The Big Book of Reel Murders

by Stories That Inspired Great Crime Films (epub)

  “Hell, I’m just a plain guy trying to make a living. Come around and see me sometime. I’m stopping at the Bushwick.”

  The train had stopped.

  Torgensen said, “Come on, I’ll drop you off,” and stepped out into the corridor. On the platform, he walked fast, with a brisk snap to his short legs, and he had an air of self-sufficiency. Kennedy, round-shouldered, hollow-chested, tagged along at his elbow. The reporter looked as if he had slept in his suit, and his hat was on backwards, the brim up in front, down in back. They went through the milling crowd in the waiting room, the redcap ahead of them lugging three heavy bags.

  There was a cobbled space outside, dim-lit, where a line of cabs stood waiting. The Negro stowed the bags in the first one and Torgensen stood cupping his hands around a match and lighting a cigar. Then he tipped the Negro and when Kennedy said, “Beauty before age,” went into the cab.

  Kennedy was raising his foot, to follow, when the two explosions whacked out and streamed into one blast of thunder. The taxi driver went down behind his wheel. Torgensen poised in the doorway of the cab, then fell backward, crumpling. Kennedy was starting for the other side of the cab but Torgensen’s chunky body hit him. He stopped, to catch the man. Caught him but was unable to master his balance enough to hold him. Both went down, Kennedy on the bottom. With Torgensen on his chest and the cobbles against his back, Kennedy said, “Ooch!”

  Then Torgensen rolled off. Kennedy rolled too and found himself facing the man. Torgensen was in pain. His mouth was crooked, his eyes full of wonder and sadness and something between pain and anger. His lips bubbled. Kennedy thought a bitter smile came to the chunky man’s lips. He heard Torgensen say almost wistfully, “Ain’t this something, boy…?”

  The taxi driver was yelling, “The shot come through the other side of the cab! The other side…through…it come!”

  Torgensen said, “H’m,” reflectively, and a sigh bubbled out.

  Legs moved about Kennedy. Big, black, polished shoes. He looked up and saw a red face coming down towards him. Above the face a visored cap with a shield on it. The cop grabbed hold of Kennedy.

  “Not me,” Kennedy said. “Him. He’s the guy’s shot.”

  Someone was shouting, “Ambulance! Ambulance! Somebuddy get an ambulance!”

  “Through the other side,” the driver insisted. “The window. Right through the window.”

  The cop, kneeling, said, “This man’s dead. Yop. Feel here. Look at his face. Look at his eyes. I seen a man once…”

  Kennedy was on his feet.

  The cop grabbed him, snapped, “Was he a friend of yours?”

  “Well, he would have been, I think.”

  “Listen, this ain’t no time for funny-bones. Who is he?”

  “George Torgensen.”

  The policeman thought hard. “Tiny Torgensen?” he asked.

  “Something like that.”

  “Um,” the cop said, staring down at Torgensen. “Fitz Mularkey ain’t going to be crazy about this. I only read in the papers today that Fitz Mularkey says Tiny Torgensen—”

  “I know he’s dead,” Kennedy said in a quiet, confidential voice, “but just for the sake of appearances, officer, you ought to call an ambulance.”

  The taxi driver was hopping about and telling everybody how Torgensen was shot. A beggar wearing dark glasses and a sign that read I Am Blind, was not begging. More cops came on the run. Torgensen looked for all the world like a man asleep. The night train was whistling out of the yards.

  Kennedy shrugged his way through the fast gathering crowd, gained the edge, and slouched away.

  CHAPTER II

  They said of the Million Club that you could let your sixteen-year-old daughter go there and she’d be safer than in church. Fitz Mularkey was that kind of idealist. He’d always had a lot of respect for women. He employed six men for the special purpose of seeing that drunks got home safely. Everyone in his employ saw to it that a drunk was safe while on the premises. Fitz Mularkey was forty-four. That is an unusual age for a man to be still an idealist.

  He liked blue. The hangings in the Million Club were blue and the indirect lighting had a bluish tinge. The high stools in front of the bar had blue plush seats. Mularkey was sitting on one of them drinking a glass of seltzer when Dolly Ireland came up to the bar and said:

  “So this is the night, eh, Fitz?”

