The Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK™: 15 Classic Crime & Mystery Stories

The smaller man hiked his eyebrows. “Do you really think any jury would convict me, Inspector?”

“I think one might, if we established that you were deliberately inciting these attacks.”

Rollin Singer looked astonished. “You know perfectly well I have done no such thing, Inspector. If I had been walking around deliberately flashing a roll of money, you might have some justification for such a charge. But both attacks on me occurred with absolutely no provocation on my part and in places where it seems to me I should have the right to feel safe from such attack. The first was in front of a church, in broad daylight, before witnesses; the second, in a corridor of my own apartment building. I suspect that if a jury were called upon to consider the matter, it would conclude that the real culprit is the 41st Precinct, for failure to keep residents safe from such attacks.”

Inspector Ireland examined the dapper little man sourly for a long time before heaving a resigned sigh. “All right, Mr. Singer. Just remember what I said about using only enough force to repel attack.” When the week passed with no further word of Rollin Singer, Inspector Ireland almost forgot him, but on Monday morning the inspector learned that a third would-be mugger had died and a fourth had been seriously injured during another attempt to rob Rollin Singer. The attempt had been made in mid-afternoon on Sunday at the intersection of Simpson and Westchester Avenue, a scant half block south of the police station, by two eighteen-year-old addicts, one armed with a hatchet and the other armed with a machete. Singer had spun the hatchet-carrier in front of his partner’s descending machete with the result that the youth had been nearly decapitated and had died instantly. The jujitsu expert had then flipped the machete-wielder into the path of a passing truck, putting the second teen-ager in the hospital with a number of broken bones and internal injuries.

The dead youth had been named Felipe Lopez. The one whose machete had killed him was Jesus Flores. He had been charged with homicide. Rollin Singer had not been held.

“At least he didn’t kill anyone this time,” Sergeant Block said. “It was the guy’s own buddy who did the killing.”

But it was Singer’s expertise that had placed the dead boy in precisely the right spot to get his head chopped nearly off, Ireland realized. It also was a matter of pure chance that the second youth wasn’t dead. The possibility that the truck might kill him must have occurred to the little man as he threw the boy in front of it.

“This one make the papers?” the inspector asked.

“No. The papers are so bored with Hunts Point violence that police reporters seldom drop in to check the blotter anymore. They just phone to ask if anything newsworthy has happened. I thought you might not care to have this one mentioned, so I didn’t.”

“Good,” Ireland said approvingly. “I don’t want any crime news deliberately suppressed, but I’d just as soon Mr. Singer’s exploits not be mentioned unless some reporter specifically asks about him.”

The homicide team investigating Rollin Singer’s first kill had run a check on him through the Bureau of Criminal Identification. There was no local package on him. Ireland decided it was time to be a little more thorough. He got off a wire to FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., and the answer came back early in the afternoon. The little man had no criminal record.

The inspector decided the situation had reached the point where higher authority should be informed of it. He phoned Assistant Chief Inspector Horace Fitzer, police commander for all of the Bronx, and told him about it. Fitzer said he would consult with the D.A. and call back.

Instead, it was Bronx District Attorney Lyle Corrigan who phoned Ireland about a half hour later. He asked the precinct commander for a detailed report on all three cases involving Rollin Singer. Ireland not only gave him that, but described his meeting with the man in his office following the second mugger kill.

When he finished, Corrigan said, “This man is deliberately killing these muggers, Inspector. I know something of jujitsu in its ancient form, because I had some YMCA training in both judo and karate while I was in college. If he’s as expert as he claims, he could have subdued his attackers without killing them.”

“Maybe,” Ireland agreed. “But it would take more than a personal opinion to convince a jury he used more force than necessary to repel attack. Even if they suspected he had, can you visualize them convicting a respectable businessman for murder when all of his victims were dope-addict muggers who died in the act of attacking him with weapons when he was unarmed?”

After a period of silence the D.A. emitted a reluctant, “No.” Then he added, “You know this character is going to continue to kill muggers, don’t you?”

“I suspect it.”

“You also know some reporter is bound eventually to learn what’s going on and make a sensational story out of it.”

“Uh-huh. Which is the main reason I called Inspector Fitzer.”

“It’s going to put the 41st Precinct in a pretty poor light to have it publicized that police protection is so poor down there, a resident’s only chance of survival is to become a jujitsu expert.”

“It’s going to put the whole Bronx in a poor light,” Ireland told him. “You know how these things go. The minute interest is stirred up about the crime rate here, reporters will start gathering statistics to compare Hunts Point with other areas. And we’re not the only section of the Bronx with a crime problem.”