The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Original)

by Unknown

  “Suppose”—the big man put both palms on the top of the showcase, bent over until his face was only a foot from Hansard’s—“an honest business man had been deceived about the ownership of certain gems, and was quite unaware of the manner in which they came into the possession of certain parties attempting to sell them—”

  “Go ahead. I’m supposing.…”

  “Do you think the police would take this fact into consideration, my friend?”

  Hansard smiled tightly. “They might. If the business man could help us to get a conviction.”

  Kutwik sighed. “I give you my word of honor I knew nothing of this killing. Naturally, under such circumstances, I would immediately have turned the stones over to the authorities.”

  “I bet you would,” said Hansard, curtly. “Let’s see ’em.”

  he jeweler emerged from behind the counter, walked with a curious shambling gait to the door of the Kredit Korner, locked it. Mike grinned to himself. That would give Schmidt something to fret about.

  The big man came back, beckoned to Hansard, led the way to a partition at the rear of the store. On the way, the detective gave the once-over to the big steel safe which stood under an electric light out where any passing policeman could make sure it hadn’t been tampered with. Evidently the jeweler didn’t trust his privately purchased goods to its security!

  There was a tiny cubbyhole of an office, a big glass-topped desk and a modernistic lamp of varnished wood and copper. Kutwik snapped on the light, sat down in a padded chair.

  “Let’s be open and above-board, my friend.”

  “Let’s,” Mike agreed.

  “Perhaps there is … um … a reward for the arrest of these men you tell me about.”

  Mike stared. “Sure. Jewelers Association reward. Twenty-five hundred bucks or so, last time I heard. For evidence leading to conviction. Why?”

  “As I understand it, you policemen are not qualified for such a reward, if you capture the criminals?”

  “So which?”

  Kutwik spread his palms, blandly. “Possibly we could work out some arrangement. You and I, eh? I give you the information; you see to it that I receive the reward. Then we split—”

  Hansard shook his head in admiration. “You got your nerve. Putting a program like that up to me. Why, you putty-puss, you’ll be getting all the reward that’s coming to you if you miss getting indicted for complicity in murder. Now cut out the horse and show me the glitter.”

  Kutwick sighed, pulled the lamp over in front of him. “You cops are so stupid about money matters. Who will it hurt if you and I split that twenty-five hundred?” There was no answer from the hockshop cop, so the jeweler grasped the base of the lamp in his left hand, twisted the top with his right.

  The lamp unscrewed, the top lifted off, and there was a niche in the wooden base about the size of a bird’s nest. There were a lot of shiny eggs in it, round little gold eggs with diamonds in them.

  Hansard laid them out on the desk. “All here but one,” he announced. “I got that one in my pocket already.”

  “They wanted three thousand dollars for the lot,” Kutwik murmured, resentfully. “Claimed they’d brought it over from Naples and smuggled it in.”

  “Don’t give me any of that guff.” Hansard scooped up the jewelry, dumped it in his coat pocket. “You knew where it came from. Probably you bought it, at that.”

  “Oh, I deny it, absolutely. I asked for time to make an appraisal.”

  “Did, eh? Tell me why a crook should trust you with five or six thousand dollars’ worth of rocks. Unless, of course, they’d done business with you before on the same basis.”

  The fence arched his eyebrows, superciliously. “I am a reputable dealer. I wouldn’t be likely to run away.”

  “Not unless you could make a dollar by doing it. All right. When were these rats coming back for their cheese?”

  “Tomorrow morning, Officer.”

  “Didn’t they leave any address, anyplace you could get hold of them?”

  Kutwik looked startled. “Why do you ask me? You have them under arrest, haven’t you?”

  “I didn’t say so, mug. But I’ll have you in a cell in no time at all, unless you answer my questions.”

  The jeweler groaned. “They mentioned a Nevins Street number. Over in Brooklyn 24781, if I remember correctly. But they were most particular that I shouldn’t attempt to contact them.”

  Hansard wrote it down. “O.K., mister. I’ll get over there and give a gander. You better close up shop now.”

  “I’d intended to.”

