The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps: The Best Crime Stories from the Pulps During Their Golden Age--The '20s, '30s & '40s

by Otto Penzler

  8

  Captain Judson put his fists on his hips and said: “You get in the damnedest messes.”

  “It took you long enough to get here,” Casey said grimly.

  Logan was looking down at Nyberg. Wade sat on the curb. Potter still held the gun. He lifted his arm, stared at the automatic, dropped the arm again. He kept doing it, as though he could not believe he had used it. And all the time he was saying: “Jeeze—jeeze,” in thick, hushed tones.

  There were two police cars in the street now, and overhead windows were up, and heads and shoulders in whitish nightclothes hung on the sills.

  Logan said: “Looks like the only guy left is Russo.” He stared at the bullet-headed fellow who stood flanked by two plain-clothesmen. “How did we miss him?”

  Casey had told what had taken place in the apartment, finished with: “Don’t ask me. I only knocked Wade into him. After that—”

  “You damn’ near knocked me out,” Wade said. “I thought he was gonna let me have it. He could have easy enough. But I guess Potter—” he broke off.

  Potter coughed, spoke apologetically. “They were both on the ground, but I saw this guy start to swing his gun around, so I kicked him in the head and took it away from him.” He hesitated, looked at Casey. “Then when I saw how you were fixed—well, I had to let him have it.”

  “You had to do it, huh?” Casey said, and grinned wryly. “I guess it’s a break for me you felt that way about it.”

  “I never shot anyone before,” Potter said. “I was afraid I’d miss. I got as close as I could.”

  Logan said: “You newspaper guys do pretty well for amateurs.”

  Casey looked down at Nyberg, cursed once, said: “I’m glad I got that anyway.”

  An ambulance pulled into the curb. Then Casey realized that he was shivering, that he had no coat. And his side was smarting; he thought his undershirt was wet. He told Logan about it and one of the internes started to take him into the apartment house foyer.

  Casey turned to Wade. “Come on, snap into it. My camera’s down in my roadster. Get busy.”

  Judson watched the interne strap up Casey’s side. The wound was superficial, grazing the ribs and cutting a shallow, two-inch furrow in the flesh.

  Casey glanced up at Judson and let his voice get disgusted. “What a help you turned out to be.”

  Judson scowled. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Was that picture I got this afternoon a break for you?”

  “Sure it was a break. That tipped the business. We’d got Handy eventually—on that alone.”

  “Yeah,” fumed Casey. “But if you’d had your way there wouldn’t been any picture. I just happened to hold out that print.” He snorted disdainfully. “Callin’ up the office and tellin’ ‘em we can’t print it.”

  “Who called up?”

  “You did.”

  Judson’s eyes widened, then narrowed. His voice had a humorous undertone.

  “Maybe a scratch on the ribs makes you slug-nutty or something. You talk that way. Hell"— he grunted, pulled at his nose— ”Whenever you steal a picture on me I don’t want printed I won’t call the office. I’ll take it away from you myself—like Haley did with your second one.”

  Casey scowled for a moment; then his eyes got sultry and he said: “Oh,” softly.

  Wade took six pictures. Casey had the three plate-holders in his pocket when they went into the Gbbe city room. Blaine was at the desk.

  Casey who had been talking to Wade all the way in, pulled him to a stop before they crossed the room. “Listen, Kid. Shake it off. I know how you feel. And if it helps any, you were right, and I was wrong, like most wise guys are.

  “She wasn’t a tramp—she just ran with tramps. She had two strikes on her, just working for a guy like Nyberg. That’s not your fault.”

  “But if I could have helped her or—”

  “Sure, I know.” Casey pulled Wade across the room. “We did the best we could. After all, she sorta put you on the spot by even callin’ you to her place. But she was level with you and she did what she could with what she had to do with.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Wade said and seemed to shrug off some of his dejection. “Only I sorta liked her.”

  Blaine leaned back in his chair and his eyes were cold and unsmiling.

  Casey said: “Did Potter phone in the story?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I got a story you’re gonna hear and—”

  “And I’ve got one for you,” snapped Blaine. “You’re fired!”

