Crime of Their Life Page 6

  Barney Ryan was the name of the cop who walked the beat on the block where Jack Allen lived. Ryan was before the days of the new breed, back when a cop spoke with a brogue instead of a cultivated accent, when he won more arguments with a nightstick than with logic. There were none of the bleeding hearts to decry police brutality and to coddle the underprivileged when Ryan found it necessary to line some of the boys up against a wall and rap their shins with his nightstick if he wasn’t satisfied with their answers.

  The neighborhood hangout, unlike the candy stores of today, was the local poolroom. Here behind shuttered doors, in the midst of the odor compounded of part stale nicotine, part untended toilets, many an education that had been started in P.S. 104 was completed.

  It had been on a winter night around this time of the year that Barney Ryan strolled into Mac’s Poolroom, his nightstick dangling from the oversized pin that held his badge in place. He closed the door behind him, wrinkled his nose at the characteristic odor of the place, squinted through the ever present fog that swirled in the inverted cone of light spilling from the lamps down onto the green tables.

  Mac, the operator of the poolroom, was sitting in his regular spot behind the glass case displaying cigarettes and an open cigar box. He was thin to the point of emaciation, wore a black, sleeveless sweater over a wool shirt, a spit-stained unlit cigarette dangled from the corner of his lips.

  The muted clicking of the pool balls stopped, all eyes in the room turned to stare at the red-faced man in the blue uniform.

  “Old Doc Schwartz was robbed tonight,” Ryan told them in his husky brogue. “Whoever did it hit the old man too hard. He might die.” His eyes glared balefully around the room. “That would mean that some rat faces a murder one.” He turned to the thin man with the sleeveless sweater. “I warned you what would happen to you if anybody got out of line on my beat. Who did it?”

  Mac’s face gleamed wetly in the reflected light. He lifted the dead cigarette from between his lips, shook his head. “Why ask me, Barney? I ain’t been outta the place since I opened up at noon.” The hand holding the cigarette shook.

  Ryan walked over to the glass case where the thin man sat. Contemptuously he shouldered past him, almost knocking his high stool over. He reached for a sliding panel behind the counter, slid it back, exposing a pile of cartons of cigarettes. “Whoever robbed Doc got away with a lot of butts.”

  He started to turn to face the room when it happened. Rusty Garsen, at table one, inverted his cue in his hands, caught in by the shooting end. It described a short arc, caught the patrolman across the side of his head with a sound like the popping of an overripe pumpkin. Ryan’s uniform hat flew halfway across the room, blood ran down the side of his face as he tumbled into a heap behind the counter.

  There was a sudden silence. The others in the room stood frozen, with vacant, staring expressions on their faces. Suddenly they all seemed to come to life at once. Garsen threw the cue across the room, sprinted for the door. The others stampeded after him. As suddenly as it happened, it was all over. The room was empty save for Mac, the poolroom proprietor, wringing his hands. He stood staring with stricken eyes at the unconscious man, whose blood was running down his face to stain the blue of his uniform a dark black.

  Jack Allen had no idea where he was going when he ran out of the closeness of the poolroom to the cold clearness of the winter night. All he did know was that he was not going home, that he probably could never go home again. He’d listened too often with morbid interest to the description of what happened to cop killers in the back rooms of the precinct houses. He never returned to the East Side.

  Weeks later, when he had bummed his way half across the country, he read that Rusty Garsen had been arrested for the murder holdup of old Doc Schwartz, that Barney Ryan’s uniform cap had saved his life and that he was alive to testify against Rusty. Mac, the poolroom owner, was being tried for receiving stolen property.

  Allen kept traveling west, managed to wangle a job as a page boy on the old Panama Pacific Lines. By the time his first voyage through the Canal brought him back to New York, he had discovered the world outside the East Side and had learned that the combination of a boyish smile, exuberant good health and a lonely female passenger with plenty of money could add up to a very pleasant existence.

  It still held true, he conceded, as the round ball of the sun melted behind the horizon.

