by Otto Penzler
Rocco just smiled a wise smile, shrugged, lit a cigarette. “You’ll find out.”
The phone rang. “Get that,” Milton ordered. “That’s her guy now. Keep him on the wire.” He turned and went running up the stairs to the floor above, where the other phone was.
Rocco took out a gun, fanned it vaguely in my direction, sauntered over.
“Don’t try nothing, now, while that line’s open. You may be fooling Milton, you’re not fooling us any. He was always a sucker for a twist.”
Rocco’s buddy said, “Hello?”
Rocco, still holding the gun on me, took a lopsided drag on his cigarette with his left hand and blew smoke vertically. Some of it caught in his throat, and he started to cough like a seal. You could hear it all over the place.
I could feel all the blood draining out of my face.
The third guy was purring, “No, you tell me what number you want first, then I’ll tell you what number this is. That’s the way it’s done, pal.” He turned a blank face. “Hung up on me!”
Rocco was still hacking away. I felt sick all over. Sold out by my own signal that everything was under control!
There was a sound like dry leaves on the stairs and Milton came whisking down again. “Some guy wanted an all-night delicatess—” the spokesman started to say.
Milton cut his hand at him viciously. “That was Centre Street, police headquarters. I had it traced! Put some clothes on her. She’s going to her funeral!”
They forced me back into the silver sheath between them. Milton came over with a flagon of brandy and dashed it all over me from head to foot. “If she lets out a peep, she’s fighting drunk. Won’t be the first stewed dame carried outa here!”
They had to hold me up between them, my heels just clear of the ground, to get me to move at all. Rocco had his gun buried in the silver folds of my dress. The other had a big handkerchief spread out in his hand held under my face, as though I were nauseated—in reality to squelch any scream.
Milton came behind us. “You shouldn’t mix your drinks,” he was saying, “and especially you shouldn’t help yourself to people’s private stock without permission.”
But the doorman was asleep again on his bench, like when I’d come in the first time. This time he didn’t wake up. His eyelids just flickered a little as the four of us went by.
They saw to it that I got in the car first, like a lady should. The ride was one of those things you take to your grave with you. My whole past life came before me, in slow motion. I didn’t mind dying so terribly much, but I hated to go without being able to do anything for Chick. But it was the way the cards had fallen, that was all.
“Maybe it’s better this way,” I said to myself, “than growing into an old lady and no one looks at your face any more.” I took out my mirror and I powdered my nose, and then I threw the compact away. I’d show them a lady could die like a gentleman!
The house was on the Sound. Milton evidently lived in it quite a bit, by the looks of it. His Filipino let us in.
“Build a fire, Juan, it’s chilly,” he grinned. And to me, “Sit down, Angel Face, and let me look at you before you go.” The other two threw me into a corner of a big sofa, and I just stayed that way, limp like a rag doll. He just stared and stared. “Gosh, you’re swell!” he said.
Rocco said, “What’re we waiting for? It’s broad daylight already.”
Milton was idly holding something into the fire, a long poker of some kind. “She’s going,” he said, “but she’s going as my property. Show the other angels this, when you get up there, so they’ll know who you belong to.” He came over to me with the end of the thing glowing dull red. It was flattened into some kind of an ornamental design or cipher. “Knock her out,” he said, “I’m not that much of a brute.”
Something exploded off the side of my head, and I lost my senses. Then he was wiping my mouth with a handkerchief soaked in whiskey, and my side burned, just above the hip, where they’d found that mark on Ruby Rose Reading.
“All right, Rocco,” Milton said.
Rocco took out his gun again, but he shoved it at the third guy hilt first. The third one held it level at me, took the safety off. His face was sort of green and wet with sweat. I looked him straight in the eyes. The gun went down like a drooping lily. “I can’t, boss, she’s too beautiful!” he groaned. “She’s got the face of an angel. How can you shoot anything like that?”
Milton pulled it away from him. “She double-crossed me just like Reading did. Any dame that doublecrosses me gets what I gave Reading.”
A voice said softly, “That’s all I wanted to know.”
