by Otto Penzler
Ken got McGovern’s gun in his hand and took a couple of shots at the limousine. He heard the bullets give forth a clinking sound as they struck against the metal of the body. The limousine swung far over to one side as it rounded the corner to the accompaniment of screaming tires.
The man in the dinner coat ran towards Ken as McGovern, recovering from the daze of Ken’s blow, started to struggle to his feet.
Ken said: “Those men were trying to take me for a ride. This guy posed as a Federal agent …”
McGovern spoke up and said: “I am a Federal agent. This crook’s been shoving the queer. He’s got a wallet of phoney stuff on him right now.”
The man in the dinner coat laughed and said: “Federal, hell! I know you, you’re Jim Harper, and you’ve done time!”
A uniformed policeman, on beat, ran up. The man in the dinner coat spoke to him sharply: “All right, Bell. Get the crowd back. I’ll handle what’s left of this.”
A curious crowd was commencing to form a ring around the men, and the uniformed policeman started to herd them back.
The man in the dinner coat said: “That’s all right, buddy, I know this guy, he’s a crook. You’re a witness in the Parks case, huh?”
Ken Corning stared at him with round eyes and shook his head.
“No,” he said, “I’m not a witness, I’m attorney for Mrs. Parks and I came here to meet a witness but he didn’t show up.”
The man in the dinner jacket stared at Ken Corning for a long five seconds. Then his right eyelid slowly closed in a solemn wink: “So,” he said, “that’s your story, eh?”
Ken Corning kept his face perfectly straight and his eyes perfectly steady. “That,” he said, “is my story and I’m sticking to it. I’m not a witness, I’m a lawyer. I was to meet a witness here. These guys tried to keep me from meeting him, that’s all.”
The man in the dinner coat said: “Who were they? Would you recognize any of them if you saw them again?”
Ken Corning shook his head.
“No,” he said, “the light wasn’t good enough. I couldn’t see them.”
The man in the dinner coat turned to the fake Federal agent. Ken Corning slipped away. No one tried to stop him. There was the sound of a police siren, approaching fast, as he turned the corner.
Ken Corning walked into his office.
The morning sun streamed in at the east window. Helen Vail stared at him with eyes that were dark with emotion, warm with pride.
“Got your name in the papers, didn’t you?”
He grinned at her.
“How about our client?” she asked.
He spread his hands, palm up, made a sweeping gesture.
“Gone. Case is closed, dismissed.”
“And all we get then is the hundred and fifty dollar retainer?”
Ken nodded.
“That’s all. The woman was driving the car. Her husband wasn’t with her. I figured that he must have been, but he wasn’t. Dike and Dwight had been having a secret meeting. They’d been out in the country at a roadhouse where they were safe. Coming back they were riding in the same car. Dike was driving and he was a little bit iickered.’ The woman was driving the flivver and they had a smash. She was a little bit belligerent and insisted on taking down the license number of the automobile. They paid her for her damage but she acted a little suspicious so Dwight got the license number of her automobile and found out who she was. They knew that she was running a speak, and figured that she was too dumb to know what it was all about, but they wanted her out of the way, just the same. With the deal Dike was planning to pull, it would have been fatal if somebody had uncovered this woman as a witness, so Dwight decided that he’d get her convicted of a felony. That would have discredited her testimony if she’d ever been called as a witness.
“She probably was suspicious, because she told her husband about it. Nobody knows just how much she told him or how much he knew, but it’s a cinch that he knew enough to put two and two together when he saw Dike’s picture in the paper with the blurb about his taking over the Water Department and eliminating graft.”
Helen Vail watched him with wide eyes.
“Can we prove any of that?” she asked.
Ken Corning shook his head. “We can’t prove anything,” he said. “Wouldn’t do us any good if we could. They’ve dismissed the case against the woman, released her from custody and she’s gone. They probably made a deal with her, gave her some money and started her traveling.”
