ANC
DETECTIVE
JUNE 35 CENTS SKIP A BEAT By Henry , Kane Plus — |
BRUNO FISCHER | : CRAIG RICE
VOL. 2, NO. 4 MANHUNT JUNE, 1954
CONTENTS
COMPLETE NOVEL Page SIE A BBAT OVAL INY DAG E E oi wee eu og Fa eee emia I (A Peter Chambers Novel) NOVELETTES NONACANCIES OY CEAD RIE E e E A E AE A 114 (A John J. Malone Novelette) Doute by Bruno Fischer. ........- A A wey ee e nae 82
SHORT STORIES
BUTCHER- OY RKIChaTA Se LIUNGA ene eh VEN Seles eal bee eae IOI (A Shell Scott Story) Tat CHOICE py Richard Penne. oon i E TA 62 Din hank ADOG Ay Darid Alexander. 8 ir Jus E A 133 POINTS SOUTH by FUAN TFIO | ss aa a e ee eRe ae 43 My Enemy, My FATHER by John M. Sitan........... ER 53 FEATURES VHEMORDER MARKET OV H: H- OMNES o o aaa a 58 CRIME CAVALCADE dy Vincent H: Gaddis: <3 os. saes oe es VT Portrait oF A KILLER by Dan Sontup..... 0.0.6.6 445 paar ae A Homicipg, Surcipe or Accipent by Fred L. Anderson........ 76
JOHN McCLOUD, Editor HAL WALKER, Managing Editor
CHAS. W. ADAMS, Art Director R. E. DECKER, Business Manager
MANHUNT VOLUME 2, NUMBER 4, JUNE, 1954. Single copies 35 cents. Subscriptions, $4.00 for one year inthe United States and Possessions; elsewhere $5.00 (in U. S. funds) for one year. Published monthly by Flying Eagle Publications, Inc. (an arfiliate of St. John Publishing Company), 545 Fifth Avenue, New York 17, New York. Telephone MU 7-6623. Application for second class entry is pending at the Post Office, New York, New York. The entire contents of thisissue are copyrighted 1954 by Flying Eagle Pub- lications, Inc. (an affiliate of St. Jobn Publishing Company), under the International Copyright Convention. All rights reserved under Inter-American Copyright Convention. Title registered U. S. Pat. Orfice. Reproduction or use, without express permission, of editorial or pictorial content in any manner is prohibited. Postage must accompany manuscripts and drawings if return is desired, but no responsibility will be assumed for unsolicited materials. Manuscripts and art work should be sent to Manhunt, 545 Fifth Avenue, New York 17, New York. No similarity between any of the names, characters, persons and/or institutions appearing in this magazine and those of any living or dead person or institution is intended and any similarity which may exist is purely coin- cidental. Printed in the U. S. A-
BY HENRY KANE
The solution to Woodward's murdér was carefully written down — but Woodward had hidden it where Peter Chambers couldn't find it.
The office was immense: Vast, square, high-ceilinged and sound- proofed. The walls were of dark red, dull-lustre wood panels; the floor of soft grey ankle-deep carpeting. The furnishings were simple, bulky and
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R i . ers E A ’ £ í ; ; : D T j +, . ji a A ra `
very expensive. There were few adorn- ments. One wall had a subdued Van Gogh, ancient and portentous, a large oblong canvas, rimmed within a ridged ebony frame (willed upon death to the Metropolitan Museum
I
Of Art). Upon the opposite wall hung a letter framed too in ebony, but in narrow strips. It was signed by a former President of The United States. It was addressed to Adam Woodward, 20 Wall Street, New York, New York, and it bore the following, all hand- written: “Dear Adam: You have been a friend, citizen, patriot, and solid adviser. Thank you for a long - and continuing assistance. Men like me always have need of men like you, and always shall, and you have been unstinting and unselfish — and un- lauded — in your service to your Gov- ernment. Thank you again, and best wishes.”
Adam Woodward was seventy years of age, fabulous, fearless, and world- known. The Woodward family had been bankers since 1800, all except Adam, who had early entered politics, had been a Congressman for eight years, and the Governor of a Western state for eight years, and then had re- tired to become a newspaperman; a columnist who wrote them as he saw them, a stormy petrel, a man of independent wealth and independent thought and independent politics; twenty years a columnist, twenty years a confidant of men in high places, twenty years a member of national and international councils, twenty years a world-statesman and speech- maker, and twenty years, day in and day out, his column appeared, na- tionally syndicated, and read by mil- lions.
At nine-thirty of a gusty Monday morning in March, Adam Woodward
2
pointed an excited finger across his massive mahogany desk, and the file- rasp-of his whiskey-and- epre voice rose in pitch:
“I will declare to the world that you're a Commie. I will shock and startle the populace. Pm a newspaper- man, and as a newspaperman, I love it, though, as an American, I detest and am ashamed of it. I don’t hit be- low the belt. I don’t sneak up on peo- ple. This ts the third time, privately, that lve given you the opportunity to show me that my facts are wrong — and it’s the third time that you've failed to do so. So Pm going to print, . column after column, fourteen col- umns, and lm going to expose you for what you are. lve put in eight months of intensive investigation, and [ve got a file this thick. Facts, and authenticated documents. And I know just who was behind my office being broken into, and my home ransacked. But you didn’t find anything there, did you? And you're not going to. And I know of your efforts to tie up my bank vaults, and that wont help either, because the stuff isn’t there. [ve got it temporarily secured in a place where nobody — nobody— would think to look, not even you. And after ve run it, all `of it, from beginning to end, with, of course, my own brilliant comments appended thereto, that file will be turned over to the proper authorities, and from there on in, you're on your own. All right. That's it. Now get out of here.”
It was a long speech.
It was, as it turned out, the last
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long speech Adam Woodward ever delivered. - l
onpay is not for bachelors. Monday, for bachelors, should be obliterated ... but then, of course, and unfortunately, there would be Tuesday. Monday is a trial, and it has been my assiduous effort, most of my life, to avoid as much óf Mondáy as possible, and, sort.of, to limp, as it were, pains- takingly but correctly, into the thriving world of humdrum Tues- day. i The week-end had been verdant, suburban, partyful and moist — gaiety merging with headache and blending with fun and hangover — but now I lay a-bed of a Monday at home with the cover over all of me, shutting out, it was my trust, the golden alarm of sunshine and the pealing of telephone bells. It worked with the sunshine. But the phone drove me crazy. Finally, I emerged from the cocoon of quilt, flicked a haphazard glance at the clock which returned an amazing one-thirty in the afternoon, strode to the phone, lifted the receiver, and then buried the separate parts of the instrument beneath the cush- ion of an easy-chair to avoid thereby _ the thin, plaintiff, irresistible whirr- wail of a sundered phone-piece. But that did not work either. I returned to bed, re-assumed my crouch beneath the all-enveloping
cover, shut my eyes, and Was per- ~-
meated with slumber . . . and then
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hell broke loose . . . doorbells
. buzzing and doors being pounded
upon.
I flung off the cover and, mayhem in my heart, I made, for the door, opened it and was at once subdued by the baleful expression on the face ` of Miss Miranda Foxworth, my secretary. “You?” I said.
“Me. 39
Miranda Foxworth: short, squat, thick and earnest, and gasping slightly from the excitement of her excursion.
“You,” I said. “Of all people, you ought to know better, breaking in on me in the middle of the morn- ing, practically.”
“It’s half past three.”
A look at the clock verified that. “Time,” I said, “flies. Does it not? All right. Just don’t stand there with that accusing look. Come in.” She did that and I closed the door behind her and hitched at my paja- mas. I said, ‘“‘Who’s at the office?”
“Nobody.”
“Very efficient. A lousy boss figures for a good secretary, so now you go and upset that. You can be
replaced, you know.”
“Can I?”
That’s all I'd need. I simmered down fast. “I’m sorry, Miranda. Grouchy. You know. how it is. Monday. morning.”
“It’s half past three.”
“Yeah. You know how it is. Monday -afternoon. Must be real special, you leaving the office alone, and coming all the way up here.”
“It wouldn’t have been necessary, if you’d answer your phone.” She looked about, went to the easy chair, disinterred the phone, put it to- gether, and restored it to its right-
ful place. “Adam Woodward called.” ~ “Who?”
“Adam Woodward.”
It was a long double- take, but when it happened I flopped about as though Pd thrown a convulsion. “Adam Woodward?”
“Correct.”
“The Adam Woodward?”
“There is only one Adam Wood- ward of consequence.”
“What he want?”
“You.”
I found cigarettes, broke open the pack, lit up with stiff fingers, and pulled smoke into my lungs. “Adam Woodward,” I said in won- derment, “calling Peter Chambers, and me sleeping like a bum in the middle of the afternoon. Miranda,” I said, “I apologize. To you, to Mr. -Woodward, to the entire world.”
Her voice grew more kindly. “Do you know him?”
<- “Never met him in my life. Wouldn’t believe that he even knew I existed. When’d he call?”
“Twelve o’clock this afternoon.”
“Twelve o’clock,’’ I mourned. “A real world-famous client — pos- sibility, that is — and me like a bum in- bed”.
“He’s called twice since then.”
“What he want? Did he say what he wanted, Miranda?”
“I stalled him in my best English.
I told him you were out on a case, and that I'd do my best to locate you. I said most probably you’d call in.”
“And what did he say to that?”
“Said for you to call him. Said it was urgent. Said that he wished to retain you on a matter. Said that he had three other private detec- tives in mind, but that you were on top of the list, and that he’d wait until four o’clock, but that he couldn’t wait after that, that if you weren’t in touch by four, he’d have to look to someone else.”
I jumped to the phone. give you a number?”
“He did.”
She said the number, od I dialed’ it. A female voice came on and I said, “Mr. Woodward” and the voice said, “Who’s calling?” and I said, “Peter Chambers” and the voice said, “Just one moment,
“Did he
` please” and then there was a pause,
and then a rasping voice said, “Mr. Chambers?”
“This is Peter Chambers.”
“Are you calling from your of- fice, Mr. Chambers?”
“No, sir.”
“Where are you calling from?”
“My home.” ss
“All right. Hang up. I'll call you back.”
“Don’t you want the number?”
“Nosi
“But it’s an unlisted number.”
“Hang up. Pll call you back.
- Keep the wire from being busy.”
He hung up, and I hung up, and
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I said to Miranda, “This guy’s wor- ried. He’s even worried about me.”
“What do you mean?”
I repeated my conversation with him.
Miranda said, “I don’t under-
stand.”
’ “Hes worried. He doesn’t know me. When he calls my office, he knows he’s getting me. When I call him — he doesn’t know who, really, is calling. I tell him I’m home. So he checks that. A big shot like him
. there are no unlisted numbers. So right now he’s making the check. Then he calls back ... and he knows he’s talking to the right man.”
Admiration from Miranda is as reluctant as a rich man’s consent to a pauper for a son-in-law, but I got a nod and a blink and the suspi- cion of a smile, and from Miranda, that’s about it . . . Miranda had small patience with the modern pri- vate richard type of operator; Mi- randa was a Sherlock Holmes fan. I didn’t have much time to.preen. The phone rang.
I grabbed it. “Hello?”
“Mr. Chambers?”
“That’s right.”
“Mr. Woodward. The reason I called back —”
“I know the reason.”
“You do?”
I told him.
“Very good,” he said. “Excellent. I'd like you to come down to my office.”
“When?”
“As soon as possible. It’s at 20
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Wall. Suite roor. But don’t come in there.”
“Where, then?”
“My suite has outer rooms and anterooms, a good deal of that. But when I handle very private business, I don’t choose even to have my sec- retaries know who my caller is. The suite is a corner suite. Around the bend is a door marked 1910. That door leads directly into my private office. If you’ll call from downstairs, then I'll know it’s you when you knock, and [’ll open for you. Is that understood, Mr. Chambers?”
“Yessir.”
“How soon?”
“Within an hour.”
“Very good. The sooner the bet- ter. Goodbye, then.” ;
ob 8s
Zs
20 Wall Street looked like 20 Wall Street: steel and concrete jut- ting into the sky, a huge marble entrance facade, busy people whirl- ing in and out of brass-bound re- volving doors, hundreds of windows ablaze with the reflection of the sink- ing sun. I called from downstairs, was borne upward in`a majestic elevator, made the journey around the bend to rgro, knocked, and the door was opened by Adam Wood- ward. No need to describe him, you’ve seen him in the newsreels,
the tall gangling figure; and the
head of him at the masthead of his column, the long thin nose, the
5
pointed chin, the bushy eyebrows; but I was surprised at the youthful- ness of his movements, the keen, constantly-moving, alive-grey eyes, the vibrant tight-to-bone skin of his face. He said, ‘““You’re Chambers; you're younger than I'd expected; come in, come in.”
He went behind his desk, inserted a cigarette in a holder. I struck the match for him, and he said, “Thank you, thank you, you were most highly recommended to me,” and I said, “By whom?” and he said, “Fogarty out of Washington,” and I said, “Great guy, Mr. Fogarty,” and he said, “A credit to his Depart- ment, a brilliant mind, but that’s water over the bridge, let’s get down to cases,.you and I.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Sit down.”
I sat.
He said, ‘‘I’ve inquired about fees and things, I’m going to pay you more than you usually receive.”
“For what?”
“I want you as... as a body- guard, I suppose. I want you as a bodyguard until further notice. I want all of your time, twenty-four hours a day. I*know Ill be taking you away from other business, and, therefore, I'll pay you one hundred dollars a day, strung n now. Is that agreeable?”
“Well .
He i: into the left pocket of
his trousers, pulled out a wad, peeled off seven one-hundred dollar bills, and handed them across the desk.
6
“All right, Mr. Chambers? One week’s pay in advance?”
You resist seven hundred dollars in cash. Me, I said, “You’ve hired yourself a man, Mr. Woodward. May I know what it’s all about?”
“TIl give you a bit of it, sketch- ily. Ive uncovered a Communist, but not an ordinary one. I believe it will make interesting copy, frantic- ally interesting copy. So I’ve planned a series of articles, all of them dealing with the facts, and all of them gradu- ally leading up to the final article, in which I shall declare the name of the individual. At that time, I shall turn over all of my data to the authorities, and at that time, I think —” his lips pulled up in a saturnine grin that gave him the mien of a benign wolf — “your services will be at an end.”
“I can assume, then, that the per- son whom you're going to expose has at least a ‘suspicion that you’re going to do just that.”
“More than:a suspicion, Mr. Chambers. I’ve declared my inten- tion to this individual. Pve given the individual every opportunity to show me I’m wrong, and I’ve been stalled, three different times, the last time this morning. I’m utterly convinced the individual has ab- solutely no defense.”
“And. you think the pey may resort to violence?”
“In moments of stress, AEE E flares. It may be directed at me, or it may be turned inward, as in suicide. The latter is not my affair, ©
MANHUNT
and I’m retaining you for the pur-
pose of circumventing any attempt at the former. I don’t believe, really, any attempt will be made, but —” he shrugged — “all of us, psycho- logically, reject the fact of violence directed at us, and I want to avoid. falling into that trap. Hence — you.”
“And the name of this person?”
“Td rather not mention it.” l - “Male or female?”
“Let’s get off that dine, Mr. Chambers. I’ll tell you this, though. Since my original declaration, my home in Riverdale has been ran- sacked, my office has been broken into, and it may be that my safe deposit vault has been tampered with. Safe deposit vaults are not impregnable, despite the two keys and the aura of a bastille — if one’s connections are strong enough — and in this case, the connections may be strong enough.”
“And what would they be looking for?”
“The data I mentioned before. I’ve got quite a file on my pigeon, documented evidence, that will feed into a beautifully juicy story. I have that, as they put it, stashed away, in a temporary place. I’m going to want your advice on that. You're
the expert. It may be that the tem- `
porary place shall be changed up, dependent upon your views, and dependent upon the ingenuity of your methods of transportation. We shall talk about that.”
“When, sir?”
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He chuckled, removed the ciga- rette from the holder, tapped it out in an ashtray, and stood up. “We’ll leave now. You'll have dinner with me, if you please. At home. I live in Riverdale, I believe I mentioned that. Coming, Mr. Chambers?”
He went to the heavy wooden door by which I had entered, and turned three different locks on it.
I rapped a knuckle against the wood of the door. I said, “Pretty solid.”
“Sheet-metal in beiweei, and specially hinged on the inside. So is this one.” He took me to another door, ushered me past it to a small ante-room, then used three keys locking that door.
I said, “But you told me they ransacked this place.”
“I didn’t say ransacked, not for the office. I said, broke in. They looked over every other room, but couldn’t get into this one. They — he or she — just weren’t prepared
. for sheet-metal.”’
“This where you keep it, then?”
“What?”
“The data- you were talking about.”
“No. You can get through sheet- metal too, if you know that’s just where you want to go. No. The office was the first place they tried. As I told you, I talked to the in- dividual three times. The second time I vouchsafed the information that the stuff was not in the office and that it would be stupid to try again, to attempt to blast through
7
sheet-metal on a fool’s errand. I _ think that took, because they didn’t try the office again. I’ve also tipped the building-guard to ‘check the office each half hour. It would cer- tainly take more than a half hour _to get through either of those doors to my inner office.”
“Then why haven’t you kept the stuff in there?”
“Because others can tip a build- ing-guard too. Or kill him.”
“You've got a point there, Mi; Woodward.”
He took me through other rooms,
where secretaries:were working, and _
other office help, heads down and busy, and he said good night as we went along, and they said good night to him, and then he waved to the receptionist in the. outer office, and then we were riding down in the elevator and coming out through the revolving door and I was match- ing his long strides as we walked east. “My garage,” he said, “is just off Pearl.” I tried for more conversa- tion as we legged it.
“The New York Bulletin, that’s your one outlet in this city, isn’t it?”
PYER?
“Pmia fan. Read the column every day.”
“Good.”
“Don’t know a soul on that paper, escept one guy.’
“Who?
“The guy that does the Broadway gossip column. Paul Kingsley.”
He stopped suddenly, and I flew -
ahead of him. When he caught up 8
‘with me, he said,
- spice from the import houses.
“An ambitious young man, isn’t he?”
. “Who?”
“Kingsley.”
“Isher” = “Overly ambitious.”
. “I wouldn’t know.”
. At Pearl we made a right turn, and then another turn toward the river to the dimness of a wide street with warehouses and the smell of “Ga- rage is here;”” Woodward said. “Right ` there.” And then I saw the car rolling toward us, rolling from the east, from the river, long and black and picking up speed, and I saw the thing sticking out the window, and I hit him hard and he went down, and so did I, two falling bodies in the dim- ness, but me with my head up if I had to lose an eye, and I saw the thing spurt flame, and I heard the shots and the skipping whine of the bullets that missed, and I saw them both, the one with the sawed-off in his hands and the one at the wheel, the car a souped-up streak of murder past us, screeching on two wheels around the turn, and I knew them both.
Then there was silence, the weird- awful silence after noise, and then the running feet, and the screams, and the gathering crowd, and I was an anonymous one of them, risen to my feet, one of the crowd.
Adam Woodward was dead, three slugs through his skull, the benign wolf-grin a thing of torment on his face, and I shuffled away, the crowd
MANHUNT
-losing one spectator, as the clang of the‘ambulance came near.
.I knew them both: the wheel- guy, Harry Strum, and the trigger- man, a guy with more guts than a butcher’s trash-casket, a palely-cold killer with a girlish giggle known on the town only as Faigle.
I trudged to a cab and went home with a problem.
