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  Rolling into his arms, she found his lips in the darkness.

  “I’m not used to a bedfellow,” she told him.

  His hand touched her bare hip. “You always sleep like this?” he asked.

  “Only when I’m awaiting company. How about you?”

  “I don’t even own a pair of pajamas.”

  His hand moved from her hip and she began to tremble. “What time is it?” she whispered.

  “Do you care?”

  Instead of answering, she crushed her mouth against his …

  EDGE OF

  THE LAW

  Richard

  Deming

  a division of F+W Media, Inc.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Chapter XXI

  Chapter XXII

  Chapter XXIII

  Chapter XXIV

  Chapter XXV

  Chapter XXVI

  Death of a Pusher

  Also Available

  Copyright

  CHAPTER I

  WHEN HE started to run from Miami, Judson Sands had a stake of thirty-two hundred dollars. Six weeks later, when he arrived by bus in the city of Ridgeford, he had twenty-four dollars left. Some had gone for living expenses, but most of it had gone for expensive hide-outs and plane tickets from one part of the country to another each time his pursuers got close.

  It cost a lot of money just to stay alive when you were fingered by Big Mark Fallon.

  Ridgeford was the end of the line, he told himself. If they tracked him there, he’d go out with his back to the wall, taking along with him as many as he could. But he wouldn’t run another foot.

  As he carried his bag through the gate from the bus barn into the depot waiting room, his eyes moved over the room in a single comprehensive glance resembling the lazy flick of a whip. Though it seemed the most casual of glances, it momentarily touched every face in the room. None of them were familiar.

  At least they weren’t ahead of him, he thought wryly. Maybe he should have started riding buses six weeks ago. Not only would it have been cheaper, but they wouldn’t expect high-living Jud Sands to travel any way except first-class.

  Pushing through the main door to the street, he again flicked his gaze over the surrounding area, instantly noting every pedestrian and parked car in sight. Momentarily his eyes narrowed at a car at the curb a half block away with two men in its front seat. But apparently the car had just backed into a parking place, for one man got out either side of the car as he watched. They entered a tavern together without a glance his way.

  Jumpy, he thought. Six weeks of running would make anyone jumpy.

  Shaking his head at a cabby who gave him an inquiring look, Sands lugged his bag up the street in search of a hotel. An overdressed blonde emerging from a tavern ahead of him paused to eye him with interest as he neared. She held herself with the exaggerated erectness of the slightly drunk.

  Women usually noticed Jud Sands, though normally not with such open interest as the blonde displayed. About thirty, he was a trim, leanly muscled man nearly six feet tall with a springy grace to his movements that suggested perfect muscular coördination. His sharply defined features weren’t handsome, but the alert glint in his oddly green eyes gave an impression of subdued recklessness, and there was the barest suggestion of cruelty tempered by a sense of humor about his straight, hard lips. Most women decided on first sight that he was interesting, and possibly dangerous.

  The blonde hiked carefully plucked eyebrows with a mixture of inquiry and invitation as he passed. With an amused shake of his head he walked on. Shrugging, she turned in the opposite direction and entered another tavern.

  The bus depot was on the edge of Ridgeford’s downtown section in an area devoted to taverns and small night clubs. Glancing through plate-glass windows as he went by, Sands noted that there was a sprinkling of customers in most of them, even though it was only mid-afternoon. Many of the customers were paired off with women wearing gowns more appropriate to the evening than the afternoon, he also noted. Undoubtedly B-girls.

  He knew nothing of Ridgeford, but even at this quick first glimpse it gave the impression of being a live town.

  He passed two hotels advertising rooms at a dollar and up, ruefully wondering as he went by how long it would be before he’d be forced to settle for accommodations like that Four blocks from the depot he found one more to his liking. It was a small building of only three stories named the Hotel Centner, and its rooms started at two fifty.

  Apparently the Centner’s sole income was from renting rooms, as there was no sign of either a cocktail lounge or a dining room off its small lobby. The lobby was deserted except for a woman of about twenty-five behind the desk.

  She was a redhead with wide-spaced green eyes, a wide, friendly mouth and an upturned nose liberally splashed with freckles. Though her features were rather plain, there was such an air of vitality about her, your first impression was that she approached beauty. It took a second look to realize that her attractiveness was largely a matter of facial expression and personality.

  From the neck down her beauty was strictly aesthetic, however. The black knit suit she wore was appropriately conservative for a hotel desk clerk, but failed to conceal that she had a breath-takingly lush figure.

  Her expression as she watched him cross the lobby was at first one of only polite interest. But as he neared, it turned to reserved approval. Setting down his bag, he exposed white teeth in a grin of such brazen admiration that she adjusted her features to a formal expression.

  “Yes, sir?” she inquired, a little distantly.

  “Like a room,” he said.

  She pushed a registration card toward him. As he bent his head to fill it out, he was conscious of her studying him. He wrote down the alias Sanford Judd, under home address listed Chicago, then suddenly looked up into her face. He caught her watching him with such approving interest, he couldn’t prevent giving her a wicked smile.

