Stewart Sterling

Finger Man

The big man with the saddle-leather complexion stepped back into a shadowed doorway as the touring car slewed around the corner and slowed down. It was more a matter of habit than reflection; most of the men who might have been expected to poke Tommy-guns through curtained tonneaus in his direction were safely located in institutions which do not provide automobiles for the inmates.

Nevertheless, he watched with wary eyes while the car pulled up in front of a store which bore a sign:

J. SCHULTZMAN DYEING & CLEANING CO.

He watched more closely as a figure in a loose topcoat, its face well hidden by a low-pulled felt, slid from the front seat to the sidewalk, glanced up and down the empty street, and vanished into the store.

Mike Hansard shrugged, eased out of his dark hallway. The license number was not on the missing car list; he had no interest in cleaning and dyeing establishments further than a daily trouser-press. But a match flared suddenly between cupped palms in the driver’s seat; and the plainclothesman stopped abruptly.

It took only a fraction of a second for Shivy Lewes to light his cigarette — less than that for Hansard to recognize him.

“A break,” muttered the detective. “What’s Calini’s wheel-man doing up in this neck of the woods?”

A muffled scream knifed the dusk; the driver of the black car shifted nervously and raced the motor, keeping his eyes on the door of the cleaning shop.

But nothing more happened. Mike Hansard fingered the revolver in his coat pocket and swore silently. Something was going on in there; he had to know what. He couldn’t go in the front way; Shivy might take a pot-shot at him; certainly the man inside would get warning.

He walked casually out of the hallway and around the corner without a glance at Lewes. Once out of sight, he sprinted for the alley which opened to the rear entrance of the cleaning shop. There was a high wire-topped fence and a thick, strong gate. The gate was padlocked; the barbed wire too high.

He hot-footed around the block to the apartment house which backed up the tailor shop, to the stairs to the roof three at a time, dropped ten feet to the adjoining factory... and found the fire-escape.

He located the rear entrance of the shop by the drums of naphtha and carboys of tetrachloride. The door was bolted. But there was a nearby window — which gave under the persuasion of his pocket-jimmy.

Inside was storage space, a workroom with ghostly rows of suits and dresses on hangers in the darkness... Finally an office. He wrinkled his nose at the stench of chemicals, put his ear to the office door.

“Last week only,” complained a frightened baritone in the front room of the shop, “you get three hundred. So soon again, two hundred dollars... it’s impossible...”

“Shut up!” The voice was flat and deadly. “You get it on the line fast, you know what’s good for you.”

There was a silence, punctuated by the rattle of a desk drawer and the rustle of paper.

“...There — twenty tens,” whined the first speaker. “I’m ruined already. You should tell him... the shop I will have to close...”

“Listen to me, cluck,” the monotone continued, “maybe you’d rather have me go to work on you with the acid? Sulphuric will bum holes in your face just like it did in them suits, hey?”

The only answer was a gasp of fear. A chair fell over; Mike tensed himself, but the stabbing screams which came from the front room caught him off guard. Desperate screams — a woman in terror.

He turned the knob. The door was locked.

“Ah! No! My God! Don’t do that... don’t...!”

Two heavy, flat reports. Mike knew the sound of a Colt thirty-eight too well to hesitate.

He stepped back a couple of paces and dived at the door. The lock burst; the door burst open and Mike rocketed into the room.

There was an acrid smell of burnt powder. A woman with black hair and a wax-white face lay in a faint on the floor, beside a short, fat man with red bubbles oozing from his mouth. His eyes were open but they weren’t looking at anything.

The street was alive with cries, shouts, running feet. Hansard backed into the hall, closed the door as the first of the crowd boiled in the front door.

An under-cover man is no good unless he is under cover, and the man was dead; the woman in a faint. Mike hadn’t seen the killer, couldn’t identify him. But he had one live lead: Shivy. He knew Shivy, thought he knew what that white-faced, yellow-bellied dope-sniffer would do in a jam. He’d go for an alibi — in a rush. Mike wanted to be around when he got it.

By the time he had this doped out, he had bolted the door and was making pace, up the fire-escape, through a window into an empty room. The door was unlocked; Mike went downstairs on the run.

