“Yes, sir,” Kirker said quietly. “I’ve watched kids like him before. All they need is a tap on the pants and a bit of help sometimes. Treaty ’em rough, sir, and they start robbing tills and buying a cheap gun in Jersey.”
“I see,” Captain Daley murmured. The red in his own face deepened. “A broken window and a bit of welfare work.” His voice rose as he struck the typewritten report in his hand a resounding whack with his palm. “Seven Long Island banks knocked over by Rod Cantor and his pal — no arrest. Thieves made a haul yesterday not a mile from this squad room — no arrest. From now on that kind of police work is ended. You’ll devote your attention to crooks and killers, or I’ll have you wishing you had.”
There was discreet silence. “That’s all,” Daley snapped and strode off to his sanctum with a brisk click of his heels.
“Try that on your pinochle deck, Adolph,” a sardonic voice muttered. Kirker grinned feebly. He was used to being kidded about his Sunday game with Muller.
Mrs. Kirker clucked indignantly when he told her about the new captain’s ultimatum. “Why didn’t you talk up to him, Adolph? Did you tell him what you did for young Charlie Franklin? Or now you put the fear of the Lord into Dave Martin and made him get busy and support that sweet little family of his?”
Kirker shrugged and didn’t answer. What was the use? Those were things the skipper wouldn’t understand.
“Anyone would think,” his wife sniffed, “that cops were a lot of quarrelsome thugs, running around day and night to shove people into cells. I’ve a good mind to go around to the station house tomorrow and give that whippersnapper a talking to.”
Kirker said mildly, “Now, Hattie!” He was sitting comfortably in a kitchen chair, his uniform coat off, the weight of his gun sagging his hip pocket. His wife bustled between cupboard and stove, preparing the coffee they always drank before they went to bed. She lifted the lid of the bread box and the irritation she felt toward Captain Daley transferred itself suddenly to household affairs.
“Oh, dear. I forgot the crumb cake. Tomorrow’s Sunday and the bakery will be closed all morning. Here, take a quarter and get some. The coffee’ll be ready by the time you get back.”
Kirker sighed. Without crumb cake, dipped in soggy chunks, coffee lacked savor. He padded heavily across the front porch and walked bareheaded up the dark street to the corner. He grunted with disgust as he saw that the bakery was already closed. His tired glance wavered hopefully toward the adjoining bank. He’d stop awhile and say hello to the watchman. Suddenly his blurred smile faded. There was a sedan parked at the curb, its motor quietly purring; and the locked door of the bank wasn’t locked — it was slowly opening.
As the door widened Kirker saw two strangers sneak cautiously out, carrying heavy suitcases. In a flash he darted toward the parked automobile to head off the thieves, his hand tugging at his gun. Pistols flared at him with a staccato roar, but the sedan shielded him. He fired and saw one of the crooks drop his suitcase and fall to the sidewalk. The other kept on and reached the car, and Kirker, puffing, sprang to the running-board as the sedan got under way.
A hot streak flicked across the flesh of his neck as he ducked. A quick clutch inward and his fingers jerked at the steering wheel. The sedan curved across the street and rammed head-on into a wooden telephone pole. The impact threw Kirker into the street on his face. A man who had peered out of a window down near the corner, began to blow shrilly on a police whistle and through the darkness came the thud-thud of running feet.
The crook, his escape cut off by a dead-end street, hesitated and then dashed straight for the open door of the bank. As the dazed Kirker staggered to his feet and clutched for his dropped gun, the bank door slammed and locked.
Kirker hesitated. He knew the inside of that bank better than the crook did! If he waited out front he could keep the killer bottled up until the precinct reserves arrived. He remembered the thin, taut-lipped sneer he had seen on a placard posted in the station house. He was facing Rod Cantor, the killer who had knocked over seven banks on Long Island; Cantor would fight a frontal attack to a finish, shielding himself behind the helpless body of the watchman.
White-faced, Kirker sprang to the tail telephone pole and climbed swiftly up the spiked footholds. It was a dangerous leap across to the roof of the bakery, but he made it. The bank roof was six feet higher. Kirker’s bleeding hands hauled him up a rusted vent pipe; a bat of his gun smashed the pane out of the bank’s skylight.
Down below Kirker could see Cantor’s gun jerk upward, and the sight sent a wave of grim rage through Kirker’s aching body. He dropped recklessly, feet first, through a crash of pistol fire. His body struck the crouched gunman and rebounded to the paved floor. Pinwheels of fire whirled through his brain. He lay for a moment, breathless and paralyzed; then, as he swayed to his knees, the glass of the front door crashed and policemen spilled into the bank. A hand clutched at Kirker and helped him to his feet. It was Captain Daley, wildly excited, shouting like a young fool. Kirker stared past him at Cantor, and saw steel cuffs on the sprawled crook’s wrists. He lay motionless on the tiled floor, his head twisted at a queer angle. The slugged watchman was stirring, groaning feebly.
In a daze Adolph Kirker found himself back in a crowded precinct house where every light was ablaze. The commissioner himself was there after a swift twenty minutes run from Manhattan. Flashlights popped, reporters jammed the tiny squad room. Kirker felt very tired.
“Why did you climb to the roof and pull that wild Tarzan jump?” a reporter asked. “Why didn’t you plug Cantor from the back door?”
“When you have over four hundred dollars in a bank, you get to know it,” Kirker said quietly. “There isn’t any back door.”
“Ummm... You got fighting mad when you realized you’d trapped Cantor, huh?”
Another camera popped and Captain Daley beamed. “Kirker was on his toes, that’s all. There’s been a shake-up in this precinct. You see, boys, the commissioner sent me here to—”
Kirker’s weary eyes were staring at the bandaged head of his friend, the watchman.
“I guess I did get a little mad,” he admitted. “The gall of that rat, Cantor! Damn him, he tried to kill Otto Muller — the only pinochle player in town.”
A Doll for Dolan
by Edgar Franklin
I
Late spring drenched the midnight air. Through the narrow little rear window of Mr. James (Red) Binney’s modest cellar saloon drifted honeysuckle from some surviving backyard bush, to mingle with the sterner smells of stale beer and of alcohol denatured in fearsome ways; but it was the honeysuckle alone which penetrated to the unlovely pug nose of that young and unpromising criminal, Johnny Dolan.
His pale eyes grew dreamy as he sniffed the perfume; he scratched his fuzzy chin and sighed vastly. From his fingers he dusted the crumbs of his hamburger sandwich and, with utmost nonchalance, tossed to the bar his very last quarter — for within hours now there would be quarters by the bushel, not to mention fins and sawbucks and even centuries, in such quantity that a person would have to tie a string around the roll.
“Red,” said Johnny Dolan, with utter irrelevance, “I gotta get me a moll.”
Mr. Binney abruptly ceased swabbing his bar and stared, at his customer and friend.
“What was you an’ the Rat drinkin’ before you come in here?” he demanded curiously.