The Second Richard Deming Mystery MEGAPACK® Read online

  “Maybe you’re just being modest.”

  “All right,” I said. “I’m irresistible.”

  I chained my drink in one swallow and set down the empty glass.

  “I’ll phone you tomorrow,” I said, and started toward the door.

  “Wait, Sam!”

  When I stopped and turned, she said softly, “Aren’t you even going to kiss me goodnight?”

  “Sure. After you tell me the angle.”

  She sighed. “You make it very difficult, Sam. You make me feel like… like some kind of prostitute. Like I’m trading myself for a favor. And it isn’t that way at all. I could have just asked the favor without ever leaving the bar.”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere,” I said.

  My voice sounded weary in my own ears. One more scar to add to my collection. Even though I had known it all along, hearing her admit it was not solely my personal attraction which made her throw herself at me did something to my ego. I suddenly experienced the vaguely unclean feeling I imagine a man gets when he hands a pro her fee.

  Then the explanation spilled out of her in a rush, as though she wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible.

  “I knew who you were before I sat next to you downstairs,” she said. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you since yesterday. Only I didn’t want to contact you at headquarters. I had a friend with a connection downtown get me your home address, and I talked to your landlady on the phone. She told me you frequently spent off-duty time at the Jefferson bar, so today I checked in here to watch for you. I had been staying at the Statler, you see. I had a waiter point you out, and then I deliberately struck up an acquaintance.”

  When she paused to get her breath, I asked, “Why?”

  “The day before yesterday you arrested a girl named Minnie Joy for soliciting. At least, that’s the name she’s booked under. It isn’t her real name.”

  “What is her real name?”

  “Minerva Crosby,” Jacqueline said in a low voice. “She’s my older sister.”

  I looked at her in astonishment. “Your sister is a hustler?”

  She blushed clear down to her shoulders. “She ran away ten years ago,” she said breathlessly. “Our parents are dead and she couldn’t get along with the uncle who raised us. My uncle didn’t know it, but I’ve been corresponding with her ever since she ran away. She used to write me that she was a model, and it wasn’t until I came to St. Louis for this fashion show and looked her up that I discovered what she really was. And then before I could do anything about it, you arrested her. I want to help her, Sam. I want to take her back to Chicago with me and get her a decent job. But first I want to get her out of this jam.”

  For a long while I merely regarded her curiously. Then I asked, “How?”

  “Her case is set for the day after tomorrow. You’ll have to testify as the arresting officer. Couldn’t you say… I mean couldn’t you somehow fix it…?”

  When her voice trailed off, I said dryly, “You mean give false evidence?”

  “Well, it isn’t as though Min were a bad girl,” she said defensively. “She just hasn’t had the breaks.”

  “This is her third tumble,” I said in the same dry voice. “There’s lots of work available for women her age these days, and there isn’t a reason in the world she has to make her living the way she does. I’m sorry she’s your sister, but she’s a chronic and hopeless delinquent.”

  “I can pay you,” she said eagerly. Jumping from the sofa, she crossed to where she had thrown her purse onto a chair, unclasped it and withdrew a roll as thick as my wrist.

  “I’m willing to give you five hundred dollars to get Min off,” she said, peeling fifty-dollar bills off the roll as she advanced on me. “Here.” She attempted to thrust them into my hand. The negligee she had forgotten about, and it hung wide open. Not that it made much difference, since it failed to conceal anything anyway.

  A little roughly, I pushed her away. “Look, baby, if you want to help your sister, don’t go around trying to bribe cops. Show up in court and tell the judge your plans for rehabilitation. Maybe he’ll parole her to your custody.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t. It would ruin me in the fashion field if anyone discovered my sister was a… was a… that kind of woman. Please take the money.”

  In a definite tone I said, “I’m not a smart cop, Jacqueline, and maybe I’m not such a hot lover, but I’ve got one attribute I intend to hang onto. I’m an honest cop. I don’t take bribes and I wouldn’t lie in court to save my own mother from the gas chamber. Let’s drop the subject.”

  She stood looking up at me, the bunched mass of fifties in one hand and the rest of the roll in the other. Her breasts rose and fell with her strained breathing.

  “Now I’ll kiss you goodnight,” I said.

  Without touching her with my hands, I leaned forward and planted a paternal kiss on her forehead. She was still standing there motionless when I slammed the door behind me.

  Minnie Joy’s case wasn’t scheduled until the day after, but the next morning I had to be in police court to testify in another case. My partner, Jud Harrison, had a case that morning too, so after I finished my own business, I waited for him.

  Jud was not only my partner, but my best friend. We were rookies together, made plain-clothes at the same time and worked together right on down the line. I don’t make friends easily; in fact, I know I have a reputation in the department as a kind of hard guy to get along with.

  But Jud and I were buddies. We made a strange combination: I’m rather morose and withdrawn and Jud’s as jolly as a department-store Santa Claus, but perhaps the reason we hit it off so well was that we complemented each other. We were as close as brothers.

