Marilyn K - The House Next Door

by Lionel White

  As Tomlinson had explained it to Arbuckle, there were several essential factors which must be present to insure success.

  “The first thing,” he’d said, in his ridiculously high-pitched voice, “the first thing is to have a place to go after we leave. The place must be not too far away; it should be readily approachable from a number of different routes, it should be in a nice, middle-class residential neighborhood. A neighborhood of small homes, young married couples with children, run-of-the-mill working people. A neighborhood where our arrival, by car if we’re lucky, or by taxi or even walking if we're not, won’t seem at all unusual.”

  He had been equally conservative in other details, details like the time that it was to take place, the business of switching cars, the securing of maps of the surrounding streets and the checking of the routine habits of everyone in the immediate neighborhood. He had also checked on the location of traffic policemen, the availability of public telephones in the vicinity, and a hundred and one other details which anyone else, contemplating such a maneuver, might easily overlook.

  Even his selection of Arbuckle, Danny Arbuckle, an ex-con whom he’d known from the old days, and his limiting the operation to only the two of them, had shown foresight.

  “The two of us can handle it without help,” he’d said to Arbuckle. “We don’t want a gang walking in on this. More than two, at that hour and place, would arouse suspicion. Anyway, this is a job which takes brains, not muscles.”

  Arbuckle was inclined to be skeptical, but quick reflection that a two-way split was a lot more attractive than a three- or four-way split, was sufficient to set his mind at rest. In any case, he had a lot of confidence in Tomlinson. When the whole thing had been satisfactorily outlined for him, he was forced to agree with the other man, that barring a miracle, it was foolproof.

  If Arbuckle had any worries at all, they were not concerned with the job itself; they were, strangely enough, concerned with the place out at Fairlawn which Tomlinson had rented. Several times during the last two weeks, while they had been busy making the arrangements, he'd brought up the matter. Each time Tomlinson had reassured him.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he’d say. “I’ve told you. A dozen times now I’ve told you. She’s my brother’s widow and she doesn't even know what the score is. All she knows is that she’s being paid, well paid, to stay there in the house with the kid. If anyone gets nosy, I’m supposed to be her husband and I’m a salesman. She isn’t likely to do any crabbing. She understands what would happen—to her and the kid, too—if she talks. Anyway, I’ve been keeping her since George died and she’s grateful.”

  “But how about the kid? Hell, a nine-year-old girl must...”

  “I said don’t worry. The girl thinks we’re married. Marian and I have been together for some time now. I've used them both before for this kind of thing.”

  And so, naturally, Arbuckle didn’t worry about the woman and the child. After a while, as the time approached, he stopped worrying about anything, even the possibility of a miracle. Arbuckle didn't believe in miracles, either good or bad.

  Certainly no one in this world could possibly have considered old Mrs. Manheimer—Mrs. Isidore Manheimer, the woman who ran the newsstand in the kiosk on the street by the subway station out in J amaica—in any sense a miracle. Nor would they have considered a certain very pretty fifteen-year-old girl, hysterically running from the embraces of a middle-aged pursuer, a miracle; at least in any sense other than that each and every living human being is to a certain extent a rather miraculous thing, when you come to think of it.

  The fact remains, nevertheless, that if it hadn’t been first for Mrs. Manheimer, and then later for that certain fifteen-year-old girl, Tomlinson’s plans would have been without flaw and nothing in particular would have happened except the loss of some forty-eight thousand dollars in deposits by the South Shore National Bank.

  The bank, however, could have suffered the loss with considerably less discomfort than the discomfort suffered by Allie Neilsen and her husband, Len, two normal young persons who were to be vitally affected because of what was to happen.

  Tomlinson and his partner, Arbuckle, having finally checked every small < detail and allowed for every possible contingency, made the first move in put

  ting their plans into execution around four o’clock on the second Friday in Jan

  uary.

  The day itself was a little overcast, but it was not particularly cold or unpleasant for the time of year.

