Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 139, No. 6, September 14, 1940

Two-Way Hookup by Lois Ames

There were plenty of radio cars to send after them, sure — but the killers could anticipate every move.

When you switch on the short wave to amuse yourself with Hancock police calls in the evening, it is Ben Haigis’s deep monotone that comes out of the solid mahogany console in your library or the walnut-finish table model in your hall bedroom. Ben is as slim as the day he went onto the force, thirty-five years ago, and he looks more like a professional man than a police officer. But his eyes are as sharp as needle-pointed, blue icicles beneath thick hair that is mostly gray now, with a pen line of black here and there. And some of those gray hairs he got on a rainy Friday night in October that started out to be as dull as a debutante’s diary.

Outside, rain lashed in angry frustration against the lighted windows, and slithered in spent streams down the thick glass. Inside the bright radio room the teletype rattled spasmodically, dispatchers hunched inside their glass enclosures in the middle of the room, and at the far end Ben Haigis sat on his raised platform behind the wide board with its blinking white, red and green eyes, answering and dispatching messages with the automatic precision of long practice.

Suddenly the loudspeaker blared in his ear. “Patrol car L-51 stolen from 258 Westminster Street while Officers Braddon and Foley were investigating a call. Saw two men running from direction of Holworth Street. No description.”

Ben snapped a switch, picked up the receiver and went into action. “Calling all cars! To all cars! Police patrol car, license H-259, stolen on Division 7, from 258 Westminster Street, by two men. Cars on Divisions 3, 8, 15 and 20, cover your intersections. Car 063, go to 258 Westminster Street, pick up two officers. Hancock Police, 9:40.”

As he cradled the receiver the loudspeaker roared again. “Send a car to 341 Holworth Street. Unconscious man in vestibule.”

“Okay.” Ben clicked a switch with his right hand, picked up the receiver with his left. “Calling Car L-53! Car L-53!” He saw the picture. Two men running from Holworth Street, stealing a police car. And an unconscious man in a vestibule.

From the loudspeaker on the board came the answer. “L-53 answering.”

“L-53, go to 341 Holworth Street. Unconscious man in vestibule. May have some connection with theft of patrol car on Westminster Street. Hancock Police, 9:43.”

Ben rubbed his leg where the bullet had smashed the bone fifteen years before, but which still ached in rainy weather. He wondered how Carl, his son, was making out. It was Carl’s first night on radio patrol. Ben was glad he wasn’t pounding the pavements in this downpour.

Although Carl was twenty-eight years old and going to be married next week, Ben still saw him as a serious, square-jawed little fellow with dirty knees, playing cops and robbers or, ludicrously, reeling off Hiawatha or The Charge of the Light Brigade with his button nose pressed against the window, waiting for the rain to stop. Carl knew every verse and poem from nursery rhymes to Edwin Arlington Robinson. Ben knew a good many, too, from hearing Carl recite them, though Ben had no use for the ones that didn’t rhyme.

It was odd that Carl, who had gone to college and stood near the top of his class, should have insisted on going onto the force. Carl had queer ideas, but he knew what he wanted. Margie, for instance. Margie was a grand girl and Ben was all for her. But most young cops with ambition would hesitate to marry the daughter of Tom Conner. Especially since Tom had got mixed up with the Snifter Morini gang and had been discharged from the force. Carl just said he wasn’t marrying Tom, and nobody dared make any cracks about it.

Tom had been a good man, too, before his wife died. That had done something to him. Ben had always told the boys that Tom wasn’t right in his head after he lost his wife, but the other men weren’t so charitable. He and Tom had been pals in the old days, and Ben had tried to get him back on his feet. Margie had tried too, but she hadn’t been able to dent him. Maybe a doctor, one of those psychiatrist chaps, could have done something, but Tom wouldn’t go near them.

Ben, answering routine calls, was glad those guys that had stolen the police car weren’t on Division 4. They’d probably head out of town, not down into that sink drain of the city where Carl was driving Dave McMahon.

Stacatto buzzing roused Ben and he lifted the receiver. “Police Headquarters answering. Answering.” Why the hell didn’t they come in, if they wanted him?

