MacKinlay Kantor, who writes equally well about grandmothers and soldiers, Ozark cats and Scottish pipers, ghosts and moths, Western outlaws and movie queens, has the enviable ability to fuse literary quality and popular appeal. Here is one of his sharp and pungent detective stories — a cops-and-robbers tale that sprang out of the old Chicago days...
Inspector Bourse looked very tired. He had been awake all night, and he was not as young as he had been in the days when he wore a gray helmet and sported a walrus-mustache.
The two young men and the two blowsy, over-dressed women crowded close around him as he sat crouched in the deep, gaudily upholstered chair.
Bourse asked, “How’s your watch, Ricardi? And yours, Nick Glennan?”
Coonskin cuffs slid back from two husky wrists, and for a moment there was silence.
“Eight-eight, sir.”
“That’s me, Inspector. Eight-eight.”
“You ladies” — he slurred the word — “got your guns in your pocket-books?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then,” said old Inspector Bourse, “I’d like to know what’s keeping you. Go to it. Don’t give ’em a break. They never gave a break in their lives, least of all Hemingway. And remember them vests. Shoot ’em in the kisser.”
Said one of the women, whose name was Cohen, “That reminds me—”
“Shoot him in the pants,” nodded the old chief, “the coat and vest is mine. All right, gentlemen.”
They went out through the kitchen, and a uniformed patrolman opened the rear door. They went down two flights of bleak stairway and crowded into a red and black taxicab which had been waiting at the alley entrance with idling motor. Nobody said anything. The driver seemed very husky for a taxi driver — he should have been able to command an occupation more fitting to one who scaled two hundred and eight pounds and whose shoulders were all steel and wire.
At the Balmoral Street end of the alley, the taxicab turned left, and left a second time at Dorchester Avenue; now it was heading east and parallel to the alley where it had stood waiting a moment before. This block was lined almost solidly with apartment buildings of the less-than-first-class variety, though here and there an old residence stood out solidly, resisting the cheap encroachment of red and yellow brick walls.
“Right here,” said the youngest, handsomest man, and the cab slowed to the curb in front of Number 1441.
The street looked innocent enough. It was then about eight-thirteen of an ordinary week-day morning, and Dorchester Avenue was an ordinary weekday street if ever there was one. A milk truck was parked ahead of the taxicab, and an express delivery van across the street. Protruding from a nearby delivery lane was the rear end of an Eclipse Laundry truck, and its driver was nowhere in sight. Apparently he had taken his little collapsible cart and vanished within the nearest building, where no doubt he was gathering loads of soiled linen or distributing the unsoiled variety. From behind the flimsy, opaque curtains of an opposite apartment, Inspector Bourse looked down at all these things and called them good.
He knew, as well, that behind 1441 Dorchester Avenue a junkman was driving through the main alley and was just about to have an altercation with a city garbage truck which blocked his way. He knew that not all the tenants of 1441 were still asleep or sitting over early breakfasts. No, at least a dozen of those tenants had taken occupancy during the previous day and night — slyly, carefully, silently — and just now they would have firearms ready to hand.
In the stupid four-and-a-half story building which was numbered 1441, a young man sat in the tiny sun parlor of Apartment 327. He would have been exceedingly interested had he known that Inspector Bourse was watching his windows. He was not a nice young man. His face was the color of the paper in which your butcher wraps meat, and his mouth had come down directly from a remote ancestor who served as a torturer for a Louis.
He was twenty-seven years old; he had killed men in Chicago, Dallas, Saginaw, Fort Wayne, Kansas City, Tulsa and in the town where he now sat. Mail trucks and banks had been levied upon, women had been forced to bestow their caresses upon Him, and strangely enough some of them didn’t have to be forced. The man’s name was Chester Hemingway, and he had a personal, cash estate of three hundred and fifteen thousand dollars.
The young man was chewing something. His thin jaws worked knowingly, cruelly, and not with the comfortable carelessness of the habitual gum-chewer. They went crunching up and down, pulverizing some mysterious food between their gleaming white teeth. It was horrible but forever fascinating, to watch Chet Hemingway chew. He was always chewing.
“Chet,” came a voice from the next room.
Without turning his head, Hemingway said, “Yeah?” There was a scowl upon his face whenever he spoke.
“What’s down there?”
“Cab. Couple of broads with two college boys in coon coats.”
“They was making a lot of noise. I just wondered—”
Chet Hemingway told his companion, “Well, I’ll do all the wondering that’s done around here. Sure they’re making a lot of noise. Anybody’s making a lot of noise that’s fried. These folks are fried — especially the two broads.” He leaned an inch closer to the window and his icy green eyes stared down at the gay party advancing toward the court entrance directly below. “And broad is the word,” he muttered to himself. “I like mine thinner than that.”
He thought of Lily.
“Tomsk,” he called, “where’s Lil?”
“Still asleep, I guess.”
“I wish to hell she’d get up and get us some breakfast. Tell her to get up.”
He heard Tomsk mutter to Heras, and Heras went padding down the short hall to knock at a bedroom door. “Hey, Lil. Get up. Chet says for you to get up.” Lil’s fretful voice came back after a moment: “Oh, for God’s sake!” She yawned. “Oh, all right,” she said, “I’m comin’, tell him.”