3:
In the apartment, I walked around with my problem. I made and drained a couple of highballs. I took _off my clothes, let the water run in the tub, made a new ball, grabbed up my cigarettes and took the high- ball, the cigarettes and my problem into the bath with me. I sipped, I smoked and I wrestled with the inner man.
Adam Woodward had hired a bodyguard. That was a laugh. A bodyguard that didn’t even havea gun on him. Well, there were ex- tenuating circumstances for that: ~ the bodyguard hadn’t known he was being hired as a bodyguard. It
had been my intention to have him
stop off so that I could pick up the -
plumbing on the way to Riverdale. It had also been my intention to ask more questions, one of which would have been the usual: why a private detective, why not the cops? I knew what the answer would have been. He had been worried about the “‘individual’s’’ connections and he had been worried about leaks. When‘
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you ask cops for a bodyguard, you’ve got to give an explanation, and you never know when an explanation will spring a leak, nor do you know what calibre of man is assigned to the job: you can’t pick your body- guard out of the public weal, he’s handed to you.
Which brought me smack up against my problem. I had seven hundred solid bucks, a quickly-dead ex-client, and a crawling conscience. The least I could do was to jerk justice around to put the clobber on the intelligence behind the hoods that had put the squash on Adam. Which ran me up against my prob- lem again. I had recognized the tor- pedoes, and I was sure they had not recognized me: Faigle was a genius with a tommy, but he had used the spray solely on the assigned target; certainly, he could have spared a few slugs for me, had he known I was I, going by the first rule of gangsterism: there’s no witness like a dead witness. But the boys. were in-a rolling car, with a definite ob- jective in view, and it was dim, and I was just another long-legged guy who happened to be walking near Adam Woodward- who was destined for death. So, once again, the prob- lem: do I go to cops with it? Cops, teletypes, nine-state alarms, descrip- tions on radio and TV. The word is out, the boys get holed up, and it becomes another long-drawn police action.
I didn’t want it like that. I wanted it sure-fire, no word, no leak, no
9
- nothing. I wanted the boys out celebrating a quick and easy kill, I = wanted them spending the money they had earned, I wanted them around and junk-happy and loose .. . and available ...to me. I sighed and sipped and traded in a soggy cigarette for another soggy cigarette. I was going against princi- ple. I’m against the theory of taking the law into your’own hands. So I rationalized. Id be an arm of the law, a private arm, as it were: I’d reach for them, and get hold of them ~—get behind them if possible — and then bring in the whole kit and caboodle, and offer myself and my testimony as witness to murder.
‘So that was it. No cops. Not yet.
I got out of my bath and dried up. I shaved and dressed up to open-’ collar shirt and no tie, It was eight o'clock. I called down and had sup- per sent up. It was far too early to go out into the jungle looking for ani- mals. The jungle wasn’t a jungle yet, it was a city of eight million people, preponderately decent, bent on work or pleasure or recreation. Later, much later, when most of them were safely bedded down: that would be my time for hunting.
But what now? What opening? What wedge? Whom do I talk to? How do I learn more about Adam Woodward? I made phone calls and came away with nothing. He was an old man, long a widower, with no children. I made another phone call, to the City Desk of The Daily News, and I asked for Al Davis,
10
twenty years with the paper, a re- write man and an old friend. I got through and I said, “Al? Pete Chambers?” “Hi, sleuth.” “A favor, Al.” “What else?” “You know Paul Kingsley?” “Everybody knows Paul: Kings- ley
“What about him?”
“A young shmigeggie with a lot of drive. A little big shot. Writes a pretty lousy column but knows everybody in town, upstairs and downstairs. Always punching, but always punching upward. Loves the newspaper business, but wants to be among the muckie-mucks. Give his right arm to be an executive. He might make it too. Knows where to play it rough, knows where to suck around. I hear he’s in pretty good graces with his boss.”
“Who dat?” :
“Lincoln Whitney. Owns The Bulletin.”
“What’s he like?”
“Search me, pal. That’s way up- stairs. I’m only a reporter.”
“What about Kingsley?”
“What about him?”
“I mean what kind of a guy, you know what I mean, Al.”
“A shmigeggie, like I said.”
“Means what, for this particular guy?” es
“Means an angle-bird, a pusher, a dance-to-whatever-the-music-guy. In short, no class, no integrity.”
‘“You really love him.”
MANHUNT
f
“Don’t love him, don’t hate him.”
“How do I get to him?”
“What’s today?”
“Monday.”
“You're in luck.”
“How come?”
“Monday nights Prince Charming holds court at home. Interviews, bribes, pay-offs; Monday night’s his night in.”
“Where’s home?”
“Lemme check.” He went away and came back. “Pete?”
“Tm still holding.”
“262 Central Park West.”
“Know the apartment?”
“It’s a private house.”
“Thanks, Al.”
“You owe me a dinner.”
“You got it. Bye now.”
I knew Paul Kingsley from the
late spots, Pd been an item in his column once, and he’d called me five or six’ times during the past couple of years for trivial informa- tion and I had obliged. I was going to collect on that obligation now. Adam Woodward had been ac- quainted with Paul Kingsley. I was curious as to how well acquainted. So I buttoned the shirt collar, slung on a tie, hooked a rig over my shoulder, examined a pistol and shoved it into the rig, slid into a jacket, topped that with a light coat and went to 262 Central Park West, which turned out to be a sombre-brown three-story house with a large white button on the right side of a shiny black door. I put a thumb on the button and
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listened to the bell ring inside, I listened for a long time but that’s all that happened, I listened. I took’ my thumb off the bell and backed away and looked up. There were lights on the top floor so I went back to the shiny black door, tried it once and found it locked, leaned on the white bell and let it work for me. It took time but I had no other engagement for so early in the even- ing. Finally there was a click and the door swung open. The young lady said, “You’ve been ringing a long time.”
“That,”
I said, ‘is the under-
` statement of the year.”
“Sorry.”
“Honey, if you’re the maid, and I were the boss, l’d fire you right now.”
“Tm not the maid.”
I shrugged. “I’m not the boss.”
She was a little package in a compactly-filled turtle-neck ` white sweater, a black velvet skirt, neutral nylons and black patent-leather spike-heeled pumps. It added up | small, maybe five feet two, but all of
-it cute. She had silver-blonde short-
cut hair, absurdly heavy studious- type black goggles on a small nose, lively blue eyes, pale smooth cheeks without rouge, a small red puckered mouth, and a prim expression. She said, “What is it, please?”
“Tm to see Paul Kingsley.” —
“You have an appointment?”
“Yes.”
“What’s your name?”
“Peter Chambers.”
II
“Please come in.”
I came into a square foyer with wall lights and a light-blue rug and followed her softly along the light- blue rug through an archway into a wider anteroom, wall to wall with the light-blue rug, yellow walls, light coming down from a chandelier hanging by a gilt-type chain, mod-
ern blond-mahogany furniture taste- -
fully arranged. There was a door on the right and a door on the left and a blue-carpeted stairway in the
-. middle, going up. She turned away
from me and.went to the door on the right. She had trim slender ankles and the back of the skirt
billowed engagingly. She knocked |
once, knocked again, and turned back. She smiled for the first time, and it took some of the primness off her face. She said, “When he’s really busy, he won’t even answer a knock. In here, please.” She crooked a finger. “It’s sort of the waiting room.” She opened the other door.
We had a maroon carpet this time, dark green walls, a room lighted only by finely-wrought lamps, dark carved furniture, a lot of easy chairs, and, in a corner, a liquor cabinet with most of the bottles on top. My gaze must have lingered, because, before it returned to her, she said, “Help yourself.”
“How about you?”
“A little brandy, if you insist.’
“I don’t insist.’
“A little brandy.”
I couldn’t find ice, so I made my ball without ice, and I brought her
I2
brandy in a pony glass. She nodded her thanks, said, “Im Marcia Kingsley.”
“Paul’s wife?”
“No.”
“Sister?”
“No.”
“You're not his mother.”
“Tm a sister, by law, that is. I was adopted by Paul’s parents. A long time ago. They’re both dead now.”
“I see.” I strolled. I said, long do I stay here?”
“He'll come asking for you, as soon as he’s ready. I like the way
“how
-you walk.”
“Pardon?”
“Tt’s lithe.”
“That good?”
“Very. Like a tiger. You want to know why you had to wait so long at the door?”
“Sure.”
“Its the maid’s day off. We sles have a part-time butler. It’s his © day off too. On Mondays, starting at about five o’clock, any of us that are at home, we’re upstairs, mostly. Paul has all sorts of company on Monday, and we like to keep out of the way. He answers the door himself.” -
“Didn’t do a good job on my | ring, did he?”
“He gets tied up sometimes. Then .
- he just doesn’t give a damn. I came
all the way down for you.”
“Thanks. Something I can do. in return? Walk specially lithe, maybe?”
MANHUNT
“You can sit down.”
She sat, and I sat, and I was just about getting comfortable, when she cracked: “What do you think about Adam Woodward?”
That brought me up out of the chair, one leap and a balanced glass, I tried to tone it down. ‘“Wood- ward?” I gurgled, mildly as I could manage. It came up a croak.
“He’s dead.”
“Adam Woodward.”
“Killed on a street downtown. Murdered.”
“How do you know?”
“Its a news flash all over radio and TV.”
“Adam Woodward,” I said and went back to my seat.
“Did you know him?”
“Met him once. Did you?”
“Oh yes. A fine man. Edwina.”
“Edwina?”
“Edwina Grayson.”
“The dancer?”
“That’s right.”
-“Now what the hell did... pardon. What’s the connection be- tween Edwina Grayson and Adam Woodward?”
“I suppose that’s going to become public gossip now.”
“What?”
“Their relationship.”
“What relationship?”
She sipped her brandy. I’d say she was about twenty-six, private school, finishing school and college. Her voice was deep and throaty and a tinge of culture clung like a South-
Poor
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ern accent clings long after North Carolina has become a faint memory. She said, “They knew each other a long, long time.” Then she shook it off and I knew she wasn’t going to talk about it any more.
I got up and put more strength into the highball. I waved the ine and I said, “Paul does pretty good. Nice shack here.”
“It doesn’t belong to him.”
“To whom?”
“Victor Barry.”
It sounded familiar but it wouldn’t stick“ Barry e enaa
“City Editor of The Bulletin.”
“Oh yes. A lot of loot, eh?”
“Not really.”
“But a joint like this.”
“That’s all he’s got, really. Got it
- by inheritance. We’re sort of ten-
ants here. Paul, Rita, and I —”
“Who’s Rita?”
“Paul’s wife. Then there’s Mark Dvorak. We all pay rent.”
“Dvorak? The scientist?”
“Fellow-scientist.”
“You kidding?”
“You against women?”
“Tm all for them.”
“Then what’s wrong with a lady- scientist?”
“Nothing. If she looks like you.”
“Child prodigy. I was graduated from college at sixteen, and that’s a fact, sir. Did graduate work, on scholarships, in most of the uni- versities of reputation in the world. Science. Got the bent, got the in- clination. Studied under all the masters. Don’t let the little-girl look
5
fool you. I’ve been hitting the brandy ever since I heard about Woodward. I’m a big shot in my business. I used to be at Oak Ridge. Now I work with Dvorak as part of the civilian scientists group of the Signal Corps Laboratories out at Fort Monmouth.”
“Well . . .”’ I said and my mouth hung open like I’d grown weights on my chin.
“Pm real famous. Check me sometime.”
- “Well . . .” I said.
“What do you do?”
“Me?”
“You.”
“I’m a private detective.”
“Really?” Now her mouth opened. “First time.”
“Two firsts. First time for me with a lady-scientist.””
She laid away the pony glass. “Let’s go check with Paul.”
I set my empty glass beside hers and followed her out the door and across the blue-rugged room to Paul’s door. She knocked and we waited. She knocked again and we waited again. “Don’t,” she said as I reached for the knob, but I'd had it. If Paul had company, he was going to get more company.
Paul didn’t have company.
Paul was alone. He was sitting in a brown-leather armchair. He was wearing a blue suit, a white shirt, a red tie, and black pointy shoes. He had sandy crew-cut hair, ‘a wide knobby jaw, and a long thin nose. _ He stared directly at us with a grin
14
that wasn’t funny. His legs were
spread apart and the heels of the pointy black shoes dug into the nap of the maroon carpet like the one in the other room. His ears were wax-white and his eyes were white- rimmed and there was a wide rust stain on the white shirt in the vicin- ity of the left breast. A thin golden knife-hilt grew out of the middle of the stain. You didn’t have to touch him to know he was dead.
She screamed, piercingly, again and again.
You wouldn’t think a little lady- scientist had that much lung power.
Then people started piling in. —
4.
The people were still there, the body was gone, and of the police, three detectives remained: Abramo- witz, First Grade, burly and silent; Cassidy, First Grade, burly and silent; and Detective-lieutenant Louis Parker, stump-figured and loquacious. The people were Rita Kingsley, Victor Barry, and Mark Dvorak. Marcia Kingsley and I were also people.
Rita Kingsley was tall and blonde
and white-faced, with a full figure
in yellow silk lounging pajamas. Victor Barry was tall, thin, brown- haired and brown-eyed, with tight lips and twitching jaw muscles. He wore moccasins, tan slacks and a white sport shirt. Mark Dvorak: ` grey-templed, grey-eyes-in-black- lashes, patrician high-boned nose,
MANHUNT
and a slender black mustache. He _ was lanky and broad-shouldered in a black velvet smoking jacket, black pants and black pumps with tassels. Rough guess, Rita was thirty, Vic- tor thirty-five, Mark on the sunny side of forty.
Parker was saying: “... you were all here, all available, all a possibility. It is my duty to inform you that you have no immunity; anything you say may be used against you.”
Mark Dvorak said, “Is there a possibility of suicide?” He had a faintly foreign voice, marshmallow- soft and musical. He moved about nervously, springy in the legs, an athletic type.
Parker said, “We don’t rule out nothing. Yet. Fast figure, it ain’t suicide. Quick dusting showed no prints on the hilt. A suicide don’t ` wipe off his prints. And if he used gloves, he’d still be wearing them. Fié ain’.
Marcia wiped her palms on her skirt. “Fingerprints are most diffi- cult to bring out on a surface like a knife-hilt, especially a corrugated ` hilt like that one was.” :
“You got a point there, lady. Which is why the knife is down at the laboratory right now. Autopsy ought to give us some viewpoints along that line too.” He went near her. “How do you know what that hilt looked like?”
“T saw it. In him.”
Parker looked about. “Any of the rest of you have a look?”
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Nobody answered. Rita Kingsley shivered. Part of the jacket of her pajamas fell away revealing the upper portion of a full breast, the flesh young and warm-glowing. She adjusted the jacket, put a loop button-hole over a large button. Her eyes were round and blue and without tears. She was his wife but she wasn’t crying. She said, “Youre making a mistake if you. limit your suspects — to us.” She had a high voice and a slightly affected intona- tion. The words came out round but they ran together. She talked like she had peas in her mouth. “My husband had visitors all evening. The bell kept ringing.”
“Anybody know who his visitors were?”
_ Nobody answered. That had been the way it had gone since Parker arrived. To most of his questions — nobody answered.
“All right,” Parker said. “‘Let’s get the suicide thing out of the way. We got his wife here, his sister, and two of his friends. You all live here in the house. This guy have any reason for suicide?”
Nobody answered.
The bell rang. Sharply.
Parker said, “That ought to be Mr. Whitney.” He cocked his head at Cassidy. “Get it.”
Cassidy went out and came back with a powerfully-built, tall man. A square man. Square shoulders in a charcoal-grey suit, the handstitching faint but patent. A thick neck, at least size eighteen, rising out of a
15
white pleated shirt to a-square red thick-jowled face, closely shaven to shiny-smooth. A square patch of fleshy nose, a square pugnacious chin, a square upper lip over a tight wide mouth. A black homburg and a black knit tie gave him, momen- tarily, a priestly look. His eyebrows were angled and had stick-out jumpy hair like the antennae of an insect. The eyebrows rose from one corner of each eye, to a point, and dropped to the other corner. The eyes were small, blue, quick-moving and com-
manding. They squinted at each of us, picked the man in charge, Parker, and stayed on him. “I’m Lincoln Whitney. This is terrible, absolutely terrible. What the hell is this city coming to? Two in one day.”
Cassidy grunted: “Two?”
Whitney wheeled on him. “Adam Woodward. Paul Kingsley. Two.” He took off the homburg and placed it on a desk. He had sparse blondish hair, parted in the middle, and a high forehead going up to a much- revealed large red shiny skull. He went to Parker. He said, “I take it you’re Detective-lieutenant Parker.”
“That's right, sir.”
Whitney’s tight expression eased off as he waved a hand. “I hope you're not giving these people too much of a difficult time. I doubt you'll find a murderer among them.”
Parker said, “We were trying to clear up any suicide possibility.”
“Suicide. Nonsense.”
“Why not, Mr. Whitney?” This from Mark Dvorak. He nudged a
16
pinky-point at his thin mustache.
“Because he was not the type, that’s why not. Because he had everything in the world to live for, that’s why not.” Whitney’s eyes jumped to Victor Barry. “Didn't you tell them?”
Barry was a casual man, lean and loose and handsome, the brown eyes soft, almost tender: a controlled man under a casual pose, only the twitch- ing jaw muscles gave him away. Even his voice was casual. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I didn’t think it was right, coming from me. There had been no public announcement. Only you knew, I knew, and he knew.” He shrugged and left one shoulder hunched. “You might have wanted to change your mind. I’m an old hand in the business. I don’t like to talk out of turn.’
“Talk,’? Parker said, what?”
Whitney said, “Berger, my man- aging editor, retired last week. To- day, this afternoon, I called in Paul and told him the job was his. Man- aging editor. I told him to keep it under his hat, until I made the an- ` nouncement.’
“Which he didn’t,” Barry said. “He told me. And I went in to Mr. Whitney and told him that Paul had told me.”
“Why?” Parker said.
“It was a squawk. I thought that job should have been mine. I’m a guy who likes to say his piece. I said it.’
‘about
MANHUNT
“Whatever,” Whitney said, “Paul Kingsley had achieved what he would have given his right eye for. He didn’t go home and kill himself — out of pure joy. You can rule out suicide, Lieutenant. Your Captain gave me the whole story, when he talked to me on the phone. No, it wasn’t suicide, and none of these good people here is a murderer. Paul wrote a column, and rather a nasty one, and he made a good many enemies. Thats where Id look, Lieutenant. Among his enemies. Not his friends.”
Parker knew when to bunt. “Yes,
ir,” he said.
And now Whitney came to me. ‘““Who’re you, young man?”
‘“‘Name’s Peter Chambers.”
“He’s a private detective,” Parker said.
“Already?” Whitney’s forehead creased and his eyebrows grew more pointed. He moved near and the quick little eyes examined all of me. “What are you doing here, young man?”
“Mr. Kingsley called me. I came in response to his call. I’m the feller discovered the body.”
“I see. Were you here alone with him?”
“No soap on that, Mr. Whitney. Furthermore, when I kill people, stabbing is too bloody. I like to choke them to death.”
Whitney smiled, reached out a freckled hand, patted my arm.
“He’s clean,” Parker said.
“T’m sure of that.” Whitney went
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`
back to Parker. “I think you ought’ to let these people go to bed, Lieu- tenant.” He looked at his watch. “It’s close to midnight.”
“Yes, sir,” Parker said.
I said, “Okay if I cut out?”
“Cut,” Parker said. “But keep in touch.”
