Robert Alter - 101 Mystery Stories

Sam tossed down the drink that was on the bar and moaned. He was staring at the automatic and Billy could see he wanted desperately to move.

A warm silence filled the bar, and then the phone rang shrilly, turning the silence to icicles.

“Now take it easy,” Billy said, backing slowly down the bar toward the phone hung on the wall. “A kiss isn’t anything.” As the phone rang again he could almost see the shrill sound grate through Sam’s tense body. Billy placed the automatic on the bar and took the last five steps to the phone. He let it ring once more before answering it.

“Naw,” Billy said into the receiver, standing with his back to Sam and Rita, “he’s not here.” He stood for a long moment instead of hanging up, as if someone were still on the other end of the line.

The shot was a sudden angry bark.

Billy put the receiver on the hook and turned. Sam was standing slumped with a supporting hand on a bar stool. Rita was crumpled on the floor beneath the table of the booth she’d been sitting in, her eyes open, her blonde hair bright with blood.

His head still bowed, Sam began to shake.

Within minutes the police were there, led by a young plainclothes detective named Parks.

“You say they were arguing and he just up and shot her?” Parks was asking as his men led Sam outside.

“He accused her of running around,” Billy said. “They were arguing, he hit her, and I was going to throw them out when the phone rang. I set the gun down for a moment when I went to answer the phone, and he grabbed it and shot.”

“Uh-hm,” Parks said efficiently, flashing a look toward where Rita’s body had lain before they’d photographed it and taken it away. “Pretty simple, I guess. Daniels confessed as soon as we got here. In fact, we couldn’t shut him up. Pretty broken.”

“Who wouldn’t be?” Billy said.

“Save some sympathy for the girl.” Parks looked around. “Seems like a nice place. I don’t know why there’s so much trouble in here.”

Billy shrugged. “In a dive, a class joint or a place like this, people are mostly the same.”

Parks grinned. “You’re probably right,” he said, and started toward the door. Before pushing it open, he paused and turned. “If you see anything like this developing again, give us a call, huh?”

“Sure,” Billy said, polishing a glass and holding it up to the fading afternoon light. “You know we don’t like trouble in here.”

“How dumb can you get!” Captain Ernest Fisher said, and slapped the desk blotter so hard that the calendar pad danced. Hogan, the bright-faced lieutenant of police, looked up from the standing files and asked a question with his eyebrows.

Fisher rattled the sheet in his hand. “I just got a look at this memo that came in last week — the one giving the names of parolees in the vicinity. It’s got Milt Potter listed.”

“Who’s Milt Potter?”

“You mean I never told you about him?”

“No, sir.”

“Take a look at the ’46 file while you’re there — under embezzlement. That’s Milton Potter, spelled the way it sounds. Bring it over and I’ll tell you the story.”

Hogan slid shut the drawer he was investigating and obeyed the order. He brought the manila folder to the Captain’s desk and flipped the cover to the first entry.

“Milton Potter,” he read. “Age thirty-four; single; employment, Metro Investment Services, Inc. ...”

“That’s the man,” Fisher nodded. He leaned back in the swivel chair and put his feet on the desk. “Tamest criminal you ever met in your life, or maybe the coolest. Walked off with two hundred thousand dollars of investors’ money, easy as stealing fruit from a pushcart. But now he’s a free man.”

“Paroled?”

“Two days ago,” Fisher scowled. “I had his release date on my calendar for twelve years — and then I don’t watch the memos! But it won’t make any difference. Two days, two weeks — I got Milt Potter’s number.”

The Captain lit a cigarette, then put the pack in front of him, readying himself for a siege of story-telling.

“It happened back in March of 1946. I was a looie like you then, and maybe even more of an eager beaver than you are now. I got called in when the Metro Investment discovered the shortage, but I didn’t have any work to do. Milt Potter did it for me.

“Potter was a funny guy. He was short and kind of owlish-looking, with sad brown eyes like a cocker spaniel. He had worked for Metro Services since he got out of college, a total of thirteen years, and he was still making only sixty bucks a week. He had no family, and few friends. He was quiet, courteous, commonplace, and careful. Nobody could tell you anecdotes about him, or even describe him very well — we found that out when he showed up missing. He went about his duties without ever complaining or revealing the secret intention that must have burned inside his guts for years.

“Then it happened. One day Potter didn’t report for work and nobody even cared very much. But when he didn’t show up the next day, somebody thought it might be a good idea to call his home and see if he had broken a leg or something. There wasn’t any answer. They didn’t get really disturbed about it until three days after that, when Potter was still unreported. It took all that time to get suspicious — that’s the kind of cookie Milt Potter was.

“Anyway, they finally came to their senses and made a quick check of Potter’s books. They didn’t even have to call in the auditors to determine that something wasn’t on the up and up. There were great big obvious holes in Potter’s accounting, and great big chunks of money missing, amounting to two hundred grand. Sure, Potter was the last guy in the world they would expect it from, but isn’t it always that way?

“So at this point they got real frantic and hollered cop. The Chief put me on assignment, and I went down to talk to them. I made a check on Potter and it was pretty surprising. He wasn’t at his rooming house, and his landlady didn’t know his whereabouts, but he hadn’t covered his trail worth a damn. His clothes and luggage were still in the room, and there were travel folders all over the place. Obviously, Potter had made plans for the money.

“I figured it wouldn’t be too difficult a task to find him, but I never even got the chance to prove myself. I guess maybe that’s why I was so upset over the case — the son of a gun cheated me out of my first big arrest! Because one day after Metro Services called in the police, Milton Potter walked into the precinct house and gave himself up.

“Well, maybe that wasn’t so surprising at that — a lot of first-timers lose their nerve after a job is pulled. But Potter didn’t look like a victim of the jitters. He was calm and rational, and all he said was, here I am, I took the money, do what you have to do.

“I grilled his for hours, but he stayed nice and cool all the time. Not cool the way some of these hoods you’re dealing with are — a respectable kind of coolness. But the one point he wouldn’t volunteer any information on was the location of the money. He clammed up tight every time I mentioned it. He was willing to go to jail for his crime, all right. But give up the dough? Uh-uh.

“Well, I really worked him over — in a legitimate way, of course. I told him that he was being a patsy, that it meant a fifteen- or twenty-year stretch for him if he kept up his attitude. I told him he would probably get off real light if he returned the dough — after all, it was his first offense. If he gave back the two hundred grand, both Metro and the insurance company would go easy on him. I practically promised it.