by Otto Penzler
“Well, if he started playing around it’s his tough luck. The trouble with a lot of these sheiks is that they’re so used to the yes-girls that when they meet another kind they get sore—and nasty.”
Kennedy rasped his throat. “Picture a decent gal trotting out with a marcelled sheik like Joe Manola! Don’t tell me!”
MacBride shrugged as he stood up. He took his flashlight and mounted the wreck, shooting the beam down through the twisted metal. A moment later he stood up and held a short, stubby automatic in his hand.
“One shot fired,” he said. “Not long ago, either.” He had rubbed his finger across the muzzle, and looked at the black streak it left.
A siren screamed through the night, and two headlights came racing down the road. It was the morgue bus, and it pulled up behind the patrol flivver.
“What kind of a gun?” asked Kennedy.
“Thirty-two,” shot back MacBride, and with a sudden movement crossed to the body and knelt down.
Kennedy trailed after him and bent over his shoulder. Then MacBride stood up, wiping his hands, a glitter in his eyes.
“He was shot, Kennedy. Shot through the right side.”
“And then he hit the tree!”
“Exactly.”
Kennedy whistled. “When the Duke hears this!”
MacBride turned to one of the man from the morgue bus. “You can take him. But there’s a slug somewhere inside. I want it after the autopsy.”
A few minutes later the bus shot off with its dead cargo, and MacBride turned to watch the wrecking-car tugging at the smashed machine. Its derrick hoisted up the front end, and thus the rear wheels were in a condition to move.
“Keep it in the garage,” said MacBride, “and I’ll take care of your bill.”
When the wreck had gone, with the rear red light winking in the distance, Kennedy made for the police car. “Well, let’s be going, Mac. This’ll be in the early editions.”
MacBride started to follow, but turned and retraced his steps to where the wreck had lain. His flash played on the gashed tree and down on to the gouged ground. His eyes narrowed and he bent over, picked up something that shimmered in the white light.
In the palm of his hand lay an emerald pendant, attached to a thin gold chain that had been broken. His lips parted in a sharp intake of breath, and his hand knotted over the pendant.
“Oh, shake it up, Mac,” called Kennedy.
MacBride turned and strode to the police car with hesitant steps. He climbed in and closed the door softly behind him. His hand, still holding the emerald pendant, slid into his pocket and remained there.
“Shoot, Donnegan,” he clipped.
III
On the way back through town, MacBride had the car stop in front of a cigar store.
“Want to get some cigars,” he told Kennedy, and strode into the store.
He bought half-a-dozen cigars, spent no more than a minute in a telephone booth, and then returned to the waiting car.
“Have one,” he offered Kennedy.
“You were always a good-natured Scotchman,” grinned Kennedy.
A couple of minutes later they walked into the station, and Kennedy made for the telephone, and shot the news into his office. Then he said, “Duty calls, Mac. Something tells me I’ll be seeing you often.”
“Don’t make it too often,” growled MacBride.
Kennedy waved and strolled out to catch a trolley back to the city.
MacBride tipped back his cap, revealing strands of damp hair plastered to his forehead by perspiration. His chiseled face looked a bit drawn.
He addressed Sergeant Haley huskily— ”Call up the Nick Nack Club. Leave word to be delivered to Duke Manola that his brother was found dead at ten-thirty tonight—”
“Dead!” exclaimed Haley, who hadn’t recorded a killing in his precinct in ten years.
“Don’t butt in,” recommended MacBride, lazily, as though deep within him he was very, very weary. “Do that. Found dead in a wrecked car on Old Stone Road, near Pine Tree Park. Tell ‘em the body’s at the morgue and may be reclaimed after the autopsy. No hint as to who shot him. No"—his teeth ground into his lower lip— ”no clues. Make out your regular report and file it. Joseph Manola. We’ll get his age and other incidentals later.”
“Looks like murder, Cap’n!”
“Ye-es, it looks like murder,” droned MacBride, sagging toward his office.
Ted Kerr came in briskly from another room, stopped short in the path of the captain.
“In here,” said MacBride, and led the way into his office.
He sank into his chair, slammed his cap down on the desk and took a stiff drink.