  Jud’s case was a second offender booked under the name of Jean Darling. Rather boredly I listened to his testimony that the woman had approached him at the corner of Sixth and Locust and asked if he was interested in a little fun, whereupon he had arrested her for soliciting. She was represented by an attorney, and with only half my attention I was conscious that the lawyer was cross-examining Jud.

  My attention perked up when Jud’s moonlike face grew embarrassed as he admitted the woman had not asked for money. He started to explain that he had jumped the gun before she could ask because he recognized her as a previous offender, but the defense lawyer cut him off. Brusquely the judge dismissed the charge for lack of evidence.

  As we crossed the street together from the Municipal Courts Building to headquarters, I said, “How come an old hand like you loused up a case? You might have known that one wouldn’t stand up.”

  “Just a bad day, I guess,” he muttered, still slightly red in the face.

  But a moment later he was his usual breezy self. “What you got planned for tonight, Gloomy? Anything special?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Let’s do a little celebrating. Dinner at the Statler, a few drinks and a couple of floor shows.”

  “Two days before pay day? You must be nuts.”

  “On me, I mean,” he said. “It’s an invitation, Sad-eyes.”

  I raised an eyebrow at him. “Your rich uncle die?”

  “I hit a horse,” he said jubilantly.

  Producing his wallet, he opened it to show me a stack of bills.

  “Fifty on the nose at ten to one,” he chortled. “Five hundred solid iron men.”

  Chapter 3

  When we checked in at room 404, where the morality squad hangs out, Lieutenant Boxer told us he had a character in the showup room he wanted us to look at.

  The man he wanted us to look over was a lank, sallow-faced individual of about forty, clad in a perfectly tailored gabardine suit which must have cost him as much as I earn in a month. From the lighted front of the room he peered out at his shadowy audie
nce with an expression of amused contempt on his face.

  “Who is he?” I asked.

  Lieutenant Boxer said in a quiet voice, “Monk Cartelli.”

  “The Chicago hood?” Jud and I asked in surprised chorus. Then, by himself, Jud inquired uneasily, “What’s he doing in town?”

  “We’ve got a stoolie tip that the syndicate is trying to muscle in on St. Louis, and Monk is the advance man,” the lieutenant said. “The chief ordered him brought in for everybody to look over so we can stop him cold before he starts. We can’t hold him on anything because he hasn’t yet done anything we know about, and the chief doesn’t want to order him out of town because he’s afraid the syndicate would just substitute some other organizer we don’t know. He wants him turned loose, then hemmed in so closely he can’t make a move we don’t know about. He thinks if we can convince the syndicate it’s hopeless, they’ll give St. Louis up as a bad job.”

  I said, “I get around, and I haven’t heard any whispers of syndicate activity.”

  “They’re not beating a brass drum,” Lieutenant Boxer told me. “Apparently it’s a very quiet operation. Our stoolie tip says they’re just feeling around to start, sounding out sentiment among local racketeers, seeing how a few picked political candidates respond to offers of campaign contributions, maybe trying to buy a few cops here and there just to see if St. Louis cops can be bought. Incidentally, that’s one of the things the chief wants every man on the force to watch for. Any strangers who feel you out to see if you’re willing to do some minor favor for a fee, play along until you get the whole pitch, then let me know at once. We’re not at all sure how this bunch operates, so be on your toes for anything at all out of the way. And report it the minute you get it.”

  “Yes, sir,” we both said.

  Later, as both Jud and I sat at our desks catching up on reports, the lieutenant’s words kept going through my mind. “Be on your toes for anything at all out of the way,” he had said. Jacqueline Crosby’s offer of five hundred dollars to change my testimony against her sister was certainly out of the way, but I could hardly reconcile it with syndicate operations.

  It had not even occurred to me to report her offer as a bribe attempt. Ordinarily if I were offered a bribe, I wouldn’t even bother to refuse it. I would simply drop my arm on the briber’s shoulder, march him off to headquarters and enter a charge of attempted bribery. But Jacqueline’s offer came under rather peculiar circumstances. I incline to interpret the law rather rigidly, but even to my mind it would be sticking a little too close to the letter of the law to haul in a woman on a bribery charge because in an hysterical moment she went overboard to get her sister out of a jam.

  Then too, I would have had to be a little less than human to arrest Jacqueline for offering me money to fix a minor charge only minutes after she had been in my arms.

  But the more I thought about it, the more clearly it dawned on me that Jacqueline Crosby had gone about offering her bribe in the only way that was absolutely safe for her if the bribe was refused. I wondered if she had deliberately planned it that way, knowing that no cop, regardless of how strict a sense of duty he had, would take any more drastic action than turning her down after the intimate hour we had spent together.

  Abruptly I shoved aside my reports, muttered something unintelligible to Jud’s question as to where I was going, and went up the hall to room 406.

  The card on Minnie Joy gave her birth date as 1920 and the place of birth as Blytheville, Arkansas. That proved nothing, of course, as the data would have been taken from Minnie herself, and she might have lied for any number of reasons. On the other hand, criminals who change their names seldom bother to fake such statistics as place of birth. If Jacqueline Crosby was from Chicago, as she said, it was still possible that she had an older sister born in Blytheville, Arkansas, but I began to worry about it a little.

