The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps

by Otto Penzler

  Although the night air was cold, Attorney Croker was sweating when he rounded the corner and headed for the shelter of his own limousine. He rapped his cane sharply against the running-board to awaken the driver who sat slumped over the steering wheel, opened the door himself and climbed into the tonneau. Then he picked up the speaking tube and issued his orders.

  “Central Police Station, Gunner; and step on it!”

  As the big machine got into motion, he relaxed against the soft cushions and lighted a cigarette. He shuddered involuntarily as he recalled the finding of Gebardi; he couldn’t stand blood or physical torture. He felt his stomach knotting and knew he was in for another attack of indigestion. He inhaled deeply, letting the smoke dribble through his nostrils….

  And then he suddenly became aware that the limousine had drawn up in front of a small, darkened drug-store!

  Disdaining to use the speaking tube, he jumped forward to the edge of his seat, jerked open the glass window that separated the tonneau from the driver’s compartment and shouted:

  “What’s the meaning of this, Gunner? Didn’t I tell you to hurry! I …” The words froze in his throat.

  For the driver turned abruptly. Instead of the battered, familiar features of his own chauffeur, Gunner McSpadden, he found himself staring at the rugged, leathery face of old Dennis Hallahan.

  Hallahan shoved back the chauffeur’s cap so that the visor would not shield his features. He was grinning, but somehow, Croker could read no mirth in the expression.

  The dapper little lawyer carried a gun by way of ornamentation. Now, as he suddenly recalled the picture of Gebardi, half-chewed with slugs, fear gripped him and he made a vague pass for his own weapon. But he didn’t complete the movement. The door jerked open and the enormous bulk of Lieutenant Forsythe crowded into the tonneau beside him.

  “Hello, Hymie,” Forsythe said, and the tinge of his voice matched Hallahan’s smile. “We want to have a nice long chat with you.” He picked up the speaking tube and gave his orders. “Home, James, and don’t spare the nags.”

  Lawyer Croker knew the meaning of the word fear. Sheer panic gripped him; sweat dampened his clothing in one awful rush; he went sick.

  “Where are you taking me?” he screamed, struggling forward in his seat.

  Forsythe grabbed him by the collar and jerked him back so hard his spine quivered.

  “To your home town, Hymie; The City of Hell!”

  He laughed, but Hymie Croker didn’t hear him. Hymie Croker had fainted….

  Judge Alexander Z. Tweedie looked like a judge even arrayed in his pajamas. His leonine head was crowned with a silver mane which he brushed straight back. His eyes were hidden in shadowed caves, guarded by bushy brows and out front, a pair of nose glasses acted as a barricade. His skin was rugged, seamed, and he had the kind of a jaw that is popularly supposed to denote great strength of character—but which does nothing of the kind. In his younger days, Alexander Tweedie had wanted to be an actor; his father wanted him to be a lawyer. Now he was both. He made a successful politician because he was a good actor, looked the part he chose to play, and knew how to obey orders. He was an impressive judicial fraud.

  At twelve-thirty at night, he sat closeted in his study with William Greeves, foreman of the Grand Jury. Greeves was a slight figure, nearly bald, who wore thick lensed glasses and suffered from an inferiority complex. His appointment to the Grand Jury had been one of the greatest surprises in his life; now he spent most of his time attempting to convince himself, as well as a rather cynical wife, that it came as a reward for his business sagacity and his civic loyalty. What made him of value to the powers-that-be was the fact that he honestly believed in himself. He was still dizzy from his sudden exaltation and was pathetically grateful to Judge Tweedie, whom he knew was responsible for the appointment.

  Tweedie ran his long fingers through his showy mane and peered over his glasses into the anxious features of his guest.

  “Greeves,” he boomed, “I called you here so that we could be ready to act first thing in the morning. This is … well … almost a crisis in our city. These two ex-policemen have run amuck. I know them both; hard, calloused brutes who hesitate not at all to kill.”

  “Just what have they done?” William Greeves wanted to know.

