The Second Pulp Crime

by Mack Reynolds

  “The horses?” I said. “Vegas?”

  He stood up and said with a frighteningly solemn sincerity, “No, Max. I’m going to rob a bank.”

  Well, I laughed. Of course I laughed. And then suddenly I stopped laughing. I’m often bothered by seriousness; now it nearly paralyzed me. I didn’t think Wade was, but I said it.

  “You’re kidding,” I said.

  He jerked a vicious black-glinting revolver from his inside jacket pocket, squeezed the trigger. The shot roared and smoked. Then he broke it open. It was a phony he’d picked up from a friend who did Westerns. “Good bluff. They’ll buy it.”

  “A bank guard won’t be using blanks,” I said, trying to laugh again. “Anyway, stop kidding.” I poured him another drink. “Simmer down, and I’ll drive you somewhere.”

  He shook his head. “How else can I get hold of a real stake without compromising my position as a professional actor? It’s the only way for me, Max. It’s all planned. I’ve cased the place. I know just how to do it. It’ll be easy for me. I’ve rehearsed the scene many times, Max, and it’s just the right part for me. I can really act it, Max. That teller won’t have any doubt about my meaning business.”

  I argued and tried to get him plastered, but he wouldn’t take another drink. At the same time I told myself he wouldn’t go through with any such stupid thing as robbing a bank. Or would he? Actors are an unpredictable lot generally. And Wade Manvell was a way-out talented kook in particular. He went to the door and said, “Wish me luck, Max?”

  “Wishing is for kids,” I said. Then, desperately, I added, “You’re selling out. Buck fever hath thee in thrall. The belle dame sans merci whose charm of cash has destroyed the finest talents of the East has seduced you at last. You have succumbed to this jerry-built land of monied, illiterate vulgarians…”

  It wouldn’t work. The satire and hip approach was no good. Wade was deadly serious. So I went over and pushed a few bills into his jacket pocket. “You’ll need getaway money,” I said lamely.

  “You’ll get your 17% of the take, Max,” he said softly. “As my agent, you’re always going to get that 17% of me. You’ve put out a lot for me for two years and all you ever got out of it was a bigger phone bill.”

  “You’ve got to figure all of it as a gamble,” I said, “or you’re a gone gosling.” But the door slammed and Wade was gone, out into the bright white California sunlight and dissolving up the street like a mirage. Only he was real. Whirligig unrealities are the norm and therefore real in this dream-scheme oasis, this topsy-turvy wonderland.

  I started to pick up the phone receiver. Instead, I poured myself a drink. I still didn’t admit to myself that Wade would really try to knock over a bank, but I knew he was desperate. Still, I couldn’t call the cops and say, “I got a friend may do something desperate and you have to watch out for him.” Even if cops could be spared to watch over all desperate, last-ditch wayfarers, there wouldn’t be nearly enough cops to go around. Besides which, I don’t betray confidences, regardless of source, and most of my friends and acquaintances are kooks. In any case, whatever Wade wanted to do was his business, even if it was felony—I kept telling myself.

  That was around 11 a.m. The rest of that day was accumulative agony. I couldn’t concentrate on the sale of human flesh. I shut up shop and went to a cool, clean little local bar where I sat in the corner and let the golden stuff very slowly trickle into me—just enough to blunt the pain and the guilt of my conscience, but never quite enough to get me googled. I really liked Manvell. He was genuine in an ersatz world of images and pseudo-events. Even his wild kookiness was real, not an image he’d worked up to make himself saleable. He hadn’t believed in that. Now it made me sad and not a little bitter to think of Wade selling out. It’s always nice to believe there’s someone who won’t. Then there’s always this sneaky little feeling of being glad when they do. And I guess that made me feel guilty and depressed.

