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

  “Yeah. Want me to keep an eye on Giovoni?”

  “No, no—that would be the worst thing you could do. Don’t go near El—that place. The man is perfectly safe now.”

  Silence on both sides—then he said:

  “That’s all!”

  And we both hung up.

  It lacked a half hour before I was to meet The Flame—but then, perhaps the hour had been suggested by Rudolph Myer because of my other engagement, which he had planned. But I was anxious to get back to my apartment and hear Jerry’s report as to where Joe Gorgon went in such a hurry.

  I won’t say I reasoned things out as I rode down town in the taxi. Not me. Reason only too often confuses, especially when you’ve got little to reason on—not reason with. But thoughts would flash through my mind, and I let them swing along.

  The message I had delivered to Joe Gorgon was a knock-out, certainly. No one would deny that. The biggest racketeer in the city had come very close to taking a nose dive. A few words had brought fear to the man who “feared nothing.” Perhaps it was that he feared nothing physically, but the mental reaction to my few words was—

  I tapped on the window. We were perhaps a block and a half from The Flame’s address. The taxi pulled to the curb. I stepped out and paid the lad off. One thing in my mind. Was The Flame with me or against me when she sent that note? Anyway, I’d look the block over before meeting her. Not very trusting? Maybe not. Oh—I’ll admit it’s nice, noble, and high minded to have a trust in your fellow man—or fellow woman for that matter. But it’s not exactly healthy in my line of work.

  The main street was more or less deserted— just one car. But it stood out in such a neighborhood. A high priced, high powered boat, with a uniformed chauffeur at the wheel. Still, a guy gets used to seeing stranger things than that on the city streets. I passed it up, turned the corner and entered the side street, where according to the number The Flame should live.

  Perhaps I got a gulp when I walked past her number. It was a shabby, dreary looking apartment house. Rather hard to connect The Flame up with it. You sort of seemed to think of her with all that was beautiful and, maybe, expensive.

  So far I spotted nothing that looked like a trap. I peered into doorways, paced down past half a dozen houses, turned quickly, walked straight to The Flame’s apartment house, found the door unlocked—so ignoring the bells, slid into the dimly lit lower hall and started up those stairs.

  Started up—and stopped dead. And just when I stopped, or just after I stopped—feet a floor above stopped. Not imagination, that. Not—

  I went on. Slowly mounting the stairs. Good sense of hearing—instinct? Call it what you will, but something told me that feet preceded me up those stairs—feet that kept a flight ahead of me. Feet that had been coming down when mine started up, and now stepped carefully back up those stairs—in tune with my own footfalls.

  I didn’t stop to listen any more. I listened without stopping. Some of my steps I made heavy, some I made light. Sometimes I increased my speed, and it threw the other lad—whoever he was—off his stride. He couldn’t keep step with me, and two or three times I heard him plainly on the flight above. He was still steadily increasing his speed as I advanced, and I don’t believe I gained a step on him.

  Then I tried a light whistle—started an air— broke off in the middle of it and heard his running feet stop, and again try to step with mine.

  All right. While he retreated there was no danger. He didn’t intend to attack me, then. So I started up the third flight, ever watching above for glaring eyes or a threatening form. But none came. Distinctly I heard old boards creak down that hall. A dull sound as if a foot struck against wood, and a door closed as I reached the landing, turned on the fourth floor and mounted the final flight.

  In the dim light I made out apartment 5-C. Listened just a moment, before I knocked on the door. I shrugged my shoulders. After all, it wasn’t an inviting neighborhood. There was no reason to connect up the slinking, retreating figure with my visit to The Flame. No reason at all. Yet—I did.

  The door opened and I saw her again. There was a hesitancy in her manner which was new to The Flame.

  “You—Race. You’re early. Just a minute.” She closed the door quickly as I entered, left me—so—in the small hall, slipped quickly down the narrow passage and disappeared from view.

  I followed her of course—quickly—silently. She slipped through worn, old curtains, and almost ran across the room. But I reached the curtains in time to see her sweep a bundle of bank notes from the table into a drawer—and something else. Something that glittered, and clinked in the drawer before it snapped shut.

