Strongarm (Prologue Crime)

by Dan J. Marlowe

  Or that was the way it used to be. I had to see if it had changed. If it hadn’t, and I went in over the back fence tonight, I had till daylight to figure out a way of being inside Charley’s office when he walked into it. If I could, Charley Risko would catch himself a big fat surprise.

  On the drive down I thought about him. In the last couple of days he hadn’t been the only thing on my mind. Not that he was any blurred image: in the pen he’d been a white-hot coal gnawing at my gut. I had to admit that wasn’t true any more. Now he was a job; an unpleasant job, like Fox Hill below Yudam-ni in Korea. I knew what had made the difference: Lynn. The girl was doing something to my sense of purpose.

  I didn’t consider myself an avenging angel. Originally, perhaps, yes. Now it just griped me to see the Charley Riskos of the world with their deals and their power plays flourishing like the green bay tree. At his convenience, Charley had turned his back on service, loyalty, and friendship. I owed him something, and if it made me feel a little better to tell myself I owed it to a lot of people to remove him from the position of power he wielded so corruptly, well, what of it? In the pen I’d promised myself long and hard what I’d do when I got out. If I didn’t do it, to me at least my moral fiber would always be suspect.

  My reasons might be all mixed up, but I was going to get it done.

  There was Lynn, though — what happened to her if I made a wrong move and got myself caught? Why hadn’t I taken off as I’d promised myself I would when I had her tucked away in a quiet place? Why was I going back to the apartment after it was done instead of holing up somewhere alone? It didn’t make sense. I’d wanted her to be safe; she was safer now without me. Because I was greedy enough to hope I could have my cake and eat it, too, was no excuse for jeopardizing her safety. But if I could just get a break in the morning …

  It was dark when I drove through the hilly suburbs into the outskirts of the city. I took the back roads; the whole area was as familiar as the fit of my shoes. I turned onto a black-topped secondary road that wound between trees bulking large in the last traces of light in the western sky. I had driven on the road a thousand times; it ran by the back fence of the Risko Construction Company’s forty-acre home office empire.

  I parked a half mile away and walked in. Away off on the right I could see through the trees the lights of cars on the main road that went by the front of the company buildings. There were no cars on my road. I picked up a splintered piece of two-by-four from a ditch. It had a rusted strip of baling wire attached to it. I ripped off the wire and carried it with me. When I came to the fence with the three-tiered barbed wire strands atop it, I threw my wire over the top strand to make sure they hadn’t electrified the fence in my absence. Nothing happened.

  If there’s no hurry, barbed wire isn’t too difficult to get over. I shouldn’t have been in a hurry, but coming down on the inside I slipped and had to grab to keep myself from falling. On the ground I wadded up a handkerchief and closed my gashed palm around it. I trekked over the uneven terrain toward the low line of the buildings in front, skirting the long since played-out gravel pits that had been the reason the Risko Construction Company had located there originally. I circled weed-overgrown mounds that were the artifacts of the gravel-loading creepers, and, emerging from behind them, got my first unobstructed look at the entire bulk of the office building.

  There was a light on behind the frosted glass windows of Charley Risko’s office.

  I stood stock still and looked at it.

  All the rest of the building was dark. The pale light shone steadily. I started toward it. Charley didn’t work late often, but occasionally something came up that brought him back after dinner. Could I be getting lucky? With me on his mind ever since the prison breakout, would the building still be unlocked as it used to be so that the engineers could get to their desks at any hour of the night in case of emergency?

  Even Minna Cartwright’s office was never locked. Only Charley’s, with its stout green files and fireproof gray safe. Had Charley Risko, the man who remembered everything, remembered that I had a key to his office, one of only three? The night watchman was no problem; old Ben Curry never started his rounds until after ten, and his work-shoed, heavy-footed, clumping progress through the buildings and around the limits of the fence was as informative as a newspaper headline. If Charley Risko was alone in that office, and my key to it worked —

  I had the same feeling I’d had the day of the crushout just before the machine gun bullets started buzzing through the laundry truck: it couldn’t be this easy. There was only one way to find out. I slipped through the back entrance warily. The building was constructed on a slope so that there were three levels in back in two in front. I climbed the stairs silently, and when I reached the front office floor I moved along the transverse back-to-front corridor and started down the long front passageway with its offices on either side.

  A faint sound stopped me in my tracks. It repeated itself in seconds, and I recognized the chatter of a comptometer. Charley preferred comptometers to adding machines; comptometers left no tapes. I eased my way down the hall and stood outside the door of Minna’s unlighted office. The only light was from Charley’s office beyond it, and the comptometer was still chattering. I dropped to my hands and knees and crawled to the lighted inside office door. There was nothing behind me to silhouette me, but I wanted no possibility of a warning being given because of movement seen or sensed through the frosted glass of Charley’s door.

  I knelt at the door, listening. There was no sound at all from inside. Even the comptometer was quiet. Could there be a bodyguard in there with him, sitting quietly in a corner? Not likely. Few people were trusted inside that office within reach of the files. A bodyguard would have been sitting in Minna’s office, through which I’d just crawled.