  By this time, you see, I figured Wade very probably was capable of going out there somewhere in bug-town and knocking over a bank. The guilt increased. Had I really done all I could to open doors for Wade? Was it really my fault maybe? If I’d only worked a little harder, pushed a little more, maybe he wouldn’t be out there cutting his throat. And I could have tried harder to stop him. Then that sneaking suspicion came back that I had secretly wanted him to do it, sell out, no matter if he ended up doing life. Maybe I welcomed his permanent departure from my grubby flesh-peddling milieu. Having real talent around that you can’t sell makes everything seedier and more depressing, especially when you think of how you’re selling pre-packaged images right and left—selling phony reputations and lies and half-truths made into saleable images. Like this girl client of mine made a million dollars last year as a famous actress—and she’s never made a movie yet. Her image as a great actress has been sold, and she makes a mint posing with cigarettes and endorsing lipstick.

  Later I tried to watch a ball game or something on the TV over the bar, but I got a bad headache. I decided to check my office out, then head for a steam bath and swim. When I stepped into my bungalow, the sun had just gone down and my phone was ringing.

  I picked up the receiver. “Yes,” I said. An imperious accented voice, very cool and arrogant, said, “Max Eastland? Actor’s Agent?”

  “Right,” I said.

  “This is me here—Alfredo Luchesi Bonannino!”

  I turned into a pillar of salt. I had learned, on cue in a second, to ascend to the highest plateaus of moonstruck superlative where the studio officials love and sing. But the living voice of Alfredo Luchesi Bonannino! He was the greatest of all the international independent movie directors and producers. He still is, of course. I don’t need to tell you about Bonannino. When great stars can shine no brighter, they fight for the prestige of being immortalized by the name and camera of Bonannino. He is the awe of art critics, and at the same time millions of Popcorn Joes make every one of his ambiguous flicks a box office smash.

  “You there, Mr. Eastland?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes, Mr. Bonannino.”

  “I stay at 139070 El Pasea Drive in Beverly Hills not so far from your pad. Get over here at once, now, run, fly! I want to talk over the business.”

  He hung up. I didn’t waste time trying to figure out what was the business. Who questions a command performance?

  I was passed through several hands and many rooms of one of those crazy colonial-type mansions off Beverly Drive, and finally was shown into a private projection room. Bonannino sat alone with a beer can. He was looking at a blank screen. He wore a white terrycloth robe and looked like a huge ripe olive with eyes.

  “Sit down, Eastland. Hurry and sit down,” he said. I sat in a reclining chair facing the screen. “This is a blowup of a television tape projection. Had it sent over from CBS television studios, re-taped from the four o’clock newcast this afternoon.” He turned and yelled and waved his hand at technicians hiding somewhere. “Ripeta! Ripeta!”

  The lights went out. The news came on the screen. After the commercial went in one ear and out the other, I looked pityingly at a poor announcer. He seemed miserably hot in tie and jacket, as if his need for a tall drink was even greater than mine. Then his crisply-spoken chatter began to register.

  “…in the nearly three o’clock quiet before the closing rush hour at Golden State Trust Bank this afternoon. And we pause now—we pause to let the entire network join us to see a modern bank robbery—just as it happens!”

  After an instant of blankness, the picture came on. It was silent of course. The people in the bank looked small at first, then they became larger until close-ups were clearly visible, and it was all so clear. The bank’s interior had a shining cleanliness, a business-like sharpness that made it more real than a movie set.

  A voice said with rising dramatic intensity, “This is actually happening, folks. Watch the man at the teller’
s window to the right of the screen—the man in light jacket and dark slacks. There is only one other customer in view, a woman. In the office space behind the tellers, you can see clerks and accountants busy at their jobs. Hidden camera eyes are silently watching, recording.

  “The man in the light jacket is the bank robber. He has just passed a note to the teller saying, ‘Put all the money there in this sack or I’ll shoot you and anybody else I can. I’m desperate, and have nothing to lose.’ The teller reads the note, starts to fill the sack as ordered.

  Now that other teller, three windows to the left, see—he has noticed what is happening and is stepping on his alarm button. But no action is taken by the bank guards. The point is to identify and trail the robber. And, if possible, capture him away from the bank, away from innocent bystanders who might be fatally injured. Now! Now watch the robber in the background!”

