Call Me Killer (Prologue Crime) Page 12

  But David, Sam knew, had existed only because his mind censored Sam Gowan’s immediate past, refused to admit it, overthrew it and forgot it. And Sam knew he could beat his way back across that darkness now.

  He had learned, from Marion to face the obstacles that he met, squarely and bravely. It sounded a simple thing, but there was nothing more complex and difficult, as Sam knew better than anyone else in the world.

  But inhaling the air and the spray, he swelled out his lungs, thinking, I’m free of it now, I’m not afraid, and because I’m not afraid, I can face it. Sluggishly at first, and then in brilliant images, unceasingly projected across his mind, flowed the scenes and memories of hurts that his conscious mind had fought to deny and forget.

  He almost laughed aloud. “Listen to me, darling,” he said to Marion. He put his arm about her and drew her close against, him. “You know you told me that I had a paper in my pocket signed David, the first time you saw me? That was a paper I’d gotten from Lambart. A note I’d written when I was a kid of nineteen. You see, this friend of mine had been closer to me than a brother. I believed him, and I believed in him. Even when I got out of the reformatory, and found out that he had lied to me about the stolen car, and a lot of other things, and I hated him, I still didn’t want to get him in trouble. I wrote the note cursing him. I didn’t want to see him for fear of what I would do. But I signed it David so that even if it were found, it wouldn’t hook him up to our old trouble.

  “How do you like that? Lambart was blackmailing me! He’d been head of the Draft Board. My papers had fallen into his hands. He learned everything about me. The reformatory sentence, the way I had lied to get my job. I guess he had his Hal Slimer dig back and get everything there was on me. When I came out of the service, he held it over my head. Not so much for the money he took from me — although I’m sure now that many little blackmail grafts must have made him plenty that he’s hidden away somewhere! And I was so afraid of my shadow that I paid! I paid a man named Hal Slimer!

  “But what Lambart wanted was the sense of power, the almost sexual pleasure he got out of sadistically torturing me, and watching me squirm. What a place he was in! He could hide behind that cloak of great and good man, and indulge his greatest desires: to hurt, and ruin, to rape and despoil!

  “Every time I’d protest, he’d have Slimer rake up new evidence against me — nothing really, but remember, I was sick and scared! Well, when I couldn’t stand it any more, that and the petty injustices of the company’s personnel system, a life barren and drab with Elsa, a life of keeping all my hurts hidden inside myself, my mind rebelled because I wouldn’t!”

  • • •

  The old man tossed a line to the pier at Bruce Moore’s Fishing Camp at Fisherman’s Cove. A man in dungarees and T-shirt made fast the line. The Old Man jerked his head toward shore.

  “This is it, Lady,” he said to Marion. “If you folks’ll go ashore, I’ll put back out. This could make me a lot of trouble.”

  Marion patted his hand as she passed him. “God bless you,” she said. “I hope there’s no trouble.”

  “Twon’t matter too much,” the old man allowed. “I’m so old now. Ain’t much they can do to me.”

  It was mid-morning now. Fisherman’s Cove appeared, in the metallic sunlight of the waterfront to be a nest of single masters, matted with brown frame shacks locked to long, rickety cat-walks and laced together by a million miles of ever-drying fish nets.

  The old man reversed his pot-bellied launch, eased it around and headed inwater, the way he’d come, without a backward glance over his shoulder.

  “Now!” Marion said, heaving a sigh.

  Sam knew Marion was thinking that at last they were on their way. She looked forward anxiously. But Sam, standing there, felt a premonition of evil in the crannies of his belly. The Old Man was gone. Bruce Moore’s weather-rotting shack was a few steps ahead. They’d reached it now. The place of no turning back.

  Bruce Moore’s small craft lay idle, the water slapping their undersides. They walked past a bait box spilling water, its insides crammed with wriggling, green minnows.

  They walked slowly together along the pier toward the shack. Double doors stood wide open up there, and in them Bruce Moore stood waiting.

  His smile was wide, in a face trained to smile. His hair was faded by hundreds of suns on blistered waters. His body was thick and heavy with lax, lazy blubber, and you could see he hadn’t hauled a net in years. But his face was still lean, as though it had not caught up with his fattening body.

