The Third Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 25 Classic Mysteries

Welcome Home, Pal

Originally appeared in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, June 1973.

There were eight of us in the prison library. We’d drifted in one by one, choosing books and magazines and finding chairs at various tables. If a guard happened to look in he’d never suspect a meeting had been called to discuss a subject of the highest priority.

Murphy was the last to amble in. I watched over the edge of my newspaper as he fingered a Jules Verne from a bookshelf and shuffled over to sit down across the table from me.

Except for the missing face — Kowalski’s — all were present and accounted for.

I called the meeting to order by clearing my throat. There was a rustle of news print, book pages, and shifting bodies as one and all gave me his attention.

“You know the problem,” I said out of the side of my mouth in a whisper that razored all the way to Ordway, who sat furthest from me. “The parole board has met. And the lousy creeps have opened the front gate for Kowalski.”

A mutter of sullen anger slipped through the reading room.

“At least Kowalski can’t leave the state without breaking his parole,” Myrick said, not moving his lips. He was a member of the team by virtue of his inclinations to write stacks of checks with other people’s names on them.

“Beyond the walls and past the gate,” Ordway pointed out, “Kowalski is like on the moon, far as we’re concerned.”

Ordway is a soft-spoken little guy with big ears and large round eyes. His mama had masterminded a fur warehouse job. Mama had got the furs, Ordway the rap. I was fond of Ordway. How many guys would go to such lengths for their mama?

“I didn’t think the parole board would be so dumb,” Murphy said. “Anybody can look at Kowalski and tell he’s a ruffian.”

Murphy certainly didn’t look like one. He was a handsome, blue-eyed Irishman. He wasn’t a crook, in the sense that the rest of us were. With a big bat and sticky glove, Murph had once second-based his way almost into the majors. Trouble was, he loved women. Just about all women. And any woman he loved, he felt he should marry. Free love is one thing. But the courts still take a dim view of bigamy. Murph was doing time on three counts.

“That don’t cut no ice,” Jellison said, a pickpocket without that finesse that separates the real pros from the better-than-average. Jellison was doing a long stretch this time, being a three-time loser. “What the parole board has done, the parole board has done. Bellyaching about it won’t help one damn bit.”

“I’ll give you a bellyache,” Murph said.

“You and whose army?”

I tapped the table with my knuckles in the library quiet, restoring order.

Determined to have the last word, Jellison said, “Curly, inform Mr. Murphy that he should offer constructive suggestions when he opens his big yap.”

I ignored the crack and Murph let it pass. Kowalski’s being on the outside was too important to waste time wrangling.

“The chair is open to suggestions,” I said. “How do we restore Kowalski inside these walls where we can keep an eye on him?”

Nobody had any offerings for several minutes. The silence was broken only by the fussing of a bluejay in the tree outside the west windows. If the warden had dropped in right then, he’d have smiled in satisfaction, seeing eight of his boys apparently wrapped up in good literature.

Byers was the first to venture an idea. “I can bust Kowalski! I’ll go to the warden and confess that Kowalski was with me on the last safe and loft job.”

Mirrored in seven other faces, contempt for his idea withered Byers a little. His neck reddened.

“You mean the job where you parked your heap by a fire plug and waltzed out with the loot while a cop was writing you a ticket?” Murph inquired disgustedly.

Byers shot a withering look of his own. “So you got a better idea, Pretty Boy? Maybe you could sick that little number, Darlene, onto Kowalski, the woman-crazy galoot.”

Like that. From the mouths of babes, or dummies like Byers. The sudden inspiration jolted through the room and everyone was suddenly looking at Murphy.

“Now wait a minute!” His library voice was rising almost to natural pitch. “I wouldn’t let a monkey like Kowalski in a thousand miles of a nice kid like Darlene!”

“So she’s nice,” Ordway said. “So is my mama. But Darlene knows the score. With his yen for feminine charms, Kowalski would be putty in her hands, to coin a phrase. She could lead him like Eve leading Adam to the apple tree.”

“Into busting his parole,” Jellison added, as if Ordway’s suggestion needed clarification.

Murphy looked at me for help. “Curly, you’re the brain in this outfit, the educated guy who could con his way into social circles, the keeper of the library. Tell these bohunks what a lousy idea it is!”

“Murph,” I said with a sigh, “wish I could agree with you. But I think Byers has displayed a rare stroke of genius, perhaps the highest moment of his life. Darlene is the one weapon we have on the outside against Kowalski. He has met her already. With the slightest encouragement from her, he would be foaming at the mouth.”

“You guys make me sick! I think I’ll go throw up. To ask me to ask a kid like Darlene—”

“Aw, come off it, Murph,” Granger said, a once-successful off-track bookie. “It ain’t like we was asking anything drastic. All Darlene has got to do is encourage him along a little until he breaks his parole.”

“No,” Murphy said, thumping the table top softly with his palm.

“For us, Murph,” Ordway pleaded.

“No! In the first place, Darlene wouldn’t do it.”