The gun went off, and I wondered why I didn’t feel anything. Then I saw that the smoke was coming from the doorway and not from Milton’s gun at all. He went down at my feet, like he wanted to apologize for what he’d done to me, but he didn’t say anything and he didn’t get up any more. There was blood running down the part of his hair in back.
Burns was in the room with more guys than I’d ever seen outside of a police parade. One of them was the doorman from Milton’s place, or at least the dick that Burns had substituted for him to keep an eye on me while I was up there. Burns told me about that later and about how they followed Milt’s little party but hadn’t been able to get in in time to keep me from getting branded. Rocco and the other guy went down into hamburger under a battery of heavy fists.
I sat there holding my side and sucking in my breath. “It was a swell trick-finish,” I panted to Burns, “but what’d you drill him for? Now we’ll never get the proof that’ll save Chick.”
He was at the phone asking to be put through to Schlesinger in the city. “We’ve got it already, Angel Face,” he said ruefully. “It’s right on you, where you’re holding your side. Just where it was on Reading. We all heard what he said before he nose-dived anyway. I only wish I hadn’t shot him,” he glowered, “then I’d have the pleasure of doing it all over again, more slowly.”
Chosen to Die
Leslie T. White
LESLIE TURNER WHITE (1901-1967) was born in Ottawa, then moved to California, where he was a lifelong member of the law enforcement community. He became a largely self-taught expert in fingerprinting, electronic eavesdropping, photography, trailing suspects, and other nascent tools of crimefighters.
He had headline-making experiences in the tong wars, battles with communists, and numerous other major criminal activities in California, all recounted in his autobiography and fictionalized in such novels as Homicide (1937), The River of No Return (1941), and his most important book, Harness Bull (1937), which included a four-page glossary of “S’language"—terms used among members of law enforcement organizations. The novel served as the basis for the famous motion picture Vice Squad (1953), released in Great Britain as The Girl in Room 17, directed by Arnold Laven with a screenplay by Lawrence Roman; it starred Edward G. Robinson.
In “Chosen to Die,” private investigator Duke Martindel is married to Phyllis, a smart lawyer he met while she was a law student and he was still a member of the police department. They got married the day she passed her bar exam. Phyllis, though still young, has largely retired, mainly taking on a case only when her husband gets in trouble.
“Chosen to Die” was first published in the December 1, 1934, issue of Detective Fiction Weekly.
Chosen to Die
Leslie T. White
The trussed-up body fell at his feet
It was the prettiest murder frame Martindel had ever found himself in—gilt-edged, steel-barred and time-locked against cracking. But those who had stuck him there hadn’t taken into consideration the fact that their dupe’s wife was the smartest criminal lawyer in town—and just enough in love with her husband to play mouthpiece for him and not double-cross or chisel in the usual way.
CHAPTER ONE
ROBBERS’ PLEA
PHYLLIS MARTINDEL WAS jerked from the depths of a sound sleep with an abruptness that left her breathless and moist with perspi
ration. She cocked her head, listening, but the apartment seemed all too silent, like a morgue peopled with the dead. Propped upon one elbow, she sought to force her eyes to pierce the darkness but the tarnished silvery glow that seeped through the single window mellowed into opaque shadows before it reached the bedroom door. She leaned over and touched the broad shoulders of her husband and seemed to absorb some of his great strength from the contact. Her heart ceased its mad fluttering as she tried to recall what had awakened her.
Then she felt, rather than heard, the door swing open!
The limp hand suddenly became a bony talon that tightened on her husband’s flesh. “Hey! What’s the idea?” he grumbled thickly.
She shrank against him. “Duke! There is— there is someone in the apartment!”
He gave her a playful bunt with his head and then his lazy voice drawled out of the darkness beside her. “Say, Phyl, just because you’re married to a detective don’t be so damn suspicious. Oh, well, if there’s anyone here tell ‘em to g’wan away and come back at a decent—” He stopped abruptly as the sudden glare of a flash blinded him.