  “Done!” Judge Tweedie looked sad. He took off his nose-glasses and rapped on the desk between them. “They have murdered a young Italian, they have kidnaped at least three other young men and now …” he paused to let the full import of his words soak in, “… they have apparently kidnaped one of the cleverest and finest members of our bar.”

  “Why?” asked Greeves.

  “Retaliation! These two policemen were demoted. None of us is safe as long as they are free. It will hasten the end of this reign of terror if we act in unison.” A happy thought came to him so he added: “You or I may be next, Greeves! Think of that!”

  William Greeves thought and didn’t like the image his mind conjured. “I’ll attend to it first thing in the morning,” he assured his mentor. “We’ll put through an indictment at once.” He scooped up his hat, carefully placed it on his head and offered his hand.

  “Good night, Your Honor.”

  Tweedie unlimbered from his chair, rose with studied dignity, and grasping the proffered hand with one of his own, he put the other hand on Greeves’ shoulder.

  “It is only by putting our shoulders to the wheel together, Greeves, will we succeed in our efforts to make our city the fairest in the land.”

  The foreman of the county Grand Jury nodded; he was visibly impressed. Tweedie held onto his hand and steered him to the front door.

  “Good night, Greeves,” he said, and closed the door.

  He smiled then and turning, started for the stairs. He was tired and anxious to return to the bed he had so recently deserted. But halfway down the hall, he heard a hesitant knock on the door. He frowned impulsively, about faced and walked back. Greeves had probably forgotten something, he decided, and by the time he folded his hand around the knob, his face was set in a benign smile.

  He opened the door … and the smile died.

  Captain Clyde Barnaby’s massive bulk filled the opening. Without pausing for an invitation, he pushed the jurist back into the house, entered and heeled the door shut.

  “You’re invited to a party, Judge,” Barnaby leered. “You don’t need to dress, but let’s go back to your study so’s we can get some papers. We want to play some games.”

  Tweedie struck an attitude. “This is an outrage, sir! I’ll have you arrested and …”

  Barnaby tapped him on his inflated chest with a stubby forefinger. “Now, listen to me, you old fraud. You do as I say an’ you won’t get hurt, but one peep out of you an’ I’ll knock you colder than Little America.” He caught Tweedie by the arm, spun him around and gave him a hard push in the general direction of the study.

  He turned when they got into the study. Barnaby softly closed the door, leaned against it.

  “Now, Judge,” he suggested slyly, “fill up a brief-case with a lot of printed forms, writs, warrants, complaints, search-warrants, forthwith subpoenas and whatever else you have. Also don’t forget your seals, pen, and other apparatus.”

  “Why this is ridiculous!” protested Tweedie, giving an excellent imitation of outraged dignity.

  Barnaby sighed, fished a blackjack from the recesses of his baggy side-pocket and dangled it from his right thumb. Some of the apoplectic color went out of Tweedie’s face. He tightened the cord of his bathrobe, grabbed a brief-case from a nearby desk and began to jam it with papers. His fingers trembled so that he had trouble securing the straps.

  “Now,” said Barnaby, “you’ll come with me … quietly.”

  Tweedie hesitated. “And if I refuse … ?”

  The captain shrugged indifferently. “You go in either case; it’s merely a choice of whether you come with your eyes open or … closed.”

  “May I have the opportunity to clothe
myself?”

  “You don’t need no more clothes,” Barnaby assured him dryly, opening the hall door. “You look funny enough the way you are.”

  Something akin to a sob escaped the jurist’s lips, but he took the lead without further protest and stalked down the corridor. At a nod from the copper he opened the front door and stepped out into the night. Barnaby fell in step beside him and together they strode to the sidewalk, where a car awaited them.

  Tweedie recognized Duane behind the wheel. He muttered something and stumbled into the tonneau. Half-in, he suddenly saw the slender figure huddled in a corner of the seat.

  It was William Greeves.

  The bitter night wind whipped Judge Tweedie’s flimsy garments, but the judge was not cold …

  He was scared.