  Casey’s jaw dropped, and Wade stiffened and froze there.

  “Fired?” Casey swallowed, and amazement gave ground slowly before his anger.

  He choked on a curse and had a hard time getting his words out. Not because he was fired. That had happened before. What threw him off stride was that Blaine had stolen his thunder, had taken the offensive right out of his hands.

  “All right,” he clipped. “I’m fired. One of your ideas huh?”

  “It was Fessendon’s idea,” said Blaine. He lifted some copy paper from a halftone cut. Beside the metal plate was a proof. The proof was of the picture Casey had given Logan. “I think this cut came up from the engraving room by mistake, but Fessendon saw the proof. You held out on him, huh?”

  “And a damn’ good thing I did,” flung out Casey. He put both hands on the desk top and leaned on them. He held that position while he told Blaine the whole story about that picture, what it meant to the police, how it had been used to bargain with and the reason he had had a halftone made.

  There was a peculiar gleam in Blaine’s eyes now. Casey saw it, but he could not fathom it. It was hard, intent, yet there seemed to be something in the background. It couldn’t be humor— a grim sort of humor—

  Casey flung aside the thought, and with this mental effort some of his rage evaporated. That first hot burst at Blaine’s announcement came from impulsive reaction; but as the true character of the situation, as the underlying significance of the city editor’s attitude dawned upon him, a new kind of anger fastened itself upon him. Anger that was logical and mixed with weariness, disillusionment, resentment.

  This feeling was strange to Casey, strange but not hard to understand. He had been going at top speed since four-thirty that afternoon. The past five hours had been crammed with action, and death, and a nerve-wracking tension that centered around the safety of Tom Wade.

  Perhaps it was this strain that brought about that hollow feeling of discouragement; it might have been that he was tired, that his head ached, or that the wound in his side had left him weakened. More probably it was because Blaine had let him down. Blaine, the sharp-tongued, unsympathetic driver—who always backed up his men.

  “All right,” Casey said finally. “I’ll be glad to go.” His voice was husky, a bit scornful now, his smoldering anger and resentment tinging each word.

  “I only stuck here because you had something on the ball, and because I always thought you were on the level. I had you figured for the one newspaperman in town who would print the news as he saw it and not let some fat-headed guy with a lot of money call you.

  “But if Fessendon’s got you, if you can’t take it, if you’re gonna do what he says and like it"— Casey breathed deeply, tightened his lips— “why, that’s okey with me. I knew damn’ well I had the right dope when you pulled that Judson gag. But I never thought you were a liar.”

  “Who’s a liar? What about Judson?” said Blaine, and his voice got thin.

  “Just like I said. He didn’t call here and tell you or Fessendon to kill that picture. I asked him.”

  “He didn’t—” Blaine got up slowly, menacingly and leaned across the desk.

  “It was that skirt-crazy Lee Fessendon that—”

  Blaine spun about and started through the doorway behind his desk. Casey followed him, still talking. And Wade, goggle-eyed and with nothing else to do, tagged behind. Blaine moved to Fessendon’s office with stiff-kne
ed strides, threw open the door.

  Fessendon looked up from his desk, started to smile. The smile faded when Blaine spoke.

  “You said Judson told you we had to kill Casey’s picture.”

  “He—he did,” said Fessendon, avoiding Blaine’s stare.

  “Casey says Judson said no such thing.”

  “Well,” Fessendon stood up and his pink face got red and scowling. “Are you going to take his word against mine?”

  “Any time,” rapped Blaine, “and anywhere. I told you when I stayed on here I’d run this sheet my way or not at all. You framed up the Judson gag because neither you—nor your kid brother had guts enough to stand up and—”

  “You can’t talk that way to me,” stormed Fessendon.

  “You hear me, don’t you?”

  Fessendon took a menacing step forward. “I’m running this paper. Suppose Lee did call me up and tell me about that picture? I don’t take orders from you, Blaine, and—”

  “You said it.” Blaine’s lip curled. “Maybe you take them from that jelly-kneed brother who was afraid to face a bawling out from his wife.”

