by Unknown
The emcee dashed on again. While he was telling three fairy jokes I ordered another side-car and looked over a party of six who’d just come in. They were in evening clothes and looked like money. They got a good table, three away from me, and ordered bonded whiskey highballs. They drank them, ordered more and stayed through the scrubwomen’s high-hat-cane-1931-Broadway-rhythm-hotcha number. They tittered hysterically at the emcee’s three fairy jokes that followed. They drank up and left in the middle of a blue-lit fan dance by the lumpiest of the scrubwomen.
Two men came in, one of them badly plastered. They were both dressed, but had a cheap look about them. They had a couple at the bar, then decided to sit for a while. They got the table next to mine. The sober one ordered coffee for the drunk one and a highball for himself. The drunk babbled that he din’ wan’ coffee and the manager began to flutter nervously in the vicinity.
The emcee was on again. When the coffee arrived the drunk threw it on the floor and bellowed: “I don’ wan’ any coffee!”
The emcee thought he would make like Eddie Davis and quell the heckler with a witty, biting gag.
“Ya know, buddy,” he said, pointing, “theh’s on’y two kines a animals ’at make a noise like ’at. One’s a—”
The drunk realized he was being talked about, took two steps onto the floor and bashed the emcee in the mouth.
“I sai’ I din’ wan’ any coffee!” he challenged the whole clip-joint and its customers.
Waiters began to flow toward him. The drunk’s friend and I each took an elbow and led him off the floor. The drunk started to apologize to the manager, who grinned and said: “That was a nice poke you gave him. The damned loudmouth needed it. I got to throw you out now. One check?”
“Sure,” I said. “Let me have it.” We got our coats and went out together. “Where to?”
The drunk said: “Le’s go Morgan’s. I gotta blackjack sys’em works ev’ time. Le’s go Morgan’s.”
“You know Morgan’s?” asked the other one.
I shrugged. “They don’t know me.”
“I’ll get ya in. They took enough from me by now ta let a friend of mine in.”
We got into the anteroom just by knocking. There was a little doubt about me there. A cauliflowered bruiser in a beautiful dinner-jacket politely refused to let me in until Hellman, wounded in the pride, swore he’d known me for seven years and that I was Square Joe from Rightville. That did it. That more than did it. The bruiser wrote me out a card—just like speakeasy days!—and I was a member. We went on in.
The whole first floor had been opened; all partitioning walls were down. There was a big chandelier with hundred-watters in it. There were plenty of hundred-watters in wall brackets. It was bright—hard on women customers and their complexions, hard on the dirty walls, but you could see what went on when the dice bounced and the cards flipped.
There were three blackjack tables, a chuck-a-luck layout, two wheels and a battery of big slot-machines.
“Craps and poker on the second floor,” said Hellman.
“I gotta blackjack sys’em works ev’ time,” said his friend, starting for the tables. Hellman hurried after him and I let him hurry.
There were about thirty women there and about twenty men. I could tell the two house men circulating gently around the room. They were big and looked darkly southern. They were watching the dealers and stickmen as closely as they watched the customers.
I left my coat and hat at the check stand, which was operated by the big bruiser who doubled as receptionist. He tripled as cashier, too, slapping down a stack of silver dollars on the counter.
“Twenty for a starter, Mr. McCowan?” he suggested.
“Forty,” I said. He doubled the stack and took my two bills. The cartwheels made an awful bulge in my pocket. After ten minutes at the roulette wheel the bulge wasn’t there anymore. I bought forty again and ran them up to forty-two in an hour at the chuck-a-luck cage.
I started upstairs to the crap games. A bulky, dark man drifted from nowhere to murmur: “Sorry, sir, no silver used on the second floor. Please change your money if you wish to go up.”
Upstairs not even a stab had been made at decorating. There were three poker tables, three craps layouts and shoulder-high screens between them. There was a twin-tube fluorescent fixture hanging over each stand.
A dark little man standing at the head of the stairs said: “Sir?”
“Craps,” I said. “High table.”
