The Richard Deming Mystery Megapack

by Richard Deming

“There’s two plainclothes cops waiting in your room, Mr. Fancy,” the boy whispered.

  “Thanks, kid.”

  As he neared the door of 512, Dan began whistling. Making an unnecessary amount of noise when he inserted the key in his lock, he pushed open the door and stepped in. His eyes widened in simulated surprise when he saw the two men in the room.

  Lieutenant Morgan Hart sat in the chair by the window with a snub-nosed thirty-eight leveled at Dan’s stomach. The thin, sharp-nosed man who had tailed Dan to Larry Bull’s house leaned negligently against the wall with both hands in his pockets.

  “Drop your gun gentle, Fancy,” Lieutenant Hart said quietly.

  “Sure,” Dan said.

  Carefully he drew the weapon from under his arm, using only an index finger and thumb. With exaggerated daintiness he laid it on the carpet.

  “This an arrest, or just a killing?” he asked.

  “An arrest. But we’d be glad to make it a killing, if you want to resist.”

  “No thanks. What’s the charge?”

  “Homicide.”

  “Anyone I know?”

  The thin lieutenant scowled at him. Rising, he dropped his Panama hat over his gun and urged the big man out of the room. At the doorway he stooped and pocketed Dan’s .45 automatic. The hat-covered gun never varied from its bearing on the big man’s nose as the trio rode down the elevator, crossed the lobby and entered a squad car at the curb. The skinny, sharp-nosed man drove, while Lieutenant Hart sat in the back with Dan.

  “You don’t really need that gun,” Dan remarked. “I wouldn’t make a break because I’m curious to find out your intentions.”

  The lieutenant said nothing, but he did not put away the gun. The grim manner in which he continued to eye Dan caused a tremor of uneasiness to run through the big man, for Morgan Hart’s expression resembled nothing so much as that of a hired killer about to practice his profession. Fleetingly Dan wondered if perhaps he had misestimated Big Jim, and instead of being framed he was simply going to be murdered.

  Then he decided that Big Jim would be guilty of nothing so crude, and settled back to await developments.

  They were not long in coming. Swiftly the car drove toward the center of town. Near the hub of the shopping district it slowed to cruising speed and drifted with the traffic. Repeatedly the sharp-nosed driver glanced in the rear-view mirror, apparently awaiting some sign from the lieutenant. Finally, in the center of a block in which traffic whizzed in both directions and the sidewalks were crammed with pedestrians, Morgan Hart gave a slight nod.

  Immediately the driver slammed on his brakes, and almost before the car stopped moving he had flung open the right-hand door and thrown himself to the sidewalk amidst startled pedestrians. Standing in a crouch, he drew a gun and fired over the top of the car.

  Simultaneously Lieutenant Hart flung himself out of the back door and winged a bullet into the upholstery immediately beneath Dan.

  Grasping the door handle on his own side, Dan threw his shoulder against the door and sprawled headlong into the street. Two more shots crashed, one nicking the asphalt on either side of the car.

  Traffic from both directions screamed to a halt, leaving a wide path between Dan and the mouth of an alley across the street.

  Like a harbor of safety the alley beckoned, but to reach it Dan would have to traverse; a wide street while two men with pistols potted at his back. Even as he hit the street on all fours, his mind was racing, and he found time to be amazed at Big Jim’s audacity. Picking the center of town with a hundred witnesses to stage a killed-while-escaping act was a stroke of genius, for even the governor would be impotent in the face of the testimony of so many disinterested witnesses.

  That he would never make the mouth of the alley across the street was a certainty. With split-second decision he bounced erect, slammed shut the car door through which he had just tumbled, jerked open the driver’s door and slid under the wheel.

  Racing around either side of the car toward the point “they expected to find Dan, and not expecting the maneuver, the two detectives were caught off balance. The motor was still running, and when Dan threw the car into low and gunned it, Morgan Hart was behind the car and the thin-nosed man was in front of it. The latter leaped backward in terror as the hood shot toward him, stumbled over the curb and fell flat. Then Dan was racing through a red light and was cut off from possible fire by the stream of traffic which immediately began to flow in the cross street behind him.

