Читать книгу Call in the Feds - Gordon Landsborough - Страница 5

CHAPTER ONE

PRETTY BOY ARRIVES

Abruptly, the phone bell broke into harsh discordance, shattering the quiet of the smoke-filled, sunlit office high up in the police building.

The big young police captain dropped his feet quickly from his desk, startled. He said, “My God, if you don’t get that cracked bell seen to, it’ll give me the jeebies one day!”

The two police clerks went on writing. They heard his voice. He said: “Yeah?” Then another casual, “Yeah.” And then they heard him jump to his feet, his voice rising abruptly when he spoke: “Sure, sure. I’ll be right down. Get a car.”

They turned. Captain Harlan Just slammed the phone back on the desk, then grabbed for hat and gun.

One cynical deskman said to the other, “It’s a horse-fly bit him.” The other said, “He ain’t no horse.” And he made it sound as though he wasn’t certain.

At the door Lanny Just turned and startled them into silence. He rapped: “He’s been seen, down at the rail station.”

The cops started to get their fat lips around a big “Who?” but the head of the Freshwater Detective Division spoke again, first. “Him,” he almost shouted. And then, to make sure: “Him!”

And then they knew and were suitably shocked.

The police car started moving as he raced across the sidewalk. The door swung open and he went in, head down like a quarterback. The swift, fierce acceleration threw him against the other occupant of the rear seat, and it took him seconds to fight for his balance against the increasing momentum. Then he got into a seat, shoved his hat back, saw a red face and black eyebrows, and the day went sour for him.

“Why the hell?” he began, and then shut his mouth.

They had a hundred and sixteen cops in Freshwater, ten of them sergeants—and they had to pick on Sergeant Aubie Gillis to accompany him on this trip!

Gillis! Lanny could have spat at the thought. Gillis, a crooked cop if ever there was one.

Gillis was watching him, just the suggestion of a grin on that hard face that was as red-raw as the beef on the hooks in the down-town abattoir. A cunning, watchful face, but bold and brutal.

Lanny snarled, “Hell, you....” Then viciously, “Well, there’ll be no pickings for you on this case.”

The hard-faced cop’s eyes slanted. “Meanin’?”

“Meanin’ nothin’.” Lanny gave back look for look, After a few seconds, the sergeant turned his head and squinted along the tree-lined boulevard that led to the terminus of the New York-Freshwater Railroad.

Lanny heard Gillis’ voice come trickling out of the side of his mouth. “You’re out to nail me. Well, watch your step. You got nothin’ on me....”

The police captain let the sneer flow like syrup round his words as the car screamed on protesting tyres up the station approach. “Me, I’m out to nail nobody—only crooked cops. If you were straight, Gillis, you’d have nothing to fear; but you’re one of those grafting cops the people of Freshwater are gunning for, and you’ll get no mercy from me.”

They were stopping. Lanny just tumbled out of the car, leaving his assistant dumb. Just now there was something more important to do than bicker with a two-timing police-sergeant. He was reported to have been seen in Freshwater.

Another train had just pulled in from the city, and the big police-captain had to force his way against a river of newly-arrived vacationers. They ran to bright clothes, brighter ties, loud voices, and louder children, and the noise was bewildering under the glass-roofed station front.

Lanny got through at last, Sergeant Gillis and a patrolman hard behind. And back in the station yard two more patrol cars came tearing in, sirens screaming a peremptory demand for right of way.

A uniformed man saw Lanny and came quickly across. He was the man who had phoned in the report—one of the railroad’s private police. He was an old-timer, an ex-regular, and pretty reliable, Lanny knew.

He grabbed him and shoved him out of the way of the tail end of the departing stream of vacationers. “Let’s have it,” he rapped.

Joe MacReady had a paper in his hand, was already unfolding it. “I don’t make mistakes,” he bragged. “I saw him here ’bout ten minutes ago.”

