Long Live the Dead (14 page)

“Nice work, boys,” he said. “Nice timing.”

I felt mean, but there was nothing I could do about it. Nothing at all. One of Lomac’s lads relieved me of my gun, thumbed out the clip and put the empty weapon back in my pocket.

Lomac said, “Take him over to the club.”

They shoved me down the steps, and Lomac stepped aside as we went by. He was grinning. He said something about the average mentality of detectives and I had no comeback. He was right. If I was any example, the average mentality of detectives was low as hell.

The car door was open and they marched me up to it. Lomac tagged along so as not to miss any of the fun. He said, “Maybe you hadn’t better take him to the club after all, boys. Just chauffeur him out into the sticks some place and—lose him. You know.”

They nodded. One of them climbed into the car. The other pushed me in beside him. Then something happened.

He’d been waiting, I suppose, for me to get into the machine, where I wouldn’t be in the way if fireworks developed. At any rate, I was no sooner ensconced in the back seat when the guy stepped out from behind a clump of Lomac’s elegant shrubbery and snapped in a voice you could hear for ten miles: “That’ll be all of that! You’re pinched!”

I
t was like a thunderclap at a funeral. Lomac jerked around scared stiff.The gorilla standing beside him acted the way most of those guys do—by instinct. He went for his gun, which, like a damn fool, he’d dropped back into his pocket.

Bill Donahue—it was Bill Donahue—blasted him from a distance of ten yards, and didn’t miss. The mugg folded.

Lomac was too scared to move. But the two dogs in the car, the one beside me and the one at the wheel, had no intention of being taken that easily. The one at the wheel said, “Get him, Frankie,” and jabbed a foot at the starter button. Frankie shifted sideways and whipped his gun up to the rear window.

Bill Donahue was doing a foolish thing. He was striding toward the car and making a target of himself.

It was up to me. I still had my gun. It was empty but still useful. I grabbed it, and before my pal Frankie knew that I was up to any mischief, he had a face full of gunbutt. I didn’t aim. I didn’t have time for any aiming. All I did was swing.

Frankie’s gun exploded and the bullet went into the upholstery. Frankie sagged. I swung clear of him, in time to toss up my left arm and slap a gun out of the hand of the driver, who whirled to blast me.

We mixed it, hands and elbows doing the work. The car shot across the street, bounced up on the curb and kissed a lamp post. Bill Donahue came running.

But I didn’t need Donahue. I may have been born without brains, but the Lord granted me a fair pair of dukes, and at infighting I’m remarkable. In a phone booth I could probably lick Joe Louis.

When Bill Donahue got the door open I was still throwing punches, but the guy wasn’t aware of it. He was out, cold. I untangled him and shoved him away from me, and got out.

“Lomac!” I muttered. “He’ll get away, Bill!”

Bill shook his head, and I looked across the street and understood. Lomac was sprawled out on his elegant lawn. I hadn’t seen Bill bop him, but he certainly wouldn’t do any running for a while. I blinked at Bill and said warmly: “You got here just in time.” Then I added: “What’s the matter?”

He didn’t look so good. His face was sort of yellow, as if he were seasick, and he swayed a little on his feet. I remembered that he’d been in a hospital. His heart again.

I grabbed him, but he shook his head, told me he was all right. “It’ll pass,” he mumbled. “Can’t be sick now, Thompson. Too much to do.”

I shot a glance at the two guys in the car, to see if they’d be apt to give us any trouble. They wouldn’t. Not for quite a time yet. I steered Bill across the street and sat him on the steps of Lomac’s mansion. “What brought you here?” I asked.

“The Chief came over to the hospital. Told me what’d happened. I skipped and came over here quick as I could.”

“Why? Why here?” I said. “You seem to know a lot about this mess.”

He gave me a queer look. “You better find Evans,” was all he said.

He was right. I went into the house and used Lomac’s phone, called Headquarters. The Chief answered and I told him what was up, where we were at. “You send some men over here to pick up Lomac’s gorillas,” I begged, “and send a raid gang over to the Dexter Social Club on Dexter Street. I’ll be there with Lomac.”

He said he would. I went outside and Bill Donahue was bending over the mugg he’d blasted. I got Lomac into my car, but Bill wouldn’t come. “I’ll stay here and wait for the boys,” he said. He still had that queer look on his face, like he was going to be sick, awful sick, and was fighting to stay on his feet until the bell rang.

