The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Six (73 page)

“You call the police now,” I interrupted. “Tell them what happened and that I was here. My name is Neil Shannon.”

Racing back to my car, I knew it was all a gamble from here on. Bryan was an important witness, and unless I got to him he would go the way Pete Burgeson had gone. Mat Bryan was the one guy who could tip the police on what had actually taken place, and once they knew, they would have the killers in a matter of minutes.

Yet there was an even more important witness, and finding him was a bigger gamble than saving Mat Bryan.

All this trouble had developed because Jake Brusa had come out of Joliet determined to play it smart. This time he was going to be on the winning side, but now the sweetest deal he had ever had in his life was blowing up in his face, and when he was caught there he wouldn’t have a chance if I could push this through.

If I’d expected to find him with Bryan, I was disappointed. He was just going in with Huber and Lincoff when I came in sight of the Sporting Center. I took a gander at my watch, then made a couple of calls to Briggs and the Roadside. They weren’t necessary, for Jake Brusa had built his alibi the wrong way and for the wrong time.

Then I walked up to the Sporting Center and pushed the door open. Inside there was a cigar stand and a long lunch counter. You could bowl, play billiards or pool, and it was said that crap games ran there occasionally. You could also make bets on baseball, races, fights, anything you wanted.

Jake Brusa had a sweet setup there without going any further, but a crook never seems to know when he’s got enough.

Huber was sitting at the counter with a cup of coffee. He turned when I started past him and grabbed at my wrist. I knocked the hand down so quick he spilled his coffee and jumped off the stool swearing.

“Where are you going?” he demanded.

“To talk to Jake,” I told him. “So what?”

“He doesn’t want to see anybody!”

“He’ll see me, and like it.”

“Tough guy, huh?” he said with a nasty smirk.

“That’s right. You tell him I’ve come to get Mat Bryan!”

When I said that name, Huber’s face went yellow-white, and he looked sick. I grinned at him.

“Don’t like it, do you?” I threw it at him. “That was kidnapping, Huber. You’ll get a chance to inhale some gas for this one!”

“Shut up!” he snarled. “Come on!”

I motioned him ahead of me, and after an instant’s hesitation, he went. We went past a couple of bowling lanes, through a door, and up a stairway. The sound of the busy alley was only a vague whisper here. Soundproofed. That meant nobody would hear a shot, either. Nor a pushing around if it came to that. When he got to the door, he rapped and then stepped aside. “Think I’m a dope?” I said. “You first!”

His face went sour, but my right hand was in my coat pocket, and he didn’t know I always carried my rod in a shoulder holster. He went in first.

Jake was behind a big desk, and Lincoff was seated in a chair at the opposite end. Brusa’s face was like iron when he saw me.

“What do you want?” he growled.

“He said he wanted to see Mat Bryan!” Huber warned.

“He ain’t here. I don’t know him.”

I leaned forward with both hands on the back of a chair. “Which one, Jake? Don’t make me call you a liar,” I told him. “Get him out here quick. I haven’t much time.”

Brusa’s eyes were pools of hate. “No, you haven’t!” he agreed. “What made you think Bryan was here?”

I laughed at him. I was in this up to my ears, and if I didn’t come out of it, I might as well have fun.

“It was simple,” I said. “You thought you had a good deal here. So what was it that gave you the idea you’re smarter than everybody else? This time you thought you were going to be in the clear, and all you did was mess it up.

“You had a finger man point these jobs for you. You had a perfect alibi last night, and all the good it did you was to help you pull a fast switch. A sucker switch. You switched your chances at a cell for a chance at the gas chamber.

“When you drove that armored car off the road, Jake, you left a track, a track that was dry. That proved it was made this morning, after the rain had stopped. The rain stopped about seven
A.M
., and your alibi isn’t worth a hoot. You took that truck out after the place opened up this morning!”

Brusa was sitting in his chair. He didn’t like this. He didn’t like it a bit. A crook can stand almost anything but being shown up as a fool.

“Smart lad!” he sneered. “Very smart! Until you walked in here!”

That one I shrugged off. Right now I wasn’t too sure I had any more brains than he did, but I’d gambled that Bryan was here and alive. If I couldn’t get him out, I could at least keep them thinking and keep them busy until the police followed up.

