The Noir Mystery MEGAPACK ™: 25 Modern and Classic Mysteries Read online

  Weak and dizzy, he struggled across the shack and stumbled out into the darkness. He had taken two steps across the wet clay when his knees suddenly gave out and he went down.

  He was still pitching forward when bright lights stabbed out from all sides, pinning him pitilessly in their glare. McGee knew the lights were on him and that men were pounding forward, but all he could do was sit in the mud and sob harshly. Then machine-guns in the hands of the sharply halting men were on him.

  “You’re covered, McGee!” It was Inspector Eldritch’s voice, lashing at him out of the darkness. “One move and you’ll be blasted! Throw away your gun.”

  McGee moved weakly and the gun tumbled into the mud. Then Eldritch and half a dozen of his men in plain clothes, followed by uniformed officers were swarming over and around him, covering him with machine-guns and pistols and automatic rifles as Eldritch slapped at his clothing.

  “You crazy Irishman, you’ve really fixed yourself now!” shouted Eldritch. “I almost believed your insane yarn back there until you knocked me out. Then, when I came to and worked myself loose, I found out about your going to Mainwaring’s friends with a ransom demand and—”

  “Sitting—on your—brains,” McGee gasped, then he managed a twisted grin. “You dope, I—”

  “Hey, Inspector!” One of the uniformed men was racing back from an inspection of the shack. “Mainwaring ain’t there, but two other guys are—Doc Luger and an investigator named Eckson from Pinnacle Insurance.”

  “Luger?” Eldritch whirled, staring at McGee’s grinning face through narrowed eyes. “Irish, what’s behind this, anyhow? What was Luger doing out—”

  “Who called you?” McGee cut in, recovering some of his strength. “Lofting, the lawyer, wasn’t it?”

  “Of course it was,’’ Eldritch snapped. “He’s right here with us now. Luger fell for your scheme and wanted to raise the money to save Mainwaring. Lofting did the right thing, though. He came straight to the police and told the whole story.”

  “That’s right, McGee,” Lofting himself snapped, pushing his white face into the circle of light. “You ought to know better than to expect an attorney, sworn to uphold the law, to play along with your schemes.”

  “You dope,” McGee growled, grinning at Eldritch. “Lofting’s the guy who shot Mainwaring. I got a good look at him as he fired through the window but I didn’t know who he was, then. Later, when I went around calling, I saw him and recognized him instantly as the killer I’d seen shooting lead into Mainwaring.”

  “That’s a lie!” Lofting yelled furiously, his face contorted with rage. “You were out of sight in the hall—” He stopped short, catching at the words, staring wildly around at the circle of gaping faces.

  “That was what McGee himself told me, tonight,” he creaked hoarsely. “He said he’d been out in the hall so he couldn’t see the killer. He—”

  McGee laughed harshly. “That won’t buy you anything in court, Paul, but it points the way. You can see he’s the guilty rat, Inspector, and with that to go on you’ll be able to dig up evidence enough to burn him. Of course I didn’t get a look at the killer, or I wouldn’t have gone out on a limb like I did tonight. I had to smoke him out the hard way—and I did.”

  “But—but Luger and that detective—” Eldritch cried, bewildered.

  “My brains,” McGee said modestly. “I called on all three suspects with a wild yarn. But I first came out here and daubed myself with red clay. It’s the only red clay in this section and I took good care to parade around where they’d notice it. I could just see their eyes glitter when they spotted my ‘carelessness.’ This would make a good hide-out, so each one figured I had Mainwaring hidden out here at the clay pit. I wanted them to think that so their reactions would betray the guilty one. But I made it definite that any police interference would get Mainwaring killed.

  “Ashley and Doc Luger both wanted Mainwaring found alive, if possible, so they kept away from the police. Luger showed the most nerve by coming out alone to try to ‘rescue’ his friend. Ashley brought in a clever insurance detective. But Lofting, here, didn’t want Mainwaring found alive. All he wanted was his corpse located, to establish evidence of death so the insurance money would be paid. So Lofting went straight to the cops—and wrote his ticket to the chair.”