5.
I did the merry-go-round of the jazzier late spots and it was two- thirty before I hit the brass ring. Two brass rings. I'd missed them in a couple of traps but I'd dropped money like my faucet was leaking and at least I knew they were to- gether and the word was that they were headed for Benjie’s. Benjie’s was two flights of stucco on a dim corner of Thompson Street in the Village. It was a privately owned home, but nobody knew who owned it: it was syndicate property and it catered to friends, but you had to be a friend with a good-deal of money. Because there was nothing penny-ante about Benjie’s. If you liked to gamble, and you could af- ford it — and you were a friend — you went to Benjie’s. Benjie’s was Las Vegas telescoped to one private house in New York City. Every in- door game of chance ever devised was practiced in Benjie’s. And it was top-bracket stuff. No floating crap game, Benjie’s. No two-bit faro, no nickel slot machines. This was the top, Number One, and the real gamblers from all over the world,
IZ
sooner or later, passed through: the portals.of Benjie’s, and congregated about its tables. All the frivolous boys and girls, all the easy-money guys, everybody with a loose buck, from the top layers of society to the deepest dirt of the underworld. Off from the big gaming chambers, there was food, and there was drink, and there were cute little rooms in which to enjoy them. Every room was sound-proofed, and every window
was black-draped. No light ever .
showed through.
I was in the right place. Id got out of the cab a block away and I was walking. Two people came out ‘of Benjie’s. One of them was Harry Strum. The other was not Faigle. The other was a big blonde swaying against Strum, and Strum held her up. Strum was tall and slender and graceful and never drunk till he passed out. He walked her across the street to a good-looking, quiet- painted, late model sedan, opened the door with one hand, shoved her in with the other, shut the door, walked around to the other door, got in, started the motor, and pulled off.
I went into Benjie’s.
The lobby was clean and conserva- tive, the lighting correct, the silence impressive. There was a beige carpet, and French Provincial furniture, and a wide beige-carpeted stairway. There was no elevator. There was a small room on the right, with an open door. The room was immacu- ` late: hardwood polished floor, an
18
oval Chinese rug, yellow and pink and black, delicate teakwood glisten- ing furniture, and a teakwood desk. The desk had six push-buttons and a telephone, nothing else. The tele- phone could produce joy and laugh- ter, the buttons, death and disorder. There was a door at the far end of the room. I didn’t know what lay behind it and I didn’t care to find out. Seated at the desk was a cherub- faced, white-haired, kindly-looking man. His name was Danny Madison.
Danny Madison looked like a suc- cessful missionary, about sixty years of age, who had devoted his life to soul-saving. Danny Madison was a three-time loser, ‘con-man and em- bezzler, but that was thirty years back. Since then Danny had found his niche. Danny Madison had prob- ably seen everything evil a man can see, but his face remained the sweetly- smiling face of an angel. As he had grown to maturity, Danny had learned the cardinal rules suited to his nature: look but don’t talk, live but don’t talk, see but don’t talk. Danny Madison didn’t know from nuthin — he’d been racked by hood- lums, tortured, and, on the other side of the fence, quizzed acutely by the law — but Danny Madison never knew from nuthin — it was said that he enjoyed the pain, and he’d linger until he fell unconscious — but he never knew from nuthin: he would blink his eyes, shrug his shoulders, and smile sweetly. It was a tribute to the intelligence of the upper eche- lons of the syndicate people that
MANHUNT
Danny Madison was behind the teakwood desk at Benjie’s, had been for the past fifteen years.
Danny looked up when I came in, and guess what, Danny smiled sweetly. There was a thing I knew about Danny that others probably knew: Danny talked when Danny wanted to talk, only then. And Danny, like everything at Benjie’s, was expensive. I reached in for one of Adam Woodward’s hundred dol- lar bills and laid it on the desk. I said, “T ve got a message for Faigle.”
“That so?” .
“I saw Harry Strum leave a few minutes ago.”
“That so?”
“Strum gave me a message to deliver.”
“That so?”
I took out two more of Wood- ward’s bills and laid them beside the other. “I don’t have time, Danny. I got a message to deliver.”
‘“He’s a crumb.”
“Who?”
“Faigle. A miserable insulting crumb. I’m glad you got a message for him. I don’t like his guts, he’s got bad manners, got no respect for old age.”
“What table is he working?”
“No table. He’s through gambling for the evening. He’s having a drink. With a lady.”
“Where?”
“Gr
“First floor?”
yeahs
“Must I knock?’
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“You don’t have to, if you have a. key.” He opened a drawer. There was a key. I took it. He said, “Leave it in the lock. Any real trouble, you hit me with a soft-billy and took it. I don’t bruise easy, don’t show no marks when I get hit right.”
“Thanks,”
“Go deliver your message. And don’t worry. They won’t find him here. They'll find him in the gutter where he belongs.”
“It’s not that kind of message.”
“You never can tell.” I started to go. He called softly: “Hey.”
ical
“Hes heeled.”
“Thanks again, Danny.”
“The hell with you.”
I didn’t have to walk softly: the carpets in the corridors were lush. I had my gun in my left hand and I tried the knob with my right. I didn’t need the key. The door opened. Faigle was being careless. One look at his eyes and I knew why.
The room was fitted up like a
nightmare out of Boccaccio: gold
tapestries, red walls, four gold- covered divans with green silk pil- lows, red light going upward from gold wall-brackets, a plate-glass mir- rored floor, and a plate-glass mir- rored ceiling. Soft music came from. a wiring-system. There was a bottle of whiskey and an ice bucket and soda and glasses‘on a gilt table with long graceful legs. There was also a Luger. And Faigle was in a chair at the table, very near the Luger. He
19
was wearing black shoes, black tight- fitting trousers (you could see the muscle of his thigh right through the pants), a black sash, and a white, tight-cuffed loose-sleeved silk sport shirt open at the throat. The lady sitting near him at the table went with the decor of the room: tight green dress over one shoulder and under the other, a wide gold belt, gold high-heeled shoes, red frizzy short-cut hair, heavy make-up, and false eyelashes.
The gun was in my right hand
— Now.
I stayed near the door and let them look at me. Faigle said, ““How’s with the peep-show, peeper? Ha.” Frizzy-hair said, “You know
him?”
“Big man with a gun. If he pulls the thing, he drops dead of a nervous break-down. Ha.”
I said, “You.”
Frizzy-hair squeaked: “Me?” ~ “Out. Hurry up.”
Faigle had a pushed-together nar- row face, and a long chin. He was blond, straw hair falling in a cow-lick _ over his forehead. He had pale grey eyes but the grey was pushed to an inhuman white rim around the black enormously dilated pupils. He had a habit of pulling his upper lip to the gum, revealing long yellow teeth spaced like fangs. Now he giggled and clapped a hand,on the back of Frizzy-hair. “You heard him. Big - man witha gun wants to talk. Wants to talk private. Wait upstairs. Blow. Musn’t keep the peeper waiting.”
20
Frizzy-hair scrambled out of the chair and scampered past me. I closed the door and Jeaned on it. Faigle got up, unsteadily, one hand leaning on the table. The hand was near the Luger. He said, “What’s the pitch, pal?”
“Who paid for Woodward?”
The upper lip pulled high. He sniffed a couple of times. He said, “Where'd you buy it?”
“Why?” .
“Because the law’s got nothing. The law’s got a blank. I got in- formation.”
“Who paid for him, Faigle?”
“What’s it to you?”
“Tm working.”
“Then work the other side of the street, pal. Who sold you that Faigle’s a canary?”
“You want law? Would you rather have law than me?”
Faigle wasn’t waiting for any more. Faigle was finished with talk. He grabbed at the Luger and let go, but Faigle was a genius with a long one, with a side-arm he was noplace, but he could get lucky, so I pointed it low and went for his legs, but Faigle outsmarted himself. I figured if I had him lame, I could squeeze it out of him, but Faigle had watched too many Westerns, and after he’d let fly with two wild ones, shattering a section of the ceiling-mirror, he threw himself to the floor where he caught one in the eye. Blood gushed like a geyser, and he was dead.
I wiped the key with my handker- chief, put it on the table, smeared
MANHUNT
the door-knobs, went downstairs, walked out of Benjie’s, and kept walking till I found a cab.
6.
The clock was a snarling prong that yanked me from my dreams. It was eleven o’clock Tuesday morn- ing, but thé boy had work. I went to the shower and let the water wake me up. I wiped, shaved, had break- fast and went to Police Headquar- ters. Parker looked weary. I said, “How goes it?”
“Stinks.” Then he narrowed his dark eyes at me. “What’s your in- terest?”
“I found the guy. I’ve got a pro- fessional interest.”
“No, sir. That wouldn’t get you _ out of bed this early and all the way downtown to here.”
I said, “I’m grinding my own little axe. I don’t want to talk about -it yeta
“But you will?”
“Promise.”
“It’s a long time we’ve known each other, Pete.”
“And we haven’t crossed each other yet. Stay with me, Louie.”
“Okay.”
“How’s it going?”
“Stinks, like I said. Got pressure from the brass too. Lincoln Whitney is a big man, and he’s riled.”
‘Woodward your package too?”
“No, thank God. Kingsley is enough. The suicide is out. Labora- tory showed -the knife had been
SKIP A BEAT
wiped clean. Then, of course, some= body wore gloves.”
“Autopsy?”
“Showed nothing unusual. We ain’t got him any more. He’s up at the Manning Chapel, on Seventy-_ ninth.”
“What kind of a knife?”
His eyes opened to a gleam. “There we got something, but I’m holding it close to the vest, and you keep clammed on it.”
“Of course, Louie.”
“It’s a foreign-make job. Like our switch-blades here, but a European job. ’ve got twenty men out on it right now. Thats a break, thas knife.”
“Anything else?”
“Nothing. What have you got for me?”
“Nothing. Yet. Will you check an address for me, Louie, please?”
Ore.
“Edwina Grayson. The ballet dancer.”
He pushed a key and talked into the inter-com. Then he smiled at me, tiredly, “That mixed with this?”
“Nope. With Woodward.”
“Woodward?” He jumped. “There | a connection? Woodward and King- . sley?”
“I don’t know. But that’s my primary interest — Woodward.”
“Don’t hold out on me, kid.”
“Don’t worry, Louie.”
A uniformed man came in with the information. Edwina -Grayson. Address and phone number. She lived on the other side of the Park,
2I
15 East 84th Street. E thanked the _ man, | thanked Parker, and down- stairs I called her. If it was early for a private detective, it was early for a ballet dancer. She was entitled to a warning. I told her who I was, that it was important, that it was about Woodward. She asked me to give her a half hour. I said fine, a half hour was fine. Then I called the office. I had one message. Lincoln Whitney wanted to see me at three o'clock. I said thanks to Miranda and went out into the warm sun- shine of March and bought myself a Bulletin from an old lady at a corner kiosk. Adam Woodward was a big story, Paul Kingsley was a smaller one, and on a back page there was a nine-inch squib about the death of a hoodlum, Warren (Faigle) Clitter- house, obviously a gang killing, found in the gutter on Rivington Street with a bullet through his eye. I went back to the Adam Woodward story. It had nothing, but it had this: The Bulletin offered a five thou- sand dollar reward for the apprehen- sion of the murderer or murderers of Adam Woodward. The axe I was
- grinding began to make a little more
‘sense. I folded up the paper and re-
turned it to the old lady, who looked at me as though I wanted my nickel
back. ve
15 East 84th Street was white, narrow and tall with a marble lobby and pearl-type buttons along a well-
22
kept brass oblong with names. I touched the one next to Grayson and the tick back was quick. I caught the door and had to peer back for the apartment number: 6B. The eleva- tor was small and sparkling-clean. She was waiting for me at the open door. A riffle went through me like my stomach had begun a card-game with my heart. The besf description of Edwina Grayson is wow.
Starting from the bottom is was like this: white, high-heeled, cork- platformed mules; long, tapered, gold-tan, bare legs; long-muscled, supple-smooth, gold-tan, bare thighs; fresh, white, short tennis pants tight- ened about a wasp-waist with a braided white belt; bare, supple- smooth, gold-tan midsection; and then a white-wool, Bikini-type, pull- over sweater, that started where the arms meet the shoulders and ended just beneath a bosom that pointed outward and up. She said, “Mr. Chambers?”
Yes.”
“Please come in.”
She was dark, black hair done up to a bun in back, a pointed nose, the tip of which moved when she talked, high cheekbones, a cleft chin, a full- curved mouth, the lower lip slightly > pouting and wet —and eyes. That was the face: the eyes. They were huge, black, shining, bold, posses- sive, almond-shaped. Théy were wide-set and ctriously tilted at the corners, the lids purple-dark, the lashes thick and long: restless eyes, intense, devouring.
MANHUNT
“You said it was ee Mr. Chambers.”
“Tm a private detective.”
. “You said it was about Mr. Wood- ward.”
“He retained me yesterday. As a bodyguard.”
“Yesterday?”
“Before he was . . . murdered.”
She turned away from me but I stayed with her. It was like watching a performance, every graceful bal- anced motion the movement of a dancer. She said, “Why do you come to me, sir?”
“Because I heard you two had been friends, good friends.”
“That’s right.” It was a challenge. She turned back to me. “I knew Adam Woodward for ten years. He was devoted to me.”
I didn’t even try to guess at her age. Edwina Grayson, all Edwina Graysons, are ageless. I had seen her perform many times. This was an artist, a superb artist, ageless, beau- tiful, inbred, impetuous, tempestu- ous, with no regard to the conven- tions, honored throughout the world, and living in’a world of her own fashioning. There were no barriers. She made her own rules. There was always scandal attached to her, never brutal, always amusing, and always, she was above the scandal, even the scandal-mongers knew that. But I’d never heard anything about her and Adam Woodward.
I offered her a cigarette and she shook it off. I lit up and began to walk. It was a large room with a good
SKIP A BEAT
deal of furniture. It was a woman’s
. room: white carpet, blue walls, pink
and grey drapes, pink and grey for the fabric of the furniture, soft, loungy and comfortable, pink and grey for the accessories.
She said, “Were you ever a dancer, Mr. Chambers?”
No
“I like the way you walk.”
“Is this a new line?”
“Pardon?”
“Nothing.”
Now she was near me. “‘You’re tall and you’re handsome and there’s a romantic flare about you. I bet you're a bear with the women.”
Can tt”
She touched my arm. “And very strong?” Her long red fingernails bit in. I blew smoke at her. She said, “Doesn’t it hurt?”
eh fae
“Then why don’t you move away?”
“Not from you, sister.”
“Sister.” She laughed. Her teeth were white, square and even. “Any- thing — but not sister. ve an in- sane impulse. I’d like to kiss you.”
Go fiddle with a ballet dancer. I said, “Are you kidding?”
“Try me.”
“Some other time.”
The nails went deeper. “Now.”
“Some other time.” I knocked off the hand and backed away.
“You know,” she said, “I’m en- joying myself.”
“Look. Come off it, lady. Pm
here for work. 2
23
“Why?”
She had me for a moment. .
She said, “He was an old man. He died quickly. That is the way it should be. I should like to die like that.”
Sut s+. ubwt.. ihe was killed. Somebody killed him. There are laws.”
“Are you a policeman?”
“Tm a private detective.”
“Are you a policeman?”
“No.”
. “Then the enforcement of the law is not your concern. Why do you intrude yourself on this?”
“He hired me, remember? As a bodyguard.”
“And since he’s dead, since he was murdered, you failed him. Obvi- ously, you are not too efficient” — the bold eyes travelled over me and the nose tightened —- “as a body- guard. I have an overwhelming intuition that you are much more efficient . . . asa man.”
You deal with an artist, you’re in another world. I said, “Look, lady, please =..."
“Why do you concern yourself with this?”
I walked. I dumped my cigarette. I marshalled reasons which would work with her. I was going to have to crawl. I tried it. I said, “Failed as a bodyguard, maybe. I have an
excuse, I have lots of excuses. Let’s .
skip that. You’re an artist. You’ve got professional pride. I can’t say that I’m an artist but the thing I do is my‘ work, as the thing you do is
24
your work, and I too have a form
of professional pride. Mr. Woodward
paid me seven hundred dollars.
Maybe it’s chicken feed, that
doesn’t matter. He wound -up dead - and I don’t like it. So I want to
catch up with the people who made
him dead. Call it professional pride.
I don’t give a damn what you call it.
I got a job to finish.”
Her hands were on her hips and her chest was heaving and her eyes were shining and she was looking at me like she was mama and I was sonny delivering the valedictory at the high school commencement. She said, “I love you.”
“Some other time.”
“What, exactly, do you want to know?”
“Thanks.”
“It was a beautiful speech.”
“Thanks.”
The smile was a girl’s grin now. “Tm sure you’re a wonderful lover.”
“Some other time.”
“Promise?”
“And how.”
“What do you want to know?”
I rubbed my hands together. They were wet. It ran against my nature to play hard-to-get. I said, “Do you know anybody — anybody — who hated Woodward enough to want to have him killed?”
“No.”
“That’s a quick answer.”
“Tve thought about it, Mr. Chambers. What’s your first name?” “Peter. |
“Peter. I’ve thought about it,
MANHUNT
a
since the moment I heard about what had happened. If there was anybody I knew, I would have gone to the police, despite the fact that that would have aroused, oh, a bit of gossip . . . it could be lurid, Adam and myself. But there was nobody, nobody that 7 knew of. He was involved in a good deal of politics, he was a brilliant man, he must have made enemies, but there
wasn’t one solitary soul that J knew
about. That’ s it. I’m sorry. I can’t help you.’
I was through here. For now. I said, “Thank you very much.”
She said, “Have a drink.”
“No, thank you.”
“Look, all kidding aside, I like you. I’d like to know you.” She went to a table, pulled open a drawer, took out pen and ‘paper, scribbled a note. She brought it to me. “Here. It’s for the theater. Come backstage. Come tonight. Give this note to the man at the stage door. Let’s have late supper. Wait for me in my dressing room.”
I took the note. I didn’t look at it. I. folded it and shoved it into my pocket. I said, “Hear about Paul Kingsley?” -
“Yes. Terrible.”
“You know him?”
“Of course. I visited on Central Park West quite frequently. So did ‘Adam. Quite a household.” And now her eyes narrowed down and she smiled with a corner of her mouth. “By the way, which of them told you about Adam and myself?”
SKIP A BEAT
“Victor Barry.” What did I have to lose? 3 “So?” Now there was a female viciousness about the mouth. “Did
‘he tell you about him and Rita?”
“Rita?”
“Kingsley’s wife. Did he tell you Rita hated Paul? Did he tell you that they were carrying on an affair right under Paul’s nose? Did he tell you that for three years they’ve been asking Paul to divorce Rita, and Paul wouldn’t?”
“Why not?”
“Pure spite, ld say. Rita had nothing for Paul any more, Paul flitted around the town with every — new beauty that came up from Texas. But he wouldn’t give her a divorce, though both of them, Rita and Victor, were begging for it, frantically.” i
I went to the door. “It’s motive.”
“For-what?”’
“Murder. Paul’s.”
She hadn’t thought of that. Her eyes widened and she looked guilty. “I doubt that. They wouldn’t have the nerve, either one of them.” Maybe she hadn’t. thought of that. Anyway, she looked like she hadn't. She said, “Should I be sorry?”
I opened the door. “For what?”
“Giving in to the temptation for vengeful gossip.”
“Talk it over with your con- science.” My hand was on the lock. There was only one lock on the door.
She smiled now, widely. “I have. Already. I’m not sorry.”