First, he got to a drugstore, went into the phone booth and talked to headquarters. Then he grabbed a taxi, barked out an address and shoved his gray matter around while the cab bounced toward Mott Avenue.

A lot depended on Schultzman’s wife. Maybe she’d talk — or maybe she’d be too scared to talk. Calini would get word through to her, all right. If she opened her mouth, she’d head for the morgue. Maybe she wouldn’t mind, if her man was there already. Women were funny — you couldn’t figure them. But suppose she did gab — still they’d never pin anything on the murderer.

The killer would get an alibi first, a good one... that is, if the boys on the Homicide Squad could find him. Which was doubtful, the number of cases they had to work on these days.

But supposing they did locate the rod-man, Hansard considered. Then the Calini fixer would go to bat. A high-priced mouthpiece. A little pressure in official places. A threat to the witnesses... a bribe to some juryman. Any or all of these, as needed. No, the gunman wouldn’t be worrying.

But Mike had to do something. This kill would make his job of small retail racket-smashing impossible, unless he worked fast. He had been assigned to help the local business man’s association clean out the muscle boys. And Calini was kingpin of the pressure-gang. He had to get the goods on Calini... for now, this affair would loosen purses and tighten lips all over the Heights. A cold-blooded warning, this butchery — a gruesome threat to those who disregarded that warning.

Not that Calini would be personally involved — no chance of that. Some hired torpedo would do the collecting, take the risks and handle the dirty work.

But if the wheels of Justice couldn’t grind out retribution to this murderer, maybe Mike Hansard could. He smiled grimly as his cab pulled up before the Cafe Vesuvius. Maybe Shivy wouldn’t be here in his usual haunt; maybe Mike would have to spend the rest of the night looking for him. He paid off the taxi, went into the cafe.

In the barroom a score of men were busy with glasses and loud talk. At the far end of the shiny mahogany, talking to a bluecoat, was Shivy Lewes.

Mike nodded to the barman, elbowed his way to Shivy’s back.

“Howya, stinky!”

Shivy spun on his heel, muttered something.

“Don’t be like that.” Mike waved at the white apron. “Make mine a sour... an’ lean on the bottle.”

The bluecoat got outside his beer, drifted away.

“What’s on ya mind, shamus?” The watery blue eyes made an attempt to appear unconcerned.

“Coupla riddles, Shivy.”

“I should give you answers! Nuts!”

Lewes ordered a rye, gulped it. Mike took a pull at the whiskey sour.

“You been right here the last hour or so?”

The other nodded.

“It might be an alibi, if you could make it stick,” continued the big man. “Best alibi there is, a cop’s. Only it won’t stick this time. I saw you, myself. Over at Schultzman’s.”

The thin lips tightened, but Lewes said nothing.

“What’s the sense, Shivy?” Mike was mildly persuasive. “Why take a rap for a mug you hardly know? A guy that’d turn you up as soon as he’d eat breakfast...”

“Talk sense, shamus.”

“The Homicide boys’ll be talkin’ sense to you with a rubber hose, Shivy. They’ll want to know where you get them marked ten-buck Federal Reserve notes; the ones Schultzman had the bank fix up this afternoon. Maybe you’ll understand that sort of sense.”

The laugh which came to the thin lips was forced.

“Be ya age, Irish. I don’t know any Schultzman. I ain’t got a tenspot in the world, an’ I been here since four o’clock — see?”

Mike finished the drink.

“That’s your song,” he said sorrowfully. “The boys at Center Street will line you up against the witnesses who saw you in the heap and watched you drive away; Schultzman’s woman will identify the rat who shot her husband. You’ll be charged as an accessory, and you’ll get just as black as the punk who did the kill — once the juice is on.”

“Hell with you, you fat slob,” snarled Lewes. His fingers trembled as he tightened the knot of his necktie. Also, he glanced at the phone. It was a wall-instrument, with no chance for privacy.

Mike left without a good-bye, waited outside the Vesuvius in a nearby doorway, saw his man sneak through the side door, walk rapidly away.

Half a block behind Lewes and on the other side of the street, Hansard drifted along as unobtrusively as the shadows that concealed him.