  Dan estimated he had at least five minutes before Lieutenant Hart could get a general alarm on the air, and he resolved to make the most of each minute. The shipping dock area along the lake front would be his best bet, he decided, for there he could probably find a cheap hotel which made a point of not asking its guests questions. Opening the siren wide, he headed in the general direction of the dock area at seventy-five miles an hour. At the same time he switched on the radio so that he would know the exact moment his squad car ceased to be a haven and became a target.

  His guess was optimistic by two minutes. He had roared a little over three miles across town, and was passing through what seemed to be a second-class residential district when the radio suddenly intoned: “Calling all cars. Calling all cars. Be on lookout for squad car number two seventy-six. Repeat car two seventy-six. Last seen at Fourth and Locust heading at high speed toward lakefront. This car has been stolen by Daniel Fancy, who is wanted for murder. Fancy may have abandoned car and may now be on foot. He is six feet four inches, two hundred and seventy pounds, suntanned, has blue eyes and iron-gray hair. He is wearing a gray suit and no hat. This man is a cop-killer and may be armed. Take no chances with him.”

  That fixed him but good, Dan thought. Labeling him a cop-killer. Every cop in town, even the honest ones, if any, would now shoot first and call “halt” after Dan dropped. He cut his siren, slowed to a crawl and began looking for a parking place, so that he could proceed more inconspicuously on foot.

  A quarter-block later he found it, a lone vacancy in front of a neighborhood tavern. Pulling alongside the car in front of the vacancy, he started to back in.

  The rear end of his squad car was halfway in when another police car drifted from the side street immediately in front of him, crossed the intersection and stopped with a jerk. As it slammed into reverse, Dan gunned out of his parking place, whipped into a U-turn which made his tires scream in agony, and headed back the way he had come with the accelerator to the floor.

  At the first corner he swung left at fifty-five miles an hour. A block farther on he made a dirt-track left turn by skidding around the corner sidewise at sixty. He was two blocks ahead and his speedometer needle wavered at eighty by the time the pursuing car rounded the second turn. When he reached ninety-two, his heart leaping to his throat every time a side street flashed by, he had increased his lead to three blocks.

  But by then the radio was chattering his location and sirens began to whine from all directions. Ahead he caught a flashing glimpse of the sun reflected on water, gritted his teeth-and roared on. What he would do or could do, when he reached the lake was something he had to decide within seconds.

  Off to his left the screech of a siren grew to a crescendo. He caught a glimpse of a gray squad car flashing at him from a side street, its tires screaming as the horrified driver locked brakes to prevent crashing head-on into Dan’s side. There was a sharp metallic click as a hub cap scraped his rear bumper, and in the rear-view mirror he could see the police car stalled diagonally across the street. A moment later another set of brakes squealed as the car which had originally given chase came to a frustrated stop, its way blocked by the stalled vehicle.

  Dan realized his respite would amount only to seconds, however. He also realized the chase was nearly over, for a bare two blocks ahead he could make out the shipping dock, and there was nowhere left for him to go except into the lake. The distance shrank t
o a block before he made his decision.

  Without slackening speed he flashed onto the wooden dock, slammed on his brakes fifty feet from its edge and skidded the rest of the way.

  Considering he was driving an unfamiliar car, his timing was perfect. The squad car came almost to a full stop, maintaining just enough momentum to slide off the end of the pier in slow motion, loiter in the air for a fraction of a second and then drop vertically. During that fraction of a second Dan managed to shoulder open the door, part company with the squad car and enter the water in a shallow dive.

  The car disappeared with an enormous splash. Underwater, Dan allowed himself to shoot forward until the force of his dive was nearly spent, then twisted and with two powerful underwater strokes was under the dock. He continued swimming underwater until his lungs would no longer sustain him, then broke to the surface and held on to a piling while he gulped a deep lungful of air.

  He found he was some twenty feet back under the dock. There was barely two-foot clearance between the underside of the dock and the water, he was gratified to discover. It would be impossible to get a boat underneath. Leisurely, he swam deeper under the pier until his feet touched bottom.