  The poor devil turned, ran straight toward the camera. They evidently have a number of hidden cameras set up in those banks to take pictures of unsuspecting felons at work. It gets the robber from all angles. There he was, turning this way and that, tortured, uncertain, bitter, terrified, cynical, everything going. They had magnified that tape until it had everything, including medium two-and-three shots and very revealing close shots, and angles that even Bonannino seemed to appreciate. He shouted. The lights came on again. Bonannino drained his beer can and wiped his face. He beamed.

  “Television cameras in banks. When the alarm button is pressed, the cameras automatically start working. The tape is made. Immediately the tape is sent to television studios and sent out to television sets all over the country. Millions see it. Someone who knows the identity of the robber is bound to see the telecast and report his identity. He doesn’t have a prayer. All sorts of mug-shots, right? Go out to everybody. Ingenious. What entertainment! What is real, what is fiction? Ha, ha!” He turned very serious then. “That robber is your client. Wade—something or other?”

  “Manvell,” I said. “How did you know?”

  “I always watch television newscasts for talent. I see this tape of the robbery from bank. I run over to TV studio at once, see it over and over, have it sent over here. I tell cops to call me if they find out who the robber is. They call. Seems he was identified by the girl clerk at Unemployment Compensation Office. Here, I believe it is called the Actor’s Lounge. Anyway, she remembered this Wade Manvell clearly. Evidently he spent a lot of time there. So I check Actor’s Equity, find out you are his agent. I call you.”

  “So,” I said, “it is a good show, right?”

  “Magnificent! You know that’s how I pick up all of my greatest actors, Eastland. Many of them have no previous experience. Naturals. Professionals I sometimes use by making them forget everything they ever learned and starting from the primitive bottom. But I get all good talent from newsreels, documentaries, faces in the crowds. And there—that Manvell, a natural! Greatest face for tragedy I have ever seen! Such intensity of emotion, all genuine—it can always be brought out of such a face, such a soul as that! I must have him for my next picture, Death in Venice. We sign him up now, now! Name your price, please, name it now. What a screen test!”

  “But he’s a criminal now,” I said. “It’s too late. If he isn’t picked up now, he soon will be.”

  “Forget it!” Bonannino yelled. Flo threw his empty beer can against the waft “It is all—what you say here—fixed? All fixed. He get away with no money, and nobody hurt. There are no formal charges. The bank forgets everything. Just a gag, a joke, understand? I fix everything with bank.”

  “What?” I said.

  “This bank he try to rob, she is branch of the big Giannini Bank of California. They help finance my picture, see!” Bonannino laughed. “So I talk to them, they fix everything. You understand, this boy of yours is worth one, maybe two million bucks now!”

  I understood perfectly. We made out the contracts and I ran out to join the search for Wade Manvell.

  HEAT FROM TEXAS, by W.W. McKenna

  Originally published in Spicy Detective Stories, November 1935.

  On a hurtling eastbound train, Gil Markham reread the highlights of the long letter which had caused him to leave his home in Texas with three boxes of soft nosed forty-five slugs in his bag.

  …my sister, Myrna, playing around with a crowd who get the idea it would be smart to meet some notorious members of the underworld, fell for Smoothy Rand, the worst of the lot… I went after Rand when I saw Myrna was badly infatuated and he shot me… I’ll probably be dead by the time you get this…don’t kill Rand…show him up for the rat he is… Myrna will drop him then…look up Joyce Drake at the Parrot Club…she used to be Rand’s girl… Buster Leonard’s got her now. He’s Rand’s right hand man…they are supposed to know about some papers which will cook Rand…your guns that you left eight years ago are here if you need them…so long Pal…

  Jack

  A shrieking burst ripped from the train’s whistle as it flung itself through the night and Gil Markham folded the letter, his two sleepy blue eyes suddenly hard.

  * * * *

  Gil Markham hulked hugely in the Empire living room of the Bruce duplex apartment on Fifty-fourth street. Outside traffic sounds were muted and the room, shielded all day from the sultry burn of the sun by Venetian blinds, held a coolness that was a distinct relief. For New York’s heat was oppressive, sticky to Gil—not like the dry, healthful heat of his native Texas.

