with These Hands (Ss) (2002) (8 page)

"That's what comes of not havin' any dough," Skinny said. "We had to make a raise. What easier way to do it?"

"Well," Blubber said, with satisfaction, "we'll get plenty out of this before we're done. Gettin' in here was a break, too. Nobody'd think to look here."

"We better keep movin'," Skinny suggested. "The boss might come out and see us loafin' on the job. Anyway, it's near time for our relief."

The two walked on, each in their respective ways. I stared after them trying to make sense from what I'd heard. One thing was sure. A relief for these two meant that at least two more men, aside from the mysterious boss, were inside. At the very least that made me one against five. It was too many, this late in the evening, especially when I hadn't eaten any dinner.

The ground-floor window looked tempting, but I decided against it. I'd not have time for much of a look before Skinny and Blubber would be back around, and the chances of being seen were too great. I didn't care to start playing cops and robbers with real bullets until I knew what the setup was.

Picking up my coat, I slid back into the bushes and weaved my way toward that tall tree. A leafy branch should offer a way into one of the upper rooms. It didn't seem like so desperate a chance as going for the groundfloor window.

A few drops of rain began to fall, but this was no time to be thinking of that. I looped my raincoat through my belt and went up that tree. From a position near the bole, my feet on the big limb, I could see into a window.

There were two people in the room. One of them was the doll who wore the diamonds. The other was a younger girl, not over twelve years old. While I was looking, the door opened and a guy came in with a tray. He put it down, made some crack to the girl, and she just looked at him. I could see her eyes, and the warmth in their expression would have killed an Eskimo.

Maybe I'm dumb. Maybe you'd get the idea sooner than me. But only now was it beginning to make sense; the girls were prisoners in what was probably their own home.

The babe who wore the ice that night had been working as a plant. She may have been forced to do it while they held her sister here. Maybe there were others of the family in there too.

Who this bunch were and how they got here did not matter now. The thing that mattered was to get those two girls out of there, and now. Once they were safe, then we could get to Mooney and spread the whole thing in his lap.

The trouble was I knew how these boys operated.

Randolph Seagram, lying back there on the floor with a knife sticking out of him was evidence enough. They were playing for keeps, and they weren't pulling any punches.

Nobody had rubber teeth in this setup.

Nevertheless, I seemed to be cutting myself in. And that was the big question. After all, I wasn't any private dick.

There was no payoff if I was successful and at least one of those guys in that house had reason enough to hate my insides.

I could get down out of this tree, go back over the wall, make a call to Mooney, and then go home and get a good night's sleep.

I had a good notion to do it. It was the smart thing to do. Except for one consideration.

This was a tough mob. Maybe they had left the doll alone up to now. It looked as if they had. But there was no reason why they should any longer. They might decide to blow and knock off the babes when they left. They might decide to do worse. And they might make that decision within the next ten minutes.

I am still thinking like that when I hear one of the boys down below running. He's heading toward the gate.

Another car comes in and swings up under my tree. Two men get out, one of them carrying a briefcase.

"Something's going down," I tell myself, "something interesting." See? That explains it. I'm just a nosy guy.

Curious.

There was a dark window a little to the left of the one to the girls' room. Working out on the limb ... I was out on a limb in more ways than one. I swung down to the ledge of the dark window. It was a French window, opening on a little, imitation balcony.

With my knife blade, I got it open and stepped down in the room.

For a moment I hesitated, getting my bearings. Then I felt my way through the room to the door.

The hallway was dark, too, and I made my way along it to the stairs, then down. I could see light coming from the crack of a door that was not quite closed and could hear the low murmur of voices.

Four men were inside. That scared me. There were two men outside, and two who had just arrived. Counting the three whom I already knew to be inside and the two who had just arrived, there should now have been five in the room.

That meant that there was another guy loose in the house.

Crouching near the foot of the stairs, I peered into the room and listened. I could see three men. One of them was a hoodlum, or I don't know the type when I see one. The other two were the ones who had come in the car, and I got the shock of my life.

The nearer of the pair, sitting sideways to me, was Ford Hiesel, a famous criminal lawyer, a man who had freed more genuine murderers than any two living men. The man facing me across the table was another famous attorney, Tarrant Houston, elderly, brilliant, and a man who had for a time been a judge and was now director of some of the biggest corporations on the Coast. The fourth man, the one I couldn't see, was speaking.

"You have no choice, Mr. Houston. If you attempt to notify the police, the girls will be killed. Their safety lies in your doing just what you are told.

"As the family's lawyer you are in the perfect position to help us. We know Dwight Harley and his wife are in Bermuda. They've left here one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in negotiable securities. If we took them, we'd get maybe thirty thousand dollars from a fence. But you can get their full value.

"You take these bonds, turn them into cash, and bring it here; I want you to work fast. I may add, that you'll be watched."

"What assurance do I have," Houston demanded, "that you will release the girls after you get the money?"

"Because we have no reason to add murder to this. If we get the money, we leave, and the girls remain here."

"All right." Houston stood up. "Since I have no choice in the matter. I can handle the bonds. But I wish you'd allow me to communicate with Harley."

"Nothing doing." The reply was sharp. "You can handle this. I'm sure you've done transactions for him before."

Crouched there by the steps, I stiffened slightly. That voice. I knew it from somewhere.

What Houston didn't know was that murder was already tied in with this deal, and what I knew was that those thugs would never leave the girls alive when they left.

Nor, the chances were, would Houston make it either.

"What's your part in this, Hiesel?" Houston demanded, as he rose from the table.

