Edge of the Law

by Deming, Richard

  Ginny gave Sands a puzzled look. “Neither did I.”

  Sands flushed. In gruff apology he said, “It isn’t. I just don’t like people sneaking up behind me.”

  “Sorry,” Carroll said, a trifle miffed. “Next time I’ll whistle.”

  Ginny said, “Don’t we have enough trouble without you two biting each other?” She lifted the hamburgers onto buns and started slicing a pickle. “Would it do any good to call the police, Jud?”

  Carroll gave a derisive snort. “Amatti owns the police, Ginny.”

  “Then what are we going to do?”

  Sands said, “I’ll keep an eye on the place from outside during the early part of the evening. But I’ve got a date at ten.”

  Carroll picked up the two sandwich plates and carried them out.

  Ginny said in an odd voice, “A date with some local girl, Jud?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Is she nice?”

  He grinned at her. “You sound jealous, gal. You’re a happily married woman. Remember?”

  “It’s just sisterly interest,” she said quickly. She changed the subject by asking, “What do we do if Amatti’s men turn up after ten?”

  “If they come at all, it’ll probably be early, before the place fills up,” he told her. “But if they do show after ten, do you think you can talk your husband into stalling them until you can get a phone call to me?”

  “I doubt it,” she said dubiously. “Harry’s such a mule-head. How would I reach you anyway? I thought you had a date.”

  “I’ll leave word at the Centner desk where I can be reached. I’ll keep it somewhere in this end of town, so I can drive here within a few minutes.”

  “All right,” she said. “I bet your date will love your spending the whole evening waiting for a call from another woman.”

  “She won’t mind. She’s the understanding type.”

  “Oh? What’s she like, Jud?”

  “She’s a red headed Mick.”

  “Is she pretty?”

  He looked at her quizzically. “Sisterly interest again?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said honestly. “Maybe I am a little bit jealous.” She added quickly, “But it’s only because I don’t want to give up that romantic dream I mentioned this morning. I really am happily married.”

  “Good for you,” he said dryly. “Keep it that way.”

  He walked out of the kitchen, nodded a good-by to the blond bartender as he went by and left the tavern.

  CHAPTER IX

  AS HE pulled the Plymouth away from the curb, in his rear-view mirror Sands caught sight of a blue Buick inching from a parking place a quarter of a block back. It occurred to him that he had twice noticed a similar colored Buick behind him on the way over. It was identical to the car Benny had driven him in earlier.

  He drove a few blocks, varying his speed and keeping an eye glued to the rear-view mirror. The Buick stayed exactly a quarter of a block behind, no matter at what speed he drove.

  Sands pulled over to the curb and parked. A quarter of a block back the Buick parked also.

  Walking back to the car, Sands leaned his forearms on the front window frame. Benny sat behind the wheel. The chauffeur’s low forehead wrinkled in embarrassment.

  “You want something, Benny?” Sands asked pleasantly.

  Benny shook his head.

  “You tailing me on your own, or did Renzo set you on me?”

  After considering this, Benny said apologetically, “I gotta follow orders, Mr. Sands.”

  “So Amatti wants to keep track of me, eh? Where’d you pick me up?”

  “When ya come out of your hotel. I seen you rent the car.”

  Sands pursed his lips. “I’m slipping. The way you tail, I should have spotted you long ago.”

  Benny looked wounded. “I ain’t such a bad tail. I didn’t lose ya, did I?”

  “There’s a little more than that to the technique,” Sands said dryly. “What’s on Renzo’s mind?”

  Benny shook his head. “He didn’t tell me nothing. He just said let him know where ya go.”

  After studying the man for a moment, Sands smiled. “No point in making it complicated for you, Benny. I don’t care if Amatti knows where I go. Leave your car here and come along in mine.”

  Benny looked surprised. “Ya mean it?”

  “Sure. You’re a nice guy. And I have no secrets. Why shouldn’t I help you out?”

  Benny removed the ignition keys and climbed from the car. “Dis is sure nice of you, Mr. Sands. It’s no fun following a guy aroun’ all’a time.”

