“Jud who?” the guy asked, and stepped into the room.
The second man, holding our guns, followed him and kicked the door shut.
“There’s two of the rats that pulled the Second National job,” Scarface said. “The other two are the ones your Doc fixed up. That makes it easy, copper. One of these muggs killed the Doc and the dame.”
The second man swung his right hand with a gun in it. He caught Scarface on the jaw, knocked him down on the couch.
“I’ll cut your guts out for that,” Scarface said, but he’d never get a chance, the way things looked.
But I didn’t know Scarface. He was one tough little guy. The man with the machine gun was facing Luke and me. The other one was standing over Scarface. All at once Scarface sent two pillows at them — right to the nose. At the same time he jumped, or maybe you’d call it diving, and hit the guy with our guns right on the knees.
Luke hit the floor, too, got the machine-gunner around the legs, brought him down. I jumped across the room, kicked the guy in the head and knocked him cold.
The Police Positives had roared a couple of times, but when I got around to looking at Scarface, he was on his feet, near the door, one of the guns in his hand.
“Stay back, copper,” he said. “I’m going after Marvin. I told that rat I’d cut his guts out.”
I looked down. So did Luke. Scarface had sunk a knife in one of Jud’s boys — an ordinary pocket knife, with a blade about three inches long, only it opened with the push of a button. Scarface had twisted it around. He wouldn’t rob any more banks.
The door banged and Scarface was out.
“Get that damned hop-head!” Luke yelled.
He grabbed up the other gun, ran out the door. I nabbed the machine gun and went to the window. There was a sedan down there and a fat man was filling the back seat. Marvin!
It was too late even to warn Jud. Almost as soon as I spotted him, Scarface got him. Marvin’s big body just settled over to one side, as though he had decided to take a nap.
Then Scarface was running down the street, Luke after him, and Ignatz, downstairs, was cheering him on. Scarface was all for getting away; he didn’t stop to do any shooting. Luke lamed him, first in one leg, then the other. When he went down, Luke jumped him and snapped handcuffs on him.
“Call Headquarters,” he yelled up to me, “and get the wagon. Tell ’em Hennessey and McGuire have done it again! Tell the chief—”
I went to the phone and reported in. Our boss, Blair, yelled at me: “Where you guys been? Why in hell don’t you do what I say? Get down here — quick!”
As soon as the wagon came, we left. Luke was saying what he thought of Blair, who was always riding us.
“We clean up two murders, a bank stick-up and incidentally get rid of Jud Marvin,” he griped. “And what does it get us from Blair? A reprimand!”
We walked in on Blair and Luke started to tell him all we had done.
“Yeah?” Blair grunted. “You cleaned up two murders? You two? Nuts! We’ve got the guy who killed the Doc and Belle — right in the next room. He’s confessed.”
“One of Jud’s boys,” Luke said.
“No,” said Blair. “Not one of Jud’s boys. Maybe you cleaned up the Second National job. Maybe, I said. But I sent you out on two Homicides.” He swung the door open. A guy was sitting under a bright light. He screamed when he saw Blair who must’ve been roughing him a bit.
It was Sam Popoupolos.
“Him?” I said.
“Yeah, him,” Blair nodded, and shut the door. Luke looked kind of sick. “You boys overlook things. I don’t. I check on everything. Sam married Belle three months ago. When you told me the note was written on the typewriter in the grill, I looked ’em up and got all I could on Sam and Belle. Somebody else might have used the machine, but Sam had the best chance at it. So I found out they were married. Why did Sam marry this dame? Love? Not him. There were plenty of younger, prettier dames around. So why? Because the Doc told him he had made over his insurance to Belle. Simple, huh?
“Why did he kill the Doc? So Belle would get that jack and he could use it. And why did he kill Belle? He had to. She knew the gun he used. She had seen it in his desk. She accused him. He lied to her, got her to believe somebody had stolen the gun.
“But he couldn’t take a chance. He had to shut her up. Then he wrote the note about this scar-faced punk — he had seen him with Marvin and heard he was a gunman. He thought you boys would stumble around if he gave you something to trip over. Scarface was one, the Rogers punk another. But he’s coughed up the whole story — the gun’s his, the knife in Belle is his; it checks and checks again.”
Luke sat down. “Well, anyway,” he began, “we—”
“You!” Blair snapped. “Hennessey, you’d be good pounding pavements again. And you, McGuire, you’d—”
“I’d like to go back to traffic,” I said meekly. “There’s a jam at Sixth and Central that—”
Blair waved his hands. “Get out, the both of you!” he roared.
Dusty Death
by Jackson Gregory, Jr
The fingers of the dead reach out to point a killer.
Big Bill Meadows tossed the check for his dinner and his last four-bit piece onto the rubber mat along side the cash register. When the girl behind the register glanced up at him, he winked at her. She pretended not to notice him, but all the same she was smiling when she handed him his four cents change. Big Bill did that to women — for several reasons they always smiled at him.
He picked up the four pennies and laughed. “That’s a lot of money for a single man, sister,” he said. “How about helping me spend it later on?”
The girl laughed too. “Well, I don’t get through here until eleven o’clock,” she said.
“Swell,” he told her. “I’ll be looking at you in two hours. And say, you better keep this for me; I might spend some of it.” He slid the pennies out of his big hand into the palm of her little one. He grinned at her again, then turned for the door.
Two men were coming in through the door when Big Bill was starting out. He acted as though they didn’t exist and walked right into them and through them, sent them staggering out onto the sidewalk.
“Hey, you!” one of the men yelled. “What the hell’s the idea!”
There was still a grin on Bill Meadows’ face when he turned around and said: “Feel like making something out of it, buddy?”
The man looked at Bill’s heavy jaw, at his thick, broad shoulders and the flat, narrow waist; he looked at the biceps that filled the arms of his blue coat. Then he mumbled:
“Well, you might look where you’re going once in a while.”
Deep laughter rumbled up out of Big Bill’s chest. “Sorry, buddy,” he said. Then his right hand flicked up from his side, knocked the man’s hat off, sent it spinning into the gutter.
Still laughing, he turned his back to the men and strode up the street. He stuck his hands in his pockets, and then pulled them out again because there wasn’t any money in those pockets to rattle.
His legs carried him in long strides through the people who were moving on the sidewalk. He was headed for a place where he could get all the money he’d want for the next few days. Here in the biggest city he had ever been in there was money every place that was his for the taking.
Big Bill wasn’t hiding out. Sure he had driven an ax into the skull of a fellow logger up in the big timber country, but what the hell? While things were blowing over, he’d stay here in the city and have a good time. And that meant money.
Two blocks up the street he stopped in front of a pawnshop. He had spotted the place yesterday, looked it over from the outside and even gone inside and pretended that he was going to buy a camera. So he knew what he was going to do and how to do it.