Shivy Lewes looked over his shoulder, nervously, every block. Finally he stopped to study a store window which reflected the street behind him — then he vanished up a brightly lighted staircase, above which flashed a neon sign:

G I R L A N D

DANCING

Mike gave him time to check his hat; then he followed up the stairs, paid the fifty cents admission.

He saw a long hall, dim under orange-shaded bulbs — a chocolate rhythm unit and a dozen couples doing the shag. At the far end of the room was a railed-off enclosure with little tables and a bar.

At one of these tables sat Shivy with a flat-faced, broad-nosed youth with greasy hair and dead-fish eyes. Mike knew the other by reputation. Augie Sado, trigger-boy for the Calini mob, was no snow-drifter or booze-fighter. A calculating killer, a money murderer. So Hansard kept his hands in plain sight as he walked down to the table...

“Ah! There!” he smiled.

“Jeeze! You get in my hair, gumshoe. Why don’t you peddle your papers?” Lewes was white with rage.

Augie sat impassive.

“Don’t say that.” Mike sat down. “We’re all pals, ain’t we?”

“Who’s your wise friend?” Augie stared at Hansard’s chin.

Lewes spat on the floor... “No double-talking dick is a friend of mine.”

Augie licked his lips... “What you after, louse?”

“Just wanted to give Shivy here a tip. I just learned they got the numbers of them tenspots, so watch your step.”

“What tens?” The rod-man spoke tonelessly.

Mike looked surprised... “Ain’t Shivy told you? Some cheap gun knocked off a bird named Schultzman an’ walked off with twenty tens the bank marked up for him.”

Sado slumped down in his seat; his dead-fish stare went from the plainclothesman to Lewes.

Shivy bent low over the table... “You goddam liar,” he exclaimed. “Try-in’ to shake down on th’ boss. Two yards you got from Schultzman... you told me you didn’t get a dime.” He started to get out of his chair.

“Sit still!” The whisper was a command. A pudgy hand flashed to a coat-lapel, stayed there.

Mike sighed, put both hands on the table. Shivy watched the hand at the lapel, wiped beads of sweat from his forehead.

“Stand up! Close together. One yelp, you get it. Walk! To the washroom— now!”

One look into the staring eyes brought Mike to his feet, started him walking. Augie meant business.

Three men strolling to the washroom caused no comment in Girland. The clarinet said “Woe-woe-woe” as Augie closed the door.

Lewes blubbered... “Lissen, Augie you can’t do it, Augie. Give it to th’ dick, Augie — not to me... I’m with ya, Augie. F’ God’s sake, Augie... don’t...”

Mike thought fast. No use playing for time. Only way out was a window... they were up one story. Well, a broken neck couldn’t hurt more than a slug in the belly. Thank God the window was open!

Shivy was bawling now. Augie had the automatic out of his shoulder holster. Four steps to the window was about right, he figured. Mike gave the sobbing Lewes a smashing shove in the back, right into the muzzle of the automatic... then he turned, dived.

He heard a high-pitched scream, a crashing roar and then he was in the air. A sickening moment of dropping through space, a roaring blackness, a sensation of floating — then sinking...

He tried to move his head — it weighed a ton. He opened his eyes, groaned at the splitting ache in his head. Slowly his brain started to function... something about Augie — Shivy — the gun — the window. He had jumped through a window and he was alive! He spat out bits of gravel, licked at a warm wetness, recognized blood. His legs felt numb — maybe he had broken them. He stirred heavily.... Then he wasn’t dreaming. There really was a weight on his neck. He gathered all his energies, heaved to his knees.

The weight rolled off, fell with a sickening thur beside him. He put out a tentative hand, felt warm flesh and grimaced in the darkness at the sticky wetness of his fingers.

Painfully he got to his feet, took a step, tentatively... and crouched in fear. There was nothing under that foot but air. He got a match out of his pocket, lit it. He was at the edge of a low roof, a dozen feet below the washroom window. He looked up, blew out the match quickly. Suppose Augie was waiting up there to take a pot-shot at him! But the washroom was dark. There was no sound of the swing band.

He ventured another match. There was only one bullet hole, but it was exactly between Shivy’s eyes.

Mike crawled to the edge of the roof, got a grip, swung over and dropped. He felt as if his head would jounce off his shoulders when he hit the ground, but he stayed on his feet.