À 25
I looked at the lock. I said, “Gotta a “Will I see you tonight?” “Pil try my best.”
“TIl be expecting you.”
“Bye, now.” I closed the door behind me.
One lock. And an old-fashioned one.
8.
I was too early for Whitney. It was a beautiful afternoon. I walked through the transverse to the other side of the park and skimmed a finger at the white bell at 262 Cen- tral Park West. The door was opened by a round-faced colored girl. She said, “Whom would = wish to see?
` “Mr. Dvorak home?”
“No, sir.” .
“Mr. Barry?”
“No, sir.”
“Mrs. Kingsley?”
“No, sir.”
“Last call. Marcia Kingsley.”
She smiled broadly. “Yes, sir. She’s at home, sir..Please come in.” She ushered me into the room with the green walls and the liquor cabi- net. “Who shall I say is calling, sir?”
“Peter Chambers.”
“Thank you, sir.”
The Scotch bottle and the brandy bottle were looking .at each other atop the liquor cabinet and the brandy bottle looked like it had gotten a lot of use. There was no
<26
`
ice, no water, no soda, so I sampled Scotch neat, and then Marcia Kings- ley was beside me smelling of musky perfume and smelling, also, of brandy. She said, “Hi. Brandy ‘for me.
The prim expression was the same, and the no-rouge cheeks were the same, but the blue eyes were wide and glistening behind the heavy black specs and there was a jauntiness about her that hadn’t been there yesterday. I wondered about her without the goggles. She was excitingly pretty in black corduroy slacks, a red ribbon around her blonde hair, red’ shoes, red belt, ~ and a red blouse open at the throat and giving off an alarming amount of cleavage for so small a girl.
I poured brandy into a pony glass and she said, “More,” and I added more brandy and she took it from me and leaned against me. “Tell you something,” she said. “Tm squiffed.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, I’m not one to praise the dead, I never had much use for Paul, but it’s happening like that —”
“I know.”
She leaned against me harder. Her body was soft and warm. She said, “I’m glad you came. I’ve been thinking about you. I tried calling you. The only number listed in the book is your office. You weren’t in. I asked for your home number and the lady. wouldn’t give it to me. I didn’t leave a message.”
“Something special?”
MANHUNT
“No. I just wanted to talk to you. Nobody’s here.”
I gave her my address and phone number. I said, “Write it down.”
“PIL remember.”
“Sure.”
“PIL come catling on you one of these days.”
“Sure. Where’s everybody?”
She leaned away from me and I missed her. She sipped the brandy. “Mark and I took the day off, but he’s out, and so’s Rita, and Victor plays big shot today.”
“Big shot?”
“He got what he always wanted. Mr. Whitney appointéd him man- aging editor.”
“Paul’s death did that guya lot of good.”
“Now that’s not nice.”
“Sorry.”
She went to an easy chair and pulled: her legs up under her. She said, ““You’re cute. Walk. Walk like a tiger.”
I wasn’t walking like a tiger. Not today. Today I had a mess of affairs to straighten out. I nipped more Scotch and it warmed my stomach. I looked at her, cuddled in the chair. Pd like walking like a tiger for her, I had a hunch I'd like it very much. But not today. Some other time. I chuckled. She said, “What is it?”
“Some other time. This is my day for postponement. I must be going soft. In the head.”
“Cryptic,” she said. “But cute.”
“See you around,” I said.
“Where you going?”
SKIP A BEAT
“Business.”
Business got me to the offices of The. Bulletin on East Thirty-fourth Street at precisely three o'clock where I went through the do-you- have-an-appointment routine with a receptionist and then I got together with Lincoln Whitney in a many- windowed office, Whitney ‘in blue serge today and a blue tie with a pearl stickpin. He said, “I’m glad you could make it, young man.”
Sunshine was a spotlight on his square red face: he was no more than fifty, a pumpous, assured, domineer-
ing fifty: he’d looked older than that
-last night.
“Made it special,” I said.
“T appreciate that. It’s about Paul, of course. The police are doing all they can.”
“They always do.”
He rubbed a stubby finger at one up-pointed eyebrow. “I want a little extra on it, and I want to keep ap- prised of exactly what’s going on. The police do co-operate, but, of course, essentially it’s a closed cor- poration.”
“You offering me a job, mae Whitney?”
“Yes.. Pve made inquiries iene you. You’ll do. How do you work, flat fee or daily pay?” P
“You pick it.’
“How’s five hundred dollars?”
“Sounds all right, unless it gets drawn out too long.”
“Tf it does, don’t hesitate to ask for more.” He pulled open a desk drawer, brought out a sheaf of bills,
27
flipped off five and gave them to me. It goes like that sometimes, cash payments and hundred dollar hills. Other times, it’s pork and beans.
He gave me a white paper and motioned to a pen in a marble base. “Would -you write out a receipt, please?”
“Sure;
While I was doing that, he said, “What was it Paul wanted you for, in. the first place?”
“I don’t know.” I gave him_the receipt.
“Pardon?”
“I don’t know. He called me and asked me to come over. He didn’t tell me what it was about.”
He. stood up, big, bulky and square in his banker’s grey. “I want a daily report, Mr. Chambers. And — I suppose you have your connec- tions — I want to know 1f the police are making any progress. By the way, you know about the reward the paper posted . . . about Wood- ward?”
“Yes. I read.”
“It’s been posted with our attor- neys. Five thousand dollars. You’re in the business, young man. As long as you don’t neglect what I’m pay- ing you for — go to ee
“Thank you, sir.’
The corners of his mouth turned up in a smile and he stuck out a beefy freckled paw. “AH right, thei.
We shook, and I blew, and on the way out I inquired for the managing editor’s office, and I was directed to
28
it, and I opened the door without knocking, and Victor Barry was clinched with Rita Kingsley, and they didn’t even hear me come in.
“My, my,” I said. “And the guy not even buried yet.”
They broke, andthe color came up in Barry’s face like a mask of wrath, and he started for me, his jaw muscles lumped, but she got in the way and held him off.
“You should have let him,” I said.
She turned her back on me, poked at him with open fingers until she got him back behind his desk, then she sat down in a hard chair. She looked good, in a tight-thighed brick-red suit and`a wisp of a hat with a veil, and when she swished one knee over the other, there was - a lot of leg, a little plump in the calf but shapely.
Barry leaned on his knuckles, “What do you want here?” -
“Chatter, About Paul Kingsley.”
“What the hell is that to you?”
“Wipe the lipstick off your mouth.”
“Get out of here.”
I cocked my head. “No talk?”
“Talk. What the hell about? You’re an intruder here, fella. Get out before I have you thrown out:” He was neat and tall and lean in pin- stripes and a button-down collar but blood still clotted his complexion and there was the glitter of sweat at his temples.
“Intruder?” I said. “Not exactly. Kingsley’s part of my job. I’ve got a client.”
MANHUNT
“Client?” “Lincoln Whitney.”
The knuckles on the desk got `
whiter. .
I said, “Murder needs oppor- tunity and you two are loaded with opportunity. Murder also needs mo- * tive. The lady with the veil here hated her husband, and death is as good as a divorce. That’s motive. The guy with the lumps in his jaw and the lipstick on his mouth — same motive. Plus it also gives him a job that he was almost done out of. That’s more motive.” I went to the door. “A pleasant good afternoon, kiddies. Go kiss each other.”
Downstairs, I whistled for a cab, and went to the office, and listened to lectures from Miranda. When she stopped for breath, I told her I was hungry and the mother in Miranda took precedence over the preacher, and she went out to get me lunch. I dialed Edwina Grayson’s number, and the phone kept ringing, and then a sing-song voice said: ‘“Gray- son residence.”
“Miss Grayson.”
The voice sang: ‘“‘Not in, sir. Would you leave a message?”
All answering services chirp the same. I said, “This her service?”
“That’s right, sir.’
‘“‘When’s she due back?”
“Who’s calling, sir?”
“Peter Chambers. It’s business. And it’s important.”
“She’s not in, sir. Sorreee.”’
“Got a number for her?”
“No, sir. She'll be out all day.
SKIP A BEAT
-= my» lovely Miranda:
Then she can be reached at the theater.”
“Thanks. Large.”
“Thank you, sir.”
I opened the safe and took out a tool-box and looked over a set of equipment that would make a bur- glar drool. I selected the pick I wanted, and then Miranda was nois- ily sucking her cheek beside me, making noises of disapproval. “Sooner or later,” she said, ‘‘you’ll go to jail.”
“Miranda, please . . .
Gloomily: “Sooner or later . .'.”
“Look, a guy like me, I have no authority, I’m not cops, I’ve got to skip a beat here and there.”
“Sooner,” she insisted, ‘‘or inter ta
“Miranda, I’m a knight without a charger, a hero without heralds, a gladiator without trumpets. There are guys like me in every business. I am what is euphemistically calleda . private richard. You mention your , line of work and it produces a joke, a sneer or a giggle. I operate within a rigid code of ethics — of my own — and a little bit, I think, I do some good in this world. Yeah, go ahead, sniff . . . but even you'll admit, murder is
”
naughty —”
“Eat your lunch, gladiator.”
I ate my lunch and I took my pick and I hied off to 15 East 84th Street and I rang a few bells and I got a few ticks and I waited ten minutes in the inner lobby and then I rode up to six and I applied pick to lock at 6B
29
and then I was inside and I locked myself in, The blinds were all drawn which gave me a cool dim atmos- phere in which to work, and work I did. In an hour I did more exploring than a couple of teen-agers in the back seat of a parked car in the mid- dle of the night. Nothing. Not one item of interest and Pll admit to a hollow growth of disappointment because it had been my hunch that this was it. I had it cleaned up and I was about to kiss it off when I heard a key in the door. I moved to a spot where the opening door would shield me and I was preparing a speech for the lady of the house, but it wasn’t the lady of the house, it was a man, so, naturally, | jumped him. We tus- sled like we were wrestlers for TV, and then I had his shoulders pinned and I was able to get a look at him, and it turned out to be Mark Dvorak, and I was more surprised to see it was he then he was to see it was I. He said, “For Chrissake, what’s the matter with you? Get off me.” - | obliged and he straightened up and I said, “What the dickens are you doing here?”
He ruffled his jacket back over his shoulders and he did a quick. jab at his mustache. Then the musical voice was back, and the smile, and the old-world languor. “I’ve got a key. What’s your excuse?”
“Key?” I said.
He said: “Key.”
Even a new-world blockhead can capture a sliver of a hint when the
30
hint is exploded all over him, and I looked at Mark Dvorak with new admiration. I said, “I thought it was Woodward?”
“Woodward was an old man.’
“You young?”
“That’s debatable.” He took out a pack of filter-tips, lit up, and * squeezed the tip between his teeth. ‘“‘Now what about you?”
“Maybe I’m your successor.”
It didn’t throw him an inch. “I doubt whether successor is the pre- cise word. With Edwina, lovers lap- over. Concurrent, I would venture to say, rather than consecutive. we congratulations.”
“Well, thanks a bunch. And as long as you’re here, and we're practi- cally brothers-in-law, let’s chat.”
“About what?”
“Oh, small talk. Let’s pick a light subject. How’s murder?”
The guy was cooler than a big toe with bad circulation. “Murder’s dandy. Whose?”
“Let’s Keep it close to home. Say somebody like Paul Kingsley.”
“Quite appropriate.” He inhaled and let smoke dribble from his nos- trils. “Do we take up any particular segment of our frothy subject?”
“Let’s talk about the instrument. Seems nobody’s talked about the- instrument so far.”
“You mean the knife?”
“T mean.”
“Unfortunately, I can’t discuss that since I had substantially no op- portunity to observe it. Marcia screamed, and we all chased in, but
MANHUNT
you, quite officiously, had us all stand back a distance ‘so as not to disturb things. Sorry, I’ll have to pass on that.”
“Check,” I said. “Let’s go old- hat. Let’s do motive.”
“Let’s put the lights on first. I’m beginning to lose you.”
He was right. It was getting dark. I switched on some lights. I said, “It’s not quite an idle discussion. Mr. Whitney retained me to do what I could on Kingsley’s death.”
“Whitney?? Magic name. He
tried not to look impressed but it .
made a dent.
“Okay, Mr. Dvorak. In the inter- ests of small talk and large justice, you go first.”
“All right, sir. I give you Victor Barry, an estimable gentleman, but one to whom the death of Paul Kingsley meant an advancement toa position which he has long coveted.”
I applauded. “Very good. And I give you Rita Kingsley. In love with Victor, in hate with Paul. With Paul out of the way, the decks are clear for a marriage to Victor.” —
It set him back. He pulled hard at the cigarette and ditched it. He said, “You Aave been working. My respects, sir.” °
“Your turn.”
“Marcia. Paul returned Rita’s ha- tred double-fold. His life insurance policy, for fifty thousand dollars, I believe, was to the benefit of Marcia. - Would you say the possibility of motive can there be spelled out?”
“I would. And so, three of the oc-
SKIP A BEAT
cupants of the household receive some certain form of benefit as a direct result of the demise of Paul Kingsley. Now, what would you say of-the fourth?” __
He clicked his heels, smiled, did a small bow. “A charming gentleman, a scientist preoccupied with tremen- dous affairs, and one totally disinter- ested in the life or death of a fellow- tenant whom he considered a foul- mouthed, ultra-modern, ineffable bore.” ;
“You didn’t like him?”
“That’s putting it mildly. But the dislike was not strong enough unto death, if you choose to comprehend that.”’
“How'd you ever get linked up theser cs: s
“Very simple. Barry, by inherit- ance, had a large furnished house, and Barry had little else, except his salary from the paper. Paul and Rita moved in, a long time ago, at quite an enormous rental. Then, when Marcia came back from Oak Ridge, she moved in, at, may I add, an ex- cellent rental too. I’d been working out at Monmouth, Marcia became an associate of mine, and she pre- vailed upon me to give up the solem- nity of a hotel suite, for more livable quarters.” He grinned. “At an ex- cellent rental too.”
I gave him a small salute. “Thanks for the chatter, Mr. Dvorak.” _
“Not at all. And now, at least for me, a more practical matter.”
“Yer?
“Which one of us stays?”
31
“That’s easy.” I went to the door. “Protocol. You’re still at the head of the table. Give her my love.”
“Sorry. Dll give her mine.”
9.
It had turned warm and the night had stars. I needed sleep and I needed. air, and I didn’t know which I needed more, so I walked; I walked a long way, kicking at kinks in my mind, and pretty soon I stood in front of the Webster Theater and I admired the full-length figure of Ed- wina Grayson on a poster against the brick wall. There was a sold-out slab
smeared against the bottom of the
poster: they were doing twenty weeks, they had started three weeks ago — ballet — and they were sold out every night. Edwina Grayson. It had taken a murder, two murders, for me to meet her, and I had played hard-to-get. I shrugged. When I’m working I’ve got rocks in my head. I went to the curb, tapped the win- dow of a parked cab, and told him to take me home, where I paid, got out, tossed a joke at the doorman, took the elevator upstairs, opened my door, switched on the lights — and looked at Harry Strum seated wide-kneed on my divan.
He said, “Make with the hands
on top of the head. The lock stinks. A baby could come visit you.” _ I made with the hands on top of the head. “Locks all stink. I knew a guy with sheet-metal doors but he wound up dead anyway.”
32
Harry Strum. Very tall and very slender with his knees up on the low divan and his elbows on his knees and a snub-nosed .38 in his delicate white hands. He had both hands on - the gun, loose and casual, a loose and casual guy with a face like a gargoyle and white as a leper’s, but handsome nevertheless. Hollows where the black eyes were set, straight across black eyebrows, deep hollows in the cheeks, a thin wide mouth like a slash across the face, and a jutting chin. Harry Strum, in a perfectly- tailored black suit, a roll-collared white-on-white shirt, a narrow yel- low tie, high-shined black shoes, and tight black ribbed hose. Harry Strum, skinny and long, the gun loose in his white hands, the gun a part of him, the star sapphire glint- ing off the pinky.
“You’re nuthin,” he said. He had a hushed confidential way of talking, the lips moving, the face remaining like stone, the eyes expressionless. “You're dead already. You’re a cipher. You got holes in you.”
Harry Strum. All gun. No gun, no Harry Strum.
I said, “Easy, Harry-boy. You’re parked in the wrong lot.”
“Maybe. But I bet against it. You heated?” a
Ta
“Honest. I like an honest guy. I appreciate it. PH do it for you real good. I won’t hurt you. You know Harry, pal. Harry’s done it a lot. - Harry can make it hurt. For you, it won’t hurt. I like an honest guy.”
MANHUNT
#
` Chalk one up for me. Harry Strum was talkative. That was good for my side. A real gun is all piano-wire, as temperamental as an Edwina Gray- son. He uncoiled off the divan, tall and lean and loose and graceful, and he came to me and stuck the muzzle of the snub-nose into my ear. He reached a hand into my holster, took out my pistol, backed toward the divan, tossed my gun to the floor, sat down. I took a step forward and the snub-nose came up like the head ofa reptile. “Where you going, pal?”
“Can I take my hands off my head, Harry?”
“Sure, fella.”
But I made it. I was one step nearer. I said, “What are you doing here, Harry?”
“You invited me.”
“I don’t remember, Harry.”
“You spit in his eye. What’d you expect? I come around with a medal?”
“Who?”
“Faigle.”
“You're making sounds, Harry. You’re not making sense.’
Now he had expression. He looked sad, Harry was sensitive. “Don’t talk like that, fella. Harry makes sense. Harry ain’t no two-bit gunsel. Har- ry’s an uptown boy. Harry don’t go for a kill for laughs. It’s business or it’s personal. Harry’s got other things to do.”
“What’s this?”
“Personal.”
“Somebody gave you a bum steer, pal.”
SKIP A BEAT
“Tm bettin’ against it.”
I pointed at a side table with a box. I took another step forward, said, “Cigarette? Can I smoke?”
“No. 39
But I made it Two steps. That was all I needed. He was within reach. Now he had to stay talkative. If he did, and I could distract him, even for a moment .. .
I said, “If it isn’t business, Harry, you ought to go and do your other things. Somebody threw you a curve.”
“Look, liar. You were looking for us last night, the word’s on the town. You caught up with Faigle in Ben- jie’s. His red-headed friend’s been swooning all day, but in between swoons, she delivers the picture. The picture’s you. Now go tell me you didn’t see Faigle in Benjie’s last night.”
“Sure I saw him.”
“Why?”
“Because he put the word out that he wanted to see me.’
“You kiddin’?”
“T wouldn’t kid you, Harry.”
“Why should he wanna see you?”
“Because he wanted to make a deal.”
“With who? With you?”
“With the law.”
“Your brain is leaking.”
“Listen hard, Harry. Faigle got word that the law had you two staked on avkilling you guys pulled yesterday. Faigle got the word good, positive identification by .a disin- terested witness. Faigle always had
: 33
brains. He knows I’ve got connec- tions. So he dropped the word for me to-see him. Think, Harry. How would I know to go to Benjie’s? Just ask that frizzy-haired girl- friend of his. The swooner. Ask her if Faigle didn’t tell her to blow out, that he wanted to talk to me alone.”
“You were carrying heat. You had it pointed.”
“Sure. I didn’t know what he wanted tiil he started talking. When I read today he got bumped, I fig- ured that for you.”
I was getting to him.
He said, “What did he want?” There was a gleam lurking in his eyes now.
“He wanted me to go to cops, and offer a deal. He’d throw ‘them you, if they’d let him cop a plea.”