Hemingway smiled. If one of those monkeys ever made a pass at Lily, he’d shoot his teeth out of his ears. Really, he must be getting fond of Lil — fonder than he’d ever been of anybody. That wouldn’t do, to get fond of her. One of these days he’d have to get rid of her, one way or another. But for the present—
He heard the party of four — coon-skin college boys and fat, painted women, come lumbering up the stairway. His hand went to his belly-gun, then away from it. Drunks. Hell-raising punks with a couple of alley-cats they’d picked up during a night of revelry. Nobody to be alarmed about... Two Railway Express deliverymen came across the street, carrying a heavy box between them. Far down the hallway, a milkman clinked his bottles. There was the mutter of rubber tires close at hand — that laundryman was coming down the hall, knocking on doors as he came.
The radio mourned: “Laaaast Round-Up...”
Chet chewed and swallowed, swallowed and chewed. To the next room he called, “Hey, Tomsk. I hear the laundry guy coming. Tell Lil to get ready to go to the door. You scram, you and Heras.” With sullen boredom, he lifted his eyes to the ceiling above his head. How long, how long would they have to stay in this damn building, this damn town? But it was too hot to try for South America, yet. Maybe another month—
At that moment, he had the first notion that it might be a good idea to take Lil along with him when he went. He had meant to ditch her in New Orleans — give her a roll, if he felt she was safe, but ditch her. If he felt she wasn’t safe, he could always put a hole through her and drop her off a bridge with an old steam radiator wired to her neck and legs. That had happened before, too. But not to Lil. That was Jenny. Jenny had never turned up again, either — the quicksands down deep in the river took care of that. It was one rap they’d never have against him.
Actually, Chet Hemingway was falling in love with Lil, and didn’t realize it. It was funny: after all these weeks, and on this day when she was to be killed, that he should fall in love with her.
“Git along, little dogies, git along, little dogies—”
In the short stairway between the second and third floors, Detective Nick Glennan said to Detective Pete Ricardi, “Okay. Dave will be opposite that little service door in the side hall. Horn will go down there as soon as we pick up the Tom-gun.”
One of the women, whose name was Cohen, gave a shrill and alcoholic laugh. He shone in the annual police vaudeville, did Benny Cohen. The other woman, whose name was Detective Barney Flynn, laughed even louder. But it was a coarse bellow; Flynn didn’t make as good a woman as Cohen.
“You’ll be bringing them out here, armed to the teeth,” muttered Nick Glennan. “You sound like a hippopotamus, Barney. Okay,” he said again, as they reached the third floor. Nick wasn’t a sergeant yet, but he was commanding this squad, and if nothing went wrong he might very soon be a sergeant.
Detective Horn came trundling his laundry cart down the hallway. He bestowed one solemn wink on the inebriated college boys and their blowsy companions; his face was rather pale. Ricardi leaned forward and lifted a Thompson submachine gun from under the pile of soft blue bags in the little cart. His coonskin coat slid from his shoulders; his slim hands moved capably from drum to trigger and back again; Ricardi was the best machine gunner in the department.
The women were doing things to themselves. Their coats and henna wigs vanished — the dresses were brief and sketchy and wouldn’t bother them much, though they lost their rhinestone-buckled shoes in a hurry. They emerged from their disguises looking like nothing on land or sea, but they had .38’s in their hands.
All this conversation, whispered as it was, and all this hasty disrobing and assembling of armature, took about three jerks. Horn ambled ahead, laundry cart and all, and vanished around the turn into the side hall where Sergeant Dave Glennan, Nick’s fat brother, would be waiting inside the door of the opposite kitchen.
It didn’t look like Hemingway and Tomsk and Scummy Heras had much of a chance. Across the street, Inspector Bourse and Chief of Detectives Moore were having a severe case of the jitters. Another minute, another two minutes—
The two Railway Express men dumped their box inside the vestibule on the opposite side of the court, and turning, drew their guns. In the alley at the rear, three detectives on an odoriferous garbage truck and two more detectives on a junkman’s wagon, all became embroiled in a vituperative argument, which made it necessary for them to descend and gather opposite the back stairways.
A milkman came along the hall. He wore white and had an account-book, but his name was Detective Kerry. Silently the four other officers crept down the hall beside him. Kerry jangled bottles in the little wire basket he carried. “Git along, little dogies,” said Chet Hemingway’s radio, “git along—”
They were on each side of the door of apartment 327. Nick Glennan pressed the little pearly button; Ricardi motioned for Kerry to jangle his bottles again, and under cover of the musical tinkle he made ready with his machine gun.
They heard a distant blatting of the kitchen buzzer; that was Horn.
“Milkman,” chanted Detective Kerry.
“Laun-dry...” droned Detective Horn, far around the corner.
“Laaast Round-Up... git along, little dogies...” Somewhere inside there was a woman’s voice, and a man replied.
“Who’s there?”
“Milk-mannn...”
The door opened a crack. Cohen reached up with his foot and shoved it back; the man inside was Two-faced Tomsk, and if indeed he had possessed two faces he couldn’t have looked any more surprised.