  “You’re fired,” shouted Fessendon.

  “That makes two of us,” said Blaine.

  “Three,” piped up Wade.

  “And I have one thing more to toss in the pot,” Blaine rapped. “Plenty of fellows think I’m a slave driver; I don’t doubt they hate my guts. But I’ve had one sort of a reputation. I played the game and I played it square. Casey’s the first man that ever said I wasn’t on the level: the first guy that ever called me a liar—and I can’t blame him.

  “I hate a liar, too, Fessendon. I hate a double crosser. And that’s what you are, a lousy, lying, double-crossing—!”

  Fessendon hit Blaine then. Hit him back of the ear and Blaine went down. Casey cursed and stepped forward, but Blaine sat up, said: “You stay out of this.”

  He got to his feet and deliberately repeated his opinion. Fessendon, his face a livid mask, swung his right. This time Blaine was ready. He said: “I thought so,” as he moved inside that right and jabbed his left to Fessendon’s stomach.

  Fessendon gasped and he seemed to gag as he crumpled. Then Blaine crossed his right. It landed flush and it straightened Fessendon before it dropped him.

  Blaine backed away, turned at the door. Casey and Wade followed him out. Blaine went to his desk, opened the bottom drawer, took out a briefcase and systematically packed it with his personal belongings. He closed all the drawers, stepped over to the clothes-tree and got his hat and coat. As he stepped past the grinning Casey and the open-mouthed Wade, he turned, spoke irritably:

  “Well, come on, you big ox. Don’t stand their gawking.”

  In the hall Casey said: “Did Fessendon tell you to fire me?”

  “Sure,” said Blaine, punching the elevator button. “If I hadn’t he would have.”

  “But you knew I had some redhot plates of that—”

  “I didn’t know you had ‘em,” said Blaine. But you generally pull something out of the hat, and I wanted to fire you before you showed them to me. Then you could take them down the street to the Express or Mirror—not that you need anything to bargain with.”

  Blaine muttered a soft curse. “You got a dirty deal from Fessendon, but you ought to be glad you’re out. I was all washed up with him anyway, after he broke that plate—as if we were a bunch of blackmailers. But he just came in his office about ten minutes ago, and I was going to be nice about it and give him two weeks’ notice.”

  Casey’s broad face was cracked in a wide grin that would not come off. He was no longer tired. It was good to be free of Fessendon, to know that Blaine was level, that Wade was okey. He released a sigh of satisfaction and relief, said:

  “Well, where we go in’ now?”

  “I’m gonna call up Gilman at the Express and see if he wants a city editor and a couple of cheap cameras. But first"—the elevator door opened and Blaine stepped in— ”we’ll stop at Steve’s and have a couple to celebrate on.”

  Casey said: “You think of things.”

  Wade grunted sardonically, said: “The idea is okey so long as I don’t get stuck with short beers.”

  The Price of a Dime

  Norbert Davis

  WHEN RAYMOND CHANDLER, not a young man, decided to try to write for the pulps, one of the stories that most impressed him was “Red Goose” by Norbert Davis. Years later, he reread it and wrote, in a letter, that it was not as good as he remembered it, but still very good, and that he had never forgotten it.

  Davis (1909-1949) was one of the few writers who attempted to blend fast-moving violence and whimsy in his stories, the humor being an element that so displeased the great Black Mask editor, Joseph T. Shaw, that he published only five stories by the prolific author.

  With his fiction selling easily to most of the major pulps, Davis graduated with a law degree from Stanford but never bothered to take the bar exam. His work also made it onto the pages of the higher-paying “slick” magazines (so-called because of their shiny paper) like The Saturday Evening Post, and into book form. Two of his novels, both featuring Doan (a private eye whose first name is never mentioned) and Carstairs (a gigantic Great Dane who is his constant companion), The Mouse In the Mountain (1943) and Sally’s In the Alley (1943), are hilarious adventures that nonetheless have their share of violence, mostly presented as harmless fun.

  “The Price of a Dime” is the second story about Ben Shaley and was initially published in Black Mask in April 1934.