  There was no indication on the card that Minnie Joy was an alias, but again that meant nothing. Few prostitutes went under their own names.

  Actually there was nothing in the record which tended to substantiate the blonde Jacqueline’s claim that Minnie Joy was her older sister, but there was nothing there to disprove the claim either.

  I studied Minnie’s picture, summoned up a mental image of the woman herself, and decided there was no family resemblance between the two women at all.

  I went back to room 404 and had a confidential talk with Lieutenant Boxer. When the head of the morality squad had heard my story and my interpretation of what the story meant, he took me up to the fifth floor for a private session with the chief.

  The chief listened without interruption until I had finished.

  Then he said, “You think this woman may have been a syndicate plant, eh, Card? I don’t quite get it. Why all the elaborate preliminaries? If they just wanted to sound you out to discover whether you’d be susceptible to bribes when they got ready to go into operation, why couldn’t she just have hinted around at the bar without dragging you off to her room? I can’t quite see your theory that she wanted to create a situation where it wouldn’t occur to you to arrest her. The way you describe it, she finally made the offer, baldly laying it on the line and even trying to thrust the money into your hand, she laid herself wide open to a bribery charge in case you weren’t as chivalrous as she hoped. She could have hinted around at the bar just enough to find out how you stood without actually making it definite enough to get herself in trouble.”

  That hadn’t occurred to me, which is probably why I’m a sergeant instead of chief of police.

  Rather foolishly I said, “I don’t know, sir.”

  “Think you could still take her up on her offer without rousing her suspicion?” he asked.

  “I could try.”

  “What is this case she wanted you to fix?”

  “Solicitation. An old pro. This is her third fall.”

  “Probably sixty days, eh? Ninety at the most. Well, she’s going to get a break. Go along with this Crosby woman all the way. Accept the money and change your testimony in court just enough to get the charge dismissed. Can you do that without making it obvious?”

  “Sure, Chief.”

  “Then we’ll sit back and see what happens. If the woman is actually what she claims, there’s no particular harm done. Maybe she can rehabilitate her sister, and we’ll figure out some way to return her five hundred dollars. But if she’s working with the syndicate, you ought to hear from her again. Keep Lieutenant Boxer informed of developments. All right. That’s all, Sergeant.”

  I left with Lieutenant Boxer.

  When we got back to room 404 Jud Harrison watched curiously as I called the Jefferson and asked for Miss Jacqueline Crosby’s suite.

  When he raised an eyebrow at me, I merely shook my head.

  After a moment Jacqueline answered, but she didn’t sound very enthusiastic when she discovered who was calling.

  “Any chance of seeing you again?” I asked.

  Her laugh was a trifle brittle. “After the way we parted? I don’t believe so, Sergeant.”

  “Last night it was Sam,” I said. “I’ve been thinking things over, and maybe we can get together on that deal after all.”

  She said cautiously, “What made you change your mind?”

  “Last night I was sore,” I said. “I wasn’t even thinking about the deal. All I could think of was that I thought I was making a big conquest, then all of a sudden you told me the whole thing happened because you wanted a favor. I guess my ego was hurt. Today I’m over the hurt.”

  “I see.” There was a lengthy silence as she thought things over. Finally she said in a more friendly voice, “When do you want to see me, Sam?”

  By the wall clock I saw it was only eleven-thirty. “How about before lunch? I’m only a couple of blocks from there. I’ll stop by now if it’s O.K.”<
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  “I’ll be waiting,” she said softly.

  When I hung up, Jud said, “We going somewhere?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “We can grab some lunch after I make this stop, then make our rounds instead of coming back to the office.”

  Chapter 4

  Jacqueline was wearing a red hostess gown this time. Though it was not transparent, in its own way it was just as revealing as last night’s negligee. It was cut low enough to expose the cleft between her round breasts, and the upper part fitted like a coat of paint down to below her hips. From there on down it flared outward in multiple pleats, which effectively concealed her lovely legs. She met me at the door with a kiss, then leaned backward to look up into my face, which movement simultaneously happened to thrust forward the zipper clasp between her breasts so that I couldn’t fail to see it. The zipper, I noted, ran clear down the front of her gown to her ankles, but I managed to resist the obvious invitation.

  “My partner’s waiting for me downstairs,” I said. “I can’t stay.”

  She looked a little disappointed.

  “About your sister,” I suggested.

  “Minnie Joy? Will you really help her, Sam?”

  I said I would do what I could. She was across to her purse and had that thick roll in her hands again almost before I got the words out.

  Just to see what would happen, I said, “You don’t have to pay me, Jacqueline. I want to do it just for you.”

  “No, Sam. It’s worth it to me. And you will be taking a risk, won’t you? I mean giving false testimony. You ought to have something for that. Take this five hundred. I can afford it.”

  I let her stuff the money in my pocket.

  “I’ll call you,” I said. “Not tonight, because I’ve got a date with my partner to celebrate a fast horse. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “I’m not sure I’ll be free,” she said dubiously. “There are so many evening events connected with this fashion show. Better wait until I can call you at work.”