“You thought,” I told him slowly, stalling for time, “you’d have the cops going around in circles over those locked doors. They’d all think the watchman had done it. But whoever sank that body did a messy job. It was already floating this morning.”

Brusa’s eyes swung around to Huber.

“He’s lyin’, boss!” Huber exclaimed in a panic. “He’s lyin’!”

“He said the body was
floatin’,
” Brusa replied brutally. “Why would he say that unless they’d found it?”

“You didn’t go through those doors at all, Brusa,” I broke in. “You didn’t have to. The furs were all ready for you in the armored car, waiting to be driven away. Only two men knew how they got there, and one of them was honest, so you decided you had to kill him. Mat Bryan!”

Right then, I was praying for Briggs or the cops to get to me before the lid blew off. It was going to come off very soon and I was afraid I was expecting too much.

I kept on talking. “Bryan wanted to get off early because of the wedding, so your finger man hinted that he might leave the furs in the truck and have them all set to go in the morning, that would save time. All you had to do was wait until the plant opened in the morning, then go in and drive the truck away. Burgeson butted in, so you killed him.

“That was a mistake. According to the watchman’s time schedule, he should have been inside the plant by then. Only something happened to throw him off, and he was there in the loading dock and tried to stop you.

“Murder changes everything, doesn’t it, Jake? You weren’t planning on killing, but you got it, anyway. If Burgeson and the furs disappeared, well, he would get credit for stealing them, only Huber here did a bum job of sinking the body.

“You picked the right man for the finger job, too. A smart man, and in a position where he could get all the inside information, not only from his own firm, but from others. But now I’ve got a feeling you’ve killed one man too many!”

“Then one more won’t matter!” Brusa said harshly. “I’m going to kill Mat Bryan, but first I’m going to kill you!” His hand went to the drawer in front of him.

“Look out, boss!” Huber screamed. “He’s got a rod!” He dove at me, clawing at that coat pocket. But my right hand slid into my jacket and it hit the butt of my .38, which came out of the armpit holster, spitting fire.

My first shot missed Brusa as Huber knocked me off balance. My second clipped Lincoff, and he cried out and grabbed at his side. Then I swung the barrel down Huber’s ear and floored him.

Grabbing at the doorknob, I jerked it open and even as a slug ripped into the doorjamb over my head, I lunged out of the door with a gun exploding again behind me.

The stairs offered themselves, but I wanted Mat Bryan. There was another door down the hall, and I hit it hard and went through just as Brusa filled the doorway of the room behind me. I tripped on the rug and sprawled at full length on the floor, my gun sliding from my hand and under the desk across the room.

There was no time to get it because Jake Brusa was lunging through the door. I shoved myself up and hit him with a flying tackle that smashed him against the wall, but he took it and chopped down at my ear with his gun. I slammed him in the ribs, then clipped his wrist with the edge of my hand and made him drop the gun.

I smashed him with a left as he came into me, but he kept coming and belted me with a right that brought smoke into my brain and made my knees sag. I staggered back, trying to cover up, and the guy was all over me, throwing them with both hands.

I nailed him with a right and left as he came on in, then stood him on his toes with an uppercut. He staggered and went to the wall. I followed him in and knocked him sprawling into a chair. It went to pieces under him, and he came up with a leg, taking a cut at my head that would have splattered my brains all over the wall had it connected. I went under it throwing a right into his solar plexus that jolted his mouth open. Then I lifted one from my knees that had the works and a prayer on it.

That wallop caught him on the jaw and lifted him right off his Number Elevens. The wall shivered as if an earthquake had struck and Brusa was out, but I was already leaving. I made a dive for my gun, shoved it into my belt, and went out the door and down the carpeted hall. My breath was coming in great gasps as I grabbed the knob and jerked the door open.

Lincoff had beat me to it, only I came in faster than he expected and hit him with my shoulder before he got his gun up. He hit the floor in a heap, and I grabbed up a paring knife lying beside some apples on the table and slashed the ropes at Bryan’s wrists.

