He paused and I waited for him to say good-by.
“Ah... Mr. Moon, we generally ask the boys who they’d like for an adult supervisor before we approach any of the adults.”
“That sounds like a good idea too.”
“Ah... when we asked the Purple Pelicans, they requested you.”
While I just sat there in astonishment, he went on hurriedly, “I know you’re probably a busy man, but before you say no, will you drop by and let me explain what duties are involved. It’s certainly a worthy cause, and it won’t tie you up more than an evening or two a week.”
I thought of sixty kids who only a couple of weeks ago had been on a one-way street leading to the penitentiary, the morgue or mental hospitals. Then I grinned into the phone.
“I’ll drop down for a briefing, Mr. Reed. But you can forget the sales talk. I’ll take it.”
The Big Scorer
by Sam Merwin, Jr
The fillers got even more money than they’d expected. That was part of the trouble...
1
Three days after the killing of F. Hubert Fellowes in his porticoed white mansion, set back from Hillside Boulevard, the story was still crowding Cold War news, the Miss America contest and a new local housing project off the front page of the City’s one morning newspaper, The Gazette. Under a big black banner headline that read Five-State Dragnet For Fellowes Killers, it stated:
Thanks to new clues turned up by the police, state and local constabularies over a five-state area have set up an airtight dragnet to trap the murderer or murderers of F. Hubert Fellowes, prominent businessman and philanthropist of this city, who was murdered while alone in his home late last Monday night or early Tuesday morning. Two as-yet-unidentified men, seen speeding away from the murder scene a few minutes after one a.m. on the night of the slaying in a maroon convertible, are the subjects of the search.
Mrs. Barbara Fellowes, widow of the victim and prominent local socialite and clubwoman, returned early yesterday from the summer resort for which she had departed, with her two small children, only last Saturday. Mrs. Fellowes’ return was delayed because she was staying at an isolated Canadian mountain resort and could only be reached by automobile. In a brief interview with Gazette reporters, Mrs. Fellowes said: “I cannot imagine why anyone would want to kill Hubert Fellowes. He was a man without enemies, a man...”
The Thursday noon news-broadcaster over Radio Station WZZQ was punchier. He said, in staccato Winchellesque syllables, “Police interest in the F. Hubert Fellowes murder is focussing on the safe in the late philanthropist’s bedroom, where his bullet-riddled body was found. This safe, concealed behind a Utrillo painting of Montmartre, had been opened and rifled when the body was found by Tony Martello, gardener for the Fellowes estate. To date, police have no clue as to what was taken by the killer or killers. They are giving more and more weight to the opinion that the murder was the result of a carefully planned, professional job, such as the city has not known in years. Every effort is being made to...”
Gino extended a hand and turned the dial. Mambo music flooded the tenement room, whose dinginess was only partially masked by the semidarkness of almost fully drawn yellow shades at the two windows. He said, “How do you like that — ‘Carefully planned, professional job’?” He permitted himself a faint smile of satisfaction over work well done. He was a dark-skinned youth with large, luminous eyes and the grace of a professional dancer — or a coiled snake.
Mike, who was lolling beside Dora on the unmade cot that, with two tables, a battered bureau and two wooden chairs, comprised the room’s total furniture, said, “What I like is that five-state alarm and those creeps in the convertible. Not a sign they’re onto us. What a breeze!”
Gino spoke sharply. He said, “Watch it, Mike. We aren’t out of the woods yet — we’re just into them. The cops don’t Spill everything they know to the papers.”
Arne, his silver-blond hair one immense rat’s nest, spoke up from the chair by the window, where he was trying to get some air. He said, in his slow, stupid drawl, “No cops — I can smell ’em a mile away.”
Dora got up from the cot and pushed uncombed blonde hair back from her forehead. She wore only a bra and panties, bobby-sox and shoes, and her skin shone with sweat. She crossed to the table and picked up one of the packages and said, “Here’s what I like — who’d have thought the old jerk would have a load like this stashed in his bedroom? Once we start travelling, we travel in style.”
“You sure your mother won’t get on your tail, kid?” Gino asked her, for perhaps the fifth time in the three days they had been cooped up in the tenement.
The girl said, unpleasantly, “You’re making me laugh! Ma won’t come off this bender she’s on for another ten days. And then she won’t have the nerve to ask questions. The last time she came after me, she damn near got jailed herself for parental negligence.”
She gave the crisp bills a riffle before laying them back on the table. “No more sitting,” she said. “No more getting them glasses of water, no more burping, no more wiping their snotty little noses. Am I glad!”
“You got a date tonight, haven’t you?” Gino asked quietly. Like the others, he had stripped to a minimum of clothing.
Dora turned on him like a panther. She said, “If you think I’m going to keep that date, you’re out of your mind. I set up this score for you lice, remember? So why do I get stuck with the dirty work afterward?”
Gino slapped her hard across the face. The sudden, sharp sound was shocking in the silence of the room. He said, his voice moderate, “Don’t get out of line now, Dora. If you don’t show up, the people might start asking questions. And we don’t want that, do we? We’re clean so far. We want to stay that way.”
Dora, who had endured the slap without a sound, said to Mike, “You going to let him maul me around, you big goon? You just going to sit there and let him beat me up?”
Mike, the biggest and oldest of them all, sat up straight on the cot and said, “Take it easy, Gino.”
Gino looked at him quickly and with contempt. Then, to Dora, “Sure you set it up — but you didn’t know it was going to be this big. Thirty-two gees — the old guy must have been out of his mind to keep that kind of loot stashed in his home. You’re going to get your share, chick, so relax. But you’d better start eating radishes right now.”
She said, “Drop dead, you louse!” and her blue eyes were smoky with rage. But she reached for the bag with the radishes, alongside the collection of half-empty food cans and bottles on the other table.
2
Gino had a lost feeling under his diaphragm. He knew they were treading water way over their heads. Neither the murder nor the size of the haul had been included in the range of their plans. They were just kids, all of them, kids without connections.
Arne was only seventeen, though he had the face and body of a man ten years older. He sat there by the window, silent, sweating, impassive in his shorts and shoes. An animal, Gino thought, a stupid, unimaginative, unfeeling animal.
Dora was a year older. A smart little tramp, with a boozer for a mother and an unknown father, she had finished high school at sixteen. A little girl with big ideas. The noise she made, munching on a radish, was like the crackling crunch of a tooth extraction. Gino said, “Dammit, can’t you keep your mouth shut while you eat?”