He was stabbing a picture on the front sheet of the newspaper, his finger punctuating his every word. “He was up there at the cigar stand, talking to the girl. I wasn’t sure at first, so I tried to work round him.”

“And he got away in the crowd?”

The railroad cop nodded. He was looking hard at the picture. “But not before I was sure. That’s him. It’s him, I tell you—he’s tryin’ to hole out here in Freshwater.”

Other cops had come up now, and people were stopping to stare at the group of police in the big hallway. They knew something was in the wind, and a ripple of excitement ran along the crowd as they watched the quickly conferring group.

MacReady said, “As soon as I lost him, I got through to you.” Lanny nodded approval. He was planning the next move. He thought: That girl at the tobacco kiosk. I must speak to her. He remembered her. A nice kid if movie-mad.

He said, “We’re wasting time here. Jeter, you get through to the chief. Tell him I’m satisfied that Pretty Boy’s been seen here in Freshwater.” MacReady preened. Lanny whirled on him. “Mac, I haven’t many men, so you’ve got to stay on your feet here at the station until Pretty Boy’s behind bars. You know him; you’ve got to check on every outgoing passenger from this station to make sure he doesn’t get away. Got that? Pretty Boy’s turned up in Freshwater, and by God we’re goin’ to keep him here.”

He started moving back to the station exit. The crowd parted this time to let them through. Someone said softly, as they passed, “What’s cookin’, bud?” And a big mouth yapped, “Pretty Boy,” before Lanny could stop him.

The captain snarled at the patrolman, “You dumb cluck! How long now d’you think it’ll be before Pretty Boy wises to the fact that we know he’s here in Freshwater? What the hell, you tryin’ to help him?”

He told one car to get down to the pier. “There’s the afternoon coast steamer going out in a coupla hours. Don’t let it sail until you’re sure our man’s not aboard,” was his instruction, then he climbed into his own car.

“What now?” asked Sergeant Gillis. He had forgotten the feud that had recently developed between him and his Superior. Anyway, there was no graft in Pretty Boy, not for Gillis.

“Back to headquarters.” Lanny was thinking: All that way just to watch a fellow’s face while he tells you what he’s already said over the phone. But that’s how you had to do it in police work. Anyone could ring up, and a phone call didn’t sound convincing. But sight of MacReady’s face while he was repeating his story had been sufficient.

Pretty Boy, New York’s latest sensational criminal, was in Freshwater City, this playground on the Atlantic coast. Lanny, anyway, had few doubts about it now, and you didn’t bother about doubts when there was a chance of hooking on to Pretty Boy....

A patrolman had picked up a new edition outside the station. Lanny reached forward and grabbed it. But now he was giving orders to Patrolman Jeter at the radio.

“Tell the chief I want every man recalled to duty. Tell him every man stays on his feet until we know we’ve got Pretty Boy—or lost him. Tell him I want a cordon thrown right round the city—every road out must have a block. Call out the Vigilantes to help—they can watch across the fields and back roads. Keep a watch out at the airport. Tell him the station’s covered and a car’s down at the pier head. Tell him if Pretty Boy’s in Freshwater, he won’t get out!”

Jeter’s voice jumped into harsh, staccato repetition, and the orders were radioed through to the chief. As they came into the back road leading to the police HQ, a flurry of motorcycle cops came leaning crazily round the corners, heads down, tyres biting a precarious hold at that speed, sirens shrieking. Lanny saw them tear north along the Boston highway, and then they were in the yard and he was out and up the stairs three at a time.

The chief was on his feet as he crashed into the room. He was shouting, “Here’s something else for you, Lanny. It’s your busy day.”

Lanny grabbed the message form and skimmed it through. Then he said, “Jesus sneezes!” and the newspaper dropped forgotten from his hand as he raced back down the stairs.

The chief gazed down. A handsome face looked up at him from the newspaper. Pretty Boy’s. And bold type shouted out a headline consisting of two words—

MANIAC MURDERER