“He’d hardly expect to see him here,” said Rawlins.
“That’s it. Well, the boy put two and two together and he got five for the answer. He thought out the reason for the hold-up — for the attempt at scaring Captain Rawlins into vacating the camp. As everything that happened seemed centered around the cookhouse, and as he knew that’s where that gang spent most of their time during the winter, from what his brother had told him, he naturally assumed that was where the loot was buried.”
Rawlins said: “And that’s where we found it.”
“I get it,” the trooper said. “He and his pal tried to hi-jack the stuff and the cook caught this young Biggers. Biggers then shot it out with Lieutenant Ward and got the worst of it. Of course I’ll have to check with this young Deiss. I can break him down on it.”
“I’ll send for him,” Rawlins offered. He went out, did so, and after while when we were just sitting there talking about what had happened, I heard a voice say: “Yes, sir. You sent for me?”
We all looked up, and for a moment I didn’t recognize Deiss. Both his eyes were black. His mouth was so swollen that either it, or the two front teeth he’d lost, kept him from speaking plainly. His face was all marred and bruised.
Rawlins stared at him and said: “The officer wants you to answer some questions, Deiss, and I want you to answer them truthfully. My Lord! What happened to you?”
Deiss said: “Fred Ardello and I got in a scrap, sir.”
“Who started it?”
“Well, he kept following me around and I told him to go away. It just sort of started then. I guess maybe I started it, sir.”
“He hurt any?” I asked.
Young Deiss looked even more pained than his bruises allowed for. He said: “Mister, not one bit. I didn’t know it, but the kid used to fight in them Golden Glove things. He whipped me on a dime and had nine cents change coming. I never laid a hand on him from start to finish.”
We all laughed and I left, to tell Fred Ardello he’d done just fine.
And when I did, young Deiss was starting to tell the state trooper his story — and it sounded just the way I’d figured it would. I went away thinking I might have a good summer after all.
Ten Carats of Lead
by Stewart Sterling
It was a case for the Homicide men according to all the rules, but Mike Hansard of the headquarters hockshop squad knew it had germinated under the three gold balls of his own special province, and that it could only end when he pulled the correct “blue card” from his “suspected” file.
Chapter One
Death on the Diamond Exchange
Mike Hansard stood just outside the door as two white-clad internes wheeled the operating carriage into the ward-room. They left the room silently without bothering to transfer the man in the short-sleeved hospital shirt, to the cot.
A grave-eyed nurse touched Hansard on the sleeve. “He won’t be out of it for half an hour. You might have a little while with him, then.”
The plainclothesman eyed the strained, weather-beaten face on the pillow. “No chance to pull through?”
She shook her head. “An ordinary man would’ve died on the table. He....”
“Yeah.” Mike’s jaw was rocky. “Guy gets toughened up after twenty years on a beat. Makes it that much harder to check out.”
The nurse moved quietly down the long corridor. Mike sat down on the cot.
The dying man groaned, stirred a bandaged arm uneasily. Mike had a similar bandage on his own arm, where they’d made the transfusion. But he didn’t have three bullet holes in his guts, the way Tom MacReady did. Mike would have given a lot more than a pint of blood to help Tom, if he’d had the chance.
MacReady had gone to bat for him plenty of times. There was that night when Mike was new to harness, and the Cassati crowd had cornered him in a blind alley and put the lead to him. Tom hadn’t even been on duty, but he’d heard the gunfire and come in blasting, just as Joe Cassati was about to dot Mike’s eye. There would be a three-inch scar, somewhere on MacReady’s chest, under those bandages, that the older man had carried ever since as a memento of Cassati.
Mike had been close to Tom in those rookie days. They both reported to the reserve-room in the same precinct house. Both had similar ambitions. But Mike had passed his qualifying examinations and gone on up. Tom just couldn’t seem to make the grade, but that was just because some of the gold-braid boys couldn’t get it through their thick skulls that MacReady had what it takes to be a first-class detective and then some.
They knew now — too late. And they’d be out in force at the funeral, to give honor to a cop who’d faced a murderous pistol fire in performance of his duty. Hansard ground out his cigarette and cursed helplessly. A hell of a lot of good official honors would do Tom’s widow and ten-year old kid!
The man on the pillow muttered incoherently and rolled his head from side to side. He opened his eyes, stared vacantly up at the detective. It was another five minutes before there was a light of recognition in his gaze, then he reached out feebly for Hansard’s hand.
“Hello, Mike,” he whispered hoarsely.
“How you feel, Tom?”
MacReady grimaced. “Not so bad. I guess they... fixed me up O.K.”
“Sure.” Mike grinned cheerfully. What they had fixed Tom up with had been a load of morphine. That was all they could do. “Feel like telling me what happened?”
The wounded man closed his eyes. “Ain’t much I can tell, Mike. I’m coming along Hester Street. To see if old lady Kruger got her coal from the relief. When I get to the corner opposite Dumont’s jewelry store—” He groaned, tried to put a hand to his belly, fumbled at the bandages for a little, then stiffened and lay still.
Hansard lit a cigarette, held it to MacReady’s lips. “Take a drag, Tom.”
The patrolman inhaled greedily, let the smoke dribble slowly from his nostrils. “I see these two punks and a dame huddled in front of Dumont’s window. When they spot me, they move on kind of sudden. So I go over to give a peek.” His voice was weaker, his lips looked like blue steel. “When I get up close, I see this Red Cross poster stuck on the outside of the window... Ah! It does hurt!”
“Take it easy, old-timer.”
“The old gray mare, Mike, ain’t what she used to be.” Sweat glistened on MacReady’s face. He went on, slowly. “Knew that poster was screwy. Stuck over hole in the glass. They’d used a glass-cutter and a suction cup. Half the junk was gone out of the window. So I... went after ’em.”
“You get a look at them, Tom?”
MacReady licked his lips. “Couldn’t see ’em clear. Light was bad. They went... up the Bowery. Turned in that alley. Middle of the block.” A trickle of pink saliva ran out of the corner of his mouth. “When I hit the corner... they jumped me. Didn’t get a chance...” His voice trailed off into nothing, but his lips continued to work.
Hansard put his ear close to MacReady’s mouth.
“Be a while,” the patrolman was gasping, “before I... get back... to roll call.”
“A little while, Tom. Yeah.”