Partners of the Dark by Alson J. Smith

“The Block” was famous up and down the east coast — you could get a girl, a beer, dirty pictures, a heroin fix. If you were a Cop, you could even get underworld informants.

I

The phone rang in the office of captain Mike Casey of the Criminal Investigation Detail, Baltimore Police Department. The Detail had been set up a year earlier to answer newspaper criticism that the Department was soft on crime syndicate hoodlums. The smartest, toughest cops in town had been pulled into it and Captain Mike Casey, 57, a grizzled, hard-boiled ex-pavement pounder had been called downtown from the North Avenue Station to head it up.

Casey picked up the phone. “Yeah?” he barked. Then, “Oh, hello, Commissioner,” in a more subdued tone.

For a full three minutes he listened, participating in the conversation only to the extent of a guarded “yes” or “no” now and then. Finally he sighed and said: “Well, we’ll do our best, Commissioner.”

As he hung up, Casey said, “Damn!” to nobody in particular.

He paced the floor for a few minutes, rubbing his chin with his big paw, looking broodingly out at the traffic on Fayette Street. Finally he buzzed his secretary on the intercom. “Alice,” he said, “tell Phil Egan to step in, will you?”

A few seconds later Lieutenant Phil Egan stuck his head in the door. He grinned. “Hi, Mike. What’s the good word?”

“Come in and close the door,” rumbled Casey. “And the word isn’t good. It just came down from the Commissioner, and it couldn’t be worse!”

Phil Egan was a thirty-nine year-old career cop who had graduated from the University of Maryland with an A.B. in Social Science. He had spent a year studying criminal law at Georgetown Law School and was considered a comer in the Department. He stood 5-11, weighed 180, and was a black belt man in judo. He had a square, high-cheekboned, tanned face with clear light blue eyes. His black hair was beginning to gray at the temples. He had been brought into the C.I.D. from the Detective Division because he was considered smart, tough, and resourceful.

Egan lit a cigarette. “Don’t tell me they want us to bring in Johnny Unitas and Weeb Eubank just because the Colts blew one to the Steelers Sunday.”

Casey snorted. “It’s no joke, Phil. It’s those goddam jewelry heists. The Commissioner has decided they’re syndicate jobs, so he’s taking them away from Burglary and dropping them in our laps.”

Egan whistled. “That is the dirty end of the stick. How come?”

“He figures that nine successful heists in as many months means syndicate. Either that or the heisters are old pro’s who are cutting The Mob in for a big percentage. Major league thieves couldn’t work here for nine months without syndicate okay.”

Egan took a long drag on his cigarette. “That’s for sure. Nine heists? I thought it was eight.”

Mike Casey picked up a piece of paper from his desk. “Nine. Forty minutes ago a New York jewelry salesman by the name of Norman Feldman was slugged while getting his sample case out of the trunk of his car in front of the Hearn Jewelry Store on West Saratoga Street. The case had fifteen thousand dollars worth of ice in it. Feldman is in Johns Hopkins Hospital with a concussion.”

“Any clues?”

Casey shook his head. “Nobody in the store or on the street saw it, or at least we haven’t located anybody yet who will admit he saw it, and the guy is still unconscious.”

“Sure puts us on the spot. I’ll bet Burglary is throwing a party over losing this one.”

Casey dead-panned: “The Commissioner put me on the spot, so I’m putting you on it. These jewelry heists are all yours, Phil. Good hunting.”

II

Back in his own office, the first thing Phil Egan did was to stick pins in a map of the city — one red pin for each of the nine jewelry robberies. None of them, he noted with interest, had been in the downtown Howard Street area. All had taken place in neighborhood shopping districts around the city. The pins formed an irregular circle the center of which was, roughly, the area around North Charles and Mount Royal, near the Pennsylvania Railroad Station.

As for the M.O., the last heist — the slugging of the jewelry salesman — was the only one involving violence. In all of the others, entrance — to seven jewelry stores and one hotel room — had been gained by simply unlocking doors, walking in at two or three A.M., and either opening safes by clever manipulation of the tumblers or cutting out the locks with a blowtorch and acetylene gas. Two of the former, five of the latter.

In the hotel room job, the thieves had let themselves into the room of a Broadway and Hollywood starlet who was playing a tryout week in Baltimore and had made off with $20,000 worth of gems with which she had been gifted — as she was able to prove — by various gentlemen.

Whatever else they were, one of the gang had to be an expert locksmith, and another a first rate boxman. And, Phil Egan would bet his last shamrock, they were holed up in the slightly run-down, semi-bohemian area around North Charles and Mount Royal. There were plenty of third rate hotels there — and a couple of good ones — plus rooming houses, bars, jazz joints. And there were several coffee houses where folk singers twanged guitars or bearded poets read their latest effusions to short-haired girls in toreador pants and dark glasses.

His first stop, obviously, was the Johns Hopkins Hospital. He phoned. Yes, Mr. Feldman had regained consciousness. Could he talk? Yes, but only for a minute or so.

It was late October, warm, hazy Indian summer, and Egan left his topcoat in the office. Hell of a day to be tracking down jewel thieves in town. He’d much rather be picking up Muriel after she got out of work at three and driving out towards Westminster to look at the foliage. He thought gloomily: that old line from Gilbert and Sullivan is right. A policeman’s lot is not a happy one.

He picked up the unmarked black Chevrolet sedan that he usually used from the police garage on Gay Street and headed north for the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Well, he thought philosophically, he would see Muriel that night, and damn the foliage. They’d make their own colors in their own fashion.

A policeman was seated out-man’s room. He recognized Egan and said: “Hello, Lieutenant. Our boy is awake, but he’s got a flying saucer for a head.”

Egan laughed shortly and went on in. A middle-aged nurse was sitting beside the bed, reading a magazine. The jewelry salesman’s head was swathed in bandages. He had his eyes closed and the whiteness of his palor emphasized the dark lines of his eyebrows. He was a rather thin man of about thirty-five, and his horn-rimmed glasses with one cracked lense were on the bedside table.

“Lieutenant Egan, Police Department,” he told the nurse crisply. Feldman heard him and slowly opened his eyes, which were brown and bloodshot.

“Sorry about this, Mr. Feldman. Feel like talking?”

The man smiled wanly and shook his head.

“Well, I understand,” Egan said soothingly. “Just a couple of routine questions for now. Did you see the men who sapped you?”

Feldman whispered: “Not very well. Happened too fast. One was kind of fat.”

“How many were there?”

“Three or four — I’m not sure.”

“Did they have a car?” Phil Egan asked.

“Yes, it was parked right behind me.”

“What make?”

“I think a Plymouth, about a fifty-six.”

“What color?”

“Black.”

“Did you notice the license number?”

Feldman shook his head. “Maryland plates,” he whispered. He closed his eyes wearily.

The nurse looked reprovingly at Egan. He said: “Well, that’s all for now. Thanks, Mr. Feldman.”

The man didn’t open his eyes.

A week later Feldman was out of the hospital and able to look through the mug books at Headquarters. He had seen his assailants briefly, but not well enough to make positive identification. The fat man he thought he might be able to identify.

He picked out four photos that might possibly be those of the men who had slugged him, including that of a fat-faced, heavy-set local thug named George “Binky” Byers, 28, who had fallen several times for petty larceny and simple assault. A very unlikely jewel thief, but Phil Egan sent Detective Sergeant Gus Anderson out to pick him up for questioning.