  Today, although he’d never see fifty again, there were still plenty of women stalking him, but all too often these days it was the basket cases. The junior members of the staff, like Larry Weston, caught the fancy of the younger, more eligible ones.

  Idly, he wondered if Weston might finally hit the jackpot with the Eldridge girl. The kid had been trying hard enough to connect with someone wealthy for the past three or four cruises. This one was the most likely of all, Allen conceded, lonely, grateful and impressed by the rush Weston was giving her. The pay-off would be worth all the work he was putting into it, but even so Allen didn’t envy the kid.

  Just the memory of the girl’s shrill giggle sent chills up and down the cruise director’s spine. And that old man of hers was no pushover. Allen didn’t envy anybody who had to go up against him. He had that cold dignity, the ability to make a man ill-at-ease with a word. He had been around and wasn’t naive enough to think the third officer was giving his daughter a rush for her good looks. He’d seen the cold calculating look in Eldridge’s eyes several times when he was watching Weston and the girl. Anything Weston got out of him he’d have to work for.

  Allen squinted at the horizon. For a hard-boiled, down-to-earth character like Eldridge, his choice of Lew Herrick, the writer, as an almost constant companion was a little out of character. But it was probably attributable to the fact that Herrick and the old movie star were constant companions. Less puzzling was the old man’s immediate acceptance of the newcomer, Johnny Liddell.

  He frowned as the new passenger popped into his head. There was something about Liddell that made him wonder. Maybe it was the fact that Keen had turned so green when he got his first glimpse of him at dinner. Keen had struck him as a pretty cold character, not easy to stampede. There was no question that he had seen Liddell before and was scared of him. That would seem to indicate that the new passenger wasn’t the amiable, easy-going vacationer he tried to portray.

  It bothered Allen not to be able to put the passengers in their rightful niches. He had spotted from the first the fact that the Sands couple were anything but uncle and niece, just as easily as he had been able to see through Lewis Herrick’s pose as a great and insatiable lover. There had been any number like him prancing around in the past ten years, waging a conscious or unconscious fight against a latent homosexuality and cloaking it by trying to prove they were male to the soles of their shoes.

  But Liddell as a type eluded him. After the Landers incident, it was more than curiosity that made Allen want to know more about the newcomer. He seemed interested in Ingrid, he mused, but then so did almost every other male on the ship, eligible or otherwise. He wondered if it would do any good to have Ingrid make a play for Liddell and find out who or what he really was. He had the unhappy conviction that it would be Liddell who would wind the blonde around his finger rather than vice versa. But it might be worth trying.

  Allen sighed, headed for the companionway.

  It was a good thing that he had finally decided that this would be his last year of cruising. He must be getting old if little things like these bothered him, after all these years!

  CHAPTER 8

  Johnny Liddell stood at the rail, stared down into the thrashing water as it rushed past the hull of the ship to be congealed into a wake at its stern. The sun had gone down in a blaze of red that spilled a rosy glow over the water and left streaks of color in the sky. He took a last drag on his cigarette, flipped it out into the water. The screaming gulls that had followed the Queen from Barbados looking for a meal ticket had long ago given up and turned back.


  Carson Eldridge, his white hair covered by a plaid cap, nodded briefly as he passed Johnny on his second lap around the deck. There was no sign of his daughter, Fran, or the crew cut type on the deck. They were probably in the grand hall dancing to the after-dinner music, Liddell figured.

  Nor had he seen any of his table companions after they had all straggled out of the dining salon in ones and twos after the meal. The honeymooners, Harry and Belle Doyle, had remained oblivious to the rest of the diners through most of the meal, were the first to finish and disappear. Maurie Handel and his well-stacked wife had lingered only a short time after the honeymooners, then had beat a hasty exit. Only the “uncle and niece” were still dawdling over dessert when Liddell had left. He thought he detected signs of disillusionment on the part of the girl, wondered if the idyll would survive to the end of the cruise.

