I take the envelope with the money in it out of my pocket and give it to him. “There’s your end,” I say, “only Caresse’s not in. You know — the little fat guy around on Third avenue.”
“I know him,” Lefty says. “What’s the matter with him?”
“He says he’s paid so much for protection now that he’s got nothing left to protect,” I say, “and he won’t stand for the boost.”
Lefty says, “So?” He says, “That’s the way, soon’s I get out of town these babies think they can cut up.” He stands up and buttons his vest. “Well,” he says, “I guess I’ll go round to see that baby and ask him does he want to listen to reason or have I got to go to work on him?”
Two Sharp Knives
Collier’s, January 13, 1934, aka: To a Sharp Knife
On my way home from the regular Wednesday night poker game at Ben Kamsley’s I stopped at the railroad station to see the 2:11 come in — what we called putting the town to bed — and as soon as this fellow stepped down from the smoking-car I recognized him. There was no mistaking his face, the pale eyes with lower lids that were as straight as if they had been drawn with a ruler, the noticeably flat-tipped bony nose, the deep cleft in his chin, the slightly hollow grayish cheeks. He was tall and thin and very neatly dressed in a dark suit, long dark overcoat, and derby hat, and carried a black Gladstone bag. He looked a few years older than the forty he was supposed to be. He went past me toward the street steps.
When I turned around to follow him I saw Wally Shane coming out of the waiting-room. I caught Wally’s eye and nodded at the man carrying the black bag. Wally examined him carefully as he went by. I could not see whether the man noticed the examination. By the time I came up to Wally the man was going down the steps to the street.
Wally rubbed his lips together and his blue eyes were bright and hard. “Look,” he said out of the side of his mouth, “that’s a ringer for the guy we got—”
“That’s the guy,” I said, and we went down the steps behind him.
Our man started toward one of the taxicabs at the curb, then saw the lights of the Deerwood Hotel two blocks away, shook his head at the taxi driver, and went up the street afoot.
“What do we do?” Wally asked. “See what he’s—?”
“It’s nothing to us. We take him. Get my car. It’s at the corner of the alley.”
I gave Wally the few minutes he needed to get the car and then closed in. “Hello, Furman,” I said when I was just behind the tall man.
His face jerked around to me. “How do you—” He halted. “I don’t believe I—” He looked up and down the street. We had the block to ourselves.
“You’re Lester Furman, aren’t you?” I asked.
He said, “Yes,” quickly.
“Philadelphia?”
He peered at me in the light that was none too strong where we stood. “Yes.”
“I’m Scott Anderson,” I said. “Chief of police here. I—”
His bag thudded down on the pavement. “What’s happened to her?” he asked hoarsely.
“Happened to whom?”
Wally arrived in my car then, abruptly, skidding into the curb. Furman, his face stretched by fright, leaped back away from me. I went after him, grabbing him with my good hand, jamming him back against the front wall of Henderson’s warehouse. He fought with me there until Wally got out of the car. Then he saw Wally’s uniform and immediately stopped fighting.
“I’m sorry,” he said weakly. “I thought — for a second I thought maybe you weren’t the police. You’re not in uniform and — It was silly of me. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” I told him. “Let’s get going before we have a mob around us.” Two cars had stopped just a little beyond mine and I could see a bellboy and a hatless man coming toward us from the direction of the hotel. Furman picked up his bag and went willingly into my car ahead of me. We sat in the rear. Wally drove. We rode a block in silence, then Furman asked, “You’re taking me to police headquarters?”
“Yes.”
“What for?”
“Philadelphia.”
“I” — he cleared his throat — “I don’t think I understand you.”
“You understand that you’re wanted in Philadelphia, don’t you, for murder?”
He said indignantly, “That’s ridiculous. Murder! That’s—” He put a hand on my arm, his face close to mine, and instead of indignation in his voice there was now a desperate sort of earnestness. “Who told you that?”
“I didn’t make it up. Well, here we are. Come on, I’ll show you.”
We took him into my office. George Propper, who had been dozing in a chair in the front office, followed us in. I found the Trans-American Detective Agency circular and handed it to Furman. In the usual form it offered fifteen hundred dollars for the arrest and conviction of Lester Furman, alias Lloyd Fields, alias J. D. Carpenter, for the murder of Paul Frank Dunlap in Philadelphia on the twenty-sixth of the previous month.
Furman’s hands holding the circular were steady and he read it carefully. His face was pale, but no muscles moved in it until he opened his mouth to speak. He tried to speak calmly. “It’s a lie.” He did not look up from the circular.
“You’re Lester Furman, aren’t you?” I asked.
He nodded, still not looking up.
“That’s your description, isn’t it?”
He nodded.
“That’s your photograph, isn’t it?”
He nodded, and then, staring at his photograph on the circular, he began to tremble — his lips, his hands, his legs.
I pushed a chair up behind him and said, “Sit down,” and he dropped down on it and shut his eyes, pressing the lids together. I took the circular from his limp hands.
George Propper, leaning against a side of the doorway, turned his loose grin from me to Wally and said, “So that’s that and so you lucky stiffs split a grand and a half reward money. Lucky Wally! If it ain’t vacations in New York at the city’s expense it’s reward money.”
Furman jumped up from the chair and screamed, “It’s a lie. It’s a frame-up. You can’t prove anything. There’s nothing to prove. I never killed anybody. I won’t be framed. I won’t be—”
I pushed him down on the chair again. “Take it easy,” I told him. “You’re wasting your breath on us. Save it for the Philadelphia police. We’re just holding you for them. If anything’s wrong it’s there, not here.”
“But it’s not the police. It’s the Trans-American De—”
“We turn you over to the police.”
He started to say something, broke off, sighed, made a little hopeless gesture with his hands, and tried to smile. “Then there’s nothing I can do now?”
“There’s nothing any of us can do till morning,” I said. “We’ll have to search you, then we won’t bother you any more till they come for you.”
In the black Gladstone bag we found a couple of changes of clothes, some toilet articles, and a loaded.38 automatic. In his pockets we found a hundred and sixty-some dollars, a book of checks on a Philadelphia bank, business cards and a few letters that seemed to show he was in the real-estate business, and the sort of odds and ends that you usually find in men’s pockets. While Wally was putting these things in the vault I told George Propper to lock Furman up.
George rattled keys in his pocket and said, “Come along, darling. We ain’t had anybody in our little hoosegow for three days. You’ll have it all to yourself, just like a suite in the Ritz.”
Furman said, “Good night and thank you,” to me, and followed George out.
When George came back he leaned against the doorframe again and asked, “How about you big-hearted boys cutting me in on a little of that blood money?”
Wally said, “Sure. I’ll forget that two and a half you been owing me three months.”
I said, “Make him as comfortable as you can, George. If he wants anything sent in, O.K.”
“He’s valuable, huh? If it was some bum that didn’t mean a nickel to you — Maybe I ought to take a pillow off my bed for him.” He spat at the cuspidor and missed. “He’s just like the rest of ’em to me.”