  From my wallet I took out a flat key, the key I’d saved as a possible way back to Charley Risko. A millimeter at a time I slipped it into the lock and tried to turn it. It wouldn’t turn. I eased it out and thrust it back in my pocket. Charley had forgotten nothing. The lock had been changed. My key was no good.

  I knew that the door opened inward.

  I got to my feet.

  It was a solid door with a good lock, if it was like the old one, but it wasn’t upon either that Charley depended for the protection of his under-the-table deals. Inside the office were the locked files and a safe — a semi-vault — that were the best that money could buy. The door was a barrier, but only a barrier.

  I backed off across Minna’s office and charged forward, hitting the door with my shoulder just above the lock. Wood splintered and metal shrieked, but it held. A sharp pain ran from my shoulder down my arm. I backed up and hit it again. The door flew open, and I stumbled inside. The shirt-sleeved, bow-tied man sitting behind the desk gaping at me, his eyes widening as recognition dawned, was not Charley Risko but Joe Foley, the lawyer who had helped to send me over. His hand was on the telephone.

  “Don’t pick it up,” I said. I must have sounded as if I meant it; his hand fell away. “Roll that chair backward.”

  He rolled it backward, away from the desk and the telephone. His Adam’s apple bobbed convulsively above his bow tie as he tried to speak. “Don’t go getting yourself in a worse mess than you’re in already,” he said. His voice was squeaky and his mouth was pinched.

  “Where’s Risko?” I pounded at him. I was just beginning to absorb the crushing disappointment of finding the wrong man in the office.

  “Downriver at the lodge.”

  It could even have been true. Charley had a hunting lodge at which he frequently entertained political guests.

  I looked at this frightened man who had connived to take three years out of my life. “Made your will, Joe? They tell me lawyers seldom do.”

  “Now wait!” Unbidden, the chair rolled still farther backward. It stopped with a jerk against the wall. “We been hoping you’d show up here so we could get you straightened out. We’d have had you out long ag
o if it hadn’t been for that crazy breakout.” His voice soared as I started around the desk after him. “Listen to me! Don’t you think your picture would’ve been on every front page in the state if we weren’t cooperating?”

  It stopped me. “Cooperating?”

  “Sure.” Words just burbled out of him. “The government men kept your identity from the police. When they came to us, they asked us to do the same thing. You’ve got something they really want, man, and they want it without any noise. I can make a deal for you, positively.” The words rolled over me. I wasn’t clear about their meaning, and I wasn’t about to take the time to think it through. Joe Foley was a damned poor second best, but my hands itched to get at the weasel. He could see it in my face. “I tell you we’ve talked to three of them already!” he blurted. “Just day before yesterday to the one you shipped up to Duluth!”

  It stopped me again.

  He wasn’t lying about everything.

  “And Charley’s cooperating?” I said. Foley had been gradually getting his courage back. At my tone, his expression changed for the worse.

  “Certainly!” he said vigorously.

  “You must think I don’t know Charley, Joe,” I said. “He’ll cooperate until he gets me to where he can drop a bulldozer on me. Isn’t that right?”

  “You got it all wrong,” he protested.

  “What is it I’m supposed to have that these people are so interested in they can muzzle you?”

  “You know. Some oilskinned packets in a briefcase.”

  Some oilskinned packets in a briefcase. Never a word about the money. Was everyone in the world crazy except me? Or did they think I was? “How did they know enough to look for me in Detroit?” I hammered at Foley.

  “A set of prints was referred to Washington by the Detroit police,” he said promptly. “It was just a routine check, but they turned out to be those of the man who’d lost the briefcase.”

  He was happy to tell me. He was feeling better again; the naturally sly look was back on his face. That much of his story checked out, but the rest of it didn’t make sense. “How could these people keep so many law enforcement agencies quiet after — ”

  A siren went off so close it sounded right in the room. A red blinker light flashed off the walls. Foley hadn’t been reaching for the phone when I burst in; he’d been hanging up. All he had to do was say “Someone’s breaking in!” when I hit the door the first time. And then keep me talking.

  The siren wailed again.

  It seemed right under my feet.

  “You’ll dance to a different tune now, buster,” Foley announced with vicious satisfaction. “This is even better than we’d — ” his voice died away. He had expected me to run. His popping eyes didn’t believe it when I went after him. “No! No! No!” he screamed, wrapping his arms around his head. I wrenched them away. He started to dive out of the chair, and I smashed him right in the mouth. I hit him twice more. I felt bone go. I didn’t know whether it was his or mine. I don’t think he felt the third one. I looked at him slumped in the chair with blood streaming down his shirt front. It was only a down payment on what I owed him, but for now it would have to do.

  There was noise outside and downstairs. I went to the head-high bookcase at the left of Charley’s big desk and pressed my thumb against the slight indentation at the end of the second shelf from the top. The bookcase swung open silently. Inside there was a chair in the space large enough for a man to sit with his feet drawn under its legs. I went in and sat down and pulled the bookcase back in toward me. It closed with a soft snick of the latch. Joe Foley was in poor shape to tell anyone about Charley Risko’s hiding place for a witness listening to “private” conversations. Nobody else who came in was likely to know about it. When the cops dashed in and found no one around, they’d have to figure me for two and a half miles cross-country.