So with Lomac slumped on the seat beside me, I drove over to Dexter Street, parked at the corner and waited. In a little while the boys arrived.

The Dexter Social Club is a basement joint on the south side of the street, under a hotel. The Dexter Hotel. One is a hangout for thugs, big and small, and the other is a flop-house of the lowest order. I had half a hunch, even when we paraded down the steps and into the club, that we’d wind up in one of the frowsy rooms in the hotel.

As it turned out, I was right. The club was practically deserted. A couple of guys were shooting pool. A couple more were drinking beer out of bottles and watching them. They were all plenty scared when they saw so many uniforms.

We rounded them up and went through the place in search of others, but it was wasted effort. So then we hiked up into the hotel.

A thin little guy at a desk turned white as a sheet when he saw us. He shriveled up and his teeth chattered. I grabbed his necktie. “You know what we want,” I said.

“I—I don’t!” he wailed.

“No? Well, maybe you don’t. Maybe you don’t. Who’s living here right now?

He didn’t shove the register at me. He had one, but it was a laugh; a guy would be a sap to scribble his name in a dump like that. No. He just let his teeth chatter for a while and then said, “We—we got a guy on the top floor, a sailor, I think he is. And a couple of girls that—that—”

“Work here?” I snapped.

He nodded. “Yes. Work here, sort of. And then there’s two men in 419. That’s all.”

W
e hiked up the stairs to 419, and went the last few yards along the corridor on the soles of our shoes, making no noise to warn the occupants of that room of our arrival. I had a gun in my right hand and knocked with my left. A voice said: “Who is it?” “Lomac,” I said.

The door opened. Before the guy even had time to widen his eyes, my foot crunched against his shin. He bent double and ran his chin straight into my fist. The fist knocked him back into the room and he fell with a crash. Even if I do say so myself, that was nice timing.

I barged in, and a flock of uniforms barged in behind me. “Move,” I snapped, “and you get it!” They didn’t move. It would have been suicide.

There were three of them, and I knew them all. Knew them by name. Shorty Macrae was a greasy, sawed-off monkey with a face as grimy as his record. Tony Partucci was tall, built like a wrestler, and reputed to be dangerous as hell with a gun. The third one, Buddy Carter, was just a tough kid doing his best to graduate into major crime. Three bad babies.

They were reaching for the ceiling, and I motioned a cop forward to frisk them. He did. Then I stood in front of Tony Partucci and snarled, “O. K., where is he?”

He must have known it wouldn’t help him any to stall. Or maybe he didn’t like the looks of the fist I held ready to tag him with. He jerked his head toward a door on the other side of the room and said, “In there.”

I crossed over and jerked the door open. Jojo Evans was inside, bound to the end of an iron bed.

He didn’t say anything. Couldn’t. His mouth was smothered under layers of tape. He stared, though, and don’t ever let anyone tell you a man can’t talk with his eyes. I was as welcome as sunshine after three weeks of rain.

I got him untied and he pulled the tape off his mouth. I would have done that for him, too, but my hands were twitching so hard I probably would have torn away his teeth.

I said, “Lomac’s responsible for this. Just wait until I get my hands on that rat!”

Jojo slumped down on the bed and sat there, sucking his lips. He was a sight. His clothes were covered with floor dirt and torn half off him, and his face was a mass of bruises. They’d tossed him around, slugged him, doused him with water to bring him to again. He’d been through hell.

“How’d they get you out of your apartment?” I demanded.

“I thought it was you,” Jojo said. “Like a sap I just opened the door.”

“They took the pictures?”

He shook his head. “Couldn’t find them. That’s why I’m not dead yet. They been beating hell out of me, trying to make me tell where to look.”

I said, “Where are those pictures?”

“There aren’t any.”

“What?”

“I mean there aren’t any prints. All I did was develop the roll. It’s hanging up to dry in the apartment house airshaft.”

I gave him the fish stare he deserved, and walked into the other room. The boys had cuffs on Lomac’s three rats and were ready to herd them out.

“Take ’em to Headquarters,” I said. “I’ll be over later with Evans and Lomac.”