Byers last known address was a rooming house on Franklin Street. Anderson came back without him. He wasn’t there, had left no forwarding address, and nobody in that transient neighborhood knew where he had gone. He hadn’t been seen around the bars in over a year.

A few days later Egan, getting nowhere in his investigation of the jewelry heists, had dinner with Muriel Evans, in her three-room apartment on Mount Vernon Place. Muriel was Goucher ’54, which made her about twenty-nine. She was a blue-eyed, honey-haired blonde, about 5–6 in height, and with other and even more impressive statistics.

She was Travel Editor of the Baltimore Sun, and she had marriage in the back — and sometimes in the front — of her mind. She’d been Phil’s girl for three years, ever since they’d met at a posh party thrown by another Goucher girl whom Egan had known ever since his Georgetown Law School days.

Muriel was something to look at, in a clinging blue housecoat and not much else. “How’s my favorite cop?” she murmurred, pressing against him and turning her face up for his kiss. It lasted a long time.

“Yum,” he said finally, still holding her in his arms. “What’s cooking?”

“Me,” she said. “Also shrimp chop suey with water chestnuts, imported all the way from Doo Far’s carry-out around the corner on Charles Street.”

“Sounds great,” he said, letting her go.

She pointed to a tea tray with bottles, a jar of olives, a bucket of ice cubes, and cocktail glasses on it. “Be a good little Hawkshaw and mix us some martinis while I check the food,” she called out as she went into the tiny kitchen.

It was a cozy apartment. Wall-to-wall deep green carpeting, three Van Gogh reproductions on the walls, glass-topped coffee table in front of the fireplace, shiny black log scuttle, low bookcases, a handsome combination television, FM radio, and hi-fi, a record-holder, his picture and one of her mother and father on the mantle. The furniture was gray, chic, comfortable. He mixed the martinis, slumped into an easy chair, and turned on the television to catch the six o’clock news.

The news was tiresome. Khrushchev might come to the UN. Cuba was complaining about U.S. violation of her air space around Guantanamo. There was a new revolution in Costa Rica. Richard Burton had been seen with his wife in Switzerland. The Colts were in good condition for their game with the Packers at Green Bay Sunday. And the police were still baffled by the series of sensational jewel robberies that had netted the thieves a quarter of a million dollars.

He grimaced at that and turned off the set.

Muriel came back into the living room. “Be a few minutes yet,” she said. She sipped her martini, sitting on the floor in front of him, putting one hand comfortingly — if a bit excitingly — on his knee. He ran his fingers through her honey-colored hair.

“How are you doing with your jewel robbers?” she asked.

“Not so good,” he replied glumly. “They’re ruining my disposition. Also my love life.”

She looked at him. “I think that involves me. Please elucidate, Charlie Chan.”

He drained his martini and held out the olive to her. “I can’t stay long after we eat. Got to check The Block on this damned jewelry thing.”

She pouted. “Can’t it wait? I thought we’d eat, catch the new Italian movie at the Art, and then come back here for an orgy.”

Egan shook his head. “Can’t wait, even though I could use a good orgy. But give me a rain check.”

She sighed. “Sure. All I do these days is hand out rainchecks. If this keeps up I’ll take out after those jewelry heisters myself.”

He laughed shortly. “You’re a cinch to do better than we’re doing.”

III

“The block,” as it was known all up and down the east coast, was really three blocks on East Baltimore Street, and it was a garish tenderloin replete with bars, B-girls, burlesque shows, night clubs, tattoo parlors, third-rate hotels, all-night movies, and gospel missions. You could get anything there — a girl, dirty pictures, a beer, a crabcake, a broken head, a heroin fix. It was the last of its kind — an organized-to-the-hilt, syndicate-controlled, Barbary Coast.

But its raffish people — strippers, bartenders, doormen, tattoo artists, men’s room attendants, masters of ceremony, bookies, B-girls, bouncers — knew everything that went on in the underworld. They were privy to all the action in town. The Baltimore Police Department leaned heavily on its “informants” in The Block.

The unmarked black Chevvie sedan prowled slowly east on Baltimore Street towards this tawdry playground. Phil Egan, full of chop suey, slumped behind the wheel, wishing to hell he was back at Muriel’s apartment, with Muriel in his arms, listening to Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall on the hi-fi.

He parked the Chevvie in front of Siggy’s Bar on Commerce Street, just off The Block. Siggy’s was near the Gayety Burlesque stagedoor, and, although it advertised itself as a stag bar, strippers from the theatre hung out there along with musicians, stagehands, and comedians.

The show was on in the Gayety so there was only one customer in the bar. The bartender was a fairly attractive girl of about twenty-seven who sat moodily smoking a cigarette behind the polished mahogany. The lone customer was studying the autographed photos of the strippers above the bar mirror.

The bar-doll — that’s what they call lady bartenders in Baltimore — looked up. “Egan,” she said. “What you-all doin’ down heah tonight?” She had all of the Blue Ridge Mountains in her voice. She was one of his people.

“Hello, Marge,” he said. “How’s business?”

She flicked the ashes from her cigarette. “Reckon it’ll pick up when the show breaks. At least, it usually does.”

In a low voice Egan said: “You get anything on that last jewelry heist?”

“The one abaht a week ago? Wheah that salesman got hisself slugged?”

He nodded.

“Uh-uh.”

He took four photos from his pocket and a ten dollar bill from his wallet and held them out to the girl. “You make any of these?”

She studied the four mug shots that the salesman had picked out as possibles. “Naw,” she said finally. “Ah kain’t make a one of ’em.” She looked wistfully at the bill folded between his fingers.

He sighed and put the pictures back in his pocket and the bill in his wallet. “Get anything, call me quick.”

“Ah’ll do that, Egan.”

That was the way it went, all night. The people hadn’t gotten a single rumble on the jewelry heists. Snaps O’Toole, who sold girlie magazines and dirty pictures, Loretta, the plump B-girl at the Tampico Club, Ferdy, the bookie at the newsstand on the corner of East Baltimore and Gay streets, Big Joe, the bouncer at the Troc Sho-Bar — all looked longingly at the ten-spot and regretfully admitted that they hadn’t gotten a thing on the jewelry capers and couldn’t make a mother’s son of the mug shots.

It was one A.M. and the last shows were going on in all The Block clubs. He decided to try one more informant — Charmaine, a stripper at the Three O’clock Club. Her real name was Haydee Melendez and she was a Cuban refugee.

Egan really liked Haydee, who supported her mother and three younger sisters by taking off her clothes for a bunch of drunks twice a night, wheedling drinks for a percentage, acting as a police stoolie, and doing whatever else was necessary to pay the rent for three buggy tenement rooms on Paca Street and a few groceries from the supermarket.

The Three O’Clock Club was the usual Baltimore show spot. There was a horseshoe-shaped bar enclosing a stage and runway, and a five-piece band played behind a curtain at the open end of the horseshoe.

There were maybe fifteen men scattered about the bar, most of them carefully nursing a single bottle of beer. Three bartenders, a girl and two men, slouched with their backs to the stage, indifferent to the feigned ecstasies of the undulating peelers.