  There was a rush of heavy footsteps into the office. “My God, look at that!” a voice exclaimed.

  “Search the building!” somebody else said authoritatively. “They can’t be far. Moran, have a cruiser circle the fence. Curry, how could strangers get in here without your seeing them?”

  I could hear poor old Ben spluttering his I-don’t-knows. I could hear everything. It was essential that Charley’s witnesses be able to hear everything clearly. “Bring up a stretcher, Bill,” the first voice said. “Can he hear you, Ed? Ask him what they looked like.”

  “He’s out cold, Sarge. I think his jaw’s broken.”

  “Well, put him on the floor till the stretcher gets here. Someone clean up that chair.”

  The sound of shuffling feet was first intensified and then lessened as men left the office bearing the stretcher, muttering admonitions to each other to be careful. For a while all sound ceased in the office. I sat and waited. Finally a single pair of footsteps returned, and I could hear a substantial weight being lowered into the swivel chair. Then silence took over again. A night watchman left until Charley’s A.M. arrival? It would really put a spoke in my wheel unless he fell asleep.

  The telephone rang loudly, startling me. “Hello?” the man in the office said. “Yes, Mr. Risko, I been waitin’ for your call. Sergeant Callahan, sir. Yes, sir. No, nothin’ yet, but we will.” He was silent a moment. “Yes, sir, from the looks of Mr. Foley it was more’n one.” He listened again. “Inside here? Just a second while I take a look.” I could hear him making a circuit of the office. “No, sir, not a dent on a one of them, Mr. Risko. The door? Smashed all to hell, sir. Boarded up? You don’t want me to stay the night here? The captain said — boarded up, right, sir. I’ll get Curry on it right away. Rest easy; we’ll get them, Mr. Risko.” He thumped out of the office, and I could hear his diminishing “Oh, Ben! You, Ben!”

  It wasn’t likely that Charley Risko would want a police sergeant sitting in his private office until daybreak. Even with a stupid one, sheer boredom could start him opening drawers. I gave Sergeant Callahan a three-minute start, and pressed the interior bookcase release. Again it opened without a sound. I stepped out and reclosed it. There was no one around, in Charley’s office, in Minna’s office, down the hall, or down the back stairs. Outside it was black, except for the tool shed off to the right where old Ben Curry would be gathering up lumber for his boarding-up job.

  I set out across the back lot. I waited at the fence, lying on the ground, until a cruiser passed slowly by. Then I went up and over, this time without taking any more bark off myself.

  I walked back to the car and drove to Columbus.

  I had a lot to think about on the way.

  chapter IX

  Lynn woke me early the next morning when she got up out of bed.

  I rolled over on my back and stared at the ceiling, my mind blank for a second. Then the pain in the knuckles and palm of my right hand brought the previous evening’s events back with a rush. The hand was both stiff and sore, cut in front and back. I’d had worse. I drew up my knees and considered — as I had all the way back on the ride to Columbus — what Joe Foley had said while he was waiting for the police to jump me.

  Granted he’d have said anything he thought would keep me off him; at least part of it was true, or he couldn’t have known about the guy I’d clobbered on the ferry. But it was crazy to think any government agency would refuse to enlist city and state police cooperation when all they had to do was ask for it. Any agency that was on the level. I had something they really wanted, Foley had said. No word of a lie in that. Three-quarters of a million dollars could induce a lot of wanting. I wanted it myself. More important, I had it. It seemed I was the only one who had a good word to say for it, though; all the rest of them were interested in oilskinned packets.

  A likely story.

  Last night — that had been a bad show.

  Not because of Foley — he had it coming, and more.

  Getting to Risko now, though, was going to be quite a proposition. The cops might think strangers had broken in on Foley; but even before Foley could talk, Risko would
know differently. It had been too good to be true to expect to find him alone in that office last night. It would be a long time before anyone caught him in it alone again.

  It left me looking for an angle.

  My life was getting too complicated. In the beginning there’d been only Risko: getting to him had been all that mattered. Then I’d discovered Lynn: preserving my own scaly hide had taken on some priority. The money had showed up: safeguarding that had become important Getting Lynn under cover so the goons who lowered the boom on Happy Jack Markham couldn’t find her had become important. Getting her under cover in some way I could be with her had become important.

  But, back to elementals.

  There was Risko.

  I wanted him.

  I wanted him, but not with the same hot, slavering need I’d felt in the pen.

  The trouble was I was getting conservative. I wasn’t thinking now in terms of the all-out shot at Risko. I was at least equally concerned with keeping the money and making sure I didn’t drag Lynn down with me if the shot at Risko went wrong. It left me in no mood for anything fancy. I couldn’t expect to be as lucky as I’d been last night. If I could just figure —

  The bedroom door opened and Lynn looked in. When she saw I was awake, she trotted to the bed and knelt down beside it, kissing me warmly. She had on an apron over a blouse and shorts and she was barefooted. I hid my damaged right hand under the sheet as I held her in my left arm. “Good morning, sunshine,” I greeted her.

  “Good morning, Pete. What time did you get in?”