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:
Slowly Wild Bill extended his rule to all the docks in Brooklyn. At his whim ships loading and unloading could be tied up for weeks by his power to call strikes. The large-headed boy had gone far in his world of terror. At his will a great part of the commerce in the world’s busiest seaport could be tied up; he had vanquished enemies by murdering them, and he had not served a day in jail on a sentence!
Yet he was slighter, paler and a more emaciated figure than he had ever been. His hands were still white and thin and he carried around in his puny body the bullets of gang war as well as those pumped into him in the course of his heroic exploits on the battle fronts of the World War. He was the master muscle-man of the docks; the czar of the dock wallopers and undisputed monarch of the gang world. By evil means he had achieved big things in his hate-inspired lust for power and bigness. And it had come to pass among gunman and cops that to offend or oppose Wild Lovett was to court certain death.
In this era of peace along the clocks he had time to see Anna Lonergan. She pleaded with him to take her out of the wretched home where her parents were always fighting and settle down to a quiet existence. She always brought up Frank Martin’s name as one of the urgent reasons why Bill should wed her. Bill told her that if he was alive, July 26, which would be the anniversary of his discharge from the army, he would marry her on that day.
On the night of January 3, 1923, Anna Lonergan sat in her home waiting for Wild Bill to call. Midnight came. Bill had not appeared. She began to bite her finger nails and show other evidence of restless apprehension. She called up the Loaders’ Club. Bill was not there. Whoever answered the phone told her that Bill was in a beer joint at 289 Front Street. She called up the joint. There was no answer.
Two hours later a patrolman looked into the Front Street hangout. It was a wreck. Chairs were overturned, mirrors smashed, and the floor strewn with empty bottles. In a dark corner the cop saw something move. He investigated. The object that had moved was Wild Bill’s leg. He lay face down in a pool of blood. Two bullets had torn through his flat chest. One had entered his lung. He was unconscious. An ambulance carried him away. One bullet was taken from the chest; the other was too deeply imbedded in his already afflicted lung to be probed for without fatal consequences. Slowly he came to. The police demanded to know who shot him.
“Aw,” he said, “somebody popped-at me and chucked me in a corner for dead. But what difference does it make who did the popping? Bullets can’t kill me.”
But to his slavish henchmen, Peg Leg, Cute Charley and Raycraft, he opened up. “I don’t say that Tim Quilty actually pulled the trigger on me,” he said, “but he was the brain back of the gun. Eddie Hughes is the guy that got me.”
Peg Leg looked at his two companions. “Quilty and Hughes,” he cried. “The finger’s on ’em now.”
“You fellows never mind getting Quilty and Hughes,” said Bill. “All I want you to do is to find out where Quilty and Hughes hang out. Then leave the rest to me.”
Cute Charley went to a telephone and returned to Bill with the news that both men were in a speakeasy at Jay and Yorke Streets.
Chapter VIII
The Last of the Line Drops
Alone, Wild Bill poked his way into the speakeasy. Twelve men were guzzling booze at the bar. Two of them were Quilty and Hughes.
Quilty was the first to spot the visitor. He reached for his gun, but a steel-nosed bullet ripped into his chest and he toppled back, dead. Hughes’ hand went for his gun, but, instead of drawing it, he hesitated for an instant, then fled out the rear. Hughes was a big bruiser and not a man to run from a gun fight. Apparently he thought it wisest to run and save his bullets for another day.
That day never came. Hughes’ body was found in a Shantytown gutter, his jugular vein severed by a steel-nosed bullet. He had been dead less than half an hour when the police found him. In a speakeasy, half down the block they found Lovett. They seized him, but not until he had covertly ditched his automatic by throwing it into a closet. The police found the gun where he had tossed it. They led him away to the Raymond Street jail, where he was held on suspicion of having murdered Quilty and Hughes.
He was languishing in this familiar bastille when Anna Lonergan brought him news that her father had been shot to death the night before and that her mother had been arrested, accused of the murder. John Lonergan had been shot in the night of the thirtieth anniversary of his marriage to the mother of Anna and Peg Leg.
“I knew it was going to happen some day,” Anna sobbed. “That’s why I wanted you to take me away.”
“I will, if I’m living July 26,” said Bill. Then he scrawled a note to a lawyer and handed it to Anna. “He’s the best mouthpiece in town and he’ll take good care of your mother,” Bill explained.
Early in July Mrs. Lonergan was acquitted. Bill was still in jail. The police were unable to find witnesses who could pin the Quilty and Hughes murder on him, but they had his gun and a charge of carrying a weapon was lodged against him, which meant that if he were convicted he would draw a seven-year sentence in the Big House. And in his sorry physical condition Bill would not live through half the term. The case against him was strong and his defense was phony. He insisted that he had been framed. The police laughed at this claim.
When his trial was called Bill was cool and confident. The police told about finding his gun in the speakeasy. A pal of the dead Hughes said he had seen Wild Bill toss it into the closet. The prosecution’s case looked complete, fool-proof.
Then Anna Lonergan was called to the stand. She was still clad in mourning for her father. She was shown the automatic. Had she ever seen the weapon before? Sure she had, many times. It was the gun which had belonged to her father and he had told her that he had thrown it into the closet in the speakeasy because he was afraid if he brought it home he might use it. Her father was dead. The prosecution had no way of refuting her story. Lovett’s lawyer, in his address to the jury, stressed his war service, his heroism and his winning of a medal. The jury deliberated twenty-four hours and finally reported it could not agree. Wild Bill was admitted to bail to await a re-trial. That was on July 25.
Next day he married Anna Lonergan.
The two honeymooners turned their backs on Brooklyn and the East River. In the quiet little village of Little Ferry, N. J., among utter strangers, they settled down as Mr. and Mrs. William La Vett. Wild Bill had pledged his bride that he was through with the old life and would begin anew. He spoke like he meant it. Perhaps he felt that since he had wiped out the Meehan dynasty, the big job he had mapped out for himself was finished. Doubtless he was also convinced that he had not long to live with seven bullets in him and one lung completely gone; and he longed to spend what time was left to him with the only woman who had come into his life and whom he had courted in an undemonstrative way in the days of his childhood in Catharine Street. Before leaving Brooklyn, Bill and Anna promised the district attorney that when Bill’s second trial on the guncarrying charge was called he would be on hand.
In his new surroundings, Bill gave every evidence of an honest attempt to “take the level” and reform. He worked in the garden, sawed and split wood, and, in the cool Fall days, went for long hikes in the woods with Anna at his side and their cocker spaniel trailing. He called his bride “The Sheriff” because wherever he went she went too. She was bound that Wild Bill would not carry out a sudden notion to go back to Brooklyn and look over the old battleground.