Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 37, No. 1, July 1975

Escape! by Max Van Derveer

The cop, the burglar, and the lady of loose virtue: they made a lousy team, but played a great game. A game where the burglar normally ended up dead.

Some cops like to put fear in you. If you’re smart, you’ll cringe. Toughs gets lumps.

Keever was a cop. He said, “Let’s take a walk, Garcia.”

I kept my eyes down and shook my head.

“Just down the hall.”

I’d never been down the hall with Keever. This was my first bust in his precinct. But I had a hunch what was down the hall. A small room, no air, just a single light, a table, a chair, soundproof.

And nobody else around.

Just you and Keever. No cop in his right mind hands out lumps in public.

I said, “So you got me prowlin’ a place. So get me a defender.”

Keever gave me the fish-eyed stare some cops like to put on a guy when they’re not sure if the guy has savvy or has seen too many movies. Then he dropped his foot from the seat of the straight backed chair and walked out of the squad room, leaving me all by myself at the desk.

I felt as if I could get up and walk out of the precinct station. I looked around. There were other cops at other desks, there were other guys answering questions. But no one seemed to be paying any particular attention to me.

I eased around in the chair. The open squad room door was beyond a low railing and about twenty-five feet away. There was a corridor outside and a wide stairway at the end of the corridor, maybe thirty yards down the hall. At the bottom of that stairway was the street door.

And outside there was a warm, black night with a threat of rain in the air. A guy could disappear fast in the dark.

Keever returned. He looked satisfied and I figured he’d checked my pedigree with Central Headquarters downtown. He went behind his desk and sat. He was a lumpy guy of maybe forty years. But he looked hard. And he had a rep.

Keever liked to break ribs and wrist bones. He’d been hauled up in front of his captain a few times, so the stories went, but he’d never had the rug jerked out from under him.

It was silently speculated the captain liked to hear the crack of rib bones, too, but sometimes was forced to put on a performance for the commissioner and the mayor. So Keever was hauled up — occasionally.

Keever said, “Garcia, your sheet shows eighteen suspicions and only two busts. That gives you a pretty good feeling, huh? Most of the time you’ve been too smart for us.”

I remained meek. I said nothing.

“But you ain’t gonna sit there and deny we got you cold tonight, are you?”

He’d been riding with a couple of car patrol boys in a hot spot. And they’d been sliding quietly through the black alley as I’d scrambled down the fire escape. I’d been trapped halfway down the ladder.

It had been a hairy few seconds. I wasn’t sure what they were going to do to me. But they hadn’t pinned me against the wall with slugs and I hadn’t snapped any foot or leg bones when they’d made me drop from the second floor level into the alley.

“Actually, you’re dumb, Garcia,” Keever went on. “You were workin’ a hot area. We’ve had more prowlin’ squeals out of that neighborhood in the last three weeks than from the rest of the city combined.”

He paused and then said slyly, “On the other side of the coin, if all of these have been you, you’ve made some pretty good hauls — including the Styversent family jewels.”

Trinkets. Fakes. Showpieces. That’s what the bulk of the glittering hauls from apartments amount to. The real stuff is in a bank deposit box somewhere — for whatever pleasure that gives. But the Styversents weren’t fakers. They wore the real stuff. And they had kept it in their apartment, where it was handy. Not many pieces, only six, but each was genuine.

Keever asked from under lifted eyebrows, “Have you got them, Garcia? No fence in town has had a smell. We know.”

“I never heard of no jewels,” I said.

Keever sat silent for a few moments, apparently finding that hard to digest. Then he stood. “Garcia, you’re not being very cooperative here. I guess it’s all these other guys in the room, so let’s go down the hall to where we can have some privacy.”

“All I want is a defender,” I repeated.

His anger flared. “Down the hall!” he snapped.

He started to come out from behind the desk. And then it was as if he had forgotten something. He turned and stooped, reached for a bottom drawer. He was jackknifed, his head down. I was out of his sight — and the squad room door still was only twenty-five feet away.