“Stick ’em up, Tomsk,” whispered Glennan. “You haven’t got a chance.”
They heard Sergeant Dave Glennan’s voice from the kitchen door: “Look out, Horn!” and they heard the sharp report of a small automatic. Lil wasn’t taking any chances, either — she must have carried a gun with her when she went to the door.
Two-faced Tomsk threw himself forward in a dive, wrenching out his revolver as he came. Scummy Heras had been lying flat on the high-backed davenport, out of sight, but he came up with a .45 in each hand.
Tomsk had fired once and his bullet went between Kerry’s arm and the side of his body, and then Tomsk continued forward to the floor with two of young Nick Glennan’s Police Positive souvenirs in his head.
Scummy Heras was more of a problem. The stool pigeon hadn’t lied when he talked about bullet-proof vests. Ricardi’s machine gun dusted the davenport in a quick staccato, but all it did was bruise Heras’ ribs. One of the gangster’s guns was empty by that time; he had put a bullet through Barney Flynn’s chest, and a lot more too close for anybody’s comfort.
Through the kitchenette and little hallway, Sergeant Dave Glennan and Laundryman Horn came roaring in a flank attack. “Drop it, Scummy,” they were yelling, but Scummy didn’t mind worth a cent. He was backed against the French windows, and he kept going as long as he could. A fistful of slugs from Dave’s sawed-off mashed him back against the yielding windows — the panes went crackling to bits, and Heras’ body dropped, turning and twisting, to the paved court three stories below.
But where was Mr. Chester Hemingway, who had slain men in Chicago, Kansas City and points east and west? When the screaming roar of exploded cartridges died down, the little radio was still mourning about the lonesome prairies, but Chet Hemingway wasn’t around. Nick Glennan tripped over an upset chair and raced on into the sun parlor; his brother and Horn were diving into bedrooms, and from every stairway came a thunder of feet as the squads converged on apartment 327. But Chet Hemingway was not at home to receive them.
Nick flashed one baffled glance around the sun parlor. There was the radio, and there was Chet’s half-burned cigarette already scorching the carpet, and there was — Nick swore, heartily. He climbed up on the table and stepped from there on top of the radiator. A square hole had been sawed in the ceiling, and through that hole it was evident that Chet Hemingway had gone soaring.
“Two apartments,” Nick sobbed to himself. “Two! And nobody had an idea about it — 327 — 427, right upstairs — to hell with that stool pigeon—”
He thrust his hands through the ragged opening and found solid wood still warm and slippery from the clutch of Chet Hemingway’s hands. He hauled himself up into apartment 427. A scraping sound, somewhere — and, sure, he might have had a bullet through his head if Chet Hemingway had lingered to give it to him...
The apartment was furnished, like the one below, but it was evident at a glance that no one lived here. They had rented it for only one purpose — the very purpose which it had served. With a little more warning, the whole gang would have climbed through that square hole and disappeared.
The door into the hallway was wide open — Nick ground his teeth. A ladder stood against the wall at the end of the hall, and a trap in the roof was opened. To think that those devils would have anticipated the whole thing — ladder and all! He paused only to bellow at the men below him, and then swarmed up the ladder.
He came out into a glare of cold sunlight, and a bullet screeched beside the trap door. Nick Glennan growled, and raised his gun. On the next roof but one, a slim figure in white shirt and black pants was vaulting over a three-foot barrier. Nick had one unexploded shell left in his cylinder. He spread his feet wide apart and took careful aim; the gun banged. The distant figure fell forward, recovered its balance, and sprinted ahead with torn shirt fluttering.
“Those vests,” sighed Nick, “those inventions of the devil... and to think he wore it under his shirt...” All this time he was racing across the gravel and jumping narrow chasms and leaping low walls, like a runaway maniac. He came to the last building of the row, and looked over the edge to see that mocking figure dropping from the last rung of the fire escape. Nick whistled; he yelled and beckoned to the other cops who were swarming out of the distant trap door; he threw a perfectly good gun which smashed on the pavement, missing Chet Hemingway’s head by six inches.
But it was all too late, now. Hemingway went up on one side of a taxicab; he thrust his gun against the driver... The detectives started after him one minute later, but that minute made about a mile’s difference. And in crowded city streets, a mile is a mile. Still chewing and swallowing, Hemingway rode out of the detectives’ lives. Temporarily...
For all the secrecy with which this coup was planned, there had been a leak somewhere in the department. The press had been tipped off, and for once the press had not gummed things up. Men from the News-Detail and Tribune came swarming eagerly into the building from Dorchester Avenue; already flashlight bulbs were flashing in the dim courts and alleyways, and reporters were clamoring.
Inspector Bourse and Chief of Detectives Moore fought their way through the crowd and up to apartment 327. With grim satisfaction they contemplated the prone body of Two-faced Tomsk and the shattered window where Scummy Heras had taken his last tumble. But when they looked around, hopefully, for another corpse — and found it — they were not so pleased. Miss Lily Denardo was the other corpse.
“Well,” said the old Inspector. He looked down at the pretty, white face and the ridiculous folds of stained crêpe-de-chine which swathed the slim figure. “How’d this happen?”