Phil Egan found a place at the bar. He didn’t see Haydee anywhere. He said to the girl bartender: “Bourbon and water. Charmaine working tonight?”

“Yeah,” the bar-doll said languidly. “She’s back stage gettin’ dressed. She’s on next.”

The girl who was working bumped a final sinuous bump, pulled the pasties from her breasts and threw them to the beer-drinkers, yanked down her transparent panties to give the crowd a completely untrammeled look at her curvacious posterior, and exited to scattered applause.

Then Charmaine came on. She was twenty, black-haired, brown-eyed, full-figured, with a coffee-and-cream complexion. She worked strong — she had to; the strong workers were always in demand, and she couldn’t afford long layoffs. In no time at all she was out of her sequin-studded silver dress, and working in a blue strobolite to bring out the full effect of the man’s hands outlined in orange on her buttocks.

She saw Phil Egan and nodded in recognition, but otherwise ignored him as she stripped her brassiere and panties and writhed on the stage in simulated passion. She got a big hand from the beer-drinkers.

She came from backstage wearing the same sequin-studded silver dress she had worn at the beginning of her act. “ ’Allo Eegan,” she said, smiling a gold-toothed smile. “ ’Ow you like me tonight?”

“You’re hotter than three feet inside a furnace,” he said, taking her light brown hand in his. Then in a lower voice: “Let’s talk for a minute.”

She nodded and led him to an unoccupied table between the bar and the wall. One of the bartenders bustled over and he ordered another bourbon and water. She shook her head at the bartender, meaning she didn’t want a drink and this guy wasn’t a mark to be taken.

She took his hand in both of hers. “So, Eegan, wot I do for you?”

“Take a look. Any of ’em ring a bell?” He handed her the four photos, and made sure she saw the folded ten between his fingers.

She looked carefully at the pictures. Three of them she turned down with a shake of the head, but the fourth she studied intently. Then she smiled and deftly plucked the bill from between his fingers.

“Thass heem,” she said. “Thass Pete.”

“Pete who?”

“Pete I don’t know who. Zey jus’ call heem Pete.”

“Who’s‘they’?”

“Hees buddies. Two of zem. Zey come here many time for oh, ’bout eight months.”

“Catch any other names?”

“Lemee theenk. Wan zey call Frank. Zat all I hear.”

“Are they heeled?”

She nodded. “Oh, good! Zey buy wheesky, teep big. Five dollah, wan time I treenk wiz zem.”

“What did they talk about?”

She shrugged. “Ball game, horses — I don’t remember.”

“Anything about jewelry?”

Her eyes opened wide. “Joolry? No, I don’ theenk—”

“Haydee, the next time they come in, try to get their names and addresses. It’ll be worth fifty.”

“Feefty dollah? Oh, I try hard, Eegan!”

“So long, Haydee. You’re a good kid.” He kissed her lightly on the cheek.

She giggled and said: “Not like zat, Eegan. Like zis.” She kissed him on the lips, her full mouth working sensuously against his.

“Very nice,” he said. “Thanks, Haydee. And don’t forget those names and addresses.”

Well, it wasn’t much to show for a night’s work, but it was something. Binky Byers, the fat hoodlum tentatively identified by Feldman as one of his assailants, was still in town, was hanging around The Block with two pals, and was calling himself Pete.

Wearily he headed the black Chevvie towards his apartment on Calvert Street.

IV

Two nights later Egan had dinner at Muriel’s. Afterwards they made a fire, threw some pillows on the floor in front of the fireplace, and lay there, sipping brandy and listening to the hi-fi. It was cozy and warm, and so was Muriel, but at 11:25, just as their kisses were beginning to take on a new meaning, the phone rang.

“Let it ring,” he groaned.

“Damn! I’d like to.” But she got up and answered it. Then she held it out to him. “It’s for you.”

It couldn’t be anybody but Mike Casey, because nobody but Mike knew that he could be reached at this number.

Casey rasped: “Phil? They’ve dropped an atom bomb on us. Just blew the safe in the Lord Calvert Hotel Jewel and Fur Shop and grabbed one hundred eighty thousand dollars worth of ice. Didn’t touch the furs. Get down here right away.”

The black Chevvie streaked downtown to the Lord Calvert Hotel in six minutes.

The Jewel and Fur Shop was on the mezzanine floor of the big hotel, overlooking the ornate lobby, but set well back from it. There were several other shops, a travel bureau, and the hotel’s business offices there, and after the close of the business day the mezzanine was usually quite deserted. It was reached either by elevator or by a broad staircase from the lobby.

Phil Egan bounded up the stairs. There were two policemen outside the Jewel and Fur Shop. Inside were Mike Casey and two detectives, the manger of the hotel, and a Mr. Birnbaum, who managed the shop. There were wisps of acrid blue smoke still floating around, and the sharp odor of acetylene gas. The door of the safe was open, and there was a round hole about a foot in diameter where the lock had been.

“Hello, Mike,” Egan said. “How’d they get in?” He added in an aside: “As if I didn’t know.”

“Like always,” grated Casey. “They unlocked the door with a key and walked in.”

“Anybody see them?”

“Maintenance man in the basement saw three guys in overalls go up in the self-service freight elevator about quarter of eleven. One of them was carrying a big canvas bag, like a laundry bag. They must have got off at the mezzanine, opened the door with a key, cut the lock out of the safe with the acetylene, grabbed the ice, and left the same way they came.”

“Anybody see them go out?” Egan asked.

“No. At least, we haven’t turned up anybody yet.”

“Hm. In that canvas bag they must have had one of those baby tanks of acetylene — the kind you carry in your arms — and a blowtorch. They knew when the night-watchman rang in from the mezzanine and timed it just right. They opened the door with a key, cut the lock out of the safe with the acetylene, grabbed the ice, shoved it into the bag with the acetylene tank, and left the same way they came, by the freight elevator.”

“Yeah,” said Casey. “And acetylene gas, which brings a heat of sixty-three hundred degrees Fahrenheit to the point of contact, can cut through steel like a sharp knife through a tender steak — as every damned crook knows.”

One of the detectives came over to them. “This might be something.” He handed Phil Egan a small metal gauge. “We found it under a chair.”

Egan examined it curiously and stuck it in his topcoat pocket. “Anything else?”

“That’s all,” said the detective.

Egan spent the next day interrogating employees of the hotel and the Jewel and Fur Shop. There were two of the latter, a woman in her fifties and a man in his sixties. Both had been with the shop for more than Jen years, both were bonded, both had airtight alibis, as did Birnbaum himself. Their keys, they swore, had not left their possession.

Egan had been hoping for some evidence of an inside job, but there was none. How the hell were they getting the keys? The police lab could uncover, no trace of wax around the lock on the shop’s door. No identifiable fingerprints, either — outside of those of Birnbaum and the two employees.

The interrogation of the hotel employees turned up only one interesting item — the maintenance man who had seen the three thieves get in the freight elevator made a fairly positive identification of a mug shot of Binky Byers as one of the three.

Binky, who was currently throwing money around The Block, was now tentatively linked to the last two jewelry heists.

Three nights later Phil Egan prowled The Block again. Most of the people hadn’t heard anything, but when he came into the Three O’Clock Club Haydee Melendez left the man she was drinking with at the bar and nodded towards a table in a dark corner.