Then a voice came flat and nasal from the speaker before him. That would be Jack Shorten, Ben’s mind registered automatically. “L-53 reporting. I’ll say the man’s unconscious. He’s dead. Shot through the heart. And say—” Jack’s voice squeaked with excitement — “it’s Snifter Morini. Looks as if his gang got him, all right. Get the homicide guys up here, and the ambulance.”

“Okay.” Ben grunted with annoyance. Didn’t Jack Shorten think he knew what to do when a man had been shot? So it was Snifter Morini. Something must have gone wrong with the gang’s car. They couldn’t have known they’d find a police car asking to be stolen.

An odd feeling of disquiet tugged at Ben’s mind while he dispatched cars to pick up the homicide squad. He wished Margie had gone home after dinner, instead of deciding to stay with Carl’s mother and talk over plans for the wedding next week. She’d be listening in on Carl’s short wave radio, he knew.

There was no reason to think Tom Conner had any connection with this shooting of Snifter Morini. Nor that Carl, down on Division 4, would have anything to do with the chase. But the feeling persisted. He could feel Margie’s hands on his arms now, a strange insistence in the firm fingers pressing into his muscles. It was when she first learned that Carl had been put on radio patrol. There had been something like fear in her hazel eyes.

“Don’t ever send Carl after my father, Mr. Haigis! Promise! I love Carl. You know that. But — I love my father, too. In spite of everything. And if Carl should be the cause of his... oh, I couldn’t bear it! I couldn’t marry Carl if he—” Seeing the protest in his eyes she had stumbled on, “Oh, I know it’s unreasonable, but I can’t help it! Don’t ever make me — hate Carl, for doing his duty!”

He had soothed her, told her Tom hadn’t got into any trouble yet, that there was nothing for her to worry about. But the scene had stayed with him, worried him at odd moments. He tried now to put it out of his mind.

The speaker from the dispatchers’ enclosure bellowed again. “Woman calling from drug store, corner Bond and Sutton, says police car went through red light headed north and nearly knocked her down. Registration H-25 — something. Missed the last figure.”

Ben swore quietly. So they hadn’t gone out of town after all. Headed straight for the thickest part of the city — Carl’s division. Must be some reason for that. The receiver was at his ear. “To all cars! Stolen police car H-259 just passed Bond and Sutton intersection headed north. Cars R-74 and 059 go to Intersection 134 and wait. Cars L-24 and R-44 close in on Intersection 152. Men believed connected with shooting. May be desperate characters. Use caution. Hancock Police, 9:59.”

Damn! thought Ben suddenly. That was a police car those men had. He was playing right into their hands, and there was nothing he could do about it. He had to broadcast to the other cars, didn’t he? And every time he gave an order directing the search, the gangsters got it too and could plan accordingly. They’d know every move the police were going to make.

Just then a sergeant, off duty, telephoned in from a store on Braxton Street that police car H-259 had passed him with two men, not in uniform, in the front seat, and was the police force now running a drive-yourself service? And he added that the man driving the car looked like Tom Conner. The little fear that had been nagging at the back of Ben’s mind since he heard that the murdered man was Snifter Morini came out in the open and danced a jig up and down his spine. Tom Conner! He was sending cops after a man whose faultless teamwork had saved his own life more than once. More than that, he’d got to send Carl after Margie’s father. A hell of a note, he thought bitterly as he hung up the receiver after broadcasting the latest location of the stolen car.

Lieutenant Draper had been studying the huge lighted map of the city that hung on the right-hand wall. He leaned across the board and said to Ben, “They can’t get anywhere from that location without going down Dry-den or Silver. Pull a couple of cars in onto those streets, cruising slowly. It’s pouring great guns. Visibility’s not so good. They’ll be almost up to the cruising cars before they see them, and when they try to pass, the boys can get them.”

“Okay. But you know they can hear these calls, same as our men. They aren’t going to run right into our arms.”

The lieutenant’s gold braid glistened as he shrugged his annoyance. “You think of a better plan.”