Sergeant Dave Glennan’s jowls trembled slightly. “I don’t know. I’m afraid it was me.”
“Had a gun, eh?” Bourse’s foot touched the little automatic. “I don’t think we’ll be blaming you for this, Dave me boy.”
The sergeant said, “That wasn’t it. She did take a crack at Horn and me, but her gun jammed or something. Just one shot, and no more. She started in here — Scummy was shooting at the whole world, and I ups with my shotgun—”
Bourse looked at him. “And kills the girl with a .45 caliber bullet?” he asked calmly.
Glennan blinked. “Thank Heaven for that! I never realized, sir. Yes, that hole does look like a .45. I... thought—”
“Never mind what you thought. Let’s find the bullet.”
“Here it is, sir,” said Horn.
The bullet had driven through Miss Lily Denardo’s heart, with the sad artistry of which that caliber is capable at close range, and had lodged in the wall. They dug it out.
“Who was shooting .45’s?” barked the Inspector.
Kerry scratched his torn sleeve. “Nobody except the Tom-gun — Ricardi. We all had regulation guns. And Ricardi’s bullets would have had to ricky-shay to hit her where she was a-standing. No, sir — take a look at Scummy’s guns. There one on the floor, and I guess he took the other with him when he went through the window.”
The ballistics expert established it later in the day; Scummy Heras had shot Lily, by design or accident. They never knew just how or why. It didn’t matter. All the detectives were glad that none of them had killed her. She was too pretty.
“And so,” Inspector Bourse grunted, at three o’clock that afternoon, “you let him get away. The meanest devil this side of hell, and you let him slide through your fingers.”
Every man who had taken part in the Dorchester Avenue raid — except Flynn, who lay in the hospital — was in Inspector Bourse’s office.
“Mind,” he said, “I’m blaming not a mother’s son of you — individually. You all worked hard and had your nerve with you. Young Nick Glennan especial. I’ll say that. When he went kiting through that hole in the ceiling, he took a mighty chance.”
Nick sat there and looked at his shoes. He felt his cheeks burning.
“But nevertheless, there you are. We had the best shots of the Bureau up there this morning, and we had the edge on that gang. And we let Hemingway get away. Sure, we didn’t know about that apartment upstairs. Nobody did. The stool pigeon didn’t. But our job was to get Chet Hemingway, more than any of the rest. We didn’t get him. Your job was to get Chet Hemingway. You didn’t get him. There it is. Eat it up; may it make you sick at the stomach.”
His desk telephone jangled. Slowly, Bourse reached down and lifted the bracket. “I told you not to bother me,” he growled at the operator. “I— What?... All right,” he said, “connect me.”
He looked at the rows of faces across his desk. “A man,” he said. “Claims he has something important about this morning.”
A new voice came on the wire. The eyes of Inspector Bourse froze bitterly as he listened.
“This,” said the voice, “is Chet Hemingway—”
“Yes,” said Bourse. His voice crackled. His hand slid across the transmitter as he snapped at Ricardi, who sat directly in front of him, “get on a phone. Trace this call!...”
“You didn’t get me this morning,” came Hemingway’s voice, “and I’m still in town. Listen, you dirty flat-foot — you had to kill that little frail — she was a peach of a kid — she—”
Bourse said, “We didn’t kill her, Hemingway. Scummy did it.”
“Yeah?” snarled Chet. “Listen — I’m not going to stay here long enough for you to trace this call. But I read the papers. Every damn sheet in town was shouting the praises of the noble detectives you had up there — and by name — get that? By name. I’m going to stay in town until I get every last guy who was in on that job. And you, too! I’ll get you all.”
There was a click.
Bourse leaped to his feet. “Did you get it?” he roared through the open door where Ricardi had gone.
No, no. There hadn’t been enough time...
Briefly and pointedly, Bourse told the men what Hemingway had said. They weren’t much impressed; most of them had heard that story before. “Go out and get Hemingway,” said the old man in dismissal. And they went, hopefully.
But it wasn’t so funny an hour later. Chief of Detectives Moore came in, with no ceremony. “Ricardi’s dead,” he cried. “He was crossing the street at Comanche and Main, and a car came past and hit him. Head on. Dragged him three hundred feet.”
Bourse kneaded the cigar-stub in his fingers. “Must have been an accident,” he muttered. But in his heart he knew that it wasn’t any accident. He turned around and looked at the window.
“Hit-and-run?” he asked, over his shoulder.
“Yes,” said Moore. “Hit-and-run. They got the car ten minutes later. It was a hot car. But the driver was gone.”
The Inspector sat in silence for a time, drumming on the desk with his fingers, “We traced Hemingway how far?”
“Well, he took the taxi driver’s coat and cap, and made him get out of the cab at Fourth and Mississippi. They found the cab about eleven o’clock on Mulberry Street, ft had only been run nine miles in all, according to a check. We can’t say definitely that we traced him to Mulberry Street, as we don’t know what happened in between—”
Bourse nodded. “I’m thinking I’d better talk to my stool pigeon.”
“It may mean his life, now,” said the chief of detectives.
“So it may. His name is Adamic. Know him?”
“No. Who is he?”
