The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps

1

When Captain MacBride was suddenly transferred from the Second Precinct to the Fifth, an undercurrent of whispered speculations trickled through the Department, buzzed in newspaper circles, and traveled along the underworld grapevine.

It was a significant move, for MacBride, besides being the youngest captain in the Department — he was barely forty — was known throughout Richmond City as a holy terror against the criminal element. He was a lank, rangy man, with a square jaw and windy blue eyes. He was brusque, talked straight from the shoulder, and was hard-boiled as a five-minute egg. Now the Second Precinct is in the very heart of Richmond City’s night-life, hence an important and busy station. The Fifth is out on the frontier, in a suburb called Grove Manor, and carries the somewhat humorous sobriquet of the Old Man’s Home. Plenty of reasons, then, why MacBride’s transfer should have been made matter for conjecture.

MacBride said nothing. He merely tightened his hard jaw a little harder, packed up and moved. To his successor, Captain O’Leary, he made one rather ironic remark: “Well, I’ll be nearer home, anyhow.” He had a bungalow, a wife and an eighteen-year-old daughter in an elm-shaded street in Grove Manor.

He landed in the Fifth in the latter part of August. It was a quiet, peaceful station, with a desk sergeant who played solitaire to pass the time away and a lieutenant who used his office and the Department’s time to tinker around a radio set which he had made and which still called for lots of improvement. MacBride’s predecessor, retired, had spent most of his time working out crossword puzzles. All the patrolmen, and three of the four detectives, were local men, and well on in years. The fourth detective had just been shifted from harness to plain-clothes. Ted Kerr was his name; twenty-eight, sandy-haired, and a dynamo of energy and good-humor. He was ambitious, too, and cursed the luck that had placed him in the Fifth.

“Gee, Cap, it sure is a shock to see you out here,” he said.

MacBride could remember when Kerr wore short pants. He grinned in his hard, tight way. “Forget it, Ted. Now that I’m here, though, I’m going to clean out a lot of the cobwebs. They say time hangs heavy on a man here. Too bad I haven’t got a hobby.”

“Why did they shift you, Cap?”

“Why?” MacBride creaked his swivel chair and bent over some reports on the desk, tacitly dismissing the subject.

A month dragged by, and the hard captain found ennui enveloping him. He was lounging in his tipped back chair one night, with his heels hooked on the desk, reading the newspaper account of a brutal night-club murder in his old district, when an old acquaintance dropped in — Kennedy, of the city Free Press.

“Oh, you,” grumbled MacBride.

Kennedy helped himself to a seat. “Yeah, me. Gone to seed yet, Mac?”

“Won’t be long now.”

“What a tough break you got,” chuckled Kennedy.

“Go ahead, rub it in. Pull ahorse laugh, go on.”

“I’ll bet Duke Manola’s laughing up his sleeve.”

“That pup!”

Kennedy shrugged. “Serves you right for taking the law in your own hands. You birds can shake down a common sneak thief or a wandering wop that goes off on a gun spree coked to the eyebrows. But, Mac, you can’t beat organized crime. You can’t beat it when it’s financed by silent partners — and those silent partners” — he arched a knowing eyebrow — “on the inside, too.”

“Man, oh, man, I’m going to get that grease-ball yet!” MacBride’s lip curled and his windy eyes glittered.

“Still got him on the brain, eh?” Kennedy lit a cigarette and spun the match out through the open window. “He’s fire to fool with, Mac. He’ll burn you surer than hell. Anyhow, you’re out here in the sticks keeping the frogs and the crickets company, and you’re not worrying Duke much. He’s planted you where you’ll do no harm. Oh, I know, Mac. There’s a lot I know that the paper can’t afford to print. When you raided the Nick Nack Club you stepped on Duke’s toes. Not only his — but his silent partner’s.”