Blonde Bait for the Murder Master

The rest was shipped to the syndicate. Taken to the syndicate by Brock, in person, driving the big black sedan one hundred and forty miles, to leave the dough in a very businesslike looking office in a large office building.

Both Anna Garron and Brock Sentosa had been sent in by the syndicate. The other girl, Joyce Kitnik, a heavy-thighed redhead, was a local. While Brock counted the cash, Joyce was over in the other end of the cellar, running the tickets for two weeks ahead through the fancy stitching machines sent in by the syndicate. The tickets are stitched into a double fold, and an end has to be torn off to open them up.

Brock counted out fifteen hundred in one pile, twenty-five hundred for the five winners that week into the second pile and shoved the rest down into a canvas sack along with his code report.

“Pay day,” he sang out. Joyce giggled, as usual, and tucked her hundred down the front of her dress. Anna Garron clicked open her purse and stuffed the hundred inside. Brock gave me four hundred, two for me and one each for the boys upstairs.

While his back was turned, Anna Garron gave me a long, steady look. I knew what it meant. We both knew that our footing was dangerous, and that what we planned to do was unhealthy, though profitable. She was good. Brock would never have guessed, unless he intercepted one of those infrequent looks, that she felt anything other than contempt for me.

Brock picked up the two sacks, grinned at me and said, “Okay, Brian, let’s roll.”

“Look, will Billy be all right for this trip?”

He frowned. “Billy is fine but he’s excitable. I’d rather have you.”

“Okay,” I said. “It’ll be me. But the blonde stenographer is going to be sore.”

He thought it over carefully. Then he smiled and said, “I’ll take Billy. You see what you can find out.”

I wanted to laugh in his face. Maybe if it hadn’t been for those dead brown eyes, I would have risked it. I was surprised to feel a trickle of ice cold sweat run down my ribs. The blonde stenographer was Kit Robinson, and she worked in the D.A.’s Office.

I went up the stairs with him and, as he took the money out to the sedan, I paid off Billy Browne and Oley Gerraine. It was funny, but whenever I had anything to do with those two, I felt like a cop again. I felt like maybe my brother, Quinn, would feel.

Quinn and Brian Gage. Brothers on the Force. Large-sized laugh.

I had seen Quinn just the day before. He had been walking up Baker Street toward his house, Molly, the kids and the mortgage and the frayed easy chair where he could take off his shoes and move his lips as he read the paper.

The crate was new. I had had it three days. So when I saw him, I pulled in at the curb about twenty feet ahead of him and lit a cigarette. When he came alongside, I said, “Hello, Quinn.”

He stopped, turned and walked heavily over to the car, put his big hands on the top of the door and looked at me with that infuriating combination of pity and dull contempt.

“New car, kid?” he asked.

“Yeah. Like it?”

“Well, it goes with those clothes, kid.”

“It’s nice not to hear that old leather harness creak when you take a deep breath, Quinn. How many years is it before they let you retire on ten dollars a week, Quinn? Not over thirty, I hope.”

Quinn is me, with heavier bones, four more years, twenty-five pounds extra. I saw the dull red flush under his weathered skin as the words struck home. I guess he counted to ten. When he spoke he said gently, “I know you got a raw deal, kid, and...”

“Hell, they did me a favor. I’m doing okay.”

“I know who you’re tied in with, kid.”

“So do half the people in town; it’s no secret. If you law boys get upset, you can haul me in and fine me and let me go. I can afford a fine; the maximum the law allows is two hundred and fifty bucks, isn’t it?”

Then, for the first time, he got under my skin. He gave me a long, superior grin. He grinned even though his eyes looked tired. “Everything you’ve ever touched, kid, has turned queer. You figure you’re a pretty bright lad. Well, when you get down to where you need eating money, you know where I live.”

He turned and walked away. I was sorry the crate had fluid drive at that point. I wanted to rip it away from the curb fast enough to scream the tires. Three blocks further on I realized that I had been holding the wheel so tightly that my fingers were cramped.

He was a great one to get holier-than-thou.

The war had snatched me out of the state university after I had worked three years in the freight yards to get the dough to go there. I had to work while I was there, and the grades weren’t too good. The army let me out so late, that I couldn’t get in any place.