  She turned crimson. Reversing the card, she looked down at it to cover her confusion.

  “We have rooms at two fifty and three fifty without baths, Mr. Judd,” she said primly. “Four fifty and five fifty with private bath.”

  Temporary lack of money never caused Jud Sands to cut corners when payment could be postponed. He had an abiding faith that something would turn up before bills became due. He said, “Give me one of your five-fifty rooms.”

  Her blush had faded, but she still carefully avoided looking at him when she reached for a key from the rack behind her. She came out from behind the desk.

  “This way, please,” she said, and moved toward the elevator. Apparently the Centner didn’t employ bellhops.

  Following behind her with his bag, he admired the provocative sway of her hips. The movement so intrigued him that they were nearly to the elevator before he dropped his gaze to see what kind of legs she had. He was gratified to note they were straight and full-calved.

  She pushed the second-floor button. As the car slowly moved upward, he examined her in profile while she self-consciously looked straight ahead, obviously aware of his examination. She had an excellent profile, from her upturned little nose all the way do
wn. She had a full, firm bust, flat stomach, a slim waist and nicely rounded hips.

  When the car stopped and the doors slid back, she swung her face toward him and said with mocking sweetness, “Thirty-six, twenty-two, thirty-five, Mr. Judd.”

  “Cold statistics hardly tell the story,” he said. “It would take poetry.”

  She flushed again. Silently she led him down the hall to a door numbered 207, unlocked it and entered. It was a bare, clean room with a double bed, a single dresser, an easy chair next to a bridge lamp and a small writing desk with a straight-backed chair in front of it. She dropped the key on the dresser and moved to open the windows.

  Setting down his bag, he said, “Any chance of getting my suit pressed?”

  She looked at him, noting with surprise, and apparently for the first time, the rumpled condition of his clothing. The light gabardine suit he wore was of expensive cut, but his long bus ride had left it creased and wrinkled. Jud Sands was one of those men who somehow manage to look debonair even in fishing slacks and a sweat shirt, and the girl had missed the signs travel had left on his clothing.

  “The hotel doesn’t offer valet service,” she said. “There’s a place two doors left of the main entrance that presses while you wait.”

  He dropped a hand in his pocket, wondering if he should offer a tip. Reading his mind, she gave him an amused smile.

  “You don’t have to tip me,” she said dryly. “Your admiration was enough reward.”

  As she moved toward the door, he asked, “What’s your name?”

  She elevated her brows. “Why?”

  “If I phone the desk for something, I don’t want to just say, ‘Hey, you.’”

  She regarded him contemplatively. “What would you be phoning to ask, Mr. Judd?”

  He shrugged. “Information about the town. Places to eat, points of interest, what time you get off work.”

  “I thought so,” she said. “I’ll save you the trouble. There’s a nice restaurant across the street called the Fox and Hounds. There aren’t any places of interest except night clubs.”

  “Uh-huh. And my last question?”

  She studied him again, then suddenly smiled in self-mockery. “I’m being coy, aren’t I? You’d think I was sweet sixteen. I work till ten P.M. and the name is Miss O’Rourke.”

  “Something like Maurene O’Rourke?” he hazarded.

  “Something like,” she admitted. “It’s Bridget.”

  “I knew it would be a fine Irish name,” he told her. “I’ll be after seeing you at ten.”

  Her eyebrows raised. “Just like that? You’re informing me, are you? You don’t bother to ask. You’ll be after seeing me long enough to bid me good-night, Mr. Judd.”

  “You put words in my mouth, lass. I meant I’d be along to beg the privilege of buying you a nightcap.”

  Her lips curved slightly. “You have the gift of blarney, but your accent is strictly vaudeville. What’s Judd? English?”

  “My Scotch ancestors will spin in their graves,” he said.

  She looked puzzled. “Judd is Scotch?”

  She was too alert, he thought. It hadn’t occurred to him that it wasn’t a Scotch name, possibly because his real one wasn’t glaringly Gaelic. He said quickly. “My great-grandfather dropped the Mac. It only means ‘son of’ and he was individualist enough not to want himself identified as merely the son of someone. See you at ten?”

  She gave him a noncommittal smile and went out, pulling the door shut behind her.

  CHAPTER II

  HE FELT grimy from the bus trip. A shower and change of underclothes removed the grimy feeling. Then he found the pressing shop Bridget O’Rourke had mentioned and had his suit pressed. When he emerged from it, he looked like a sharply dressed young executive.

  It was now only four P.M. and he wandered around looking the town over.

  Ridgeford, he guessed, was of about two hundred thousand population. From what little he could determine by a tour of the downtown shopping area, it was a clean, bustling city of some wealth. The stores were mostly new and modern, and seemed well crowded with customers.

  Eventually he wandered back toward the bus depot and started investigating the bars he had seen in that area.