  “This is it. You’re looking swell, Doll.”

  “Don’t it make you kind of sad leaving”—she smiled around—“all this?”

  He didn’t have to look around to check up. He chuckled and shook his head. “Not a bit, Dolly. The game’s getting full of crackpots and tin-horns. I’m fed up, lady. I want to live like a human being. I’m tired of grifters and drunks and guys trying to sell me white elephants. I want a real home and a real business, a business I can be proud of.”

  “Gee, Fitz, you ought to be pretty proud of this.”

  “I ain’t. That’s it. I ain’t. I want kids and a nice wife and regular hours—Say, you never met Marcia, did you?”

  “You never brought her around.”

  He looked a little sheepish. He shrugged. “She don’t go for these kind of places. Hey, have a drink.”

  “I’m on my way inside, Fitz.”

  “Oh, sure, I forgot.”

  She put her hand on his sandy, flat-boned wrist. “I thought you might be sliding out early. I just wanted to wish you luck, Fitz—all the good things; you know, the things you want. You’re a grand guy, no kidding, and I’m all for you.”

  He had slate-blue eyes that could look murderous or full of happiness. They looked happy now. He said awkwardly, “Thanks, Dolly. You know—well, a lot of people think I’m going high hat. I ain’t, Dolly. I just want—I just want—”

  She gave a low, warm laugh. “I know, Fitz. I know just how you feel.” She dropped her voice, looked grave. “What are you doing about Steamboat?”

  Mularkey looked unhappy. He said in a low, husky voice, “I’m fixing it so he’ll get an income for life—three hundred bucks a month. Dolly, I had to cut away from Steamboat. I know he’s been what they call my man Friday for years, but you just can’t break Steamboat o’ the habit o’ packing a gun. And the life I’m going to lead, why, hell, Dolly, I don’t need that.”

  “He’s pretty sore, Fitz.”

  “I know he is. He’ll get over it. He ain’t really sore—not at me, Dolly. He’s just sore because he thinks I’m leaving a good thing. He don’t understand.”

  She patted his arm. “Well, I’ve got to get back to my party, Fitz.”

  “Gee, you look swell, Dolly.”

  He stood spread-legged and his eyes admired her as she walked out of the bar. Then he put a cigar in his mouth, did not light it, and strode into the lobby. His sandy hair was crisp, tight against his scalp. His long face was slabsided, rough around the jaw. He had square shoulders and long straight legs. His stare was a little chill when he was wound up in thought, but otherwise it was twinkling, good-natured. You knew that he was tough but you knew also that he had spent a lot of time smoothing down the rough edges.

  Tom Carney, his manager, came up and said, “Fitz, maybe you’ll slam me for this.”

  Mularkey grinned. “Maybe. Why?”

  “Steamboat. I wouldn’t let him in.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, he was cockeyed drunk and noisy. I took his gun away from him and sent Eddie and Boze to take him home.”

  Mularkey brooded. “Poor Steamboat.”

  “Yeah, I know, but—”

  “Sure, Tommy, sure. That’s okey.”

  The front door opened and MacBride came in, showing behind him for an instant the doorman, the marquee, and a street lamp. The doorman pulled the door shut and Mularkey dropped an aside to Tom C
arney:

  “The skipper looks—”

  “Yeah,” nodded Carney.

  MacBride came right up to them and said, “See you alone, Fitz.” His dark eyes had a slap in them and you could tell that he had hurried.

  Mularkey said, “Sure—over here,” and led the way into a small triangular room. It contained a desk on which there were a telephone and a form-sheet for taking reservations. There were two armchairs studded with antique nails. A lamp with a green glass shade diffused quiet light.

  Mularkey was offhand, genial—“Sit down, Steve.”

  MacBride seemed not to have heard. He stood looking at the green lamp as though he liked it and were considering buying one some day. His eyes were bright, dark, contracted. Mularkey was waiting for him to sit before he himself should take a seat. But the skipper did not sit down; instead, he said:

  “About how many guys wanted to buy you out, Fitz, when you said you were chucking all this?”

