The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps

7

A day later MacBride stood in a large room in Police Headquarters. He was a little pale. His cheek was covered with cotton and adhesive tape. Moriarity was there, strips of tape over his right eye. And Cohen’s left arm was in a sling.

Against one wall was a bench. On this bench sat Trixie Meloy, Adolph Shanz, and Beroni, manager of the Palmetto Club. All three were manacled, one to the other. Shanz was despair personified. Beroni was haggard. Trixie wore a look of contempt for everybody in the room.

Kennedy came in, sat down at a desk and played with a pencil.

MacBride said, “I have a letter here that I’m going to read. It will interest you, Miss Meloy.”

He spread a sheet before him, said, “It was dictated to a stenographer at the hospital by a man named Louis Martinez.”

Trixie bit her lip.

MacBride read, “ ‘To Captain Stephen MacBride: The man you want is Tony Bonelio. I worked in his club. I was Miss Meloy’s dancing partner. We’d danced before, all over the country. I loved her. I thought she loved me. Maybe she did until Bonelio won her with money. It drove me crazy. I wanted to kill him. But I didn’t. But I learned a lot. He killed Bedell. I heard the plans being made. Bedell was getting hard to handle. State’s Attorney Krug and Shanz and Bonelio got together. Shanz was to get Bedell on the speaker’s platform, so Bonelio could shoot him from the roof. Shanz and Krug staged the block-party just for that. When Bonelio read that you had a man prisoner who was in the know, I heard him phone Krug. Krug promised to go down and get the man from you. Whoever he was, they were going to pay him a lot of money to take the rap. But when you wouldn’t give him up, Bonelio told Krug there was only one way — blow the station up.

“ ‘I tipped you about all this because I wanted to see Bonelio get his. I wanted to win back Trixie’s love. But I knew if she knew I’d done all that, she’d never look at me again. I was crazy about her. I was, but that’s over. I was lying here, dying, and I called her up to come over. She told me to go to hell and croak. I’ve been a fool. I see what she is now. But go easy with her, Captain, anyhow. The only thing she did was to go to the block-party and say she saw a man in a gray suit walking away. She didn’t see anybody. It was just a stall. That’s all she did, except what she did to me. I don’t know, maybe I still love her.’ ”

MacBride concluded, and you could have heard a pin drop. Then he said, “That was Martinez’s death-bed confession.”

“The damn sap!” snapped Trixie, her face coloring.

“What a fool he was to waste his time on a hunk of peroxide like you,” observed Kennedy. “And what a dirty write-up I’m going to give you, sister.”

“Rats for you, buddy,” she gave him.

“Here’s hoping you become a guest of the state. Don’t forget to primp up and look pretty when the tabloid photographers get around. I don’t even see what the hell Bonelio saw in you.”

“Damn you, shut up!” she cried fiercely.

“Now, now,” cut in MacBride, “that’ll be enough. You, Shanz, are under arrest, and your trial won’t come up till the new administration’s in.”

“Where’s Krug?” he grumbled.

“Still looking for him,” said MacBride. “He slipped out at three this morning. Moriarity was over to his house and saw signs of a hasty departure. Krug got cold feet when he heard we had Bonelio. He knew he couldn’t help Bonelio, because the wop staged a gunfight with us. And he knew that if Bonelio knew Krug couldn’t help him, then Bonelio would squeal. As a matter of fact, Bonelio has squealed. You’ll go on trial in connection with the killing of Bedell. The net is out for Krug.”

Even as he said this, the telephone rang. He picked it up.

“Hello,” drawled a voice. “I want MacBride.”

“You’ve got him.”

“Well, MacBride, this is Duveen. I was sore as hell because you picked up Hess and the other two boys. They were on the way to blow up one of Bonelio’s warehouses. Say, I hear you’re looking for Krug.”

“Yes, I am. He’s wanted — bad.”

“I’ve got him. I’m calling from up-State. He ran into me a little while ago with his car. I nabbed him. I’m sending him in with a State trooper. That’s all, MacBride.”

“Thanks. Drop in for a drink some time.”

“I might, at that.”

That was all.

MacBride rubbed his hands together. “And now we’ve got Krug,” he said. “Krug, Shanz, Bonelio. And thank God, they’ll go on trial when Anderson is State’s Attorney.”

Shanz groaned. A little man, a tool of others, he had tried to barter honor for power.

The three of them, including Trixie Meloy, were marched out and locked in separate cells.

The commissioner came in, a large, benign man, mellow-voiced, steady-eyed.

“Congratulations, MacBride,” he said, and shook warmly. “It was great work. You’ve broken up an insidious crowd in Richmond City, and there’s every possibility you’ll be made inspector and attached to my personal staff.”