I almost had to carry Jojo down the stairs. He needed a doctor, but I had something else in mind that would do him a lot more good. Mentally, anyway. We piled into my car and I dismissed the cop who was waiting there, guarding Lomac. Lomac was coming to.

I took a roundabout way to Headquarters, a route that led through a couple of nice dark alleys. We spent some time in one of those alleys. When we did reach Headquarters, Jojo felt better. So did I. I slung Lomac over my shoulder and lugged him up the steps, took him into the Chief’s private sanctum and dumped him down on a chair. He slid off it and lay in a heap on the floor.

“What the devil happened?” the Chief demanded, looking at him.

“He resisted arrest,” I explained.

The Chief said, “Oh.”

Later, Jojo and I went over to Jojo’s apartment and picked up the roll of film. I held it to a light and looked at it, while Evans stared at me. They were pictures he’d taken in Leon Vanetti’s room, with his camera. They showed the corpse hanging there, the fishline, the overturned chair.

It was the chair, of course. I’d been in that room enough times to know it, but sometimes when you’re that close to a thing you don’t see it. The pictures gave me the proper perspective.

The chair was a mighty long way from the dangling feet of Mr. Leon Vanetti. And it was a heavy hunk of furniture; I knew because I’d hefted it. And no guy with a game leg could ever have kicked it so far out from under him.

I said,“Lomac hangs for this, Jojo.At least he rots in jail for a time. They planned this thing beautifully. Moeller swiped Vanetti’s door-key out at Vemmy Hasnlin’s place, Monday night. The rest was easy. They just laid for Vanetti and strung him up. Maybe Lomac wasn’t on the scene, but he engineered it, and when we put the pressure on those rats who kept you company at the Dexter Hotel, something’ll break wide open.”

“It would be easier,” Jojo declared, if we knew
why
they hung Vanetti.”

“I think maybe we’ll find that out.”

“How?”

“From Bill Donahue. He seems to know plenty about all this.”

Bill Donahue wasn’t at Headquarters when we got back with the film. He’d stayed on his feet long enough to superintend the cleaning up at Lomac’s house; then he’d collapsed.

Jojo and I drove over to the hospital to see him.

He was in bed and he didn’t look too good. We parked beside the bed, and when the nurse went out I said, “Mister, we want to know why Lomac saw fit to rub out Vanetti.”

Bill scowled. “Any reason will be good enough for a jury,” he said.

“I know that, but just between us we’d like to know the truth. And where you fit into this thing.”

Bill handed me a long, quiet stare. “I suppose you know I’m through,” he said.

“Hooey! You’ll be up and around—”

“Not a chance,” Bill declared calmly. “As long as a month ago I knew I was through. I went to a flock of doctors,Thompson, and they all told me the same thing. Bum ticker. Lights out any time. A month at the most.”

“You mean it?” I said, feeling queer.

He nodded. “So I decided to raise a little private hell before I turned in my checks. I’ve been a dick a long time, and I’ve taken more than my share from crooked politicians and plain rats like Lomac. So I snooped around, Thompson. I snooped and came across a pretty chunk of crime in which Lomac was sunk up to big greasy neck. You remember that Mason Street underpass?”

I said I remembered it. Why wouldn’t I? When the Mason Street underpass caved in—by accident—three workmen died.

“Lomac was the lad who arranged that cave-in,” Bill Donahue said quietly, “because he was sore about not getting the contract in the first place. He arranged it, and Vanetti did the dirty work. I dug up positive proof. Not the kind of proof that would convince a jury, but more than enough to convince me. So … I planned a curtain call for him. Me, too, I guess.”

He hooked his mouth into a smile. To this day, when I go past the cemetery where Bill is buried, I can still see that smile. “So … I decided to scare the wits out of Lomac, just for the hell of it, Thompson. I made a few cagey phone calls. I tipped him off that the cops were wise about that underpass cave-in. I figured it would do me a lot of good to see that rat shake in his shoes for a while.”

I stared at him. After a while I said, “So he figured he’d be safer with Vanetti out of the way.”

“And that,” Bill declared, “was the mistake he made.”

Black Mask
used two of my tales in the December 1938 issue, and ran this one under the name of Allen Beck. “The famous magician pulls a maniacal killer out of his hat,” says the come-on. The magician has lost the use of his hands and lives alone by a lake in the woods. There is a murder, and the magician is framed for it by the killer. Take it from there, please.

HBC