  Mularkey sat on the corner of the desk. “Oh, about four or five.”

  “Made some hard feelings, eh? I mean, going out of town for your buyer.”

  “Hell, no; no hard feelings.”

  “Who’re the four or five?”

  Mularkey gave him a brief squint, then looked at the ceiling. “Well, Guy Shaster and Will Pope came to me together. Then there was Brad Hooper. Then Pickney Sax. Four. That’s all. Four.”

  “And no hard feelings, eh?”

  “What makes you think there was any?”

  “Torgensen. Torgensen was killed. Yeah. Tonight. About half an hour ago. About a quarter past eight.”

  Mularkey pushed himself up off the desk, cupped his right elbow in his left palm and used his right thumb to scratch his chin. He strolled around the room, each step slow, timed. The carpet was thick and his footfalls made no sound. He said from one of the corners:

  “Where?”

  “Front of Union Station.”

  Mularkey made another slow circuit of the room, still scratching his chin. He sat down, took his unlit cigar from his mouth, looked at it, put it back between his lips again. He said very thoughtfully:

  “So there were hard feelings, huh?”

  MacBride put his palms flat on the desk and leaned on his straight, braced arms. His face was wooden.

  “I’m going to say a few words to you, Fitz,” he said, “and I want you to listen. You’ve been here in Richmond City a dozen years. I’ve been a cop over twenty. You’ve kept your nose clean ever since you been here. How, in the business you’re in, hell knows. But you’ve kept it clean. You’re all set to bail out of it clean. You’re going into what we call legitimate business. I’m all for you. I like to see a guy do that. A lot of people think I like to see guys tossed in the can all the time. That’s crap. Now I know you and Torgensen were old buddies. I was glad when I heard you were selling out to Torgensen. I’ve got his record and it’s clean. Now some mugg’s knocked him off. I know how you feel about that and that’s what I mean. I mean, Fitz, keep your nose clean. I like you, I’ve liked you ever since you came here, but the minute you take a sock at anybody with a gun—even if they did kill Torgensen—it’ll be murder and you know my answer to murder.”

  Mularkey was remembering—“Little Tiny…he never toted a gun or a bodyguard around with him. He always used to say guns and bodyguards are what get guys killed.”

  MacBride leaned across the desk. “You heard what I said, Fitz, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, sure. Sure, Steve.”

  MacBride fixed a hard dark stare on him. Mularkey looked up; then he rose and tucked down the lapels of his vest. He said, “There’s only one thing stopping me from getting my nose dirty, Steve. I’m going to marry Marcia Friel. I think Tiny’d understand that.” His jaw tightened. “He’s got to. I’m too nuts about Marcia to ball things up by killing anybody.”

  MacBride gripped his arm. “That’s sweet music, Fitz.” He added, “I could have saved my speech.”

  “You could’ve saved it all right.”

  Mularkey tossed away his unlit cigar.

  “Orchids to her,” MacBride said.

  “That’s an idea,” Mularkey said, and phoned and ordered.

  CHAPTER III

  The skipper got back to his office at a quarter to ten. A couple of flies were roosting on his desk and he got his fly-swatter down from a hook in the closet and nailed them. He noticed that someone had left his window open without putting in the small rectangular screen he used at night. He figured it was Abraham, the porter, and made a note of it. He turned to spit and found that his spittoon was gone. He knew it was Abraham. He looked irritated for a minute, but he was too absorbed with other things to remain irritated long. Stuffing his pipe, he paced the floor. Lighting up, he still paced. On his tenth trip past his desk he slapped open the annunciator and said:

  “Send up Lieutenant Blaufuss.”

  In two minutes Blaufuss, head of the Flying Squad, stuck his long nose through the doorway and said, “You looking for me?”

  “In, Leon,” MacBride beckoned. He had not stopped pacing, nor did he now. Ribbons of tobacco smoke trailed behind him, overlapped him on the turns. “Leon…”

  The skipper went to the closet again and got his fly-swatter. “Leon, what do you know about Pickney Sax, Guy Shaster, Will Pope, and Brad Hooper?” He nailed a fly on top of the telephone.

  “Jeese, d’you want me to sit here all night?”