  The door to the Piccadilly Bar opened, Rita Keen stepped out on deck. She saw Liddell leaning against the rail, walked over to him. Her red hair was covered with a wisp of green silk; she had drawn a white cashmere sweater over her shoulders. Her body was ripe, lush. Swelling breasts showed over the top of her low-cut dress; a small waist hinted at the full hips, long shapely legs concealed by the fullness of the skirt.

  She stopped alongside Johnny, looked out at the streaked sky, the expanse of water as smooth as a millpond. “Quite a show tonight,” she commented.

  “In Technicolor,” Liddell agreed.

  She turned to him, gave him the full impact of her slanted eyes. “Would you have a cigarette? I left my purse in the cabin.”

  Liddell fumbled through his pockets, brought out a pack of cigarettes, held one out to her. She stuck it between her lips, accepted a light, waited until he had lit one for himself.

  “The cruise director was right, wasn’t he, Mr. Liddell—”

  “Johnny.”

  The redhead inclined her head. “Okay, Johnny. You did know my husband from some place, didn’t you?”

  Liddell took a deep drag on his cigarette, exhaled in twin streams from his nostrils. The wind caught the smoke, whipped it away. “That what your husband says?”

  Rita shook her head. “He wouldn’t discuss it. Said you just looked like someone he once knew. That’s all it was. Just a resemblance to someone.” She took the cigarette from her mouth, let smoke escape from half-parted lips. “I don’t think he was telling me the truth.” She studied the carmined stain on the end of the cigarette for a moment, brought her eyes up to his face. “Was he?”

  “I’ve never seen Peter Keen before and I never heard the name,” Liddell hedged. “Incidentally, where is your husband?”

  The redhead shrugged, with spectacular effect on the décolleté of her dress. “He’s a gin fiend. Plays every night from right after dinner until bedtime.” She pouted. “I’m a gin rummy widow.”

  Liddell shook his head. “No accounting for tastes.” He let his eyes roam from the top of her head to her feet and back with appropriate stops on the way. “I couldn’t keep my mind on the game knowing something like you was waiting for me at home.”

  She dimpled at the compliment. “Just for that, I’m going to let you buy me a drink.” She took a last drag at the cigarette, flipped it out into the water. She tucked her arm under his. “That is, if you’d like to?”

  “Best offer I’ve had today. But that Piccadilly Bar is jammed. You can cut the smoke with a knife. How about having a drink of some of my private stock? I picked it up in Barbados.”

  The redhead frowned slightly. “In your cabin?” She considered for a moment, shook her head. “You have no idea how these stewards gossip. I don’t think it would be a good idea for me to be seen going into your cabin.” She hesitated for a moment, turned the full power of the slanted eyes on him. “I don’t think there’d be quite as much talk if you were seen going into mine, though. Especially at this hour. And we did some shopping in Barbados, too.”

  “You talked me into it.” He dropped his butt over the railing, let the redhead lead him toward the forward companionway.

  The Keens had a cabin de luxe on the lower promenade deck. The redhead opened the door, led the way in. The sitting room was comfortably furnished with a sofa, a couple of small tables and some upholstered chairs. The entrance to the bedroom beyond was curtained.

  Maurie Handel sat in one of the chairs, facing the door. He held a .45 in his hand that was aimed at a spot a few inches above Liddell’s belt buckle. Wordlessly, he waved Johnny in with the muzzle of the gun.

  The redhead waited until Liddell was in the room, closed and bolted the door after him. She walked over to a table against the wall that held some liquor, made herself a drink, turned, leaned her hips against the edge of the table.

  “Do you always greet your wife’s guests with a .45?” Liddell asked amiably. “I was invited in for a shot. I didn’t know it was going to be a shot in the head.”

  “Very funny,” Handel conceded. “So the boys found out I was on this boat and they flew you down to look me over, to make sure it was the right guy, huh? But you got to report back to them before they’ll know whether or not it pays them to meet the boat. And maybe you won’t be in any condition to report.”