He kept on them until he stumbled into a saloon, where he mumbled something about a fall, a nosebleed. He got three drinks under his belt, washed up, and put a cigarette between puffed lips.

Then he climbed into a cab and said, “Merrit Lakemin Social Club.”

It wasn’t a club; yet, after its fashion, it was quite social — to the right people. No one knew who Merrit Lakemin was, but he certainly had nothing to do with the pool, billiard and bowling parlors which masqueraded under his name.

Those who know their upper East Side simply call it “Jack Calini’s place.” There is a nice little bar, a couple of poker and black-jack rooms, and on the top floor — according to rumor — private apartments wherein Calini’s friends or enemies are entertained or looked after, as the case may be.

Mike climbed the stairs to the second floor wearily. No one paid much attention to him. Augie was not visible, which relieved Mike considerably.

“Where’s Jack?” he asked a desk-man.

“Back there.” A nod indicated the bar.

The plainclothesman strolled in casually, said “Hi” and “Hello” once or twice, and found Jack Calini sipping a glass of Three Star. He was a short, squat, swarthy man with the face of a prize fighter, the mind of a shyster and the manners of a head waiter.

“ ’Lo, Mike. What’s wrong?” he grinned genially.

“Been foolin’ around with one of your boys. He plays too rough for me.”

“Who?” Calini was watchful, suspicious.

“Augie Sado. I had to jump through a window to get away from him. But that wasn’t what I came to see you about.”

“No?”

“No. A client... uh... of yours got hurt tonight.”

“Bad?”

“Yeah. Sort of bad. But what I dropped in to tell you was this — the bird that did the work got away with two hundred of Schultzman’s dough.”

“Herman Schultzman? That’s too bad.” Jack Calini shook his head sympathetically.

“Yeah. Sure. But about this dough. It’s hot money, Jack. Twenty tens — Federal Reserves — marked. Numbers taken at the bank before they were turned over to him.”

Calini looked interested.

“...Now, somebody’s got that green. Shivy Lewes hasn’t, because he’s cold meat now.”

Calini put down his whiskey glass, smiled disagreeably.

“You probably haven’t got it,” the detective continued, “because you wouldn’t be that crude. But if you see... um... the punk that has got it, you might tip him off. It’s bad medicine.”

“Drink, Mike?”

The detective thought it was a first-class idea, said so.

“I’m obliged to you, Mike,” murmured the Italian, when they had hoisted. “Much obliged. But not for the reason you think...”

“Never can tell, Jack. Well... so long.”

Mike went downstairs, strolled slowly to the corner, climbed the long flight to the elevated station. He dropped a nickel in the slot, walked to the southern end of the platform and let six trains go past.

At the end of that time, he saw Jack Calini and his bodyguard come out the front door of the Social Club, climb into a limousine and move north.

Hansard grinned, as if pleased at something, walked downstairs and hailed a cruising cab.

“I better buy me a car,” he sighed as he relaxed on the cushions. “Cabs cost too much coin. Drive me to Hundred Eighty-first and St. Nick.”

Then — sitting on the back seat of the taxi — he went to sleep.

After the taxi-driver shook him awake at St. Nick, Hansard entered a dingy office building and cursed at the thought of climbing more stairs. He went up one flight, sat down and took off his shoes. The next three flights were accomplished with less noise than would be made by a prowling cat.

Which was the reason for the sudden and painful shock sustained by Bug Fister, Calini’s personal bodyguard. Bug was guarding the hall which gave entrance to the offices of the Heights Commercial Protective Association, one of Calini’s most prosperous ventures.

The clubbed gun which caught the Bug back of the ear would put him out of business for at least half an hour; and Mike fixed wire bonds and an old sock-gag to keep him that way. Then he got set outside the door bearing the name, G. Calini, M’ngr.

Inside, voices were raised in argument. The detective recognized both of them.

“I tell you, th’ Yid wouldn’t come across. He said he’d put in a squeal and then he pulled a rod on me. I hadda burn him.”

“You didn’t get any dough?” Calini’s voice was a threatening purr.

“Not a lousy nickel.”

“Where’s Shivy?”

“How th’ hell should I know? Sleeping off a jolt, probably.”