  “Come in,” he said. “I’ve been expecting you since Old Tom called. I wish now you had come last night.”

  “We tried,” Marion said fervently. “This is the best we could do.”

  Moore hiked up his heavy shoulders. They were the color of his frame board shack, those shoulders. The sun had dried out the last ounce of oil from them.

  He stepped aside as they went up through the double doors past him. Inside, huge oil lamps were suspended from the rafter beams, their reflectors and hoods brown and red with age. Small nets, like those drying on the frames along the water’s edge outside, hung between the upright supports. Cots, chairs and stoves were pushed out of the way against the left wall. Three walls were littered with lines, tackle and other fishing gear. The lee side was open, wooden windows pushed out and supported by planks.

  Directly before them was an unpainted kitchen table. Upon a corner of it, one leg hoisted over it, his head bandaged with gauze like a white turban, his mouth twisted into a lazy, sneering smile that left his flat eyes untouched, was Barney Manton.

  “Turn around and run,” he said quietly. “So I can shoot you down. I’d like that.”

  Marion just looked at Bruce Moore as though he were something that had crawled out of the woodwork.

  He shrugged again. “As I said. I wish now you’d come last night.”

  “I thought you were Tom Dugan’s friend,” Marion said emptily.

  That shrug. That trained smile. “I am. But I got to watch out for myself. I could get in trouble helping you two. When I read your names in the paper, and they were the names Tom Dugan had said to me — I knew I’d better call the City police if I wanted to stay out of trouble.”

  17

  “YOU DONE RIGHT, Moore,” Barney Manton said.

  He held up the” pair of handcuffs.

  “These are for you, Gowan,” he said.

  “I thought you weren’t afraid of me,” Sam said.

  “I’m not. But this time, I’m taking you back. If I keep you locked up, I won’t have to worry about any assists from your cute little baby doll.”

  He slid off the table.

  Sam stood there, feeling gone inside as Manton walked warily toward him. He smiled.

  “What you got to grin about?” Manton said.

  “You were pretty sure of yourself last night, Manton.”

  “I’m just taking no chances. This hide and seek gets boring after a while.” His mouth tightened. “Put out your hands, killer.”

  “I didn’t kill Lambart,” Sam said. His voice shook. But he knew it was hopeless to ask for mercy. “There was no clip in my gun, Manton. I couldn’t have killed him”

  “Come on, put out your hands.”

  “Wasn’t there a robbery?” Sam cried. “I haven’t the money, Manton. Why don’t you find that money?”

  “I’ll find it all right,” Manton said quietly, “when I get you and your doll down to headquarters. Before I’m through, One of you will decide to tell me about the money.” His voice hardened. “Put out your hands.”

  Slowly, Sam raised his trembling hands, backs up. Bruce Moore seemed to have stopped breathing. He was standing near the door. Sam glanced at Marion. She was standing tall, straight, but tears were sliding down her cheeks. “Oh, Sam,” she said in despair.

  At the sound of her voice, Manton cocked an insolent eye toward her. Sam took a step back and dropped his hands. As Manton wheeled about, Sam swung wildly
with his right fist.

  Manton moved back agilely, his face contorted with rage. Sam’s swinging arm missed, throwing him off balance.

  Manton backhanded him with the open cuffs. The crack of the metal across Sam’s face was loud in the shack. Marion screamed.

  Blood boiled from Sam’s torn cheek.

  “All right, Sonny, let’s settle this now!” Manton breathed. He fell back another step. Gowan dove upon him, his clawing fingers clutching at Manton’s thick neck. Sam was no fighter. He was just an ordinary guy and no match for Manton. But this was his life, he knew, that he was fighting for, his freedom. It was his last chance on earth to keep Marion out of Manton’s reach.

  Manton drove a short left into the middle of Sam’s stomach. Sam’s arms flew wide, and as Manton hit him again in the same place, he was for the moment completely helpless.

  Sam toppled forward, clinging to Manton for support. With a twist of his left hand, Manton caught Sam’s left shoulder and thrust him away. While Sam was still reaching out for him, Manton chopped at his face with his right fist.