  Eldritch clenched his fists and looked at the sky.

  “By heck,” he groaned. “By heck, he’s done it again. I get that Irish imbecile ticketed for the last walk and he wiggles out of... Watch him!” Lofting, taking advantage of momentary inattention, was whirling away in a desperate bid for freedom. He kneed one bluecoat, butted another, and sprang out of the light.

  A policeman off to one side raised his tommy-gun. It stuttered for a second and something heavy and limp went crashing down into the deep clay pit to land with a splash far below. There were no further sounds of movement.

  Eldritch mopped his forehead.

  “Oh, well. That’s the only kind of a trial where you can’t fix the jury. Listen, you screwball, where is Mainwaring’s body? We’ve torn the town apart tonight—”

  McGee laughed. “You always said the only friend I had in town was Jake, the morgue keeper, Paul. Jake was a real friend, tonight. He helped me undress Mainwaring’s corpse, ticketed it as a floater out of the river, and stuck it in the John Doe cooler at the police morgue.”

  A RAT MUST CHEW, by Gary Lovisi

  Originally appeared in Hardboiled #23.

  Jimmy Dongen was a Staten Island wise-guy with his dirty hands into more dirty crap than even he could keep track of. Anything and everything to make a buck and not just gambling and other soft vices, but nasty stuff like teen-age hookers, drug dealing in schools, selling guns to kiddie gangs. The guys under Jimmy saw him as a greedy fuck, the guys over him saw him as a greedy fuck who brought in the cash. He was a good earner so they all put up with Jimmy Dongen while he tried his best to smart-ass double-cross them all when they weren’t looking. He figured he’d end up with everything he ever wanted. I don’t think he even knew all of what he wanted---he just wanted.

  My name is Vic Powers. I came into it originally back in the old days when I’d been on the job. Before they threw me off the force for being “unstable.” Hell, I wasn’t unstable, I was just damn angry that a lowlife creep had killed my partner, Larry, and I wanted to do something about it. Larry was the best damn friend I ever had. The best damn cop I ever knew. Damn right I was angry. I was fit to be tied! But I wasn’t unstable, least ways any more unstable than I’d ever been. But then again, I guess I could see their point, and it probably all worked out for the best. I wasn’t cut out to be a cop. Not the kind of cops they want. Yes-men, ass-kissers, sell-outs and politically correct rats---a lot of them no better than the criminals they are supposed to arrest.

  Well, all that was a lot of water under the bridge now, but over the years Jimmy Dongen had moved up, turning into one of the biggest of the bad guys. But he’d made a lot of enemies along the way.

  He told me once long ago, after I’d saved his ass, that he wanted to go straight.

  I told him he was full of shit.

  He had acted all serious about it back then.

  I just looked at him and said, “Rats must chew, that’s just the way it is, Jimmy”.

  He got all upset, thought I was calling him a rat.

  I smiled, said, “No, Jimmy, you’re not a rat. Least far as I know, you’re not. You’re a scumbag, but you ain’t no rat.”

  There is a difference.

  Then I told him that to live a rat must chew. Rats -- the four-legged kind, that is – have huge incisors that keep growing in their mouths and if the rat doesn’t constantly gnaw at things, constantly chew, cut and grind with those teeth to wear them down, the damn teeth will grow right into the rats brain and kill it.

  “Nice way fo
r a rat to die,” Jimmy had said.

  “It’s like that with a scumbag like you, Jimmy. You’ll never stop. You’ll never go straight. It’s in the blood. Rats must chew and scumbags like you will never stop what they do.”

  Then Larry and I cuffed him and brought him in.

  * * * *

  Well, that had been a long time ago. Like they say, a lot of water under the bridge, a lot of blood too. Now Larry was gone and I was on my own.

  Now I was a two-bit no-one in a world that had dreamed me out of its dreams a long time ago. So I did the next best thing, I hung in and survived. I did my best to make it day to day. Trying to beat the odds but coming up craps with every throw. In the meantime I never dared to hope.

