Too Many Crooks (21 page)

I stepped inside, trying to relax. "Seven," I said.

Another man came in behind me, said, "Four," and leaned against the wall. I'd never seen him before and he paid no attention to me. He got out at the fourth floor, then we went up to seven. I looked around the hall and waited till the elevator started down again, then walked to the door numbered 712.

For a moment I was undecided whether to ease the door open and hope the surreptitious movement wouldn't be noticed, or merely swing it wide suddenly. Then I grabbed the knob, turned it, and shoved. There was nobody inside the room. The door banged with a small noise against the wall. I stepped inside and looked round rapidly, but the office was empty. A door in the wall on my left was closed.

I felt frustrated, angry. My whole play depended on Baron's being here. I was so keyed up, so much depended on this, that I thought only that he must have stepped out for a moment, maybe gone to the restroom or out for coffee. I didn't even consider the chance that he might be in one of the two other rooms of his suite. I headed for his desk, then my eyes fell on the big wastebasket beside it. I took the box from under my arm, checked its dials, and placed it in the wastebasket, partially covering it with some crumpled papers.

I was bent over when I heard footsteps in the hallway. My nerves jumped and I jerked out my gun. I stepped to the wall alongside the door and waited as the footsteps came up to the door. I aimed my gun at it, waited for Baron to come inside, hoping it was Baron. The walking feet went past, stopped. Then everything was quiet; I couldn't hear a sound. When I did hear a sound, it wasn't at all what I wanted to hear. It was Baron's voice—and it came from behind me near one of the connecting doors.

"All right," he said. "Turn around. Slowly."

I jerked my head around, starting to swing the gun up, but then I moved slowly as he'd suggested. The revolver in Baron's hand was a small one, probably .32, but it was big enough. And it was pointed squarely at my chest.

Baron was halfway across the room from me, and when I thought of all he had done, I wanted to jump for him, get my hands on him, smash them into his face. But I knew I couldn't take more than one step toward him before he fired. Anyway, he was no good to me dead.

He said, "Drop that gun. Kick it over here."

I hesitated for another long second, then dropped the gun, nudged it over the carpet with my foot. This wasn't the way I'd planned our meeting at all. Baron was supposed to be squirming under my gun.

He stooped and picked up the revolver and dropped it into his coat pocket, his eyes never leaving my face. Then his large even teeth flashed in an uncertain smile. "I don't understand this, Mr. Scott. Put up your hands."

I stretched my arms over my head, thinking it must be close to five-fifteen now. I said, "You're surprised I'm not dead, I suppose."

"Mainly that you're here. Why here, Mr. Scott?"

"You can guess. You've framed me so tight there's no chance for me to get out. I came here to . . . pay you back, let's say."

He was frowning. "I see. You came here to kill me."

I didn't speak. He went on, "I suppose you know all of it."

"All the important bits. Enough to have stopped you, I think. If you hadn't had me on the run all the time."

Baron pulled back the hammer of his little gun. "You know, of course, that you'll never live to tell anybody."

"You can't kill me here. How are you going to manage it, Baron? And if you walk me out of the building, I'll run for it."

He said coldly, "Why can't I kill you here, Mr. Scott? You're in a police uniform, you came here to kill me, you forced your way into my office." He stopped for a moment, frowning. "I've never killed a man before, believe it or not."

"You murdered Emmett Dane."

When he spoke, it seemed as if he were talking more to himself than to me, as though he might still be trying to convince himself that he wasn't actually guilty of murder.

He said, "No. That's not true. I've never killed a man. It was Zimmerman. He and Gibbons—"

"Nuts, Baron. You don't have to pull the trigger to kill a man. Not when you can hire professional hoods like Zimmerman. And Norris. Maybe they pulled the triggers for you, but you're even more guilty than they are."

He suddenly took a step toward me, his eyes widening. "I thought you were in jail. Or"—he glanced at his watch, the gun never wavering from me—"dead. I don't understand."

"There's a lot you don't know, Baron. A lot you should know—besides what happened to your crooked police chief and his pals."

I thought his finger tightened on the trigger and I said rapidly, "I can't tell you if I'm dead. You'll never figure it out by yourself. Your operation's falling apart, Baron."