“Hear you went out to investigate a wreck,” ventured Kerr.
“Ye-es. And ran into a murder.” MacBride’s hand was in his pocket fingering the emerald pendant.
“Well!”
“Don’t get worked up,” dragged out MacBride.
“You look all in,” said Kerr, seriously.
“Never mind me. What’s on your mind?”
“Well, nothing much. Kelly and I were out to the Blue River Inn. You know there’s been some complaints about raw parties being pulled off there. Pretty quiet tonight. Couple of drunken dames and a few soused college boys. And then—well….” He hesitated, and looked away, his lips compressed.
“Well, what?”
“Oh, nothing much. Just….” He paused again.
“Come on, Ted. Let’s have it.”
“Well, I just got a bit of a shock, that’s all.” His clean-cut face bore a vaguely hurt expression. “Well, Judith was there—”
MacBride snapped forward, his eyes keened. “Yes!”
“Why, what’s the matter, Cap?”
“Keep talking. Judith was there. Who with?”
“Oh, hell, I shouldn’t have said anything about it. But I’ve sort of liked Judith—”
“Don’t say like when you mean love. And?”
“Well, she was there, that’s all. Was another girl with her. Never saw the other girl. Kind of— well, brassy type. Chic looking and all that but— brassy. And two fellows. The one with Judith was young and dark—looked like an Italian sheik. The other fellow was older—so was the girl. I didn’t let on I saw them. They had a couple of drinks, then breezed in a big, classy touring car. Don’t bawl Judith out, Cap. I shouldn’t have told you, but—well, it just came out. Judith’s a good girl. I guess I’ve got a nerve to think I ever had a chance—me just a dick. Promise me you won’t say anything to her about it.”
MacBride drew in a deep breath and held it trapped in his lungs for a long moment. Then he let it out, slowly, noiselessly, and followed it with a sigh.
“Ah-r- it’s a rough, tough world, Ted, old timer.”
Kerr attempted to change the subject. “But what about this murder, Cap?”
“It’s going to start something—something big—big! Well, I’ve got my wish—but not in the way I’d expected.” He was thinking of his wish that Duke Manola would face him again for a showdown.
“What wish, Cap?” asked Ted Kerr.
“No matter. Joe Manola was the bird got killed. He’s Duke Manola’s brother, and the Duke can call two dozen gunmen any time he wants to.”
The telephone on the desk jangled. MacBride leaned forward, picking up the receiver and said, “Captain MacBride—”
“Yes, MacBride,” came a voice with a hint of a nasal snarl. “This is your old playmate, Manola.”
“The elder,” supplemented MacBride.
“Be funny,” snapped Duke Manola. “I just heard my kid brother was bumped off out in the sticks. What’s the lay?”
“No lay yet, Duke. When I get the lay I’ll send you an engraved copy of the report, autographed.”
“Crack wise, big boy, crack wise.”
“And—”
“You better snap on it, MacBride. I’m just telling you, get the pup or pups that winged the kid before I do. And don’t get tough, either. Kind
of a sock on your jaw, eh? You having to work for the guy gave you a buggy ride out to God’s country!”
“Lay off that, Duke. And don’t you get tough. You keep your hands out of this. And take a tip: Try to play around in this neck of the woods and I’ll flop on you like a ton of brick. I’ll handle this case, and I don’t want any dirty greaseball getting in my light.”
“I may drop in for tea soon, big boy.”
“If I never saw you, Duke, that’d be years too soon. There’s no Welcome sign hanging out here, and there’s no good-luck horseshoe parked over the door. In short, I’m not entertaining.”
“Whistle that, guy, and go to hell!” With that a sharp click indicated that Duke Manola had hung up.
MacBride slammed down the receiver, and Kerr offered, with a half-grin, “You men don’t seem to get along so well.”
“We get along worse every day,” replied MacBride.
Kerr lit a cigarette. “Any clues on that murder, Cap?”
MacBride’s hand was in his pocket, and it clenched the emerald pendant in sweaty fingers.
“No, Ted,” he muttered.