I bolted. I heard surprised shouts, the scraping of chairs being thrown back. I wondered how many cops were pawing for.38 Specials.

I tucked my head into my shoulders as I leaped the railing, skidded around the corner and raced to the stairway. I clattered down the stairway and shot outside to the night, the shouting still loud behind me.

I raced to the corner of the police building, careened around it and bolted across the parking lot, running low between the parked vehicles. I found the alley, turned down it, then spotted the dangling ladder of a fire escape.

I looked over my shoulder. Nothing. But I heard the shouts coming. I went up the ladder and froze against it with the first sighting of a running cop turning into the alley.

It seemed as if most of the city’s police force was passing under me, running in a variety of clusters. Some of the clusters went on out of the alley exit and disappeared. Others began to slow.

I went up the ladder to the roof, scrambled across it and jumped down to the next roof. Somebody down below would figure it soon enough. And then the rooftops would be swarming.

I went from building to building, leaping and scrambling, looking over my shoulder. I was running out of room, nearing the end of the block.

I saw the skylight. It opened — squeakingly — from the outside. I crouched, waiting for a startled shout from the well of blackness. There was no sound. I propped the skylight on its braces and remained crouched.

Below me could be an apartment, a studio, an attic. I had no idea what to expect.

I went into the well, hung by my fingertips for a moment. I sucked a breath, closed my eyes and dropped. I landed on something with lumps and a slight spring. I pitched and then lost my balance. A startled yelp filled my ears. I hit a floor, scrambled on hands and knees back toward the shadow that was coming up from the bed.

I leaped on the shadow, putting it down again and pinning it. My hand found a mouth, covered it. The head under my hand whipped in terror, legs flailed and bed coverings fluttered.

The shadow smelled good. My nostrils became filled with the scent of perfume or bubble bath. I didn’t know which, but I did know I was wrestling a scantily clad girl. She was warm.

I curved a hand against her voice box, cutting off all sound and reached out and found a lamp. I turned on the light.

The girl was very well constructed. She also had become frozen in terror. I snapped, “Is this an apartment building?”

She managed to nod.

“Is there a basement?”

She nodded again.

“How many floors in the building?”

I released the pressure against her throat. She pawed and gagged. “T-three.”

I left her. She wouldn’t scream for all of thirty seconds. It would take her that long to get her throat muscles functioning to where she could reach full pitch.

I went down to a basement and found a rear door. I opened it cautiously and looked up six steps to level ground. There seemed to be a small, open lot. I couldn’t spot any moving shadows.

I went across the lot in a low run and crouched in a deep building shadow. There was an alley exit about a hundred feet away. Occasionally a man, a woman, a couple moved across the opening to disappear again.

Where were the cops?

I inched down to the exit and risked a look up and down the street. There was a cluster of cops off to my left, but they were concentrating on moving into a building. They were scrambling. Screams had been heard.

I slid out to the sidewalk and walked off in the opposite direction. I wanted to run, but I could not afford to bolt now.

I crossed an intersection and kept going in a straight line. I increased my pace as the confidence built. At the second intersection, I turned right and went up a desolate street. There was an alley entrance across the street. I curved over there and moved into the black shadows.

And then I ran.

The pad I’d rented a couple of months earlier was two rooms in a basement. Once one of the rooms had housed a furnace, the other had been a large coal bin. The opening for the coal chute remained, although the chute was gone. A heavy iron slab covered the opening, but it was on hinges. It provided my ventilation.

Upstairs, there was a wine shop on the ground level floor and a commune of hippies occupied the second floor. Nobody bothered anybody.

I squatted in the alley behind the building and stared at it. It was quiet and black. No one seemed to be stirring. But Keever could be around somewhere, waiting in a deep shadow.

I eased over to the chute opening, put a couple of fingernails in the edge of the iron door and inched it open. I sniffed. No odor of cigarette smoke.

So maybe Keever, if he was inside, was a nonsmoker.

