Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 118, No. 2, March 19, 1938
- Автор: Clark Dale, 12627 Convict
- Год: 1938
- Язык: английский
- Год: The Red Star News Company
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 118, No. 2, March 19, 1938». Краткое содержание книги:
I straightened out in the opposite direction and began fanning the air in earnest. The main reason was a prowl car’s siren. I didn’t want to meet any cops till I’d had time to stash Frances in a safe place. Maybe not even then. What with Big Ed being on familiar terms with State Senators and one thing and another, I had no assurance I’d be any safer in jail. This guy Ames had me kind of worried too. I mean, I thought his name had a familiar sound to it, but I couldn’t seem to place it. Fran had said he’d cursed Ed. Anybody big enough to curse Ed must be no small potatoes. Maybe he’s lieutenant-governor or something, I thought. Anyway, between the two of them, they were pretty sure to swing a mean drag politically; enough to see that a punk named Jerry Cassidy didn’t talk to the wrong cops...
I left the car in an alley and Fran and I walked the two blocks to the Hotel Mercer. It was a good middle-class house, not too gaudy, not too cheap. The clerk lifted an eyebrow at our lack of baggage.
“Fire,” I explained. “Practically ruined our flat, and what the fire missed the smoke-eaters took care of. We left it as is for the adjusters to worry over.”
He accepted that at face value. I thought it was pretty good myself. I peeled a twenty off Cora’s roll, asked for a suite, or at least two rooms with connecting bath. We got the two rooms, registering as John Jones and Frances Jones, brother and sister. Not that I expected Big Ed or Cora to ever use the register in a divorce action.
A hop took us up to the third, opened all the windows in both rooms, put them down again when I yelled at him, finally went away with a dollar and a request for some cigarettes. I gave Fran the old grin.
“Well, kid, here we are. Not so bad, huh?”
She nodded. “Pretty swell, Jerry. You, I mean.”
I said, “Nuts. You want something to eat? Drink?”
She said she didn’t. She took off her hat and the suit coat. “Mind if I stay in here with you for a while, Jerry?”
I saw she was getting the jeebies all over again. Well, who wouldn’t? I wasn’t feeling any too good myself. But it wasn’t sympathy that made me say, “Baby, you can stay with me the rest of our lives if you want to.”
Her nice mouth quirked a little at that. “The rest of our lives,” she said. “That may not be very long, Jerry.” I let that ride because there was no use kidding her. After a while she said, “Jerry, would you mind kissing me? Just once?”
It wasn’t any chore. I kissed her, then straightened and stood looking down at her. “Why did you want me to do that?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I just thought it might be a good idea.” She got up, took her — or rather Cora’s — hat and coat and went to the connecting door. “I’m going to lie down for a while, Jerry.”
“But look,” I said, “hey, you just claimed you wanted to stay in here with me!”
“I know,” she nodded. And then, “We gals are funny, Jerry. You’ll find that out some day.” The door closed behind her.
I just stood there.
Somebody knocked on the hall door and I thought it was the hop coming back with the cigarettes. “Come on in,” I said. The door opened quietly and there was Detective-Sergeant Slats McKenna, as big as life and just about as unpleasant.
To give you some idea of how unpleasant he really intended to be, he had his gun out in plain sight. His lean dark face was drawn, tired-looking, and the down-drooping mouth was more than just tired; it was cynical. His eyes looked like two burned holes in a navy blanket. He shut the door quietly behind him, stood leaning against it.
“Well, Jerry,” he said, “we do find out things about people, don’t we? Why’d you do it? I mean, why did you have to do it that way?”
“Why did I do what?” I sparred. I knew, of course. Somehow the guy had found out about the Heinie Ziegler kill. “And what do you mean by that way? What difference does it make?”
He gave me a screwy look. “So you do know what I’m talking about! I’d sort of hoped you wouldn’t.”
Well, I’d certainly left myself open on that one. That’s the trouble with cops and a guilty conscience. They ask you two questions at once and you’re so busy trying to evade one that you trip on the other.
He said, “All right, Jerry, turn around. Slowly, now. I don’t want to have to hurt you.”
“No,” I said, “I can see that. All you want to do is have my neck stretched about a yard.” I turned around, though, and he came up behind me, reached around and got my gun. He was sniffing it when I looked at him again. Like a bloodhound. I couldn’t quite figure this out. I mean, it had been thirty-seven days since I’d blasted Ziegler and even a punk as dumb as me wouldn’t be expected to carry a dirty gun all that time. Besides, it wasn’t the same gun. Big Ed had gotten me a new one. Then I remembered that I’d just got through using the rod on the hoods that were chasing us. Maybe, I thought, he don’t know about Ziegler. Maybe I’m being picked up for this other thing.
I said, “Now wait a minute, Slats. Maybe I can explain.”
“You don’t have to,” he said tiredly. “It’s all quite clear. Cora caught you cheating with this other dame and you let her have it.” He dropped my heater in his pocket. He could have made it vanish in thin air and I wouldn’t have been surprised. I was numb from head to foot already. I was supposed to have killed my wife!
Funny, huh? I’d really killed Ziegler. I’d more than likely killed a hood or two in that car. But was I wanted for either of those things? No, indeed. No, I was being arrested for murdering Cora. It was to laugh — if you felt like laughing. Me, I didn’t. My brain suddenly unlocked. Slats was saying: “I knew you hated her, Jerry. Everybody knew it. And you had plenty cause. But to do it over another woman — to just toss her out in the gutter like that... well, you never seemed like that kind of a guy, is all. Who is this dame posing as your sister?”
I tried not to look at Fran’s door. It was closed a little while ago, I knew. I hoped it still was; hoped she wasn’t getting a load of this. Oh, I know; it all looks quite simple on the surface. All I had to do was get Fran to tell Slats it couldn’t have been me who let Cora have it. She’d say, “Why, Big Ed did it, of course! Right after he got through killing Senator Delgardo!”
Only thing was, Slats wouldn’t believe it. There was the old record of Fran and I going together back in the days when we were all kids. There was my known hatred for Cora, and my hot gun. Ballistics, of course, could prove that it wasn’t the gun that had done for Cora, but at the moment I was all out of ballistics experts. Slats would naturally think Fran was trying to cover me and not doing a very good job of it. He’d say, “Okay, you can come along too, Fran.” Suppose he did that. Suppose we all went down to Headquarters. By this time Big Ed and the Ames party would thoughtfully have gotten rid of Delgardo’s body. There wouldn’t be any proof. They’d think Fran was lying, and let Big Ed spring her. Once sprung, it didn’t take a very vivid imagination to picture what would happen to her.