  It was the strangest court proceedings ever held in the long annals of legal history! Perhaps the most amazing feature of it all was that the idea was born, not in the cunning brain of a criminal lawyer, but in the honest heads of four old harness bulls. The courtroom was in the bowels of the earth, an abandoned sewer, and the city was directly overhead. Barnaby sat in the middle of a long, improvised table. At one end sat his Honor, Judge Alexander Z. Tweedie, garbed in striped pajamas and a dark blue bathrobe; at the other end, William Greeves shivered on a small soapbox chair.

  The room was more like a dungeon than a courtroom, and the crude lighting fixtures— beer-bottles and candles—sent jumpy little shadows carousing around the bat-infested ceiling. There was only one door—a sort of arch— and on either side of this stood Hallahan and Duane. Forsythe was down with the prisoners.

  Then Captain Clyde Barnaby began to speak.

  “Greeves,” he addressed himself to the little man, “we believe you are merely a fool, not dishonest. Like a lot of business men, you think you can dabble in politics with no experience whatever, trusting to your limited judgement of men to carry you through. We brought you here for two reasons, first, to use you for the ends of justice and because we believe you really would do the thing we are going to do if you had the knowledge and the strength. You keep your eyes and ears open and you’ll learn more about politics in the next thirty minutes than you ever dreamed of knowing. If you play smart, you can have the glory of this clean-up and perhaps get to be governor of the State on the strength of it; who knows? However, you have little choice; if you interfere, we’ll …” He paused significantly, fixed his steely eyes on the slack-jawed Greeves.

  “I won’t interfere!” promised Foreman Greeves.

  Barnaby swung towards the jurist. “An’ you, you graftin’ old scoundrel, we ought to send you to the Federal pen. We got enough evidence already to do just that, but we feel we can use you more profitably. That’s your luck just so long as you obey orders. When we’re finished, you, like Greeves, will be regarded as a civic benefactor.”

  “What,” shivered Tweedie, and not from the cold, “do you want?”

  “In the first place,” Barnaby went on, “we want you to declare this a real court of law.”

  “But … but jurisdiction …” protested Tweedie.

  Barnaby nodded. “We got the answer to that one. This place is within the city limits; a city goes down as well as up. You declare this a legal court and hear testimony and admit evidence. The first thing we want are some nine or ten subpoenas and a dozen or so blank warrants of arrests. That will erase any possible charges cropping up later.”

  “You … you damned blackguards!” choked Tweedie. “I refuse!”

  Barnaby sighed. He glanced at Duane. “Sergeant, will you take the judge into the next chamber and … well… talk to him privately!”

  Duane grinned pleasantly, unlimbered a short length of rubber-hose from under his coat and strode forward. Tweedie gulped, shrank back against his chair.

  It was Greeves who made him pause.

  The little foreman sat on the edge of his chair, eyes bulging. “Just … just a minute!” he begged with a courage that must have surprised even himself; it would assuredly have amazed his wife. “Just what are you men trying to do?”

  Barnaby frowned, squinted with one eye. He stopped Duane’s advance with a motion of one hand, then he studied William Greeves for a full three minutes of absolute silence. At length he spoke:

  “All right, Greeves, that’s a fair question. This city up above has been slowly worked into the hands of grafters, hoodlums, mobsters and professional killers: in a word, the machine has it by the throat. Chief of Police Grogan—we have him a prisoner, by the way—takes his orders from Coxy Swarm, our local Al Capone. Tweedie here, heads the Grand Jury, tells you fellows what he wants done, but he gets his orders from much the same source. The whole mess is so rotten it stinks, yet the way it’s tangled, there’s no way of unraveling it except by cleaning it out wholesale. Since it would be impossible to do that by any known regular means, we’ve improvised our own system. We’ve got the key man of every crooked outfit in the city, got ‘em here under chains and handcuffs. We’ve got Hymie Croker, the mouthpiece of Swarm and the other mobs; we got Grogan, head of the police department; we got Tweedie, senior judge of the bench and head of the local bar association.”

  “What good will that do you?” Greeves asked in a strangely awed tone.

