Honest Money Read online

  “I don’t give a damn what he confesses to!” the officer said.

  “He killed my pal. If my bullet hasn’t killed him, he’s going to get the death penalty.”

  “Well I care,” said Corning. “This man killed Frank Glover.”

  A look of infinite weariness took the glitter from the hard black eyes. The head nodded. More blood sputtered from the lips, and the eyes glazed.

  “Grab that girl!” said Corning. “She can give us the whole story.”

  Mary Bagley got to her knees, stared at the face of Pete the Polack.

  “My God, he’s dead!” she screamed.

  It was one o’clock when Ken Corning got Helen Vail on the telephone.

  “You can go home now,” he told her. “It’s all over.”

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “A frame-up,” he said. “Glover’s own bodyguard wanted to get rid of him and take over his lay. They wanted to frame the crime on Pyle whom they also wanted out of the way. They worked the frame-up and exploded a torpedo at the same time a crack-shot plugged Glover from Mary Bagley’s apartment. That was Pete the Polack who had his own grudge against Glover and jumped at the chance. They’d decoyed the radio car into the neighborhood by a fake call. Pyle was framed all the way along.”

  “Was that why you pulled the shooting gallery stuff?” she asked.

  “Yes. It was a thousand to one chance, but I had to get Mary Bagley’s boy-friend out in the open and just where I could work on him.”

  “Any action?” asked Helen Vail.

  “A little,” he told her. “I gave the cops a tip that should have had them in my room. They got the numbers mixed and got in the wrong room. It wasn’t until the shooting started that they got into action. Pete plugged one of the dicks right through the heart.”

  “Did you get a confession?” asked Helen Vail.

  “Yes, from the girl. After Pete fired the shot he knocked the silencer off the gun, ran down stairs, and when he saw Pyle go by, planted the gun behind the billboard and disappeared.”

  “You coming back to the office?” she asked.

  “No,” he told her. “I’m going out and hunt up Lampson. He’ll tell the truth now.”

  “You mean about the crime?”

  “No. I mean about the frame-up they tried to work on me.”

  “He won’t dare to talk,” she told him. “Not with his record.”

  Ken Corning laughed grimly.

  “When I get done with him,” he said, “he won’t dare to keep silent. These fellows started this funny business and now I’m going to start fighting the devil with fire.”

  “Be careful your fingers don’t get burned,” she warned.

  “I,” he told her, “am the one guy in this hookup that’s got asbestos gloves.”

  Devil’s Fire, Black Mask, July 1933

  Blackmail with Lead

  KEN CORNING STOPPED AT THE BATTERED TABLE, which ran the length of the jail room, and looked through the coarse wire screen into the face of Sam Driver; a face that was twitching nervously.

  “If I’m going to be your lawyer,” said Ken Corning, “I’ve got to have all there is to know about your case.”

  Sam Driver fidgeted uncomfortably in the chair on the other side of the screened partition. He acted as though he could already feel a current of electricity coursing through the chair, burning the life from his body.

  “Listen,” he said, “don’t you s’pose you could cop a plea?” Ken Corning shook his head.

  “I sounded out the deputy D. A. They want first degree or nothing and they won’t make any promises about the death penalty. That’s up to the judge.”

  “Jeeze,” said Driver, “that’s no break at all.”

  “You will have to give me the true facts if we’re going to get anywhere,” Corning told him.

  Driver looked furtively around and then leaned forward and spoke rapidly, the words coming from the side of his lips.

  “I wouldn’t have killed Harry Green for a million dollars,” he said. “We was buddies. We’d batted around together a lot. He’d give me the shirt off his back, and I’d give him my last dollar.

  “We’d had a little run of luck. The cards had been breaking better for us, and we had this old flivver. We stayed at the auto camp and used the car together. I don’t know where Harry went that night. He was out on a game somewhere, but he didn’t have the car. I had the car. I drove it up to visit some relatives of mine on Hampshire Street.

