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:
He began to put on flesh and acquire a ruddy complexion. By winter he had a job in a nearby silk mill staked out for himself. He had heard nothing from Brooklyn. Letters came to the house for him from Peg Leg, Cute Charley and Raycraft, advising him that they were running the Loaders’ Club and everything was jake, except that a lot of tough muggs were always asking, “Where’s Wild Bill?” These letters got no further than Anna La Vett’s hands and she tossed them into the fire.
“The Sheriff” kept newspapers from him, too, so that he had no way of learning that Al Capone, the first enemy he had led his White Hands against, and whom he had driven from the docks, lone-handed; was laying the foundation of his underworld empire in Chicago, killing men and muscling into the booze, gambling, vice, and cleaning and dyeing rackets in the Windy City.
Wild Bill had almost forgotten Capone in the stress of violent events which had followed his driving of Capone from the coffee docks. But Capone had left proxies in Brooklyn, pals and henchmen in the Navy Street gang.
On Columbus Day, 1923, Bill was splitting wood in the back yard of the Little Ferry home when “The Sheriff” snapped some pictures of him. He was surprised at the change in himself when he saw them. He actually appeared robust.
“It would be a swell idea to send them to the district attorney in Brooklyn,” said Bill. “He might wash out the old gun charge against me if he saw I was on the level now. And what about sending a set to my mother for her birthday, November first? It would certainly-tickle her to see the change.”
“That’s a swell idea,” Anna agreed.
“And wait a second,” Bill exploded with enthusiasm. “I ought to be able to take out a life insurance policy now, in your favor.”
When Anna wrote to a New York insurance company, asking that an agent be sent to see her husband about taking out a policy, she gave Wild Bill’s full name and mentioned his army service, for that would show the one commendable high light in his career. There was considerable delay in getting an answer from the company. When it came a pall of gloom fell over the household. Under no circumstances, said the company, would it take a risk on a man as notorious and uncertain of life as William Joseph Lovett! The reputation he had built up had carried its ferocious import into quarters far remote from the bloody streets of Shantytown.
But “The Sheriff” and Wild Bill had the snapshots. On the last day of October, 1923, they got into a taxicab outside their new home and were driven to Brooklyn, crossing the Brooklyn Bridge and speeding past and above Shantytown. They had the snapshots with them for the district attorney, and an extra set for Bill’s mother. The taxicab bore a New Jersey license plate. Anna Lovett did not propose to let her reformed man run the risk of traveling in dangerous country in a Brooklyn taxi. As the taxi neared the Lonergan home Bill spoke about getting some flowers for his mother’s birthday the next day.
Chapter IX
Missing
It was dark when they reached the Lonergan house. “The Sheriff” wouldn’t let Bill out of the taxi until she made sure that Peg Leg was not around. She wanted to avoid the risk of the two pals meeting. Therefore she got out and went into the house, leaving Bill in the taxi.
When she came out to call in Bill, the taxi had gone with Lovett. For an instant she thought that he had gone for the flowers he had spoken about. At the end of half an-hour she was frantic. Bill had not shown up and had not phoned. It grew late, then past midnight. Terror-stricken, Anna called a taxi and went out in search of her man. She drove straight to the Loaders’ Club. It was closed and in darkness. She phoned everyone who knew Bill. None had seen him, nor did they know he was in town.
It was almost daybreak when she reached home. Bill was not there and had sent no message. She sat up, waiting for him.
Shortly after daybreak, a policeman, passing the Loaders’ Club, halted at its dirty window and peered in. It was dark within. He flashed his lamp into the place. It touched a pile of lumber standing against a rear wall. Then he played it on the floor. Its bright beam touched the feet of a man lying face down on the floor. The cop broke down the door and rushed in. He turned the body over on its back and noted that the head was enormously large; the thin face was smeared with gore and bashed in. In its right temple were two bullet wounds. Wild Bill was dead. Detectives were summoned. It was plain that whoever had fired the bullets into the temple knew that Wild Bill had survived many a bullet and had crashed in his large head to make certain he would die.
One of the detectives observed that, although Bill wore his own coat, there was a man’s coat under his head. He pulled it out. On a cloth label on the inner pocket was written the name Fiddler Byrnes, the man Wild Bill had driven out of the White Hands for double-crossing him.
The police net was spread for Byrnes and Frank Martin, both known to the police as old time enemies of the slain Bill.
“Me kill Wild Bill?” Byrnes protested. “You dicks are crazy. Sure, I was with him last night and we had drinks and patched up all our troubles.”
“But how did your coat happen to get under his head?” the detective demanded.
“Well, Bill got aboard more liquor than he could stand,” said Byrnes, “and he passed out on the floor. I took off me coat and made a pillow for his head. Then I beat it home. What happened after I left I don’t know.”
Fiddler Byrnes was released.
Martin had a shatterproof alibi and was eliminated.
In the uniform he had worn in France, Wild Bill was buried in the National Cemetery at Cypress Hills, Brooklyn. His Distinguished Service Cross gleamed on his breast. There were no burial services at the grave for the all-sufficient reason that the cemetery authorities did not desire to have a battle, and word had reached them that guns would be sure to blaze if a ceremony were permitted in the open.
Quietly, the funeral services took place in a chapel in Ridgefield, N. J., not far from the Little Ferry home where Bill and his “Sheriff” had settled down. The chapel was crowded. Among the mourners were Peg Leg, Cute Charley, and Raycraft, heavily gatted, alert-eyed and tensely solemn. Chaplain Allan McNeil of the Veterans of Foreign Wars was reading the service — extolling the one heroic chapter in Wild Bill’s life — when the tense atmosphere caused him to falter.
“It’s all right,” a voice whispered into his ear. “Go ahead. Do your best by Bill. If trouble starts you can count on us.”
The chaplain concluded. The crowd was tense. The chapel was heaped with flowers. As vicious as he was in his ganging days Bill Lovett was admired by scores of respectable persons for the one act in his life that merited him a decent burial in a hero’s grave.
Two hours later the flag-draped coffin was lowered into the earth. Rifles cracked over the grave in a last military salute, a Boy Scout blew taps and grumbling sod thumped against the coffin in the pit.
Anna Lonergan, her brother Peg Leg, Cute Charley Donnelly, and Bill Raycraft stood at the grave for some time, in silence.
It was Peg Leg who broke the spell. He looked at Cute Charley.
“Remember on the roof that night,” he said. “The pork chops... the jug of whiskey... and Byrnes and Martin?”
Cute Charley and Raycraft nodded.
“We raised our hands when Bill told us to, and we swore to stick even if something happened to him,” Peg Leg went on. “Well, it’s happened. Byrnes and Martin are still alive.”
“Yeah and don’t we know it,” snarled Donnelly.
They left the cemetery. Anna Lovett parted from them at the grave. She seemed to want to avoid them. Though her grief seemed to be genuine, her thoughts at the grave were more concerned with her immediate and now widowed future.