  “Now—” She turned, stopped dead when she saw that I was already in the room, half glanced toward the table, shrugged her shoulders and smiled.

  “Same old trust in The Flame, eh, Race? Well—what do you think of my diggings—my outfit—the reward of honesty?” And in a mock sort of sincerity, “Honesty—the one thing that the rich leave for the poor to fatten on.”

  I didn’t like her mood, so I waited and looked the room over. Things were old and worn, but the place was spotless. The skirt and jacket she wore might have passed for a fashion picture until she got near the light. Then the cheapness of the material forced itself on you in spite of the aristocratic carriage. And as I looked at her I thought of her final sentence in that note. Certainly she was halfway between the girl and the woman.

  CHAPTER IX

  THE GIRL WITH THE CRIMINAL MIND

  When The Flame didn’t speak, I tried:

  “You didn’t bring me here to fill me up on Communism?”

  And she laughed.

  “No—hardly. That wouldn’t be fitting in me. Communism is a hatred of the poor for the rich—not simply an envy. But—” She stepped quickly forward and laid both her hands on my shoulders. “I had to see you again,” she said, and those brown eyes sparkled as she looked up at my face. “Sometimes I wonder if it’s just my pride that you’re the only man I wanted, that I couldn’t have—and then I hate myself. Other times I wonder if it’s that thing we read about in best sellers, and laugh secretly at. Simply love. Funny. You’re the only man who ever—”

  “Let’s not go into that, Florence.” I took her hands off my shoulders. “Let me tell you it’s far harder not to love you than it would be to love you. There’s your life and mine. I wouldn’t have the right to ask any woman to share mine and—”

  “Stop!” and the youth went out of her face and the woman crept in. “I made an agreement with you. Anyway, I made it with myself. I’d go straight. And I did. I went straight, though every cop in New York was trying his damnedest to drag me back into the life again. The joke of it, Race! They pulled me out of twenty dollar a week jobs, where the chance to rob the cash till might bring me a few dollars. Me. The Flame! Whose advice—or even suggestion—was bid for in the thousands. And what right had they? I’ve never done a stretch—never even seen the inside of stir. And they rode me, Race. Didn’t want to let me take twenty dollars for ten to twelve hours work a day.”

  She laughed now, and I didn’t like her laugh.

  “They even had me tossed out of jobs where the boss was paid to take me on. A bought position in a sixth grade store. Even the slimy employment agents, who send you to a job or hire you for one, take it out of a girl’s pocketbook or her body. Yes, I found the same graft in the East Side sweat shops. All my life the law has taken things from me—even to that real love in the orphanage, when I was a child. A memory. The one decent thing in my life. But why try to make you understand? Honesty? Why, honesty is simply avoiding or evading the law. You can buy a job in the city today—from the position of the meanest worker on the city dump, to a judge-ship of even the higher courts. Well—I’m through.”

  “Easy does it, Florence.” I knew what a woman she was when she worked herself up into one of these fits.

  “Easy does it! That’s what you tell me. But through the months you let me sit night af
ter night in this lonely room. I loved you then. Maybe I love you now. I don’t know. But I hate myself for it. I had you come tonight because I thought—well—just pride. I looked at myself in the glass. I’m still The Flame. I’ve still got the same active—and, yes—maybe criminal mind; still the same beautiful body. You can’t deny that. Now—what do you want me to do with it. Sit here and rot it out in this dirty dive? Sit here—for what? So that you can come in to me during my old age, and tell me that you’ve bought me a bid to the poorhouse? The poor-house! Why, you’ve even got to have money or influence to get into it.”

  I’d seen The Flame bad before, but never quite like this. Rudolph Myer was right. I shouldn’t have come. But still, if I had known the truth—known exactly how I was going to find her—I’d have come anyway, I suppose. But I simply said:

  “I didn’t think you wanted me, Florence.”