  He quickly decided that his first impression of Ridgeford had been right. At least in that section it was wide-open. Every place he entered had B-girls, few of them busy at that time of day, for they converged on him practically in cordon formation the instant he walked into a new place. In most cases a mere shake of his head was enough to discourage them, for they could sense after one look that he wasn’t the sort of man who had to pay for female companionship. One or two older, thicker-skinned girls got a little persistent, though, and he had to be blunt. Though innately courteous to all women, he knew from experience that there is no courteous way to fend off a B-girl whose luck has been bad and, who has been warned by the management to step up her custom or get out. In those cases he simply said, “Scram, babe,” and turned his back.

  Most of the bars had some type of gambling going on in them, too, usually in side rooms blocked off from the main rooms only by curtained doors. No one made any objection to his entering these rooms to see what was going on. Some had dice games going, some contained slot machines, others had card games of various sorts.

  He didn’t order a drink in any of the places, but no one seemed to notice. He merely wandered into each, looked around and wandered out again.

  Apparently local taste ran to feminine dealers, for all the games, even the dice tables, seemed to be run by women. Sands noted that there were always one or two burly men who weren’t playing hovering in the background, however, in case trouble developed that the women couldn’t handle.

  Most of his adult life Jud Sands had supported himself either by gambling or by working in various capacities for professional gambling syndicates. He could tell at a glance if a game was straight, or if the house was increasing its percentage by means of loaded dice, mechanical gadgets or trick dealing.

  In fact, this talent was responsible for his present plight. In a private game in Miami he had accused Big Mark Fallon of second-carding, and in the ensuing argument had put a bullet through Fallon’s right arm. Unfortunately the bullet had shattered the bone beyond repair, and now Fallon’s right sleeve was empty below the elbow.

  Mark Fallon headed a race track syndicate that employed seven hundred people, all of whom were accustomed to jumping when he spoke. At the time, Jud Sands was one of the seven hundred. He hadn’t been long or he would have known that one of his employer’s foibles was the neurotic compulsion always to win at cards. He only played with a favored few of his top employees, who stoically accepted their losses and later submitted them on expense accounts. No one explained this to Sands before the game, though it probably wouldn’t have averted the trouble anyway, for he had a foible too. When somebody pushed him, he pushed back, hard, without thinking of possible consequences.

  Mark Fallon wasn’t a forgiving man. He didn’t regard it as an extenuating circumstance that he had drawn a gun first, his reasoning being that when he decided to shoot an employee, it was the employee’s duty to sit still and accept the bullet. Sands hadn’t stopped to apologize. He’d been running ever since, one jump ahead of Mark Fallon’s hired guns.

  Now his ability to judge games at a glance told him that every one he saw in this town was rigged. It was apparent why all the dealers were women. Players aren’t so likely to suspect women of double-dealing, and even if they do, a sense of gallantry prevents most men from exposing them. Rather than cause a scene, they are much more likely simply to leave the game quietly. Even so, it was so raw Sands wondered how they got any suckers to sit in the games.

  At a place coyly named the Kit Kat Inn he stood watching a blackjack game for some time. The dealer was a lushly built brunette with a lovely but totally expressionless face. She wore a white gown so low-cut that it exposed all but the tips of full, snow-white breasts, and threatened to
dip even lower each time she flipped a card. The four players at her table, all men, seemed to be hopefully waiting for her to flip a card just a bit too hard. They were too preoccupied with this intriguing possibility to pay much attention to her dealing.

  She was good with a deck, Sands noted. To his practiced eye it was evident that she could deal any card she wanted from the deck any time she wanted.

  She didn’t always want to, however. She made no effort to win every time, he saw, being content to rely on house percentage most of the time. When the bets were moderate, she let the cards fall where they would. But every time there was a substantial bet, she miraculously came up with twenty-one.

  The game was being played according to customary house rules. A tie was a push, the dealer had to hit fifteen and stick on seventeen. Blackjack and five under paid one and a half instead of double.

  He was about to move away when one of the players growled, “Dollar insurance, Belle.”

  In blackjack an insurance bet means you are betting that the dealer has twenty-one. If the dealer’s up card is an ace, you are betting that the down card is a ten or a face card, and if you’re right, you get paid two to one. If the up card is a ten or a face card, the odds that an ace is down are considerably longer, and the bet pays eight to one.

  In this case the brunette Belle had an ace showing. She flipped over the other card to show a nine. The insurance bettor showed a king and a jack, which meant his original bet was a push. He lost his dollar insurance bet, however, and as no one else had twenty, the dealer swept in all the other bets.

  A thoughtful look appeared in Jud Sands’ eyes. He glanced around at the other occupants of the room. Several men stood watching the game, and all but one he tabbed as bar patrons merely idling away time. A heavy-featured man with dull-lidded eyes and the build of a professional wrestler lounged against the wall with a toothpick in his mouth, bored and half asleep.

  Only one house man, Sands thought. It ought to be easy.

  Glancing at his watch, he saw it was only ten of five. Pawnshops would still be open.