The Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK™: 15 Classic Crime & Mystery Stories
- Автор: Деминг Ричард
- Год: 2015
- Язык: английский
- Год: Wildside Press
- ISBN: 9781479406159
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK™: 15 Classic Crime & Mystery Stories». Краткое содержание книги:
“I wish to report a crime,” the man said.
“All right,” Sergeant Block said agreeably.
The complainant was somewhere in his mid-thirties, rather slight of build and with delicate, almost effeminate features. It crossed Ireland’s mind that he must have driven to the station house, because he couldn’t have walked through Hunts Point from a subway stop without being mugged.
When the man spoke again, Ireland realized he had been.
“It happened on 163rd Street, in front of St. Athanasius Church. This mugger chap exhibited a switchblade knife and demanded my money. In broad daylight, mind you, within sight of several pedestrians.”
Sergeant Block showed no astonishment. The 41st Precinct received between ninety and a hundred assault and robbery complaints a month, and a good number of them occurred in broad daylight before witnesses. The only thing that could have astonished the sergeant would have been for one of the witnesses to accompany the complainant to the station house. Hunts Point residents never admitted witnessing crimes.
Poising a ball-point pen over a squeal form, the desk sergeant asked, “Can you describe this man?”
“Oh, that won’t be necessary. You may just send someone over to look at him. He’s lying on the sidewalk.”
Sergeant Block stared up at the dapper little man without understanding.
“I’m afraid I killed him,” the man said apologetically. “In disarming him, I flipped him over my shoulder and his head hit the sidewalk. It rather thoroughly dashed his brains out.”
Sergeant Block continued to stare up at him, his pen still poised over the complaint form. Ireland walked over to the desk.
“I’m Inspector Ireland, the precinct commander,” he announced.
The smaller man thrust out his hand and the inspector found himself accepting a cordial handshake. “How do you do, Inspector? My name is Rollin Singer.”
The desk sergeant recovered enough to lay down his pen, pick up the dispatch mike and order a radio car to the intersection of 163rd and Tiffany. Then he picked up the pen again and entered the name Rollin Singer on the complaint form.
“Address?” he asked.
“One-thousand-nine-and-a-half Simpson.”
The sergeant stared up at him again. “You live there?”
“That’s correct.”
Sergeant Block’s expression approached disbelief, but he wrote the address.
Ireland asked, “How long have you lived there, Mr. Singer?”
“I just moved in last evening. I was on my way to work when this mugger chap accosted me.”
“You work around here?”
“Oh, no. I operate Rollin’s Beauty Salon on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. When I say I was on my way to work, I mean I was en route to the subway station at 163rd Street and Westchester Avenue.”
This time both Sergeant Block and Ireland stared. Finally, the inspector asked, “How did you happen to settle in this particular section of the Bronx, Mr. Singer?”
The dapper little man raised his eyebrows. “I’m afraid I don’t understand the question. Or your disapproving tone.”
“I didn’t mean to sound disapproving, Mr. Singer. I am merely curious. You look and act like a man of some affluence, and the 1000 block of Simpson is hardly one of Hunts Point’s better neighborhoods.”
Rollin Singer shrugged. “I find the area quaint. And the rent is certainly reasonable.”
Sergeant Block said sourly, “You won’t find it so reasonable after you’ve been mugged a few times. We estimate that nine out of ten kids in that block are on smack, which makes it a pretty dangerous place to live. During the past three weeks the block you live in has had eighteen assaults and robberies, one rape, one murder, three overdose deaths and a baby suffocation.”
“My, my,” Singer clucked. “So short a distance from the station house too, and on the same street.”
Ireland felt himself flushing. “The high crime-rate in Hunts Point stems from drug abuse and substandard living conditions, Mr. Singer, not from inadequate policing. We make plenty of arrests.”
“Oh, I’m sure you people do all you can,” Singer said with an indulgent smile. “But you really don’t have to worry about me. I’m quite adept at self-defense. I hold a black belt in jujitsu; from Japan, not one of the meaningless black belts handed out like popcorn by American schools. And in real jujitsu, not the adulterated version taught here. Do you know the difference?”
“No,” Ireland admitted.
“What is taught as jujitsu in America is merely another simple variety of self-defense similar to judo, karate and aikido. But in its original form, as devised by the samurai and secretly handed down from generation to generation, it is a whole way of life. It involves rigid mental and emotional training as well as physical skills. And it encompasses all the techniques of unarmed combat. Judo, karate and aikido are all merely simple segments of jujitsu as taught by the samurai. I could easily tie in knots any American-trained wearer of a so-called black belt in any of those three techniques.”
Inspector Ireland looked him up and down with what started out as skepticism but turned to belief when he remembered the dead mugger lying in front of St. Athanasius Church. He said, “That still doesn’t explain why you choose to live in the heart of a high-crime area.”
The smaller man looked Ireland up and down too. It took him longer because the inspector stood six-feet-four.
Eventually he said, “Are you implying that police permission is required to live in this neighborhood?”
Ireland felt himself flush again. “Of course not,” he answered shortly. Then, because the little man kept putting him on the defensive, he took it out on Sergeant Block. Glaring down at the desk sergeant, he snapped, “Make sure this matter is thoroughly investigated before you release Mr. Singer, Sergeant.”
Sergeant Block gazed up at him quizzically, his expression suggesting wonder at why the precinct commander felt it necessary to instruct him that a man who just confessed to homicide had to be held for investigation, even though presumably it was justifiable homicide. Doing an about-face, Ireland stalked into his office.
This occurred Wednesday morning. On Wednesday afternoon Sergeant Block informed Ireland that the medical examiner and the homicide team that had investigated the death of the would-be mugger in front of St. Athanasius Church had agreed it was justifiable homicide and that the circumstances didn’t merit a formal inquest. The dead man had been a twenty-five-year-old drug addict named Edwin Garth, with a long record of arrests for assaults and robberies.
Both muggings and homicides were too common in Hunts Point for the incident to interest the news media. It wasn’t even reported in the newspapers.
Inspector Ireland took Saturdays and Sundays as his days off. When he logged in Monday morning, the desk sergeant informed him that Rollin Singer had killed another mugger Saturday night, this time in the first-floor corridor of his apartment building. Again the M.E. and the investigating homicide officers had agreed it was so clearly justifiable homicide that no inquest was required. This time the assailant had been a thirty-year-old man named Harry Purvis, who had three convictions for robbery with violent assault.
“Purvis was waiting under the stairs when Singer arrived home from having dinner out,” the sergeant reported. “He jumped out and tried to brain Singer with a lead pipe. Singer gave him a karate chop between the eyes and it killed him.”
Ireland sat at his desk and thought about this for nearly an hour. Finally he got up and went out to the squeal desk.
“Did this make the papers?” he asked Sergeant Block.