Dan and the Death-Cell Bluff

Chapter Three Hide-and-Seek with Death

Sergeant Larry Bull’s flat face turned the color of paper, but his eyes remained expressionless and hard. For a long time his gaze remained unwaveringly fixed on the big man’s grin.

“What do you want?” he asked finally.

“Nothing,” Dan said. “Absolutely nothing. I’m not going to turn you in. Just wanted you to know I recognized you.”

“Why?” Bull asked flatly, but the big man only grinned at him.

Puzzlement and wariness mixed with the fear in the sergeant’s face. “You know you’re giving me a damn good reason to knock you off. You’re not that dumb, Fancy. What’s the angle?”

“No angle. Does Big Jim know you’re wanted for murder in Missouri?”

Bull licked his lips. “No.”

“Want him to?”

“No.” The man watched Dan’s face, a waiting expression on his own.

“Might give him a toe hold on you, eh?” Dan asked. “You don’t mind working for Jim Calhoun, but you wouldn’t want to be in a spot where you couldn’t quit, would you?”

“What do you want?” Bull demanded.

The big man simulated surprise. “Nothing, I told you. Nothing at all. I’m not going to inform the Missouri cops, and I’m not going to tell Big Jim. You can depend on it.”

“You must want something,” the sergeant insisted worriedly. “If you’re working up a deal where you expect me to cross Big Jim, forget it. I’d rather face Missouri.”

Dan shook his head and grinned hugely. “You’re an untrusting soul, Sergeant.” Opening the door by reaching behind himself and turning the knob, he backed out of the room.

He was still grinning when he pushed the door shut again.

Back at the hotel the big man put in a long-distance call to Martin Robinson.

“Fancy!” the old man said sharply. “I’ve been going crazy waiting to hear from you. Have you seen Gene?”

“Yes,” Dan said shortly. “He’s bearing up. Think I have a lead.”

“Yes?” The old man’s voice was eager.

“For five thousand bucks and a guarantee of immunity one of the arresting officers will repudiate his original story and sign a full confession to the whole frame.”

“Five thousand?” Martin Robinson’s tone made it sound like five cents. “Well, for goodness sakes, Fancy, promise it to him. I’ll wire it imniediately.”

“Good. I’m in room five-twelve of the Lake view Hotel.”

He hung up before the old man could ask any questions.

The short, burly man with the bald head rapped quietly on the bar at the Downtown Athletic Club, bringing the bartender from his dreams of a chicken farm.

“Hello, Stub,” the barman said.

“Big Jim in?” The burly man’s voice was as soft as his manner. Everything about him was soft, except his eyes, which could have chipped sparks from a piece of flint.

“Yeah. He’s expecting you. Go on up.”

Stub approached a door at the side of the bar and waited. The bartender’s foot touched a concealed button, a low buzz sounded, and Stub pushed open the door. He followed a narrow hallway to the open door of a self-service elevator, pushed the button marked 2 and rose silently to the second floor. When the elevator door slid back, another steel-grilled door barred his exit from the car.

Facing him from behind a desk across the room sat Big Jim Calhoun.

“It’s Stub, Mr. Calhoun,” the baldheaded man called.

Another buzz sounded. Stub pushed open the steel door and let it swing shut behind him. His eyes flicked briefly at Lieutenant Morgan Hart, who sat with his back against one wall, then returned to Big Jim.

“I kept Fancy in sight all day,” Stub reported in his soft voice. “Gyp Fleming relieved me at five.”

“You didn’t make a special trip over here, just for that?” the blond giant asked.

“No.” The burly man glanced at Lieutenant Hart. “He rented a car and drove up to the prison to visit Gene Robinson. He took Adele Hudson along with him. Following your orders to take advantage of any situation where it would look like an... ah... accident, I cut him off on the mountain road so short it should have pushed him over a hundred-foot bank. He was expecting it and he crossed me up.”

“You still haven’t said anything that couldn’t have waited till tomorrow,” Big Jim said irritably.

“No,” Stub agreed. “It’s coming now. I left word for Gyp to phone me if anything special developed, and he just phoned me at home.” His eyes again flicked at Lieutenant Hart, then moved back to Big Jim. “I want to report this privately.”

A frown disturbed the cherubic blandness of Big Jim’s expression. “You can talk in front of Morg. You know that.”

“Yes, sir. Generally. I’d prefer to report this privately.”