  “You’re scaring me to death, Maurie,” Liddell said. “You know I never bird dogged a pigeon for a hit in my life. And I’m not going to start dirtying my hands with something like you.” He ignored the gun in the man’s hand, walked over to the table with the liquor. “How about that drink you promised me, doll?”

  The redhead chewed at her lower lip, looked nervously from Liddell to her husband and back. “Is he right? Is that why you’re on board? To set him up for the organization?”

  Liddell reached out, caught the scotch bottle by the neck, spilled some into a glass. He dropped some ice into it, swirled the liquor over the ice. “What do you think?” Handel was on his feet, the cords in his neck showing. “Turn around, Liddell. Unless you want to get it in the back.” There was a shrill note of desperation in the disbarred lawyer’s voice. “I didn’t get you in here so you could get cozy with my wife. I brought you here because if it’s either you or me, I intend to walk away from it.”

  Liddell turned, studied the man’s face. There was a faint twitch under his left eye, a thin film of perspiration glistened on his upper lip. “You always do, don’t you, counselor?” He took a long swallow from the glass. “That why you’re so scared?”

  “They’re not scaring me.” He hit his chest with the side of his hand. “They’re not scaring me even a little bit. So they sent you to make sure they got the right guy. So what? There are still four stops on this cruise and they can’t cover them all.”

  Liddell finished the drink, set his glass down on the table. “You’re not scared? Then how come you’re shaking yourself apart?” He dropped his eye to the whitened knuckle on the trigger. “That why you killed Harry Landers? Because you found out he was a private eye and you figured he was sent to finger you?”

  Maurie Handel’s jaw went slack, he stared at Liddell. “The guy who went over the side? That was an accident. He got washed over during a storm—”

  The redhead dropped her glass. “He was a private detective?” She stared at Handel with stricken eyes. “Look, mister, I told you I’d stick with you through thick and thin. But if you’re mixed up in a murder, that scratches everything. Little Rita wants no part of a ride on the thunderbolt. A stool pigeon saving his skin I can stomach, but a killer, pardon me!”

  As Handel started to blurt a denial, Liddell moved in. The disbarred lawyer tried to swing the gun back into firing position, Liddell caught him a crippling blow on the wrist with the side of his hand. Handel screamed his rage, tried to bring his knee up in Liddell’s groin. Johnny caught him under the arms, lifted him and threw him into the chair he had just vacated. The chair went over backward, spilled Handel onto the floor, a tangle of arms and legs.

  Liddell walked over to where the gun lay on the floor, picked it up. He weighed it in the palm of his hand.<
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  “Nice iron,” he grunted. He examined the serial number. “You could get in a lot of trouble carrying a piece like this.”

  Handel was on his hands and knees, staring up at him. The carefully combed hair hung lankly over his face, beads of perspiration glistened at his hairline, along his jowls. ‘I’ve got a license for it.”

  Liddell looked up, grinned bleakly. “So it’s registered in your name. Convenient, huh?”

  Panic widened the lawyer’s eyes until the whites showed. “What do you mean?”

  “If I was doing a job for the organization, look how nice and neat it would be. You got shot with your own gun and when they found out who you really were it would make a lot of sense that you did the Dutch because you were afraid the boys were catching up with you.”

  “No, don’t, Liddell!” Handel crawled over to him on all fours, caught his leg. The perspiration was streaming down his face. “Give me a break, Liddell. You can have everything I’ve got. Money, her, anything. But don’t kill me. Don’t!”

  The redhead stared at the man on his knees, loathing in her eyes. “You trying to use me to buy your own lousy life?” She walked over, put the flat of her foot against his shoulder, toppled him on his side. “I hope he does kill you. If you don’t die of fright first.”

  Handel lay prone on the floor, sobbing. Liddell shook his head, stepped across the prostrate man, walked to a porthole. He threw the .45 out.

  When he turned around, the redhead was staring at him with narrowed eyes, parted lips. “Then you weren’t sent here to set him up?” Her voice was low, sultry.