He tensed. “Rat bastard.” Then he eased. “You're a liar.” Then he got crafty: “Who got chilled yes- terday? How?”
“Adam Woodward. Downtown near Pearl Street. You were at the wheel. Faigle used a long job.”
His knees came together and he quivered. I jumped him.
I knocked the gun out of his hands, yanked him up, swung from the bottom and it caught him on the mouth. It ripped the skin off my knuckles but it knocked his teeth clean through his upper lip, and he looked like he was smiling some sort of ghastly unearthly smile, the blood all over him, before he went down. I put a finger in his collar and
got him up. I grabbed the lip be- 34 i
tween my forefinger and thumb and pulled it clear. It was cut bad but the teeth didn’t show any more. I said, “Lets have music, pal.”
_ He was shaking like he had a chill. Harry was nothing without a gun. I said, “Lers have it.” I shoved him back onto the divan and I picked up the guns, my own in my right hand. Two-gun Chambers. All I needed were my spurs, my chaps, a horse, a prairie, and a beautiful girl. I didn’t need menace. Menace was crumbled on my divan slobbering blood through a gash on his upper lip like a crimson mustache. I said, “Let’s have it, Harry.”
“Look, shamus, a deal, you and me, let’s work it out, I don’t carry no grudge.” He lisped when he talked; the blood down over his chin. He rubbed a hand across his mouth, smearing his face.
I put his gun in my pocket, switched mine to the other hand, pulled him up by black greasy hair, and held, him half way up. ““Who gave you the contract, Harry? Spill, or I really work you over.” I threw him back on the divan.
-He looked at the gun in my hand. He said, ‘Shoot, for Chrissake. Shoot, bastard.”
I swung, not too hard, and’ the side of the gun opened more flesh, over the cheekbone. I didn’t like it but I was beginning to breathe hard. The guy couldn’t take it — Harry was nothing without a gun — and the tears were leaking from his eyes. “You're a killer, Harry,” I told
MANHUNT
him. “You’re neat. You’re a rod man. You're no strong-arm guy, give or take. I’m different. Look at me, Harry. I’m not going to shoot. I’m going to chop you, Harry.” I pulled him up by his tie. “I go for the gut now, Harry. Last call. Who gave you the contract?”
“Paul Kingsley.”
It took the wind out of me. I dropped him. He ripped down his tie, tore open his shirt collar. He was gasping, touching his hands to his face, discovering the holes, min- istering tentatively, looking at his bloody fingers. “I need a doctor, shamus. It’s backing into my throat. I’m choking.”
“Paul Kingsley. Why?”
“He didn’t tell me why. He give us a contract. He paid good.”
“How much?”
“Six big ones. Three apiece. Me and Faigle.”
I threw him a handkerchief. “Hold it to your lip.”
“I need a doctor.”
“You'll get a doctor. Keep your drawers on.”
I backed to a closet, pulled out a tape, recorder, and told him to talk. He talked. I called Police Head-
quarters. I0.
My place was lousy with cops. Harry Strum was patched and man- acled. The tape recorder had played back four times. New stuff had been added:, questions and answers: Par-
SKIP A BEAT
ker and Strum. Then Parker said, “Okay. We get a positive identifica- tion, and we’re through,” and then the party moved to the Manning Chapel on the ghoulish mission of pulling out the body afd having Harry point the finger. Harry pointed, and the boys took him downtown, and Parker and I re- paired to a neighborhood delica- | tessen where we had tea and lemon in a glass and salami sandwiches on rye bread, pickle on a side. I gave him the story, all of it, from Wood- ward’s original phone call. Parker lit a cigar.
“Quick figure,” he said. ‘“Kings- ley was a Commie, Woodward caught up with him, and Kingsley had him belted.”
“Good enough,” I said. “But who belted Kingsley?”
“We're creeping up on that.”
“How?” i ;
“We got a line on the guy who sold that knife. Foreign guy, now lives out in Staten Island, runs an antique business here in New York: The boys are out on it right now.”
“Will you let me know?”
“Soon as it happens. You’re do- ing all right. Five thousand bucks reward. It’s all yours, and good luck to you. You got the roscoe that cooled Faigle?”
“At your service, Lieutenant.” I took it out of the holster and gave it to him. The eyes of the man be- hind the delicatessan counter popped - like a pastrami had reared up and bitten him. Parker noticed. Parker
35
called: “Settle down, bo.” He flashed his shield. “I’m a policeman.”
“Yes, sir,” the man said, his eyes still popped. “It is an honor.”
- “Let’s get out of here,” Parker said. “You pay. You're the rich one.”
“My pleasure, Lieutenant.”
Outside, he said, “Wanna come downtown with me?” 3
I looked at my watch. ‘‘Can’t. Got business.”
“Always business.” He sighed. “Its a racket that’s getting better and better, private cop. Where’ll you be when we catch up with the knife seller?”
“Home.”
“Good. I'll be in touch. Drop you somewhere?”
“Webster Theater.”
He gave me a wry look, and we went to the car, and it was a quick trip with the siren going, and then I said, “Don’t forget to let me know,” and he said, “Don’t worry, I will,” and then I was handing the stage door man a note that I hadn’t _ even looked at, but it must have had the right words, because he said: “Yes, sir. Go right in. Dressing room’s one flight up, first door to the right.”
When I came in, Edwina Grayson was stretched on a couch in a cos- tume that gave off all of her body, the long, full, graceful legs exposed all the way to the hips. She said to cher dresser, a plump grey-haired woman: “All right, Anna. You can go out to the wings now.. And stay
36
there, please. I’m going to need an arm for support after the next num- ber.” :
“Yes, Miss Grayson. You’ve got five minutes.”
“PIL be out in three.”
The woman went away. Grayson sat up and flashed all her teeth at me. She stretched, ran her hands down the sides of her breasts. “Rest- ing. I have two more numbers. I hope you'll wait.”
*“Sure.”’
She got off the couch, and I ad- mired every inch of her. She sat down at the dressing table and started doing things to her face. I looked around. Dressing room: a couch, chairs, a table, a phone, a dressing table, a tall screen, an open door to a toilet and shower, and a tremendous trunk. I pointed at it. I said, “Nobody’s got enough cos- tumes to fill that.”
“You're right.” She talked -at my three reflections in the three mirrors of the table. “That mon- strosity contains things I haven’t seen for years. A performer’s trunk is like the attic of an old farmhouse.”’ She stood up. “Got to go be a balle- rina. Please wait.”
“Sure.”
I closed the door behind her, and I shot the bolt. I started in the toilet and worked my way out. It took time, but there was nothing, . and then I got to the trunk, which wasn’t locked, and that took more time, and then I came up with a fat brief-case out of the very bottom
MANHUNT
of the trunk. It was brass-locked and expensive and the discreet gold initials started the sweat going on the back of my neck: A.W. >
I folded the stuff back into the trunk, opened the bolt on the door, opened the door, and there she was, coming at me with her dresser. I still had the brief-case in my hand. She said, “You weren’t going, were you?”
I joined them in the room. Very carefully, initials downward, I laid the brief-case on the dressing table. I said, “Got to go. Made a phone call. I gotta go.” -
The black devouring eyes looked straight into mine. “But I have just one more number.”
“I should be home later. I wish you'd take some statistics.”
The grey-haired dresser came at me with pencil and paper and I recited my address and phone num- ber. I said, “I thought I could stay.” I started for the door.
She called: “You forgot your leather case.”
I came back. I kept looking at her.
A wrinkle formed on her fore- head. “I didn’t even see you bring ` it in. Ah, work. You concentrate even while you’re resting. You’ve caught me at my worst time, Peter. I usually don’t allow visitors here, not during a performance. I’d hoped you'd come after.”
She didn’t have another glance for the brief-case. I said, ‘‘Sister, I love you,” and picked it up.
SKIP A BEAT
Her teeth gleamed and one lid came down in a solemn wink. ‘‘Mu- tual, brother.”
The dresser said: “You must change, Miss Grayson.”
“Bye,” I said. ;
She waved at me. “Pll be in
touch. I don’t know when. But I'll be in touch. And don’t be surprised. - Ever. It’s bruited about that I’m unpredictable.”
I got out of there, and down the flight of iron steps, and out past the man at the stage door, and into a cab. I kept thinking about Adam Woodward. Sure, hed stashed it away, and in a place where nobody would look, not even the owner of. the trunk, and she was operating there for twenty weeks and he’d be able to reach in for it whenever he wanted. No bunk like a casual bunk, who would think to look there? But it must have been an impulse, probably slipped it in while she was on stage, and he worried about it: it was a topic he was to take up with me, and one on which he wanted advice.
The cab stopped and I paid fast and tipped big and flew past the doorman and upstairs I went to work on the lock of the briefcase and I just had it opened when’ the phone rang. It was Parker.
“If you come quick, you can be in on the finish.”
“Where?”
“Where Kingsley lived. ve got them all assembled. Move it, guy.”
“Be right there, Lieutenant.”
37
I scooped up the brief-case, and locked the door, and noted in pass- ing that Strum hadn’t even left a scratch. Downstairs, my doorman said, “This is for you.” He handed me a white envelope.
“Where'd you get it?” :
“A boy delivered it.’
“Thanks.” I shoved it into a pocket, breezed out, blew for a cab, got in, gave him the address, and turned on the roof light. It worked. I scurried through the con- tents of the brief-case and then the driver said, ‘“Two-sixty-two, mis- ter,’ and I was pushing the white button again.
Victor Barry opened the door. He looked at me like he’d swallowed cold coffee that he’d expected to be warm. “Just for the record,” he said. “I didn’t invite you.” Then he ushered me in.
They were all there, including Lincoln Whitney, and they all looked the same with the exception of Marcia, who was absolutely ravishing in an off-the-shoulder cocktail gown, black and clinging. There was also Parker and a lot of uniforms.
Parker said, “Okay, we got a quorum.” He- thumbed a cop. “Bring him in.’
The cop went out and came back with a small, bald man in a dark suit with shiny seams and a leathery face with more wrinkles than a fat man’s vest. Parker said, “Okay, we go from here. What’s your name, sir?”
“Anton Amsterdam.” The deep
38
voice was a surprise from so little a man. The accent was peculiar, it could have been French. -
“How long in this country?”
“Eight years. And I am now an American. And I am proud.” |
“What’s your business?”
“I deal in antiques.”
“Where you from, originally?”
“Antwerp. I had a fine business in Antwerp. I was —”
“All right,” Parker said. “I show you this knife, and I ask you if you recognize it.” Parker took the ob- ject from his pocket and handed it to Amsterdam.
“Oh, yes.’ He handled it fondly. “I have already informed you that I recognized it.”
Parker grinned. “I know. We’re doing it over. Sort of legal-like. You recognize the knife.”
“Yes. It is a form of push-button knife, not like the American switch- blade. It was made in Italy, during the Renaissance period, probably the sixteenth century. It is gold, completely handworked, with a cun- ningly concealed blade which springs straight out from the end upon pressure on this shielded button. Like so.” A murderous six inch blade appeared as out of nowhere. “And it is returned by pressure on` a lower button, also shielded. Like so.” The blade disappeared into the hilt. The thing now. looked like an ornate paper-weight. He returned it to Parker. He continued: ‘This item was part of my stock in Ant- werp. It is there I sold it.”
MANHUNT
“Bill of sale?”
“Of course. And also a record of the purchaser.”
“You have such record?”
“Yes, sir. I brought all my papers with me to America.”
“May I see such record?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Please hand it over.”
“I cannot.”
Parker looked puzzled. “Now look, Mr. Amsterdam —”
“T have already handed it over. You have it, sir.”
Parker laughed. Out loud. ‘‘Cop, maybe. Lawyer, no.” He drew a sheet from his pocket and gave it to Amsterdam. “I give you a sheet of paper. Will you please identify it?”
“It is a record. I kept such rec- ord in my old establishment in Antwerp. It contains the facts of the sale of the Renaissance knife.”
We had a diversion. Mark Dvorak walked up to Parker, said, “I think that’s enough of this courtroom poppycock. May I see the knife?” Parker showed it to him. Dvorak examined it and returned it. He went to Amsterdam, peered at him, smiled, said, “Of course.” Then he spoke in French to Amsterdam, who smiled, and then they started jab- bing French at each. other, and - practically embraced.
Then Amsterdam went to Parker and pointed an apologetic finger at Dvorak. “He is Mark Dvorak. A famous scientist. He is the one who ‘purchased the Renaissance item in Antwerp.”
SKIP A BEAT
“Okay,” Parker said. “Take him out.” A cop obliged. Then Parker spread his feet in front of Dvorak. “All right, sweet-boy, your turn.”
“Tt is correct that I purchased the knife. I think it a beautiful object. Useful also.” Rita gasped. Dvorak turned to her: “I mean, well, as a letter-opener, not as a weapon.” He turned back to Parker. ““How- ever, my dear Lieutenant, I dis- ` associated myself from it, oh, more than a year ago.”
“We're going to need more than just your word for that.”
“You're going to have more than just my word.”
“Disassociated. How?”
“I gave it away. As a gift.”
“Oh, like that? And now you’re going to tell me that the donee got lost on a mission to Greenland.”
“Quite the contrary. The donee is present in this room.” He bowed, turned, and produced an upturned palm. The fingers were pointing at Lincoln Whitney.
Parker sounded like he was gar- gling his throat. “Lincoln Whit- ney?”
Whitney approached, said, “May I see it, please?”
Parker showed it to him. Whitney turned it over in his hands a few times, smiled, gave Parker the knife. “It’s a fact, sir. Mark presented me with this thing about a year ago. I used it as a paper-weight in my of- finest
“Didn’t you miss it?”
“As a matter of fact, no. I have
39
a confoundedly cluttered desk. Prac- tically everybody in this room can attest to that.”
“Well...” Parker said. “You could have informed me, sir, that you had some connection with it.”
Whitney’s voice climbed up in his throat. “Inform you? Inform you, sir? Yes, I might have, had some- body shown me the knife. Nobody did, if you remember.” Purple be- gan to blossom in his ruddy cheeks and his jowls shook. “If this is some kind of veiled accusation, officer, you’re crazy. Anybody could have picked this damned thing off my desk. Hundreds of people have ac- cess to my office . . .”
“Tm not accusing you, Mr. Whit- ney —”
I said: “But I am.”
Silence fell like it was a house cav- ing in. Everybody stood stock-still. Parker’s mouth was open. Then Whitney came tearing at me, “Look, you crazy little whippersnapper . . . He reached his thick freckled hands for my throat.
I rapped him.
I hit him on one of his jowls and the other one trembled like jelly and he went over like a barrel of beer and when he came up there was a small .22 in his hand and the flap hung open from his jacket pocket. But I wasn’t having any. I hit him again, and the breath came out of him like exhaust from a bus, and then I clubbed the gun-hand, and the .22 bounced on the maroon rug. Then cops broke it up, and they had me
40
t
by the arms, and they had him by the arms, and the brief-case lay on the floor near the .22, and then Parker came at me, his eyes a-blaze and his face white, and he spluttered like fizz-medicine for heartburn.
“Pete . iq Peter. S-you crazy . . . you going out of your mind?
. what the hell’s the matter with you?”
I eased out of the cops’ hands. I said, “Take a look at that brief-case. It belonged to Adam Woodward.” Parker picked it up. “It’s crammed full of documents and every one of them says —’ I pointed — “that that fat slob is a Communist. Facts, figures, dates, and associates.”
Parker gasped. “Whitney?”
Whitney wriggled, but the cops held him.
I said, “Guys get old, they some- times go a little nuts. Guys with a lot of dough, sometimes they need something else. Power, maybe. Maybe under our kind of govern- ment a bastard like this can’t get enough. Maybe he wants to be a Commissar, or Mister Number One Man himself. Search me what he wants, but this guy was actively en- gaged in subversive activities with enemy agents of the top-bracket echelons. Somehow, Adam Wood- ward found out.”
Victor Barry said, “Its unbe- lievable.”
“That’s what Woodward thought. Figured maybe all the evidence, un- likely as it seemed, was a plant or something. So he called him in. And
MANHUNT
he put it to him direct. And he gave him a chance to straighten himself out. But he couldn’t. Three times he called him in, the last time was yes-
terday morning. Yesterday morning »
he told him he was going to do a series of articles on it, blast it wide open, and then turn the stuff over to the authorities.”
Dvorak said in wonderment: “Lincoln Whitney .. .”
“Yeah, Lincoln Whitney. And by the way, what are you doing here?”
He smiled. “I called from a lady- friend’s house.”
Parker said, “What’s this? What’s this? What’s the interruption?”
“There was a message,” Dvorak said, “that the police wanted me here. So I came. Please go on.”
“Yeah, go on,” Parker said.
“Whitney tried to stymie it by getting to the stuff. He had Wood- ward’s house searched, and his office, and he may even have gotten to his bank vaults. But the stuff wasn’t there.”
“Where was it?” Parker said.
“That’s not for public consump-
tion, Lieutenant. That’s for my statement downtown.” “Okay.”
“Yesterday morning, he was up against it. He’d get rid of Wood- ward, and hope against hope, the
stuff wouldn’t turn up, and — if and .
when it did, he’d cope with that then. But the major problem was Woedward, and Whitney had to act fast. He got to Kingsley, man-about- town, runner-with-hoods, wise-guy-
SKIP A BEAT
with-ambition. This part is a guess, but —”
“Keep guessing, guy,” said. “Look at him.”
The sweat was pouring out of Whitney, and he sagged in the arms of the cops, and his little eyes were bloodshot, fixed on me as though he were hypnotized.
“Okay, he got to Kingsley and he propositioned him:. get rid of Wood- ward and you’re my managing edi- tor, plus, maybe, a lot of dough. Kingsley got to two hoods named Faigle and Strum, and they did the job. Faigle is dead now, I killed him. Strum has confessed to the murder, implicating Kingsley.”
Parker said, “‘Let’s get back to yesterday.”
“Right. Woodward was murdered, and Kingsley was behind it, but the Commissar’s no dope. Kingsley was an open door, and there was a draft. Kingsley alive was a threat — two ways — it implicated Whitney in murder, and Kingsley might go pry- ing to find out why Whitney had arranged Woodward’s murder. Mon- day nights, anybody could visit Kingsley, nobody in the household intruded, and Kingsley answered the bell himself. So the Commissar came visiting, and he brung his trusty blade with him. That’s it.”
Parker said, “Good boy.” | “He even hired me today. I was supposed to look into the Kingsley killing. But roundabout he asked me a question: did Kingsley tell me why he had called me? The good old
4I
Parker
Commissar, plugging every hole. Matter of fact, Kingsley never called me. I came here on the Woodward thing, the old man had hired me as bodyguard, but he’d thought of it too late, he got killed as we left his office going to his garage. He was even plugging holes in advance, the old Commissar; part of my job was to keep him informed on how the cops were doing on Kingsley’s mur- der.”
“Take him out of here,” Parker said.
I said, “I’m going with you.”
II.
I was home, and it was two o’clock in the morning, and I was feeling good, and I wasn’t sleepy any more, I was over-stimulated. I’d promised Parker to be down in the morning for statements to complete his file. I had Scotch and water, repeat and repeat, and I thought about how maybe Whitney’s expensive lawyers might pull him through the murder rap because Kingsley was dead and Strum couldn’t finger the guy be- hind Kingsley, but the treason thing would stick, and one way or another, Whitney was more washed up than an infant’s diaper, but none of that was my business any more, my job was finished. There was a net of four hundred on Woodward’s fee, and I had earned five hundred from Whit- ney, and there was a five thousand
dollar reward to pick up, which made a grand total of fifty-nine hun- dred dollars, and here it was Tuesday night, and me over-stimulated, so I
- began to think about company and
phone numbers and who could be up this time of night, when I remem- bered the envelope my doorman had given me.
