The Third Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 25 Classic Mysteries
- Автор: Пауэлл Тэлмидж
- Год: 2020
- Язык: английский
- Год: Wildside Press LLC
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «The Third Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 25 Classic Mysteries». Краткое содержание книги:
My first stop of course was the sheriff’s office. Gaither Jones, the lank deputy, was on duty.
I stood beside his desk, shaking my head sadly. “Terrible accident, Gate. One minute Mr. Fogarty, all excited, was running about, showing me where he planned a pavilion overlooking the valley. And the next — poor fellow; the shale looked solid, but the edge crumpled under his feet, and afore I could reach him, Mr. Fogarty was falling.”
Gate, in the act of rising, was frozen for a second. “All the way down?”
“Plump to the bottom,” I said. “Gate, you better take a couple men out there and blot up what’s left of our friend Mr. Fogarty.”
Gaither reached for his hat, and bounded from the office.
I walked out, traded friendly nods with good folks I’d known a lifetime as I hurried along the sidewalk. A block further on, I turned into my own office. I had to pause a moment and look at the lettering on the front window: Comfort Savings and Loan Association. I must say that the gold leaf looked a lot brighter than it had when I’d driven out of town.
Business was moving along at its normal pace as I passed through the large outer room. An overalled farmer, stained with honest toil, was making his monthly savings deposit at the single teller’s cage. A young man and wife were discussing a loan with Jed Markham at his desk.
Jed started to rise and ask a question when he looked up and saw me.
“Later, Jed,” I said. “Got something else on my mind right now. And you treat those young folks right, hear me?”
With a wave of the hand, I went through the doorway at the rear. It provided entry to my private office, which was wedged in a portion of the building beside the board room.
Miss Meffort, the tall, spare, no-nonsense woman who has been a most efficient secretary to me for twenty-five years, was busily typing. She greeted me with a short but friendly nod as I moved on to my old walnut desk in the comer.
I picked up the phone, rocked back in my swivel chair, and called Judge Bine. I told him to forget about Randolph P. Fogarty’s preliminaries for bankruptcy. “Just keep the whole thing under your hat, Judge. Fogarty won’t be petitioning, and sleeping dogs never bit anybody or howled any questions.”
I knew it was all I had to say. The judge would understand, at least a little of it, in due time.
Comfort, as Fogarty should have realized, is more than a town. It’s an organism, you might say. And the cells work together to fight a hint of cancer.
I put the phone down and sat there with my fingers laced across my flat, trim stomach, content to listen to the everyday music of Miss Meffort’s typewriter.
But there was still work to do.
“Miss Meffort, bring your pad, please. I have to dictate a letter.”
A brisk flick of movement, Miss Meffort was seated in the secretary’s chair beside my desk, pencil poised for shorthand.
“The letter is to Amalgamated and Consolidated Life Insurance Company of Dixie,” I said.
That brought a startled look from her, a most unusual reaction, seeing as how Miss Meffort is a real cucumber when it comes to coolness.
“Yes, Miss Meffort,” I sighed. “Like any reputable institution loaning money we’ve insured every borrower for the amount of his loan over all the years. There has been, I fear, an accident. A fatal accident. So we must file a claim for a hundred thousand dollars with ACLIC of Dixie to repay in full the loan which Mr. Randolph P. Fogarty took with us some weeks ago.”
“My goodness!” Miss Meffort said. She’d have questions later, but she’d await them until the completion of business.
In the moment before I started dictating the letter that would put a hundred thousand back in our vaults, ready for usage by deserving customers, I experienced a strange flicker of fondness for Mr. Fogarty. Alive, he’d been a smooth con man, his front covering the dirtiest of crooks. Dead, he was surely the most honest man I knew, repaying to the final penny his indebtedness to Comfort Savings and Loan Association.
Parole Violation
Originally appeared in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, May 1973.
The parole supervisor’s office fitted the man. It was gloomy, a little seedy, with a feeling of dusty untidiness.
The big cop who’d escorted me in said, “Here he is, Sam. Fred Davis. Another nose to wipe.”
A cop of the old school, he shoved me another step toward Sam Lagin’s desk and then turned around and went out.
“Pull up a chair and sit down, Freddie,” Lagin said.
He stood behind his desk, a moth-eaten, bullish figure. Baggy gray suit, rumpled shirt, necktie with a wrinkled knot. Big, fleshy face with a drab, brown, old-uncle mustache that matched his hair and mean little eyes that were almost colorless.
With the power of the state to back him, Sam Lagin was the parole officer who’d run my life for the next two years, and I wondered if the pokey may not turn out to be just the frying pan...
As I eased onto a scuffed wooden chair, Lagin settled behind his desk. He pawed through the litter until he found the file he wanted.
He let me sweat while he read, grunting now and then while he did so. He looked at me at last, the loose lips below the unkempt mustache tightening into a smile that was more sly and secret than happy.
“Fred B. Davis, age twenty-five, fair education, better than average I.Q.,” he recited. “What’s your trouble, Freddie? Can’t stand the routine of punching a time clock?”
I let it hang there, and after a few seconds his heavy face darkened a shade.
“Boy, you answer when I speak to you!”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
His eyes drifted back to the folder. “Bought yourself some real trouble, didn’t you? Mugged a well-heeled citizen one dark night and took his cash, watch, ring, credit cards and car. Picked up your chick Clemmie and partied through three states before the law put the arm on you.”
“I’ve learned my lesson, Mr. Lagin,” I said earnestly.
“Have you, Freddie? I’m betting you’re a natural born criminal, easily bored, lacking in self-discipline, itching for excitement, and always looking for the easy way out. You’re a good looking kid, Freddie, even if it’s on the tall, skinny side. That boyish face and wide brown eyes might fool a lot of people — But not me. I’m pegging you as lazy, self-centered, with no stomach for the responsibilities acceptable to most members of society.”
His words brought a pink anger to my face, but I pressed my elbows hard on the wooden arms of the chair and kept my mouth shut.
Lagin spotted my reaction, and the first glint of pleasure came to his smile.
“Well,” he said, “we’ll see. Seventy-eight percent of your kind return to crime almost the minute you’re back on the streets. It’s my job to whittle away at that figure, Freddie, and I do the best I can. I’ve fifty-three of you to wet-nurse at the, moment, and despite the gloomy prospects I’m pulling for you, Freddie.”
“Thank you, Mr. Lagin,” I said, because it seemed the thing to say.
He dropped the folder carelessly on the desk. “You know the rules. You entered a contract when you applied for parole.”
“You’ll have no trouble from me, Mr. Lagin.”
“Thus spake seventy-eight percent,” he muttered dourly. “But in prison or out, you won’t make much difference in the crime rate, Freddie. It always rises, no matter how hard Mrs. Lagin’s boy Sam tries.”
He pushed back his chair, ending the interview. “Even with fifty-three, I always try to keep an extra close eye on new members of the club for awhile.”