“A pawnbroker and loan-shark down in the Delta. On Sage Street.”
Moore wagged his head. “I remember, now. George Adamic. A small, gray fellow with black eyes.”
“Yes. It seems that he knew Two-faced Tomsk from ’way back, and had disposed of some bonds for him after that Western Savings stick-up. Adamic is as close as the tomb. We could never have sweat nothing out of him; he came to me voluntarily, and made me swear—” Bourse made a wry face. “We both belong to the same lodge, and it’s one to which you belong as well. He made me swear I wouldn’t turn him in.”
Moore asked, “Why was he singing about Hemingway?”
“He knew they was in apartment 327 at 1441 Dorchester Avenue, and that was all he knew, except that they had a young arsenal and wore vests. Moore, it seems that Hemingway pushed over a man named Kolchak in Chicago last month. And Kolchak was George Adamic’s brother-in-law. Family ties — nothing less. That’s the only reason he talked.”
“You’d best talk to Adamic now,” nodded Moore.
Bourse took up his phone.
“If he’s still alive,” added Moore, softly.
And when George Adamic didn’t answer the telephone which rang so long and stridently in his narrow little shop, Inspector Bourse sent Squad Sixteen whistling in that direction. Sergeant Dave Glennan and Detectives Horn and Kerry found the store unlocked, and it was a wonder that folks in that scrubby neighborhood hadn’t looted the place of every last thing. Only their inherited terror of George Adamic and the power he wielded over their sad little lives, had kept them from raiding his shop, unguarded and defenseless as it was.
Detective Horn it was who found George Adamic in a dark washroom behind the rows of second-hand overcoats. Adamic was shot through the heart and the medical examiner estimated that he had been dead since about nine o’clock that morning.
Nick Glennan’s handsome face was a bit drawn. Inspector Bourse’s harsh accusation was still ringing in his ears; he felt that he had failed, miserably enough, when circumstances demanded the most of him. And now, to be sent for... private and special— Maybe old Bourse was going to ask him to turn in his gun and badge. And after being promoted to plainclothes only last tall! When, heaven knew that he must have deserved it.
“Sit down, Nick,” said the old inspector.
“Begging your pardon,” murmured Nick. “I’ll take it standing up.”
There was a sudden, misty twinkle in the older man’s eyes. He saw that his door was locked and the heavy shade drawn over the window, and then he sat down behind his desk and looked at Nick. Distantly a chiming clock announced that it was five-thirty.
“Glennan,” asked Bourse, “do you know why I sent for you?”
“I’m afraid I do. But I hope I don’t.”
Bourse grinned wearily. “Pshaw, why are you a-worrying? That was a bad break.” He smoked in silence for a moment. “Nick, you’re young—”
“Yes, sir. I’ll be getting over it as rapidly as possible.”
“You’ve got nerve.”
“I hope so, sir.”
“And brains.”
“Well,” said Nick.
“Every man in my department has nerve, and most of them have got a brain or two. But you have something else. You showed it when you was a rookie cop and helped clean out that gang on Acola Street; and you showed it when you ran down those Kentucky gorillas that had us all stumped, in the fall. That’s the reason you’re wearing plainclothes. You have that strange and fortunate thing which you have through no fault of your own: instinct, my boy. A nose for it.”
Bourse wrinkled his own pug nose in demonstration. “Your big brother Dave is a good sergeant; I wouldn’t be asking for none better. But he ain’t got the hunch that you have — the kind of natural, hound-dog notion of being a good detective — smelling things out. Nick, did any of your ancestors, rest their souls, have second sight?”
Nick wriggled. “I’ve heard that my father was the seventh son of a seventh son, sir. But I’m only the second son of a seventh son.”
“However that may be, what would you do about Hemingway?”
“I’d like to get him, sir.”
“I want you to tell me, me boy.”
Nicholas Glennan stood looking at the carpet for awhile. “We haven’t much to go on, sir.”
“Mulberry Street is right near Adamic’s place. You know about Adamic? Very good. Hemingway must have ditched his cab, walked in there, shot Adamic, and walked out again.”
“Yes, sir. But not in taxi clothes.”
“What would he have done?”
“At least he would have put on a good suit and hat, and maybe taken a suitcase or traveling bag. The store was full of ’em, and some not half bad. Hemingway’s always been one to take life easy and comfortable, sir, or so his record shows. Probably he had money on him. Maybe a belt, under that bullet-proof vest.”
Bourse nodded slightly. “I’m ’way ahead of you, boy. But he wouldn’t show that face around town — not with the papers full of it, and a million people gasping for the reward.”
“But he wouldn’t have had time for much disguise, sir. Not a hair-bleach or nothing like that. It would have to be quick and simple.”
“The usual? Glasses? Mustache?”
“That’s my notion, Inspector. This loan-broker had whole cases full of bankrupt notions — glasses of various kinds, even false whiskers, perhaps.”
Bourse sighed. “Blue goggles and green whiskers! I thought better of your perspicacity, me boy.”
“It’s doing fine, sir. My per — what you said.”
Bourse played with a pen-holder. “And then?”
“The witness to the killing of Ricardi said that a young man with glasses drove the car, sir.”