  He could not have found a better hiding place had he deliberately hunted for one, he realized. He estimated that the dock was a hundred feet deep and possibly a block long. Even a dozen swimmers would have difficulty finding him, for the place was in perpetual dusk and there were literally hundreds of pilings to play hide-and-seek behind.

  Apparently the police decided the same thing, for a few minutes later several boats crowded to the edge of the dock and powerful lights were beamed under it. But they contented themselves with peering from the boat and no swimmers ventured back to seek for him. Dan merely stood quietly behind a piling until the police gave up and went away.

  Walking back into shallower water, he soon found his chest and shoulders above the surface, but his head scraping the underside of the dock. Sinking to a crouch, he continued back until he was able to sit on the hard sand bottom with his head and shoulders above water. He was not uncomfortable, for while the water was cool, it was clear lake water and probably clean enough to drink. However, he realized he might have to stay under the pier until dark, which was at least six hours off, and he would certainly grow uncomfortable if he had to stay immersed.

  It occurred to him that if he crawled back far enough he might find a strip of dry sand where the pier joined the shore. Investigating, he did find sand, though it could hardly be called dry. Lying sidewise, he was able to wedge himself almost entirely out of the water, so that it merely lapped against one arm and shoulder. He lay there until dark, and though he became cramped and chilled through, he was not nearly as uncomfortable as he would have been if he had been forced to remain seated in water for six hours.

  At dark he swam to the edge of the pier a half block from the point where the squad car had sunk, listened five minutes for any sign of police patrol, then cautiously drew himself out of the water. Ten minutes later he was wringing out his wet clothes in a deserted warehouse. When he redressed he looked as if he had slept outside during a shower, but at least he did not squish when he walked.

  He found a pay phone in a waterfront tavern where his appearance excited no comment, since all the customers looked as if they had slept in their clothes. Locating Adele Hudson’s home phone number in the book, he dropped a nickel and dialed. She answered so promptly that he got the impression she had been waiting by the phone.

  “Dan!” she breathed. “I’ve been worried to death ever since I heard it on the radio. Are you all right?”

  “A little damp,” he said huskily. “What was on the radio?”

  “About your being arrested for murder, and escaping right in the heart of town and then drowning. I knew you didn’t.”

  “Didn’t what? Kill somebody or drown—?”

  “Either,” she said breathlessly. “I had a feeling I’d hear from you, and I’ve been practically sitting on the phone.”

  “Who was I supposed to have killed?” he asked curiously. “Larry Bull?”

  “Yes. You didn’t, did you?”

  “Not that I remember. But I have been expecting him to show up dead. When was I supposed to have done it?”

  “Last night. A little after eight.”

  “Humm…” he said thoughtfully. “I was at his house about then. No doubt Big Jim has witnesses to the shooting, ballistic tests to prove it was my gun and all the other necessary proof. Should make an interesting trial.”

  “What are you going to do, Dan?”

  “Nothing. But you are. Get a pencil and paper. I want you to make a couple of long-distance calls for me.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Tough Town Justice

  District Attorney Edward Ossening was a round, sleek man with a calm manner and horn-rimmed glasses which gave him the appearance of a benevolent owl. During the first few days after the murder of Homicide Detective Lawrence Bull, a series of secret conferences took place between Big Jim Calhoun and District Attorney Ossening. They were not very satisfactory conferences, and Big Jim’s temper grew more ragged after each one. The D.A. managed to maintain his benevolent air, but beneath it his calmness disintegrated and his nerves became as ragged as Big Jim’s temper.

  The first conference took place the day after Dan Fancy, accompanied by Broadway columnist Henry Drew, turned himself in at the Lake City police headquarters.

  “You said Fancy would never come up for trial,” Ed Ossening complained nervously. “You said he’d be killed resisting arrest, or attempting to escape, and no one but the coroner would have to pass on the evidence against him.”

  “That was before Drew entered the picture,” Big Jim snapped. “How the hell can I have him bumped when a nationally syndicated columnist sits outside his cell all day?”

  “I don’t understand how Drew got down here, or what his interest in it is.”

