The door was opened by Jigger Cullem himself. Jigger’s eyes, as he regarded Teed, looked like glass behind glass. In answer to Teed’s question he said he didn’t mind if Teed came in, though obviously he did. Teed went in and looked around the crummy little living-room with its newspapers, whiskey bottles, playing cards, and cigarette butts lying around. The Hango kid was standing over near the window, a smoking cigarette in his fingers. Joey’s fingers weren’t steady.
“You have a warrant?” Jigger asked in his monotone.
Teed pulled his revolver. “This is it.” He stepped up close to Jigger and relieved the four-eyed killer of his gun. He gun-drove Jigger over to where Joey stood and patted the kid’s pockets. Joey wasn’t armed.
“Let’s go look at the bathroom,” Bill said, thinking of the hard water and soap stains on that C-note. He prodded Jigger ahead of him into the bathroom, went over to the lavatory and tried to turn on the water. Opening the taps, no water came out. Cullem said if he wanted to wash he’d have to go to the kitchen.
Bill kicked under the lavatory with the toe of his shoe and discovered that the drain pipe was loose. He backed, motioned Jigger forward with his gun. “Tough on the plumbers’ union, Jigger, but you’ll have to take down that drain pipe. That’s where the money is, isn’t it?”
Jigger said, “What money?” and turned a little pale.
“The loot from the bank stick-up you and your pals pulled with Benny Hango.”
Behind Bill, somebody said: “Drop the rod, dick.”
Teed turned without dropping his gun. In the bathroom door was Spig Morrava and red-haired Mike Brandon. Teed knew no matter how good a shot he was he couldn’t gun both of those men before one of them gunned him. So he dropped his gun.
“The dick is in the know, Spig,” Jigger said.
Morrava shrugged. “Just so he don’t tell, we don’t care.”
“He won’t tell,” Mike Brandon said.
Joey Hango squeezed in between the two men in the doorway. His face was white, like he might be sick any minute. Mike Brandon said to him: “You pick up the dick’s gun, Joey, and then you and I will sort of square things for your old man by taking this guy for a ride, huh?”
“They’ll frame you, Joey,” Teed warned.
Joey stumbled forward and crouched to pick up Teed’s gun. Jigger Cullem said:“And get my rod out of the dick’s pocket, Joey.”
Bill Teed looked down. He saw Joey’s fingers close over the grips of the police gun and saw Joey’s finger slide into the trigger guard. Bill knew that something that wasn’t on the books was going to happen.
Joey lifted the gun, spun around on one heel like a dervish. Still in a crouch, he fired. Spig Morrava looked like the most surprised man who ever lived — or died. His broad flat face went blank as he started sliding down the frame of the bathroom door, both hands clutched to his chest.
Mike Brandon’s gun dipped a bit to take in Joey Hango. Bill Teed kicked Joey from behind, knocked him flat on the floor, and at the same time pulled Cullem’s automatic from his pocket and gave Mike Brandon two shots — one through the leg and the other through the right arm. Going down, Mike Brandon tried to cross his gun to his left hand, but Joey came up from the floor to rush Mike and managed to get to the gun first.
At about this time, Jigger Cullem tried a flying tackle that took Teed from behind and thigh-high. Bill came down, squirmed over to put the gun on Jigger. Jigger released Bill’s legs to try and get hold of the automatic Bill Teed was using.
Bill used the gun to slap a barrel blow to the side of Jigger’s head.
Pop Walker broke into the Cullem apartment about that time to see Joey Hango grinning and shaking hands with a grim and slightly puzzled Bill Teed. Joey was saying that he had planned this all the time. He had passed that hot note right under Bill’s nose as a way of telling Bill where he could nail the bank stick-up boys without much trouble. Joey had found out where the money was hidden and had swiped one of the hot notes just to use as a signal to Bill. He wondered if that sort of made up for things and if Bill thought he’d make a good cop later on.
When the police were cleaning up the Cullem place, Teed got Pop off in a corner and asked what he had done to make the Hango kid change overnight. Pop didn’t know. He hadn’t said anything that would have caused the sudden change. No, Joey must have made the right decision himself.
“Of course,” Pop added, “this might have had something to do with it.” He picked up a sheet from the morning Courier that was on the table in the Cullem living-room. There was an item on the sheet, by-lined by Walker. It read—
Bill didn’t read any farther. He just looked at Pop Walker and said: “You damned liar.”
Pop said: “I felt that the last impression of his dad the kid got would determine what he decided to be. I knew a yellow streak down his idol would make the kid ashamed of his dad and of the kind of life his dad had represented.”
“So you just painted the yellow streak on,” Bill said.
10,001 Motives for Murder
by Wyatt Blassingame
Everyone in South City knew about the first ten thousand reasons why Ralph McDonald should have been bumped off. It was the ten-thousand-and-first that came as a surprise — to all but the Bishop and Mrs. Good, that pair of none-such newshounds who knew what could happen when a honey-haired fire-ball of Southern charm got cued with a little reverse English.
Chapter One
The Face at the Window
The Bishop was shooting craps in one of the upstairs gambling-rooms when the murder took place. I was standing beside him, holding his money, because the Bishop has a peg leg — he wears an artificial foot — and always carries a cane in his left hand. This leaves only his right hand free and he doesn’t want to be bothered by anything but the dice.
He was in the middle of a hot winning streak. He’d shake the dice, keeping his hand palm down, balance back on his heel and his cane, look owlishly around at the other players and say: “Wouldn’t it be terrible if I were to fling a seven?” And then he’d do it.
The Bishop is a short, heavy-bodied man of about sixty, with a head as round and bald and pink as a balloon. He has small, puckish features and no neck between his round head and his big shoulders. He looks more like an aging overgrown imp than like a newspaperman. Actually he’s the political writer on the South City Democrat, and has been on that same paper for forty-two years, or twenty years longer than I’ve been living.
This was at the Red and Black Gambling Club, at a party given by one of the city commissioners. A party given by a city commissioner at a gambling club will sound strange only to persons who don’t know South City. The government airport there was being enlarged and this was in celebration. The commissioner himself wasn’t present (he was entertaining some of the older officers elsewhere) but he’d sent a few cops to sit outside and keep everybody away except the invited guests. There were newspapermen, young men from the Civic Clubs which had worked to bring the new addition to the local air field, the young officers, their wives and dates.
That was the set-up for the murder. It was a neat, clever murder and it would have been a swell case to cover if the Bishop hadn’t got interested in it.
At this particular moment the Bishop was looking for a ten. He’d been rolling for two minutes and he couldn’t make the ten and he wouldn’t fall off. That’s when we heard the shot.