  “It was dark when I got there, and I stuck around and had a few drinks. Then I came out and got in the car and started out towards the automobile camp. I guess I was a little bit crocked. Anyway, a car drove up alongside, and a couple of dicks started to shake me down. They said my headlights was glaring, and I was driving funny. They looked the car over for booze, and found Harry Green’s body in the back.”

  “How did it get there?” asked Corning.

  “I wish I knew, boss, honest to gawd I do! It wasn’t in there when I started out with the car, I know that.”

  “All right,” said Corning, wearily, “what about the money?”

  “That’s another funny thing,” said Driver, lowering his eyes and shifting about in his chair nervously. “I had about five thousand bucks on me. It was in crisp new bills. The bulls claim that I got that from Harry Green; that that’s why I croaked him. Why, listen, I wouldn’t take any money from Harry… .”

  “I’ve heard all that before,” Corning said. “How did you get the money?”

  “I won it fair and square, in a poker game.”

  “All right, you’ve got to produce the people who sat in that poker game.”

  Driver placed his hand to his face, started tugging nervously at his mouth with the tips of his fingers.

  “I can’t do that,” he said. “They were friends of Harry’s, but strangers to me. Harry introduced me to the club and I got in the game. They wouldn’t admit sitting in a poker game; not with a murder rap.”

  Ken Corning drummed silently on the table, with the tips of his fingers. His steady eyes bored into the cowering optics of the man on the other side of the screen.

  “Get this, Driver,” he said slowly, “and get it straight. Unless you can give me the truth on that case, and I can make something out of it, you’re going to get the death penalty.”

  Driver’s lips quivered. He held them with his fingers for a moment. His eyes were shifty with panic.

  All right,” he said, “give me a chance to think things over a bit. Maybe I can work out something.”

  “You’ve got to have something that you can tell a jury,” said Ken Corning slowly. “Something that the jury will believe; something that is going to sound logical, in spite of all the cross-examination a District Attorney gives you. In short, Driver, the only thing that will work is the truth.”

  “But I told you the truth.”

  “It doesn’t sound like it,” said Ken Corning grimly.

  “To you, or to a jury?” asked Driver.

  “Neither to me nor a jury,” Ken Corning said slowly.

  Driver wet his lips nervously with the tip of his tongue, said nothing.

  “Do you,” asked Ken Corning, taking a notebook from his pocket, “know a woman by the name of Ella Ambrose?”

  Sam Driver nodded his head slowly.

  “Yes,” he said, “she lives out there near where the folks are, on Hampshire Street.”

  “What does she know about the case?” asked Corning.

  The eyes of the prisoner sought his face, and, for the first time during the interview, became steady.

  “Search me,” he said. “She can’t know anything about it.”

  Corning nodded.

  “Yes, she knows something about it. I can’t figure just what it is, but it’s something that she thinks is important. She wants me to come down to the house, after dark tonight, and not to let anyone know I’m coming. She sent me a message.”

  Driver shook his head and made a s
imultaneous gesture with his shoulders and the palms of his hands.

  “You better go see her,” he said. “Maybe she knows something, but be sure it’s something that’s going to help me. If it ain’t, get her out of the country.”

  Corning suddenly snapped a swift question at the prisoner.

  “Driver,” he said, “what did you do with the gun that killed Harry Green?”

  For what seemed like three long seconds, Sam Driver sat with sagging jaw, and looked as though someone had slapped him in the face with a wet towel. His eyes bulged, and the muscles of his throat worked convulsively. Suddenly he said all in one breath: “Jeeze, boss, I never saw any gun. For gawd’s sake, don’t you go getting an idea like that through your head. How would I know what happened to the gun?”

  Ken Corning got to his feet.

  “That,” he said, “is just a mild sample of what the District Attorney is going to do to you on cross-examination. You’ve got to answer the questions better than that, or you’ll get murder in the first.”