I watched the roll until I got the gun, then shot twenty and made it with a four-three.
I let it ride and rolled a five, a nine, another nine, a six and a five.
I took off thirty, rolled and crapped out with a two. The gun moved left, my fifty said he wouldn’t. He didn’t. I took off fifty, bet wrong again and collected again. I bet a hundred right on the next gunner and lost, fifty wrong on the next and won.
I got the gun and shot the hundred. I eighted the hard way and made it with a six-two on the second roll. I shot the two hundred and rolled six-five.
Shoot the four, something told me.
“Shoot the four,” I said.
The stickman didn’t flick the dice at me.
“I thought this was the high table!”
“Let him shoot the four,” said a little, dark man who had joined us.
“Yes, Mr. Morgan,” said the stickman. The dice rolled into my cupped hand.
“Nice place you have, Mr. Morgan,” I said, cackling the dice.
“We like it,” said Morgan. Only his name wasn’t Morgan, or hadn’t been long. Morgan’s a Welsh name, and Welshmen aren’t olive-skinned little men with small hands and white teeth. Welshmen don’t use perfume either.
There was something about Mr. Morgan, something just outside my reach—
“Four hundred!” I breathed, and rolled. It was a four-three again. Everybody at the table sighed.
Morgan—what was there about that guy?—counted out four C-notes and said: “Good for you, Mr. McCowan. Try again?”
“Shoot twenty,” I said. I rolled a six, a three, a nine and sevened out.
Somebody else came up from the first floor and started to the third. It was Maxie, the little peterman. I turned my back, but he recognized me. The house man at the head of the stairs saw that something was up, though Maxie had started climbing again, looking innocent and virtuous. He started after him and I heard them talk in an undertone, his voice gentle and Maxie’s nervous. I slipped down the stairs, left unguarded. I heard a buzzer somewhere.
When I turned at the landing I saw the two house men of the first floor and another I hadn’t spotted standing there at the foot of the stairs.
I stopped. The second-floor man came down the steps and frisked me lightly. He took out the flashy cigarette case, looked in it and put it back.
“Will you come upstairs, sir?” he asked.
“You bet I will,” I said.
e went up to the third floor. I was politely ushered through a door that clicked behind me. It was a nice little waiting room with three chairs. Maxie was sitting in one of them as if it were the hot seat.
“How’s the gut?” I asked him politely. It was a very courteous place.
He stared at me. “What did you come here for?”
“Why didn’t you blow town after you bungled the job?”
“I was going to bluff. After Morgan paid me I was going to blow.”
“Looks like you’re going to get paid,” I said.
I pointed to a door where one of the house men was silently standing. He beckoned to Maxie. Maxie went with him. There was a look of doom on his face.
The door opened again after a couple of minutes. The man beckoned to me. I went with him.
I wondered what my face looked like then.
I wondered what it would look like in a couple of hours.
The man took me through a corridor to the back of the house. He knocked on a door and opened it. I went through and he followed me.
Th
ere was a table, four chairs, a couple of pictures. Morgan was sitting behind the table.
“Sit down, Skeat,” he said. “Maxie told me you were here. I want to know what happened.”
I flipped the tails of my coat into my lap. “You have a secret, Mr. Morgan.”
“That’s right,” he agreed, smiling. I stared at the smile until he relaxed and waited. What was there about this little guy?
I went on: “A grifter named English found out what it was. He tried to peddle it to me. I didn’t want it, but you didn’t know that. You had English killed and you sent a boy to kill me. After I was killed Maxie was supposed to show up, open my safe and destroy the secret if I had it in writing. But I got the drop on your boy and I beat hell out of Maxie until I got the story.”
“Does Maxie know my—secret?” he asked, his face growing wintry.
“No. He’s scared of it. I’m scared of it too. I didn’t know it and I didn’t want to know it. I came here to look over your layout, maybe say hello and tell you I didn’t know what you’re covering up.”
Something clicked.