  “Know plenty about ’em, huh?”

  “More than I know about my in-laws.”

  “Okey, Leon. Now…” He stopped and aimed his pipe-stem at the lieutenant. “I want their inside men—all of them. I don’t want Sax, Pope, Shaster, or Hooper. I want their inside men. All of them. And I want their women. Not their wives, understand—but their women.”

  “Brad Hooper has none.”

  “Okey, the other three, then.”

  “Any charge?”

  “No. I’ll book ’em en route.”

  Blaufuss pointed. “There’s a fly—right there—on the—”

  MacBride smacked it.

  Blaufuss said, “Anything else?”

  MacBride shook his head and Blaufuss went out. The door had hardly closed when it opened again and Kennedy came in tapping a yawn. He moved haphazardly across the office, set two chairs opposite each other; sat down in one, put his feet on the other and drawing a sporting sheet from his pocket, proceeded to read it. The skipper had taken to pacing again and was going up and down at a great rate. After a couple of minutes Kennedy said:

  “Please stop it, my friend. It makes me nervous.”

  MacBride stopped and held up four fingers of his right hand. “Four guys, Kennedy. Four. Four guys wanted to buy out Fitz. He turned ’em down.”

  Kennedy said, “My, my, here’s a horse I should have bet on.”

  “Fitz leans to his old pal Tiny Torgensen. Torgensen’s killed as he comes out of Union Station. Four guys. One of them did it. One of them got Torgensen before the deal was closed. Fitz is bound to sell. He wants to get out. He will sell.”

  Kennedy said, “I was going to bet on this horse, but I let Paderoofski talk me out of it. He talked me into betting on Full House because he said he had a dream in which he was playing poker and he dreamt he had a Full House. And here Stumble Bum, a twenty-to-one shot—”

  Exasperated, MacBride spat. He spat where he was used to finding his spittoon. It wasn’t there, and with a growl he called the central-room desk and bawled, “Tell Abraham to bring a mop and my spittoon back….No, not a cop—a mop!”

  He hung up violently and glared at Kennedy. “You know what I’m doing?” he demanded.

  Kennedy looked up at him, shrugged. “Standing there working up a sweat.”

  MacBride was not to be sidetracked.
“I’m rounding up the pulse men and the good-time dames of Pope, Sax, Shaster, and Hooper. I suppose you thought I’d round up the head men themselves.” He swatted another fly by way of emphasis.

  Kennedy yawned. “Well, it’s all right, Stevie. Gathering in all those guys is good display psychology. Keeps your cops busy and makes news for the papers. But”—he rubbed his eyes—“I don’t think you’re going to find anything.”

  The skipper cut him with a caustic stare. “Oh, no? And why not?”

  “Well, you can’t charge these guys with anything that’ll hold. You can only hold ’em overnight. You’ll drag in, all told, about twenty guys and three or four dames. You’ll have to do some shellacking. If you worked on each guy three hours, which is a very short time, it would take you sixty hours to get through all of them—which is longer than you can hold ’em.”

  “That’s just paper figuring.”

  Kennedy took off a shoe in order to scratch the arch of his foot. He pointed lazily with the shoe. “Here’s some more paper figuring. Guy Shaster and Will Pope teamed up trying to buy out Fitz. Pickney Sax tried it alone. So did Brad Hooper. There you have three bidders, each with enough dough to buy him out. Why should one bidder knock off Tiny Torgensen and take a chance, if Fitz does sell to one of them, of Fitz selling to one of the others? I know that all these guys have settled more than one argument with a gun, but here’s a long chance, too long to play on. These guys are not hop-heads, they’re business men. A murder has to get them something definite before they pull it.”

  The skipper planted his fists on his hips, screwed down one eye and flexed his lips. “Go ahead with some more paper work.”

  Kennedy put his shoe back on, took his time about lacing it up. He became absorbed in a spot on his coat and tried to remove it by scraping with his thumbnail.

  MacBride laughed raucously. “You’re just one of these destructive critics. You tell a guy everything he does is lousy but you can’t build up anything yourself.”

  Kennedy smiled gently. “Potato, you’re doing swell. Your display work is the tops and—”