  Arbuckle alone took the initial step. He stole a Checker Cab from its parking spot near a barroom in Long Island City.

  It wasn’t a difficult theft in as much as Arbuckle had invited the driver into the bar earlier in the afternoon and had spent a considerable sum of money in getting the man drunk. He had stood the cabbie to drinks several times before and he knew his man. It hadn’t even been necessary to drink along with him. After two hours of knocking over boiler makers, the cab driver had been helped into a booth where he drooped over black coffee, carefully spiked with brandy. Arbuckle departed when the cabbie’s head began to nod.

  He’d had no difficulty starting the cab as the driver had left the key in the lock. Arbuckle was sure that the cab wouldn’t be missed for at least two hours and two hours was all that they needed.

  At four-thirty, wearing a chauffeur’s cap and a leather jacket, Arbuckle, by prearrangement, picked up Tomlinson in downtown Jamaica. Tomlinson himself was dressed as usual except that he wore a yellow rubber slicker over his topcoat and had on dark glasses. He said nothing at all as he got into the back of the taxi and Arbuckle immediately pulled the flag down and started toward their destination.

  It was necessary to kill a half hour as Tomlinson had arranged things so as to give them a little leeway in case there was any trouble in getting the taxi. Consequently, they drove at a normal speed, but around a rather circuitous route which had previously been mapped. They arrived in front of the South Shore Bank at exactly five o’clock.

  The bank itself had closed for the business day at two o’clock. That is to say, at two o’clock the bank’s doors were no longer open for regular business with the public. By two-twenty, all monies had been taken from the tellers’ cages and placed in the burglar- proof safe, the door closed and the time lock set, so that it couldn’t possibly he opened again until the following Monday morning.

  At three-thirty the two guards who worked on the floor during banking hours had finished certain extra curricular chores, punched the time clock, and were leaving the building by a side entrance. One of them proceeded immediately to a nearby tavern where he ordered a shot of straight whiskey and drank it slowly as he looked over a scratch sheet. The other, a family man, picked up his car in an adjacent parking lot and went home.

  At four o’clock the last employee had left by the same side door and the bank was deserted.

  The South Shore Bank is, like thousands of similar institutions about the country, a rather phenomenal institution. In spite of the fact that its doors were closed and locked, that the employees had gone their diverse ways and all activities within its sterile confines had ceased, the South Shore Bank continued absorbing money into its greedy maw.

  It accomplished this singular feat by the use of a very simple device; a device which consisted of a large brass roller drawer imbedded in its granite face, some three and a half feet up from the sidewalk and next to the main entrance. It had been placed there to accommodate depositors who, finding themselves with large amounts of cash on hand after banking hours, wished to deposit those sums in a safe and secure sanctuary.

  Among the several hundred persons who periodically found the device at the South Shore Bank a convenience was a man by the name of Angelo Bertolli.

  Bertolli was a private detective, but a very special kind of private detective. He didn’t dabble with divorce cases, or investigate bad credit risks or handle the usual type of work which occupied his brethren in the profession. He had but a single c
ustomer. The customer wasn’t an individual; the customer was a syndicate. To be exact, a horse betting syndicate which used Mr. Bertolli’s services for only one reason. It used him each afternoon for the safe conduct of a large sum of money, which had been collected by its various runners from bookies who made "layoff” bets. Bertolli carried the money from a certain central office to the South Shore Bank.

  The fact that this money wasn’t gathered until fairly late in the afternoon was responsible for the using of Mr. Bertolli to guarantee that it reached ultimate safety in the night depository of the bank. Mr. Bertolli, as a private detective, was licensed to carry a gun. The syndicate, whenever possible, preferred to use legal methods in the conduct of its business.

  One of the few persons outside of the inner circle of syndicate members who was aware of Bertolli’s daily chore was Gerald Tomlinson. How he happened to know about this is relatively unimportant; the thing is that he did know and that on this particular Friday afternoon, at five minutes after five, he was sitting in a cab opposite the front door of the bank as Angelo Bertolli drove up and parked.