He swallowed and I saw muscles working under the fat at the sides of his jaws. I went on, "Some of it goes clear back to the day I met you and Dorothy Craig at the Manning home. Before I guessed you were passing Dorothy off to Dane and me as Lilith Manning."

He bit his lip, frowning at me, and I kept it going. I talked steadily for a full minute while he stared at me, and I tried to cover, fast, all the high spots of his operation here, the muscle and the con and the murder: the Craig-Manning deception, the rezoning angle, the foundation gimmick, the murder of Dane and the forged will; everything clear up to the moment when Chief Thurmond had started to stop the car this afternoon. I finished it up: "They meant to murder me, Baron, just as Carver and Blake tried once before, and I suppose you could have breathed easier then. But even with me out of the way, there's too much for you to cover, too many guys you've had to bribe or blackmail. It's not worth the lousy million bucks, Baron. It won't work, no matter what you do."

"It will." He spoke softly, earnestly, and again it was as though he spoke more to himself than to me. "And it isn't just a million. It's millions, literally millions upon millions. A city . . . an entire city, Mr. Scott."

"You'll never—"

"That's enough," he interrupted. He had talked with me, and let me talk, seeming hardly to hear my words or be aware of his own, apparently trying to screw his courage up to the point where he could pull the trigger of the gun in his hand. He looked now as if he had made up his mind, as though he'd got the needed courage from somewhere. His face was pale and beaded with perspiration, jaws clamped tightly together.

I had been straining my ears, listening with part of my mind for some sound, any sound from outside, from the street seven stories below us. Now I heard the ready wail of a siren. It didn't have to mean anything—but there was a chance it did. And I had to keep him talking, preoccupied, for at least another minute or two.

"Baron," I said sharply. "Wait a minute. Thurmond and his two buddies are down below, tied up in their car, the car I drove here. When the other cops in town, the honest ones, know what Thurmond's been messed up in, they'll tear him apart. He'll spill and they'll get to you finally. You said you haven't killed a man, not yet, not yourself. You've still got a chance. You—"

He broke in, staring, his voice tight. "I have no choice."

I knew from the expression on his face, the slight convulsive movement of his right hand, that he was going to shoot. His lips tightened over his teeth and he thrust the gun slightly toward me as I jumped aside, trying to get away from the muzzle of his gun. But I was too slow.

The gun cracked and simultaneously I felt the bullet slam into my middle, felt the sharp stinging sensation as the slug tore through flesh and muscle. I stumbled, fell to my knees, and twisted my body toward Baron as he stepped toward me, the gun pointed at my head.

The next moment seemed stretched, elongated, and dozens of distinct impressions raced through my mind. Baron's twisted, staring face, the louder wail of the siren below, the absence of pain in my side except for the slight stinging sensation there, the ugly bore of the gun in Baron's hand. And, in that moment, I knew that if I tried to jump him he'd fire again and again, and kill me.

"Baron!" I shouted. "Wait. A thousand people heard that shot."

Something in my tone or words stopped him momentarily. He paused, not yet squeezing the trigger. I pilled out the words. "I mean it. Every word either of us has said for the last five minutes has been heard by half the people in town. You'd better listen to me, Baron."

The intense, strained expression on his face slowly added and his eyes got puzzled. I got my feet under me, hands pressed to my side, feeling the warm blood spilling upon them. But there wasn't yet any real pain; there wouldn't be for a while. I said, "I planted a short-wave radio in here, a small sending set. It's in your wastebasket. Take a look."

His expression stayed the same. "You're lying. You couldn't have. I was gone only a few seconds. You're lying."

"Take a look."

He didn't move.

I heard the siren below moaning faintly. "You hear that siren, Baron? It's for you. And I'll bet these cops aren't friends of yours. You can't have any left. All your pals should be running by now. Jim Norris and his hoods, all your chums, they all know the operation's ruined now, Baron. They'll be pulling out."

He moved to the wastebasket, fumbled inside it, and even before he saw the small sending set, when his hand had merely touched it, his face changed. The flesh seemed to sag and his skin whitened. He pulled the small box out, glanced at it, then looked at me again. "You couldn't have. I heard you come in. There wasn't time." He looked at the plain box, at its grilled top.