  A door opened on a tiny balcony. Gil, blinking his sleepy eyes once, got up and crossed the room, his walking beam shoulders swaying lazily under his linens.

  “Gil!”

  It must be Myrna, Gil thought. Yet, eight years ago, she had been all legs and knees and elbows, like a newborn calf. Now, coming down the steps to greet him with outstretched hands, there were no more knees and elbows—not prominent, anyhow.

  “Gil!” the girl called again. “Don’t you remember me? It’s Myrna…!”

  Gil took a pair of cool, slim hands in his big, bronzed ones. The sleepiness had left his eyes and he was frankly staring. Slowly, appreciatively his gaze lingered…sweeping down her body like a spotlight. Probably the heat could be held responsible for her attire, for, as far as he could see, she was wearing nothing under her negligee.

  A little dazed, he noted her breasts, widely spaced, high, nicely rounded. From a narrow waist, her hips were twin outward sweeps of soft delight. Shadows were painted on the delectable rise of her stomach. He scarcely paid attention to her lustrous crop of jet hair, or her soft, crimson lips that half smiled at him.

  “Myrna!” he muttered. “You are…Myrna.”

  A soft laugh escaped her. It did something to Gil Markham, something over which he hadn’t the slightest control. His arm muscles flexed briefly…and she was in his arms, her hot body tight against his. Like an arrow his lips flashed down on hers. Flame swallowed him as her lips fell slightly open. Dimly he was aware of her arms—like steel hands now—around his neck. Her breasts were pulsing mounds of heat against his chest…his brain rocked…

  And then they were apart.

  “Oh…!” she began, breathless, hands covering her mouth.

  A red mantle of embarrassment stained Gil’s tanned features to the roots of his ash blond hair. “I’m—I’m sorry,” he mumbled tritely, lamely. Myrna Bruce quickly recovered herself.

  “You knew”—a little sob back in her throat—“Jack was dead?”

  “Yes. That is—his letter said he would be. He must have known.”

  The girl looked away. In profile, Gil saw the slightest suspicion of moisture in her eyes. A wave of pity seized him and, were it not for the remembrance of what just had happened when he’d touched her, he would have tried to soothe her.

  “He was buried—yesterday,” she explained brokenly. “He was so young, so alive.” She turned savagely toward him. “Why should my brother be killed? An in
nocent onlooker in a common street battle! It isn’t fair!”

  Gil’s blue eyes watched her, more sleepy than ever. Jack had covered the real cause of his death well; had left it up to Gil to carry on and save his sister from Smoothy Rand.

  Gil said, low, “He didn’t say in his letter what had happened. He just asked me to—”

  Myrna’s hand fell on his, its soft warmth sending ripples of excitement through him.

  “Jack left a package for you.” Her smile was wan, brave. “His room is next to mine on the balcony. You’ll find it on his bureau. I’ll mix a drink while you’re up there.”

  She turned toward a door across the room. For an instant the dying light of day was behind her and she was almost as if nude. Cursing himself for the trend of his thoughts, Gil strode to the balcony, up its four steps and into Jack Bruce’s room.

  It was dim and cool and very peaceful within. Almost reverently Gil let his eyes fall on the bed, the half-opened closet showing male attire in neat array, Jack’s framed picture on the bureau. Beside the portrait was a bulky package done up in white paper.

  Gil unwrapped it, opening a leather case to reveal two forty-fives. They were oiled, clean, dully agleam with brute efficiency. Gil’s thin lips curled approvingly away from his teeth. He hefted one of the heavy weapons, thrilling at the familiar contact of chill steel in his hand again. About to replace the gun, he saw an envelope in the case.

  Inside was nothing but a folded newspaper clipping. The paper was a little yellowed, bearing a date some eight years ago. Gil’s hands shook a little as he read it. A nervous tremor coursed through his big frame, although he was only too familiar with the article. In the simple, clipped phrases of a bored reporter, it told how a man from the southwest had, single-handed, killed three members of an East Side gang.