“ ’Allo Eegan,” she said. “Zat Peet — he’s here last night wiz same two pals. Me, two uzzer girls, we treenk wiz zem. Zey ask us come up zair place for party after club close. I zay ‘Who the hell are you an’ ware you place?’ Zey zay: ‘You’ll come up?’ We zay sure, we like party mucho. Zo Pete, he write down names and ware place is. I got paper in dressing room. Wait, I get.” She bounced up.

Phil Egan sighed and ordered a bourbon and water. His hands were a little shaky. The unsolved jewelry heists were getting on his nerves, what with the newspapers demanding a shakeup in the Police Department and Mike Casey breathing hotly down his back. And now maybe the first small crack in the case was beginning to open up.

Haydee came back and handed him a piece of paper. On it in pencil was scrawled: Pete Byers, Maury Mahaffey, Frank Visconti — 674 Preston Street, Apartment 3B.

Egan smiled and said: “Good girl, Haydee. Have a drink — a real one?”

“No, I got go back to heem.” She nodded in the direction of the man at the bar. “Ware my feefty dol-lah, Eegan?”

He handed her two twenties and a ten. “How was the party?” he asked.

She laughed. “You don’ theenk we go, do you? ’Bye, Eegan.”

V

The first thing the next morning he called Sergeant Ed Stearns in Identification. “Ed? Phil Egan. Listen, have you got anything on a Maury Mahaffey or a Frank Visconti?” He spelled out the names.

Ten minutes later Ed Stearns called him back. “Phil? We’ve got both your boys. Want to hear it?”

“Shoot!”

“Mahaffey, Maurice — he is also known as Milton Haffey — thirty-two years old, unmarried, WMA. Last known address, twenty three fourteen West Saratoga Street. Three arrests suspicion of narcotics violation, one conviction. Served two years City Prison. Two arrests simple assault, one conviction. Served six months City Prison. Four arrests petty larceny, no convictions.

“Here’s the other one: Visconti, Frank — also known as Larry Visco — thirty-four years old, WMA, divorced, last known address, fifty seven seventy one York Road. Three arrests petty larceny, one conviction. Served six months of a nine-month sentence to City Prison. One arrest on suspicion of rape, released after questioning. One arrest on charge of burglary, reduced to malicious mischief. Suspended sentence. Suspect in murder of gambler Jack Keefe, June sixteen, nineteen-fifty nine. Released after inconclusive lie detector test. That’s it, Phil.”

“Thanks, Ed. Send up the mugs, will you?”

“Sure thing, Phil.”

Cheap, petty hoods. Where was the brains? Where was the clever locksmith? Where was the expert boxman?

The slugged salesman had gone back home by this time. Egan sent Sergeant Lou Grissom up to New York with the mug shots of Mahaffey and Visconti to see if Norman Feldman could identify them, along with Byers, as his assailants. He also put a stake-out on 674 Preston Street.

That night he was back prowling The Block, and this time he got a little something from the stoolies. The jewelry heisters were local, and the Outfit was letting them work for a big 40 % of the take. The jewels were being fenced through a chain of small loan companies controlled by the Outfit. And the gang was already poised for another strike.

He ended up with Haydee in the Three O’Clock Club. No, she hadn’t seen Pete, Frank, and Maury since the night they had invited her up to Preston Street for a party.

“What did they talk about that night?”

She wrinkled her brows in concentration. “Let me theenk. Mostly, zey complain zey don’ have no fun. Life eez all work. Zat why zey want beeg wild party. Get trunk, have girls all night. I theenk it was Frank zay ‘I don’ even go movie zince zat beeg Towson job.’ ”

Egan took a deep breath. “Thanks, Haydee. You’re a big help.”

By noon the next day Sergeant Grissom was back from New York. Feldman couldn’t be absolutely sure, but he was fairly certain that Mahaffey and Visconti, along with Byers, were the men who had jumped him in front of Hearn’s Jewelry Store.

Phil Egan mulled over in his mind what Haydee had said. Visconti had complained that he hadn’t even been to a movie since the Towson job. What Towson job? Legit, a heist, or what?

Towson was a small, pleasant suburban city ten miles north of Baltimore. He called the Towson Police Department and recognized the answering voice of Herman Watters.

“Hello,” he said. “Herm, this is Phil Egan downtown. I want to check with you on three guys. Here they are: Byers, George, also known as Binky, and lately calling himself Pete; Mahaffey, Maurice, sometimes known as Milton Haffey; and Visconti, Frank, sometimes known as Larry Visco.”

“Got ’em, Phil. I’ll call you back.”

Fifteen minutes later the Towson officer called back. “Phil? We have a small make on one of your boys. On the night of October twenty-ninth last, the Texaco station at York Road and Taylor Avenue out here was held up. We found an abandoned car at the scene later, a fifty-nine Plymouth sedan, black. Had Maryland plates, and we traced the registration to a, George Peter Byers, six seventy four Preston Street, Baltimore.”

Egan sighed. “Binky Byers. He likes his middle name now. Calls himself Pete. He seems to get around. What did you do with him?”

“We brought him in on suspicion. He claimed his car had been stolen the day before the hold-up but He hadn’t reported it because he thought one of his buddies had borrowed it to drive up to Gettysburg to a football game. We couldn’t connect him to the hold-up, so we let him go.”

“Tell me about it. How much did they get?”

“Funny thing — not a penny. They weren’t after money. All they took were two small cylinders of compressed acetylene gas, the kind you can carry in your arms.”

“Who was on duty at the gas station?”

“Seventeen-year-old high school kid named Lou Jackson who works there from five until close-up at nine. He didn’t see their faces. There were two of them, and they had women’s stockings pulled down over their kissers. They locked him in the Ladies Room.”

“Anything else?”

“That’s about it, Phil.”

Egan added it up. Binky Byers’ black Plymouth could have been the car behind Norman Feldman’s in front of Hearn’s Jewelry Store, the car from which Feldman thought the thugs got out to assault him. And the tanks of compressed acetylene gas had been stolen from the Towson Texaco station just two days before the safe in the Lord Calvert Hotel Jewel and Fur Shop was cut open with compressed acetylene gas. The gas had been carried into the hotel by three men, one of whom had been tentatively identified as Binky Byers.

He opened his desk drawer, fumbled around, and found the little metal gauge that had been picked up from under the chair of the Jewel and Fur Shop. He dropped the gauge in his topcoat pocket, picked up the black Chevvie at the police garage on Gay Street, and headed out York Road towards Towson. As he approached Taylor Avenue, he saw the Texaco station on his right.


It was too early for the boy who had been working on the night of the theft to be on the job, but the man who leased the station was there.

He introduced himself. “Lieutenant Egan, Baltimore Police Department. Understand you were robbed of two tanks of acetylene gas about two weeks ago.”

“That’s right.”

“Do you sell compressed acetylene gas?”

“No, we’re just agents for the North Baltimore Industrial Supply Company. The customers pick up full tanks here and drop off the empties. We get a commission.”

He showed the man the gauge. “Could this have come from one of your tanks?”

“Come on back and we’ll see.”

He led Egan to the back of the garage, where full and empty tanks of compressed acetylene gas awaited pickup. The man unscrewed the gauge from one of the empties and screwed on the gauge Egan had handed him. It fit perfectly.

“There’s your answer,” the man said, unscrewing the gauge and handing it back.