I got in that one slash, then dropped the knife and grabbed at the gun in my waistband. Lincoff had got to his feet and had his gun on me by that time. I knew once that big cluck started to shoot, he’d never stop until the gun was empty, so I squeezed mine and felt it buck in my hand.

His gun muzzle pointed down as he raised on his tiptoes, and then it bellowed and the shot ripped into the floor. Lincoff dropped on his face and lay still. Thrusting the gun back in my pants, I wheeled to help Mat. He was almost free now, and it was only a minute’s work to complete the job.

Down the hall there was a yell, then quiet, and then the pounding of feet. Briggs loomed in the door, a plainclothesman and a couple of harness cops with him.

“You!” Briggs’s face broke into a relieved grin. “I might have known it. I was afraid they’d killed you!”

There wasn’t much talking done until we got them down to Moffit’s office. When we marched them in, he got up, scowling. Hudspeth was there, and I’ve never seen a man more frightened.

Jake Brusa and Huber, handcuffed, looked anything but the smart crooks they believed themselves to be. Brusa stood there glowering, and Huber was scared silly. But they were only the small fry in this crime. We wanted the man behind the scenes.

“All right,” Briggs said, “it’s your show.” Most of the story he’d heard from me on the way over from the Sporting Center, and Bryan had admitted to the furs left in the truck.

“There’s only one thing left,” I said, watching one of our men come in beside a tall young fellow in a decrepit sharkskin suit, “and that’s nailing the inside man, and we’ve got him. Dead to rights!”

Moffit sat up straight. “See here! If one of my men had been—” His eyes shifted to Hudspeth. “You, Warren?”

“No, Moffit,” I said, leaning over the desk, “not the man you hired to be your scapegoat! You!”

His face went white as he sprang to his feet. “Why, of all the preposterous nonsense! Young man, I’ll have—”

“Shut up, and sit down!” I barked at him. “It was you, Moffit. You were the man who informed these crooks when a valuable haul could be made! You were the man who cased the jobs for them! You knew the inside of every warehouse in town, and could come and go as you liked.

“We’ve got the evidence that will send you to prison if not to the gas chamber where you rightly should go! I’ll confess I suspected Hudspeth. I know he had done time, but—”

“What?” Briggs interrupted. “Why, you investigated this man. You passed him for this job.”

“Sure, and if I was wrong, we’d have to make the best of it. Hudspeth was in trouble as a kid, but after looking over his record, I decided he’d learned his lesson. I checked him carefully and found he had been bending over backwards to go straight.

“Nevertheless, knowing what I did and understanding it was my responsibility if anything went wrong, I kept a check on his spending and bank account. That day in the office when I first came in, he acted strangely because he knew something was going on and he was scared, afraid he’d be implicated.

“Another reason I originally let him stay was that I found that Moffit had hired him while knowing all about that prison stretch. I figured that if he would take a chance, we could, too. Now it seems Moffit was going to use him if anything went haywire.”

“That’s a lie!” Moffit bellowed. “I’ll not be a party to this sort of talk anymore!”

Briggs looked at me. “I hope you’ve got the evidence.” I looked at the man in the gray sharkskin suit and he stepped forward. “It was him, all right,” he said, motioning toward Moffit. “He opened the doors this morning and he was standing by when the crooks knocked Pete out and took him away. He talked with this man,” he added, pointing at Brusa.

“That’s a lie!” Moffit protested weakly. “How would you know?”

“Tell us about it,” I suggested to the man in gray.

He shifted his feet. “Pete Burgeson and me were in the same outfit overseas. But I got wounded and I’ve been in and out of the hospital for the last two years. He told me to come around and he’d give me money for a bed and chow. When I got here, the rain was pouring down and I couldn’t make him hear. I tried to push up that back window and it busted, so I opened it and crawled in. Pete was some upset but said he’d take the blame. There weren’t any burglar alarms on the annex.

“I was out of the hospital just a few days, and I got the shakes, so I laid down on those tarps under the bench after sharing Pete’s lunch with him. Pete came along and put his coat over me.

“When I woke up, I saw them slug Pete. Moffit was standing right alongside. Every morning, I have to rub my legs before I can walk much and knew if I tried to get up they’d kill me, so I laid still until they left, then got away from there. One of the detectives found me this morning in the park.”