I eased my fingernails from the crack and remained squatted. Keever’s best point for vigilance, if he was waiting, was from under the basement hallway stairsteps that went up into the wine shop. He’d have command of the front and the back doors and he could see anyone who might come through the shop and down the steps.

So my best entry to the pad was through the chute opening. The floor was clear under that opening. I kept it clean.

I slid in and dropped, bracing a palm against the iron door to eliminate the clang.

I crouched in the darkness. There was no sound. I went to the bed, pulled up the mattress and dug down into the second spring on the right side. There was two hundred dollars there.

A lighter flared. A cigarette was lit. And Keever said, “You scared that girl bananas, Garcia.”

I stood frozen. He turned on a lamplight. He was in my only deep chair. He looked almost comfortable. His hat was shoved to the back of his head. There was only the cigarette caught between two fingers of his right hand. No gun in sight. No weapons.

He drew deep on the cigarette, said, “You’re a little slow on the take, pal. I thought for a while I might have to lead you out to an open street and point.”

“And you stayed down behind your desk so long I thought you might be having a heart attack,” I smirked.

“Knock the smart stuff. You ain’t out of the woods.”

“What’s the pitch, Keever? How come you let me run?”

He eyed me hard. The temptation, I knew, was to knock me down. But he backed off. He said, “Eighteen suspicions and only two busts, that’s not too bad a battin’ average.”

“So?”

“So maybe you ain’t so dumb, after all — although I gotta say comin’ here wasn’t smart on your part. It’d figure I’d have this place spotted, wouldn’t it?” He paused, then added slyly, “Or maybe there’s somethun here you didn’t want to leave behind. Like the Styversent haul, for instance.”

“All the dough I got in the world is here,” I said. “My travelin’ money.”

He stared. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. “I’ve got a friend,” he said finally, “who would be satisfied with half of the Styversent jewels. Three pieces. You could wrap ’em in a box, Garcia, and mail the box to R. M. McCracken, 451 °Crescent, City.”

“What for?”

His shrug was slight. “The price may seem a bit heavy, but freedom costs, right? Figure it that way if you wanna.”

“I might,” I conceded, “if I had the stones.”

He scowled. “You keep goin’ dumb on me. I don’t like that.”

“And I don’t know nothun’ ’bout no jewels,” I insisted.

“So what did you just dig out of the bed springs — potatoes?”

“My travelin’ money.” I showed him the fold of bills in my hand.

His scowl deepened. He seemed to be thinking hard. “How much?”

“Two hundred.”

“That ain’t much.”

“It’s all I got.”

“No jewels?”

“No.”

“If I ever find out you’re lyin’ to me, Garcia, you’re dead.”

The way I saw it, I could be dead in the next thirty seconds. I didn’t have what he wanted. And it was no trick to shoot down an escaped prowler who was resisting arrest, no trick to find some kind of weapon and jam it in the prowler’s hand after the shooting.

I felt as if I was walking a very thin thread between life and death as Keever sat there staring up at me, and I held out the fold of bills, turning meek again. “It’s all I got. Honest.”

He eyed the bills. Then he snubbed out his cigarette and stood. He ignored my extended hand. He went to my door, stopped, looked back.

“You can put the two hundred in the mail, Garcia, if you think that’s the right thing to do. My friend ain’t gonna turn handsprings over it, but it could buy you a little time, I guess.”

“I can leave town?” I asked.

“You can try if you’re not scared of endin’ up in a box,” he nodded.

“Buy if I pay—”

“My friend’s gonna wanna think ’bout you. Like I said, he’s gonna be disappointed, not findin’ jewels in his mailbox. He had big ideas for you, Garcia. I mean, he figured a guy who collects suspicions but damn few busts...

“Well, he figured that kind of guy has a little savvy, might be interested in a soft touch or two, you know, on a partnership basis, sorta, where two guys could profit... but now I dunno. You’re gonna seem like awful small spuds to my friend, I think.”

Keever left. I went to the chair he had vacated and sat on the edge. I felt like a condemned man who had been granted last second reprieve. I also felt frustrated. I’d wanted Keever to take the two hundred.