Egan sighed. “Well, part of it. We know it’s off a North Baltimore Industrial Supply Company tank. Mind if I use your phone?”

“Help yourself.”

Egan called the office of the company that owned the tanks. Were any of their tanks unaccounted for? The voice on the other end of the wire said sharply: “Who wants to know?” Egan snapped back, “Lieutenant Egan, Baltimore Police Department.” He’d check it, it would take a couple of minutes, the voice replied, much more courteously.

When he came back on he said: “All accounted for but two. They were stolen from a gas station in Towson a couple of weeks ago.”

Egan thanked him and hung up.

There was no doubt about it. The gas station had been robbed of the two tanks for the sole purpose of cracking the Lord Calvert Jewel and Fur Shop. Since lab experts estimated that had used up less than one tank, the gang still had a full tank to use on their next job, which, according to underworld scuttlebutt, would be any day now.

674 Preston Street was right in the middle of the area where the red pins on the map indicated that the jewel thieves were holed up. An unmarked police car containing two detectives from the Criminal Investigation Detail was parked across the street at various inconspicuous locations twenty-four hours a day.

In the alley near the back door of the old-fashioned, three-story gray stone house, a three-man crew from the “telephone company” had dug a hole and over-ralled detectives worked on the “underground cables” around the clock.

These repairmen had explored the house thoroughly. 3B was on the top floor front overlooking Preston Street. It consisted of four small rooms and a bath, and was reached by a small self-service elevator recently installed in the old mansion which had been converted into an apartment house.

There were three apartments on each floor. The other occupants of the house seemed to be mostly young or middle-aged working couples. The house didn’t allow children. It was quiet, undistinguished, respectable — a perfect hole-up for a gang of clever jewel thieves.

Only the three men occupying it weren’t clever. They were petty hoodlums, hanging on the outer fringe of the national crime syndicate that dominated the Baltimore underworld.

VI

The next time Egan ate at Muriel’s, she asked him, as they sipped their pre-dinner martinis: “Why don’t you arrest those three punks you’re cat-and-mousing up there on Preston Street? After all, you can connect them to the last two robberies.”

He shook his head. “They’re connected, but just barely so. I want that gang’s brains, not just its muscle. They’re getting ready to hit again, and when they do we’ll be waiting for them.”

“It’s none of my business,” she said, “but aren’t you overlooking one important angle?”

“All the angles I can overlook from here are pretty good.”

“Lecher!” She drew her housecoat tighter. “No, seriously, Phil, your locksmith is obviously the brains of the outfit. He had to learn locksmithing somewhere, didn’t he?”

He said thoughtfully: “It isn’t something you just pick up.”

“Where do they teach it?” she asked.

“Trade schools, YMCA courses, night schools. Places like that.”

“You said the gang was local, so chances are your brain studied locksmithing here. The schools probably keep records of their graduates. Go through the records and check out any that look interesting.”

“That is an angle that would bear investigating,” he said “And that’s a curve that would also—”

She laughed and drew away from him. “Oh, cut it out. I’m serious. Hurry up and catch those jewel thieves so we can start having fun again.”

What she had said about the locksmith started him thinking, though. It was like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack, but even a 1000 to 1 shot looked like good odds in this case.

The next morning he called in Detective Sergeant Terence Clancy. “Check out all the trade schools, the YMCA’s, the night schools, and any other places you can think of that might teach lock-smithing. Go back ten years and list all their graduates, what they’re doing now, and where.”

Clancy groaned. “Hell, Phil, there are eighteen public trade schools alone in town. I know, because I had to check them once before. This’ll take to Christmas at least.”

“Take two men to help you. And hurry it up!”

Clancy groaned loudly and went out, but Egan knew he’d get the list in a couple of days. Clancy was a griper, but a good man.

From the stakeout on Preston Street he learned that Byers, Mahaffey, and Visconti had two visitors practically every night. One was a tall, thin man of about thirty who wore horn-rimmed glasses and drove a sporty little red Italian sports car. The other was a man of medium height, stocky, who arrived in a blue panel truck marked “Elite Bakery, 3714 Harford Road.” The license plate on the sports car was Maryland 292–861; that on the panel truck was Maryland 728–592.

He called the Motor Vehicle Department. “This is Lieutenant Egan, Police Department. Will you check out these license plates for me? Maryland 292–861, and Maryland 728–592.”

The girl on the other end said: “Just a minute, Lieutenant.” Then, after a long pause: “Here they are, Lieutenant. Maryland 292–861 is a Fiat sports car and it is registered in the name of Mrs. Stuart R. Heisman, 1821 Belair Road. Maryland 728–592 is a Ford panel truck registered in the name of Harold J. O’Konski, 3714 Harford Road.”

“Thank you, honey,” said Egan.

The next thing to do was to find out as much as possible about the men who drove to the nightly rendezvous with Byers, Mahaffey, and Visconti.

He had traffic cops stop both men to look at driver’s licenses and ask routine questions. Thus he learned that the driver of the sports car was Stuart R. Heisman, out of the army about a year, married, no children, worked as a pharmacist at the Belair Drug Store near his home on Belair road. He answered questions easily, was self-possessed, and seemed all right.

The Ford panel truck was driven by Harold J. O’Konski, 31, also out of the army about a year, married, no children. He and his wife ran the Elite Bakery on Harford Road. They lived over the bakery, and O’Konski used the truck to deliver pies, cakes, and other baked goods to restaurants in the northeast Baltimore area. He was laconic, maybe even a bit surly, but he, too, seemed all right.

But a pharmacist and a baker as the brains of a gang that included simple thugs like Byers, Visconti, and Mahaffey? It didn’t add up.

Then, suddenly, everything began to fall into place, as it usually does when the police have done their homework well. A routine check with Identification disclosed that while Heisman was completely clean, O’Konski had been picked up leaving the scene of a crime at a shopping center not far from his bakery and home.

A sporting goods store had been held up about a week before, by four men wearing stocking masks. But O’Konski claimed that he had merely been delivering pies to a restaurant in the shopping center and had tried to speed away when he heard the police sirens, not wanting to get mixed up in anything. They didn’t really have anything on him, and he had been released with a reprimand.

Of course Egan had heard about the hold-up of the sporting goods store, but it was Burglary’s case, not his, and he hadn’t paid too much attention. But with the discovery that O’Konski had been at the scene of the crime, he was all ears. What had been taken from the sporting goods store, he asked Identification.

Five Colt .38 revolvers and about a hundred rounds of ammunition, Identification reported. No money! Only the guns and ammo. The hold-up men had ignored $138.60 in the till.

The M.O. had been the same as in the hold-up of the Texaco station in Towson. The thieves had ignored everything except what they needed for their next job. And, if their previous M.O. meant anything, that next job must be close at hand.

Two days later the complaining Clancy brought in his list of all the locksmiths graduated from trade, YMCA, and night schools during the past ten years. First, Egan had a secretary pick out of it — with the cooperation of Identification — any locksmiths with known criminal records. There were five. One had recently died, two were back in prison, one had spent the last two months in Johns Hopkins Hospital, and one was now a bartender on The Block with an airtight alibi. Nothing there.

Next, he had her pick out all the trained locksmiths who were now engaged in another profession, or were unemployed. There were 247 names on this list.