  Each man stepped to the sidewalk at the same moment. Bertolli had been driving his own car, a Cadillac convertible, and Arbuckle was in the driver’s seat of Tomlinson’s car, the stolen taxi.

  Bertolli carried a large yellow manila envelope under his left arm and as he approached the bank, he pulled the depository key from his right-hand trouser pocket. Tomlinson was not two feet away, in his own left hand a somewhat similar envelope.

  Bertolli saw Tomlinson out of the corner of his eye and he also noticed the envelope he carried. He paid him no further attention.

  The street was comparatively busy at this moment as the bank was at a busy corner and a number of neighborhood offices were emptying. A half dozen persons were within fifty or sixty feet, but each was intent only on reaching his own destination and no one noticed as Tomlinson suddenly took a quick step forward. At the same moment he tore the end off the envelope he carried . He had raised the gun and was bringing it down on Bertolli’s skull even as the other man started to swing around.

  It was at this precise moment that Mrs. Manheimer rounded the corner.

  Bertolli knew that something was happening; perhaps he felt the swift rush of air as Tomlinson swung or perhaps it was only instinct. But he knew there was something wrong and he started to duck. He would never, however, have escaped the full force of that vicious blow, if it hadn’t been for Mrs. Manheimer.

  Less than ten minutes before, Mrs. Manheimer had left her newsstand where she had been on duty since seven o’clock that morning. She had been relieved by her oldest son, but before she had left, she had collected the day’s receipts, tallied them up and made out a deposit slip. As usual she had gone directly to the bank to leave the money in the night depository.

  The odd thing was that Mrs. Manheimer, when she saw the gun in Tomlinson's hand about to descend on the head of Bertolli, hadn’t the slightest idea of what was happening or what was about to happen. One thought and one thought alone occurred to her. In front of her, not five feet distant, was a man with a gun. And in the large cloth bag which she carried was her day’s receipts.

  Mrs. Manheimer screamed.

  The scream didn’t act as an additional warning to Bertolli. It was too late for that. But what it did was to halt, for just the fraction of a second, the action of Tomlinson’s arm as he brought the gun crashing down.

  That sudden high-pitched cry, coming from less than two yards distance, was one of the few things which Tomlinson had not allowed for in making his plans.

  The split-second lapse in timing was enough to cause the damage. Instead of the pistol butt crashing into Bertolli’s skull, it slashed down the side of his face leaving a long brutal gash and almost dismembering an ear.

  Bertolli sunk to the sidewalk, but he didn’t lose consciousness. For a moment he was powerless, the moment it took Tomlinson to grab the yellow manila envelope and turn and leap into the cab. And then, while Mrs. Manheimer was still screaming as though it were she herself who had been assaulted, Bertolli pulled out the thirty-eight cal. revolver for which he had a license.

  He managed to fire twice as the cab screeched away from the curb.

  It wasn’t until the taxi had turned the second corner that Tomlinson realized something was wrong. Until that time he had been busy stripping off the yellow raincoat and changing his homburg for a soft felt hat he’d rolled up and stuffed into his pocket. Also, he’d been watching behind to see if by any chance they were being followed.

  Assuring himself that at least for the time being they had made a clean break, he finally leaned forward in his seat to speak to Arbuckle. He was about to warn him to slow down when he saw the blood welling from the side of his partner’s neck.

  “Jesus!” He pushed his head through the opened window separating himself from the other man as he made the exclamation. “He got you, Dan!” Tomlinson said. “How bad is it?”

  The other man spoke in a low, choking voice, not turning his head and barely moving his lips.

  “I can make the car,” he said. “But I’ll never get up the steps. There’s something wrong with my stomach. ”

  Tomlinson could see that except for the place where the channel of blood ran down his neck and soaked into the collar of the leather jacket, Arbuckle’s face was deathly white. He knew he was badly hurt. He understood at once about the steps.

  “The hell with the steps, ” he said. “Go right to the car. Stop anywhere near it.”

