A. Fair - The Bigger They Come

‘Morgan Birks had been pretty smart. He’d cached most of the swag in safety deposit boxes, and these safety deposit boxes were in his wife’s name. Well, it happened that that was the particular time his wife chose to start a divorce action, knowing that she had him over a barrel. She’d been laying for a break like that because she’d been stepping and Morgan had the goods on her.

‘That raised merry hell with Morgan Birks. He couldn’t go into court to fight the divorce action. She had all of the stuff where she could get at it and he couldn’t. He had to take things lying down. So he reached an agreement with her — the best he could get — which wasn’t much. He had the deadwood on her, but he couldn’t use it because of what she had on him and because the chief would have taken him for a ride if he’d stuck his head out of cover.’

‘Where was Morgan Birks?’ the district attorney asked.

‘I’m coming to that,’ I said. ‘You said you wanted it from the beginning.’

‘All right. Go ahead and give it to me.’

‘Well, the chief found out that Sandra Birks was going to hire the Cool Detective Agency to serve the papers. So the chief planted me to get a job with the Cool Detective Agency, figuring that we’d find Morgan that way. I got the job and was assigned to serve the papers. Sandra Birks naturally wanted the thing cleaned up.’

‘Now, Sandra was protecting Morgan Birks, but we didn’t know it at the time. She had a man in the house who was supposed to be her brother. It wasn’t her brother at all. It was Morgan. But Morgan was watching her like a hawk. He was afraid she was going to two-time him all the way along the line and skip out with all the money from the safety deposit boxes instead of the cut that they’d agreed on.

‘Well, as soon as I’d get any information from Sandra Birks and Alma Hunter I’d relay it on to the chief. And in that way, we found out where Morgan Birks was hiding ― that is, we found out the man who was supposed to be Sandra’s brother was really the man we wanted.’

‘But how could he pose as her brother when you already knew him?’ the sheriff asked.

‘Because he’d pretended he was in an automobile accident, and they’d taped a lot of stuff over his nose, and the tape had pulled his face all out of shape. He was combing his hair differently, and he’d put on some padding under his coat, enough to fill him out. After I bumped Morgan off, I rolled that padding up into a bundle and dropped it in an ashcan in front of the apartment house. You can check on that.’

‘Go ahead,’ the sheriff said.

‘Well, I passed all this information on to the chief. So the chief had a pug by the name of Fred — I never did know his last name. And he sent Fred out to bring Morgan Birks to time.

‘Well, here’s the funny thing. Sandra had already been down and looted the lock boxes. She was lousy with coin. Morgan Birks found it out, and made up his mind he’d kill her, get the dough, and skip out. But Sandra was playing around with a boy friend, and she didn’t want Morgan to know anything about it. So she talked Alma Hunter into sleeping in her bed. She told her husband she was going to be sleeping in one of the twin beds in the room with Alma — and he wasn’t to come in because he was supposed to be her brother.

‘Her husband had his keys. Along in the middle of the night he slipped into the apartment, tiptoed over to the twin bed, groped around in the dark, and started to choke Alma Hunter, thinking it was Sandra. Alma kicked him in the stomach a couple of times and broke loose his hold. She started to scream, and Morgan beat it. That was the day before I bumped Morgan Off.

‘Well, when the chief got the dope on Morgan, naturally Morgan was on the spot. Morgan confessed to everything and agreed to return the dough. But he couldn’t return the dough until he got it back from his wife. So the chief told him to go get it.

‘But get this — the chief wasn’t trusting Morgan Birks any more, and Morgan knew too much. With the grand jury business coming up and Sandra Birks turning against him and all of that stuff, Morgan represented a pretty bad liability.

‘Now, I’d taken a shine to Alma Hunter. She was a good kid, and when I found out that Morgan had been at work on her throat, I slipped her the rod and told her to protect herself in case anything else happened.

‘Well, Morgan met me at a drug store where the chief had staked me out, and we were going up to get the dough from Sandra. Morgan told me Alma Hunter was out with a boy friend and wouldn’t be in all evening. Do you get the sketch? Sandra Birks had the chief’s dough. We wanted it. We knew it was going to be a rough party. Sandra had passed a stall on to Morgan. He’d fallen for it, and passed it on to me. Morgan figured I’d tap her over the head and get the dough she was supposed to be wearing in a money belt under her nightgown right next to the skin.

‘I fell for it. We went up to the apartment. Morgan Birks opened it with his key, and went into the bedroom. It was dark. I had a flashlight, but Morgan said his wife always woke up when there was a light in the room and for me to feel my way. I’d asked him just before we went in if there was anyone except his wife in the place, and he said no, his wife was the only one there.

‘I fumbled my way along through the dark. I could hear her breathing there on the bed. I decided I’d clap my hand over her mouth and then grab the money belt. Morgan Birks was over near the foot of the bed somewhere. I couldn’t see just where, but I could hear him breathing, too. I reached out, trying to get my hand where I could clamp it over her mouth all at once. I wanted to get it where I could feel from her breathing that it was right over her nose. I stuck it out there in the dark and kept moving it around until I could feel her breath on the palm of my hand — well, then she woke up.

‘And I swear to heaven, gentlemen, that I never had a chance. She was quicker than a cat. That rod came around and blazed off in my face before I could do a thing about it. I’d made a grab for her, but she’d moved and all I got was a handful of pillow. And then this gun went off right under my nose, and then she jumped out of bed and made for the door. And as soon as I heard that scream, I knew it was Alma and not Sandra.

‘Well, we stood there for a minute until we heard the outer door slam, and then I turned on my flash. Morgan Birks said, “You dirty bungler. You’ve ranked the job!” ’

‘I didn’t say anything. I was looking at the rod on the floor. I knew it was the gun I’d given Alma Hunter. She’d shot and then dropped it when she’d beat it for the door. Morgan Birks was still cussing me. I reached down and picked up the gun. I said, “Birks, you can’t shoot square even when it’s a showdown, can you?” He said, “What do you mean?” I said, “You know damn well what I mean. You planted Alma Hunter on me and said it was Sandra.” ’

‘I think he read what was going to happen then in my eyes. He ran past me and tried to get to the door. Well, he never made it, I shot him through the back of the head. Then I dropped the gun on the floor and had to move the body back in order to open the door. I went out to the corridor, down the back stairs, out through the alley door, took a taxicab, went home, and went to bed.’

‘Did you report to Cunweather?’

‘Not then. I figured that was the way the chief would like to have things and there was no use getting all excited about it.’

‘Did you go to sleep?’

‘I was just getting to sleep when Alma Hunter called me on the telephone. I hadn’t expected she’d do that— Well, you know the rest. I put on an act about being sleepy so that the landlady had to call me three or four times.’