And, about a third of the way down the list, was pay-dirt. It read: Heisman, Stuart R. Graduated Ensor Street Commercial and Trade School, June 1958. U.S. Army, 1958–1961. Present address: 1821 Belair Road. Present occupation: Pharmacist, Belair Drug Store, 1647 Belair Road.

Egan went down the police garage, picked up the black Chevvie, and drove out to the Ensor Street Commercial and Trade School. The principal there turned out to be a white-haired old gentleman named Brierly who had occupied his position for twenty-one years.

“I remember Stuart Heisman very well,” he told Egan. “Quiet, studious boy, with an inventive mind. I remember one thing he put together while he was here. He could have patented it, it was that good.”

“What was that, sir?”

“A key-maker. It was a box-like thing. It would probe any lock with a very slender gauge and then record the depth of the tumblers, the spring tensions, and all the rest. Then you fed in a piece of metal, turned a dial to the proper setting, and out dropped your new key. I wonder if he ever did anything with it?”

“Well,” said Egan guardedly, “I don’t know, but I think he did.”

Old Mr. Brierly said: “If you could get hold of his friend — they roomed together at the YMCA on Franklin Street while they were in school here — he could tell you more about Heisman. They were inseparable. Went into the army together, as a matter of fact. Oh, what was his name?”

“Was he a locksmith, too?”

“No. He studied welding — acetylene gas welding. Pretty good at it, too.”

“Could it have been O’Konski, sir?”

“That’s it — Harold O’Konski. You know him?”

“A little. Well, thank you, Mr. Brierly. You’ve been very helpful.” Egan rose to go.

The old man said: “I hope Stuart isn’t in any trouble.”

“We don’t know yet. Goodbye, Mr. Brierly.”

VII

Now came the long wait. The Heisman and O’Konski residences were also staked out by inconspicuous, unmarked cars that kept changing location. The “telephone repairmen” worked around the clock by temporary lights strung in the alley in back of 674 Preston Street.

Byers, Mahaffey, and Visconti rarely left their apartment now except to go to the supermarket or a neighborhood bar. Heisman and O’Konski came every night and rarely left before eleven. And from The Block the stoolies whispered a Greek chorus: soon, soon, soon.

“I have a hunch it’ll be when they think we are least likely to expect a major crime,” Egan told Muriel. “Like on a Sunday night, or the night before a holiday.”

“Thanksgiving’s coming up next week.”

“Thanksgiving eve. My Irish intuition says that’ll be it. The little people are all piping. ‘Thanksgiving eve, Thanksgiving eve.’ Well, we’re ready. One thing worries me.”

“What’s that, Sweetie?” Her tone was casual, but there was concern in it. She loved this man.

“This time they’ve got guns. That means they figure they might have to use them.”

She said soberly: “Phil, promise me something. When it’s over, come up here. I don’t care what time it is or anything. Just come up.”

“Will do,” he said softly, kissing her.

On the Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving, Egan was tense, chain-smoking little cigars. Outside of Police Headquarters, in downtown Baltimore, people were already in a holiday mood, and the bars were filling up. Hourly reports were coming in from the stakeouts on Belair Road, Harford Road, and Preston Street.

By 4:30 P.M. Byers, Mahaffey, and Visconti had not left the apartment. O’Konski was still delivering pies; Heisman was filling prescriptions in the drug-store. He knew that Heisman would get off work at five and that the Elite Bakery would close at six.

He felt it in his bones — tonight’s the night. He had learned to trust his hunches, and he trusted this one. He took a last look at the map with its circle of red pins with one big pin squarely in the center, representing the gang’s only downtown job, the safe-cracking at the Lord Calvert Jewel and Fur Shop.

He checked the Smith and Wesson .44 in his shoulder holster, put on his topcoat, and called Detective Terence Clancy.

“Let’s go, Terry,” he said tightly. The two men went over to the police garage to pick up the black Chevvie.

Up at the Preston Street stake-out everything was ready.

Egan checked his little fleet. On Preston Street across from the apartment was the black Chevvie with himself and Clancy. Further down the street, in front of a neighborhood bar, was another unmarked car, a battered tan Buick about seven years old. In it were Detective, Sergeants Lou Grissom and Con McClure, both big, hard men.

McClure was oddly dressed for a detective on duty. He wore an old gray sweater, frayed blue-jeans, ancient shoes that were run down at the heels and splitting at the seams. On his head was a blue knitted seaman’s cap somewhat the worse for wear. A stubble of beard adorned his chin and his gray-brown hair was growing down the back of his neck. He looked like a bum, a wino — which was the exact idea. But he had something most bums didn’t — a neat little Smith and Wesson .32 in the pocket of his dirty blue-jeans.

Finally, parked in the alley beside the excavation made by the “telephone repairmen” was a blue Volkswagen station wagon containing — conspicuously — coils of wire and various types of telephone repair equipment. On its door in gray was the bell insignia and the words CHEASAPEAKE TELEPHONE COMPANY. The three “repairmen” in the light blue jumpers of the phone company were Detectives Kohnstamm, Smyth, and Murphy — good men all.

Communication between all three of the groups on Preston Street was by walkie-talkie. Phil Egan was using the police radio only to communicate with the stakeouts on Belair Road and Harford Road, and then only by a code he had worked out. The gang’s cars undoubtedly had radios equipped to pick up police calls, and there were probably similiarly-equipped radios in the homes of Heisman and O’Konski, and in the apartment at 674 Preston.

Egan had ordered the cars on stakeout on Belair Road and Harford Road not to tail Heisman and O’Konski as they drove to the rendezvous on Preston Street. These tails would have to cover a considerable distance and might be discovered, causing the gang to break off its plans.

But suppose the rendezvous was not at the Preston Street apartment? Or suppose the gang set out in four or five cars — how could he tail them with three? He felt a moment of panic, but it passed.

He had to go with the probables, and the most probable place of rendezvous was Preston Street, in the center of town, rather than on Belair Road or Harford Road, out in suburbia. Besides, a meeting at the homes of O’Konski or Heisman would involve their wives. Preston Street was the best bet. If it turned out not to be Preston Street, he would just have to play it by ear, that was all. He shrugged and lit another little cigar.

At a few minutes before nine P.M. the police radio crackled: “Car X to Sea Lion — Car X to Sea Lion.”

Egan said tightly: “Sea Lion. Come, in, X.”

Car X replied: “Two drunks in a knife fight at Market and East Baltimore.”

Egan replied: “Got you, X. Roger.”

Heisman had left his Harford Road home in the Fiat sports car.

Thirty seconds later the radio crackled again: “Car Y to Sea Lion — Car Y to Sea Lion.”

Egan said hoarsely: “Sea Lion. Come in, Car Y.”

Car Y replied: “Investigate hold-up of liquor store at Howard and Fayette.”

Egan said: “Will do. Roger.”

O’Konski had left the bakery on. Belair Road in the blue Ford panel truck.

O’Konski arrived at 9:32. He parked the Elite Bakery truck in the alley right in back of the Chesapeake Telephone Company’s Volkswagen. The three repairmen in their, blue jumpers paid — or seemed to pay — no heed as he went in the back door and up the stairs to the third floor of 674 Preston.

Ten minutes later the Fiat came slowly down Preston Street, found a parking space in front of the house next door to 674, and Heisman got out. He went in the front door of 674.