  “That’s a lie,” she said, very calmly. More dangerous for that calm I thought. “That’s a lie, Race. You knew I wanted you—and I wanted you tonight. I wanted to look at you again. I’ve been living in a dream, but Myer let me know the truth. You bought and paid for half the rotten jobs I worked on. He didn’t tell me in so many words. He didn’t have to. And, Myer—” she stopped, flashed those bright, keen eyes on me now. “Well?”

  And that “Well?” was a stickler, you got to admit.

  “Florence—” I tried the “soft words turneth away wrath” business. “Why don’t you be a good sport? You and I have played the game together—faced death together. Just a couple of good pals. I’ve got some money. Let me give you a stake, until—”

  “Just chums!” And her laugh was like finger nails along a wall. “I suppose you’d want me to show you a good behavior card every month; report in person to Rudolph Myer once a week; hit the sawdust trail and shake a tambourine down in the Bowery! And all this while you go around with a gun in your hand and the peculiar idea of personal ethics which allow you to knock over some gunman and trust to the city to give him a decent burial. No—I don’t want your money. When I take something I give something in return for it, and—”

  “Such as this.” My hand had fallen upon the table and rested on a small object that dug into my palm. I picked that thing up now and held it out to The Flame. I’m no jeweller, you understand, but the thing I held was a ring—and the diamond in it was large and real.

  “Yes.” The Flame cocked up her chin. “Such as this.” She snatched it from me, looked at it a moment and shoved it onto a finger. “Such as this. You want to know why I brought you here tonight? Well—I wanted to tell you this. I wanted to look at you again and know. Now—I’m through. The city doesn’t want honest citizens. There are dicks right on the Force today who opened car doors for me and touched their hats when they knew I was riding high in the rackets, who have insulted me when I was straight. Politicians—public office holders—and perhaps even a big criminal lawyer, who you—” She stopped dead, pulled open the drawer of her desk and tossed a roll of bills out to me. “That evens it up. There’s every penny, as nearly as I can figure it out, that you spent to keep my brain straight and my body—” She shrugged her shoulders, stepped back and looked at me. “You don’t like that line, do you?”

  “No—” I said, “I don’t. It’s cheap stuff. And by ‘a criminal lawyer’ you don’t by any chance refer to Rudolph Myer?”

  She laughed. But she ignored my question.

  “I’ve tasted the virtue of poverty and didn’t find it palatable. Now—I’m through. I’ve a chance. I’m going to take it.” She looked straight up into my eyes, and those brown glims of hers were brilliant. “And I’m not starting over. I’m not building up something. I’m to meet a mind that is like mine—brilliant, quick, active. I’m starting in again. Starting in at the top of the ladder.”

  “Yeah?” I pulled a butt, stuck a match to the end of it and took a chestful of smoke. “I’m sure glad, Florence, that you’re not overmodest about your own abilities.” And as she just looked at me, “Well—you didn’t bring me here to walk up and down my vest and dig your heels in at each button, did you?” And when she still played the looking game—the brilliance fading from her eyes and a shrewd, speculative cunning creeping in, I forgot the “you catch more flies with molasses than with vinegar” and opened up like a valedictorian.

  “Kid,” I told her, “you’ve got guts or you haven’t got guts. There are no two ways about that. You can’t play the game if you can’t stand the gaff. I—” And suddenly, seeing the woman of the night—the Girl with the Criminal Mind—creep into her face, I lost my nerve or made a stab at bringing to the surface the good that I knew—or maybe felt—or maybe only thought—was in The Flame. “Look here, Florence—I’ll play along with you. We’ll meet occasionally. We’ll have dinner together. We’ll come up here afterwards and—”

  “And you’ll explain to me the virtues of honest living.” She snapped in on me, and the eyes blazed again. “I’ve told you I’m through. I am giving you a break. After tonight—The Flame lives again. The Girl with the Criminal Mind takes her place on Broadway. And the police and the rotten officials, who thought my reign was over through lack of guts—not being able to stand the gaff—will bow and scrape again.”

  I reached out and placed my hands upon her shoulders. She swung slightly, raised those small delicate hands with the quick, living fingers toward me—swayed once, I thought—and maybe only thought—then with a quick jerk she tore my hands from her shoulders.