  “One more thing.” Mike reached for the phone, dialed Spring 7-1000. When he got the switchboard man, he rattled off: “Hansard talking, hockshop squad … I’m up at 9744 Lenox Avenue. Jewelry store. Nathan Kutwik. Got that? The phone is Edgecombe 7-0741. Put a tap on the wire, right away, will you? Want a record kept of all conversations, numbers called, the works.”

  He hung up with the operator’s comment still ringing in his ears. “What’s the matter with you, Hansard? You know we got to get a court order before we do any wire-tapping.”

  Mike started for the front door.

  “Where you live, Kutwik?”

  “At the Concourse Savoy. On the Grand Concourse.”

  “You better beat it right up there. Stay there till I give you a ring.”

  The jeweler unlocked the door. “You won’t double-cross me, Mr. Hansard. After my helping you, this way?”

  The detective clucked derisively. “Tchk, tchk. You’re a guy should talk about double-crossing! I’ll promise you nothing except an even break. And you won’t get that if you don’t keep your nose clean from here on in.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  TEN CARATS OF LEAD

  e went out, swung briskly past Schmidt, without speaking. After he’d gone halfway down the block, he flailed one arm in a come-on motion without turning around. His partner got it, slid the car up alongside.

  “No dice, huh, Mike?”

  “Plenty dice. I got the junk in my pocket.”

  “Ain’t you going to arrest Kutwik?”

  “Not yet, Ed. I’m not sure he’s really working with these choppers. But we’ll find out. You stick here, at this end of the block. I’ll drive around to the other end. We tail him. If he comes your way, I’ll see him and pick you up. If he heads my way, you’re on your own. You better check in with H.Q.”

  Hansard dropped his partner, drove on around the block. The lights at the Kredit Korner were just going out as he hit the end of the street. A minute later the jeweler stepped out of the door. He glanced cautiously up and down the block, hurried toward Schmidt’s corner. Mike followed with the car, keeping well behind him.

  Kutwik turned down Seventh Avenue. By the time Mike saw Ed Schmidt, the fence was nowhere in sight.

  “That yellow,” Schmidt snapped. “Headin’ downtown. That’s him!”

  Mike grunted. “He’s taking one hell of a roundabout route to get to the Concourse, isn’t he?”

  Through the northwest corner of Central Park, they trailed the taxi to a short crosstown block between Columbus and Broadway. Mike stopped the coupe before the taxi ceased moving. When Kutwik got out of his cab and scanned the street, there was no indication anyone had been trailing him.

  The jeweler paid off, hurried into a three-story brownstone house.

  Schmidt said: “That’s one of those remodeled joints with a couple of apartments on each floor. How do we know which one he’s in?”

  “We don’t, Eddie. You stay here. Collar him if he comes out. If you get rough about it, nobody could blame you. Cuff him to the wheel and then hit the hall. Wait there until you hear a racket, somewhere. That’ll be me. If you don’t hear a rumpus in a couple of minutes, make one yourself and get some help.”

  “How’ll you know where to head in, Mike?”

  “I’ll have to pull a Peeping Tom act. Up the fire-escape, at the rear. If he’s not in one of the rear flats I’ll go to the roof and come
down inside.”

  “Don’t climb into some dame’s room by mistake, pal.”

  Mike told him to go to hell, got around back past a row of ash cans, using his flash, found the iron ladder leading up past the rear windows.

  There were lights on all three floors. The voices on the first floor were female, those on the second an old man and a child.

  But when Hansard put his ear to the window on the top floor he heard Kutwik say: “I don’t want any part of it, Babe. I don’t mind running a few legitimate risks. But this hot-squat stuff is too much for me.”

  The high-pitched voice of the Babe cut in. “You soft-bellied ——! What do you think you can do about it now?”

  “All I want is my money back. I’ll give you the stuff. You can get rid of it outside the state.”

  The Babe cursed him obscenely. “You got as much chance of getting back that grand as you have of staying in the clear if George or I get picked up, Nate. The junk was worth three thousand, any way you wanted to figure it. You chiseled us down to one and now you want to welsh on that.”

  “All right.” Kutwik sounded tired. “Forget the cash. Come up tomorrow and take the junk back. I don’t want it. It’s too hot for me. I’d rather take the loss and throw the stuff down the sewer.”