Big Jim’s eyes narrowed and swung to Morgan Hart. The homicide officer rose with a mixture of puzzlement and suspicion tingeing his expression.

“What you getting at, Stub?” he asked belligerently.

“Speak up,” Big Jim commanded, his voice nearly as soft as Stub’s. “If Morg doesn’t like it, he can learn to.”

The baldheaded man shrugged. “I’ll give you the full report in order, including what we got from the phone tap. About a half hour after you left his room, Fancy put in a call to the state justice department and arranged to see Gene Robinson at the prison. Like I told you, he rented a car and took the girl with him. They were at the prison about forty-five minutes. When they got back to town, he dropped off the girl, returned the car and went back to the hotel. That’s when I dropped out and Gyp Fleming took over.

“Fancy had a bellhop find him a month’s back issues of the Star, and stayed in his room with them about an hour and a half. At seven he had dinner sent up. At seven-fifteen he started making phone calls. He made eight, and these are the numbers.” He laid a half-sheet of paper on Big Jim’s desk. “From the names he asked for whenever he got an answer, I guess he was calling all the witnesses in the Robinson trial.” Stub smiled briefly. “He didn’t have any luck.”

“He wouldn’t,” Big Jim said without interest.

“About eight he left the room and grabbed a cab to Larry Bull’s house. He was inside about fifteen minutes. Then he returned to the hotel and phoned Martin Robinson in Pittsburgh.”

Stub paused and for the third time his eyes moved to Lieutenant Morgan Hart. “This is where I wanted it to be private. Bull is a pal of the lieutenant’s.”

Hart’s eyes narrowed to slits. “What about Larry?”

“Go on,” Big Jim ordered.

The baldheaded man shrugged. “Fancy told Robinson he had a lead. He said one of the arresting officers in the Saunders murder was willing to repudiate his testimony for a guarantee of immunity and five thousand bucks. Robinson promised to wire the money.”

“I don’t believe it,” Morgan Hart said flatly.

Stub raised brows over eyes as hard as steel knives. “You mean I made it up?” he asked softly.

The homicide officer took a step toward the bald man, both of his fists clenched.

“Cut it!” Big Jim said. His eyes moved with displeasure from one to the other of his men. “Get Bull over here,” he ordered Morgan Hart. “Don’t tell him why. Just get him here.”

Without a word the lieutenant strode into the elevator. The steel door clanged and the elevator door slid shut.

“Think that’s wise?” Stub asked. “Sending Hart, I mean.”

Big Jim glared at him irritably. “Morgan would kill his mother if I told him to. And when I need punks to advise me, I’ll let you know. Sit down and shut up.”

The bald man blinked rapidly and a film settled over his eyes. He took the chair Morgan Hart had deserted and sat looking straight ahead. Big Jim opened a ledger and began adding figures.

Twenty minutes later Morgan Hart returned with Sergeant Larry Bull. He left the sergeant standing in front of Big Jim’s desk, and retired to a corner himself. Bull’s flat face wore a faintly worried expression.

“Dan Fancy called on you tonight,” Big Jim said without preamble. “What did he want?”

The sergeant flushed. “I don’t know. He just asked some silly questions.”

“Like what?”

“Like — I don’t know. I don’t remember exactly.”

“You mean you don’t want to remember?” Big Jim asked softly.

The sergeant looked alarmed. “No, sir. It wasn’t anything important. Nothing about the Saunders murder.”

Big Jim’s cherubic face became even more cherubic. “Now why would you mention the Saunders murder if he didn’t talk about it?”

Bull’s alarm visibly increased. “That’s why he’s down here, isn’t it? I mean, I thought it was funny he didn’t mention it.”

Big Jim nodded agreement. “Very funny. My sides practically ache.” He dropped his eyes to the ledger again. “That’s all I wanted, Bull,” he said quietly. “Go on home.”

An expression of incredulous relief flooded the sergeant’s flat face. “Sure, boss,” he said hurriedly, backing into the elevator.

When the elevator door had closed, Big Jim looked up at the two remaining men. “Arrange it as soon as you possibly can,” he said casually. “Dan Fancy will be the sucker, of course. And make it fool-proof. We’ll probably have the best defense lawyers in the country defending Fancy, and I want it so tight nothing can upset the apple-cart.”