“How do you know?” Byers asked reasonably. “You ain’t even asked her yet. Visitors’ day is tomorrow. You could ask her tomorrow.”

“No!” Murph stuck to his guns, although, feeling the strain of seven other overpowering presences, he was beginning to sweat.

“I know what’s eating Murph,” Jellison said.

“Yeah?” Murphy shot an angry look. “Like what?”

“Like you’re scared to expose Darlene to a lady killer like Kowalski,” Jellison shot back. “That’s right, Murph. You think you’re the end of all lover boys. But with his big, rough, kind of ugly good looks Kowalski might make you look kind of pale. You’re scared of the competition, boy, afraid of the contest.”

Murph was in an angered crouch, halfway out of his chair. “Punk, any dame who takes my brand wears it for keeps. They never get over old Murphy-boy. I got wives the courts have never even heard about!”

“Yeah,” Jellison needled, “you have to marry them.”

I reached and grabbed Murphy’s arm, my grip coaxing him back into his chair. “Easy, Murph. You want us all to draw solitary from brawling?”

“Well, okay,” he said, tight-lipped. “But tell the punk to keep his yap shut! Darlene would stay true blue to me if Cassanola himself came along.”

“Casanova,” I corrected, and Jellison put in, “You got talk, Murph. But talk is cheap. I ain’t seen you proving anything. If you got the guts, put up or shut up. Sick Darlene onto Kowalski and just see if her faithful appearances on visitors’ day don’t shortly stop.”

Murphy sat breathing thinly. He looked slowly from face to face. For him, it was a moment of being starkly alone, the pack waiting for his reaction.

“Okay,” he snarled, “I’ll show you. But just how is my girl supposed to jerk the parole out from under Kowalski?”

“Well,” Byers leered, “she could—”

“Oh, no!” Murph grated. “There are some measures to which I will not agree!”

“Sure, Murph,” I placated. “And your terms are acceptable.”

“So?” Murphy threw at me.

“So let me think a minute,” I said. “Being more or less your captain, boys, I need a moment to crack a gray cell.”

Everyone pretended to read, affording me more than a dozen moments. I found the factors conducive to clear thinking, the absolute quiet, the need to finger Kowalski, the urgency of the time element, and the prospect of a weapon on the outside in the form of a cute doll.

Unfortunately, I have not always thought so clearly in the past, such as the time I perjured myself before a judge who did seem slightly senile. On that occasion I was trying to help a friend who had helped himself to sizeable company funds and needed an alibi. It was a greater misfortune not to receive my promised share of the aforesaid company funds.

I raised my head slowly and felt the room taking in and holding a breath.

I gave a nod to their expectant gazes.

“I have the solution,” I announced. “Darlene is still working as a cocktail waitress in the same place?”

“Sure,” Murph said. “Working. Paying her taxes. Visiting me every chance. And just counting the days until we can get a Mexican marriage license.”

“Excellent,” I said. “Then she will have no trouble in ruining Kowalski’s parole. I predict that we shall see Kowalski within a week or two, if Darlene is as faithful as you say, Murph.”

“She will prove the most faithful of all my wives,” Murph said, now having built himself beyond fear of contradiction. “But just what is she to do?”

“Working in the nightclub, she will experience no trouble in making a connection,” I said. “She is simply to buy a deck or two of heroin, plaint it in Kowalski’s place of abode, and then simply place an anonymous phone call to his parole supervisor.”

The simplicity and absolute workability of the scheme brought their nods and generous remarks of admiration. In here, at least, the well-mannered, well-spoken Harrison Currance Abbott, otherwise known as Curly, the repetitive failure on the outside, was top of the roster.

Darlene was every bit as good as Murphy’s word, and my prediction as to Kowalski’s return missed by only a couple of days.

We were gathered in the prison library when Kowalski came barging in. He looked rather glum at first. No one even dared to think about the chain of little events that had returned him here. For the eight of us, it would be a secret for all time to come.

Kowalski had figured an explanation that satisfied his own mind. As we broke library rules and crowded around him, he said, “Yeah, it’s me. Lousy fuzz framed me. Planted some heroin in my room and nailed me for parole violation. That’s why I’m back here.”

Murph pounded Kowalski on the shoulder while I grabbed and pumped his hand.

“Tough break,” Murph said, “but it sure is good to see you, Kowalski!”

Everybody murmured approval of that sentiment, and as he looked from face to face, Kowalski began losing his glum.

“Come to think of it,” he said, his teeth glinting in the first stages of a smile, “it’s not so bad seeing you monkeys either!”

I let out an easy breath. His experience seemed not to have unduly upset Kowalski psychologically. And that was important. As team captain, I was certainly counting on Kowalski to pitch us to another inter-prison championship.

“You got back just in time,” I remarked. “Baseball season starts next week.”

For a second, the merest glint of suspicion flicked across Kowalski’s big face. But how could we have broken his parole? So now his smile came full blown and eager.

“I guess you bums were plenty worried by the thought of starting without me. You’d never get anywhere.”

Which was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.