Ben didn’t answer. The muscles in his lean cheeks tensed as he lifted the receiver. “Calling Car L-21! Car L-21!” That was Carl’s car.

L-21 answered with a growling sound in the speaker.

“L-21, go to Dryden, cruise slowly north. Watch out for stolen patrol car, H-259. Men in car believed murderers.” That would give those guys in the stolen car a laugh, all right! Then he called 016 and gave them the same instruction, substituting Silver for Dryden. And sat back to wait.

A few desultory calls came through for other things — a drunk annoying women, a milk bottle thrown through a cellar window by some boys, a false alarm. Ben was taut, keyed up, waiting. He hoped it would be Silver Street the car would take, and 016 that would try to stop it. The gangsters had guns, of course, but it was the deadly tommy gun in the police car that had him worried. He could see it, held by the man beside Tom, ready to pour hot lead into Carl as they drew alongside.

He saw Carl at the wheel of the patrol car, alert, eager, with his brown hair crisp under his cap, his blue-clad shoulders square and straight. His chin would be a little forward, Ben thought, his head up as if scenting for danger. He didn’t know it was Tom Conner driving that other car. He’d be chafing at the slow pace they were obliged to take, cruising down Dryden Avenue, his foot hovering lightly over the accelerator, impatient for the glimpse of that other black car. And nothing happened.

Suddenly Ben shot up straight in his chair. If the gangsters were going down Dryden or Silver they ought to have passed the cruising cars minutes ago. Then they hadn’t gone down Dryden or Silver. But where—? The alley, he thought, with a lightning flash of inspiration. He spoke to the lieutenant, and just then a call came through by telephone. A man living on Silver Street had heard the sound of a car backfiring in the alley. He was an inquisitive man, and he’d opened the back door to have a look. At his feet sprawled a patrolman, dead, and through sluicing rain he’d seen the winking red taillight of a car careening down the ill-paved, dimly lighted alley.

Ben gritted his teeth and swore between them. If that car got across Black-stone Street and into the old part of the city they might play puss-in-the-corner with it all night and be no further ahead, except perhaps for the loss of a few more patrolmen who happened to get in the way. Squad car, ambulance and homicide men were dispatched to the scene of the shooting, while grim-faced men all over the city squared uniformed shoulders and held themselves alert, watchful, ready to pounce.

The speaker on the board buzzed and Ben lifted the receiver with a sense of foreboding. “Answering. Police Headquarters answering.” His voice was flat and quiet, the voice of one who knows that bad news is imminent.

“L-21 reporting. H-259 seen by officer on Blackstone Street shooting across traffic from alley. Entered alley on opposite side about three minutes ago.”

So it was to be puss-in-the-corner after all. He couldn’t figure it. It was suicide for the gangsters, working down into that narrowing strip of land, hemmed in by water. But it was suicide for the officers that went after them, too. Shooting it out with desperate criminals armed with tommy guns was grim business. If this had only happened next week when Carl would be on leave, married to Margie, with nothing more dangerous to chase than a few stray kernels of rice inside his shirt! And then, startingly clear on the board he saw Carl’s blue eyes looking at him, unafraid, scornful of weakness.

Ben got the go-ahead signal from Lieutenant Draper. He leaned forward, every sense concentrating on the problem before him. He knew those streets like the palm of his own hand. Hadn’t he pounded the pavements down there as a rooky cop? The waterfront was straight ahead of the gangsters. That was a break. They’d have to shoot out right or left to get away.

“Okay, L-21. L-21, go to Atlantic and High. There’s an officer on traffic duty. If they haven’t passed him, wait there.” He paused a moment, his eyes slitted in thought. “To all cars on Division 4! Stand by for orders.” Then in rapid succession, “Car 016, go to Rugby and Farraday. Car L-53, go to Mill and Holland. L-24, to Glover and Common.”

His voice droned on, bottling up the stolen car in that maze of narrow, crooked streets with their dirty-faced buildings. Riot squads were called out, half the police force concentrated in that square mile or so of evil-smelling rat runs.