I said slowly and carefully: “Only now that I take a good, long look at you, I do know what you’re covering up.”
“You’re crazy to tell me that, Skeat. It means you die.”
I grinned, sweating. “Send your men away or I’ll yell what I know so loud they’ll all hear it. Can you kill them all?”
Morgan waved at the house man in a tired way. “Leave him to me,” he said. “I don’t want anybody else on this floor for a half hour.”
The man left silently.
Morgan leaned earnestly over the table and nodded at me. “It must sound crazy to you,” he said.
“People over here don’t kill for that,” I said.
“I’m from over there.…” His eyes clouded and he nodded his little nod. “You don’t know what it’s like,” he said. “All you crazy-rich Americans—the garbage you throw away after dinner would feed two of our families all day.
“It is because we have so little—a handful of stony soil, a few saucepans, a leaking little hut and the rags we wear. We have nothing, Skeat, nothing except our families to love and protect.
“My brother and I were orphaned when we were six and eight. Our father died with the bends—he was a sponge-diver. Very hard life. Our mother died because she could not live any longer. An uncle in America sent for us and raised us. We went two different ways. I’ve been crooked as hell since I was sixteen. He’s been straight as a die all his life.
“Years ago I realized that I was doing my brother terrible harm by being what I was, so I changed my name. English found out my true name, so he died. Now nobody knows except you, who recognized my brother’s features in mine.
“If my true name were known my brother’s career would be at an end. He would drift back into obscurity and heartbreak. That is why you must die—because over there we are so poor and have nothing to love but our families.”
He reached in the drawer of the table. I reached in the left tail pocket of my dress-coat. The little Belgian .25 automatic flicked out as Morgan lifted a big revolver.
I fired at his hand a split-second before he could drag back the ponderous action of the .44. My tiny bullet burned him and his hand wavered as he fired. My second shot landed in his chest. So did my third, fourth and fifth. My ears rang with the roar of his big gun. My shoulder felt cold as ice, then began to tingle.
“Skeat,” I said drunkenly, “you’re shot.” I swayed to my feet and clawed my way to the table and the phone that stood on it.
I called a man and told him something. “And bring a doctor,” I added.
In the movies there’s a trick called “iris out.” It’s what you see when blackness creeps over the screen until there’s just a little circle of light left in the center and then the light winks out. That’s what happened to me then.
The little circle of light appeared again. It expanded and was the chest of somebody in hospital white. There was a low, heart-sick wailing somewhere, and lots of people.
The man in white said: “He’s coming to.”
“Did you phone that tip in?” asked somebody.
“Hell, yes,” I said. I could still hear the wailing.
“Good guy! We made a beautiful haul.”
My shoulder smelled of alcohol and had a bulky dressing on it. I looked around.
There was Angonides crouched by the corpse of his brother, wailing: “O Demetrios! O, delph’ Demetrios!”
“He shouldn’t have muscled me,” I said sleepily. “But we’re all square now.”
I felt very tired and contented.
Borrowed Crime
Cornell Woolrich
CORNELL (GEORGE HOPLEY) WOOLRICH (1903–1968) was born in New York City, grew up in South America and New York, and was educated at Columbia University, to which he left his literary estate. A sad and lonely man who desperately dedicated his books to his typewriter and to his hotel room, Woolrich was almost certainly a closeted homosexual (his marriage was terminated in short order) and an alcoholic, so antisocial and reclusive that he refused to leave his hotel room when his leg became infected, ultimately resulting in its amputation. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, the majority of his work has an overwhelming darkness, and few of his characters, whether good or evil, have much hope for happiness—or even justice. No twentieth-century author equaled Woolrich’s ability to create suspense, and Hollywood producers recognized it early on. Few writers have had as many films based on their work as Woolrich, beginning with Convicted (1938), based on “Angel Face,” starring Rita Hayworth, and continuing with Street of Chance (1942), on The Black Curtain, with Burgess Meredith and Claire Trevor; The Leopard Man (1943), on Black Alibi, with Dennis O’Keefe and Jean Brooks; Phantom Lady (1944), on the novel, with Ella Raines and Alan Curtis; The Mark of the Whistler (1944), on “Chance,” with Richard Dix and Janis Carter; Deadline at Dawn (1946), on the novel, with Susan Hayward; Rear Window (1954), on “It Had to Be Murder,” with Grace Kelly and James Stewart; and fifteen others.