“Keep your hands away from that pillow, Duke!” a tense voice commanded from the shadows behind the source of light. “Get ‘em in plain sight on top the covers!”
Duke Martindel arched his neck and blinked into the beam. Very slowly he spread his big hands on top of the counterpane, then shot a sidelong glance at his wife. “Darling,” he grinned wryly, “is this guy calling on you or me?”
A shadow moved across the wan light of the window. The shades were carefully drawn, then a wall-switch clicked and the room was flooded with light. Martindel pushed himself erect and stared at his guests.
They both had guns on him, but there the similarity ceased. The big man at the foot of the bed had apparently dressed hurriedly for his visit, for even the up-turned collar of his black topcoat failed to hide the fact that he wore no tie. Close-cropped gray hair bristled from the brim of a derby that shaded his tiny close-set eyes— eyes that reminded Martindel of twin bullet holes in a cantaloupe. His square jaw and heavy jowls were tinted a deep purple by a stubble of beard and he carried a scar that coursed upward from the corner of his thin mouth to the crisscrossed sack under his right eye. It was the first time Duke Martindel had ever seen stark fear in Sam Skuro’s eyes.
“Get up, Duke!” growled Skuro. “You’re goin’ places.”
Martindel felt the convulsive clutch of his wife. He turned his head and looked at the man who had drawn the window shade.
“Well, Gus Nuene! Since when have you and Sam gone into the kidnaping racket?”
The man addressed as Nuene gave his neck a nervous jerk. He was very tall and very thin like a giant crane and the angled bridge of his hooked nose made it seem as though he were perpetually sighting a shotgun. He was all straight lines and angles.
“This isn’t a snatch, Duke,” he announced. “We got a job for you.”
Martindel chuckled without pleasantry. “I maintain an office, boys.”
Sam Skuro made an impatient gesture with his gun. “Pile out, Duke,” he growled. “We’re in one hell of a hurry. This is on the level.”
Duke Martindel glanced at his wife and a thrill of pride suffused him. She looked very young and very cool lying there with her round blue eyes fastened on Skuro’s gun muzzle. Brown hair tumbling around her bare shoulders made her look like a school girl rather than a clever lawyer and the wife of a well known detective. Duke grinned in spite of himself.
“Phyl,” he said in an audible stage-whisper, “you’re the legal brains of the family. What would you advise in a situation like this?”
Phyllis Martindel was scared—Duke could tell that by the way the nostrils on her little turned-up nose quivered—but she prided herself that she could match her husband’s cool wit, so she tried it now. “Darling, they seem to be clients of yours.”
The detective’s quick laughter brought a dark scowl to the swarthy features of Sam Skuro. “Listen, Duke, this is no time for wise-crackin’. There’s big dough in this for you.”
Nuene took a step nearer the bed. “Ten gran’, Duke! That’s more than you private dicks can make in a year on a straight job.”
Martindel chuckled. “Straight job? Now that’s a word I didn’t think you boys included in your vocabulary; you, Gus Nuene, the slickest con-man in town, and Sam Skuro the veteran peterman! Why, Sam, you must be well over fifty! You were cracking cribs when I was in short pants.”
Skuro leaned over the foot of the bed. “Duke, you got a reputation in this town. Everybody that knows you at all knows you left the police department and went into private practice because the department went crooked.”
“Part of it did,” Martindel admitted.
Skuro nodded vigorously. “All right, then, part of it; the biggest part. Well, you wouldn’t sit by an’ see them frame an innocent man, frame an’ hang him, would you?”
The detective drew up his knees and locked his hands around them. “Sam, you old fraud, you couldn’t be innocent of anything.”
Nuene said: “You know Harry Washburn, Duke?”
Martindel nodded. “Sure. He’s the grand jury investigator. We teamed on the force when I was in harness.”
Sam Skuro’s gun sagged. “Listen, Duke, before my God, I didn’t kill Washburn!”
The detective stiffened slightly. “Well, who said you did?”
Skuro opened his mouth as if to say something, apparently changed his mind and, swivelling, walked over to a small radio near the bed. With trembling fingers he rotated the dial. Then he stepped back and listened as the cool, impersonal voice of the police announcer droned out of the instrument.
