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 have no recollection of being taken out of the car or going up in the elevator or anything. The first I remember was waking up in a chair in front of a big desk, and on the other side of the desk was Big Ed Harmon. My broken left arm was swollen tight inside my coat sleeve and shooting flaming arrows of pain clear out the top of my head. Ed’s face would loom up big as a house for a minute, then fade out till you couldn’t see anything but the eyes.
Percy and Hatchet-face were telling him all about it. I gathered that they’d left a couple of their pals behind to find Frances, but that they couldn’t wait themselves because the blasting had brought down a wagon load of cops. Big Ed told them off as good as I could have done it myself. Not loudly, though. His voice sounded dead level, perfectly controlled.
“You damned fools, you knew there were cops in the neighborhood. We expected that when we heard about them finding the punk’s car in the alley. Why’d you have to start blasting?”
Percy cleared his throat. “We never started it. It was the punk himself. He had three-four mugs chasin’ him outa the lobby and we hadda stop ’em, didn’t we?”
A new voice said, “But you didn’t have to half kill Cassidy.”
Big Ed said, “I’ll take care of this, Ames.”
I turned my head a little and looked at this Ames party. Not until then had I associated the name with the man himself. The reason, of course, was that probably there weren’t more than a half dozen people in the whole town who called him Ames. He was A. H. Hutchins to the papers and the public at large. He owned the Title Guarantee Building; the one where Big Ed had his offices. He was chairman of the State Central Committee, on the boards of most of the banks, an honorary police commissioner and a lot of other things I was too busy to think of. He had nice curly white hair and one of those skins you love to touch. Boy, would I have loved to touch it! The fingers of my right hand started jerking I wanted to get at him so bad. My left hand didn’t do much of anything except hurt like hell.
This Hutchins guy was the first to notice I was awake. He said, “Get rid of these — these men.” Meaning Percy and Hatchet-face. Ed told them to get the hell out. I got the impression that they didn’t really know what it was all about. All they’d been told was to get me and the gal that was with me. The short wave had given Ed the general locality of where I might have holed up and he’d sent out a couple of cars to patrol the neighborhood. Even the cops didn’t know the gal was Big Ed’s wife, though.
He got up as soon as the two mugs were gone, came around the desk and held a glass to my lips. I drank. The room stopped going round and round. Ed sat on the edge of the desk, one foot on the floor, the other swinging. I remember he was wearing spats.
“Where is she, Jerry?”
I gave him a grin. “In China, I hope.”
He reached down, quite casually, got hold of my broken arm and twisted it. You could hear the bones grating. I went off my nut for a minute, tried to kick him. It was then I discovered that my ankles were tied to the front legs of the chair I was in. “Where is she, Jerry?”
I screamed then. I couldn’t help it. But screaming or not I stuck to my story. “She’s in China!” I yelled. “In China, China, China, you hear?”
Hutchins said, “Stop it, Harmon! I can’t stand it!” As if Big Ed had hold of his arm. I wanted to laugh at that, but somehow all I could do was sob. And here I’d been thinking I was a tough guy.
Ed let go my arm, held the glass to my mouth again. I slobbered all over it. Then I remembered I had two arms and tried to paste him one with the right. He just pushed it down as if I was a baby. “Did you tell Slats McKenna anything?”
So he knew about Slats being there too. I choked on the last swallow. “Sure,” I gasped. “Fran and I told him the whole works. He oughta be along most any minute now.”
Mr. Hutchins said, “Great Scott!”
Ed just laughed at him. “Imagine me working for you all these years. Why, you’re a weak sister, Ames, and I thought you were a big shot. I might have guessed when you went haywire and shot Delgardo. Well, we’ll have a show-down after we get this thing straightened out. Maybe you’ll be working for me.”
Mr. Hutchins groaned.
Ed said, “Don’t worry, the punk didn’t tell McKenna anything. He bopped the dick and lammed. All we’ve got to do is find Frances and then we can wash the whole thing up.”
The telephone rang. Ed swung around, answered it. “Okay,” he said, “bring her right up.” I almost passed out. Something told me the “her” they were bringing up was Frances. Desperately I got the kinks out of my neck and really looked around. We were in the living room of the Beverly Hills penthouse. I hadn’t known it before.
The door opened and two guys carried Frances in. They must have brought her up in the freight elevator. Even the dumbest clerk on earth wouldn’t have passed them like that. Her feet and hands were taped very neatly and there were two strips of adhesive crossed over her lips. X marking the spot, I thought. The spot where Ed will kick her teeth in. He didn’t do it right away, though. He just jerked his big, good-looking head toward a fireside divan and the two lugs dumped her on it. Her eyes met mine with a sort of horrified surprise. I guess I didn’t make a very pretty picture. I could feel the smear of dried blood on my cheek where the guy had operated on my ear.
The two guys looked kind of like the ones that had got out of the car, there in front of the Mercer. I couldn’t be sure because it had been pretty dark in the street at the time and I’d had one or two other things on my mind. I couldn’t see that it made much difference anyway. Neither Frances nor I were going to do any identifying.
Ed said quietly, “You have any trouble?”
“A little,” one guy admitted. “She’d already gotten a cab and was on her way by the time we found out all the angles. We had to wait for the cab to come back. Then it was duck soup. The Palais is a nice dump,” he added.
“I’ll make a note of that,” Ed said, and Mr. Hutchins, over by the windows, cursed him irritably. “Let’s get this over with, Harmon!”
Ed said, “Sure, Ames, sure. You want to take care of it personally?”
Mr. Hutchins turned green and looked like he was going to be sick. “Hell, man, no! How can you be so callous?”
“Well,” Ed said, “after all, it wasn’t I who killed—” He broke off as Mr. Hutchins lifted a shaking hand. Then, smiling a little as at some secret joke, he said, “Excuse it, please,” and told the two mugs to scram. They went out. That left only him and Mr. Hutchins and Fran and me.
Hutchins said accusingly, “See here, Harmon, it’s true I shot Senator Delgardo, but it was in a moment of panic. I’m not a cold-blooded murderer.”
“No? Then what would you suggest we do with this pair of tramps — give ’em our blessing and turn ’em loose?”
“Couldn’t... couldn’t you have your men...”
Ed gave him a hard little laugh. “Listen, lame-brain, you and I are in this together. It doesn’t make any difference to the police who actually pulled the trigger on Delgardo. It was my gun and it’s my penthouse. Nobody but the four of us here even knows the senator is dead. We’ll just keep it that way, and after a while there’ll only be two who know. You and I will take care of it.”
The telephone buzzed again. This seemed to be Big Ed’s busy night. He picked it up, listened a moment and for the first time I actually saw emotion register on his face. He looked scared. Then he slammed the phone down, whirled on Mr. Hutchins. “Okay, punk, we’ll have to make this fast. A flatfoot named McKenna is on his way up.”