Or had I?

I got up and paced. Keever’s R. M. McCracken had surprised me. But the McCracken angle confirmed something else too. It’d take time to set up an R. M. McCracken at a legitimate address. And 451 °Crescent had to be legitimate or the mail gimmick wouldn’t produce. McCracken could be Keever, probably was — or McCracken could be McCracken, a partner.

Either way, Keever wasn’t setting up his first take. So who had been his prowlers before me? And where were they now? How many of them had been labled “victim of gangland slaying?”

And how many “touches” had they lasted? One? Two?

I felt as if I was breathing on borrowed time. I got the small Saturday Night Special from the false bottomed suitcase and put it under the pillow on the sagging bed. The next morning it was in my trouser pocket as I walked to a Post Office substation and mailed an envelope.

I was especially alert to all sounds, all movements after I left the substation. But no sniper cut me down in the first ten blocks of walking, and I began to breath easier. My borrowed time was taking on some stature.

The house at 451 °Crescent was a pale green bungalow. It sat nestled among other bungalows on the quiet street in the quiet neighborhood. There were young trees, grass and other green things growing all over the area. Middle class lived on Crescent. Lawn mowers, tricycles, and sprinklers dotted the front yards.

R. M. McCracken was a surprise again.

Her Christian name was Rhonda. She was about thirty, rather tall, dark-haired, pleasantly attractive, and lived alone in the bungalow. She drove a 1971 blue Volkswagen sedan. But no one really knew her.

She was some kind of saleslady. She traveled. She was at the bungalow only on weekends, normally arriving after dark on Friday evenings and leaving on Sunday evenings.

No one had ever seen a visitor arrive or leave the bungalow. A high school boy kept the bungalow yard shaped for her. He was paid weekly in cash by mail.

None of this was particularly difficult for me to learn.

Keever came to my place in the early hours of Thursday morning. He let himself inside. The sound awoke me. I jerked into a sitting position in the bed and yanked the small gun from under the pillow.

Keever told me to take it easy, and then he closed the door and stood in the dark. I kept the gun gripped tightly in my hand under the bed sheet. Keever was a dark bulk against the door. He didn’t move.

“There’s an old guy named Albert Wineschlager,” he said. “Lives alone in a ground floor back room at 6807 Morgan. I think you’ll find his place interesting, Garcia.”

I felt tremendous relief. I’d gained reprieve again. But I said, “Yeah?” making it sound as if I was tremendously suspicious. Which was not difficult.

“Look,” Keever said from the heavy shadow around the door, “do you want this guy, or don’tcha? You ain’t in the best position in the goddam world, yuh know. Like I figured, my friend wasn’t very goddamn happy ’bout a lousy two hundred clams. But he does like your sheet. Only two busts outta twenty pickups, he figures yuh gotta have some talent. Now, if you ain’t—”

“Okay, okay,” I said quickly.

“Okay, what?”

“I’m in.”

“It keeps you livin’, Garcia — and it’s gonna get you more than two hundred clams.”

I ignored the sarcasm and asked, “My choice on hitting this guy?”

“No choice. You sit out today, you hit tonight. Eleven or after. The old man watches television til ’round ten-thirty, seldom later. When his lights go out, you hit him.”

“Hold it. I don’t hit places where people are at home.”

“This time you’re gonna, Garcia, ’cause Wineschlager seldom goes out — and never at night.”

“But—”

“As long as yuh don’t kill the old devil, I don’t care how yuh get to him. Sap him, take along a pipe, I don’t care. But don’t kill him. Just clean out his place.” Keever paused, and then added, “And remember, I’ll read the squeal at the precinct station. So I’ll know how much you find. You mail half.”

“To R. M. McCracken...” It was my turn for sarcasm.

Keever snarled, “Half!” And then he departed as quickly as he had arrived.

His interest in Albert Wineschlager puzzled me when I discovered that the old geezer was a laugh along Morgan Street.