  Sam’s knees buckled. He staggered a little forward, and Manton hit him again. His head rocked back, and he slumped so he was kneeling. Manton struck him three more times in the face as Sam crumpled. Manton wouldn’t let him fall. He growled, clutching up Sam’s shirt front. Holding Sam up on his knees though his whole body sagged helplessly, Manton began to hit him senselessly across the face.

  Sam heard Marion’s weeping, and the breath sobbing out of his own body, but all the sounds in the shack were fading as he slipped deeper into darkness….

  …. He wasn’t feeling the terrible force of Manton’s fists ripping at his face, any more. He was seeing someone running in the darkness, running and hiding. He knew that the awful moment of Ross Lambart’s dying was fighting back up into his consciousness.

  It seemed to Sam that he was back in Lambart’s office. The lights were on, but Lambart wasn’t there. Thank God, Sam was thinking, I don’t want to talk to him. I don’t want to see him. I couldn’t kill him. But I had to get this far to know I never could.

  His fingers closed in horror on the automatic he’d bought at the pawn shop. Then he heard voices at the corridor door. Someone was coming. He had to hide. He ran across the room and stepped into the coat closet.

  In his haste, he brushed down two overcoats and two hats. They were crumpled about his feet. He was afraid to move. He was straining to hear the two people in the office. Through the door, he heard a woman’s voice rising angrily against Lambart’s.

  “You’ll pay it,” she was saying. “I told you I wanted a thousand dollars, and I mean to have it.”

  “There is the money,” Lambart’s voice was cold. He was sitting behind his desk. “You reach for it, my dear and I’m going to reach for the telephone. I’ll have the police in here before you could ever hope to get away.”

  “The police!” That derisive laughter! It was so familiar! It went through him, chilling him. But standing there in the clothes niche, he could not say why. “How can you afford to call the police, my fine Mr. Lambart?” the woman inquired. “Would you say to them that I was blackmailing you? Would you like for Hal to tell the world what he knows about the righteous Ross Lambart?

  “Oh, no. You never thought all these years when you’ve been blackmailing poor devils that you were laying yourself Open to blackmail, did you?

  “Well, you’re in the prettiest spot you’ll ever be in in your life, Mr. Lambart. And one you got in all by yourself. My husband was gone. Driven away by your sadistic hounding. You couldn’t let me alone, could you? You couldn’t keep your soft hands off me, could you? You had to sneak in to see me nights, didn’t you?

  “Now, you’re going to pay for it. A thousand dollars tonight. And next week, a thousand more, paid to poor lonely little Elsa — and to spineless Hal Slimer. Hal who’d never dare turn against you. Well, maybe once he jumped when you said jump, Ross, but that’s all over now. You’re going to dance when we say dance. And you’re going to pay, every week.”

  Sam, watching through the slit in the door, could see Ross bring up the gun from the middle desk drawer. But before he could level it, the woman had snatched up the telephone and hurled it straight into Lambart’s face.

  The gun flew from Lambart’s hand upon the desk. The woman snatched it up as Lambart came to his feet, his face gashed, the telephone lying broken on the desk top.

  Lambart ran around the desk. He grabbed at Elsa’s throat, hitting and scratching at her face. He fought like a woman, sobbing and swearing as he struck at her.

  Elsa wrenched away from him. He started toward her again as she moved around the desk. She fired. It was as though Lambart’s face caved in under that first shot. Then he took two more steps and got five more bullets into his face for his efforts. He staggered, twisting in agony, and leaned against the desk top. Blood leaked from his face, smearing everything on the desk before he crumpled to the floor. He struck a chair and it toppled out on its side.

  Elsa’s hands trembled as she snatched up the crisp pile of hundred dollar bills from the desk. She upset the inkstand into the pool of Lambart’s blood. Without looking at him, she thrust the gun in her purse along with the money and fled from the room….

  • • •

  Sam came out of it with Marion bent over him, calling to him. He shook his head to clear it, although now he saw things more clearly than he ever had.

  He looked down at his hands. They were securely linked together with handcuffs. Manton was standing over him, feet apart.