  It was the first change he had to make in his blueprint. Until that moment, he had planned that they should drive the half dozen blocks to the Long Island Railroad station in Jamaica.

  They would be there, if things went according to schedule, at just about five-fifteen. At this hour, the neighborhood would be jammed with commuters, literally thousands of whom drove into J amaica and parked their cars and then took the train on into New York. Five-fifteen would see the first big batches of them returning.

  This particular station had another advantage. A large percentage of all trains coming from New York stopped at Jamaica, and passengers destined for points on the eastern end of Long Island were forced to change trains. As a result the station at this hour was a maelstrom of confusion, overrun by rushing commuters. Tomlinson’s plans called for ducking out of the cab, running upstairs to the station, crossing over among the crowds to the far platform and going back on down the stairs to the street.

  He had parked his own Chevrolet sedan not two blocks from the station.

  He was confident, that even if they should be followed, this technique would I be bound to shake off any pursuers. Arbuckle was to discard the leather jacket

  and the chauffeur’s cap as they deserted the cab. Once in the Chewie, he knew

  that they’d be safe.

  If the police were looking for anything by that time, it would be for a Checker Cab. No one who saw them leave the cab could possibly see them entering Tomlinson’s own car.

  But now this plan was out. Arbuckle was bleeding badly. He’d never be able to run up and down those long flights of stairs; never be able to fight his way through the crowds. And even if he could, a man with a stream of blood running down his neck would attract far too much attention.

  Tomlinson leaned forward again in the seat.

  “Directly to the car, Dan,” he said again. “Wait in the cab until I get the Chewie. I’ll drive alongside and pick you up. You sure you can make it?”

  Arbuckle didn’t answer. It was taking every ounce of his will power and his rapidly flagging strength to drive the car. As it was, he ran through the next stop light, never seeing it at all. Fortunately, there was no police officer around.

  They were hitting heavy traffic now and Tomlinson leaned forward again. He took a handkerchief out of his back pocket and padding it, he tucked it into the top of Arbuckle’s leather collar so that it partly covered the blood.

  It was one hell of a break. But he di
dn’t panic. When the cab pulled into the street on which he’d left his car an hour before, Tomlinson drew a long breath of relief.

  Three cars down from where the Chewie stood, on the same side of the street, was a fire plug. Arbuckle swung the cab into the empty space and cut the ignition. As Tomlinson leaped out of the back of the taxi, Arbuckle slowly leaned over the steering wheel until his head was resting on its rim.

  A minute later and the Chewie was parallel with him. Tomlinson had to get out and run around the car and open the door in order to help him out. Arbuckle’s eyes were half closed and he was groaning as Tomlinson got him into the front seat and closed the door.

  Several persons had stopped and were watching curiously as the Chevrolet pulled away.

  A half mile from the business section of the town, Tomlinson found a dark, narrow alley. He pulled into it long enough to transfer Arbuckle from the front seat to the back of the car, where he laid him on the floor. Arbuckle, by now, was unconscious.

  It was dark by the time Tomlinson cut into Northern State Parkway. Traffic was extremely heavy, as was only normal for that hour on a Friday evening. He knew that he was safe. Once or twice as he drove east in the endless stream

  of cars, he heard muffled groans from the back. He would have liked to have been able to stop to see if there was anything he could do for Arbuckle, but he didn’t dare. He knew that the parkway was well patrolled and pulling off the road, even for a minute or two, would invite trouble.

  The possibility of dumping the other man entered his mind for a moment but he quickly discarded it. It wasn’t that he had any scruples as far as loyalty to Arbuckle went. Arbuckle had to take his chances; it was unfortunate that things had gone wrong, but such things were a calculated risk. Tomlinson would have gotten rid of him in a second if it were the practical thing to do. But Tomlinson was well aware of Arbuckle's criminal record and he knew that, dead or alive, the other man would be found. He’d be fingerprinted and identified and once the police had his identity, they would be quick to trace the connection to himself.