Byers’ black Plymouth was parked in front of the apartment house, right where it usually was. The house had no garages; its tenants had to leave their cars on the street.

By 11:30 the tensed-up men had begun to feel somewhat let down. Nobody had come out of the house, and it looked like a dry run. Egan slouched behind the wheel of the Chevvie, chewing the stub of a little cigar, his topcoat pulled up around his ears against the November chill. He never wore a hat.


At 12:10 A.M. O’Konski and Heisman came out of the front door of the house, conversed briefly for a moment, and then O’Konski went back to the alley where he had parked the Elite Bakery truck. Heisman headed for the Fiat parked in front of the house next door. Upstairs in Apartment 3B the lights went off.

Had Byers, Mahaffey, and Visconti gone to bed so quickly? Egan’s heart dropped into the pit of his stomach. But he picked up the walkie-talkie.

“All right, everybody,” he said. “Here’s the way we’ll play it: Clancy and I’ll take Heisman. You telephone guys stay with O’Konski. If and when the black Plymouth goes, Grissom and McClure will stick with it. Looks like a dry run, but we’ve got to play it out.”

The racy little Fiat, with the tall, tweedy, pipe-smoking Heisman at the wheel, turned north on St. Paul Street with Egan and Clancy in the Chevvie three cars behind it. It went right at North Avenue, turned into Belair Road, and proceeded northeast at a leisurely pace. Heisman put it in the garage of his attractive two-story house. Fifteen minutes later all the lights were out.

Gone to bed. A goddam dry run. But Egan decided to hang on. The hunch was fading, but it was still there. He located the stakeout car and told the two detectives in it to go home; he and Clancy would take over, and stay on the job all night, if they had to.

The men going off duty left them a thermos half full of black coffee. Egan and Clancy sat there, about half a block down from Heisman’s house, on the other side of the broad street. There were several other cars parked along the highway that was also U.S. Route 1, and the black Chevvie was inconspicuous. They sipped coffee, smoked, and listened to the police radio. Even at that hour of the night, there was a good deal of traffic.

At about 3:30 A.M. a light came on in an upstairs room of the Heisman home. Egan nudged the dozing Clancy.

At 3:45 Heisman, carrying a small tan attache case, came out of the house, went into the garage, and drove out a car they hadn’t seen before, a black Mercury about two years old, as inconspicuous as their own. It turned southwest, towards the downtown area. The Chevvie followed, keeping two blocks and several cars back.

Suddenly Heisman gunned the powerful Mercury and it shot ahead. Tires screaming, it turned right on Belvidere Avenue. Phil Egan cut out and passed several trucks, racing after it. Had Heisman spotted them, or was he merely taking the usual underworld precaution against a possible police tail?

Heisman, tires screeching, turned right on Loch Raven Boulevard. By the time the Chevvie got around the corner, the Mercury had vanished, in the maze of side streets.

“God damn!” the frustrated Egan shouted.

Heisman had shaken them. They searched the side streets between Belvidere Avenue and Cold Spring Lane for fifteen minutes, without success. The pigeon had flown the coop.

Shaking with anger and nervous tension, Egan headed for Preston Street. He turned on the walkie-talkie, but couldn’t raise anybody. The other cars were out of range. He didn’t dare use the police radio — he hadn’t made up any code to cover this situation.

A few minutes later he tried the walkie-talkie again. This time there was an answering click and a faint voice said: “I read you, Phil, but just barely. This is Lou Grissom in the Buick. We’re tailing Byers’ black Plymouth. He and his two pals left the apartment about half an hour ago. They’ve just been driving around. Right now we’re on Erdman Avenue, heading northwest towards thirty-third Street at about thirty-five miles an hour. Over.”

Egan shouted: “Hang on, Lou! We’ve lost Heisman. We’ll pick you up at the corner of Loch Raven Boulevard and thirty-third. Over and out.”

A few seconds brought them to the intersection of Loch Raven Boulevard and 33rd Street. They turned off their lights, parked, and waited. At this point, the street that had been Erdman Avenue became 33rd Street.

In about thirty seconds they came into view, the black Plymouth with Byers, Visconti, and Mahaffey in the front seat, going slowly down 33rd Street. Behind the Plymouth was a truck and behind the truck and about a block back was the tan Buick. The black Chevvie turned the corner and pulled in about half a block behind the Buick, and the little procession crawled slowly west towards North Charles Street.

Egan picked up the walkie-talkie again. “Lou, let us take over. You drop back and follow along. That damned tan color is too easy to spot.”

“Roger,” replied Grissom. The Buick slowed and Egan passed it, pulling in behind the truck.

VIII

At the corner of 33rd Street and York Road there was an all-night diner. The Plymouth parked in front of it and Byers, Mahaffey, and Visconti went in and ordered coffee. Egan parked the Chevvie across the street from the diner, and awaited developments. He saw the tan Buick parked about a block back, too far to be identified from the diner.

About five minutes later O’Konski’s Elite Bakery truck appeared, parked behind Byers’ Plymouth, and O’Konski went into the diner. A Chesapeake Telephone Company repair truck passed the diner, turned into a side street, and parked.

Egan breathed a sigh of relief. He picked up the walkie-talkie. “Nice going, phone company. The pigeons are roosting. One more to come. Over and out.”

They didn’t have long to wait. The Mercury appeared, coming slowly up 33rd street, made the York Road turn, and parked. Heisman went into the diner.

It was exactly 4:15 A.M.

Five minutes later Heisman, O’Konski, Byers, Mahaffey, and Visconti emerged from the diner and headed for their respective cars.

Egan grabbed the walkie-talkie. “Same M.O. as before. Take the same car, and for God’s sake don’t lose it!”

The three gang cars all turned into York Road and proceeded slowly south, towards the downtown area, followed at a distance of two blocks by the three police vehicles.

At North Avenue each of the three gang cars suddenly bolted in a different direction. Heisman gunned the Mercury west on North Avenue; O’Konski shot off east towards Harford Road; Byers went straight south on York Road, which at this point became Greenmount Avenue.

Heisman slowed again, then speeded up, turned left on St. Paul Street, and headed downtown. Egan, a block behind, clung to him like a used car dealer to a sweepstakes winner.

The walkie-talkie clicked. Lou Grissom said mournfully: “Sorry, Phil, we lost ours. The Plymouth shook us. It turned east on Biddle Street. A trailer-truck got between us and when we passed it the Plymouth was gone.”

“Never mind,” said Egan. “I think we’re getting close. Come fast and fall in behind me about Monument Street. Over and out.”

At St. Paul and Monument he saw by the rear view mirror that the Buick had come up and was following about two blocks back.

Heisman, apparently satisfied that he was not being followed, turned west off St. Paul Street, crossed Howard in the heart of the downtown shopping and theatrical district, turned into Saratoga, then went left off Saratoga on to Green Street.

He parked two stores down from the Lattman Jewelry Store, a large, flashy emporium that specialized in selling jewelry on time at high interest rates to not-too-prosperous customers.

The area, although downtown, was a bit seedy. Not far from brightly-lighted Howard Street; it was dark and deserted at 4:45 A.M.

Egan drove slowly past Green Street and saw Heisman parked near the jewelry store. He kept on going and parked on Saratoga, out of sight of Heisman. A chill fall wind keened down the dark, empty street.