  “Get up,” Manton said. “Both of you. Let’s go.”

  Sam got painfully to his feet. His legs trembled and almost buckled under him. Marion put her arm about his waist.

  “Let him alone,” Manton ordered. “He’s got to get used to walking by himself, baby. He’s going to walk all by himself, right into the gas chamber.”

  Sam saw that Bruce Moore was backed over under the pushed-out board windows. He wasn’t smiling that trained smile now. His lean face over his fat body, was gray.

  Sam wiped the blood from his eyes with the backs of both his hands. He felt Manton’s fingers dig into his manacled arm. He looked at Manton’s face. And still Sam knew he could never tell him the truth. His knowledge was never going to do him any good. He thought of the torture ahead for him in the third degree room with Manton and the relay of goons. He realized that even if in desperation, he would blurt out what he knew about Elsa, what he had seen in Lambart’s office, they weren’t going to listen, anyway. They wouldn’t ever believe him.

  He knew the look in the detective’s face. Barney Manton didn’t care who killed Ross Lambart. Sam looked guilty, and his guilt could be proved enough to suit Manton’s case against him.

  It’s all happened like this before, Sam thought miserably. He half staggered down the planks toward Manton’s car at the rear of the shack. He could remember the vicious faces of the detectives who had arrested him when he was eighteen. They hadn’t cared whether he was guilty or not, he’d looked guilty. They’d even tried to make a deal with him. “Rat on your buddy,” is what they’d told him, “and maybe you can go free.” But Sam had trusted his friend, and had gone to jail.

  Now, Sam knew Elsa was guilty. He had known since he had read about the $1000 robbery. He could still see the stack of flat new hundred dollar bills in Elsa’s hand the day she paid Dr. Terasake. But he hadn’t known how Elsa had murdered Lambart or why she was mixed up with him.

  What would that knowledge gain him now? Elsa was his wife. No matter how she’d failed him. No matter that it was Marion he loved, and escape from this place with Marion was all he wanted. He could not tell what he knew about Elsa. His first thought that night he’d come awake in Lambart’s office had been “run to Elsa!” She had not aided him. But no one could have helped him.

  At eighteen, he had gone to prison because he had trusted a boy who’d been like his own brother. Now, Sam knew he could not talk against
Elsa. He’d go to prison again. Only this time it was for keeps for Sam.

  Manton meant to see Sam in the gas chamber. What a wonderful record that would make for Barney Manton! It didn’t matter to Manton that he was not guilty, and time might reveal the truth! Manton had won because he was stronger, brutal and uncaring! Sam shivered. That was the kind of truth that won out. All you had to do was to be strong enough, and evil enough in this world and you couldn’t lose!

  Manton ordered Sam to get into the middle of the front seat. He got in under the wheel. He smiled grimly. It was almost over. He wondered if that damned Milligan had given up with his test tubes and slide rules, yet? Well, he wouldn’t have to worry about Milligan much longer, now.

  He spoke across Sam to Marion. “Any time you feel like jumping, baby, between here and town,” he said. “Go ahead, It’ll be a lot easier for you.”

  “I’m going back,” Marion said very quietly. “There must be some way to stop people like you.’

  “Don’t count on it, will you, honey?” Manton put the car in reverse and roared out onto the highway.

  Marion closed her fingers over Sam’s manacled hands. They were icy cold. With a handkerchief from his coat pocket, she tried to wipe the blood from about his eyes. He looked at her. Her hand tightened on his, and she bit hard on her underlip. He tried to smile through the blood on his face. He supposed it must be a pretty horrible attempt.

  18

  IT WAS a little after one o’clock in the afternoon when Barney parked before police headquarters. There was still a slight chill in the air, but Manton was aware that he was sweating. Everything he had ever lived for was about to be realized. The palms of his hands were sweated.

  He told Marion and Gowan to get out, and they crossed the walk and started up the steps. Loafers about the doorway stared.

  As they entered the door, Manton could feel the sense of wrong about the place. The room was completely silent. The desk sergeant was bent over his ledger and didn’t even look up. The patrolmen in chairs along the wall appeared not even to see them.