  It was after Larry had been killed, but before my wife, Gayle, had been murdered. That’s how I usually remember events in my life, I date them from who it was who was close to me -- and when they were taken away from me. Killings, murders, my partner, Larry, my friends, my women, my enemies, my wife…

  Anyway, Gayle was still alive back then and we were trying to have a real life. I was playing the hubby and loving it. Thinking of opening an office again, maybe a husband and wife P.I. team? A dream I shouldn’t have let enter my mind.

  Then Jimmy Dongen entered my world again.

  He was on the run.

  The cops -- crooked and otherwise, the mob, a Jersey biker gang that dealt drugs, an upstate Aryan Separatist group that paid Jimmy a lot of good money for some very bad guns. They were all after Jimmy and I was in Jimmy’s car parked under the West Side Highway while he was telling me all this crap.

  I said, “Why, man? You had it good; you could have stopped the crap, taken it easy. You play so many games, so many sides against each other you were bound one day to get caught in the middle.”

  “I know, Vic,” he said. “I guess it had to happen sooner or later. You know how it is. I got to do what I do. I can’t stop. I could never stop. Once I started a life of crime, Vic, once I started playing The Game, I just couldn’t stop it. I love it too much. Now I know there’s only one end for us all, eventually.”

  “You know all this shit and you still fuck around.”

  “Yeah, I know all this shit, and it doesn’t help me by knowing it.”

  “Not if you don’t do anything to stop it, Jimmy.”

  He smiled, “A rat must chew, Vic.”

  I nodded.

  The gun slipped into my hand.

  I pressed it up against Jimmy’s temple.

  Jimmy’s eyes blew up into big circles of surprise, and then understanding.

  It was quick.

  I pressed the trigger.

  One.

  Two.

  He fell away from me.

  I whipped the gun and placed it in his right hand, melding the fingers to the grip. Opened the door. Locked the passenger side as I got out of the car and walked away.

  A rat must chew.

  This was one rat that would never chew again.

  A RIDE FOR MR. TWO-BY-FOUR, by Bruno Fischer

  Originally published in 10-Story Detective, Sept. 1943.

  Sure I want credit, mister. A cop needs all he can get if he hopes for advancement. Lay it on as thick as you like in that magazine of yours. But the fact is, about all I did was throw monkey wrenches into the works—anyway, until near the end.

  I got my first sight of that blue sedan on Route 202, a couple of miles outside of Paterson. One of those cold, steady rains was falling that turned to ice as soon as it hit the road. I was sitting in my patrol car watching the cars and trucks crawling along like they were feeling their way. Nobody was doing more than 20 that morning, and even at that speed the drivers were risking their necks.

  So for a minute I couldn’t believe that I was seeing straight when this sedan came along doing fifty if it did a mile. It nosed out to pass a ten-wheel trailer truck, skidded clear across to the other side of the road, recovered just in time to miss a southbound coupe, cut in front of the trailer, and was on its way again.

  I’d have given a day’s pay not to have to go after that maniac in that weather, but that’s my job. A couple of times I lost him at intersections and curves, but he stuck to the highway and was easy to spot. The car was a low-slung, two-tone blue job, with a New York license tag.

  And it could step. Why we both didn’t pile up on the turns, especially when we had to brake on that ice, I’ll never know. I tell you, I was hopping mad. I crouched over my wheel, peering through my icy windshield and the blanket of rain, repeating aloud every cuss word I had ever heard.

  Until at last, on a clear, open stretch, I pulled up alongside him. There was nobody but this little man in the car—or so I thought. When I gave him the horn, he threw a terrified glance at me. I was sure then that he’d been aware all along that I was on his tail, and he’d been trying to shake me.

  He pulled over and I got out of my car and walked over to him stiff-legged so as not to slip on the ice. I was shivering from the cold and the rain froze as it hit my nose.