Bourse hunched his shoulders, as if expecting a bullet to come through the window behind him. “Do you think he’ll make good his boast, and stay around town long enough to get every one of us, as he promised?”
“No,” said Nick, promptly, “when he’s cooled off he’ll see that the average is ag’inst him. But he might try to get another one or two.”
“You feel certain of it?”
“He’s a mad dog, they say. What the stories call a Lone Wolf. A red-hot killer, and always has been. And like all of them, he is what you call an ee-gow-ist. He’ll want to write his name large before he leaves town.”
Bourse slammed up out of his chair. “I’m afraid we’re getting nowhere. What do you think is the best bet? What would you do if you had your choice and was playing a free hand? I’ve got men all over town, a-raiding here and a-raiding there, and every cop on every corner is on the lookout. But what would you like to do?”
“Begging your pardon,” whispered Nick, “but I’d like to stick beside the man he’s most likely to come after, next.”
“And that’s—”
“Yourself, sir.”
Chet Hemingway looked very dignified and circumspect. He did not look at all like a mad dog, although he might have answered up to Nick Glennan’s characterization as an egoist.
“Drive me,” he told the taxicab driver, “to 561 Alamo Street.”
“Yes, sir.”
The minutes passed to the feeble ticking of the meter. Dusk was here, and the low-lit auto lights swished past on every side. Alamo Street was a narrow, quiet court a bare mile from the heart of town; it was here, at 558, that Inspector Bourse lived with his plump wife and his plump, old-maid daughter.
The driver set Hemingway down promptly enough in front of the old apartment building numbered 561, and Hemingway paid the bill. He tipped not extravagantly or penuriously, but in an ordinary fashion; it was not well for the taxi driver to have a too clear memory of his passenger. Then Hemingway stepped into the lobby of the building and examined mail boxes until the cab drove way.
He walked back out to the curb and glanced to the east and west. Couldn’t be better. There were only two cars parked in the entire block, and between Number 561 and the next building ran a narrow sluice which led to a rear alley — he could see the lights back there glistening on the lids of garbage cans. Inspector Bourse lived straight across the street. If he had come home before this, he would be going out again. Hemingway’s mouth slid back in a bitter smile, his killing grin, as he reasoned how stupid the motive which had prompted Inspector Bourse to have his address and telephone number listed in the directory.
Chet Hemingway leaned among the shadows near the opening of the area-way, and waited. He could wait without jumping nerves or too eager mind; he had spent a good share of his life waiting for men to come, waiting for mail trucks, and bank watchmen. Once he had even waited eighteen months in a penitentiary before his chance came. But whenever the opportunity appeared, the opportunity for which Chet happened to be waiting, no one could grasp it any quicker than he. That was how he happened to have more than three hundred thousand dollars stowed in various corners of the country, and a good fifteen thousand dollars fastened next to his skin, under his expensive silk undershirt.
Two girls passed; an old man; a plump woman; solitary young men. Homegoing folks, bound for dinner and quiet evenings in their apartments. Only one person entered the building at 558, and that was a young girl — stenographer, probably. Idly, Hemingway wondered whether she knew Bourse. He put his hand into his coat pocket, took out his usual food, and began to crack it between his teeth.
He thought of Lily. Sentimental and superstitious, like most of his kind, he began to think of Lily as a swell dame — a kind of saint — now that she was dead. “I’ll get the dirty louse, kid,” he told her. This would look good in the tabloids. Lone Wolf Killer Avenges Murder of Sweetheart Slain by Cops. It was pretty good stuff.
He stiffened. Here was a cop, a big, stupid patrolman, lumbering down the street with idly-swinging dub. He might flash a light into the narrow path between the two buildings, and it wouldn’t be safe to hide there. Chet didn’t want to bump off a cop. He wanted to bump off Inspector Bourse.
So he bent forward and peered into the bloom. “Kitty,” he began to call, softly, “here, kitty-kitty.” The cop came closer. Hemingway still called to his cat. The heavy feet ambled past.
“Oh, officer,” Chet said.
The man stopped. “Yeh?”
“If you see a black kitten down the block anywhere, would you mind sticking it in the vestibule here at 561? My kid’s cat. Run away... Here, kitty-kitty-kitty.”
“Sure.” The cop lumbered away. Chet stared after him with narrowed eyes. Like to let him have it. Now he hoped that Bourse wouldn’t appear on the doorstep until the cop was around the next corner.
The patrolman had just disappeared when a big car hummed into Alamo Street from the Avenue. Its brakes crunched; it stopped in front of 558... A department car; yes, Hemingway could see a gong above the running-board. Bourse got out.
Chet swallowed the last tiny morsel in his mouth. He brought out his gun; the belly-gun from inside his trousers — he had two, now — and one had been taken from Adamic’s shop that morning. Wait until the car was at least half a block up the street. The old devil would still be fooling with his door key, or at least standing in the vestibule, plainly visible from outside. The men in the car would either have to turn it, or else jump out and run back; that was all the start Hemingway would need.
“Nine o’clock.”
“You bet, sir.”