  “I do,” Big Jim said grimly. “He flew down. He’s a pal of Dan Fancy’s, and Fancy is using him as life insurance. But with the evidence we’ve got rigged, he’ll need more than a newspaper columnist, to beat this rap.”

  The second conference took place the following afternoon.

  “I don’t like this lawyer, Farraday, who’s defending Fancy,” the D.A. said. “He’s one of the top criminal lawyers in the country.”

  “It takes more than a legal rep to beat the kind of evidence you’ve got,” Big Jim growled at him. “What’s eating you?”

  “He hadn’t been in town ten minutes when he had a writ of habeas corpus,” Ossening said nervously.

  “So what? The hearing went all right, didn’t it? Fancy’s bound over for the grand jury without bail.”

  “That’s what worries me. Farraday didn’t even ask for bail.”

  “Relax,” Big Jim advised. “At least Fancy is where he can’t make any trouble over the Saunders killing. In two more weeks young Robinson takes the final jolt, and Fancy won’t even be up before the grand jury by then.”

  That same evening the third conference took place.

  “Listen,” Ed Ossening said plaintively. “I’m getting scared. Somebody’s pulling strings.”

  “What now?” Big Jim inquired irritably. “Fancy has been moved way up on the grand jury’s calendar. He goes before it tomorrow morning.”

  Big Jim pulled a blank mask over the expression of surprise which started to grow on his face. “So what?” he asked with studied indifference.

  “Well, we don’t have any fix in with the grand jury, do we?”

  “We don’t need one,” Big Jim said. “What can they do in the face of the evidence but remand him until trial?”

  The fourth conference occurred the morning after the grand jury decided Fancy should be tried for first degree homicide.

  “I thought somebody big was pulling strin
gs in the Fancy case,” Ed Ossening said breathlessly. “Circuit Judge Anderson has Fancy’s trial scheduled to start this afternoon!”

  “Well, you’re ready, aren’t you?” Big Jim asked irritably.

  “Yes, of course. But who ever heard of such quick action in a murder case?”

  “You lawyers make me sick,” Big Jim told him. “You get all upset if there isn’t a lot of legal delay. I read of a case in Alabama where a guy was arrested for murder, legally tried and hanged in twenty-four hours.”

  “This isn’t Alabama,” the D.A. muttered.

  The fifth conference took place the evening of the first day of Dan Fancy’s trial.

  “I can’t understand this lawyer, Farraday,” Ed Ossening said worriedly. “He didn’t challenge a single juror. Didn’t even question them. Who ever heard of a jury in a murder trial being seated in one day?”

  “You got the jury you wanted, didn’t you?” Big Jim said. “I own every one of those guys. With that jury, you couldn’t lose the case even without evidence.”

  “I’m scared,” the district attorney said simply. “Let’s withdraw charges.”

  “Are you crazy?” Big Jim roared. But his next words were a tacit admission that the same thought had at least occurred to him. “We can’t withdraw charges without admitting the whole thing is a frame. Get in there and prosecute, or there’ll be a new district attorney in this county next election.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the D. A.

  * * * *

  The case of the People versus Daniel Fancy started out rather dully. The prosecutor, though a man of unquestioned legal ability, and seemingly in possession of an airtight case, did not have an inspiring courtroom manner. Though he presented a bland, unruffled visage to the jury, there was an indefinable air of unease surrounding him, and it seemed to increase as he paraded witness after witness before the jury. There was no obvious reason for his unease, for little by little he was weaving what appeared to be an indestructible case.

  From the spectator’s standpoint the defense contributed little more to the interest of the trial. The famous John Farraday, who most of the spectators had come to see in action, disappointed them by apparently going to sleep in his chair. His sharp chin rested upon his chest during the entire presentation of the state’s case, and his eyes seemed to be closed. But periodic indication that he was conscious came each time Prosecuting Attorney Edward Ossening finished with a witness and Judge Anderson inquired if the defense wished to cross-examine. Then the theatrically long white hair of the famous lawyer would flutter briefly as his head gave an impatient shake, after which he again seemed to sink into a coma.