Blonde Bait for the Murder Master

And big hearted Quinn, the big brother type person, had gotten me appointed to the force. I couldn’t admit it to him, and I rarely admitted it to myself, but I had liked it. A corny thing to like, I guess — being rigged out in police blues, with a gun on your hip and a badge on your chest and a big glare for overtime parkers. Nearly two years of it. Well enough set so that Kid Robinson and I were beginning, to talk about setting the date.

By then I was riding in a prowl car rather than standing traffic duty. At two A.M. one morning. I was driving and I had dropped Sig Western, my partner, at a drugstore to call his wife about something he had forgotten. While I was waiting for him the motor idling, a car steamed through the intersection ahead, going at least seventy. I pulled out onto his tail, and managed to edge him over and forced him to stop up by the vacant lots near the edge of town. Like a damn fool, I forgot to give communications a buzz and tell him what I was doing.

I came back to the car, wishing I had Sig along, because I wanted to take the guy in. I never got a look at him. He got out and said something in a low voice, and then I leaned on the shoulder of the road. When I got up, I realized I was drunk. I stank of liquor. The wise apples in the car had knocked me out and poured me full.

I weaved and staggered back to the prowl car and tried to send in a call, but I couldn’t make my lips fit around the words. I decided to drive the car back to pick up Sig. Halfway back the world took a big swoop and I slammed against a tree and blacked out.

My story stank as badly as I did. No license to give them. Drunk on duty. Busting up police equipment. And out of the files they dug up the old case about when I was in high-school and another kid and I got into his pop’s liquor and we were booked for busting street lights. That was all, brother. And so the cheery little city of Murrisberg owed Brian Gage a lot. I was out to get mine — all that was coming to me, and a little more for mental anguish.

I knew that I wasn’t any better than Billy and Oley, the kid gunmen, but I still felt like a cop whenever I talked to them. They both had those little rodent faces, that way of keeping their eyes moving, that self-conscious foulness of mouth that they seem to need to feel like men. Yet I knew they couldn’t even be hauled in for lugging weapons. Wallace Rome, attorney at law, had put pressure in the right places to get the licenses.

Billy climbed in beside Brock Sentano, and he backed the big car out into the dusk. I stood on the porch steps and watched it head down the street. Oley squeezed at a pimple on his chin with nails that he wore too long, and said, “How’s chances a lift into town, Brian?”

“Slim,” I said.

He shrugged. “Okay, okay,” he said, and walked off down the street. He wore metal things on his heels, and scuffed as he walked.

I sat on the porch steps and lit a cigarette. The dusk turned slowly to night and pretty soon I heard the heavy tread of Joyce Kitnik coming across the porch as the front door slammed. I knew what she was going to do before she did it, and my mouth twisted in disgust. She came up and stood beside me. Her leg brushed my shoulder and then she leaned the solid meat of her knee heavily against me. “Nice night, hah?” she gave me in husky MGM voice.

Joyce was okay, except that she had some highly exaggerated ideas about her own charms. I didn’t answer; I just moved the glowing end of my cigarette close to her ankle.

She jumped back. “Clown!” she rasped, in her normal voice.

“Oh, sorry!” I said politely. She sniffed and clumped heavily down the steps and walked toward the bus stop. I knew that she was sore and I knew that she would try again.

When she had rounded the corner, I snapped the butt off into the grass in a shower of sparks, stood up and went into the house. I could hear the sound of Anna’s typewriter in the cellar. According to the official records, Brock Sentosa ran a wholesale food business. He had a couple dozen cases of canned goods stacked in one end of the cellar to prove it. Anna kept the books and made out the state and federal forms, withholding and so on. According to the official records, I was paid forty dollars a week and she was paid twenty-five. That eased the tax situation considerably.

I went quietly down the stairs and stood in the shadows for a moment, watching her. I would have felt more at ease about her, if I could have learned more about her past. But Anna did little talking about anything except the future.

When I moved out toward the cone of light made by the hanging lamp, she looked up. It was typical of her that she didn’t jump or look surprised. Her face showed nothing.