The criminal lawyer shrugged. "The same as yours, Houston. These men knew of me. They simply got me to contact you. I don't know the girls. Nor do I know Harley, but I've no desire to see the girls or Harley killed over a few paltry dollars."

"And some of those paltry dollars," Houston replied sharply, "will no doubt find their way into your pockets."

He turned and walked to a door to the outside, and Hiesel followed him.

As they reached the door, I glanced back through the archway into the library where they had talked.

A man was standing there, and he was looking right at me.

The gun in his hand was very large, and I knew his face as well as I knew my own.

It was a round, moonlike face, pink and healthy. There were almost no eyebrows, and the mouth was peculiarly flat. When he smiled, he looked cherubic and pleasant.

When his mouth closed and his eyes hardened, he looked merciless and brutal.

He was an underworld character known as Candy Chuck Marvin.

"So," he said, "we've a guest." And he added, as I got up and walked out into the open, "Long time no see, Morgan."

"Yeah," I said. "It has been a long time. I haven't seen you since the Redden mob was wiped out. As I remember, you took a powder at just about that time."

"That's right." He gestured me into the library. The fourth man, the hoodlum in the gray plaid suit, had a gun too. "And where are the boys who wiped out the Redden mob now?"

It took me a minute to get it. "Where are they? Why, let's see." I scowled, trying to recall. "Salter was killed by a hitand-run driver. Pete Maron hung himself, or something.

Lew Fischer and Joey Spats got into an argument over a card game and shot it out, both killed. I guess they are all dead."

"That's right. They are." Candy Chuck smiled at me.

"Odd coincidence, isn't it? Fortunately, Pete Maron was light. That hook held his weight. I wasn't sure that it would when I first hung the rope over it. Salter was easy.

It's simple enough to run a man down. And it's not too difficult a matter to fake a 'gun battle.' I pay my debts, Morgan."

I smiled at him. Candy Chuck Marvin was cunning, without any mercy, and killing meant nothing to him.

He had been convicted once, when a boy. After that, nobody ever found any witnesses.

"But this time there's going to be a change," I said.

"You're turning those girls, loose."

He laughed. "Am I?" He sat down on the corner of the desk and looked at me. "Morgan, I've found one of those setups I used to dream about. The boys pulled the Madison Tool payroll job, and they were on the lam. They came to me for a place to hole up. Then I got to talking with the little Harley girl on a train. It was perfect, see? Her parents gone, all the servants on vacations. The two girls were going to Atlanta-on a surprise visit. All we had to do was take them off the train at the next stop, return here and move in, a safe hideout for at least thirty days."

"Looked good, didn't it?" I said. "Until Blubber Puss followed the girl out of that bar."

His eyes hardened. "Was that you who beat up on Buckley? I might have known it." Then he nodded. "Yes," he said ruefully, "that was the bad part. We've got the sixty grand the boys lifted on the payroll, but it's hot money. Using it would be a dead giveaway. There was a little money on the girls, but my boys eat. So I sent the babe out with Buckley in order to pick up some cash."

"Winding up," I said dryly, "by knocking off Seagram."

"You know about that?" He looked at me thoughtfully.

"You know too much."

Right then I wouldn't have sold my chances of getting out of this mess for a plugged nickel.

I wasn't kidding myself any about Candy Chuck. Take the wiping out of those killers back East. Nobody had ever tumbled that those killings weren't just like they looked- accident, suicide, and gunfight. Candy Chuck knew all the answers.

"There's no end to it," I told him. "You got in a bind and let Seagram learn too much. So you knocked him off.

That got the police stirred up. Now you've got me on your hands. Are you going to knock me off too? Don't you see?

It just leads from one to another. You got sixty grand in hot money, and for all the good it does you now, you might as well have none. You've got a lawyer with a lot of bonds, but you haven't any cash to work with. The trouble with you, Marvin, is that you figure it all your way. Just like when you were so sure I'd throw that Williams fight because you threatened me."

Candy Chuck Marvin's eyes narrowed and his mouth tightened. "You'd have been smart to let me forget that," he said. "I dropped ten grand on that fight."

"You're not the kind of guy who forgets anything," I said. "And you're in the spot, not me."

This hoodlum with the rod is standing by taking it all in. Most of my talk has been as much for his benefit as for Candy Chuck's. I knew Marvin liked to hear himself tell how smart he was. I knew he would keep on talking. The longer he talked, the better chance I had for a break. One was all I wanted, brother, just one!

The hoodlum was beginning to shift his feet in a worried fashion. He was getting ideas. After all, he and his pals were right in the middle of a strange city, the cops were on their trail, they didn't have any money, and they were trusting to Marvin to pull rabbits out of a hat.

Marvin was good. He had hostages. He was living in one of the biggest, finest homes in the city, the last place anybody would look. Tarrant Houston wouldn't peep for fear of getting the girls killed. Nobody was around to interfere, and soon Houston would be cashing in a lot of bonds.

"Think of your men, Marvin," I said. I turned to the hood. "What do you think will happen to you guys if the cops move in? You guys get sold down the river. You take the rap, and the smart boy here has his pretty lawyer to get him out of it. If you ask me, you guys are just losing time from your getaway to let Marvin use you for a fast take-if it works."

"Shut up." Marvin was on his feet.

"Y'know, the guy's got somethin'."

The voice was a new one and we all turned. I jumped inside my skin. Whit Dyer had a rep like Dillinger's. He was no smart Joe, but he had a nickel's worth of brains, a fast gun hand, and courage enough for three.