He started other cars cruising through the district to keep the quarry on the move. Damn them, he’d smoke them out, he thought savagely. Sweat ran into his eyes so that he could not see, but all the sight he needed was inside his head, stamped in indelible grooves by years of lonely nights on patrol. They’d abandon the car, he thought, when they heard themselves blocked at every possible exit.

At last he sat back and drew his sleeve across his eyes. It surprised him to see the radio room with its bright lights, its teletypes clicking busily. He’d almost expected, when he got his sight cleared, to find himself down there in that fetid North End, he’d been seeing it so clearly in his mind.

Something ought to happen soon. The gangsters couldn’t possibly slip through that belt of cars he’d thrown around them. But the board was strangely quiet, waiting. He became uneasy. They couldn’t, he thought desperately, have got away. Was there some hole he’d left, some unguarded spot through which they’d slinked? He went over them all in his mind. Not one, he decided. But his uneasiness grew.

He saw himself in their place. What would he do? It was a trick that had worked well at other times, this ability to figure the moves desperate men would make. Well, what would he do in their place? Abandon the car? Not without another to take its place. And one of the cruising cars would have picked it up, if it had been abandoned. The police car with the radio was their best bet, if they could disguise it.

Disguise! That was it. But how, and where?

He went over the section, inch by inch, in his mind. He didn’t need the map the lieutenant was frowning over, there on the wall. Something clicked. It was Tom Conner driving that car. Instead of the bright lights of the room he saw an old stable under a rickety house, its entrance on an alley just off High Street. He had good reason to remember it. It had been used by a gang years ago as a cache for stolen goods. It was where he had got that bullet in his leg that was still bothering him, fifteen years later. Tom Conner had been with him then. The house must still be there. There hadn’t been a building touched in that rotten district since it was first built. A shot in the dark, perhaps, but — he lifted the receiver.

“Calling Car L-21! Calling Car L-21!” There was a grating reply, and he barked, “L-21! Try that little garage in the alley a couple of doors south of your corner.” Hell! he thought. If I could only put their damned radio out of commission! If they are there, they’ll have a sweet reception ready for Dave and Carl! He spoke into the transmitter again. “L-21! Use caution. Don’t forget they’ve got a police radio in that car, and an arsenal.” Sweat was again glistening on his forehead.

Five interminable minutes clicked by on the clock at the top of the board. He caught the first buzz of their call, and the receiver was at his ear.

“L-21 reporting. They’ve been here, all right. We’ve found the number plates. And there’s a can of black enamel with a brush in it. They’ve changed the plates and blacked over the police insignia on the doors. Tough luck!”

“Why didn’t I think of that before?” he groaned. Yet he was strangely relieved. If they’d caught them there, Carl Haigis might be stretched out now with a dark stain on the front of his uniform, like that patrolman in the alley.

Automatically he flicked a button. “Calling all cars! To all cars! Stolen patrol car has been disguised, number plates changed, insignia on doors blacked out. Keep sharp watch!” They can’t have been gone long, he thought despairingly.

The speaker buzzed, and he answered. “028 reporting,” came a rasping voice. “Black sedan reported two minutes ago turning from High Street into River, heading north. Standing by.”

North! Always working north, thought Ben. Not out of the city. Straight for the riverfront, always. That meant then — he spoke into the transmitter. “Okay, 028. Stay where you are.” He held the receiver, thinking desperately. If he could only find some way to broadcast to the patrol cars without letting the gangsters know his orders. Some way to send those cars to the river, where he knew now the criminals had a boat waiting. It was the only thing that would explain their constant working into that bottle neck. With a boat waiting for them there would be no cork in the bottle. There was no police boat on the river after the first of October. After they’d changed the plates, if they hoped to escape from the city by car, they would surely have turned south, east or west. They’d never have continued north...

And suddenly it came to him. He couldn’t send the other cars without letting the gangsters hear. But he could send Carl’s car. Alone. Two officers against two murderers. One of them was Tom Conner. He must forget that. Carl needn’t know — yet. Perhaps he would never know. He pressed his knees together to keep them from shaking, and lifted the receiver.

