Edge of the Law Read online

  Quickly lifting the receiver, he said, “Yeah?”

  Bridget’s strained voice said, “They’re on the way up, Jud.”

  “Thanks,” he said, and clicked the receiver down.

  Hurriedly he moved to the bathroom, switched on the light and turned the shower on halfway. He left the bathroom door open and the light on, switched off the room light and seated himself in the straight-backed chair. Drawing his thirty-eight, he rested the butt on his knee.

  For minutes he sat in the semidarkness with his eyes on the door, listening to the shower run in the bathroom. As time dribbled by with nothing happening, a puzzled frown settled on his face.

  Were Ault and his companion simply going to station themselves in the hall, he wondered, and wait for him to come out? Or was the careful Henny Ault now standing at the door listening to the shower run, as usual making no move until he figured the odds were all on his side?

  Another minute ticked by. Then, very slowly, the doorknob began to turn.

  Sands lifted the gun butt from his knee. As the door pushed inward the barest fraction of an inch, he centered the muzzle on the crack at knee height.

  All motion stopped, and the noise of the shower seemed to grow in volume as silence grew in the room. Sands realized he was holding his breath.

  The door edge moved again, and the crack widened to an inch. Carefully Sands drew the revolver hammer back with his thumb. As it clicked to full cock, the sound seemed to reverberate from the walls, drowning the splash of water.

  Then there was silence. A silence so profound that it contained an element of suspended waiting. The door remained motionless.

  Silently cursing himself for cocking the gun, Sands noiselessly rose from the chair and circled the doorway until he could see into the hall through the thin crack. Nothing was visible but a stretch of carpet and a section of bare wall.

  Pressing his shoulder against the wall next to the door, he raised one foot to the knob and slammed the door wide open. Even as the inner knob crashed against the wall, he was whipping through the doorway and spinning to cover both sides of it, his breath held and his body braced against the expected shock of a bullet.

  The hall was empty. Down it a way, above the closed elevator door, the indicator was dropping from two to one.

  In a vicious temper he slammed his gun back into its holster, stalked back into the room and switched on the light. Cutting off the shower, he strode out into the hallway again, leaving both lights on, but locking the door behind him.

  When the elevator door opened at one, he remained in the car for a moment, surveying the lobby. No one was in sight except Bridget behind the desk. Her sprinkling of freckles stood out starkly in her pale face.

  Moving over to the desk, he said gruffly, “Sorry I had to drag you into this, but it came up too suddenly to do it any other way. Where’s George?”

  She gestured to the open door behind the desk, from which a faint snoring came. George had lost no time in getting to sleep the moment he came on duty.

  “Who were they, Jud?” Bridget asked in a frightened voice.

  “Just a couple of mugs,” he said vaguely. “One was a sharp-nosed guy, wasn’t he?”

  Her eyes widened. “Didn’t you see them?”

  “They changed their minds about dropping in,” he said sardonically. “What was the second guy like?”

  “Short and kind of plump. What did they want, any why did they leave without seeing you?”

  “They wanted me, and they left because I goofed. I set a lovely trap, then blew it by getting overanxious.”

  She stared at him. “You meant to murder them?” she whispered.

  “I meant to shoot first,” he said. “Self-defense is a long way from murder. They meant to murder me.”

  Bridget pushed her hair back with a distracted hand. “I’ve never been involved in anything like this, Jud. What did you do to them?”

  “Nothing. They were sent by a Miami gambler who has a grudge. The sharp-nosed one is a free-lance killer who would burn his own brother for a fee. The other one is just along.”

  Bridget gave the front door a fearful glance. “Suppose they come back?”

  Sands smiled grimly. “They won’t tonight. Henny Ault never makes a careless hit. Now that he knows I’m waiting, he’ll take time to study all the angles.”

  “But they will be back sometime,” she said faintly.

  He examined her moodily. “You won’t get blood on your carpets. I’ll move out tonight.”

