Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 75, No. 4, April 15, 1933
- Автор: Day Stanley, Dunn J. Allan
- Год: 1933
- Язык: английский
- Год: Red Star News Company
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 75, No. 4, April 15, 1933». Краткое содержание книги:
With the help of Peg Leg, Donnelly and Raycraft, Lovett rounded up former members of the White Hands and they assembled in a speakeasy to meet their old chief and make plans to drive out Dinny Meehan. The speakeasy was not far from the Loaders’ Club and Lovett had visited it often. Now they had beers all around. After the first glass Wild Bill gripped his stomach and writhed in pain. The beer had been poisoned. Meehan was reaching out for him again, this time with poison. Lovett made short work of the speakeasy. He whipped out his automatic and emptied it into the back bar, smashed all the bottles, and finally fired a shot into a copper boiler steaming with a fresh mess of home brew. When he left the place it was to have his stomach pumped.
This happened on a cold night in March, 1921.
The next morning Dinny Meehan failed to show up in the Loaders’ Club. He had been shot through the heart as he lay asleep in his bed with his wife and infant daughter at his side. As near as the police could gather, the killer had fired through a transom over the bedroom door. He had fired twice, hitting Mrs. Meehan in the shoulder with his first shot, then ending Dinny Meehan’s career with the second.
Both bullets were soft-nosed.
That night Wild Bill was in jail charged with suspicion of having killed Meehan.
Chapter VII
An Old Enemy Back Again
The police faced their old enemy with a certain feeling that he would end in the electric chair or go to the Big House for life. For twenty-four hours they grilled Wild Bill.
The nearest they got to an admission from him was this:
“I’m sorry to say I didn’t get Dinny Meehan. If I had I’d be telling you about it. But, in the first place, I never shot a soft-nosed bullet in my life. In the second place, I’m not such a poor shot that I’d hit a woman in the shoulder.”
“Then it was one of your gang that got Meehan,” a detective shouted at him.
“That might be,” grinned Lovett. “They’d do almost anything I ask them to do. There’s a hundred of my friends that might have done it, but it’s up to you to pick out the one that did.”
Bill once more walked out of jail into the free air. He went direct to the Loaders’ Club. At his appearance three of Meehan’s old bodyguard skulked out. Only Terror McTague remained. Openly he accused Lovett of having killed Meehan, and he swore to get the White Hander before the week was out.
“Meehan left this place to Gillen, Barry, Tim Quilty and myself,” said McTague, “and we’ll drive you out.” He stamped out of the Loaders’ Club. Slouching along the docks, three bullets were pumped into him, and though he recovered he never again set foot in Bridge Street.
The arm of the law reached out for Wild Bill again, but he had a shatterproof alibi to meet the charge that he had wounded McTague. When he left Raymond Street jail Peg Leg was with him. The latter wanted to call a taxi for Bill, for his old wounds were causing him great pain.
“Never mind the cab,” said Lovett. “Walking’s good for me, and. I’m not running away from any bullets. I’ve got six in me now. A few more won’t hurt.”
They walked on a block and halted at a cross-street to let a large touring car pass. The machine slowed and the blue muzzle of an automatic poked out through the side curtains. Bill made a leap for it. It blazed three times and he fell with two bullets in the right shoulder, opening up the old shrapnel wound.
Though he was in great pain, Lovett got up on his knees and said to Peg Leg: “It was Garry Barry’s finger that pulled that trigger. I got a good look at his hand. He was wearing a silver horseshoe nail ring that Dinny Meehan gave him.”
Lovett refused to be taken to a hospital. The wounds were superficial, and a private surgeon extracted the two bullets. Detectives called on Lovett.
“You fellows might as well ask a can of peaches to talk as to ask me to spill,” Lovett said to them. “Whoever pumped that lead into me will be taken care of as he expects to be taken care of.”
Garry Barry’s body was found riddled with two steel-nosed bullets.
In two hours Lovett was back in Raymond Street jail, but, lacking evidence to connect him with the killing of Barry, the detectives turned him loose. It was true that Barry was killed with steel-nosed bullets, but Wild Bill produced a score of dock wallopers who swore that at the moment Barry was killed Wild Bill was in the Loaders’ Club.
Wild Bill went back to the club. His men greeted him with a bellowing welcome. And yet Bill hadn’t up to this time been able actually to rule the domain which he had wrung from Meehan. He had been too busy exterminating his enemies and going to and from jail and courts. And he had broken up the succession planned by Meehan for Gillen, Barry, Quilty and McTague. He had wiped out Barry and McTague, but Gillen and Quilty remained, ready, the moment Wild Bill was unseated, to step into Meehan’s shoes. Lovett was aware that the fortunes of battle might at any moment turn against him. He had arranged, in the event of a sudden taking off, that Peg Leg, Donnelly and Raycraft should succeed him in the order named, unless one of them happened to be bumped off before his time.
Gillen, who had a reputation as a killer and an unquenchable thirst for liquor, was a close and ever-present enemy. He openly vowed to kill Lovett. He was standing at a bar lifting a glass of whisky to his lips when he announced that before he took his next drink Wild Bill would be dead. A weasel-faced henchman of Gillen’s, known as Sammy the Angel, stood at Gillen’s side. A flash of blue fire came through a window in the rear of the speakeasy and the glass in Gillen’s hand flew into splinters. The gun barked a second time and Gillen slumped to the floor with a bullet through his heart.
Sammy the Angel drew his gun and dashed to the window, crying, “Lovett got Gilly. I’ll get Lovett.” Whether Sammy had actually seen Wild Bill at the window no one ever has been able to say, for when Sammy stood on a chair and peered through the rear window a bullet pierced his skull and he fell back dead.
The bullets which ended the careers of Gillen and Sammy were both steel-jacketed. Lovett was hauled in again on suspicion. He put up a mild protest.
“For the love of Mike,” he said. “If the king of Siam was bumped off you dicks’d pick me up for the job. Can’t somebody else do the bumping off that’s being done around here besides me?”
The steel-nosed bullets in Gillen and Sammy were not enough to cinch the murders on Wild Bill. Once more he made a triumphant exit from Raymond Street jail.-
For a year affairs ran a comparatively quiet course in Shantytown. On New Year’s day 1922 Wild Bill awoke to the realization that he was living beyond the brief span hospital surgeons had mapped out for him. The dock wallopers offered no rebellion to his rule. He kept the Loaders’ Club going, and in spite of prohibition kept them supplied with beer and booze.
The day of high wages on the docks had ended with the war. Earnings were down to their old level. Lovett assessed each man fifty cents a day when he worked, as dues in the club, and, in addition, he made a profit on the sale of home brew and moonshine to them. He had rid Shantytown docks of Italian guerillas from Navy Street, and he had piloted his men through two strikes. Dock owners claimed that Bill extorted protection money from them under the threat of more strikes. If he did so the men under him were not offended, for Meehan had extorted heavy tribute from dock owners during the war, and whatever graft the dockmen were forced to contribute was the business of the boss and not theirs.