“To all cars! Stolen police car believed still bottled up between River, High, Holland and Clifton. Remain where you are. They’ll make a break soon.” That would give them a laugh, he thought. Make them think they’d fooled him. Lieutenant Draper was protesting in his ear, but with the flat of his hand he pushed the gleaming brass buttons away. “Car L-21! Car L-21!”

Dave’s flat voice responded. Ben hoped the other gangster didn’t know poetry. He knew that Tom didn’t.

“Listen, L-21.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure dome decree—

Carry on, Carl.” The word “river” in the next line would tell Carl what he wanted to know.

Lieutenant Draper was shouting in his ear, dragging at his shoulder. “Ben! Are you crazy? What do you think this is, ‘Information, Please’? Come away from there and let someone else take over.”

Ben glanced over his shoulder, saw the lieutenant’s flaming face, his bulging eyes. “Shut up!” he croaked at his superior.

The speaker on the board buzzed. There was a crackling of voices, then Dave’s laconic reply, “We got it.”

The lieutenant had subsided. Ben frowned at the board. L-21 would be turning down River Street now. But that wasn’t good enough. The criminals had at least three minutes jump on the patrol car. More, probably. River Street ran straight down to the Thomas and Franklin Company’s wharf, its gates locked. The only place for a private boat was a small wharf farther west. That was the place the gangsters were heading for. If they went beyond that, they’d come to a bridgehead and the waiting arms of four policemen in a squad car. Tom Conner knew those streets as well as Ben. He’d take the shortest way. Oblivious of the other officers crowding around the board, Ben shut his eyes in frantic concentration. Halfway down River Street was Crescent, curving into Hirsch Square. He opened his eyes and barked into the transmitter.

“L-21! L-21!

Straight down the crooked lane,

And all around the square—

He wondered if Carl would ever associate Crescent with the “crooked lane,” but it was the best he could think of. He let out a long breath of relief when Dave’s “Okay” came back to him. But he couldn’t stop. Victoria Street was next, across the square. What was that thing—?

“Try this one, Carl. Remember Kipling, something about the Empress of India? ‘The Overland Mail,’ isn’t it? Get it?”

He was pleading now, praying that Carl would know instantly that he meant Victoria, and that he or Dave would know which street it was of the four that led out of the square. There were so many streets to remember, when you were new on the Division. The old sign that hung drunkenly on the dirty brick building would be illegible in this downpour.

But Dave’s “Okay” came back a moment later through a sputter of static, while Ben’s forehead wrinkled into deep grooves as he remembered how Victoria Street’s deceptive turns and twists curved away from that desolate wharf. There was a boat there waiting — he felt sure of that — and the killers as elusive as shadows once they shoved off into the darkness of the river. But not if he could get Carl and Dave there first.

There was still a chance that they could catch the men. On the left hand side of Victoria Street, just before it made one of its unpredictable turns, was a crack in the blackened brick of the old buildings, barely wide enough for a car. Moon Lane. It looked like an alley leading to a blank wall. But at that barrier it turned unexpectedly and continued straight down to the public wharf at the waterfront.

A police car travels fast, and Ben’s knowledge of poetry was sketchy. He thought desperately. Moon! He had it! Not good, but it would do.

“L-21! If you would view fair Melrose aright. Go visit it by the pale — starlight.”

Substituting “star” for “moon” would give Carl the cue, he thought. It all depended now on Carl’s knowledge of the Division.

If it hadn’t been Tom Conner driving that car, Ben would have felt reasonably sure that Carl’s car would get to the wharf first. But Tom knew of that turn into Moon Lane. Using it meant maybe an extra minute and a half, possibly two. Ninety seconds can mean a lot in a close chase.

Ben was shaking suddenly, so the receiver rattled under his hand. Why hadn’t he let Carl go down Victoria Street, so Tom could have those extra minutes? No one would ever have known about Moon Lane. With Tom out there on the dark river Carl would have been safe. There’d be no need for him to shoot Margie’s father, if he got the chance before he was peppered with bullets. He wondered if Tom knew it was Carl in the other car whether it would make any difference. He thought not.