  Bridget gave him a stricken look. “I want to help you, Jud. Don’t be short with me just because I’m not used to this sort of thing. I’m not a gun moll.”

  Instantly he was contrite. “I’m sorry, Bridget. I have no right to involve you in my troubles, and you’ve been wonderful. I do think I’d better move, though, just to keep you out of it.”

  “No,” she said. “I want to help. If you stay here, I can always warn you if they come again.”

  He gave her a crooked grin. “Thanks, Bridget, but they won’t try that same stunt again. It’ll be somewhere and sometime Ault figures I’ll least expect it.”

  The girl shivered. “Jud—” she said, then hesitated.

  “Yeah?”

  “This Miami gambler—did you do something very bad to him?”

  “He thinks so. I refused to sit still and let him shoot me.”

  Her eyes widened. “Why did he want to shoot you?”

  “I caught him cheating in a poker game. He resented being caught.”

  She stared at him without understanding. “He wants you killed for a thing like that?”

  “There’s a little more to it,” he told her. “I avoided getting shot by putting a bullet in his arm. It shattered the bone and the arm had to be amputated.”

  She blinked. “I see. Then—then it was self-defense?”

  “Legally it wasn’t even a misdemeanor,” he said dryly. “I had a permit to carry a gun.”

  Reaching across the desk, Bridget impulsively laid a hand on his. “Then you couldn’t be jailed, Jud, even if the whole story came out. Why don’t we call the police?”

  “Because it wouldn’t help.”

  “Why not?” she insisted. “You haven’t committed any crime. And these men are hired killers. It’s the job of the police to protect citizens from people like that.”

  “Sure,” he said. “They’d assign me a police guard for a couple of days. Henny Ault would wait. He’s a very patient man.”

  She considered this. “Couldn’t they arrest him and run him out of town?”

  A little wearily he said, “On what charge? Ault hasn’t done anything yet. But even if the police did roust Henny and his pal, Mark Fallon would only send a couple more along. It has to be handled my way, Bridget.”

  She withdrew her hand. Almost on the verge of tears, she said, “You mean either kill them or be killed? What will it solve if you do kill them? You just said that this Fallon man will only send more killers if these fail.”

  Before he could answer, the switchboard buzzed. Flipping a switch, Bridget put the headset receiver to her ear.

  “Hotel Centner,” she said.

  Then she looked at Sands. “It’s some man. He asked for you by your real name.”

  Sands pointed to the desk phone. “Can I take it there?”

  Bridget inserted a plug in the board. Lifting the receiver, Sands said, “Yeah?”

  “Mr. Sands?” a muffled male voice said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “This is a customer from Harry’s Bar and Grill. Ginny asked me to call and tell you to get over there right away.”

  “Why?” Sands asked. “Any trouble there?”

  “All I know is what she said,” the muffled voice said.

  There was a click and the line went dead.

  As he slowly hung up the receiver, Bridget asked fearfully, “Was it one of those men?”

  He gave her a reassuring smile. “Some other business. I have to go out. You may
as well go on to bed.”

  CHAPTER XI

  SANDS LEFT by the hotel’s back door. He surveyed the parking lot carefully before stepping outdoors, though he really didn’t expect an ambush. He knew Henny Ault’s methods too well to anticipate another attempt so soon. The specialist in murder wouldn’t try anything so obvious immediately after a failure.

  The possibility that the anonymous phone call had been a trap set by Ault had occurred to him, but he dismissed the thought for the simple reason that it had occurred to him. Henny Ault was too devious to set the kind of trap his quarry might suspect. When he did make a move, it would be breath-takingly unexpected.

  Though the thin killer was about as formidable an opponent, as Mark Fallon could have thrown against him, there were certain advantages in the situation too. Sands knew, for instance, that he didn’t have to worry about such things as his car blowing up when he touched the starter. Ault enjoyed his work too much to kill by remote control devices. He liked to be present to watch his victims die, which pretty well restricted him to the use of a pistol or knife. He avoided such crudities as blasting with a shotgun from a speeding car, or tossing a grenade through a window, because that type of killing robbed him of the pleasure of watching his victims’ facial expressions as they died. He preferred, by meticulous planning, to maneuver his quarry into a defenseless position, then kill at his leisure, exacting the fullest possible enjoyment from the final act.