  Companionably they walked up to the Plymouth and got in.

  Sands said, “Where’s a good place to have dinner?”

  Benny looked at his wrist watch. “Dinner now? It ain’t even five o’clock yet.”

  “I want to eat early,” Sands told him. “I have to be somewhere at six.”

  “Okay,” Benny said with a shrug. “I can eat any time.”

  He directed Sands to a restaurant on the north side, some miles from where the Buick was parked.

  As they left the place after having dinner, Sands said pleasantly, “Well, I guess this is where we part, Benny.”

  “Huh?” Benny said. “I gotta stick with ya.”

  Sands gave his head a regretful shake. “Not any more, you don’t.”

  Benny’s low forehead creased. “Ain’t ya gonna drive me back to my car?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then how’m I gonna tail ya?” Benny asked reasonably.

  “That’s the idea,” Sands said. “You’re not.”

  Benny gave him an injured look. “Ya just done this to shake me,” he accused. “I thought we was pals.”

  Sands sighed with mock sympathy. “Just goes to show you can’t even trust your best friends these days.”

  “What am I gonna tell Renzo?”

  “I wouldn’t tell him the truth,” Sands advised. “Better say you lost me in traffic.”

  Walking over to the car, he climbed under the wheel. Benny stood on the sidewalk, looking after him aggrievedly, as he pulled away.

  Sands found a parking place across the street and a few yards down from Harry’s Bar and Grill. From this spot he could see the tavern’s bar through the plate-glass front. Three customers sat on bar stools and Jack Carroll was behind the bar.

  A few minutes before six P.M. he saw Harry Thompson come from the kitchen. Apparently the proprietor had parked behind the tavern and come in the back door, for he wore a hat. Hanging it on a wall hook, he went behind the bar.

  Sands watched as Jack Carroll checked out his register. The blond man disappeared into the kitchen for a moment, then came out again, lifted a hat from a wall hook and exited by the front door.

  For a few moments he stood in front of the tavern, scanning the street in both directions. When he spotted Sands sitting in the front seat of the Plymouth, he crossed the street

  Leaning in the front window, he said, “I thought you’d be out here somewhere, Mr. Sands. Think anything will happen?”

  Sands shrugged. “If not tonight, sometime soon. Amatti won’t just write Harry off as a lost cause.”

  “Ginny told me not to mention to Harry that you were covering the place,” Carroll said. “She says he’d get sore. You’d think he’d be grateful, wouldn’t you?”

  Sands merely gave an indefinite grunt.

  Carroll asked, “What will you do if some of Amatti’s men show?”

  “Break it up,” Sands said tersely.

  “You must think a lot of Ginny to go to all this trouble.”

  Sands looked at him. “I do.”

  “I guess you two were pretty close once, huh?”

  Sands examined the man with a frown. “You just making conversation, or you got something on your mind?”

  “Just making conversation,” Carroll said with raised brows. “What would I have on my mind?”

  “You seem overly interested in my relationship with Gi
nny.”

  “It’s nothing to me,” Carroll said with a shrug. “Only I think that’s what’s eating Harry more than your pushing him around.”

  “What is?”

  “Your being an old boy friend of Ginny’s. He’s a pretty jealous guy. With good reason, I guess.”

  Sands’ eyes narrowed. “Are you hinting that Ginny plays around?” he demanded.

  Carroll looked a little taken aback. “I just meant she’s such a doll. Any guy would worry a little.”

  Sands eyed him thoughtfully, wondering what was behind this odd conversation. A possibility occured to him.

  He said shortly, “If, in your devious way, you’re trying to do Harry a good turn by warning me off, don’t bother. I don’t play with married women.”

  “You got me wrong,” Carroll protested, but he looked a little relieved. “Like I said, I’m just making conversation.”

  “Well, go make it with someone else,” Sands said in a blunt tone, suddenly tiring of the man. “With you leaning in the window, Amatti’s boys would spot this as a stake out car the minute they looked this way.”