“Why would they do that?” asked Helen Vail. “Her testimony is just as damaging now as it ever was.”
Ken Corning smiled and motioned towards the morning paper.
“Read the news,” he said, “and you’ll notice that Dike has declined the appointment. He said that his private business was taking up too much of his time for him to make the sacrifice of accepting a public position.”
Helen Vail blinked her eyes thoughtfully and said: “How about the people in the automobile— don’t you know any of them?”
Ken Corning said: “You mean the ones who were trying to take me for a ride?”
She nodded her head.
Ken laughed and said: “Sure I do. Perkins was one of them. He was the detective who barged into the office here. He’s a cheap heel who does dirty work for the Dwight machine.”
“But,” she said, “you told the officers that you couldn’t recognize any of them.”
Ken Corning laughed mirthlessly and said: “Of course I did. I’d never get anywhere trying to pin anything on Perkins. He’d produce an alibi and get acquitted. Then they’d turn around and prosecute me for perjury. I’m bucking a machine in this town, and the machine is well entrenched with a lot of money back of it. I’m not a fool!”
“How about the man who pretended to be a Federal officer?” she asked.
“He’s got to take the rap. They’ve got the goods on him. They might have managed to make some sort of stall there, only I knew it was coming. I had worked the wallet that the waiter had planted on me out of my pocket. When they opened the door of the limousine I tossed the wallet in with my left hand before I grabbed at this guy’s gun and socked him with my right.”
She shuddered and said: “Oh, Ken, I don’t like it.”
He stood with his feet planted far apart, his jaw thrust forward, hands thrust into the pocket of his coat.
“I like it,” he said, “and I’m going to make them like it. I’m going to bust this town wide open. They’re going to stop me if they can. They’ll try to frame me, try to take me for a ride, try to freeze me out. I’m going to stay! I’m going to be here after they’re gone.”
“But, Ken,” she objected, “you’ve done all this work and risked your life and we only get a hundred and fifty dollars out of it.”
Ken Corning nodded and laughed.
“A hundred and fifty dollars,” he said, “and it’s honest money.”
Then he walked into his private office and the door clicked shut.
Helen Vail could hear him moving around in the inner office. He was whistling cheerfully as though he didn’t have a care in the world.
She opened the drawer of her desk, took out a ledger which was innocent of entry, took a pen and wrote in a hand which trembled slightly: “People versus Parks—cash retainer $150.00.”
Frost Rides Alone
Horace McCoy
A SOMEWHAT PROLIFIC author of pulp stories, primarily for Black Mask, Horace McCoy (1897-1955) is mainly remembered for his dark, tragic, and occasionally violent novels, several of which have been made into notable films.
A memorable work of noir fiction and a classic film is They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1935), filmed in 1969 with Sydney Pollack as the director, which achieved its aim of illustrating the pain and hopelessness of the Great Depression, using a marathon dance contest as a metaphor, with the exhausting and pointless expenditure of energy for participants being analogous to the plight of the majority of Americans.
The film
The Turning Point (1952), directed by William Dieterle, became the novel Corruption City in 1959; Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1948) starred James Cagney and was directed by Gordon Douglas when it was filmed in 1950; No Pockets In a Shroud (1937) was filmed in France in 1975; and Scalpel (1952) was filmed the following year as Bad for Each Other, the screenplay co-written by McCoy and directed by Irving Rapper. The only one of McCoy’s novels to have no film version is I Should Have Stayed Home (1938), and McCoy’s screenplay was published in 1978.
Captain Jerry Frost of the Texas (Air) Rangers made his debut in “Dirty Work” in Black Mask in September 1929; “Frost Rides Alone” was published in the March 1930 issue.
Frost Rides Alone
Horace McCoy
FROST FELT THAT HE and the woman were being followed, had been followed since they crossed the Border. As they emerged from the Plaza Madero and turned down the crooked street towards the Cafe Estrellita he became acutely aware that footsteps were proceeding in the same direction as himself and that the owner was trying to attract as little attention as possible.