“Borrowed Crime” was published in the July 1939 issue.
Borrowed Crime
Cornell Woolrich
THE DOCTOR LOWERED HIS STETHOSCOPE with an irritable gesture. “No improvement at all,” he snapped. “He’s losing ground, if anything, staying here!”
The kid’s ribs were sticking out like a fish’s backbone. The doctor turned to him and spoke more gently than he had to the man and woman. “Put on your shirt, sonny; don’t catch cold.” He eyed the row of medicine bottles ranged above the bed, swept his arm at them impatiently. “Throw them out; they’re not doing the boy a bit of good! I gave you my diagnosis over two months ago. He’s got to be taken out West, where the air’s dry and the sun’s hot. I can’t do anything for him; you’re just wasting your time and mine by sending for me.”
The woman had begun to cry soundlessly into her apron, with the terrible resignation of the poor. The doctor banged his instrument case shut, stalked ill-humoredly out of the room.
Swanson slouched dejectedly after him. “But, Doc, I ain’t got—” He faltered.
The doctor stopped short in the outer doorway, looked around at him short-temperedly. “I know,” he said, “you haven’t got the money! That’s the hell of it. It’ll take a thousand dollars.”
The boy had started to cough again in the room they’d just come from. The woman closed the door, but it came through anyway.
It seemed to infuriate the doctor even more. Maybe he was a conscientious man, hated the feeling of helplessness a case like this gave him. “Hear that?” he exclaimed. “You better find some way of getting that kid out of here, or you won’t have to hear it very much longer!”
Swanson kept staring at him helplessly. “If there was only some way …”
The doctor looked him squarely in the eye. “If it was my child, I’d find a way; you bet your bottom dollar!” he said wrathfully. “Go out and hit somebody over the head for it!
Hold up a bank! I don’t care where you get it, but see that you get it!”
He went stomping down the tenement stairs outside, swearing audibly all the way down. His bad temper didn’t mislead Swanson any; he knew he was a sympathetic, honest man.
He closed the door and went in again, hanging his head. The kid had stopped coughing now—until the next time. His wife came out of the room, carrying a cloth half-hidden so he wouldn’t see it. He knew those cloths, knew what color they were apt to show if you unfolded them.
He sat down at the table in the shabby room, held his head in both hands, staring down at nothing; at the soiled oilcloth and the newspaper resting on it. He had no chance of borrowing; money was only loaned to those who already had something, who could offer security. Even a loan-shark wouldn’t have considered him a worthwhile risk—he had no job that could be milked later on.
Even the doctor’s sinister suggestion, although it had only been angry rhetoric, was beyond his scope. Bank robbery was an organized business nowadays; what chance had a solitary, unarmed amateur against all their guards and tear bombs and alarm systems? And you didn’t find a thousand dollars on the first man you held up on the streets these days.
The paper had been there under his eyes the whole time. It was no use looking at the Help Wanteds any more. He’d tried too long and hard, broken his heart, smashed his head against the stone wall of conditions as they were. Besides, even if by a miracle he could land something tomorrow, what hope had he of getting anything that would pay a thousand dollars even in a year’s time? He flung it tormentedly away from him, with its black scarehead: No Clue Yet in Ranger Slaying.
Some murder case or other. What was it to him? Let the whole world murder and be murdered; he only cared about his kid and Helen. The front page furled over with the fling he had given the paper, and bared the page beneath, and after a while he became conscious of a dollar sign peering up at him from it. Next to it there was a one, and then a comma, and then three naughts. Funny, he must have been thinking so hard of one thousand dollars that he thought he was seeing it staring up at him from the printed page.
