He would probably never again make such a remark in the presence of two subordinates. Garfein looked embarrassed. Crisp shrugged.
Ramsey paused. “There’s a way out of it, one way.”
Garfein, who was sweating, said, “Tell us what it is, Captain.”
“It means that we’d all be taking a hell of a chance,” Ramsey said. “But I want to remind you two again, that we can’t afford to let it get in the papers that a hero cop, with five citations for bravery, killed his wife with a nightstick because he got so used to being a hard guy on the beat.”
“Sure, Captain, we know,” Crisp said, and flushed when Ramsey looked sourly at him.
Ramsey said a little more sharply, “Garfein, get a sheet of paper and bring it here. Then go into the next room. Close the windows and turn down the blinds, then mess up the room, kick the furniture, knock things upside down, throw things on the floor.”
Garfein, after a pause, nodded slowly. His eyes looked hurt.
Seeing it, Ramsey said with surprising gentleness, “Give me a better suggestion, Fred, and I’ll take it.” Garfein looked away. Ramsey nodded firmly. “Hop to it. And when you get finished with the living room, go into the bedroom and do the same thing. You’ve got gloves with you?”
“Sure thing, Captain.”
He stumbled off, first to bring back a clean sheet of lined white paper and a ball point pen, all of which he set down on the small table.
Ramsey looked up at Penner. “Sit down there and write out your resignation.”
“My resignation?” Penner’s hands trembled out of tiredness. He tried to force his mind to think, but nothing happened.
“Listen to me, boy.” Ramsey kept his temper. “You are the luckiest son-of-a-gun cop I ever heard of. I’m not going to have a lot of good men loused up when this hits the papers. Instead, I’m going to take your resignation. Garfein will make the house look like burglars came in and while they were at it, they killed your wife. You’ll say you came home from a hard day’s work and found her dead. Kapeesh?”
“Sure, sure.”
“Get busy and start writing. You’re resigning out of grief. You can’t carry on. Put tomorrow’s date on it.”
Penner sat down on the hard-backed chair and adjusted the paper so that the top-left was inclined to his left. He wrote slowly. Once he looked up to see young Crisp’s eyes on him, then on Ramsey.
“Captain, this is all wrong! We can’t let ourselves do this.”
Penner wrote listlessly. His eyes were half-shut and he paused at the end of every word.
From the next room, Garfein began his job of destruction. The sounds rose in tempo. With each rise, Penner sighed.
“I don’t get this.” Crisp’s jaw was set almost mutinously. Penner saw his fingers stiffen on the gun, and looked away. He wasn’t tempted to move or to call out.
Ramsey, who saw everything, had seen this, too. “You’re liable to shoot somebody with that brand-new gun of yours, Crisp. How about handing it over to me if you can’t do what you’re told?”
Crisp walked across the room and handed over the gun with butt foremost. Ramsey sniffed down at it and dropped it into a suit pocket-then swivelled around to Penner.
“Finished?”
Garfein had proceeded to the living room and the wrecking sounds were more faint.
“When we get back downtown,” Ramsey told Crisp, “you’ll get hold of the desk man who took the message that Penner phoned in. Have him see me. And take Penner’s nightstick with you. Wrap it up in newspapers and get rid of it.” He put up a hand to his throat and turned to Penner. “I’m thirsty. Get me some water.”
“Of course, Captain. Sure.” Penner rose and walked tiredly toward the kitchen. Crisp started out to call something, but smothered it. There was a shot and pain seared Penner’s back. He turned slowly, and sank to the floor.
Ramsey stood over him, looking down. “Sorry, fella.” He raised the gun and fired twice more. Penner was still.
From the living room, Garfein ran in with his usual heavy steps. “Burglars shot a hero cop in the back and beat his wife to death,” Ramsey said. He shrugged. “When Penner thought he had a chance to get out with a whole skin, he didn’t want it. He wanted things to be finished for him. I tried to arrange it so he wouldn’t know when the bullet was coming.”
Ramsey glanced down to the resignation Penner had written, folded it and put into a pocket. “I hope I did the right thing. I sure as hell hope so.”
“In a way, I’m sorry for him,” Crisp said finally. “I guess he’ll get a hero’s funeral.”
“Deserves it,” Ramsey snapped. “He was a good cop.”
Blackmailers Don’t Take Chances
by David C. Cooke
Bennett knew he had to pay the stranger off. But Bennett wasn’t going to pay off in money...
The envelope arrived at his office in the morning mail. It was marked Personal and Private, so Miss Madison did not open it. There was no return address, no letter. Just a picture of him and Gloria in the bedroom of her apartment, and they weren’t looking for missing cufflinks.
Shock slammed into Norman Bennett when he first ripped open the envelope and drew out the picture. He could not believe it was possible. No one could have taken such a picture. They’d been alone, he and Gloria. They were always alone in her place. He’d made sure no one ever saw them together.
But then who had taken the picture... and how... and why hadn’t they at least written a note... and what happened next?
That last was easy. It was too obvious. And he’d have to pay, no matter how much the blackmailer demanded. If Stella ever got her hands on the picture, she would have plenty of evidence for a countersuit against his incompatability grounds. And she would milk him dry in alimony. It was just the kind of thing she had been waiting for.
Bennett looked at the picture again, and perspiration oozed from his pores and ran down his cheeks. There was no mistaking the people. Every line in Gloria’s ecstasy-contorted features stood out in stark detail, and his face was equally clear. He had moved his head to the side just as the camera clicked, giving almost a profile shot. But even if his face had been hidden, the tattoo on his right shoulder would have been identification enough. It was an exclusive design the artist in Tokyo had worked out for him, and all his friends knew it by sight.
He threw the picture to the top of his desk and jumped up from his chair. He paced back and forth on the thick pile carpeting.
Despite the precautions he and Gloria had taken, someone had seen them together and had followed them, had probably been following them and watching them for a long time. Probably even knew that he went to see her every Tuesday and Friday after leaving the office.
But who could it have been, and how had he got into her place to take the picture, and why hadn’t either of them heard him or seen him?
There were no answers to those questions. Not a single damn one. He stopped his pacing, went back to his desk, picked up his private phone. As quietly and calmly as possible, he told Gloria about the picture.
“No!” she cried. “My God!”
“Now don’t get upset,” Bennett said. “It’ll be all right.”
“But how can it be all right? Suppose somebody saw the picture — somebody who knows you or me?”
“They won’t,” he assured her.
“You don’t know how many prints have been made from the negative,” she argued, her voice tense. “He could have made hundreds!”
“Blackmailers don’t work like that,” he said, trying to soothe her. “He just made a print or two, and put one in the mail to scare me. He wouldn’t have shown it to anyone else. Scum like this have to work secretly.”