Wineschlager was a pensioner and a recluse. He was supposed to be senile, his mind sharp at times and as foggy as a London night at other times. But I figured Keever had his reasons. He wouldn’t send me here for nothing. A test? Maybe.

Wineschlager’s single window faced a small back lot. A rusty heap, the front wheels gone, was nosed into the building just to the right of the window. I sat squatted at the rear of the heap.

The window was open about eight inches. Around ten forty-five the old man shoved hands through the thin curtains and pushed the window up another couple of inches. The brief glimpse was enough. The lamp, probably on a table, was centered on the window and the bed was across the room.

I waited an hour after the lamplight went out. Then I inched up on the fender of the rusty heap, put a foot over on the window sill, reached down and caught the bottom edge of the window.

Sucking a deep breath, I heaved the window up and swung both feet inside, sending the lamp crashing.

I propelled my body into the room, hit the floor and pitched forward in a flat racing dive, landing on the old man in the bed. He managed one startled yelp before I jammed the muzzle of the Saturday Night Special against his ear. “No noise!” I hissed.

I took him from the bed and put him in a chair in a comer. Then I turned on two lamps. He was a wrinkled old duffer, probably seventy or better. He was frightened, but he looked stuffed with ancient courage, too.

So I told him, “I don’t wanna kill you, pop, I don’t wanna hurtcha, so you just sit quiet, huh? Don’t make me do somethun I don’t wanna do.”

He wanted to come after me. But age had put creaks in his muscles and provided wisdom. He sat rigid in the chair and his eyes never seemed to leave me as I prowled, but he didn’t attempt to move.

Ransacking, I found money stuffed down behind cushions of an ancient chair and sagging couch, poked into the toes of old shoes, inside the ripped lining of a baggy overcoat. A shoe box in the portable closet was packed with bills.

I found a bed sheet, spread it on the floor and piled my finds. Then I knotted the sheet to form a bag and went to the window. The old man surprised me when I looked at him. He was crying.

I went out the window. The black sedan rolled silently down the alley to a stop in front of me as I bolted across the small lot. I didn’t even have time to careen off.

The door on the passenger side of the sedan opened and in the dashlight I saw Keever leaning toward me from the steering wheel. I grunted. The gun was in my pocket but I was using both hands to hold shut the sheet bag.

I figured Keever had me cold. And dead.

He growled, “Get your tail inside, man! We gotta get out of here!”

He was an expert at the wheel. We didn’t seem to speed, yet we moved fast through the city streets. Not that we were going to draw a ticket from any car prowl boys. We were in an official police sedan, the radio under the dash periodically bleating instructions to various police units.

I eased my hand down toward my pocket until Keever snarled, “Keep ’em in sight, Garcia. It ain’t that I figure you’ll try anything funny, but...”

He let the words hang and I said sourly, “It’s okay if I smoke, ain’t it? I’ve had a couple of nerve-jangling hours. It was rough.”

I got out a bent cigarette and a damp book of matches. The match wouldn’t light. Keever flicked his lighter for me, held it near the bent cigarette. “How much you figure you got?”

“A few bills here and there.”

He grunted. “An old geezer, livin’ alone, cashing pension checks for years, never spending a dime, no bank accounts, it’d figure there’d be a few bills here and there, yeah.” He nodded before he said sharply, “But a guy needs a sheet to haul off a few bills?”

My gun was where it was difficult to get at. His was in a belt rig where he could whip it out.

Keever turned into a side street, drove a couple of blocks and braked in a narrow off-street area, the nose of the car pointed into a pillar helping to hold up an overhead pass of an expressway.

We opened the sheet and counted. I’d taken $9,445 from Albert Wineschlager, probably every dime he owned.

“Wha’d yuh do to the old man?” Keever snapped.

“Left him sitting in a chair.”

“Dead or alive?”

“He was cryin’.”

“Big deal. Okay, five thou for me, the rest is yours — and before you open your yap, quit bitchin’ ’bout a short end. You never had this big a take in your life. Yuh wanna go another round, or yuh wanna get the hell outta town?”

I suspicioned how I’d leave town. In a grave.

