Stewart Sterling
Finger Man
The big man with the saddle-leather complexion stepped back into a shadowed doorway as the touring car slewed around the corner and slowed down. It was more a matter of habit than reflection; most of the men who might have been expected to poke Tommy-guns through curtained tonneaus in his direction were safely located in institutions which do not provide automobiles for the inmates.
Nevertheless, he watched with wary eyes while the car pulled up in front of a store which bore a sign:
He watched more closely as a figure in a loose topcoat, its face well hidden by a low-pulled felt, slid from the front seat to the sidewalk, glanced up and down the empty street, and vanished into the store.
Mike Hansard shrugged, eased out of his dark hallway. The license number was not on the missing car list; he had no interest in cleaning and dyeing establishments further than a daily trouser-press. But a match flared suddenly between cupped palms in the driver’s seat; and the plainclothesman stopped abruptly.
It took only a fraction of a second for Shivy Lewes to light his cigarette — less than that for Hansard to recognize him.
“A break,” muttered the detective. “What’s Calini’s wheel-man doing up in this neck of the woods?”
A muffled scream knifed the dusk; the driver of the black car shifted nervously and raced the motor, keeping his eyes on the door of the cleaning shop.
But nothing more happened. Mike Hansard fingered the revolver in his coat pocket and swore silently. Something was going on in there; he had to know what. He couldn’t go in the front way; Shivy might take a pot-shot at him; certainly the man inside would get warning.
He walked casually out of the hallway and around the corner without a glance at Lewes. Once out of sight, he sprinted for the alley which opened to the rear entrance of the cleaning shop. There was a high wire-topped fence and a thick, strong gate. The gate was padlocked; the barbed wire too high.
He hot-footed around the block to the apartment house which backed up the tailor shop, to the stairs to the roof three at a time, dropped ten feet to the adjoining factory... and found the fire-escape.
He located the rear entrance of the shop by the drums of naphtha and carboys of tetrachloride. The door was bolted. But there was a nearby window — which gave under the persuasion of his pocket-jimmy.
Inside was storage space, a workroom with ghostly rows of suits and dresses on hangers in the darkness... Finally an office. He wrinkled his nose at the stench of chemicals, put his ear to the office door.
“Last week only,” complained a frightened baritone in the front room of the shop, “you get three hundred. So soon again, two hundred dollars... it’s impossible...”
“Shut up!” The voice was flat and deadly. “You get it on the line fast, you know what’s good for you.”
There was a silence, punctuated by the rattle of a desk drawer and the rustle of paper.
“...There — twenty tens,” whined the first speaker. “I’m ruined already. You should tell him... the shop I will have to close...”
“Listen to me, cluck,” the monotone continued, “maybe you’d rather have me go to work on you with the acid? Sulphuric will bum holes in your face just like it did in them suits, hey?”
The only answer was a gasp of fear. A chair fell over; Mike tensed himself, but the stabbing screams which came from the front room caught him off guard. Desperate screams — a woman in terror.
He turned the knob. The door was locked.
“Ah! No! My God! Don’t do that... don’t...!”
Two heavy, flat reports. Mike knew the sound of a Colt thirty-eight too well to hesitate.
He stepped back a couple of paces and dived at the door. The lock burst; the door burst open and Mike rocketed into the room.
There was an acrid smell of burnt powder. A woman with black hair and a wax-white face lay in a faint on the floor, beside a short, fat man with red bubbles oozing from his mouth. His eyes were open but they weren’t looking at anything.
The street was alive with cries, shouts, running feet. Hansard backed into the hall, closed the door as the first of the crowd boiled in the front door.
An under-cover man is no good unless he is under cover, and the man was dead; the woman in a faint. Mike hadn’t seen the killer, couldn’t identify him. But he had one live lead: Shivy. He knew Shivy, thought he knew what that white-faced, yellow-bellied dope-sniffer would do in a jam. He’d go for an alibi — in a rush. Mike wanted to be around when he got it.
By the time he had this doped out, he had bolted the door and was making pace, up the fire-escape, through a window into an empty room. The door was unlocked; Mike went downstairs on the run.
First, he got to a drugstore, went into the phone booth and talked to headquarters. Then he grabbed a taxi, barked out an address and shoved his gray matter around while the cab bounced toward Mott Avenue.
A lot depended on Schultzman’s wife. Maybe she’d talk — or maybe she’d be too scared to talk. Calini would get word through to her, all right. If she opened her mouth, she’d head for the morgue. Maybe she wouldn’t mind, if her man was there already. Women were funny — you couldn’t figure them. But suppose she did gab — still they’d never pin anything on the murderer.
The killer would get an alibi first, a good one... that is, if the boys on the Homicide Squad could find him. Which was doubtful, the number of cases they had to work on these days.
But supposing they did locate the rod-man, Hansard considered. Then the Calini fixer would go to bat. A high-priced mouthpiece. A little pressure in official places. A threat to the witnesses... a bribe to some juryman. Any or all of these, as needed. No, the gunman wouldn’t be worrying.
But Mike had to do something. This kill would make his job of small retail racket-smashing impossible, unless he worked fast. He had been assigned to help the local business man’s association clean out the muscle boys. And Calini was kingpin of the pressure-gang. He had to get the goods on Calini... for now, this affair would loosen purses and tighten lips all over the Heights. A cold-blooded warning, this butchery — a gruesome threat to those who disregarded that warning.
Not that Calini would be personally involved — no chance of that. Some hired torpedo would do the collecting, take the risks and handle the dirty work.
But if the wheels of Justice couldn’t grind out retribution to this murderer, maybe Mike Hansard could. He smiled grimly as his cab pulled up before the Cafe Vesuvius. Maybe Shivy wouldn’t be here in his usual haunt; maybe Mike would have to spend the rest of the night looking for him. He paid off the taxi, went into the cafe.
In the barroom a score of men were busy with glasses and loud talk. At the far end of the shiny mahogany, talking to a bluecoat, was Shivy Lewes.
Mike nodded to the barman, elbowed his way to Shivy’s back.
“Howya, stinky!”
Shivy spun on his heel, muttered something.
“Don’t be like that.” Mike waved at the white apron. “Make mine a sour... an’ lean on the bottle.”
The bluecoat got outside his beer, drifted away.
“What’s on ya mind, shamus?” The watery blue eyes made an attempt to appear unconcerned.
“Coupla riddles, Shivy.”
“I should give you answers! Nuts!”
Lewes ordered a rye, gulped it. Mike took a pull at the whiskey sour.
“You been right here the last hour or so?”
The other nodded.
“It might be an alibi, if you could make it stick,” continued the big man. “Best alibi there is, a cop’s. Only it won’t stick this time. I saw you, myself. Over at Schultzman’s.”