The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps

6

But he went out, his slouch hat yanked over his eyes. Night had closed in, half-brother to the fog. And both shrouded the city. Street lights glowed wanly, diffusing needle-like shafts of shimmering radiance. Headlights glared like hungry eyes. Autos hissed sibilantly on wet pavements. Faces appeared, palely afloat, and then disappeared.

Cold and wet and miserable, and MacBride tramping the streets, collar up, hands in pockets, pain pumping through his arm. In minutes he aged years. Why not let things slide? Why go to all the bother? What reward, what price honour? Let Headquarters take ’em. Let Bower frame their getaway. Cripes, but Bower would get a nice slice of graft out of this! How could a single precinct captain hope to carry his white plume in this city of graft?

He dragged to a stop at an intersection. Well, Rigallo was standing by him. And the State’s Attorney was a square-shooter.

“H’m.”

He suddenly flagged a taxi, climbed in and gave an address. Out of the dark of the street another figure appeared, got into a second taxi.

Ten minutes later MacBride alighted in a quiet, residential street, told the driver to wait, and ascending a flight of brown-stone steps, pushed a bell-button. A servant appeared and MacBride gave his name. A moment later he was ushered from the foyer into a spacious library.

State’s Attorney Rolland, thirty-eight, lean, blond, clean-cut in evening clothes, extended a hand. MacBride shook with his left, and though Rolland’s eyes flickered, he said nothing.

“You look worn, Captain. Sit down. Cigar?”

“Thanks — no. Am I keeping you?”

“No. Dinner at eight.” He leaned against the side of a broad mahogany table, arms folded loosely, eyes quizzical.

MacBride detailed, briefly, the fight in Jockey Street, the apprehension of Gertie Case and Midge Sutter; the release of Sutter on a writ, the game of hide and seek even now being played by Rigallo.

“I’ll pick up Rigallo and the woman around dawn,” he went on. “I’ll get her indicted. I thought if you could be around there, to take her in hand before her lawyer gets to her— Hell, we’ve got to get the jump on these pups!”

“Don’t know her man, eh?”

“No. That’s why we’ve got to hold her. If she’s faced with twenty years for shooting an officer, she’ll think. She’s thirty now, and no guy is worth enough in her eyes to take a twenty-year rap for him. She’ll come across. Ten to one her boy friend realizes this.”

“And you believe that Saunders chap was poisoned?”

“Yes. Bannon did it. He’s been lying low for a couple years. Always lone-wolfed. That’s why we can’t connect him with the gang he must have hooked with. If the Case woman squeals, we’ll get the gang, and getting the gang means—”

“Ah, yes,” nodded Rolland.

It was politic, in the State’s Attorney’s rooms, not to mention the name both men had in mind.

Then Rolland said, “Good you have the woman. These gangsters laugh at a prison sentence. But a woman — and especially one of her type — looks upon prison as death. I’ll be there in the morning. Take care of your wound.”

They shook, and MacBride departed. The Regime thought they had picked soft clay in Rolland. What a shock when they had discovered cement instead, unpliable!

Entering the taxi, MacBride drove off, and further back, another taxi began moving.

He left his taxi at the Fourth, and discovered that Rigallo and the woman had gone on to the Fifth ten minutes before. He hung around, saw the runner with the writ rush in and start broadcasting to the desk. The sergeant told him where the woman had gone, and cursing, the runner went off and out like a streak.

MacBride followed from station to station, and at the Seventh, just after the runner had gone on, he met Bower.

“Look here, MacBride. What’s your game?”