IV
Mrs. MacBride was a woman of thirty-eight who still retained much of her youthful charm. The onyx sheen of her hair was not threaded by the slightest wisp of gray. Ordinarily, at breakfast time, she was a bright-eyed, animated woman, with a song on her lips and pleasant banter for her husband; and occasionally, as she passed back and forth from the kitchen, a kiss for the captain’s cheek. Secretly, MacBride cherished this show of affection.
But something in his attitude that morning— or it may have been something in the heart of his wife—tended to eliminate this little by-play. There was a song on her lips, but it was in an unnatural, off-tone key.
When they sat down at the table facing each other, MacBride, without looking up from his morning paper, said, “Judith up yet?”
“Yes. She’ll be right in, Steve.” She went about sprinkling sugar on the grapefruit. “Grove Manor must have gasped this morning when they read the papers about—about—”
“Yes,” nodded MacBride. “Haven’t had a murder here in ten years.”
“You’ll be careful, Steve.”
He glanced up. “Careful, Ann?”
“Well—you never can tell. I’m always worried.”
“Oh, nonsense, Ann. You shouldn’t worry—”
There was a step on the stair, and Judith came in, quietly. Ordinarily she entered at a skip, vivacious, animated. Her hair was jet black, and bobbed short, in the extremely modern manner. Likewise was her mode of dress extremely modern.
“Morning, dad. Morning, ma.” Cheerful the tone, but with a faintly hollow ring.
As she crossed to the table she limped a trifle, but it escaped MacBride’s eyes. His gaze was riveted on the newspaper.
“Morning, Judith,” he said.
When she was seated, he folded his paper and laid it aside.
It seemed that Mrs. MacBride was holding her breath.
Hard on the outside, hard with men who were hard, he had always found it difficult to be hard at home. He wanted to eliminate a lot of preliminary talk. Somehow, he did not want to see a woman of his own crumpling bit by bit under a lightning parry and thrust of words.
He drew his hand from his pocket and laid the emerald pendant on the table.
“Yours, Judith?”
But the girl had already blanched. Mrs. MacBride sat stiff and straight, her hands clenched in her lap, the color draining from her tightly compressed lips.
“It was found,” went on MacBride slowly, clumsily gentle, “beside a wrecked car on Old Stone Road last night.”
“Oh!” breathed Judith, and looked to left and right, as if seeking an avenue of escape.
“Come, now, little girl,” pursued MacBride. “Tell me about it. What happened?”
Judith jerked up from her chair, started for the stairs leading to her room.
“Judith!”
She dragged to a stop and turned.
“Please, Steve!” choked Mrs. MacBride. She got up and put an arm around her daughter.
“Ann, please stay out of this,” recommended MacBride; and to the girl, “Judith, tell me about it. I know you were out in the company of the man who was murdered last night! I’ll have to have an explanation!”
“I—I can’t tell!” came her muffled, panicky voice.
“But you must!” he insisted sternly.
“No—no! I can’t! I won’t! Oh, please! …”
He crossed the room and laid his hand on her shoulder. “Do you realize the significance of this? I don’t say you killed Manola. But you were out with him, and you know what happened on that road. Judith! Out with one of the worst rakes in the city—the brother of Duke Manola, the gang leader and—my enemy! My God, girl, what have you been thinking of? Isn’t Ted Kerr good enough for you? Or does a classy car and a marcelled wop win you?”
She was crying now, but through it all she kept reiterating— ”I won’t tell! I won’t tell!”
“Judith, so help me, you will!”
“No—no! I won’t! You can beat me! You— can—beat—me! I won’t tell! Oh-o-o-o! …”
“Steve,” implored Mrs. MacBride, “don’t— please!”
“Ann, be still! Do you think I enjoy this? How do you think I felt last night when I picked that pendant up by the wreck? God, it’s a wonder the hawkeyed Kennedy didn’t see me! Judith, listen to reason. You’ve got to tell me!”
She spun back, her hands clenched, a storm of terror in her moist eyes—tense, quivering, like a cornered animal, and defiant.
“No—no—never! You can’t make me. Dear God, you can’t!”
She pivoted and clawed her way up the stairs, fled into her room and locked the door.
