Murders' Row

FIVE

WHEN I HEARD the siren and saw the red flasher coming up in the mirror, I glanced at the speedometer to make sure I was operating within the law and held on, hoping they’d go past to bother somebody else. They didn’t. I pulled over onto the shoulder, therefore, like a docile citizen, and cranked down the window, waiting for the first policeman to come up.

“What’s the matter, officer?” I asked.

Then I saw the revolver in his hand, and I knew I was in real trouble. They don’t unlimber the firearms for a simple traffic offense. I’d been hoping to make Washington, where I’d have turned in the car for burial, along with everything else connected with the fictitious Lash Petroni, who’d have ceased to exist. That was the first line of defense, if things went wrong. The second was to stick to my Petroni cover and hope for the best.

The one thing I had no authority to do was to reveal myself publicly as a government agent who went around beating up people-not to mention leaving them dead on the floor. That decision was Mac’s to make, not mine.

I had no choice. I drew a long breath and became Lash Petroni until further notice. “I asked you a question, buddy,” I said harshly as the state policeman reached me. “What’s the big idea, stopping me like this? I wasn’t doing over fifty-five, and what’s with the crummy artillery, anyway? Here’s my license-”

“Please keep your hands on the steering wheel, sir.” He was very polite and businesslike. He waited until his partner was in position to back him up before he waved me out with the gun. “Now get out slowly-”

They drove me back the way I’d come. Presently they left the big highway and took me by smaller roads to a building equipped with a tall radio mast, where they turned me over to the county police, with a sigh of relief. They were state cops. Their primary job was seeing that people didn’t kill themselves, or each other, on the public highways. Suspected criminals, even loud-mouthed ones, were just a sideline with them.

The county officers searched me and put me through the fingerprint routine. They also searched the little Ford, which had been brought around by somebody. At least I deducted that was what a couple of them had been doing outside when they came back in with my suitcase-Lash Petroni’s suitcase, to be exact. Mine reposed in a Washington hotel room that was beginning to seem more remote every minute. As for Texas, it was already as unattainable as paradise.

They went through the bag and discovered the switchblade knife hidden in the lining. That had been Mac’s idea. When helping an agent build a cover for a particular assignment, he’s apt to get carried away by creative enthusiasm. I’d thought the knife unnecessary as a prop, but it’s always reassuring to have some weapon along, so I hadn’t fought it very hard. Maybe I should have. It certainly didn’t make the police feel more kindly towards me now, although it did convince them of my low character.

Then we waited. I offered my blustering Petroni act again, got no takers, and subsided on a bench in sullen silence. After a while, the door opened, and a man came in. He was stocky and white-haired, with a heavy, impassive cop face. His uniform was neat enough, but it had seen lots of wear.

“Here you are, Tom,” one of the office help said. “Name: James A. Peters, Chicago. About six-four, about two hundred, dark suit and hat-well, look for yourself. Picked up at eleven-seventeen about twenty miles west on U.S. 50, driving a blue Falcon two-door, Illinois plates.”

“That checks right down the line.” Neither policeman ~: looked at me, but I didn’t think it was accidental that I was present to overhear the conversation. I was being informed, I gathered, that they had the goods on me and I might as well confess. “What’s this?” the white-haired man asked, touching the knife on the counter.

“We found it in his luggage, hidden behind the lining.”

The white-haired one picked up the knife and carried it over to me. He stood over me for a moment without speaking, tossing the knife contemptuously into the air and catching it again-closed, of course, or he’d have cut himself badly. He was probably pretty good with his police revolver, and maybe even with his bare hands, but knives were out of his line and he was proud of it.

So many of them are, these days. Jim Bowie would be startled to hear it, as would Jim Bridger and Kit Carson and all the rest of those rugged old-timers who opened up a wilderness with their Arkansas toothpicks and Green River blades; but nowadays there’s supposed to be something very underhanded and un-American about a knife.

“I’m Sergeant Crowell,” the white-haired man said. “Tom Crowell.”

“If you drop that,” I said, “and damage it, you’ll buy me a new one.”

He caught the knife and looked at it again, raising his eyebrows. “You admit it’s yours?”

“Damn right it’s mine,” I said. “And I want it back, along with my cuff links and cigarette case and all the rest of the stuff those jerks have been pawing through like they owned it.”

“A knife like this is illegal,” he said.

“Be your age, Sergeant,” I said. “Wearing it may be illegal in certain places, but you know as well as I do that in my suitcase, locked in the car trunk-hell, I could carry a Samurai sword back there if I wanted. Legally.”

He sighed. “I guess that’s true, Mr. Peters. But it’s kind of a specialized weapon. Do you mind telling me why you have it?”

“I’m interested in specialized weapons; it’s a hobby of mine.” I got to my feet, which gave me a sudden height advantage of several inches. He was heavier, though. But he wouldn’t be hard to take. Nobody is who kids himself that one deadly weapon is morally better, or worse, than another. I said, “Did you have the state boys flag me down and bring me here just because you heard I was packing a shiv in my suitcase? What’s the matter, did some local taxpayer get cut? Send it to your lab, if you’ve got one. They won’t find any blood on it.”

He looked at me sharply. We both knew that knife was irrelevant-that it had nothing whatever to do with the case-but I wasn’t supposed to know it, yet. He tried to decide whether or not my attitude indicated guilty information. Then he shook his head, dismissing the subject.

“Would you mind telling me where you’ve spent the day, Mr. Peters?”

I said, “I was a day early for an appointment in Washington, so I took a drive over your big bridge and down the peninsula a ways, just sight-seeing. I was coming back to Washington to spend the night when I was stopped.” Saying it, I wondered if there were some way he could check if I’d crossed the toll bridge twice. Usually there isn’t; but I took a step forward and said harshly, to get us off the subject, “What the hell is this all about, anyway? Who do you think you’re pushing around? You hick cops are all alike when you get hold of somebody with an out-of-state license-”

I could have saved my indignation. He had stopped listening. Another policeman had stuck his head in the door. When Crowell looked in his direction, the newcomer nodded briefly and withdrew as silently as he had appeared. Crowell tossed the knife into my open suitcase and turned’t~ me.

“Let’s go in the other office, Mr. Peters.”

“I’m not going anywhere until somebody tells me what-”

He took my arm. “If you please. This way.”

I jerked free and started to speak. Then the door opened and stayed that way, held by the young policeman who had looked in a moment ago. Two people came in. The woman stopped abruptly, staring at me.

“That’s him!” she said. “That’s the murderer!”