  “Why didn’t you bring it with you tonight, if you’re so damn anxious to get rid of it?”

  The jeweler said: “I don’t want to touch it again. Much less carry it around where they could frisk it off me. You come up in the morning and get it. If you don’t, I’ll heave it in the river. I’m telling you.”

  Mike squatted on the fire-escape and grinned sourly as he patted the bulge in his pocket where the rings were. The old buzzard was still after that reward, figured that by getting Babe and the Gorilla to return to the Kredit Korner in the morning, he’d square himself with the authorities and be able to claim at least a part of the twenty-five hundred. He wouldn’t miss the thousand bucks he’d paid over to the Babe so much, then.

  There was no more talking from within. Somewhere in the apartment a door slammed. Mike got out his jack-knife, went to work on the catch of the window. It was a gamble, busting into a crook’s flat this way. But it would be even more of a gamble if he and Eddie tried to crash the front door. And maybe this rear window wasn’t being watched.

  It wasn’t. He slipped the catch with the blade, put his fingers on the pane, pushed up gently. The window came up with no noise. He got out his gun, shoved the shade aside, stepped quietly over the sill. Then he closed the window softly. The Babe might notice a draft from an unaccustomed source.

  The room he was in looked like a boudoir. Rose-pink spread on the bed, fluffy drapes at the windows, a dressing-table with a vanity mirror. But no women’s clothes …

  He stepped to the door leading into the hall. There was a rattling of ice in a glass, the sound of a syphon. Mike moved out into the hall.

  The Babe, in a pair of vivid blue lounging pajamas, was mixing a drink. He was lifting it to his lips when Mike said: “Hang onto it, sweetheart. With both hands. Get both hands on that glass, fast!”

  The Babe did as he was told, watching Hansard with sullen eyes.

  Mike stepped close to him, jabbed him gently with the muzzle of his pistol. “Turn around, Babe. Up against the wall there.” He got the bracelets out of his hip pocket, clipped one-half of the nickeled cuffs to the killer’s left wrist.

  There was a buzz out in the front of the apartment, another and another.

  “That will be Georgie the ape-man, huh?”

  Mike snapped the other half of the handcuffs around a steam riser in the corner of the kitchen. “You stay here, beautiful. I’ll go let him in. And if you yell or anything like that, I’ll put a dent in that classic nose of yours.”

  Hansard went through the hall, past a daintily furnished living-room, to the front door. There was the sound of a key in the lock. Mike didn’t wait. He jerked the door open.

  Gorilla George fell into the room, his jaw gaping in astonishment. Hansard had his share of the same feeling. For behind the Gorilla, a look of grim determination on his red face and an automatic clutched in his fist, was Brundage, the Ames patrolman!

  Things happened fast. The Gorilla let the momentum of his plunging entrance carry him into a dive for Mike’s knees. Hansard chopped down with the barrel of his revolver, caught the ape-man beside the ear with force enough to crack the skull of an ordinary individual.

  But the Gorilla didn’t stop. He got those long arms around Hansard’s knees, threw him heavily.

  From the kitchen came a cry. “George. He’s got me cuffed here!” The words spurred the scar-lipped man to a frenzy. Mike shot him once, through the shoulder, but George smashed a clubbed fist to the plainclothesman’s jaw, wrenching his head to one side and sending a spasm of pain through him from the cracked rib.

  Then Brundage took two quick steps, put the muzzle of his automatic in the Gorilla’s right ear, pulled the trigger. The body collapsed on top of Hansard.

  “Crysake, Brundage,” Mike muttered. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  The Ames man blew the smoke out of his pistol barrel. “He’d have killed you, wise guy. He was heading upstairs to do just that, when I ran into him.”

  Mike got painfully to his feet. “Didn’t you run into my partner, too? I left him down there, on guard.”

  “Sure.” Brundage turned the Gorilla over with his toe. “But he wanted to phone for some more of you John Laws, so I told him to go ahead. Then when I got in the building, I’m trying to find which apartment belongs to this Babe Tyler, who used to buddy around with Dumont, an’ who should come along but this rat? So I bring him up with me.”

