Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 39, No. 6, June, 1994
- Автор: Bashover Albert, Crawford Dan
- Год: 1994
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: ISSN: 0002-5224
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 39, No. 6, June, 1994». Краткое содержание книги:
I was at the police station when the report came in and close on Plato Largis’s heels when he arrived at the scene. From a booth downstairs I phoned Jack Eddy. “You’d better get down here fast and tell Largis what Damokura said about Victor Reiner.”
After a short pause, Jack said, “Hold your horses, buddy. Does Largis know you called me?”
“No.”
“Then I’ve got a better idea. Be on the sidewalk out front in ten minutes, and I’ll pick you up.”
Before I could argue the point, he had hung up. By the time his Auburn pulled to the curb I thought I had it figured out for myself. The prospect didn’t please me.
As he circled the block and headed south I said, “This is crazy, Jack. Let Plato handle it.”
“I intend to — in time.”
“What are you planning, another gunfight at the O.K. Corral with you playing Wyatt Earp? If so, count me out.”
“You think we’re going to pay a call on Vic Reiner?”
“Aren’t we?”
“That’s loony, friend. We’re on our way to see Jerry Lynch.”
“And Reiner’ll be there.”
“He’s busy collecting the day’s loot from his ticket sellers. I checked after you called. Lynch is alone and expecting us.”
Jack Eddy did the talking, Jerry Lynch the listening. He didn’t even inquire about my story on Emerald Laundry. Of Jack he asked a single question: “When are you telling this to the cops?”
Jack glanced at his watch. “I’ve got a couple of things to wind up before quitting time, so I guess it’ll be morning.”
“Fine,” said Lynch. As I closed the door behind us he was reaching for the telephone.
Ben Goldsmith was excited over my story. This time it was the entire story, or at least most of it. Goldsmith gloated when he saw the Beacon Journal’s and found it lacked the details in mine. The fact that Victor Reiner hadn’t been picked up for questioning made it all the better in his eyes. More suspenseful, he said, and good for another story.
He grew increasingly impatient, though, as the days slipped by without the police finding Reiner. They say a reporter is only as good as his last story, and Goldsmith soon tired of reading those of mine saying the manhunt was continuing.
“People are getting sick of this stuff,” he said after skimming over my latest before tossing it aside. “I want something fresh.”
Look, Ben, I write the stories, I don’t make them. That was the thought in my mind. I kept it to myself, naturally.
In desperation I went back to see Jerry Lynch. His numbers bank, closed the day Reiner vanished, was still shut down. It would remain that way until things cooled off.
When I asked about Reiner, he gave me the answer I expected: a blank look, a meaningful shrug with arms thrust out, palms upward. Again he didn’t ask about the story on Emerald Laundry, but as I had my hand on the doorknob to leave he said, “Do much swimming, kid?”
I turned my head and found him smirking.
“Some,” I said.
“Come summer, stay away from Summit Beach. They say the lake’s polluted.”
“Do?” said Jack Eddy. “What can you do? Lynch was having you on. I don’t doubt for a minute that Reiner is wearing cement shoes and keeping company with the fishes, but if there’s one place you can be sure of not finding his body, it’s Summit Lake.”
“It’s frustrating, Jack. It makes me feel like a sap.”
“Then think how you’ll feel if you talk Plato Largis into dragging the lake and all he comes up with are old tires and tin cans.”
He gave me a poke on the arm, laughing at my long face. “Just forget about it, buddy. Going to the wedding?”
“What wedding?”
“Haven’t you heard? Spangler and Beverly Keeler are getting hitched tomorrow. He asked me to be best man. Talk about guts. Wouldn’t that look great on my agency record?”
Perhaps it shouldn’t have, but the news left me stunned. The idea of a sweet girl like Beverly married to a thief didn’t seem right. I convinced myself that my feelings had nothing to do with envy, and certainly not jealousy. For an instant the thought of trying to stop the wedding crossed my mind, then was quickly discarded. It was Sue Baney, not Beverly Keeler, who mattered in my life.
Rather than commenting on it, I went back to the original subject. “Jack, I still don’t understand why you didn’t let Plato Largis handle Reiner instead of tipping off Lynch.”
“What could Largis have done? There wasn’t any solid evidence to tie Reiner to either murder and never would be. Once the heat was off, Reiner would have started looking around for somebody else to help clean out Lynch’s operation and no telling where that would have led.”
For a while I sat quietly in a corner of Jack’s office while he finished whatever he was doing.
Of the two cases, the jewel robbery and Beverly Keeler’s, Jack had zeroed in on the one of greater importance. Beverly, totally innocent of any wrongdoing, was no longer in danger of serving a prison sentence.
Victor Reiner had killed people in cold blood, but the law couldn’t touch him. Perhaps Jack Eddy’s way was best. Jerry Lynch took money from suckers, but if he were gone, someone else would move in and do the job.
Anderson Spangler was a different breed. He belonged in jail, but he didn’t leave dead bodies behind. His real victims were insurance companies.
If Beverly Keeler’s case hadn’t come along, would Jack have done more on the jewel robbery? But what, for instance?
In the outer office a radio was softly playing Tommy Dorsey’s “Once in a While,” the top tune on that week’s Hit Parade. I looked up suddenly and said, “Will you?”
“Huh?”
“Once in a while will you give one little thought to Anderson Spangler?”
“What brought that on?”
“Admit it, Jack, he outfoxed you again.”
For a moment he scowled at me, then switched to a grin. “So maybe Spangler won another round. That doesn’t mean the fight’s over.”
“If you nail him someday, it’ll make his bride happy, won’t it?”
“His problem, not mine.”
“It really steams me, Jack. Either you or the cops should have done something about him before now.”
He leaned back in his chair, hands locked behind his head, contemplating the ceiling. When he looked toward me again, he said, “You’re halfway intelligent, Bram, and thanks to your job, you know your way around a police station. How many times would you say Plato Largis or any other cop in the country knows exactly how a job was pulled and could name every man involved, yet can’t do a thing about it? We both know it happens all the time. When they say crime doesn’t pay, they’re talking about the dummies.”
“That’s not very satisfying.” After a moment I grudgingly added, “Okay, I suppose you’re right.”
“You know I’m right. Even if we caught Spangler’s boys in the act, they’d clam up tight. He wouldn’t work with a squealer. Sure, we could put a man on him and know his every move, but so what? He might hit a place next week or maybe it’ll be a year. So he goes into fifty jewelry stores, noses around, and maybe even buys something. What do we do, stake out every one of them indefinitely? Then when one gets hit he’ll be a hundred miles away with an airtight alibi.”
“In other words he’ll go on thumbing his nose at you and the agency until the day he dies.”
“Maybe, maybe not. Remember that ball game we went to up in Cleveland when the Yankees were in town last summer? Lyn Larry was at shortstop for the Indians, a guy who handles ninety-six out of a hundred chances and makes it look easy. So DiMaggio tops the ball and hits an easy roller out to Larry, but at the last second it takes a funny little hop and bounces off his glove because he was nonchalanting it, just going through the same old motions. Sometimes you can be too good for your own good.”