Half-way up the staircase, MacBride stopped, turned and came down slowly, his face a frozen mask.
“To think, to think!” he groaned.
His wife touched him with her hands, and he took them in his own and looked down into her swimming eyes.
“Ann, I wish you could make me happy, but just now—you can’t. I’m as miserable, as sunk, as you are.”
Years seemed to creep upon him visibly. He picked up the pendant and dropped it into his pocket.
V
At five that evening MacBride was sitting at his desk in the precinct, when Ted Kerr breezed in, closed the door quietly and stood, wiping perspiration from his forehead.
“Well?” asked MacBride.
“I was out there. Kline, the bird that runs the Blue River Inn, acted dumb. He didn’t remember the party of four. Had never seen them before. In short, didn’t know them.”
“Think he’s on the level?”
“No.” Kerr dropped to a chair. “I could see he was walking on soft ground, watching his step. It’s my bet that he knows the two fellows.” He paused. “How—how’s Judith?”
“Still love her?”
“Well, God, Cap, she’s in trouble—”
“Sh! Soft pedal, Ted!”
Kerr spoke in a husky whisper. “I don’t believe she’s done bad. She wouldn’t. Just lost her head. Damn these oily birds with their flashy cars!”
“Listen. If you saw the guy who was with Manola again, would you recognize him?”
“Sure.”
“Then take a trolley to Headquarters and look over the Rogues’ Gallery. Call me up if you have any luck.”
Kerr took his departure, and a little later Kelly entered and said, “Yup, Cap, there’s men out in that brewery where you sent me. I heard some hammerin’ goin’ on like, and the windows on the third floor—that’s the top, you know— them windows was open, they was. Then I seen two cars parked inside the fence, under the sheds where the beer used to be loaded on trucks. Classy cars—one a big sedan, all black—number A2260. The other was a sport roadster, C4002. Nobody was around them.”
On his desk pad MacBride marked down the type and number of the two cars. He dismissed Kelly and then
called up the automobile license bureau. The sport roadster, he found, belonged to a man named John A. Winslow. The sedan was owned by Judge Michael Haggerty.
MacBride sat back with a bitter chuckle. “That sounds like ‘Diamond Jack’ Winslow, the race-track kid. H’m. And Mike Haggerty. Cheek and jowl with Duke Manola.”
He lit a cigar and looked up to find Detective-Sergeant O’Dowd, from Headquarters.
“Hello, O’Dowd.”
“Hello, Mac. I just dropped in with a little order from the big cheese. Know that brewery out off Farmingville Turnpike?”
MacBride nodded.
O’Dowd said, “Well, don’t let it worry you, Mac. They’re making some good beer there, and orders are to leave ‘em be.”
“I’ve been waiting for those orders,” said MacBride. “So long as they bust the Volstead Act and don’t make any noise, it’s O.K. by me. Anything else, though—”
“Let your conscience be your guide, Mac,” grinned O’Dowd, and left.
The machinery of the underworld and politics, mused MacBride, was getting under way. Kerr called up a little later, and he had information.
“I’m sure it’s the same guy, Cap,” he said. “Chuck Devore. The records show he was arrested two years ago in connection with the shooting of a taxi driver named Max Levy. But he wasn’t indicted.”
“We’re hot, Ted,” shot back MacBride. “Devore is a gangster, and a pretty tough egg. He used to run with Duke Manola. In that killing two years ago we had the hunch that Manola tried to frame Devore to take the rap. Then they broke and Devore drifted. If he’s back in town, there’s a pot of trouble brewing.”
“You mean a gang war?”
“Right. Dog eat dog stuff, and hell’s going to pop or I miss my guess. All right, Ted. Hop a trolley home.”
MacBride slammed down the receiver and sat back rubbing his hands. Devore back in town! But what had he been doing in the company of Duke Manola’s brother? And who was the woman in the case—besides Judith? A chill shot through MacBride. His own daughter mixed up in an underworld feud!
He snapped up to his feet, changed from his uniform coat and cap into a plain blue jacket and a gray fedora. He strode out of his office, told Donnegan to get the car out, and left brief instructions with Sergeant Haley.