I got it and opened it and read: “Three o'clock is not the witching hour, but I’m coming to call at three
. o'clock. I hope you'll be home.”
I showered and I shaved and I dressed in black slacks and. black loafers and a white silk sporty shirt like the touts-wear at the track, and . I thought about her full long dancer’s legs and her wild black eyes and her gold-tan skin, and I celebrated in advance. I broke out champagne and iced a bucket and prepared snacks and cleaned up the apartment, and then it was three o’clock and my buzzer was making friendly noises and I skipped across and opened the door to — Marcia Kingsley.
I stood rooted like a tree. An old -
oak. y
“Well,” she said. “Don’t just stand there. You got my note, I hope.”
There’s a lot of them you can figure, and a lot of them you can’t, | but I defy you to figure the studious- spectacle type, with the no-rouge cheeks and the prim expressions.
‘Brother . . . them you can’t.
Nohow.
Ses
42
MANHUNT
DREW AN ACE, and I needed it.
With the pair that I already had, it established something substantial. Luck was going my way. I lifted my eyes from the cards to the face of Leo Gall, and I thought to myself again that it was like a fat olive with
features. His eyes were screwed back .
Leo was going to kill Andy Corkin, and there wasn’t a thing Andy could do except wait for the bullet...
BY
FLETCHER FLORA
into little puffs of skin as he exam- ined his hand, and his pimento-red lips were pursed into the shape of a wet kiss. It was a face I didn’t like, though I pretended to like it for my health’s sake, so I slanted my line of | vision off over his shoulder to the face of Hilda Hearn. ;
43
Hilda was tired. About midnight, she’d gone into the bedroom for a nap, but when she’d returned a couple of hours later, it was obvious that the nap had been too late and too short to do her much good. The muscles of her face had a tight, drawn look, her eyes were smudged, and her mouth was a soft scarlet smear. She slept too little and smoked ‘ too much, ate too little and drank
too much, did too much of every- thing. bad for her and too little of anything good, but tousled and smeared and worn to the bone, she was still a lovely assembly of female parts. Sprawled on the sofa with a highball in her hand, she combed free fingers through copper curls and sent me a smoke signal from smol-
dering eyes. “One grand,” Leo Gall said.
Beside me, between me and Leo as the betting went, Hugh Lawson cursed softly and bitterly, slapping his hand into the discard. His mouth and eyes were pinched at the corners by the long strain of losing, and his fingers shook as they fumbled a ciga- rette out of a limp pack and carried it to his lips. I did some quick calcu- lation and figured he must have dropped at least twenty grand. Just about what I’d contributed myself to the fat welfare of our host. I also figured Hugh could afford it about as much as | could, which was not at „all. He was a slim guy with a lean, hungry face and blond hair cut very short and square on top the way a lot of college boys wear it. He’d
H
got most of his education in pool rooms and clip joints, but he looked a hell of a lot like a college boy.
“Out,” he said.
I put my faith in three bullets and met the thousand. I couldn’t bump it, because I didn’t have a good bump left. A couple of hundred in chips, that was all.
“One raise, I’m a dead duck,” I said.
Leo laughed softly and wetly be-. hind a red, white and blue moun- tain. “‘Credit’s good, boy. With me, it’s always good.”
Around the circle go degrees, Kal Magnus sighed and rolled his soaked cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other. His hand struck the discard and flew apart, but his ex- pression was genial, signifying his indifference to luck that always ran one way or the other and would be good next time, or the next or the next, if it happened to be bad to- night. Being able to carry your luck comfortably from bad to good makes a hell of a difference in your atti- tude. Kal’s was bad tonight, all right, ten grand bad, but you’d have thought he was playing for matches.
He said, “If you’re worried about me, you’re wasting it. I’m out.”
Leo smiled. It was a very small smile, slightly sad. It was the one he’d been using all night. The one he used when he was looking down your throat.
“No raise? That’s too bad. Well, you paid to see them, Andy, so have | a good look.”
MANHUNT
He spread them slowly in ascend- ing order, five little cards worth my last grand, and whichever end you read them from, going up or down, they came out straight. Better any _ time than three lousy aces.
I added my junk to the discard and said, “Take it away.”
He took it. On the ring finger of his right hand was a diamond worth more than the pot. In the thick nest of black hair growing above the second joint of the finger, it looked like a glittering egg. And it was then, watching his fat hands rake in my dough, that I got one of those crazy ideas a guy sometiines gets when it’s late, too late, and the world’s gone sour. It was then that I began to think what fun it would be to clob- ber him. We began to settle the score, and all the time we were set- tling it, I kept seeing those fat white fingers with the black hair growing out of them. I saw them over and over in a dozen repellent engage- ments — dealing cards that brought me.no luck, dragging in the fat pots, creeping like slugs over the soft flesh of Hilda Hearn.
I closed my eyes and kept them ‘closed for half a minute, but the fingers were there behind the lids, so I opened them again, and the first thing I saw was his red, wet mouth. The lips were so soft and thick and full of blood. They looked as if they’d smash on his big white teeth like a glutted leech.
I went sort of blind, I guess. Blind to everything and everyone but Leo
POINTS SOUTH
A
Gall. And I functioned for a few seconds in the terrible urgency of a
_ single grim compulsion.
I stood up and leaned across the table and clobbered him.
He got a glimpse of knuckles coming at him, and his face had, for a split second, a ludicrous expression of surprise. His chair rocked back on its rear legs, hung for a moment in balance, and then crashed over. He hit the floor on his shoulders and skidded like a clown on ice, but there wasn’t really anything funny about it. His head smacked the sharp edge of the frame of the sofa Hilda was sprawled on, and there was a dull, sodden sound like the bursting of a
rotten melon, and he lay very still-
on his back with his fat gut rising like a strange and ugly growth from the floor, and it was not funny at all.
Hilda stood up very slowly, the movements of her arms and legs possessing the unreal quality of ac- tion in slow-motion. She stood look- ing down at Leo. “Jesus,” she said. “Oh, Jesus.”
Hugh Lawson’s breath whistled shrilly through his nostrils, and Kal Magnus heaved his ponderous bulk erect. He turned his eyes from Leo’s prone carcass to me, and his broad face was flat and still and hard as stone. ;
He said tonelessly, “You tired of living, Andy?”
I didn’t bother to answer. I went over and knelt beside Leo. I felt for
his pulse and found it. Then I passed
\
45
my hands swiftly over the obvious places for a gun, but there was no gun on him. I knew he would come out of it soon, and I didn’t want him coming with death in his hand. My death, I mean. Chances were it’d come soon enough. Soon and sud- den, if I was lucky. Soon and not so sudden, if I wasn’t.
Standing, I looked across the body at Hilda. Her lips were slightly parted, and the tip of her tongue ap- peared between them to slip slowly around the red circumference. Her eyes were hot and cloudy behind lids descending to veil an intense inner excitement.
On the floor between us, Leo stirred and shuddered and came up jerkily from the hips, leaning back for support against braced arms. He shook his head from side to side and brought one hand forward and up across his split lips. He sat there on the floor and looked in a stupefied way at the smear of blood on his hand, At last, moving like an old, old man, he got one knee under him and rose slowly to his feet. His eyes were as dull and lifeless as dirty smetal disks..They slid from face to face until they reached and remained on mine, and his voice was a gassy whisper escaping through loose teeth and blood and swollen flesh.
“You dirty bastard! You scummy little louse! Get out of here! Get the hell out of here fast! And right now you better start living it up. Right now you better start to live up all your God-damn life in the next
46
twenty-four hours, because maybe you'll have that long and maybe
_you won't.”
Hilda took a step toward him, lifting one arm with a jerk, as if she were breaking ice in the joints. “Look, Leo. It was just one of those crazy things. Andy just went nuts for a second, that’s all.”
He turned to face her. His man- gled lips were working, and a trickle of saliva léaked out of one corner of his mouth and down across his chin. “The hell you say! So we just forget all about it, is that it? So we kiss and make up? Well, it’s nice to know you’re so damn concerned about the lousy punk. If that’s the way it is, maybe you better get the hell out, too.”
“It’s not that way, Leo. You know it’s not that way.”
His voice broke controls, skidding up to a high, feminine scream. “Get out! Get the hell out, you God- damn tramp!”
She stood very still for a moment, her breasts held high against her dress, and then she turned without speaking and went into the bed- room. She returned immediately in mink and went over to the hall door and out, still without speaking and without looking at any one of-us. When she was gone, I helped. myself to my hat and followed. Behind me, Leo’s shrill voice said, “Don’t try to run, punk. Wherever you go, wherever you try to hide. . . .”
There was more, but I never heard it, because I cut it off with the
MANHUNT
‘door and went down the hall to the elevator. Hilda had left the car in the lobby, and when I'd brought it up, Kal and’ Hugh still hadn’t come out of the apartment. Taking time to clear themselves, I thought. Making certain that none of Leo’s trigger men came looking for them in whatever good time was conven- ient for killing. On the same trip, probably, when he came looking for me. God knows I couldn’t blame them. I could blame them in no way _ for not wanting to share Andy Corkin’s suicide. Descending alone in the elevator, I cursed myself in the bleak and passionless futility of irreparable idiocy, but it only came to the same result that most things had come to in the life of Andy Corkin. To nothing, that is.
Outside by the curb, the taxi was waiting with its engine running. The back door opened as I came out, and I scooted across the sidewalk and inside. The taxi lurched forward, swerving out into the traffic lane, and Hilda came over against me with a kind of restrained violence, her body twisting around to a frontal approach, her soft mouth hungry and aggressive. I snarled fingers in her short copper hair and pulled her face down so hard that I could feel her lips flatten and spread and her teeth click sharply against mine. Her breath was hot and labored, and after a long time she twisted away and fell back in the seat, her breasts rising and falling in slow cadence with deep, ragged gasps.
POINTS SOUTH
“Andy, she said. “Andy . . .”
“I just thought we’d better be making hay, honey.”
“Don’t say it. that way. Don’t ever say it that way.’
“You heard Leo. Live it up, i said. Twenty-four hours, he said.”
“Why, Andy? For God’s sake, why'd you do it?”
“I went blind, honey. I saw his fat fingers, and I thought of you, and I thought of the fingers and you to- gether, and so I smashed his ugly mouth. Besides, maybe it was just getting too late. Maybe I’m just a sour loser who should’ve stuck to penny ante. Who really knows what makes a guy do something crazy? He does it, that’s all. First thing he knows, it’s done.”
“Now what, Andy? What’re you going to do now?”
“Something pleasant, I hope. It’s up to you.’
“You’ve got to get away, Andy. Just till Pve had time to try to fix things.”
“Run?”
“Call it what you like. If I can’t get it fixed, Pll run after you.”
I shook my head. “There’s no place far enough, honey. And if there were, there’s nothing fast enough to get me there.”
“Jesus, Andy, you can’t just sit and wait for it. There has to be some- thing we can do.”
“There is. I said it was up to you. Something pleasant, I said.”
She came back then, and my hands crept in under mink, and it
47
was as if she was trying desperately to give me everything in no time at all, but a taxi’s no place for it, a taxi prescribes limits, and so pretty soon I said, “We’d better go to my place, honey.”
“That’s where we’re going. I told the cabbie.”
“Sweet baby.”
“I can’t stay, though, darling.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Tve got to get back.”
“To Leo?”
SeSi
“Don’t be a fool. He kicked you out. Remember?”
“Look, Andy. It was just because he’d been humiliated, and I’d seen it happen. It was just because his bloated little ego couldn’t stand my seeing it. When I get back, it’ll be different. By that time, he'll be wanting me so bad it'll be stronger than anything else, even stronger than the effect of my seeing him slapped in the chops like a fat brat.” Her voice sank to a thin complaint. “T’ve been earning the rent, Andy. Believe me, I earn it in plenty of service and a thousand futile damn regrets.”
“Don’t tell me. I don’t want to hear it.”
“Its for us, Andy. If I left him, it still wouldn’t clear things for us. He’d have us both killed. Can’t you see it’s for us? You’re the only one I really ever want it from, darling. Just you.”
“You're forgetting something, honey. I’m the guy who clobbered
48
him tonight. He’s going to have me taken care of, anyhow.”
“Maybe not. Maybe I can stop him. If I go back tonight, I think I can stop him. Not entirely, of course. He’ll want something out of you. Something to salvage his pig’s van- ity. But I can make it something less than death. Then it’ll be you and me, Andy, the same as now, and there'll be a- thousand nights to- gether to make up for this one.”
“Sure. You and me. You and me and Leo.”
“We'll find a way to eliminate Leo later on. A safe way. Sometime, somehow, we'll find a way.”
I was tired. I was a tired, broke, sick damn fool, but I had no particu- lar desire to die, and I wanted Hilda wholly or on shares, any way I could get her whenever she wanted to..
.come. I leaned back in the seat and
said, “You save it for us, A rll be waiting around.”
The tax^ wheeled into my street and stopped, and I got out and stood beside it on the curb. Hilda leaned out after me, her face lifted above her white, arched throat, and I leaned down and kissed her with- out touching her with anything but my lips. Then the taxi pulled us apart, and I went inside and upstairs alone.
What do you do with the twenty- four hours that may be your last? Get drunk? Get religion? Go crazy? I guess it depends on who you are, how much that next breath means to you. For what it signifies, I had
MANHUNT
one drink, one cigarette, and went to bed. I also slept. I slept long and well, and when I woke up I saw by the watch.on my wrist that it was far past noon. I got up and oriented, and I didn’t feel so good, but I didn’t feel so bad, either. Sort of so-so. Sort of like almost any garden variety day. I went into the bathroom and showered and shaved and brushed the fur off my teeth. I dressed and asked myself if I was hungry, and I decided that I wasn’t hungry but that I could do with a drink. I had the stuff available, rye and bourbon, but I didn’t want a drink alone in the apartment. I wanted a drink ina bar. This seemed a reasonable desire for a guy well into his last time around the clock, so I went out to gratify it.
I got the drink at Stony’s. Stony himself poured it for me. He asked me how I was, and I said I was all right. After drinking half of what _ hed poured,’ I almost believed it. Someone in a booth paid a nickel for Many Times, which isn’t a bad tune in itself, but it started me thinking about Hilda trying to make Leo see that I wasn’t worth killing, and that wasn’t good. I tried to quit thinking about it, but little details kept forc- ing their way into my mind which may or may not have been parts of the way it actually happened, so I lifted my drink to finish it, and in the process. I saw. something that made me think for a moment that it hadn’t happened at all. In the mirror behind the bar, I saw a character
POINTS SOUTH
named Jack Steap, a thin guy with a body like ten-gauge wire and a face like the edge of a razor. He was a guy for hire who worked for Leo Gall when Leo needed a fast, profes- sional job, and he was standing pre- cisely behind the empty stool on my right. One hand was in the pocket of his coat, very casually. I felt, sud- denly, dry and withered inside, all dead and done and ready for the fire.
He said softly in a thin tenor voice, “Okay, hero. Let’s go.”
I turned on the stool, and it was then that I realized that he hadn’t spoken to me at all. His eyes and voice were directed toward the cus- tomer on the other side of the empty stool. He’d come in a few minutes after me, and we were now the only ones at the bar. He looked like a col- lege guy. He was wearing a hat, but the hair that showed below it was blond, and I knew it was cut ‘short and square on top. I was a little sur- prised to see that he still had the price of a drink. Hugh Lawson, I mean.
If he ever recognized me, he didn’t’ show it. He looked over his shoulder at the gunsel and said, “You talking to me?”
“You, hero. Let’s go.”
“What the hell you about?”
Jack Steap showed his teeth in a smile that was all on the plane. No depth, no meaning. “You know, hero. Just for kicks, though, I'll brief you on it. Pm talking about your
dropping a bundle to Leo Gall last 49
talking
night. I’m talking about your com- ing back later to,reclaim it. It and the other lettuce Leo’d won, plus fifty grand or so he had lying around for household expenses. It was real messy, the way you did it. Smashing his skull that way. Leo’s head was a real mess.”
Hugh Lawson spun around slowly on his stool. His face had gone white and slack, and the first wash of fear was coming up into his eyes. His voice was a sick croak. ‘“You’re crazy! Leo was alive when I left. Kal Magnus and I went together.”
“I know. Kal went and stayed. You didn’t. You went back.”
“I didn’t! I swear I didn’t!”
“Sure you swear you didn’t. But you did. You were seen, hero. You were seen leaving the apartment by someone else who went back. Some- one on Leo’s team. So the word went out to Leo’s boys. So the boys sent me out to find you. So here I am. And so let’s go.”
A greenish tinge began to creep into the dead white of Lawson’s face. It was the face of a man who knew that nothing he could say would make any difference. His mouth labored to create sound, but the most it managed was a whimper, and his eyes slithered around des- perately for help that wasn’t there. They crossed my face, his eyes, but I don’t think I registered in them. Then he was off the stool and run- ning parallel to the bar. He must
have intended to duck around it and out the back way into the alley,
50
but he never made it. Jack Steap’s hand came out of his pocket, and there were two muffled detonations so close together that they almost blended, and Hugh Lawson stopped and turned half around and leaned back against the bar like a guy who might have stopped in for a short beer. After a moment, he slipped down to a sitting position and top- pled over sideways.
There was a long moment of dead silence in the bar, and then the five or six customers in booths got up and out before the cops got in.
Jack Steap walked down along the bar, stepped over Lawson’s body, and went on out the way Lawson had wanted to go.
I went that way myself. I went out into the alley and down the alley to the street and back to my apartment.
I went inside and closed the door and leaned back against it with my eyes closed. Something was hurting inside me, and the hurting was re- lated to the death of Hugh Lawson. He was a guy I hadn’t known well and had neither liked nor disliked, but I didn’t want him dead at the hands of a thin weasel like Jack Steap for the sake of a fat pig like Leo Gall. Not even when his death was maybe my salvation.
Hilda’s voice said, “What’s the matter, darling?”
I opened my eyes, and there she was. She was there like something beautiful and warm and real that I needed like hell. I started for her,
MANHUNT
and she started for me, and we met and merged somewhere between our starting places.
“It’s all right, darling,” she said. “‘Leo’s dead.”
“I know he’s dead. So’s Hugh Lawson. I just saw him shot down in Stony’s place.”
“Leo’s boys think Hugh’s the one who killed Leo.”
“I know. That’s what the gunsel .
said.”
“Don’t you see what it means, darling? It means you and me in the open. You and me without a worry. We can go away for awhile. South, I think. Somewhere a long way south of the border.”
“Using what for money?”
She broke out of ‘my arms then and went for her purse in a chair. It was a big job, almost as big as an overnight bag, one of these things on a strap that’s worn over the shoulder. She picked it up and brought it back and turned it upside down, and paper began to fall out. Green paper. I thought it’d never quit falling. It fell and spread and piled up around my feet.
I raised my eyes to her face, and it was still the loveliest face I'd ever seen, smooth and creamy under copper, with a bright and gifted mouth and smoky eyes.
“You,” I said. “You killed Leo and put the finger on Lawson.”
She shook her head. “No. I put the finger on Lawson, all right, but I didn’t kill Leo.”
“Lawson really did, then?”
POINTS SOUTH
“No. Neither me nor Lawson.”