  Wind tugged at the skirts of Ken Corning’s overcoat as he stood on the dark street corner and strained his eyes at the shadowy houses, trying to see the numbers above the doors.

  He moved forward, out of the circle of illumination cast by the street lamp, and became conscious of motion in the darkness.

  He whirled and stood tense.

  A lad of about twelve years of age came out from behind a board fence. He was leaning against the wind, and his cap was pulled down low against the tug of the gale. The light from the corner showed a young-old face, with shrewd, peering eyes, and a much frayed coat that was originally several sizes too large.

  “You’re Ken Corning, the big lawyer?” the boy asked.

  “Yes, I’m Corning.”

  “My mom, she was afraid you couldn’t find the place, so she sent me to wait around,” said the boy.

  “Who is your mother, lad?”

  “Mrs. Ambrose. She’s the one you’re goin’ to see.”

  Ken Corning nodded his head. “All right, son,” he said, “let’s go.”

  The boy remarked in a swiftly nervous monotone, “We’d better cut through the alley. Mom’s afraid somebody may be watching the place.”

  “Why should they watch the place?”

  “I don’t know Mom told me not to talk nothing over with you, just to bring you to the house.”

  The boy slipped through the gate in the fence. “Watch your step when you get around here,” he warned. “There’s a bunch of tin cans over there on the side.”

  He moved unerringly, following some path which was invisible to the lawyer’s eyes. All above was smelly darkness. Houses fronted on the narrow street; houses that were cheap and unpretentious, yet were palaces beside the hovels which were scattered around the backs of the lots. All about were the sounds of human occupancy; low voices which carried through the flimsy walls of mean structures, the raucous blasts of a cheap radio which sounded from a living-room where comparative affluence announced its presence in strident tones.

  The shadow grew deeper and Corning’s guide was but a blotch of black moving against a dark background. Abruptly he paused.

  “This is the place,” said the boy, and started beating lightly with his knuckles on a door.

  “Who is it?” asked thin, tired tones from the interior.

  “It’s me, Mom.”

  “Did he come with you?”

  “Yeah. Open up.”

  A bolt rasped back on the inside of the door, then, as the door swung open, an oblong of dim light from an oil lamp silhouetted the broad hips and shoulders of a heavy-set woman who hulked in the doorway.

  “Come in,” said the woman.

  Ken Corning stepped into the dark room. The woman pushed the door shut.

  “I couldn’t understand,” said Corning, cautiously, “why you didn’t come to the office,”

  The woman placed a linger to her lips, looked over at the boy. “Frank,” she said, “you run over and see if Jimmy won’t let you stay with him for a while.”

  The boy turned the knob, held the door against the wind, slipped out into the night.

  Ken Corning stared at the woman. She was in the early fifties. Adversity had stamped its mark upon her, and her face had set in lines of whining defiance, as though she had learned to cope with the world by aggressively protesting her rights with shrill-voiced insistence. Her features were heavy, the eyes small and sharp. The lower jaw was full and determined, but the upper part of the mouth seemed pinched, with a high, narrow roof.

  “You’re defending Sam Driver?” she said.

  Ken Corning nodded.

  “Why didn’t you come to the office?”

  “Because they got the place watched.”

  “Who has?”

  “I d’know. Maybe the police.”

  “Why have they got the place watched?”

  “I spoke out of turn,” she said.

  “To whom?” Corning inquired.

  “The cop on the beat. I told him that I didn’t think Sam Driver was guilty, and that I knew some stuff that would give him a break. The cop told me I’d better keep out of things that didn’t concern me. Right after that, men started to stand around in front of the house. They waited in automobiles, and poked around, as though they had business, but they didn’t fool me any. They were dicks, watching me.”

  “All right,” said Ken Corning, “what do you know?”

  She leered at him shrewdly.

  “There’s got to be something in it for me,” she told him.