  A simple movement mine—a quick movement hers. But—well—we all have our moments. Weak or strong, I won’t try to lay a name to that one. I’ll simply say that The Flame was a very beautiful woman. I’ll simply say that experience had taught me that to love The Flame was to die, and for a split second I didn’t care. Maybe she lost her chance; maybe I’m wrong, and I simply lost mine. Maybe, again, I stood on the brink of disaster and was saved. Anyway, she spoke her piece. I’ll give her credit for saying what was on her mind, so that there was no misunderstanding it.

  “Race,” she said, “you can’t help me and you can’t hurt me. But I can hurt you. I want one favor from you—one last thing I’ll ask. You’ve often said you owe me something.”

  “Yes,” I told her very seriously, “I do. If ever you need me I’ll come to you.” I stood watching her now as I finished very slowly. “Even knowing that I may be walking to— into—. Well—I’ll come. That much you can count on. I’ll come.”

  “And come armed.” There was a sneer in her voice.

  “Yes—and come armed,” I told her. A guy may be willing to be a fool, but draws the line at being a damned fool.

  “Well—” she said, “I’m willing to cry quits. You owe me nothing. I owe you nothing. Just one promise I want. That—for two—” and stopping and looking at my face, “that for two weeks you’ll enter into no case—no matter what the inducement—no matter what the incentive.”

  I thought a moment, and then:

  “I’m crossing your plans—your crooked plans?”

  “Yes,” she said very slowly, “you’re crossing my plans—my crooked plans.”

  Another moment of thought. A straight look into those brown, hard eyes, and I gave her a direct answer.

  “I won’t do it.” That was flat. My ethics may be warped, my ideas twisted, but there’s no guy who can say I don’t like my own game, and don’t play that game as I see it.

  “All right!” she snapped suddenly. “You’ve had your warning—or rather, should I say— your notice.” And with the slightest twist to those thin, delicate lips, “I suppose you still think—or still say—you’ll come to me when I need you—if I need you.”

  I looked her smack in the eyes.

  “I still say I’ll come to you if you need me— if you send for me.” And very slowly, “And I still say that I’ll come armed.”

  “That’s a threat.” She jerked up her chin.

  “You can take it as you please. I’ll pay my debt. For no man can tel
l when The Flame will be a good citizen—a fine woman. But no man can tell either when—”

  “She’d lead Race Williams to—to his death, eh? That’s what you want to say, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe.” I guess my smile was sort of dead. I won’t say that I loved The Flame. But I will say that I admired her. Certainly, if she was built to do great wrong, she might just as well be built to do great good. You see, the dual personality doesn’t fit in with my practical nature. I always sort of look on it as synonymous with “two faced.” That is, that it’s an outward change, and doesn’t really take place in the individual—but only in the mind of some one who knows the individual. In plain words, there were times when I thought The Flame was all bad, and the good—that youthful, innocent sparkle—was put on to fool others. But fair is fair. There were times also when I felt that The Flame was really all good, and the hard, cruel face—that went with the woman of the night—was put on to hide the real good in her.

  There we were, facing each other in that small, sparsely furnished room. The Flame with her back to the curtain by the window, and me with my back against a bare wall, my right hand thrust indifferently into a jacket pocket.

  The Flame bit her lip, and emotions you couldn’t lay a finger to ran over her beautiful face. I didn’t bite my lip. I waited. A long minute passed—feet seemed to creak on the worn stairs outside—steal along the hall and stop by the door of apartment 5-C. Just seemed to, you understand. That don’t mean it was nerves on my part. I haven’t any. But I have got a keen pair of ears. Ears that weren’t sure that the sounds— the faint, almost imperceptible sounds they caught—weren’t from the natural, but eerie creakings of an old structure. Let us just say that I liked my back against the wall.

  The Flame seemed to be listening too. After a bit, she spoke quickly and hurriedly.

  “I’ve played the game as I’ve seen the game. I’ve given you your chance. Now—” she spread out her hands, and her voice was raised—at least, it was shriller, “you stand in my way, Race Williams, and I’ll—I’ll—by God! I’ll crush you.”