Dan rose at eight, had breakfast in his room, and phoned Adele Hudson about nine. She was cool over the phone, apparently having not entirely forgiven him for his frank comments about her fiancé, but she agreed to have lunch with him. He arranged to meet her in the hotel cocktail lounge at eleven.

Over a Manhattan her coolness melted a trifle, particularly after Dan made a point of apologizing for his frankness. It was a somewhat oblique apology, however.

“I shouldn’t have sounded off the way I did about young Robinson,” he said. “It’s none of my business whether the guy you love has all of his marbles or not.”

“You just don’t understand Gene,” she told him. “You’re like his father. Gene has the soul of a poet.”

Fancy grunted and changed the subject, not trusting himself to comment on Gene Robinson’s poetic soul without starting the argument all over again.

“The witnesses at the trial have all been pulled into cover,” he said. “There isn’t a chance in the world of breaking open the Saunders killing again, so I’m trying something else.”

“What?”

“You’ll be better off not knowing. But the wheels are in motion. At least I think they are. I’m banking on Big Jim’s having had my phone tapped. If he did, I expect to be neck deep in trouble by tomorrow at the latest. And I want to be left in it. Don’t try to help me out by hiring lawyers or any such thing. Just sit tight and watch.”

She frowned puzzledly. “Why, Dan? I’m not afraid. You said I could go along for the ride.”

“The ride just ended. From here on all you could do is foul things up. Be a nice girl and stay away from me awhile, eh?”

“If that’s what you want,” she said slowly. “Is that all you asked me here for?”

“Not entirely. I was bored. There isn’t a thing I can do until Big Jim makes the next move, and I figured I might as well kill time with a beautiful girl as on my back in a hotel room.”

She made a face at him, but her facial muscles got out of control and reduced if to a grin.

From the cocktail lounge they moved into the dining room for lunch, where by tacit consent they kept conversation away from both Big Jim Calhoun and Gene Robinson. At twelve forty-five she left him to return to her beauty shop.

“Good luck, Dan,” she said softly, putting her small hand in his enormous one.

He grinned down at her. “Thanks. But I’m banking on a little more than just luck.”

As he recrossed the lobby after escorting Adele to the street and putting her into a taxi, he was stopped by Billie, the bellhop.

“There’s two plainclothes cops waiting in your room, Mr. Fancy,” the boy whispered.

“Thanks, kid.”

As he neared the door of 512, Dan began whistling. Making an unnecessary amount of noise when he inserted the key in his lock, he pushed open the door and stepped in. His eyes widened in simulated surprise when he saw the two men in the room.

Lieutenant Morgan Hart sat in the chair by the window with a snub-nosed thirty-eight leveled at Dan’s stomach. The thin, sharp-nosed man who had tailed Dan to Larry Bull’s house leaned negligently against the wall with both hands in his pockets.

“Drop your gun gentle, Fancy,” Lieutenant Hart said quietly.

“Sure,” Dan said.

Carefully he drew the weapon from under his arm, using only an index finger and thumb. With exaggerated daintiness he laid it on the carpet.

“This an arrest, or just a killing?” he asked.

“An arrest. But we’d be glad to make it a killing, if you want to resist.”

“No thanks. What’s the charge?”

“Homicide.”

“Anyone I know?”

The thin lieutenant scowled at him. Rising, he dropped his Panama hat over his gun and urged the big man out of the room. At the doorway he stooped and pocketed Dan’s .45 automatic. The hat-covered gun never varied from its bearing on the big man’s nose as the trio rode down the elevator, crossed the lobby and entered a squad car at the curb. The skinny, sharp-nosed man drove, while Lieutenant Hart sat in the back with Dan.

“You don’t really need that gun,” Dan remarked. “I wouldn’t make a break because I’m curious to find out your intentions.”

The lieutenant said nothing, but he did not put away the gun. The grim manner in which he continued to eye Dan caused a tremor of uneasiness to run through the big man, for Morgan Hart’s expression resembled nothing so much as that of a hired killer about to practise his profession. Fleetingly Dan wondered if perhaps he had mis-estimated Big Jim, and instead of being framed he was simply going to be murdered.

Then he decided that Big Jim would be guilty of nothing so crude, and settled back to await developments.

They were not long in coming. Swiftly the car drove toward the center of town. Near the hub of the shopping district it slowed to cruising speed and drifted with the traffic. Repeatedly the sharp-nosed driver glanced in the rear-view mirror, apparently awaiting some sign from the lieutenant. Finally, in the center of a block in which traffic whizzed in both directions and the sidewalks were crammed with pedestrians, Morgan Hart gave a slight nod.