“… railway stations, apartments, rooming houses and small hotels. Repeating general order to all cars. Description of wanted men as follows: Sam Skuro, age fifty, six foot one, two ten, gray, close-clipped hair, bullet head, dark com-plection, scar running from right corner of mouth to right cheek-bone. Skuro is a three-time loser, dangerous criminal. Gus Nuene, confederate, probably holed up together. Nuene five eleven, thirty-eight, gaunt and angular,
dark and sleek, well dressed, thin hawk-face, cold gray eyes. Take no chances in arresting these men as they are wanted for murdering investigator Harry Washburn. All cars will patrol their—”
Sam Skuro switched off the instrument. Both men kept their eyes on Martindel’s sober features.
Duke spat: “Cop-killers!”
Skuro caught the bed post. “We didn’t, Duke! I’m tough, I’ve cracked a lot of cribs in my day, slugged a lotta guys, but before my God, Duke, I never drilled a guy.” He paused and amended the statement by adding, “I never drilled a guy in the back!”
Martindel’s voice was cold. “What did you come to me for?”
“We’re bein’ framed, Duke. With our records any jury in the world would sink us. We’re innocent, we need help.”
Martindel gave a dry laugh that lacked mirth. “What you birds need is a lawyer, not a detective. You better speak to my wife.”
Nuene shook his head. “No, Duke, a lawyer can’t help us out of this spot.”
“Have you got an alibi?” Martindel asked.
The two visitors exchanged glances. Nuene answered through tightened lips. “We can’t use it, Duke.”
Nuene shot another glance at Sam Skuro. The latter gave his head a perceptible nod. Nuene turned back to the detective.
“Duke, we’ll lay our cards on the table—cold. But first we want your word that under no circumstances will you tell the law.”
Martindel shook his head. “I can’t give my word on that. If they subpoena me into court, I’ll have to talk.” He smiled sardonically. “However, if you boys hired a good lawyer and told her your troubles, she would be able to protect your confidences by the laws of privileged communications.”
Phyllis swung around. “Darling! I don’t want—”
“Go on, boys,” Duke interrupted. “Tell the attorney your troubles.”
/> Nuene nodded to Sam Skuro; Sam began to talk. “Harry Washburn was diggin’ up a lot of graft dope—”
“Skip it,” Duke cut in. “We know all about Washburn’s activities.”
“Well, he knew too much so he got bumped at five minutes after twelve.”
“Ask him who bumped him?” Duke suggested to his wife.
Skuro answered before Phyllis had a chance to repeat the query. “I don’t know that. It was framed to look like Gus an’ me did it.”
“How do you mean—framed?” asked Phyllis.
Skuro shrugged helplessly. “Phoney evidence—I don’t know just what. A friendly stoolie tipped me off just in time to the raid or we’d have been—” He ended with a shudder.
“They want us—dead,” contributed Nuene.
“Where were you at five minutes after twelve?” Phyllis Martindel wanted to know.
Both men hesitated, then Sam Skuro heaved his shoulders. “In the main vault of the County and Suburban Bank!”
Martindel laughed harshly. His wife gasped.
“They were cracking the bank, darling,” the detective told her drily, “when Washburn was murdered.”
“Couldn’t you prove that?” Phyllis asked. “It would be better than being charged with murder!”
“Not much better,” Duke put in. “Sam and Gus are both old offenders, if memory serves me right they each have three convictions behind them.”
“That’s right,” Nuene admitted wearily.
“And that means they’ll get life even if convicted for cracking the bank.”
“It means,” Nuene corrected drily, “that unless you prove us innocent we’ll both be killed by the cops. We heard they don’t aim to make any arrests in this case; they don’t want to chance it to a jury in case anything slips up. It’s a frame, I tell you, Duke!”
“But how,” protested the charming lawyer, “can we prove you innocent when you are guilty of something else?”
Skuro bit his lip. “Your husband will know how to handle that, ma’m.”