  While it wasn’t pleasant to realize you were being hunted by a psychotic killer, at least when Ault was your hunter you didn’t have to fear every car you spotted behind you, or constantly wonder each time you stepped out a door if the telescopic sights of a high-powered rifle were centering on you from some distant window. Something unpleasant would happen eventually, you knew, but there were a lot of unpleasant possibilities you didn’t have to worry about.

  Nevertheless, as a matter of habit, Sands kept one eye on the rear-view mirror during his drive to West Fourth and Gaylord. He was satisfied that no one followed him.

  Sands parked in the same spot he had previously. As he climbed from the car, his gaze swept the street in both directions. Aside from a young couple a block away sauntering hand-in-hand, no one was on the street. Through the tavern’s plate-glass front he could see that customers still lined the bar and that Harry Thompson was still working behind it.

  Crossing the street, Sands pushed open the door and stepped into the tavern. His eyes flicked over the crowd without noting even the slightest sign of disorder. Ginny was not in sight.

  Whatever the trouble was that had caused her to send for him, it wasn’t in evidence.

  Thompson, busy serving drinks, didn’t notice Sands standing just inside the door. A couple of bar customers gave him casual glances, then looked away again. Sands took a step toward the bar, then paused when a door behind the bar, at the front end near the plate-glass window, started to inch open.

  It opened only about six inches, there was the sound of something metallic rolling across the floor behind the bar, then the door clicked shut again.

  It happened so quickly, there was no time to analyze what the occurrence meant. It didn’t consciously register on Sands that a bomb was going to explode. He merely realized, at a time when he was tensed to react to any unusual happening, that something was going to happen.

  Instinctively he dropped flat on his face as a dull boom shook the building. A puff of smoke mushroomed from behind the bar. Bottles on the backbar burst open. The backbar mirror shattered with a series of tinkling crashes. A yard-wide section of the plate-glass front tumbled outward onto the sidewalk. Customers seated on stools tipped over backward. Those standing reeled away from the bar and threw themselves flat. Women seated in booths began to scream.

  Sands bounced to his feet before the reverberations from the explosion stopped. In two bounds he made the end of the bar. He wasted only a quick side glance at the mutilated figure lying behind the bar, then jerked open the door from which the bomb had come. Gun in hand, he stood poised in the doorway.

  There was no light beyond the door, but light from the barroom showed him a switch on the wall. Clicking it on, he found himself in a windowless alcove no more than six feet square. To his left was the heavy door to a beer cooler, to his right a door to the street.

  The street door, which he had never noticed from outside, was for the convenience of beer truck drivers when they delivered draft beer, he realized. Through it they could roll barrels right into the cooler from outside, instead of trundling them across the barroom.

  There was no inner lock, but the door seemed to be locked from outside. Sands whirled and jerked open the door to the cooler. A light automatically went on as the door opened, showing him nothing inside but several half barrels of beer and a pile of case beer. He slammed it shut again.

  Amid the screams and cries of patrons, he shot back across the barroom to the main entrance and outside.

  No one was in sight.

  Slapping his gun back into its holster, Sands examined the outside of the door to the alcove. It was secured by a metal hasp and padlock, which the bomber had snapped shut to block pursuit.

  Sands reëntered the tavern to find bedlam. The screaming had stopped, but everyone was talking at once, most of them hysterically asking each other what had happened. Apparently the bomb had rolled under the bar before exploding, for miraculously none of the patrons had even been injured by the explosion. Its entire force had been thrown up and toward the backbar, nearly tearing the man behind the bar apart. But the heavy wood of the bar had shielded the patrons.

