a good one, though it is really only a review of the cover.

  I have not yet had time to read the book itself.

  I spend the afternoon pleasantly, visiting the local book stores and giving out posters. These are special composite jobs the “art department of Creepy Club has worked up. They are big pictures of Herbert in a convict suit with a number hanging on his neck. Underneath in large black letters it says wanted! Below this in very small print it explains that Herbert is America’s Most Wanted Mystery Author and the number on his chest is the circulation of his last book.