He jumped when the buzzer sounded. Dave’s voice was as cold and controlled as ever. “Double-crossed us, Ben. Nobody home. Nobody’s been home, according to the watchman next door.” Dave was being cautious, trying to tell him that they were at the wharf, that the watchman at Bradford’s warehouse across the street hadn’t seen any car. They couldn’t have doubled back, Ben thought, perplexed. He’d been so sure it was Tom in that car. But if it was, he’d know the way through Moon Lane and take it. If it wasn’t Tom, the driver probably didn’t know the short cut and they’d be along any minute.

“Okay, Dave. Sit tight and watch out.” Suppose, thought Ben, trying to wipe off the perspiration that kept oozing into his palms, I’ve been all wrong. Suppose they’ve slipped out somewhere else. I’ve been so sure it was Tom Conner, that they were heading for the river. If I’m wrong, I’m on the spot with the lieutenant. He’ll never forgive me.

He answered the buzzer with a husky voice and felt a mixture of relief and tearing apprehension when Dave said shortly, “It’s Okay, Ben.”

That meant, then, that they were coming. The room was so quiet that the rain pounding against the windows was like the rattle of machine guns. And suddenly there was a banging in the receiver that seemed to crack his head open, then a tremendous crash, and silence.

Ben felt cold perspiration trickling down his spine, but his eyes were hot, and water ran into them so he could not see. He didn’t know whether it was sweat or tears. He wanted to shout hysterically, “Carl’s been shot! Carl’s dead!” But years of self-control kept his voice down as he barked into the transmitter, “To all cars now on Division 4! Public wharf, North Street between Binney and Victoria. Murderers in stolen police car in gunfight with patrol car. Men will attempt to escape by boat.”

His chest was tight with a sob that seemed too big to move. His legs were like soggy paper, and his eyes were blinded by stinging, salty water. There was a rush of movement around him, but he did not look up until a hand was laid on his arm. His blurred senses told him it was a woman’s, and he looked up into Margie’s round, frightened eyes.

“I... I’m sorry. I had to come,” she sobbed. “Tell me — is it Dad?”

He could not answer her. He looked at her a moment, then his eyes went back to the clock at the top of the board. This, he thought, is what it means for Carl to be a policeman. To lose his life, or to lose the woman he loves. Either way, Ben felt he could not bear it. His responsibility for what had happened was like a slab of granite crushing him. He felt terribly old, and tired.

Five endless minutes ticked by before the buzzer sounded and a voice he couldn’t recognize, through the roaring in his ears, came from the speaker. “Taking over Car L-51, Dad. L-21 is pretty much shot up. And, Dad, wait a minute. A swell guy wants to speak to you.”

The room was whirling madly, and Ben clutched the edge of the board for support as Tom Conner’s voice came faintly over the radio. “You win, Ben. Carl will — look out for — Margie. Good luck and — goodbye.”

Carl came on again, his voice cracking suspiciously. Or maybe it was the radio. “We’ve got the other guy. But Tom — he was driving. He took the long way down here so we could get here first. Said he thought Snifter had it coming to him and it was all right to shoot him, but when his pal shot the cop in the alley, something clicked and Tom felt like a cop himself again. He knew you were onto them, and would remember Moon Lane, and that the poetry stuff was your way of coding the messages, but the other guy didn’t know what it was all about, and he was plenty nervous. It’s Finn Neilsen, by the way. Well, he was all set to shoot at us when Tom knocked the gun up and the shot went wild. Neilsen got mad and shot Tom, and got one shot plugged into our car before we got him. We’re bringing him in, but Tom — gee, Dad, Tom just died.”

Even over the sputtering harshness of the radio Ben recognized Carl’s little-boy voice, trying not to cry. “But, Dad, he died a cop. I can tell Margie that.”

Ben felt the receiver wrenched from his hand, felt Margie’s cool cheek next to his. “C–Carl! I l-love you! I’m g-glad you were there, with Dad!”

And those, thought Ben, are the first words a woman ever spoke over the police hook-up. There was no perspiration in his eyes now.

Nothing but tears.