Blonde Bait for the Murder Master

A dress had been found which was a close match to the one that had been ripped and cut by the steel shoes. No, a change in hair style wasn’t necessary. The bandage would take care of that. Miss Garron’s face hadn’t been damaged, and the greatest similarity was around the mouth and nose.

So it was intended that the bandage would cover one eye. And then they decided, at least the lieutenant decided that I was needed. Quinn took me out to the black sedan and I was rushed to the side door of the Mercy Hospital taken up to a room on the second floor.

Kit stood there, the bandage covering her fair hair, one of her grey eyes. They had told her about me.

“The plan is this,” the lieutenant said. “The paper hits the street at six. At eight thirty, Miss Robinson leaves by the out patient door. She walks to the curb, stands there a moment, then turns and heads up the street toward the taxi stand. She walks slow. We have the block covered with everything we’ve got.”

She didn’t look at me. The lieutenant had her walk and asked me if it was okay. “No. Kit carried her head too high and her shoulders too straight. Slump a little and take shorter steps.”

Finally she got it right. She held a big red purse similar to the one half-destroyed by the fire in the shack

“Good luck, Kit,” I said.

She didn’t answer me.

I stuck close to the lieutenant and he seemed to forget that I was someone in ‘protective custody’. In his mind I had become a part of the home team, and it made me feel warm and good to be so considered.

Before daylight, the lieutenant, Quinn, Captain Jameson and I entered the small florist shop across the street from the out patient door. We moved some potted ferns into the window which would conceal us. In high windows across from the hospital men from the department checked the bolts of high-powered rifles.

At eight a car stopped near the door and two men leisurely began to change a soft rear tire. At either end of the block, department men loitered.

And at eight thirty on the dot, Kit came out of the door across the street, out into the morning sunshine. At one hundred feet, the illusion was perfect. It was as though Anna Garron walked out toward the street. It gave me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

At that moment the plan seemed futile, the trap empty, the whole idea childish and absurd. If Fletcher was still in town, he would try to grab her. Before the unknown backer tried to kill her, to kill the woman he had already killed...

She stood for a moment at the curb. I could see that her face was very white, her lips tight under the dark lipstick in Anna’s shade.

She was a clay pigeon, fragile and yet priceless. She was all the days of my future, standing alone and unprotected.

Suddenly another figure came out of the hospital door. The lieutenant cursed softly. In explanation he said, “Wallace Rome, the legal eagle. He’ll foul things up. He knew Garron and he knows Miss Robinson.”

Suddenly my mind was working with speed and desperation. Wallace Rome. Something was wrong, horribly wrong. What had I said to him over the phone? Something was missing in that conversation. Of course! I had mentioned the raid. He should have immediately said, “What raid?” But he hadn’t said it. He should have said it, but he didn’t.

Kit had not heard him. She turned to walk slowly down the street.

“Maybe he won’t notice her,” the lieutenant whispered.

As I looked, Wallace Rome casually slipped his hand into his jacket pocket. I grabbed a potted fern and threw it through the plate glass window of the shop. Kit turned startled eyes toward the direction of the crash.

As the lieutenant reached for me, I shook his arm off and hurried toward the door. Wallace Rome had crouched; he pulled his hand half out of the pocket and I saw the gleam of metal.

A rifle spoke with an authoritative crack, and Rome staggered back. His white teeth shone. Kit, as she had been instructed, dropped flat. Rome aimed the weapon at her and car brakes screamed as I ran directly across the road.

There was only one thought in my mind, and that was to somehow get between Kit and the muzzle of that gun.

But two rifles spoke together and he coughed, dropped to his knees, and folded slowly over onto his face. Men ran toward us from all directions. Kit got up and I grabbed her in my arms. She was shivering and I was saying silly and sentimental words over and over...

And then she pushed me away.

You can’t live on the wrong side of the fence without paying. And I am paying. Oh, the other deal is all washed up. Fletcher was picked up, along with Cowlfax, in Miami. I turned state’s evidence and saved my own hide.

But the months go by and I keep paying. I live with Quinn and Molly now, and I’m a brakeman in the yards. The big-shot dreams are gone. I’m just an average, beaten-down guy.

Quinn is working to get me back on the cops, but it is an uphill fight. He may never make it.