To satisfy himself that he was not the victim of his own imagination, so often the case when he invaded old Mexico after nightfall, he halted briefly before a shop window, wherein baubles were exhibited, and whispered a caution to his companion. The moment they stopped the footfalls ceased. No one passed. Quite evidently someone was following.
Fully alive now, his nerves on edge, Frost spoke to his companion, and they walked on. In the distance he could see the lights of the Cafe Estrellita and outside the shadowy forms of customers at the sidewalk tables. Frost walked slowly, his ears strained, but did not look around. He was still being followed. Moreover, the number of steps behind him had increased. There were now two or three men. The street was narrow and the footsteps loud: overhead the stars blinked and from a hidden patio nearby there floated the dim tinkle of a guitar.
As the woman passed the dark, dank interiors she gave way to a swift rush of apprehension and took Frost’s arm nervously. He leaned over and whispered: “Don’t get excited, but I’d like to know if you can use a gun.”
She moved her head closer. “I’m sort of jumpy,” she apologized lamely, “but really, I can use a gun. Fact is—” her confidence returned “—I’ve got one.” She patted her voluminous handbag. She went on lightly. “I haven’t been a newspaper woman ten years without learning a few things.”
Frost said, “Oh!” rather contritely, and steered her into the cafe without looking back at his pursuers.
La Estrellita was a little square room overcrowded with tables at which, outside and inside, sat perhaps half a hundred persons. The ceiling was almost obscured by cigarette smoke, and there was all the variety of noises commonly associated with Border joints. It was the hour when Algadon blazed with the specific intent of luring tourists, although the patronage here was now, as far as Frost determined in a hurried glance, mostly native.
At one end of the room was a bar at which two Mexicans were mixing drinks; behind them was the traditional frosted mirror and long rows of bottles. A square-shouldered, semi-bald man was busy plying a rag with what amounted to violence and one look at him left no doubt concerning his origin. He was one of those old-time American bartenders driven into Mexico by prohibition.
Glasses and spoons littered one end of the bar and near this end, on a raised platform, sat a quintet of native musicians languidly strumming their guitars. They simulated indifference, ennui, hoping to chisel a round of drinks from a sympathetic tourist. The house was bare of sympathy.
Frost led his companion inside and half way to the table he had mentally selected he recognized the unmistakable form of Ranger Captain George Stuart. Frost slowly passed Stuart’s table and said under his breath:
“Don’t look up, George. Just get set. Hell’s fixing to pop.”
The only indication Stuart heard was an almost imperceptible movement of his fingers as he knocked the ashes off his cigarette. Twenty years on the Border had given him perfect control of all his faculties, had deadened his emotions.
Frost went to a table near the end of the bar and helped his companion into a chair. Then he sat down, facing the room and glanced at George Stuart.
There passed a look of understanding. Stuart crossed his legs and as he did so slid his six-gun inside his thigh by means of his elbow. At that moment three men came through the doorway, looked hurriedly about the room and walked to a table near Frost. As they sat down their chairs scraped and the sounds were audible above the maudlin talk and the soporific music.
The three of them were young, Mexican in cast of countenance, with sharp faces and narrow eyes—of a general type with which the Border, from end to end, teems: shrewd, crafty wastrels who will turn any sort of a trick for any sort of a price.
Frost ordered two bottles of beer from a waiter, and looked at his companion.
“I’m afraid,” he said, striving to be unconcerned, “I’ve got you into a mess—and the only way out is straight ahead.”
“You think,” she asked, inclining her head slightly, “those men—”
“I don’t know,” Frost said. “But I’ve got a sweet hunch you’re liable to get a good story before this party ends. There’s a window directly behind you. If—if anything happens, get out and keep going.”
“You talk,” she said, “as if you regretted bringing me.”
Frost eyed her. “I never have regrets,” he said, “they’re cowardly. Just the same it didn’t look this foggy when we started. If we tried to get out now we’d never live to reach the street.”
