On the way downtown he stopped at Jim Browning’s, and walked around to the back of the house. Jim himself answered the door, his lean features questioning. “Have to roust you out a little later tonight, Jim.”
He nodded, unperturbed. “Someone cookin’ a little mash? Will I need boots?”
“No boots. It’s in town. We’re raiding the game.”
His head went back as if he’d been hit. “The game? Hell, Joe—”
“Dave will call you, Jim. This is a special.” Jim Browning was Dave Corbin’s man, Conway mused as he walked back out to his car. He needed Dave’s man to testify to what happened to Charlie and Max. When it happened.
He drove to Dave Corbin’s, and found him and his wife seated on their front porch in the late dusk that was nearly darkness. Doris Corbin knowingly excused herself after a moment so that they could talk.
The weatherbeaten police captain listened carefully, a hand absently rubbing his long, bristled jawline, lank grey hair standing up all over his head. He nodded finally. “Shame, in a way. Still, ‘pears like it’s the thing to do. Little coolin’ off period will be no bad thing all around. Thing seems to go in cycles. You say Bart’s taking care of everything?”
“Yes. I thought I’d take Jim along with me. I just came from there. He’s a little nervous; I told him you’d call him.”
Dave Corbin smiled. “Jim’s a good man. I’ll call him. You need me for anything?”
“I’ll probably need you to play magistrate later.”
“I’ll hunt up my gavel, and blow the dust off it.”
All cleared with Captain Corbin, he thought on the way down to the Boys’ Club. Keep the old man posted, so that when the push comes he’ll never suspect the direction. Or suspect it too late. Dave Corbin was more nearly ready to retire than he knew.
Lieutenant Conway made his speech at ten thirty, and was held up afterward only long enough to have a drink with First Selectman Mike Winn in the locker room. He drove back to Jim Browning’s, and pulled into the driveway. The kitchen light went out at the sound of the tires on the gravel, and Jim crossed the damp grass from his back door and climbed into the car.
“Dave explain it to you?” Conway asked.
“Yeah.” It was an embarrassed mumble. “I was afraid you were playin’ a little politics, or—”
“Ted Lindsay’s in the game, for bait,” Conway said, cutting him short. “I’ll send him down first. You see to it that he gets away from you. We’ll take in the rest.”
Conway could see it all very clearly. They would walk down one at a time until only two were left. Charlie and Max. Charlie and Max would be carried down. Max’s sleeve derringer was all the excuse needed, and there would be no one to deny the raiding officer’s version of what had happened.
He parked the car in the shadows at the rear of the big warehouse, and found that he was in a hurry to get it accomplished. “This won’t take long, Jim.”
Jim Browning nodded, slid out, and took up his station beside the warehouse door. Conway took out his key — every regular in the game had his own key to the loft entrance of Bart Chisholm’s warehouse — and opened the heavy outer door. On the stairs in the dim light of the naked bulb he removed his jacket and laid it over a projecting beam. He wanted nothing like his pistol snagging on a lapel when he went for it. On second thought he drew it and carried it loosely in his hand as he ascended the stairs.
He could hear the low murmur of voices behind the upstairs door, and knowing that it was never locked, he kicked it open with a bang and walked in on them, fast. “All right, everybody — hold it!”
For an instant heads, arms, and bodies froze grotesquely around the green baize of the table top. He quickly focused on Max at the far end of the table; Max was the one with the derringer, and the animal instinct that might tip him off as to the reason for the raid.
Conway moved a long stride closer to the table, never taking his eyes from the motionless Max. He could hear Ted Lindsay’s unbelieving “What the hell! — ” and above it, a sharp, staccato voice that barked “Stickup!”
His ears filled suddenly with the room-contained explosion of a pistol shot, and a jarring slam in the chest that came from nowhere staggered him backward. His frontward recoil dropped him to his knees. For a stupefied instant he thought that he pulled his own trigger by mistake, and that his gun had somehow burst.
He struggled to get up; in the wavering light he could see a red-faced man at the card table with a smoking pistol still extended. A couple of seconds and a whole eternity too late he realized it was Ted Lindsay’s wild dairyman from downstate, and that Max’s derringer had not been the only gun in the game.
He couldn’t get off his knees. His eyes were fogging over; he shook his head, trying to clear them. There was something he had to see. From a long way off he could hear Ted Lindsay’s voice, panic stricken: “You fool — he’s a cop! Didn’t you tumble to that?”
“Cop? Good God! I thought it was a heist!”
By an effort that strained his blurring vision the man on the floor separated Charlie Ballou’s face from the circle of pale faces staring down at him. The round, childish features wore a sort of half-leer that could have been a triumphant grin; as though absent-mindedly he rubbed the arm which had been pistol-whipped, and the man on his knees knew that Charlie Ballou was answering his question for him: Charlie was the man who had yelled “Stickup!”
Desperately Conway tried to raise his arm. With all his might he willed his arm to raise and the revolver to level, but it was terribly heavy. The room spun dizzily, and his head dropped.
With disinterest he noticed the bright red bubbles on his clean white shirtfront. He was so tired... so awfully tired. And it was getting dark... dark.
The blond head flew up and back as final realization dawned. Galvanically the heavy body lurched upward in a final convulsive lunge, and then fell onto its back with a crash that shook the room, and the staring eyes reflected glassily the light they could no longer see.
The Defenders
by C. B. Gilford
Neighborliness in Suburbia may have its advantages... when crime comes knocking.
Neither Kit nor Tony Foster noticed the strange car that morning. They had no reason to pay any particular attention to it. It was parked way up at the corner, five houses away. And they certainly didn’t notice, at that distance, that a man was sitting in it. Besides, they were concentrating on each other.
Kit went as far as the front stoop with her husband. It was a summer morning, already warm, and she wore only a halter and shorts, the customary “uniform” for the subdivision’s matrons.
She gave Tony another small peck out there in the broad daylight. It was not at all like the more passionate farewell embrace they’d had indoors. But she loved him very much, and wanted to kiss him at every opportunity.
“I hate to leave you alone all day,” Tony said, still holding her hand.
She knew what he meant. A husband for less than a year, he begrudged every moment he had to spend away from her. So from that point of view she liked to hear him say it. But he also meant that he worried about her — here alone in this new little subdivision house. And that, of course, was ridiculous. She might be separated from him, but she certainly wasn’t alone. In fact, the total absence of solitude was her principal complaint.
But she didn’t tell him so. She wanted him to think that her happiness in her new home was complete, perfect. “Don’t be silly, darling,” she said. “I’ve been getting along fine.”