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:
Darlene was every bit as good as Murphy’s word, and my prediction as to Kowalski’s return missed by only a couple of days.
We were gathered in the prison library when Kowalski came barging in. He looked rather glum at first. No one even dared to think about the chain of little events that had returned him here. For the eight of us, it would be a secret for all time to come.
Kowalski had figured an explanation that satisfied his own mind. As we broke library rules and crowded around him, he said, “Yeah, it’s me. Lousy fuzz framed me. Planted some heroin in my room and nailed me for parole violation. That’s why I’m back here.”
Murph pounded Kowalski on the shoulder while I grabbed and pumped his hand.
“Tough break,” Murph said, “but it sure is good to see you, Kowalski!”
Everybody murmured approval of that sentiment, and as he looked from face to face, Kowalski began losing his glum.
“Come to think of it,” he said, his teeth glinting in the first stages of a smile, “it’s not so bad seeing you monkeys either!”
I let out an easy breath. His experience seemed not to have unduly upset Kowalski psychologically. And that was important. As team captain, I was certainly counting on Kowalski to pitch us to another inter-prison championship.
“You got back just in time,” I remarked. “Baseball season starts next week.”
For a second, the merest glint of suspicion flicked across Kowalski’s big face. But how could we have broken his parole? So now his smile came full blown and eager.
“I guess you bums were plenty worried by the thought of starting without me. You’d never get anywhere.”
Which was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
The Jury Caper
Originally published in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, July 1974.
While Clara tidied the dinette and did the dinner dishes, Eddie passed the minutes restlessly in her small living room, pacing the carpet, fiddling with the TV set.
When he heard her closing cabinet doors in the kitchenette, he settled into the large orange-colored armchair, feigning an air of well-fed contentment that masked the out-of-sight idea churning in his mind.
With his superficial good looks, curly black hair styled long about his ears, slender body clothed in carefully coordinated brown-tan-gold, Eddie was a good imitation of a fashion advertisement depicting a young executive taking his ease. The fact is, he spent a lot of time studying the ads, then picking with ferret determination through the cut-rate and chain stores when he had to buy a shirt, tie, jacket, shoes, or suit.
Clara came in, palming a stray wisp of dull brown hair from her forehead. Eddie turned his head, looking up and hitting her with the Bailey special smile, glint of white teeth, a crinkling at the corners of sooty-lashed eyes.
It worked as always.
Clara pinked with pleasure as he took her hand and drew her down on his lap. She was plain, but not a real dog, Eddie reflected. The lack-luster hair set the tone for the rest of her. Ordinary face and figure. Dull brown personality. Sum total not unpleasant, just blah. A shy, lonely, affection-starved working girl.
But she was a cool cook, and her apartment was always open when there was no place else to spend an evening. Her eagerness to please him sometimes annoyed Eddie. Still, it was nice to receive golf clubs and Swedish sweaters for presents and to know she would always override his protests about accepting loans from her.
He slipped his arms about her waist.
“Was the dinner okay, Eddie?”
“The greatest.” His lips nuzzled her neck, bringing a shivery little sigh from her. She wriggled comfortably in his lap, resting her head against his shoulder.
He let her have a moment of idyllic contentment; then he murmured against her hair, “Kitten, I’m darn tired of not being able to give you things.”
“You’re all I want, Eddie.”
“See what I mean? Girl like you, you rate the best. I want us to play on the sand at Miami Beach. Dine at Antoine’s. Shop for a bauble in a Parisian shop.”
She raised slightly and looked at him, their eyes inches apart. “What are you talking about, Eddie?”
“You and me, baby.” He kissed her quite suddenly, feeling her response of passionate longing. His own mind was more concerned with the immediate future than with this moment. Clara’s job in the courthouse hadn’t interested him, except as an incidental source of bread — until the recent murder of a girl named Nancy Chavez.
He broke the kiss lingeringly. “We can have all those things, Kitten, everything we’ve dreamed of, and we don’t have to necessarily rob a bank to do it.”
“How, Eddie?”
“You just make sure I’m on the jury when the Chavez case comes to trial. I’ll take care of everything else, and when the trial is over we’ll have so much bread you’ll think I’ve printed the stuff, believe me.”
She drew back, but not much. “I don’t understand, Eddie.”
“It’s simple. You’ve told me about your job and how the jury setup works in this state. First, a list of jurors is summoned, making up a jury pool. From this pool the jury clerk makes up the lists that will act as juries in the civil and criminal cases scheduled for trial in the courthouse before the various judges.”
“That’s about the way it works,” she said, “but I still don’t see—”
“Who is the jury clerk, Kitten? Who handles the papers, keeps the records, draws the jury lists from the pool?”
“I do, Eddie. You know that.”
“So I’m volunteering, baby, for a duty that most citizens try to duck. You add my name to the pool. Then you make sure I’m included in the jury for the Chavez trial. After that, who knows? Maybe a honeymoon to Hawaii.”
“Oh, Eddie!” A sob of happiness filled her throat. “Did I hear you say honeymoon?”
“Your ears don’t lie, Kitten.” He bruised her lips with a Bailey special. He knew he’d overrun the first objective. He was as good as sitting in the jury box already, hearing the indictment read against young Richie Wood for the murder of Nancy Chavez.
Eddie escaped Clara shortly before midnight. Instead of going directly home, he tooled his Toyota sports crosstown to a modestly fashionable apartment building. He thumbed the communicator button in the lobby half a dozen times before he admitted to himself that Joella Marlowe wasn’t home.
He gritted his teeth, glowered about the small empty lobby. Often when he had to take Clara in his arms, his mind would displace her with the lovely blonde image of Joella. Right now, he was stung with the thought of Joella living it up with some well-heeled creep while he’d had to make the scene with Clara.
Okay, Joella baby, he thought as he kicked the lobby door open, but you’ll be singing Eddie-boy’s tune...
The next morning at ten o’clock Eddie was in a corner booth in a downtown bar and grill. He drank coffee in nervous sips, his eyes riveted to the front door. Now and then he blotted his forehead with a purple-hued handkerchief.
The back-bar clock registered ten-fifteen when Baxter Wood appeared in the doorway and paused to look the bar over. Eddie recognized him instantly, from pictures splashed on television and front pages when Nancy Chavez was murdered.
Eddie stumbled in his haste to get out of the booth. He hurried over to the multimillionaire plastics manufacturer.
“Mr. Baxter Wood?”
“Yes.” The word was a guttural. Even in a cashmere suit and twenty-dollar necktie, Baxter Wood struck Eddie as a character who would be right at home in a lumber camp. The guy had a blunt, square face topped with a style-scorning crewcut the color of iron.
“I’m Eddie Bailey, Mr. Wood, the fellow who phoned you earlier this morning and suggested a meeting.” Eddie was sweating only a little. “Not many people in here this time of day. We can have all the privacy we need over there in that corner booth.”