Inside Job

by Raoul Whitfield

  He went away, gesturing towards the stairs. From a rear room Slade heard voices and the clink of glasses. Upstairs everything seemed pretty quiet.

  Tim Slade said very softly as he climbed the wooden stairs:

  “Jap—sure—”

  The door of the room was half opened. Slade shoved it open the rest of the way, with his left shoe. He walked inside. Jap Dyke was leaning across a table, elbows spread. He was a small, heavily shouldered man with eyes that slanted, and were slightly almond shaped. His skin was yellowish, and his dark hair edged high from his forehead. He was Italian, but he looked like a Japanese.

  Hugh Fresney sat in a corner, on a chair without arms. The chair was tilted back, and Fresney’s brown shoes rested on a cross rung between the two front legs. Both arms hung at his sides. There were two glasses, half filled with beer, on the table across which Dyke sprawled.

  Tim Slade stood near the opened door, his back to the stairs. Both hands were in the side pockets of his suit coat. He smiled at Fresney.

  The city editor’s lips twitched a little. Jap Dyke said:

  “What’s this?”

  He had a thin tone and when he spoke his lips didn’t move very much.

  Slade said: “Hello, Hugh—feel better?”

  The city editor’s eyes were very small. He shook his head.

  “My face isn’t so bad, but my body hurts like the devil.”

  Slade nodded. “It’ll hurt worse in a couple of months,” he said very quietly.

  Fresney let his shoes slip off the rung of the tilted chair. They dangled just clear of the floor.

  “How’s that, Tim?” he asked.

  Slade smiled very narrowly. “You missed out, Hugh,” he said quietly. “You’re going to go the way Walter Cresser went—tonight.”

  The city editor’s body jerked a little. Jap Dyke lifted his chin from his spread arms and his eyes got more almond shaped.

  Fresney swallowed slowly and said: “Tell us about it, Tim.”

  Slade said: “You murdered Vaupaugh.”

  Jap Dyke drew a deep breath, then sighed heavily. Fresney closed his eyes, then opened them again.

  “It was Little Red Riding Hood who did that, Tim,” he said very quietly.

  Slade smiled with his lips. His brown eyes were on Fresney’s small ones.

  “You’ve been tough for a long time, Hugh,” Slade said. “Good and tough. But lately you’ve been getting bad and tough. Tonight you murdered Vaupaugh. You did it because you hated him—you’ve hated him for a long time. You’ve planned his murder for a long time. He was yellow, Hugh—but that yellowness was going to stop you from doing things with the sheet.”

  Jap Dyke swore very softly, but he didn’t move his body. Fresney said grimly:

  “Yes, yes—go on.”

  Slade said: “You built up this stuff about your life being threatened. And Vaupaugh’s. You said the sheet had been hard—too hard. Maybe that was true, but it was hard where it didn’t count. You said Jap Dyke was after you because you’d forced the police to pull him in. He wasn’t after you, Hugh—he was with you. The sheet yelped until he was pulled in, but they didn’t have anything on him. And you knew that. It just made it look good. And even with Vaupaugh dead, they wouldn’t have anything on him, Hugh.”

  Slade paused. Jap Dyke’s fingers made faint tapping sound against the table wood. Someone laughed thinly, downstairs.

  Slade said: “You got me on from Cleveland, because you were ready to finish Vaupaugh, and you needed more evidence that a mistake had been made, and that someone had got the managing editor instead of you. You wanted to be sure everyone knew you were afraid. You built up a lot of little hates—some of them were real enough. Then, when Vaupaugh was leaving tonight, you went after him. You shot him in the back—and because his life had been threatened, and he still trusted you, you got a break. He didn’t think you’d shot him, so he yelled to you to get whoever had shot him. Collins heard that.”

  Fresney was breathing heavily, but his eyes were still very small. Slade said:

  “You knew you had him. After he yelled, you put another bullet up in the wall—in a spot that put it in line with the door you were going to use in your story. Your gun was in a pocket, loaded. I don’t know what you did with the one you used, and I don’t give a damn. Maybe Vaupaugh realized what had happened, and grabbed you. Maybe he didn’t. He might have shoved you down the stairs before he went out, or you might have just let yourself go down. You’re hard, Hugh—and you can take it. Besides you’d killed a man, and you had to make it look right. Collins found you unconscious or almost unconscious, halfway down the stairs. That’s how you murdered Vaupaugh.” Jap Dyke said: “You shouldn’t have done it, Hugh.” His voice was very low and hard. Fresney was still breathing heavily and evenly.

  Slade said: “Vaupaugh was putting a check on you. He was going to run the sheet again, and you didn’t want that. You were playing politics, Hugh—you were going to play politics. You and Jap Dyke. You needed the sheet—the two of you could have done things with it. But you went too fast, and too far. And when Vaupaugh weakened you knew you’d lost. Unless he was dead. If he was dead—there was his daughter—”

  Fresney let the chair tilt forward. His face twisted. Slade said:

  “Take it easy—both of you! I’ve got lead ready to rip cloth—and then some more cloth!”

  After a few seconds he spoke softly. “I went to the Schenley tonight and talked to Vaupaugh’s daughter. She hates you, Hugh—she hates your insides. Why? Because I told her what I figured. And she figured the same way. The chances are she would have married you, Hugh. She sort of liked you, and her father, who didn’t like you, would have been dead. She wouldn’t have known she was marrying his murderer. And you’d have had the paper, Hugh—the whole damn’ sheet to use the way you wanted.”