  The Price of a Dime

  Norbert Davis

  It was an old trick

  but this time it

  started fireworks

  HALEY WAS SITTING behind the big desk in his private office. He had his hat on, pushed down over his forehead, so that the wide brim shaded his hard, narrowed eyes, his thin, straight nose. He had an opened penknife in his hand, and he was stabbing the soft wood of a drawer of the desk in an irritated way.

  There was a sudden shrill scream from the outer office.

  Shaley started. He scowled at the door.

  In the outer office a chair tipped over with a crash. There was another scream, louder than the first one.

  Shaley tossed his penknife on the desk and got up.

  “She’ll drive me crazy one of these days,” he muttered, heading for the door in long-legged strides.

  He banged the door open, looked through into the outer office.

  Sadie, his secretary, was scuffling with a fat-tish blonde woman. Sadie had the woman by the shoulders, trying to push her through the door into the corridor. The blonde woman’s face was puffy, tear-stained. She had a desperately hopeless expression. She was the one who was doing the screaming.

  Sadie had her sleek, dark head down, pushing determinedly, but the blonde woman’s weight was too much for her.

  Shaley said: “Well?” in an explosively angry voice.

  Both women turned on him. Sadie got started first.

  “You told me you didn’t want to see anybody this morning, and she wanted to see you, and I told her you couldn’t see her, and she wouldn’t go away, and so I tried to put her out, and she started to scream.” Sadie said this all in one breath.

  The blonde woman sniffed a little. “I’ve got to see you. I’ve got to see you, Mr. Shaley. It’s about Bennie. I’ve got to see you.”

  “All right, all right,” Shaley said helplessly. “All right! Come on in here.”

  “But you told me—” Sadie protested.

  “Will you kindly sit down and get to work?” Shaley asked in an elaborately courteous voice.

  Sadie blinked. “Yes, Mr. Shaley,” she said meekly.

  Shaley jerked his head at the blonde woman. “Come in.” He shut the door of the private office again, pointed to a chair. “Sit down.” He walked around his desk, sat down in his chair, and dropped his hat on the floor beside him. He frowned at the blonde woman. “Now what is it?”

  She was dabbing at her p
uffy eyes with a handkerchief that was a moist, wadded ball. “I’m sorry I screamed and acted that way, Mr. Shaley, but I had to see you. Bennie told me to see you, and he’s in bad trouble, and so I had to see you.”

  “Who’s Bennie?”

  The blonde woman looked surprised. “He’s my brother.”

  “That makes it all clear,” said Shaley. “Does he have a last name?”

  “Oh, sure. Bennie Petersen.” The blonde woman looked like she was going to start to cry again. “He told me you knew him. He told me you’d help him. He’s a bellboy at the Grover Hotel”

  “Oh,” said Shaley understandingly. “Bennie Peterson, huh? That little chiseler—” He coughed. “That is to say, yes. I remember him. What’s he done now?”

  “The blonde woman sniffed. “It wasn’t his fault, Mr. Shaley.”

  “No,” said Shaley. “Of course not. It never is his fault. What did he do?”

  “He just lost a dime, Mr. Shaley. And now Mr. Van Bilbo is going to have him arrested.”

  Shaley sat up straight with a jerk. “Van Bilbo, the movie director?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “Van Bilbo is going to have Bennie arrested because Bennie lost a dime?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hmm,” Shaley said, scowling. “Now let’s get this straight. Start at the beginning and tell me just what happened—or what Bennie told you happened.”

  “Well, Bennie took some ginger ale up to a party on the seventh floor of the hotel. This party tipped him a dime. Bennie was coming back down the hall to the elevator. He had the dime in his hand, and he was flipping it up in the air like George Raft does in the movies. But Bennie dropped the dime on the floor. He was just leaning over to pick it up when Mr. Van Bilbo came out of one of the rooms and saw him, and now he’s going to have Bennie arrested.”

  Shaley leaned back in his chair. “So,” he said quietly. “The old dropped dime gag. Bennie dropped a dime in front of a keyhole, and he was looking through the keyhole for the dime, when Van Bilbo caught him at it, huh?”