Тэлмидж Пауэлл - The Third Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™ - 25 Classic Mysteries

“You were so sweet, Freddie,” she said, “the way you protected me when they arrested you.”

I shrugged, feeling like a big man. “I told you a long time ago you were my girl, didn’t I? I take care of what’s mine. Anyway, the fuzz had me dead to rights. The least I could do was stick to my story that you didn’t know I’d been operating with somebody else’s dough, car, and credit cards. No matter what they suspected, they couldn’t build a case against you.”

“Freddie,” she said through moistly parted lips, “you are the bravest, greatest, most loyal man—”

Her sweet music was interrupted by the arrival of her boss at the table. Clemmie introduced us, explaining that I was an old friend of the family and schoolmate she hadn’t seen in years. O’Leary’s ire was somewhat soothed. Reminding me of a twitchy mouse, he shook hands and suggested to Clemmie that she get back to work.

It was great, sitting there and chugging my first cold beer in more than three years and watching Clemmie’s bright movements from table to table.

A beautiful half hour passed, and then I felt like I was being stared at. My eyes cut along the bar. A big, dark-haired man had come in and was being served a shot glass. His gaze caught with mine. He glanced away, as if trying to decide whether or not to admit he’d seen me.

He was Porter Attics, a bricklayer on the construction job. Making up his mind, he tossed his drink down in one swallow, swiped the back of his hand across his mouth, and came over to the table.

“How goes, Freddie?”

“Okay. Sit down, Port.”

He lowered his beef into the chair Clemmie had vacated, sat looking at his knuckles, then lifted his eyes to mine.

“Freddie,” he said with some hesitation, “ain’t neither of us seen the other in a gin mill. Okay?”

I didn’t dig. He saw the frown grow on my face.

“I mean when we have to report to Sam Lagin,” he explained. “He’ll figure we’ve met on the job. You’ll find that he’s always picking, trying to make a stoolie out of you.”

I gawked at him, then laughed. “Well, how about that! Two members of the fifty-three club.”

“Yeah,” Attics said, “and joints serving booze are off-limits to us — with six more months of my parole to go.”

I slapped him on the shoulder. “So forget it, Porter! Sam Lagin, the creep, couldn’t make me stoolie if he ran over me with a bulldozer.”

“Likewise,” Port nodded, relaxing. “I had you pegged as a right guy, first day you reported on the job. How about I buy?”

“To drink to Sam Lagin,” I suggested.

He got a laugh out of that. “I got a feeling you and me is going to get along, Freddie.”

Lovely evening. I’d found a pal with common interests, common lingo, and Clemmie was serving the drinks.

I reported in to Sam Lagin at my appointed hour. He grunted that he was glad to see my punctuality, asked me how I was getting along on the job.

I conned him with some talk about how I wanted to look into this job training deal.

“Don’t want to barrow cement for the rest of my life, Mr. Lagin.”

“Well, that sounds fine, Freddie. Always good to see a man who wants to better himself. We’ll certainly look for an opening in some line of work you’d like to do.”

I halfway listened to him ramble along about various opportunities in the job training programs. I nodded when I was supposed to and asked a question when it seemed proper. But in my mind, I was way ahead of him. Now that I was back with Clemmie, the job was a hole in the head.

There was a big, wide world out there waiting for Clemmie and me. We’d already talked about it some. Sam Lagin would be no problem at all. I was already more than up to here with him, his stinking job, with wrestling piles of lumber all day after a night with Clemmie.

Parole violation had lost its first fears for me. The country was full of parole absconders, as file legal term put it. I’d got caught the first time because I’d played it dumb. I wouldn’t play it that way again.

Question was, what kind of hit? Not a two-bit job like sticking up a filling station? I wanted loot Clemmie and I could really enjoy.

I wondered — for a second — if Porter Attics might have some ideas. He and I had got to be real pals since the night we met in O’Leary’s. But I nixed him. We only had a few more months until he could thumb his nose at all the bricks his parole slavery had forced him to lay. Also, he’d done time twice for rough stuff, assault with a deadly weapon and a truck hijacking. I wanted a hit that was much less spectacular...

“Got all that, Freddie?” Lagin finished, lifting his baleful little eyes.

“Oh, yes, sir, Mr. Lagin.”

“Fine. Just stick with it and we’ll get you into one of those tech school night classes when the new semester starts in the fall.”

“I’m looking forward to it, Mr. Lagin.” And that was partly the truth. I didn’t bother to mention to him that I was looking forward to being with Clemmie on a nice southern beach when autumn rolled around.

Clemmie wanted to go out that night, but the best I could go was drag into her apartment and flop on the couch, bushed from laying sewer line laterals all day.

“You poor baby,” she said, flinging me a beer and stroking my forehead with her tantalizing fingertips, “what are they doing to you?”

“Killing me,” I said.

“Like you were no better than a mule. Freddie, it’s not fair — we’re going to put a stop to it!”

I forced my beat-up muscles to work me to a sitting position, asking a book full of questions with a single word: “How?”

She snuggled down beside me. “You remember when I was a cocktail waitress in the hotel lounge, I spotted the guy with the car, the cash, credit cards?”

“Sure do,” I said.

“Best job I ever had,” she mused. “But I didn’t regret walking off from it, not for a minute, Freddie.”

“Likewise. Great party while it lasted.”

“The next will last a lot longer, Freddie.”

“With whose loot?” I asked.

“O’Leary’s.”

I drew away from her a little, looking her full in the face.

“It’s like this,” she explained. “Every first and third Saturday of the month, when Kreighton Mills makes a payday, O’Leary’s does a land office business from early opening to late closing. Sometimes there’s nearly five or six thousand dollars-in the kitty by the time O’Leary locks up.”

“And O’Leary with that big forty-five automatic he keeps under the bar and police cruisers prowling the neighborhood! Even if I got out of the bar, one yell from O’Leary and the fuzz would corner me in half a block. Uh-uh, baby, heist at gunpoint isn’t my prescription.”

Clemmie kissed me lightly on the ear. “I know, darling, and I wouldn’t have you take that risk. I want you to walk out of O’Leary’s with everything nice and quiet, and the money under your shirt.”

“O’Leary doesn’t strike me as the nice, quiet, donating type.” I killed the remainder of the beer, crumpling the empty in my fingers. “We’ll have to think of something else, Clemmie.”

She pouted, tilting her cute blonde head. “Don’t you want to hear the rest of it?”

“Is there a rest of it?”

“You just listen, honey pot.” She wriggled comfortably on the couch. “This is how it is. O’Leary used to take all that bread to the night depository of the bank. But when he was stuck up for the third time, he made some changes.”

“I’ll bet he did. Third time’s always the charm.”

“Please, Freddie,” she huffed. “Will you let me finish?”

“Be my guest.”

“Well, O’Leary turned his private office into a fort. Steel bars on the windows. Burglar alarm wires all over the place. And a huge, burglar-proof safe to keep his boodle in until he can make trips to the bank in daytime hours with a security guard.”