“As bad as that?” She was smiling and the smile annoyed Frost. He didn’t answer. He thought her question was stupid. Hell, of course it was bad. She had no business here. But that was the way with the newspaper tribe—all of them. Especially women. They thought that their profession was protection. Helen Stevens, however, seemed more officious than any other Frost had known. Probably, he presumed, because she was to author a series about Hell’s Stepsons for an indubitably important organization, the Manhattan Syndicate, Inc. But, even then, Frost told himself again, this time bitterly, she had no business here.
Few spots on the Border are safe for a woman after dark; Algadon was no spot for a woman at any time. But Helen Stevens had insisted and as the final persuasive force she had even brought a letter from the Adjutant-General. And here she was.
It looked bad.
The waiter returned with the bottles and two glasses. He poured the drinks, placed the bottles on a tray, and started away.
“Psst!” said Frost. “Deja los botella. “
The waiter turned, surprised. “Como?”
“Deja los botella!” Frost repeated, more sharply.
The waiter lifted his eyes as if invoking divine compassion on the fool before him; and put the empty bottles back on the table. He moved away, slightly puzzled; but no more so than the newspaper woman.
“How odd!” she observed.
“Not at all,” Frost said. “I’ve got a lot of funny little habits like that.” He didn’t feel it necessary to tell her experience had taught him there was nothing comparable to the efficiency of a beer bottle at close quarters; or that he had a deep-seated hunch it would be at close quarters soon.
He took a sip from his glass and looked at his companion. Her face was unworried, lovely. He thought of that moment on route to La Estrellita when she had, momentarily frightened, touched his arm. Her face betrayed no fear now—nor anything that remotely approached fear. From the tranquillity of her demeanor she might have been sitting in the refinement of an opera loge instead of a Mexican dive where the air was charged with expectancy. Frost felt, irreverently, that if he, accustomed to tension, was slightly ill at ease, she, unaccustomed to anything of the sort, should at least have shared a portion of that discomfort. It mildly annoyed him that she didn’t.
She reached for the glass with her long fingers and as she lifted it she drummed her fingers lightly against the stem. Out of
the corner of his eye Frost saw one of the three men who had followed him lean over and whisper to his comrades. He also saw George Stuart move forward in his chair, ready to get into action in a split second.
Helen Stevens was speaking in a dulcet voice. “Is this,” she was saying, “typical of Border towns?”
“Is it possible,” Frost countered, “that you are a stranger to Border towns?”
She laughed and her eyes beamed spiritedly. “Of course.”
“In that case it’s typical. Just the same,” Frost went on, “I wish we hadn’t come.”
“Why?” she demanded. She seemed positively to be enjoying it. “I’m glad,” she went on, rippling, “that I can see you against your proper background.” She inclined her head. “Captain, I’m afraid you dramatize yourself fearfully.”
For the second time in the past few minutes Frost was the victim of mixed emotions. She alternately stirred him and irritated him. Now he was in no mood for tea-room repartee.
“Please,” he said, “let’s not get personal.” He contemplated that remark and decided it wasn’t exactly what he wanted to say. It sounded flat. So he hurried on, “Miss Stevens, you mustn’t get me wrong. Our men have been having a tough time along this river with an important gang. We are constantly expecting things to happen—anything. To you that may seem dramatic. But I am only cautious—” he lifted his eyes “—and thinking of you.”
“You needn’t,” she said suddenly. “I’m all right.”
Somehow he didn’t quite think so. He was alarmed—rather definitely alarmed. Notwithstanding his attitude of indifference he felt that something was going to happen before they got out of La Estrellita. He knew the signs. It was the sort of a prelude that always traveled along in the same slot. Never any change. Had he been alone he could have forced the issue. But he was not alone. There was a woman with him—a personal charge. That sort of cramped his style. Jerry Frost had been in the habit of meeting trouble half-way.