  Customers crowded both ends of the bar, staring in horror at the torn and bloody remains of Harry Thompson.

  As Sands reëntered, one of the men who had glanced at him the first time he came in looked his way. He was a thin, reedy man in workman’s clothing.

  His eyes widened in shock and he squealed, “He’s back! That’s the bomber!”

  He made a rush for the door, and the entire crowd stampeded after him. Sands pressed himself against the wall to avoid being trampled.

  As the last customer disappeared, Sands looked up to see Ginny standing in the kitchen doorway, still wearing an apron. Her normally pale face was dead white and she was swaying on her feet.

  She looked at him in horror as he moved toward her. “Jud,” she whispered. “Why?”

  With a sense of shock he realized that she, like the hysterical customers, thought he had thrown the bomb.

  “Ginny,” he said gently. “You don’t really think I did this, do you?”

  Her gaze searched his face, and gradually her horror-stricken expression faded to one of mere dazed bewilderment. “What—what happened, Jud?”

  “Somebody rolled a grenade under the bar just as I walked in the front door. From that alcove leading to the beer cooler. The bomber ducked out the street door from the alcove. Apparently nobody but me saw what really happened, and some of your customers assumed I tossed it.”

  “What—how did you happen to be here, Jud?” she asked.

  He examined her face. “Didn’t you send for me?”

  She looked confused. “Me? What do you mean?”

  “Somebody phoned the Centner,” he told her. “He said he was a customer, and you’d asked him to call me. He said you wanted me here right away.”

  She gave her head a slow shake. “I don’t know anything about it.”

  He wasn’t surprised. It would be too much of a coincidence for the anonymous phone call to have nothing to do with the bombing. He didn’t quite understand the bomber’s motive in wanting him present, though. If it was an attempt to frame him for the killing, it didn’t strike him as a very good one. Despite some of the customers’ belief that he had tossed the bomb, he didn’t contemplate having much difficulty convincing the police that he was innocent.

  Ginny’s gaze strayed toward the bar and her eyes grew sick. From the kitchen doorway she couldn’t see behind it, but from the extensive damage to the
backbar, it was easy to imagine the gruesome sight on the floor. As in a dream she started to move toward the bar.

  Sands grabbed her arm. “Huh-uh. There’s nothing you can do, Ginny. And you’ll come apart at the seams if you see him.”

  Gently he propelled her into the kitchen. Leading her to a chair, he made her sit.

  “Renzo Amatti?” she asked dully.

  He shrugged. “Who else could it be?”

  “Are you going to call the police?”

  “Your fleeing customers will take care of that,” he said. “Headquarters has probably had a dozen calls by now.”

  Stripping off his coat, he removed his shoulder harness and put his coat back on.

  “What are you doing?” she asked in a remote voice, as though she really weren’t very interested.

  “I have a gun license for Florida,” he said. “It’s no good here. And cops will be shaking me down in a few minutes.”

  He began opening drawers until he found one where bar towels were stored. Hiding the gun and harness under the towels, he pushed the drawer closed again.

  The first police to arrive were in uniform. They came with sirens wide open, surrounded the place and simultaneously poured in both the front and back doors with drawn guns. The sergeant in charge of the detail seemed a little confused to find no one in the place but Ginny quietly sitting in the kitchen and Sands nonchalantly leaning against the kitchen wall.

  When his men had checked the rest of the building and found it empty except for the dead man behind the bar, the sergeant said to Ginny, “Some of the witnesses outside said the bomber was still in here.”

  “They mean me,” Sands told him helpfully. “Somebody got the silly idea that I tossed the bomb, and mass hysteria set in.”

  The sergeant looked him over suspiciously. “Who are you?”

  “Judson Sands. Friend of the family.”

  The sergeant decided to shake him down. His suspicion seemed to abate when he found him unarmed.

  “The witnesses said the bomber ran out with a gun in his hand, then later came back,” he offered. “Probably the guy looked something like you, huh? And when you walked in later, somebody went off half cocked.”