  “Plenty. When Tweedie declares this a legal court of law, we’ll issue search-warrants, go through the homes, the offices and the safe deposit vaults of these grafters. We’ll find enough evidence so that the courts up above will have to act to save their own faces; if they refuse, we’ll step into a Federal court and indict the whole outfit with a Federal Grand Jury.”

  Greeves was very white of face. “Is … is that the true state of affairs?” He looked from one grim face to the other and his shoulders came back.

  “I see it is,” he declared harshly. “I’ve been a fool, a … a … damn’ fool! You show me some proof of your statements, something /can act on, and you won’t need to go before any Federal Grand Jury!”

  Barnaby grinned. “We’ll show you,” he promised.

  Greeves looked sternly at Tweedie. “Judge, as Foreman of the Grand Jury, I demand that you sift the evidence these officers produce!”

  Tweedie’s skin was yellow. “These men are renegades,” he stormed. “They are no longer officers of the law!”

  Barnaby snorted. “Dennis,” he commanded, “bring Grogan in, will you?”

  Hallahan vanished, to reappear a few minutes later with Chief Grogan in tow. Grogan was indignant, to say the least, and tough.

  Barnaby looked at him. “Grogan, take your choice; you either reinstate the four of us to our commands, or we’ll produce the contents of your safe deposit box to the Federal District Attorney.”

  Grogan tensed himself. “What do you know about my safe deposit box?”

  Barnaby grinned. “Which’ll it be?”

  Grogan glanced furtively at Greeves, winced and looked at Tweedie. What he saw there failed to reassure him.

  “Okey,” he agreed reluctantly, “you’re back.”

  Hallahan shoved him over to the table. “Put that in writing, Grogan.” As Grogan reached for a pen, Barnaby suggested:

  “You might add that we are conducting a special investigation into municipal graft at the instigation of the Grand Jury and Judge Alexander Tweedie.” He turned to the two men at the table. “How about that, Greeves? And you, Judge?”

  “Excellent!” snapped Greeves, wiping his face. “If you can only prove …” His voice trailed, died.

  Tweedie swallowed, combed his white mane, and nodded. “You may use my name, Captain Barnaby,” he agreed with a sigh.

  Grogan glanced from one strained face to the other. Then he bent over the paper and wrote rapidly. When he finished, Barnaby picked up the document, read it with a growing smile, and nodded to Hallahan.

  “Take the Chief out, Dennis, and bring up the shyster.”

  As Hallahan went out with Grogan, Barnaby said to the others:

  “You’ll listen to the conver
sation to come. If you feel we have a case, you can act; if you don’t, you are at liberty to refuse. This may not be strictly admissible testimony, but I wager you’ll feel justified in voting for an indictment and in giving us warrants to proceed with our investigations.”

  Hallahan appeared at the doorway and thrust Croker into the center of the room. The little lawyer stumbled, caught his balance and glared at Barnaby. He opened his mouth to speak, then, apparently for the first time, saw Tweedie and Greeves. His jaw sagged, his eyes bulged and he looked sick. Before he could recover his surprise, Barnaby took over the command.

  “Croker, you’re in a court of law. You know these gentleman at the table with me, so I can skip the introductions and get down to business. You are not only a criminal lawyer, you are a lawyer-criminal! The present charge against you is conspiracy to commit murder.”

  “You’re crazy!” screamed the attorney. “What kind of a frame-up is this?”

  “This is no frame,” Barnaby went on smoothly. “The day before yesterday, Swarm sent three of his boys out to gun a rat from the Antecki mob. You were in on that plot and advised the men to drop the machine-gun into the river at the completion of the crime. Instead of the hood, however, a little kid was murdered, an innocent bystander. You’ve got that crime on your hands, as well as others, Croker. What have you to say?”

  “I say you’re nuts!” shouted Croker, waving his arms. “You can’t prove a damn’ thing!” He swung on the white-haired jurist. “You can’t get away with this, Tweedie! I’ll have …”

  The Honorable Tweedie was caught between two fires, but he scented the direction of the wind and proved his diplomacy.

  “Are those things true, Counselor?” he demanded heavily.