The tan Buick passed him, went around the block, and came back up to park on Saratoga, just across Green Street from the Chevvie, and also out of Heisman’s sight.

The Elite Bakery truck turned into Green Street off Fayette. O’Konski parked across the street from Heisman and walked over to join the latter in the front seat of the Mercury. Coming into Green off Fayette, he had not seen the Buick and the Chevvie parked on opposite corners of Saratoga and Green.

In a few minutes Byers’ black Plymouth appeared, also turning into Green from Fayette. A block behind it the telephone company truck went on past Green Street, turned the corner, and headed for Saratoga Street. It parked behind the Buick. All the walkie-talkies were open.

“This is it,” Egan said. “Con, do your stuff!”

Detective Con McClure, dressed and smelling like a bum, took a pint of cheap whiskey from the Buick’s glove compartment, spattered some over his clothes, and, bottle in hand, staggered towards Green Street.

He saw Byers, acting as a lookout, walking slowly up towards Saratoga Street, and Visconti, also a lookout, standing in a doorway near Fayette Street. Heisman, carrying the attache case, O’Konski, cradling a small cylinder of acetylene gas in his arms, and Mahaffey, one of the stolen Colt .38’s in hand, were walking rapidly towards the entrance to the jewelry store.

In a few seconds Byers would reach the corner of Green and Saratoga, see the three police cars, get suspicious, and give the alarm.

McClure, waving his bottle, staggered towards him, shouting: “Have a lil drink, fren!”

Byers stopped, put his hand in his pocket, then drew it out empty. He called to the men in the jewelry store doorway: “Just a goddam drunk. Nothing to worry about.”

McClure gripped Byers by the coat lapel. “Jus’ one won’t hurt, fren’. S’my birthday!”

Byers laughed good-naturedly. “Okay,” he said. “Gimme the damn bottle.”

Out of the corner of his eye McClure saw Heisman take a small black box out of the attache case, hold it up to the lock, adjust a dial, and — clink. Out fell a newly-made key.

Heisman picked it up, unlocked the door, and he and O’Konski went in. Mahaffey, gun in hand, nervously watched Byers and the “bum.”

“Get rid of him!” he growled.

“Go sleep it off in some alley,” said Byers, shaking himself loose from McClure’s grasp.

McClure hurled the whiskey bottle to the pavement, where it smashed with the sound of a firecracker.

That was the signal they’d been waiting for. The six detectives erupted from their cars, guns in hand, and raced around the corner towards the jewelry store.

The “bum” yanked out his gun, but Mahaffey’s shot caught him in the right hip and he went down. As he fell he fired and hit Mahaffey in the groin. Mahaffey dropped his gun and sank slowly to the pavement, his hands clutching the wound.

Byers got off one shot that sang by Egan’s ear. Egan’s own bullet hit him in the neck and Byers flopped to the sidewalk like a stranded fish, the blood gurgling through the hole in his throat, and running across the sidewalk into the gutter.

Visconti was far enough away to make a run for the Elite Bakery truck. He got it started and raced for Saratoga Street, trying to hit Steve Kohnstamm, who was running across the street towards the jewelry store. Steve dove out of the way, breaking his wrist as he fell. His own gun cluttered to the pavement.

Egan, Clancy, Grissom, and Smyth riddled the windshield; a red flower blossomed in the middle of Visconti’s face. The truck veered crazily, careened towards the sidewalk, and smashed through the display window of a men’s clothing store.

The sudden burst of noise was now replaced by an eerie silence. The interior of the jewelry store was dark and quiet. Detective Murphy, gun in hand, had gone down an alley to guard the rear door.

The street looked like a battle scene. Visconti, dead, his face and body full of glass splinters, hung half in and half out of the driver’s seat of the Elite Bakery truck, his blood dripping on the neat window display of men’s white button-down shirts.

Byers, not dead but dying, lay face down on the sidewalk, the blood still bubbling out of the hole in his throat. Mahaffey lay groaning in front of the jewelry store, his hands over the wound in his groin, blood seeping through them.

Detective McClure, the wounded “bum” — had half propped himself against a lamp post. Detective Kohnstamm sat on the sidewalk with his feet in the gutter, holding his head down, trying to keep from fainting as his right hand flopped grotesquely at the end of his broken wrist.

Egan yelled into the dark void of the jewelry store. “You’ve had it, Heisman! Back door’s covered! Throw out those thirty-eights!”

Silence. Then a .38 was kicked out through the wide-open door, followed by another. O’Konski and Heisman, hands joined behind their necks, came out.

By now squad cars and ambulances were pouring into the area, and a small crowd had materialized out of nowhere to gape in amazement at the bodies, the blood, the prisoners. Phil Egan phoned Mike Casey, then bustled Heisman and O’Konski, handcuffed together, into the back seat of the Chevvie for the ride down to Headquarters. Clancy, gun in hand, sat with them, and Smyth rode up front with Phil.

Heisman, the brain, was calm but dejected. O’Konski, smothered in gloom, snarled and cursed and refused to talk.

Heisman, clinically interested in the failure of his ingenious plan, said: “Where did I goof? What tipped you?”

Egan replied: “Byers, when he left his car out near that Texaco station in Towson. How’d he happen to do that?”

Heisman gritted his teeth. “The fat, stupid jerk! Our three goons — the Outfit provided them, partly to protect us and partly to make sure we didn’t pull a double cross — had the Plymouth and the Bakery truck that night. Byers was the lookout. After the job, he couldn’t get the Plymouth going right away, so he panicked and jumped in the truck with the others. Next time it won’t—”

Egan interrupted. “There won’t be a next time, Heisman. You’re going on an extended vacation.”

Heisman was silent.


After Heisman and O’Konski had been booked and jailed, Egan wrote out his report. Dawn was beginning to light the eastern sky as he headed the black Chevvie towards Muriel’s apartment on Mount Vernon Place. He had promised to come up no matter what time it was, so he did.

She answered the bell in a revealing black negligee, but it was easy to tell she hadn’t been sleeping. Her eyes were red and tired-looking and the ash trays were full of lipstick-stained, half-smoked butts.

Wordlessly they embraced.

He sank into an easy chair. “I could use a drink,” he said. “Or two or three.”

She mixed him a stiff bourbon and water, and as he sipped it he told her all about it. “Heisman and O’Konski planned the whole thing when they were in the army together. It was in the army that O’Konski learned to be a baker and Heisman a pharmacist. They learned those trades as a cover. They even got married as a cover. Heisman is a genius but he has the heart of a born thief who’d rather steal ten bucks than make a hundred legit.

“If he patents that key-making thing of his he’ll pile up a fortune in prison. He took the whole plan to the syndicate boys and they okayed it for a forty percent cut. Byers, Visconti, and Mahaffey were lent to Heisman as muscle, to do the necessary stealing, act as lookouts, and stuff like that. Also to see that Heisman and O’Konski didn’t cross the big boys.

“We got to them largely through Byers, although your idea about the locksmiths was a big help. Byers is dead. So is Visconti. Mahaffey is shot up and may not make it. Con McClure has a smashed hip and Steve Kohnstamm a broken wrist.”

“God,” she murmured. “What a night!”

As Thanksgiving Day dawned, they drank bourbon and ate some scrambled eggs and finally fell asleep in each other’s arms on the floor in front of the fireplace.

Загрузка...