  “All right,” Carroll said agreeably. “Good-night.”

  He walked off down the street.

  For nearly four hours Sands sat in the car, watching every customer who entered or left the tavern. Periodically he spotted Ginny bringing sandwiches or plates of food from the kitchen, and once, presumably during a period when no one ordered food, she sat at the bar conversing with customers for over an hour.

  When nothing untoward happened by twenty of ten, Sands decided nothing would that night. The bar was filled and several customers sat in booths. It wasn’t likely that Amatti’s men would pick a time when there were so many witnesses to give their object lesson. Starting the car, he drove back to the Hotel Centner.

  It was just ten when he entered the lobby. Tonight Bridget wore a white sheath dress with short sleeves and a high neck. Though a party dress, it was less formal than the green nylon she had worn the previous night, and he experienced a moment of disappointment that her shoulders were so sedately concealed. At second glance he noted the dress was cut to cling to her fine figure like an extra coat of skin, and decided that in its own way it was even more revealing than the green nylon.

  “You look like something that should come wrapped in cellophane,” he said appreciatively. “All ready?”

  She flushed with pleasure. “George isn’t here yet. You had a phone call a few minutes ago, Mr. Judd.”

  He had almost forgotten he was registered as Sanford Judd. Since Amatti knew his real name, the deception wasn’t important any more.

  He said, “That’s a fake name on the register, Bridget. My real name’s Judson Sands. Generally called Jud.”

  Her eyes widened. “Oh?” She waited for explanation.

  “I’m not a fugitive from the law,” he told her. “I was just trying to make it tough for some unsavory characters to find me if they showed up in Ridgeford. But practically everybody in town knows my real name now, so you may as well too.”

  “I see,” she said. “I don’t suppose it would be any of my business who these unsavory characters are, would it?”

  He shrugged. “It’s a long story. We’ll go into it some other time. What about this phone call?”

  She took a slip of paper from his box. He had assumed she meant a local phone call, but the message requested him to call Operator One in Miami, Florida.

  The slight chill he felt didn’t register on his face. He said casually, “I’ll take it in my room. Pick you up in a few minutes.”

  Up in his room he lifted the phone and Bridget answered from the switchboard.

  “I already have the Miami operator, Mr.—I mean Jud,” she said. “She’s ringing your party now.”

  A moment later a deep male voice said, “Yeah?”

  The operator’s voice broke in. “Is this the party calling Mr. Sanford Judd in Ridgeford?”

  “That’s right,” the voice said.

  “Your party is on the line.”

  Sands had recognized the voice. He said with a touch of relief, “Hello, Solly. How’d you locate me?”

  “I was in Mark’s office when he got a call telling him where you were, and under what name,” Solly said. “For old times’ sake, I thought I’d tip you off.”

  “Nice of you, Solly. Mark wouldn’t like it if he knew.”

  “You can return the favor by never mentioning this call,” Solly said. “Not even to your mother, if you have one.”

  “I won’t get you in trouble,” Sands assured him.

  “Good. There’s a guy in Ridgeford who don’t like you, Jud.”

  “Several,” Sands said dryly. “But how do you know?”

  “I figured he wouldn’t have phoned Mark Fallon your hide-out if he was a pal.”

  “Renzo Amatti?” Sands asked.

  “That’s the character. What’s his beef?”

  “I was working for him, and we had a falling out.”

  Solly said in a surprised tone, “Again? Can’t you get along with anybody?”

  “I guess I’m a little bullheaded,” Sands admitted. “What are Mark’s plans?”

  “The same, Jud. Maybe if you’d just pinked him, he’d forget it eventually. But not with an empty sleeve. You know Mark.”

  “Yeah, I know him. I should have put the slug in his fat head.”

  “You shouldn’t have called him at all. But it’s spilt milk now, Jud. You better lam out of Ridgeford.”

  “No thanks,” Sands said quietly. “I’ve stopped running.”

  “You don’t understand, Jud. Mark put a couple of friends on a plane for Ridgeford this afternoon. They may be there by now.”