  “George!” screamed the Babe, from the kitchen. “Where did he hit you, George? If that —— got you, I’ll burn his eyes out!”

  Mike nodded toward the kitchen. “Georgie’s boy-friend, or something. The one who drilled Tom MacReady.”

  Brundage stuck out his jaw belligerently. “I’d like a crack at that punk. I’ll run him over to the precinct house for you. You ain’t in no shape to manhandle him, fella.”

  Hansard said: “I’ll be O.K. Bent a rib last time I had an argument with these two. But you can help me with him, unless you’ve got ideas about collecting any part of that Jeweler’s Association reward?”

  The Ames man shook his head. “I ain’t eligible. All I’m doin’ is tryin’ to protect my job. That’s why I hammered Dumont until I dragged the Babe’s address outa him. Gimme the cuff-keys. I got a couple of new grips I want to show that scut.”

  Hansard took a key from his vest pocket, tossed it to him. “Don’t bang him around too much. Prosecutor’ll give us trouble, if you do.”

  Brundage went into the kitchen.

  Mike waited until the private patrolman was out of sight, then followed on tiptoe. He peeked around the corner.

  Brundage was having trouble with the lock on the handcuffs.

  “Hurry up,” whispered the Babe. “And give me a gun.”

  “Left-hand pocket,” muttered the Ames representative. “This key don’t fit.”

  “Damn right it don’t,” Mike snapped. “You don’t think I was sap enough to fall for that line of horse, do you?”

  Brundage snarled, fired. But his aim was spoiled by the Babe, who was desperately trying to tug the extra pistol from Brundage’s pocket.

  ike took his time, steadied himself against the door jamb, shot Brundage in the navel. He had to put another slug in the same place before the private cop sank to the floor and dropped his gun.

  The Babe had managed to get the automatic from Brundage’s coat before the Ames man fell. He lifted it, sighted.

  Hansard came in fast, knocked the muzzle aside, clipped the Babe once across the teeth with the barrel of his own .38.

  The killer moaned and sagged limply against the chain of the handcuffs.

  Brundage rolled over on his side. “They’ll get you for this, copper. My people’ll get you
.”

  “Sure they will, Amesy.” Mike ran water in the sink, put his head under it, said sputteringly: “They’ll get me to accept a medal for turning up a traitor. As well as a guy who’s wanted by the Frisco police.”

  “You’re crazy. Ain’t … first time … cop’s gone … gun-crazy.” Brundage put a hand to his belly. Somehow the gesture reminded Mike of Tom MacReady on the operating carriage.

  “No.” Mike wiped his face on a dish towel. “I might have been a little dumb. But not wacky. I had sense enough to figure out that the louse behind all these window-hole robberies must be somebody who knew a lot about the kind of stuff in jewelry-store windows and when the Ames men wouldn’t be around and what time the harness bulls would be on a different part of their beats. A guy like Dumont wouldn’t know all those angles. He wouldn’t be able to find out, either. And naturally, a couple of torpedoes like the Gorilla and the Babe here wouldn’t have that information. But you would. And working with Kutwik, you’d gotten away with it for a long time. Using a different mob of killers every so often and knocking them off yourself, when you were through with them, I suppose.”

  The Babe whimpered: “George. You shot George?”

  “Not me,” Mike said. “I would have, only your boss beat me to the punch.”

  The youth in the pajamas reached over, clawed savagely at Brundage’s face. Mike bent down, clipped him.

  “Mike! Where are you, Mike?” It was Schmidt’s worried voice, calling from the front door.

  “In the kitchen,” Hansard shouted.

  Schmidt came running in. “Holy cow!” he breathed as he saw the two men on the floor in the corner. “Good thing I sent for an ambulance, huh?”

  “What’d you do that for, Ed?”

  “That jeweler, Kutwik. I went away from the car and left that Ames gent to watch him. When I come back, the Ames lad is gone and Kutwik has a hole as big as your thumb, in his chest.”

  “I hope he’ll live,” Mike growled, “to testify against this crooked private cop. His name isn’t Brundage, of course. It’s Sexton. But it won’t make much difference. The Babe will go to town on the stand. Brundage, or Sexton, bumped the Babe’s boy-friend.”