  Slowly, Ken Corning shook his head.

  “All the money that Sam Driver has,” he said, “is held by the law, on the theory that it belonged to Harry Green, the man he’s charged with killing. If I can get him acquitted, naturally he gets that money back. I’m going to take most of it for my fee. There’ll be some left for him and some for expenses. If he wants to make you a present after the case is over, that’s up to him.”

  She twisted her fingers together and looked at Corning with avaricious eyes that took in every detail of his tailor-made clothes.

  “Seems like it’s going to be pretty soft for you, if you get him off. Seems like I’d oughtta have some cash.”

  “No,” said Corning, “they’d ask you about that when you got on the witness stand. If you told them I’d given you a single nickel, they’d make it appear I’d bought your evidence.”

  “I wouldn’t have to tell them,” she suggested.

  “You won’t get anywhere with that line. And it doesn’t listen well. If you know anything, go ahead and tell me.”

  She twisted her fingers for a moment, then suddenly broke into speech.

  “All right,” she said. “I know Sam Driver, and I know his sister-in-law well. They’ve got a place here on Hampshire Street. The man’s got a job, and they’ve got a radio ’n everything.”

  “Yes,” said Corning. “What of it?”

  “Well, Driver used to come and visit them. Sometimes he’d bring Harry Green with him. More often he’d come alone. He drove a flivver, and kept it parked out in front of the place when he was inside. I got so I knowed the flivver.

  “The night of the murder, I knew that Driver was inside, at his sister-in-law’s, hoisting a few. I was going uptown, and I saw a man walking up and down the sidewalk, and I figured I’d wait until he got out of the way, before I came out into view.

  “I seen a new model Cadillac car come down and stop side of Driver’s flivver. Guys got out that had on evening clothes. You could see the white of them in the light that came from the street lamp. There were two of them. I saw them pull something from the Cadillac and put it in the flivver. It was something heavy.”

  “Could you see definitely what it was?” asked Corning slowly.

  “No. But it was heavy.”

  “How do you know the car was a Cadillac?”

  “It was a Cadillac,” she said, doggedly enough, “a new model Cadillac. I keep up on automobiles becau
se my boy talks about them all the time. He knows every new car that comes out.”

  Ken Corning looked at her searchingly.

  “You don’t look like the type of woman who would be interested in a Cadillac automobile.”

  “I knew that new model Cadillac.”

  “All right. Then what happened?”

  “Then,” she said, “they went around to the headlights on Driver’s automobile and started doing something to them with a monkey wrench or something. I thought they were car thieves that was stealing the headlights, but they were dressed too good for that.”

  “Go on,” Corning told her.

  “That’s about all. I got to thinking things over, and I thought you’d ought to know.”

  “Got the license number on the Cadillac car?” he asked.

  She shook her head rapidly.

  “No,” she said, “I …”

  There was the sound of peremptory knuckles banging on the door.

  “Open up!” said a gruff voice. “This is the law.”

  She looked in swift consternation at Ken Corning.

  “You double-crossed me,” she said.

  Corning shook his head. He was on his feet, standing over in a comer of the room, shifting his eyes from the face of the woman to the door.

  The door quivered, then banged open, shivering in the wind. Three men pushed their way into the room. The last man shoved the door closed, and the oil light flickered and danced in the wind.

  “Well,” said Corning, “what’s the trouble?”

  The man who had been the first into the room looked at Corning.

  “Nothing that concerns you, buddy,” he said. “It’s something that concerns the woman. She’s been selling hooch.”

  “I have not!” said the woman.

  The detective grinned.

  “Got a warrant?” asked Ken Corning.

  The man’s voice was scornful. “Of course I have,” he said.

  “But I haven’t been selling any booze. I haven’t got any booze. I don’t know anything about …”

  “Look around, boys,” said the man who was in charge.

  “I think,” said Ken Corning, “that I’ll have to take a look at that warrant.”