“I’ve got a hunch,” I said carefully, “I could get rich — with a cop on my side.”

“Just don’t push. And live quiet. Stash that green stuff someplace and keep right on livin’ just like you’re livin’ now. No breakin’ out in fancy pads, or drivin’ fancy heaps, or hustlin’ fancy dames. You live quiet for six months or so and you can do all of your fancy livin’ in another corner of the world someday. There’s a few more touches around.”

“Can I ask a question?” I asked him.

“What?” Keever snarled.

“Have you lost your faith in the U.S. mail?”

“Get out,” he growled. “Get outta my goddamn car.”

I got out and I quickly put a concrete pillar between myself and the official sedan. But I didn’t breath easy until the taillights had disappeared. Then I walked, moving along as if I had a destination. I didn’t need prowl car boys busting me on a vag rap.

I was at a crossroad. I had Keever cold but he had become a fascination, too. I’d checked him out. He was a bachelor, never had married, he was a cop, and he lived modestly in a small rent apartment and drove a four-year-old sedan with wrinkles in two fenders.

You couldn’t call him a swinger, either. He had an occasional beer at a bowling alley, he took in a baseball game once in a while, and there were evenings when he’d go down to the river and just sit.

The single chink in this seemingly dull pattern was a dame who lived in a penthouse at the Armstrong Towers. Keever sometimes visited the dame. Her name was Tish Grant. She was tall, about thirty, and dark-haired. If certain people out along Crescent Street saw her, they might say she was Rhonda McCracken. I wasn’t sure.

The only thing I was sure of was Tish Grant — or Rhonda McCracken — was a class hooker. And she always accepted Keever’s presence. No matter the hour of day or night.

Then there was the other side of Keever. He obviously was a man of talent when it came to smelling out marks. And it now was a question of how many marks over how many months, years, had lost to him.

Too, he had to have a cache somewhere.

Possibly in various bank boxes rented under assumed names, of course. But maybe not. Perhaps he and a hooker were pooling — for future use together. And they might want to move very fast someday. Overnight. It was difficult to get into bank boxes overnight.

So I was at a crossroad...

It was a question of how much Keever, and possibly Tish Grant/Rhonda McCracken, had stashed somewhere, against my original purpose for allowing myself to be trapped on a fire escape ladder in an area of the city where Keever might bust me.

Greed could be cancerous. But greed also was a tremendously strong lure.

I broke into and cased the pale green bungalow at 451 °Crescent three week nights in a row. I didn’t find a penny. The bungalow seemed clean, a nice little home in a nice quiet neighborhood. The furnishings were new and modern, but Rhonda McCracken/Tish Grant — take your pick — hadn’t spent a fortune to make the house liveable.

I went over the bungalow again, stepping off wall lengths, checking closet depths, looking for double flooring and false ceilings, but all I found was an area of a basement wall where there might have been a water seepage problem.

Several of the cement brick blocks had been replaced, the calking cement fresh. It was enough for me.

I tingled all over.

I found a hammer and began pounding on a cement block in the wall, chipping it. Finally the hammer broke through. After that it was easy. I pounded the block into small pieces, revealing the money stashed in its interior.

I went to work on other blocks, pounding furiously, and the money began to pile up on the floor. I became so excited at the sight — and the prospect — that I forgot all caution. I hammered viciously, opening one block after another all across the freshly calked area.

I cleaned out Keever and Tish Grant/Rhonda McCracken. I went upstairs and found two suitcases and a makeup carrier. I filled each. No bills remained on the cement floor or inside the wall.

I drove out to the airport and boarded the first flight to New York City. Then I caught a flight to Los Angeles. The next hop was to Toronto where I rested for two days. Then I rode a commercial liner to Mexico City where I finally dressed first class and boarded first class to London.

But it was in Madrid that I finally completed the transformation. I no longer was a small time hood and some time stoolie who got off by trading information.

I became a wealthy Mexican-American new on the scene at the various waterholes of the swingers.

In time, I would be accepted.