Immediately the driver slammed on his brakes, and almost before the car stopped moving he had flung open the right-hand door and thrown himself to the sidewalk amidst startled pedestrians. Standing in a crouch, he drew a gun and fired over the top of the car.

Simultaneously Lieutenant Hart flung himself out of the back door and winged a bullet into the upholstery immediately beneath Dan.

Grasping the door handle on his own side, Dan threw his shoulder against the door and sprawled headlong into the street. Two more shots crashed, one nicking the asphalt on either side of the car.

Traffic from both directions screamed to a halt, leaving a wide path between Dan and the mouth of an alley across the street. Like a harbor of safety the alley beckoned, but to reach it Dan would have to traverse a wide street while two men with pistols potted at his back. Even as he hit the street on all fours, his mind was racing, and he found time to be amazed at Big Jim’s audacity. Picking the center of town with a hundred witnesses to stage a killed-while-escaping act was a stroke of genius, for even the governor would be impotent in the face of the testimony of so many disinterested witnesses.

That he would never make the mouth of the alley across the street was a certainty. With split-second decision he bounced erect, slammed shut the car door through which he had just tumbled, jerked open the driver’s door and slid under the wheel.

Racing around either side of the car toward the point they expected to find Dan, and not expecting the maneuver, the two detectives were caught off balance. The motor was still running, and when Dan threw the car into low and gunned it, Morgan Hart was behind the car and the thin-nosed man was in front of it. The latter leaped backward in terror as the hood shot toward him, stumbled over the curb and fell flat. Then Dan was racing through a red light and was cut off from possible fire by the stream of traffic which immediately began to flow in the cross-street behind him.

Dan estimated he had at least five minutes before Lieutenant Hart could get a general alarm on the air, and he resolved to make the most of each minute. The shipping dock area along the lake front would be his best bet, he decided, for there he could probably find a cheap hotel which made a point of not asking its guests questions. Opening the siren wide, he headed in the general direction of the dock area at seventy-five miles an hour. At the same time he switched on the radio so that he would know the exact moment his squad car ceased to be a haven and became a target.

His guess was optimistic by two minutes. He had roared a little over three miles across town and was passing through what seemed to be a second-class residential district when the radio suddenly intoned: “Calling all cars. Calling all cars. Be on lookout for squad car number two seventy-six. Repeat car two seventy-six. Last seen at Fourth and Locust heading at high speed toward lake front. This car has been stolen by Daniel Fancy, who is wanted for murder. Fancy may have abandoned car and may now be on foot. He is six feet four inches, two hundred and seventy pounds, suntanned, has blue eyes and iron-gray hair. He is wearing a gray suit and no hat. This man is a cop-killer and may be armed. Take no chances with him.”

That fixed him but good, Dan thought. Labeling him a cop-killer. Every cop in town, even the honest ones, if any, would now shoot first and call “halt” after Dan dropped. He cut his siren, slowed to a crawl and began looking for a parking place, so that he could proceed more inconspicuously on foot.

A quarter-block later he found it, a lone vacancy in front of a neighborhood tavern. Pulling alongside the car in front of the vacancy, he started to back in.

The rear end of his squad car was halfway in when another police car drifted from the side street immediately in front of him, crossed the intersection and stopped with a jerk. As it slammed into reverse, Dan gunned out of his parking place, whipped into a U-turn which made his tires scream in agony, and headed back the way he had come with the accelerator to the floor.

At the first corner he swung left at fifty-five miles an hour. A block farther on he made a dirt-track left turn by skidding around the corner sidewise at sixty. He was two blocks ahead and his speedometer needle wavered at eighty by the time the pursuing car rounded the second turn. When he reached ninety-two, his heart leaping to his throat every time a side street flashed by, he had increased his lead to three blocks.

But by then the radio was chattering his location and sirens began to whine from all directions. Ahead he caught a flashing glimpse of the sun reflected on water, gritted his teeth and roared on. What he would do, or could do, when he reached the lake was something he had to decide within seconds.

Off to his left the screech of a siren grew to a, crescendo. He caught a glimpse of a gray squad car flashing at him from a side street, its tires screaming as the horrified driver locked brakes to prevent crashing head-on into Dan’s side. There was a sharp metallic click as a hub cap scraped his rear bumper, and in the rear-view mirror he could see the police car stalled diagonally across the street. A moment later another set of brakes squealed as the car which had originally given chase came to a frustrated stop, its way blocked by the stalled vehicle.