  “What friends?”

  Solly said slowly, “Henny Ault. The other one doesn’t matter.”

  Sands had a recurrence of the slight chill he had felt when he first learned he had a call from Miami. “No,” he agreed. “With Henny on a team, the other members wouldn’t.”

  “Play it smart, Jud. You wouldn’t have a chance against Henny.”

  “I know how tough he is,” Sands said with a touch of irritation.

  “It’s not just that, Jud. Lots of people are tough. But Henny’s a specialist. Face-to-face against an ordinary gun, I’d put my chips on you. But you wouldn’t even see Henny.”

  “I keep a pretty sharp lookout,” Sands said dryly. “Thanks for the tip-off, Solly.”

  “You’re welcome, Jud. And good luck.”

  “Thanks,” Sands said, and hung up.

  CHAPTER X

  THE INSTANT he hung up the phone, it occurred to Sands that he should have asked Solly what plane Henny Ault and his companion had taken. If he met the plane, he could become the stalker instead of the stalked.

  Lighting a cigarette, he paced to the window and sightlessly stared down into the parking lot back of the hotel, mulling over whether it would be worth while to call Solly back. A pencil-thin beam of light behind one of the cars below jerked his attention that way.

  Quickly he backed from the window and switched off the room light. Then he returned to the window and watched as the thin beam of light moved from license plate to license plate. It stopped behind the car he had rented. The light winked out and two shadowy figures faded toward the alley.

  With the hair at the base of his neck rising, he wondered if the two men were Mark Fallon’s hired killers. Even if they were already in town, how would they know the license number of his rented car?

  Then he remembered Benny. With so little to report to his boss, Benny wouldn’t have neglected to describe the car Sands was driving. And Amatti would helpfully turn the information over to Ault when he arrived in town.

  The two shadowy figures had been the men sent by Fallon, he decided. Since they hadn’t tampered with the car and had left as soon as they located it, he guessed that their only purpose in looking for it was to make sure he was in the hotel at present.

  Henny Ault must be pla
nning an immediate hit.

  Sands drew the window shade and switched the light back on. Punching out his cigarette in a tray on the dresser, he picked up the phone.

  When Bridget answered, he asked, “George show up yet?”

  “He’s just coming in the door now.”

  Sands said, “Do you mind if we postpone our nightcap, Bridget?”

  “Of course not, Jud,” she said instantly. “Was your call bad news?”

  “In a way,” he said noncommittally. “Will you do me a favor?”

  “Of course.”

  “Some men may come in soon. Will you stay on the desk until they do?”

  “All right,” she said puzzledly. “Will they be registering?”

  “Not likely. I don’t think they’ll even stop at the desk. They’ll just take the elevator. One will be a very thin man with a kind of sunken-in face and a sharp, pointed nose. I don’t know what the other looks like.”

  Bridget’s voice sounded even more puzzled. “You want me to tell them anything?”

  “Not unless they ask. If they ask for me, just tell them I’m in. But don’t tell them I’m expecting them. If they walk right by the desk, let them go without saying anything. Then ring me the minute they start up in the elevator.”

  There was a moment of silence. Then Bridget said in an oddly quiet voice. “These men are the unsavory characters you mentioned, aren’t they, Jud?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Shouldn’t I call the police?”

  “Look, Bridget,” he said patiently. “Either do as I ask, or go to your apartment and do nothing. But don’t try to interfere.”

  “I don’t want you to get hurt,” she protested.

  “Then do as I ask,” he snapped.

  She was silent again. Then she said in a small voice, “All right, Jud.”

  When he hung up, Sands checked his room door, found the catch set and unlocked it. Dragging a straight-backed chair to the wall opposite the bathroom, he positioned it so that it faced the hall door at an angle. But he didn’t sit in it. Instead he sat on the bed, calmly smoking, while he waited for the phone to ring.

  Fifteen minutes passed and he was just stubbing out his second cigarette when the phone jangled. It irritated him that the sudden sound made him jump.