  Fresney said in a hoarse voice: “You’re lying, Tim—you’re lying like hell. If you’d gone to her tonight and told her what you thought—she’d have laughed at you. You haven’t any evidence—you just think—”

  Slade interrupted. “She didn’t laugh at me—she believed me. She had to believe me.”

  Fresney said thickly: “You’re lying—”

  Slade shook his head. “I called you on the phone and asked you if you knew a small man with a limp. I told you that I’d thought he had tipped that you were inside the paper. You said you weren’t interested. And then you changed the story. You did know such a man. You said his name was Garrow, and that he was working with Jap Dyke’s mob, you’d heard. He wouldn’t turn up anything against them, anyway.”

  Fresney said: “Well?”

  Slade’s smile faded. “There wasn’t any man with a limp. He didn’t pick up any paper and hand it to a blonde. I was just feeding you, Hugh—just seeing whether you’d use it. And you did use it, when you figured it would help.”

  Fresney ran his tongue-tip over a lower lip. He looked at Jap Dyke and said: “Is he safe, Jap?”

  The slant-eyed one nodded. Fresney looked at Tim Slade and spoke in a very soft voice.

  “You certainly earned the money you owed me, Tim. I hate to see you get still.”

  Slade tightened the grip on his Luger. “Sure,” he said with sarcasm. “But you got worried, Hugh. I was away from the paper too much. I think you had me tailed—and spotted the Schenley visit. So guns were turned loose on me, on the bridge. They didn’t take.”

  Fresney smiled thinly. “That’s so, Tim,” he said. “They didn’t take.”

  Slade spoke quietly. “I think the police would have got around to you pretty soon, Hugh. But they were willing to believe you were hated enough for someone to have made a mistake—and have smeared Vaupaugh instead. I wasn’t so willing to believe that.”

  Fresney said steadily: “All right, Tim. You’ve made your speech. About the gun—I took on a new reporter three days ago. Jap here recommended him. He was at the bottom of the stairs, with his coat spread like a blanket. I tossed him the gun, then d
id the dive. It hurt like the devil. The reporter went through the pressroom and out the truck entrance. He had the gun with him. The rest was the way you’ve told us.”

  Jap Dyke looked at Fresney, and Fresney nodded. Dyke called loudly and thinly:

  “Terry!”

  Slade shook his head. “No good,” he said. “The police have been over here since I started across the first time. They let me work it my way. Terry and the rest are downstairs—they’ve been talking and laughing once in a while. But the police guns are making them act that way. Your bunch weren’t so strong for you taking up with Fresney, anyway, Jap. They’re being good and saving their necks.”

  Jap Dyke let his body roll to one side and jerked at a pocket. Slade swung his body a little and squeezed on the Luger. Dyke moaned, went to his knees and fell forward. Hugh Fresney shoved over the table and leaped for Slade.

  There were pounding footfalls on the wooden stairs as Slade jerked his body to one side. Fresney’s arms were swinging; a fist struck Slade and knocked him off balance, to one side. Fresney swung and pounded at him again. Slade said hoarsely:

  “Stop—it—I’ve got—a gun—”

  Fresney wasn’t armed, and he hated to shoot. The city editor had fingers on his right wrist now. They swayed backward, their bodies close. Fresney twisted the gun so the muzzle slanted towards his face—then jerked Slade’s wrist. His finger slipped with the sharpness of the jerk—the gun crashed.

  Fresney’s body sagged, and he slipped slowly to the floor. O’Hafey came into the room, followed by two plain-clothes men. They had drawn guns in their hands. Fresney was half propped against a wall. Slade said:

  “He did it—and dropped the gun to one of Jap’s men he’d taken on as a reporter.”

  One of the plain-clothes men crossed the room and bent over Dyke. He straightened and said:

  “He’s dead.”

  O’Hafey stared down at the city editor, and Slade said:

  “He twisted my gun—and jerked my wrist. It was his way of—”

  Fresney’s eyes were staring, his lips were colorless. He tried to smile.

  “The kid’s—good—O’Hafey,” he said very slowly and weakly. “And I—broke him in—taught him to use his eyes—”

  His eyes closed, then opened again. He said with an effort, in a hoarse whisper:

  “Inside—job—but it didn’t—work—”

  His head fell forward, and his eyes stayed open. O’Hafey bent down and after a few seconds said:

  “Well—that’s all for him.”

  Tim Slade shook his head slowly. “He was a good, tough city editor,” he said slowly. “But he got greedy.”

  O’Hafey nodded. “That’s the way with a lot of good tough guys,” he philosophized. “And after they get too greedy—they get dead.”

  Tim Slade had dinner with Dana Jones. He needed someone to cut up the meat for him. He had a pretty bad left hand. It was a quiet dinner, but they got along nicely together. She’d never been to Cleveland, and they finally got around to wondering if she’d like it there. They were both fairly sure that she would.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Inside Job by Raoul Whitfield (February 1932, Black Mask Magazine) is copyright © 1932 by Pro-Distributors Publishing Company. Inc. Copyright © renewed 1960 by Popular Publications, Inc., and assigned to Keith Alan Deutsch as successor-in-interest to Popular Publications Inc., Proprietor of Black Mask Magazine, and conservator of all copyrights, text and art.

  Cover design by Andrea Worthington

  978-1-4804-9301-8

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