A cab was coming from the direction of the avenue, coming slowly, as if hunting for an address. The big department car moved away from the curb — screeched into second gear — went purring away down the block. Chet’s left hand went to the automatic, Adamic’s gun, and brought it out. He would have to stop that cab before it interfered, though experience had taught him to fear nothing from the terrorized bystanders at such a scene.
Inspector Bourse’s portly body was sharply outlined against the vestibule lights. Oh, you old Mick, thought the bandit, I’ve seen you more than once before this... His belly-gun began to stutter. Bourse fell against the door. Those were soft-nosed bullets, and they would play hell with any man’s ribs. With his left hand, Hemingway turned his automatic toward the advancing taxicab. One shot in the radiator or windshield — he wasn’t particular—
A long, bright smear came from the side of the cab, and something tore at the skirt of Chet Hemingway’s coat. He snarled, and stepped back into the narrow court between the buildings. He had fixed old Bourse, but he wasn’t expecting this. Bullets squirted all around him, flattening among the bricks. He let his whole clip speed toward the taxicab, then he turned and ran. In his heart he was cursing savagely. Those damn fly-cops — they were half a block or more away, and out of the picture. But this cab— Who in—
A bullet screamed from the concrete beside him, and still he could feel that wrenching blow which had torn at his coat. Just that close... He sprinted twenty yards down the alley, dodged between a line of garages, and sped out into the street beyond. It was a through street, and there were plenty of cars, parked or moving. In the distance behind him he heard yells and pounding feet. At the first entrance he found, he dodged inside. Luck. Plenty of it. He needed it.
It was an office building with an L-shaped vestibule opening on the side street and on the avenue as well. Over here the humming traffic had drowned all the affray on Alamo Street. Chet strolled around the corner of the corridor, trying to still the hammering heart inside his body. The one elevator man on duty nodded at him.
Hemingway glanced at the directory on the wall. The little white line of names were swimming. He picked one out... Jacobson, Rudolph. 420. He turned to the elevator man.
“Is Mr. Jacobson gone?” His gasping lungs pushed up against his throat, but he fought them back.
“Yes, sir. It’s after six. Most everybody’s gone.”
“Okay.”
He went out to the avenue. A row of waiting taxicabs blurred before his eyes, and distantly he could hear a siren whining. These folks would think it was a fire truck. Well, it wasn’t any fire truck.
He stepped into the first cab. “Let’s go downtown,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
They went toward the bridge, through the evening crush of cars, and Chet Hemingway had the pleasure of watching traffic cops clear the northbound lanes to make passage for a rocketing squad car which hooted its way toward Alamo Street. He fumbled for a cigarette, and found a torn paper of matches ground into the hole in his coat pocket. The bullet of the would-be avenger had come just that close. He swore. But there was his food — a little of it, still left to him. Chet began to chew it.
He’d better get out of town as soon as possible. One way or another. They’d have picked men at every station, and the highways wouldn’t be very safe. He’d have to think.
He arrived at his hotel safely enough and went without further incident to his room. But during the next hour, when he sat munching, enjoying a cigarette or two and coldly reenacting the finish of Inspector Bourse, his leaping brain would have turned to jelly had it visualized the steel net which was closing in on him.
Bourse drew a long breath. “Glennan,” he said to Nick, “what was that about your being the seventh son of a seventh son?”
“It wasn’t me. It was the old man.”
“Nevertheless—”
“Heras will be hotter than ever in hell, sir, when he realizes that you was wearing his bullet-proof vest.”
The old inspector rubbed his sore body and examined the shreds in his clothing. “It’s a wonderful vest, boy. I don’t see why hoods always have these things better than the cops, but they do. At least nobody could ever blame you for not dropping Hemingway, up there on the roof.”
“I should have drilled him through the head, sir.”
Bourse fingered a tiny scrap of limp, gilded cardboard which he held in his hands. “At least you drilled this out of his pocket.”
“Yes, but it’s twice in one day that I had him under my gun and let him get away.”
They stood there together in front of a gleaming spot-light while officers swarmed through every nook and cranny along Alamo Street. Bourse turned to Sergeant Dave Glennan. “No use, Dave. He’s gone. But he left his calling card.”
The fat sergeant waddled over to the shaft of light. “I’ll take you on, sparrow cop,” he told his younger brother, “at any shooting gallery in the Palace Amusement Park, when it opens in warm weather.”
“You go to hell,” whispered Nick.
“Shut up your big gab, Dave,” added the inspector, kindly. “Nick was shooting from a moving taxicab, into the dark — shooting at gun-flashes — and anyway, if it hadn’t been for him you’d be getting your shoes shined for an inspector’s funeral.”
He offered the torn scrap of cardboard. “This was over there across the street where he stood, when we looked for bloodstains.”
Dave turned the fragment between his big fingers. He spelled aloud, “Diamond Match Com... E... L. And what’s this that looks like the west end of a spider?”
“It’s a coat-of-arms, Owl Eyes,” snarled his brother, “and that is by way of being his stopping place. You don’t recognize the souvenir matches of high-priced hotels, but the inspector does. He says that is part of a fold of matches from the Aberdeen Hotel.”