“Who?”
She looked at me and smiled-and said, “You did, darling.”
I reached out and took her by the shoulders and dug in. “What the hell’s this? I never went back there.”
“I know you didn’t. Look, Andy. When I was a kid on southside, I used to watch the fellows play ball in the street. One day a kid we called - Fats got hit in the head with a bat. He was out for a few minutes, and his head hurt for a while, but pretty soon he started to play again, and it was almost half an hour later when he dropped dead. Concussion acts like that sometimes, and that’s‘ the way Leo died. You remember how his head smacked the sharp frame of the sofa? He got up and chased us out, and he got ready for bed, and he dropped dead.”
“Wait a minute. The gunsel said his head was a mess.”
“That was just for looks, darling. He was already dead when I got back. If I’'d left him the way I found him, it would’ve been easy to figure what had really happened.”
“So you mess him up and help yourself to his money and finger an innocent guy for the rap.’
“For you, darling. For you and me.’
“You, think I’d touch the lousy money now? Or you?”
“Yes, darling. The money and me. Without us, it’s so much paper. With us, it’s more fun than you ever
_ dreamed of in that place we'll find
5.
below the border.”
I kept on looking at her, and I kept*on wanting her, in spite of everything, and I told myself that there’s a point beyond which you ‘can’t go. You can skirt the dark edge, you can do things that later make you sick to your stomach, but
there’s a point beyond which you can’t go if your soul is ever to be your own again. That’s what I told myself, and I told myself that I had reached the*point.
Now PII tell you something: it’s hot down here. It’s hot as hell below the border.
>
52
MANHUNT
Other guys fathers played with them and liked them. Bruce's Sather hated him — so Bruce decided to do something about it.
BY JOHN M. SITAN
RUCE BARLOW took a long puff on B the cigarette and blew the smoke out. He had taken a pack of cigarettes from one of the several cartons his father kept in a closet off the kitchen. Bruce was taking an-
other puff when he was struck on the side of the head and knocked to the basement floor. The open pack of cigarettes scattered around him. He
had been sitting on an apple crate behind the furnace. His father stood ©
eE Uae
over him, stern-faced. It was the first time Bruce had ever tried smok- ing. He was eleven years old.
Bruce had two other brothers and a sister. The two brothers were a year older then he, and twins. His sister was three years older. Bruce was the only one out of the family who had ever stood up to his father. He had been punished often and it was seldom that his back wasn’t angry with purple welts. He had not, as his brothers and sister, learned to give in completely to his father’s iron will.
Bruce looked up at his father for a moment and then scrambled to his feet and ran into the back yard. His father shouted and came out of the basement a moment later carrying a length of lath he had taken up from the kindling pile for the fireplace. He didn’t see Bruce fof a moment and then located him on the other side of the garden patch next to the tomato vine racks. He started purposefully toward his son and was hit by the first ripe tomato of the four Bruce held lightly in the crook of his arm. The second tomato missed and the third hit an elbow. The fourth was a strike on the fore- head and left a dribble over the en- raged man’s face.
Bruce turned and ran up the alley as his father stumbled in blind anger across the garden patch toward him. When he turned at the alley’s en- trance to run up the street he glanced ~ back to see his father standing in the alley opposite the back yard gate.
24
He was shouting. and one fist was raised in an angry gesture.
Bruce did not stop running until > he reached the cave he had found above the river that wound through Leavenworth, the small town he lived in. He waited a long time back
~in the shadows of the cave. Occa-
sionally he looked out. When he had first reached his cave he had been short of breath and his body had shaken uncontrollably.
The tears did not come until he had been there a while. When he was finally quiet he began to mold some of the clay from the wall of his cave . into balls. When he had formed four balls he made two large ones. It was a painstaking process but he finally molded the shapes into the recogniz- able form of a family group. Three boys, a girl and a mother and father. When he had finished this work he paused to stare at them. He looked down at the river after a while and then ran down to its bank. The clay figures were left behind. The father and one boy figure had been paired apart from the rest of the group. A small twig served as a threatening father’s hand over the clay lump representing the boy.
A pathway followed the winding course of the river. Bruce walked along it. Sometimes he marched mili- tarily and other times he kicked and shuffled his feet. At one place the pathway lifted up over a bluff leav- ing the river below. When Bruce looked down from the edge of the -
bluff he saw a man and boy sitting
MANHUNT
beside the river fishing. He recog- nized the boy as a friend of his from school. The man was the boy’s father. As Bruce watched the man put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and they both laughed.
There was a loose rock on the path and Bruce picked it up and threw it violently in the water not far from the two below. He ducked back so they could not look up and see him. The laughter, stopped and Bruce quickly ran back into the woods where he could not be seen if the father and son should come up to the bluff to investigate. He was smil- ing as he ducked behind a bush. He lay behind the bush fór several min- utes and when no one appeared he frowned. Suddenly he gritted his teeth and kicked violently into the dirt and pounded his fist against the earth. He waited longer but no one came up the bluff to investigate. He began crying, holding his sobs in, and again pounded his fist on the earth. For several moments he pounded harder and harder. Finally his desperate anger abated and he walked to the edge of the bluff again and carefully peered over the edge.
The boy and man were still fishing quietly below. It was a contented scene. They had paid no particular “attention to Bruce’s thrown rock. The boy had just caught a fish and his father was watching him take it from the hook and drop it in their fish creel. For an hour Bruce watched the two below until they finally left. When they walked away the man
MY ENEMY, MY FATHER
put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and they talked earnestly. Before they went out of sight around a bend of the river they were laughing to- gether again. ;
When Bruce got back to his cave the little figures he had molded earlier were where he had left them. He sat down for a while and listlessly moved the group of mother and chil- dren with his finger. He did not touch the father and boy. He sat quietly for a long while and then as it started getting dark he stood up. He took a small piece of chocolate from his pocket and ate it hungrily. His glance fell on the figures of the boy and father. Stooping he care- fully twisted the arms of the father doll off. When he had done that he smiled triumphantly and picked the ~ doll up and jabbed at it with his finger. It was almost shapeless when he clenched his fist and slammed it into the blob of clay that had been the father doll. He dropped the lump of clay at the cave entrance way and began stamping on it. He did not stop until he had stamped the lump into the ground.
It was almost totally dark when he left the cave. He walked slowly home stopping before a drug store on a corner two blocks from his home. He finally went in. The druggist did not bother Bruce when he began thumb- ing through comic magazines. Bruce had looked at a half dozen when his gaze began wandering from_ the comic magazine he held and to the door. He was chewing on his lower
55
lip when he finally got up and left the drug store.
At his home he found the back porch light on. He stood for awhile looking at the house from the alley. Suddenly the door opened and one _ of his brothers brought out a paper sack of garbage and put it in the garbage can. As his brother was go- ing back to the house the back door again opened and his father stood there looking out into the dark. Bruce watched from behind a tele- phone pole in the alley until the door closed. When the door had re- ‘mained closed for several moments he walked to the gate and stood there with his hand on the latch catch. The back door to the house remained closed. Finally Bruce went ` into the yard. He walked to where he could see his family. They were - sitting down to dinner. He saw that no plate had been set out on the table for him.
Bruce almost ran when his father turned and looked directly at him. But it was dark where he stood and his father had not in reality been looking at him. Bruce watched as his father handed around a large pot roast. It was followed with potatoes and gravy and a salad.
When Bruce did move he went to a basement window. He felt with the tips of his fingers until he found a tiny hole drilled at one edge of the window. He took a curved wire from his pocket and inserted it in the hole. A ¢atch slipped inside and _ the window opened easily.
>. 56
- It was dark in the basement and Bruce lowered himself carefully through the window. Moving with his arms outstretched across the floor he found the first of three beams that supported the floor above. Stepping up on a crate he reached into a space between the floor stringers and took down a small ` flashlight.
Bruce held his hand over the end of the flashlight before turning it on. The light showing was controlled by the clenching or loosening of his fist. When he was under the dining room he stopped to listen to the muffled voices above. He stood listening un- til the meal was over. His mother was worried about him. His father was not. His father expected him to come home as he had before when hed run away. Bruce heard his. father instruct one of his brothers to get him his razor strop from upstairs as the meal ended. His father also ordered his brothers and sister to their rooms. His father was not in the habit of whipping him before an audience. i
Shortly afterward his mother- went to her sewing room. His father’s footsteps sounded heavy as they went to the kitchen. He heard the back door open and a moment later his father’s legs went by the base- ment window against the shining porch light. Bruce watched as his father look around the yard and finally came back to the house. The footsteps went into the living room. There was the slight scraping sound
MANHUNT
as a chair was moved on the floor above.
_Bruce turned on his flashlight again and searched in a corner until he found a coil of piano wire hidden at the back of a shelf holding cans of paint. When he had uncoiled the wire he went to the stairway leading down into the basement and fas- tened one end of the steel wire to a hooked nail on the stairwell. He stretched the wire across a stair five steps up from the basement floor and fastened it to another nail. He tested the wire to see that it was tight and then went to the basement door and unlocked it. He had gone to the door when he heard his father stir upstairs. He stood by the door until he was sure that-his father was moving no longer.
Bruce next uncovered a card- board box hidden under stacked newspapers. He took the splintered remains of several broken glass gal- lon jugs from it. He placed the broken shards of glass at the bottom of the stairwell. He then stood on the wash tub to unscrew the light bulb that lighted the utility room and the bottom of the stairwell. He replaced it with a burned-out bulb that had been in the cardboard box. The good bulb he put on the shelf with the paint cans.
Using his flashlight he traced a pathway from the stairway to the basement door. He removed a basket
of dirty clothes from his pathway — and tested its clearance by retracing it silently in the dark several times. When he was ready Bruce tipped over a crate near the basement door
-and listened. His father’s footsteps
were quick and the door leading down into the basement opened sud- denly. His father stood in the square of light at the top of the stairway.
Bruce heard his father call and then an exasperated oath as the light switch snapped back and forth. When his father finally came down the stairs Bruce waited with calm inviolability. There was a sudden grunt and a startled cry.
Bruce ran forward and removed the wire that was now slack. He heard his father groan and a ques- tioning call from his mother up- stairs. In a moment he was out of the basement door and back in the dark alley.
Bruce waited in the alley until an ambulance came. After a while his father was taken out to the am- bulance. His father’s face was cov- ered with a sheet. A man was hold- ing his mother and leading her back into the house.
Bruce waited a moment longer until the ambulance was driving away before. he opened the back yard gate. He deliberately let it slam loudly. He was humming under his breath as he walked ey up to the
kitchen door.
“HL
MY ENEMY, MY FATHER
57
The Murder Market —
BY H. H.
YSTERY fans can, and will, M argue all night as to the proper place of humor in the mur- der novel. Most will admit that a certain amount of wit and lively ob- servation is not amiss in any type of writing, and that a judicious proportion of humor in murder has a tradition that goes back through Hammett and Doyle to Poe, and even beyond him, to the murder plays of Shakespeare and Euripides.
For those of you who, like me and Euripides, relish a little absurdity along with your tragedy and in- tensely regret the absence from re- cent publishers’ catalogs of the two masters of humorous homicide, Alice Tilton and Richard Shattuck, the most diverting item in many months is Richard Powell’s Say It With Bullets (Simon & Schuster, $2.50). It’s hard to think of anybody, in or out of the mystery field, who writes quite such smoothly enter- taining dialog as Mr. Powell, or who has quite so much fun pitting hero and heroine in an all-out Battle of the Sexes while allowing each to be a likable human individual rather than a slick automaton. He has a good, almost Woolrich-like sus- pense-pursuit plot to frame his hu- mor this time, and incidentally he conducts the reader on a guided tour
58
HOLMES
of Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and California, with descriptions at least as accurate as those in any guide- book, and much funnier. In all, it’s a most neatly blended novel, and one only wishes that such charm- ingly unserious specimens turned up more often.
As often happens, the latest Mr. and Mrs. North novel is less overtly funny than their radio and TV ad- ventures. The Lockridges’ Curtain for a Jester (Lippincott, $2.50) is, indeed, a sort of diatribe against the crude humor exemplified by the practical joker and novelty-shop gagster, and draws so poisonous a pen-sketch of such a character that one greets his murder with cheers. The stock and workings of a Novelty Emporium make for some strikingly macabre situations; the detective puzzle is a strong and solid one; and serious though the general tone may be, there are bound to be cap- tivating moments of humor in any novel featuring Pam North, who this time is trying to prove that cats understand human character —a theory which markedly fails to im- press the cats, who have better things to do.
You may remember a fme hu- morous story of swindling and a sort
of screwball justice, The Loaded
Tourist, in Manhunt, March, 1953; now that and six similar adventures of Simon Templar are gathered to- gether in Leslie Charteris’ -The Saint in Europe (Crime ‘Club, $2.75), the first new Saint book in five years and a wholly amusing one.
End of humor in recent detection; now to more serious matters:
CHARACTER AND KILLING: William Campbell Gault moves from a fine novel of prizefighting (The Canvas Coffin) to an equally detailed and believable study of Little Theatre people in Blood on the Boards (Dut- ton, $2.50). Prose and plot-move- ment are as hard-punching as in the boxing story; and I can’t think of a book in a dozen years that has so accurately shown the real, unglam- orous side of hardworking amateur acting. I’m beginning to think there’s no subject this boy Gault can’t write about sharply and con- vincingly. Val Gielgud essays a highly complex job of detection-by- character-analysis in Ride for a Fall (Morrow, $3), the story of a minor British diplomat who jumped off a New York windowledge . . . be- “cause he was a traitor, or because he was a failure in his private life? The answer is something of an anti- climax; but the buildup is skilled and suspenseful, and deals with Communist espionage in a far more “plausible way than most recent fic- tion. Another complex and tor- mented figure is the hero of Gordon Davis’ I Came. To Kill (Gold Medal, 25c), an innocent fugitive from a
THE MURDER MARKET
murder charge so embittered as to hire out as a professional assassin in a South American revolution. The echoes of Hemingway’s Bell may toll a little too’ frequently; but it’s still an absorbing off-trail suspense item. The echoes in Wade Miller’s South of the Sun (Gold Medal, 25c) are those of Vicki Baum’s Grand Hotel — same technique of a half- dozen unrelated personal plots grad- ually crossing in a luxury hotel, this time in Acapulco, with the plots fused by the almost innocent debut as sneakthief and murderer of an unobtrusive bellhop. It’s an adroitly told story —and might make as good a film as the Baum classic. THE SCIENCE OF DEDUCTION: An- drew Garve, who has in the past shown himself equally skillful at the deductive puzzle and the novel of character, combines them in The Cuckoo Line Affair (Harper, $2.50), which starts off as a serious study of an admirable aging eccentric who is unexpectedly charged with assault in a railway carriage, and goes on to an elaborate “pure” detective story of timetables and tide-schedules, at- tractively investigated by a Bright Young Couple of mystery writers. The focal character of the eccentric gets somewhat lost; but in exchange you'll receive much of the best for- mal detection to cross the Atlantic in some time. Shortly after this col- umn appears, America’s master of strict deduction, Ellery Queen, will celebrate his Silver Anniversary as a mystery writer. I haven’t seen the
59
Anniversary book yet, but in prepa- ration you might look into The Scar- let Letters (Little, Brown, $3), one of the most experimental Queen jobs,
in which Ellery spends 194 pages as |
onlooker to a curious love affair, and then steps in as deductionist to solve the resultant. murder. Some old Queen fans may, like me, find it dis- appointing — and others refreshing. Even further off the deductive trail is Josephine Tey’s recently revived 1929 novel, The Man in the Queue (Macmillan, $2.75), in which the most orthodox and intelligent Scot- land Yard methods of Inspector Grant lead to a most unorthodox (and, for a reviewer, unmentionable) conclusion. Prose and characteriza- t on are as subtly flawless as in more recent Tey books; and whatever you think of the ending, you'll have a wonderful time reaching it.
SHERLOCK HOLMES: The character of the greatest deducer of them all is superlatively analyzed in S. C. Roberts’ Holmes & Watson: A Mis- cellany (Oxford, $3), a collection of all Dr. Roberts’ many writings on the subject over a period of twenty- odd years, adding up to probably the best book on the immortal detective since Vincent Starrett’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.
THE FACTS OF DEATH: This depart- ment doesn’t usually list paperback reprints; there are too many to keep up with. But an exception must be made for Russell Crouse’s collection of twelve unsolved New York mur- ders, Murder Wont Out (Pennant,
60
me 25c), scarce and out of print for
twenty years, and eminently de- serving revival at this attractive
‘price; among American collections
of murder essays it ranks not far after the books of Edmund Pearson. The Girl in Potson Cottage by Rich- ard H. Hoffmann, M.D., and Jim Bishop (Gold Medal, 25c) is more crudely written and less objectively reported than previous volumes in this fine series of condensed trial transcripts; but its subject — the sordid, shocking, and still perplexing Creighton-Appelgate case on Long Island in 1935 — is so intensely fas- cinating that one could overlook worse flaws in this first full-length treatment.
. - . AND SOME OTHERS
Cartoon books seem to be getting more and more popular of late — and deservedly so. Several fine ones have appeared of late: for example, a devastating book of sketches en- titled Dreams of Glory by William Steig (Duell, Sloan and Pearce, $3.95). For those who’ve seen the omnibus Szeig Album, reviewed here last month, no further word is neces-- sary. For the others: this is the first appearance in book form of Steig’s famous series depicting those gran- ` diose fantasies you, too, used to have when you were younger. There’s a hilarious ring of truth to the book; if nothing else, these drawings will enable you to understand your own bewildering offspring a lot better.
Another highly recommended car-
‘MANHUNT
toon book is Walt Kelly’s latest ad- dition to the saga of the world’s most surprising possum: The Pogo Papers (Simon and Schuster, $1.00). Pogo- philes don’t need this recommenda- tion; they’ve undoubtedly pur- chased the book already. If you’re one of the few benighted souls who has never heard of Pogo, Albert Alligator, Churchy the Owl, Porky- pine and the other inhabitants of Okefenokee Swamp Township, this book will serve as a formal introduc- tion. There’s nobody else quite like Walt Kelly now in print — which is a shame.
The Best Cartoons from France (Simon and Schuster, $2.95) is a somewhat uneven collection of Gal- lic humor which is, nevertheless, worth your attention. Though an occasional cartoon may not strike you as hilarious (and though a few, frankly, are bewildering) the general level of the book is high, and it con-
tains several master-strokes, from the drawing-boards of F rance’s fore- most cartoonists.
Not a cartoon book, but having something of the same quality in its incisive, colorful prose pictures, Monster Midway by William Lind- say Gresham definitely deserves your attention. Gresham, of course, is the ` author of Nightmare Alley, and Man- hunt'readers will recall his fine story, Teaser, which appeared some issues ago. In Monster Midway his subject is that completely different way of life known as “‘the carnival,” and it ranks among the most startling books of the last few years. Gresham is an expert knife-thrower, magician and “mind reader” and has tried his hand at fire-eating; he obviously knows his subject and loves it. He'll make you love it, too. The book is published by Rinehart, and priced
at $3.75. aa
—
THE MURDER MARKET
61
HE THING I want ET get across is that I’m an honest man. In all my years of public service I’ve never accepted a dis- honest cent.
In most other re- spects too I think I’m what society calls a “good citizen.” Pm a kind father and a good husband. I’m active in church and com- munity affairs. And even beyond that, Pve devoted my whole life to public service.
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It isn’t a matter of honesty. There’s nothing else I can do. lve got to play along with the syndicate — or else.