  The words I was going to let him have were already blistering my tongue, but I didn’t get them out. Not right away, that is. There was something so small and queer and pathetic about him as he cowered behind the wheel that I took another look at him. He was the kind of middle-aged, rabbity, watery-eyed man you’d think would be the last guy on earth to go tearing along at fifty or better in weather that gave the toughest truck driver the jitters.

  “All right, I was speeding,” the little man said. “Write out your ticket and let me go.”

  “Just like that, eh?” I said. And I let him have both barrels of my tongue.

  He sat there trying to shrink into himself. Not because of what I said. It was plain he wasn’t listening to a word of mine, and when I paused for breath I heard his voice.

  “I lost my head,” he was muttering to himself. “But always the crowds. Even here in New Jersey the crowds.”

  I got a queer feeling listening to him. A nut, I told myself. Then he seemed to be shaking himself out of a bad dream and turned his head to me, and I wasn’t sure. He was smiling now, looking as normal as the next man.

  “I’m in a hurry, officer,” he said. “If you’re going to give me a ticket for speeding, give it to me.”

  I asked for his owner’s and driver’s licenses, and he handed them to me. His description tallied all right, and there was no doubt the car was his. His name was John Luce, and he lived on Eighty-something Street in Manhattan.

  “Speeding, hell!” I said. “That was reckless driving. And we don’t hand out tickets to out-of-state cars for that. We take them in.”

  All at once he was the most scared-looking man I had ever seen.

  “Take me in where?” he said.

  “To the judge.”

  “But I can’t go!” His voice was as shrill as a woman’s. “It’s impossible.”

  “You think so?” I said. “You got room to turn here. I’ll be right behind you in my car.”

  “Yes,” Luce whispered. “I couldn’t get away from the crowds.”

  There he was, off again. Well, if he was really a nut, all the more reason for me to take him in.

  I started back to my car. As I passed the rear left door of the sedan, I happened to glance through the window. A man lay on the seat, his face down, and buried deep in his arms, his hat setting on the back of his head. His legs hung off the seat.

  “Who’s that?” I asked, going back to the driver’s window.

  Luce was bent over, fumbling for some reason with the ignition key.

  “A friend of mine,” he muttered. “He’s asleep.”

  “Drunk?”

  “That’s right,” Luce said quickly. His head came up and he looked at me, fear lining his face. “He passe
d out a while ago. I was speeding because I wanted to hurry him home.”

  “Home where?”

  “In—in Suffern.”

  “That’s no reason to endanger lives,” I said. “He’ll keep. You lead so I can keep my eye on you. I’ll give you the horn when I want you to turn off.”

  I went back to my own car. The blue sedan started with a jerk and made a bad U-turn which almost took it off the road. I yelled an oath after him.

  We crawled at no more than twelve and sometimes fifteen miles an hour. John Luce was setting the pace, and now he was too cautious. I had a notion that he was trying to stretch out the trip as long as possible. And that was odd because a few minutes ago he’d been so anxious to get his friend out of the cold.

  I don’t know, mister. Maybe if I was one of those super-detectives you meet in stories I’d have taken one look at the setup and known all the answers. I felt there was something screwy, but not too screwy. I mean, when you patrol the highways day after day you meet all sorts of funny people.

  I guess I was thinking about that and maybe a little hypnotized by the rain and the monotonous fanning of the windshield wipers, because the next thing I knew Luce’s car was a hundred feet ahead of me and eating up the road. I stepped on the gas, and yelled out loud as if he could hear me, or as if it would do any good if he could.

  Then he was swinging off the highway, skidding on two wheels onto a side road. I had no warning, but I had to follow. My wheels wouldn’t grip on the turn, and for a couple of sick moments I thought I was a goner. But I managed to right my car and high-tailed after him.

  This was a bad road, all curves, tough for making time on a good day, and now sheer suicide. But I was so sore I didn’t care. I gave my car all it had. In a mile or two of the closest shaves I’ll ever have, I caught him.

  When he saw me roaring up to him, the heart seemed to go out of him. He rolled to a stop.