Dan realized his respite would amount only to seconds, however. He also realized the chase was nearly over, for a bare two blocks ahead he could make out the shipping dock, and there was nowhere left for him to go except into the lake. The distance shrank to a block before he made his decision.

Without slackening speed he flashed onto the wooden dock, slammed on his brakes fifty feet from its edge and skidded the rest of the way.

Considering he was driving an unfamiliar car, his timing was perfect. The squad car came almost to a full stop, maintaining just enough momentum to slide off the end of the pier in slow motion, loiter in the air for a fraction of a second and then drop vertically. During that fraction of a second Dan managed to shoulder open the door, part company with the squad car and enter the water in a shallow dive.

The car disappeared with an enormous splash. Underwater, Dan allowed himself to shoot forward until the force of his dive was nearly spent, then twisted and with two powerful underwater strokes was under the dock. He continued swimming underwater until his lungs would no longer sustain him, then broke to the surface and held on to a piling while he gulped deep lungsfull of air.

He found he was some twenty feet back under the dock. There was barely two-foot clearance between the underside of the dock and the water, he was gratified to discover. It would be impossible to get a boat underneath. Leisurely, he swam deeper under the pier until his feet touched bottom.

He could not have found a better hiding place had he deliberately hunted for one, he realized. He estimated that the dock was a hundred feet deep and possibly a block long. Even a dozen swimmers would have difficulty finding him, for the place was in perpetual dusk and there were literally hundreds of pilings to play hide-and-seek behind.

Apparently the police decided the same thing, for a few minutes later several boats crowded to the edge of the dock and powerful lights were beamed under it. But they contented themselves with peering from the boat and no swimmers ventured back to seek for him. Dan merely stood quietly behind a piling until the police gave up and went away.

Walking back into shallower water, he soon found his chest and shoulders above the surface, but his head scraping the underside of the dock. Sinking to a crouch, he continued back until he was able to sit on the hard sand bottom with his head and shoulders above water. He was not uncomfortable, for while the water was cool, it was clear lake water and probably clean enough to drink. However, he realized he might have to stay under the pier until dark, which was at least six hours off, and he would certainly grow uncomfortable if he had to stay immersed.

It occurred to him that if he crawled back far enough he might find a strip of dry sand where the pier joined the shore. Investigating, he did find sand, though it could hardly be called dry. Lying sidewise, he was able to wedge himself almost entirely out of the water, so that it merely lapped against one arm and shoulder. He lay there until dark, and though he became cramped and chilled through, he was not nearly as uncomfortable as he would have been if he had been forced to remain seated in water for six hours.

At dark he swam to the edge of the pier a half block from the point where the squad car had sunk, listened five minutes for any sign of police patrol, then cautiously drew himself out of the water. Ten minutes later he was wringing out his wet clothes in a deserted warehouse. When he redressed he looked as if he had slept outside during a shower, but at least he did not squish when he walked.

He found a pay phone in a waterfront tavern where his appearance excited no comment, since all the customers looked as if they had slept in their clothes. Locating Adele Hudson’s home phone number in the book, he dropped a nickel and dialed. She answered so promptly that he got the impression she had been waiting by the phone.

“Dan!” she breathed. “I’ve been worried to death ever since I heard it on the radio. Are you all right?”

“A little damp,” he said huskily. “What was on the radio?”

“About your being arrested for murder, and escaping right in the heart of town and then drowning. I knew you didn’t.”

“Didn’t what? Kill somebody or drown?”

“Either,” she said breathlessly. “I had a feeling I’d hear from you, and I’ve been practically sitting on the phone.”

“Who was I supposed to have killed?” he asked curiously. “Larry Bull?”

“Yes. You didn’t, did you?”

“Not that I remember. But I have been expecting him to show up dead. When was I supposed to have done it?”

“Last night. A little after eight.”

“Humm...” he said thoughtfully. “I was at his house about then. No doubt Big Jim has witnesses to the shooting, ballistic tests to prove it was my gun and all the other necessary proof. Should make an interesting trial.”

“What are you going to do, Dan?”

“Nothing. But you are. Get a pencil and paper. I want you to make a couple of long distance calls for me.”