“Just because you found it there—”
“If you look close, Owl Eyes, you can see the fuzz of lead along one side. The luck of Nicholas Glennan was working; I ripped open his pocket, and half the torn paper of matches comes out.”
“But,” cried Dave, “that’s no sign he’s there!”
“He took a suit from Adamic’s store, or I don’t know where else. And do them second-hand guys leave matches lying around in the pockets of their suits? No, Macushla. He gathered that up today since he’s been on the loose. And not in no one-arm restaurant, but likely enough in a hotel room.”
The inspector said, “Get your squad together, Dave. Tell Rhineheimer to get his.”
“Yes, sir. But... God... you can’t raid the whole hotel. It’s got twenty-two hundred rooms!”
“We cannot. But we can soon get a list of the folks who registered today, and their room numbers. And after that, in case we run up against a snag, your kid brother that once was a sparrow cop in a park — well, he’s got an idea. And I’ve observed that his ideas are apt to be good.”
“What is this idea that he has, inspector?”
For reply, Nick displayed some very small, silvery fragments in the palm of his big hand. They were egg-shaped bits crusted with a strange and frosty deposit, and none of them was longer than three-quarters of an inch. “Over there on the sidewalk, beside that alley,” his polite voice announced.
“Them!” snorted Dave Glennan. “Them! What the hell! What’s the worth of those? Nicholas, why don’t you turn in your badge and gun, and become a member of the white wings? You scavenger, you.”
“Well,” said Nick, “I’ve seen them before. And many of them.” He dropped the fragments into his vest pocket.
“We’re a-wasting time,” Inspector Bourse announced.
The chambermaid — Number Seventy-two, she was, of the Aberdeen Hotel — had plenty of nerve. Really she didn’t need a lot of nerve, since she wasn’t compelled to place herself within the range of direct gunfire. When Nicholas Glennan tapped softly upon the door of Room 1661, and an answering bark came from inside, the woman controlled her quivering throat adequately.
She crouched close beside the thick wall and said, “Chambermaid.”
The man inside the room seemed waiting for something. Finally he spoke in a voice full of annoyance. “I don’t need you, girlie. Trot along.”
For a fatal moment there was silence in the hall, and inside the room.
“Just to clean up your room, sir.”
There had been people outside the door, up there in Dorchester Avenue — milkman, laundryman — the door had been opened, and then the law had come. Chet Hemingway wasn’t taking a chance in the world.
He snarled, “Run along and peddle yourself some place else!”
Gently, Nick Glennan drew the frightened chambermaid around the corner, past the house detectives and the group of hard-faced officers from headquarters. “What he says is good advice, lady,” he murmured. “You’d better go.” There was a tense shuffling of feet on the thick rug.
Glennan looked coolly into the eyes of a brother detective. “It’s him?”
“Sure. His voice. I was a witness in K. C. when they had him up for trial. Know it anywhere.”
“Okay,” breathed Nick Glennan.
He said, “Hemingway. Are you going to come out, or do you want to be carried? Last fall we said that to some hoods, and they decided to stay. We carried them out and embalmed them. What do you say?”
In 1661, Chet Hemingway took out his two guns and turned toward the door. He fancied how it would look, in the headlines. “I say come and get me, if you’re man enough!” He put a heavy slug through the door.
“I am,” responded Nick, “and here... I... come.”
A machine gun was lifted, but Nick’s gesture stayed the ready finger. “No,” he muttered, “I missed him — twice. This time it’s me or him.”
He took care of the lock with his first three bullets, and heavy pebbles of lead gouged whole strips out of the veneer as he kicked against the wrecked door... Inside, there was the distant slam of the bathroom door, so Glennan braced his whole body against the big slice of wood which blocked his way. He crashed to the floor, the sundered hinges flying wide. The bathroom door opened a crack, and in that crack was a jet of dancing flame... turned out the lights... well, one of them, there in the dark.
Flat on the floor, with the air splitting beside his ears, he took steady aim at a point above the flashes, and scattered his three remaining bullets there. There was sudden silence — a cough, and then the sound of a body falling into a bathtub.
They switched on the lights, and sniffed in the doorway.
“He got Glennan.”
Bourse groaned from the hall, “Oh, the black-hearted—”
“The hell he got Glennan,” said Nick. He climbed to his feet and pushed the bathroom door wide. For one in Hemingway’s messy condition, the bathtub was a very good place for him to be sprawled.
Inspector Bourse looked at the corpse.
“You must have second sight,” he muttered.
“No indeed, sir. It was the shells.”
He found them in his vest pocket, and juggled them in his hands.
“Pistachio nuts,” somebody said.
Nick Glennan nodded, soberly. After all, Hemingway had been a man and now he wasn’t anything. Rest his soul, if possible... “The nut shells was all over the sun parlor, up on Dorchester Avenue,” he said. “They was also scattered on the sidewalk tonight where he waited for the inspector. He was a pig for them, it would seem. When the bellboy said that the man in Room 1661 of this hotel had sent twice for pistachio nuts during the day, it had to be Hemingway and no other. Probably he’s feeding on them this minute, wherever he’s gone.”
“I’ll answer that,” remarked his brother, grimly. “If Hemingway is eating pistachio nuts this minute, he’s eating roasted ones.”