I said, "No, Baron, nothing fancy. All I had to do was drop it in there. No outside wires, no nothing. Just some transistors and coils, a battery and a microphone. There's another set almost like that a few blocks from here, a receiving set. At the Red Cross stand, friend. And every word you've said, every word I've said—all that's happened here has been booming over the two loudspeakers there at that Red Cross platform. A thousand people must have heard your words, heard that gunshot. By now half the town knows about it. It's not just me any more, Baron. It's Seacliff. It's the whole town."

I hoped to God I was right, hoped that Betty had made it to the speakers, let everything her receiving set picked up blare out over the public-address system there, over Main Street and a good chunk of town. Because if anything had gone wrong, Baron could still win.

He gently placed the box on his desk and looked away from it to the wide window open at the front wall of his office, but he kept the gun pointed at me all the time.

He glanced out the window, down seven stories to the street, and then raised his eyes, skimmed his sight over the length of Main Street toward the Red Cross stand, more than two blocks away. His gaze was away from me for a full second or two, but I took only one step toward him and his eyes were on me again, the gun pointing at my chest.

I stopped, tensing the muscles in my legs, but then I saw Baron's face and knew he was shaken, unnerved and frightened by what he must have seen. His face was an almost sickly gray, and his mouth was partly open, the lips slack. The gun drooped until it pointed at the floor between him and me and he said so softly I could barely hear him, "My God."

Then I heard, in the hall outside, the slap of running feet. "Here's your cops, Baron," I said, but he didn't seem to hear me.

I suppose I should have known what was going through his mind; maybe I should have been able to stop him. I didn't stop him, though. For one thing, he didn't move quickly, didn't suddenly jerk into motion. He looked at me, unseeing, his eyes staring through me. Then he looked out of the window again, looked far down below him to the street, and then glanced at me once more. But his eyes merely brushed over me and then around his office, and he turned, it seemed slowly, and thrust his head and shoulders through the yawning window.

I yelled and jumped toward him, a fiery pain darting through my side. The door behind me burst open as I jumped and grabbed for Baron's foot, my fingers just brushing his shoe, and then he was gone. I leaned forward, one hand pressed against the side of the window, and I saw him fall, barely turning in the air. He didn't cry out; not a sound came from his lips. His form seemed to became smaller as he plummeted toward the sidewalk, and then he hit.

I had never seen a man fall from a high building before, and I hope I never see it again. It would almost have been less terrible if he had screamed. But it was strange what thought was forecast in my mind even seconds after he was a kind of jelly down there on the cement. I couldn't help wondering if Baron, in that last horrible moment before he struck, seeing the sidewalk rushing inevitably toward him, had thrust his hands out to break his fall. I don't know, but I imagine that he did.

Chapter Nineteen

I felt a hand on my shoulder, but for a moment longer I looked down at the sidewalk, thinking about Baron as he had been a few minutes ago and as he was now. I could see hundreds of people below on the street, like bugs crawling. Two and a half blocks away, around the Red Cross stand, the street was dotted with figures; cars were double-parked at both ends of that block, and more figures moved this way toward the Diamond Building in an accelerating stream.

In a few frightening seconds, Baron must have seen his monstrous dream being ripped to shreds, got a glimpse of what was happening in the city below him—and the knowledge of what would happen to him in the future. And he had jumped. I turned, one hand pressed against my side, a slight weakness and dizziness blurring my sight for a second. A man in a blue serge suit stood before me, heavy-lidded eyes fixed on my face. Behind him were other men, uniformed officers. One man in uniform stood in the doorway, facing the hall, waving other people back.

The man in front of me said, "Lieutenant Casey, Scott. Come along." His voice wasn't friendly, but he glanced at the hand against my side, saw the red stain of blood over my fingers. "How bad is that, Scott?"

"I don't think it'll kill me. If the state doesn't, I should live a while."

He stepped past me and looked out the window, then pulled his head back, distaste wrinkling his features. He glanced at my bloody side again. "We better get that fixed. Just in case."