BY RICHARD DEMING
At the moment I serve as district at- torney of St. Michael County.
In case my stressing of my respectability gives you the idea I am building up to confessing some crime, I'd better explain that I’m not. I don’t want to create a false im- pression. I merely have a choice to make.
No matter how I choose Pll remain a solid and respected citizen. If I choose
one way, I can look forward to spending the rest of my life pleas- antly but unexcitingly in private law practice, probably at a better in- come than my salary as district attorney. If I choose the other way, almost certainly I will be my state’s ` next governor and possibly, though I admit improbably, even end my political career in the White House.
The only way I can explain my position is to say I drifted into it.
Each compromise with my moral.
precepts seemed so small at the time, and the consequences of not com- promising seemed so drastic, even now when I look back I can’t hon- estly blame myself.
I can’t really blame the System either, for that would merely be blaming all humanity.
My first contact with what I have come to think of as the “System” was over the Max Bloom case, when I was a green young assistant district attorney. I was twenty-six at the time, and the junior of eight as- sistants.
Max Bloom was a bookie, and there was nothing exceptional about the case. Two officers had raided his bookshop, caught Max in the act of accepting bets and placed him under arrest. Since there seemed to be no possible defense, I contemplated a single appearance in court, where
‘the defendant undoubtedly would
plead guilty and accept the usual ines =" ;
Instead, Big Joey Martin dropped in to see me. :
THE CHOICE
I knew who Big Joey was, though I had never before met him. He was
political boss of the Sixth and Sev-
enth Wards, and also reputed to have some sort of connection with organized gambling. He was a huge man, at least six feet four and weigh- ing probably two hundred and sev- enty pounds. Some of this was mus-
cle, but a good deal of it was plain
fat.
He came into my cubbyhole-office without knocking, carefully lowered himself into a chair, squirmed until he was comfortable and began fan- ning himself with his hat. ,
“You George Kenneday?” he asked when these preliminaries were over.
I nodded.
“I guess you know who I am.”
I nodded again. “Joey Martin.”
For a moment or two the fat man merely fanned himself with his hat. Then he said, “They tell me you got the prosecution against Maxie Bloom.”
I nodded for the third time.
“Somebody slipped up. It ain’t Maxie’s turn for two more months, and he’s sorer than hell about losing two weeks’ business. I tried to tell him Id get his next tumble post- poned two months overtime, but I can’t talk no sense into his head. He’s kind of a psycho, you know. I’m afraid he'll blow his lid in court and start yammering to the judge about getting his protection money back. So I think we better work out a dismissal or something.”
63
I looked at the man with my mouth open. “Are you asking me to drop charges against a lawbreaker?”
“A lawbreaker?”’ Joey Martin re- peated in a surprised tone. ““Maxie’s a bookie, not no criminal.” He eyed me narrowly, then said, “I ain’t ask- ing you nothing if you’re going to get horsey about it. I guess I just took it for granted you knew the setup. Forget I bothered you.”
Heaving himself to his feet, he nodded indifferently and ambled out of my office. And I was so flabber- gasted by the whole performance, I just sat there open-mouthed and watched him go.
Fifteen minutes later I was called into the office of First Assistant Dis- trict Attorney Clark Gleason.
“How are you, George?” Gleason said in a friendly voice, waving me to a chair. “Beginning to get the feel of things?”
I told him I was getting along fine.
“Reason I called you in, George, I’m taking over the Max Bloom.case myself. Mind dropping the folder next time you pass my office?”
Carefully I folded my hands in my lap. “Has Joey Martin been to see you, Mr. Gleason?”
“Well, yes. As a matter of fact, he just left.”
“I see. Mr. Gleason, only a few minutes ago Joey Martin practically ordered me to get Bloom’s charge dismissed. He said something about protection money and that Bloom’s arrest had been a mistake in timing
on the part of the police. When I
64
_taken, Mr.
started to jump him, he seemed more surprised than alarmed, and walked out. Now I learn he’s been to see you, and you’re taking over Bloom’s case. I think I’m entitled to . an explanation.”
Gleason examined me thought- fully for a long time before answer- ing. Eventually he asked, “Why do you think I’m taking over the case?”
I said with a mixture of caution and belligerence, “I must be mis- Gleason, but on the surface it looks as though this office takes orders from a two-bit racke- teer.””
Gleason’s smile was rueful, but it didn’t contain any anger. ‘This office doesn’t take orders from any- one, George. But sometimes we have to do political favors. Do you know who Joey Martin is?”
“Sure. A professional gambler.”
“A little more than that, George. Joey is the boy who delivers the votes down in the Sixth and Seventh Wards. All the votes. Election after election he turns out a solid majority for the party. In return he occasion- ally asks a small favor. Never much of a favor and never very often. It’s just practical politics to go along when he asks.”
“Even if you have to'violate your oath of office?”
“Oh, for cripes sake, George,” Gleason said impatiently. “Max Bloom isn’t a murderer or bank rob- ber. Everybody knows bookshops are tolerated in St. Michael and what raids are made are only token
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raids. Two weeks after his trial Max would be back in business in the same spot even if we got a convic- tion.’
I said, “What TAE saying in effect is that this office knows the police deliberately protect illegal bookshops. Even that they accept protection money for it. Yet we con- done it because it wouldn’t be prac- tical politics to crack down. Why doesn’t the D.A. swear out warrants for everybody concerned, including a few crooked cops?”
“Because next election there would be a new district attorney. If you intend to follow a political ca- reer, George, now is as good a time as any to learn the hard facts of po- litical life. We’re aware that the po- lice to some extent connive with Joey and his kind, and we don’t ap- prove of it. But attempting to stop it would be tilting at windmills. No one in this office has any direct con- nection with men like Joey and no one receives any payoff. But as a matter of practical politics we some- times have to rub the backs of such men, because its the votes con- trolled by ward leaders like Joey Martin that keep our party in power. Call it a violation of public trust if you want, but what’s the alterna- tive? Kicking Joey out of the office and having two wards refuse to back John Doud for D.A. in the next primary?”
“Your job and mine aren’t elec- tive,” I said. “We're appointed.”
“By the D.A.,” Gleason agreed.
THE CHOICE
“Whose job zs elective. And you’re only kidding yourself if you think your appointment was entirely on merit. Weren’t you sponsored by someone?”
Reluctantly I admitted, “My Un- cle Crosby is an alderman.”
When I left Gleason’s office there was no question in my mind that the whole system was wrong in spite of the first assistant D.A.’s glib argu- ment about practical politics. But I couldn’t think of anywhere to go with a complaint. It would have been silly to go to the police, who seemed to be party to the arrange- ment. And just as silly to expect action from the D.A. or any other elected official who owed allegiance to the System.
In the end I did nothing, justify- ing myself by dẹciding I would have taken some kind of action if I had been asked to get Max Bloom a dis- missal myself. But since the case had been taken out of my hands, there really wasn’t any action I could take.
Looking back, I still can’t see any- thing I could have done. I have comé to regard the Max Bloom case as the first compromise with my principles, but in a way it wasn’t a compromise at all. At least not in an active sense. All I actually did was accept a situa- tion about which I could do nothing. How many sincerely honest men in the same position would have done anything else? »
Would you have?
It was nearly four years before I 65`
was called upon to make the next big compromise, though in the mean- time I found myself making more and more small ones. Even now I can’t put my finger on any one point of my career and say, “Here is where I should have resisted,” because it was a gradual process. The mere mental act of accepting the System as a necessary evil of politics opened the way for greater and greater de- partures from what I knew to be right.
Yet if I had the chance to live this period over, I know my reactions would be the same. There was no fighting the System. Either you con- formed, or you retired to private life. And since the party had begun to regard me as a bright young man with a political future, I conformed.
My growing influence in local party affairs was largely the result of the reputation I was gaining as a prosecutor. Actually this reputation was based almost entirely on a single murder case which the papers seemed _to think I had handled with some brilliance, but the party didn’t care about that. What counted was that I had the public’s confidence. As a result when Clark Gleason resigned to accept a job in the State’s At- torney’s office, I was appointed first assistant district attorney in his place.
During this four years I learned a lot about how the System operated. For the most part what Clark Glea- son had told me was quite true. Most elected officials were honest
66
men who had no direct connection with the underworld-controlled po- litical machine which maintained them in office. Yet the influence of ward leaders such as Joey Martin was tremendous. In return for the votes necessary to elect them, offi- cials usually found it expedient to wink at the illegal side activities of Joey and his kind, and occasionally grant favors which came close to criminal conspiracy.
At the time I was appointed first assistant district attorney I hadn’t held, or even run for, any elective office, but I was aware of hints within the party that I might make a good district attorney when old John Doud finally decided to retire. I kept these hints alive by actively engaging in party affairs, which brought me in frequent contact with local political bosses.
With an eye on my future, I de- liberately cultivated friendly rela- tions with these men, with the result that I was asked for a lot of minor favors. For example, Willie Tamm, president of the Dock Worker’s Local and also party leader of the three wards in the dock area, rou- tinely mailed me his traffic tickets to have fixed.
Many similar minor favors were asked of me, but the one dg favor I performed was done tacitly without being mentioned by anyone. This was a passive favor. It was simply closing my eyes to the rackets going on in the districts run by the men who controlled the votes.
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That is, this was my one big fa- vor prior to the evening Timothy Grange called at my house.
Tim Grange ranked higher both politically and in the underworld than Big Joey Martin. He owned the wire service which brought horse race results into town from all over the country, and his business was leasing this service to individual bookies. He also controlled the party organization for the entire East Side, including the two wards run by Joey Martin.
Grange was one of the men whose friendship 1 had been deliberately cultivating, but aside from passing time with him at a number of po- litical rallies, we hadn’t had much contact prior to the Friday evening he unexpectedly showed up at my house.
He was a tall, slim man in his late forties with iron gray hair. He ar- rived about nine o'clock, after both the children were in bed. When he rather nervously refused Mary’s of- fer of a drink with the statement that he had urgent business with me, she went into another room and left us alone in the front room. Grange stated his business at once.
“My kid’s in a jam, George. Tim Jr. He’s killed a man.”
The abruptness of it startled me. “My God!” I said. “Murder?”
He shook his head in nervous im- patience. “A traffic accident. He ran over a pedestrian at Fourth and Locust about an hour ago. An old man named Abraham Swartz. I just
THE CHOICE
checked with City Hospital, and the man’s dead.”
“Oh,” I said, partially relieved that it wasn’t as serious as I first thought. “Was it Tim’s fault?”
Grange paced up and down a mo- ment before answering. Then he said, “He says he wasn’t speeding. At least not much. He claims he was going about thirty-five in a thirty mile zone when this Swartz suddenly stepped from the curb right in front of him.”
“I see. Then what are you upset about? It’s unfortunate, but those things . . .”
“He didn’t stop,” George inter- rupted. “He raced home and hid the car in the garage. Fortunately I hap- pened to be going out just as he came in, and when I saw how upset he was, I forced the story out of him.” He paused, then added in a flat voice, “He was drunk.”
For a moment I just looked at him. Then I walked over to stare angrily out the window. When I turned again, I said, “At the risk of hurting your feelings, Grange, young Tim is a damned fool.”
“I knew that before I came, George. The kid panicked. What’s he up against?” :
‘Manslaughter, probably,” I said bluntly. “The combination of hit- and-run and drunken driving almost automatically means a manslaughter charge, no matter whose fault the accident was.”
“He’s not drunk now. I threw him in a cold shower, and when I left I-
67
had my wife pouring black coffee in him.” .
I said, “The police make a blood test for alcohol content. It’s routine in hit-and-run cases. Even if you have him walking straight and talk- ing coherently, theyll be able to judge how drunk he was at the time of the accident.”
“Suppose they didn’t find him ull tomorrow?”
I looked at him. “He can’t wait till tomorrow. He'll have to turn himself in at once. If he turns in voluntarily, he may just possibly scrape out of the manslaughter charge. But it’s already too late for him to get out of the hit-and-run. The law requires any driver involved in an accident to stop immediately and identify himself either to the other party involved or to the po- lice. The law allows the alternate procedure of reporting directly to the nearest police station, but young Tim didn’t do that either. The kid is in a jam, and the longer he waits before turning in, the worse the jam is going to get.”
“Suppose he reported to the sta- tion closest to Fourth and Locust now, George? It was only a little over an hour ago.”
“It might as well be a year. The law says immediately.”
“Couldn’t the report be . . . set back a little?”
I said, “Are you asking me to get the police to falsify a report? This isn’t like fixing a parking ticket. Manslaughter is a felony.”
68
“But it’s only technically man- slaughter,’ Grange said in a reason- able tone. “If he'd stopped, he wouldn’t be in any particular trou- ble. Manslaughter’s kind of a tough rap just for getting panicky.” —..
“Death is kind of a tough rap just for stepping off a curb.”
“T'm not excusing the kid, George. But he zs my kid. I know you're hounded for favors by every ward heeler in town, but I’ve never asked you for one before. I'll put it right on the line. Get my kid out of this and I’m your friend for life.”
He didn’t put it into words, but his tone meant I would have the solid backing of the entire East Side any time I wanted to run for any office at all. It also meant I could count on its solid opposition if I failed to help his son.
I think I would have thrown him out of the house if he had offered me money. Even if he had come right out in the open and used his political influence as a weapon, I think I might have turned him down. But he offered me nothing but his friend- ship, and let the rest dangle there by inference.
There wasn’t any middle course I could take. I couldn’t, like Pilate, wash my hands of the whole affair. For if I refused to help young Tim out of his jam, I was going to have to prosecute him.
I thought about the talk within the party about my replacing old John Doud when he finally got around to retiring, and realized that
MANHUNT
with Tim Grange behind me, I wouldn’t have to wait for his retire- ment. I could have the job at the next election.
But not if I refused Timothy Grange. If I insisted on trying his son for manslaughter, from the mo- ment of that decision I could forget all political ambition.
Going to the phone, I dialled the Fourth Street Precinct House, got hold of the night captain, who hap- pened to owe me a favor, and ar- ranged for the log book to show that Timothy Grange Jr. had reported there five minutes after the accident at Fourth and Locust and that he’d been checked and found cold sober.
Conspiracy to compound a fel- ony? Of course it was. But you tell me what else I could have done.
In the nearly eight years that I have been district attorney of St. Michael County I’ve thought back on this incident often. From the standpoint of abstract justice I admit there is no defense for my action. I was pledged to uphold the law im- partially, and in my own mind I know that if Tim Grange Jr. hadn’t been the son of an influential politi- cian, I would have prosecuted him for manslaughter.
Yet I can’t blame myself for de- ciding as I did. Kicking the elder Grange out of my house would have accomplished nothing but ending my political career. It wouldn’t have brought the dead man back to life.
I can’t even blame Timothy
THE CHOICE
Grange Sr. for bringing pressure to save his son. What normal father wouldn’t? I’ve decided that if any- thing is to blame, it’s the bad luck which created an nipike situa- tion.
Nevertheless I recognize my ac- tion as the first great compromise with my principles. I also recognize that once having made this major step, future compromises became easier and easier.
This was just as well for my peace of mind, for from the moment I was elected district attorney I found it necessary to make more and more compromises. But I was no longer under constant pressure to perform minor favors. This nuisance now fell to my new first assistant, a young man named Edmund Rowe, who as chief prosecutor for the county was in closer contact with both the police and those on the other side of the law than I was.
This was because the district at- torney of a county including as large a metropolitan area as St. Michael is a policy maker rather than a court- room lawyer. He has too many ad- ministrative duties to handle prose- cutions personally. His concern is crime in a general sense. Specific crimes are the business of his assist- ants, and I had eight to relieve me of this responsibility. Even important cases were tried by Edmund Rowe.
The compromises I was now forced to make came from my policy-mak- ing power. And this power was considerable.
69
At any time after I assumed office I could have eliminated any racket Į chose from St. Michael simply by issuing an order to the police. The police wouldn’t have liked it, but even though they were to some ex- tent in partnership with the racke- teers, they wouldn’t have dared to refuse cooperation. The constant dread of any crooked cop is a shake- up in the police department, and the moment a crusading district attor- ney turns on the heat, every cop, even on a crooked force, becomes a
crusader too.
I was aware of my power before I ever assumed office, and I gave a lot of thought to just how I was go- ing to use it. If I wanted to conduct a crusade, I had four years to do it and nothing but the next election could put me out of office. Undoubt- edly I could clean up the city and keep it clean during that four years.
But just as undoubtedly I would never again be my party’s candidate for any office whatever.
The alternative to fighting crime as I was sworn to do was no longer as simple as it had been when I was merely first assistant district attor- ney. Then I had been forced to close my eyes to many of the things going on around me, but my cooperation with the underworld had been merely passive. My role had been that of chief public prosecutor, and I lacked the policy-making power of the district attorney.
But now my cooperation had to become active if I was going to co-
70
operate at all. As D.A. it was not enough merely to ignore the rackets controlled by local political bosses. I was now in a spot where I either had to fight racketeering or help cover it up.
For example I often met with volunteer citizens’ groups formed to combat organized crime. Sporadi- cally such groups rise in every met- ropolitan community, and since they usually represent segments of the independent group, they can’t just be brushed aside. It’s only practical politics to avoid arousing unneces- sary resentment in representatives of the Chamber of Commerce, Rotary International and other business groups out of which citizens’ com- mittees arise.
Consequently it was necessary to go through the motions of running cleanup drives against gambling, vice and other rackets whenever such a group offered its services. I had a standard procedure for han- dling such groups.
First I would make a public dec- laration of war against racketeers. Next my office and the police jointly would release to the papers that city- wide raids had taken place and large numbers of arrests had been made. Actually probably a half dozen bookies and an equal number of house madams, all thoughtfully tipped off in advance of the raids, would be dragged in and booked. But since about six cases in addition to the routine parade of drunks and traffic violators was all police court
MANHUNT
could handle in one day, this was enough to keep a steady stream go- ing before the judge for at least two days. Any of the citizens’ groups in- terested enough to follow up as far as the courtroom usually tired after one day of watching and went away satisfied that justice was being done.
The newspapers, too, occasionally ran editorial campaigns against or- ganized crime in St. Michael, and again it would be necessary to simu- late ruthless war against racketeers. In either event, I became so adept, I actually began to gain something of a reputation as a crusading dis- trict attorney.
Never once did Timothy Grange or any other racketeer openly ask for this sort of protection. And never once during my entire political ca- reer was I ever on the payroll of any racketeer. I cooperated solely to weld a solid voting force behind me.
I succeeded too. When I was elected for my second term as dis- trict attorney, I got the most over- whelming majority in the history of St. Michael politics. And that thump- ing majority put me in line for at least consideration as the party’s
gubernatorial candidate in the fol- lowing election.
My hope was only for considera- tion up to the time Tony Manetti and Arnold Price got interested in me. It is one thing to have the solid political support of a single county, and a different proposition to get an entire state behind you. But after Tim Grange brought Manetti and
THE CHOICE
Price to see me, I began to think of my nomination for governor as al- most a certainty. Which, in our one- party state, is the same as election.
This meeting, like my previous one with Grange, took place at my home instead of at my office. Both men were from out of state, Tony Manetti from New York and Arnold Price from Chicago, but they both represented the same organization.
Their organization was the na- tional crime syndicate.
Tony Manetti was a squat, swarthy man with heavy features and kinky, close-cropped hair which fitted his head like a skullcap. Arnold Price was tall and lean and slow moving, with gaunt features and the home- spun manner of a backwoods farmer.
After the four of us were settled