There was a silence.

“...Jeeze, boss, don’t you believe me?”

No reply. In the hall, where he could command the door as it opened, Mike smiled grimly and thought of the dead man in the cleaning shop; of the woman.

“I swear to — what’s th’ idea, boss?”

“Up, Augie. Way up... turn around!”

“You gonna let some crummy John Law fill you up with dirt about me, boss? You ain’t....”

There was a vicious crack, the sort of noise that might be made by an open hand slapping a mouth.

“Jeeze, Jack... gimme a chance...”

Silence. A rustle of crisp paper.

“You had the crust to try that on me! With th’ roll right on you. Thought you’d have a little time for yourself, eh, Augie? Well, I will see that every dime is spent on you, Augie — for flowers.”

The gurgling sound that followed made Mike a little sick to his stomach.

The door swung open softly. A pair of heels showed in the light which streamed into the hall, then legs. The body of Augie Sado slumped down crazily, as if stuffed with sawdust.

“Oh, Bug!”

Mike crept forward... “Hold it, Jack! Make one bad move and I’ll let you have it!”

A breathless second — then a slamming door, the click of a key.

“No use, Calini. You can’t get away. I’ve got Fister in the bag out here. You’re licked. Maybe you can fix up a self-defense plea. Better take the rap.”

The light went out in the offices of the Heights Commercial Protective Association, but there was no noise.

Mike took his shoes out of his coat pockets, put them on. He had no proof that Calini had slashed a knife into Augie Sado’s heart. He knew it, but he hadn’t seen it. He hadn’t seen Calini either. He’d recognized the voice, to be sure.

He fished through Sado’s pockets, extracted a thick roll o£ ten-dollar Federal Reserve notes. Then he got a piece of wire from Fister’s bonds, crouched beside the door. It took a lot of fiddling, but finally Mike turned the lock and kicked open the door... He got the light on... the office was empty.

He looked in the closet — nothing. The window was closed. He opened it, looked out. Five stories straight down to concrete pavement. No fire-escape.

“Now, how th’ hell did he get out of here?”

He stuck his head out of the window again, looked up. A window was open directly above him. A rope ladder dangled from that window right down to the top of the Protective Association sash.

He went back to the hall.

Bug Fister was gone, and there was nothing to indicate that Augie Sado’s body had ever been in the hall. He groaned and took off his shoes again.

He got to the stairwell without making any noise; kept close to the wall as he went down. At the second floor landing he felt a prickling at the back of his neck, stopped, crouched.

A jet of orange flame gashed the blackness, blinded him so that his return shot was pure reflex. His ears were still ringing with the roar of the discharge when he heard a body crash to the floor of the landing.

“Get him, Bug?”

Mike made his voice hoarse... “Okay, Jack — here he is.” Then he waited.

He heard Calini’s quick, jerky steps; jabbed savagely with the muzzle of his service special. Calini squalled warningly.

“Look out, you damn fool—”

“Up, Jack. Up fast! That’s it... now, let’s frisk you.”

Calini cursed obscenely.

“Don’t carry a roscoe, do you?” Hansard kept the gun in the gangster’s belly, backed him against a wall, turned him around and marched him up the stairs.

“No, I don’t, flatfoot. And everybody knows it.”

“You carried a knife, though. Augie Sado found out you carried a knife.”

“Try and prove it!”

They got to the Protective Association offices. The detective made Calini stand against the wall, his hands on top of his head.

“The headquarters boys’ll find Augie around somewhere, Jack. And I can testify to what I heard a little while ago.”

“Frame up,” snarled Calini. “And the knife you put in my pocket won’t show any prints of mine, either.”

“That wasn’t a knife I put in your pocket, Jack.” Hansard spun the phone dial: Spring 7-7100... “That was the two hundred bucks Augie took off Schultz-man.”

“You—!”

“So you can take your choice. If they indict you for the tailor’s murder, you’ll go out of that little room up the river, but you’ll go out feet first. If you plead to getting Augie in self-defense, you might get out in twenty years.”

Calini was quiet for a minute.

“If I’m going to get it, I’m going to get it. Only I wish it was you I used that knife on instead of Augie.”

Hansard was still trying to lace his shoes with one hand when the wagon got there.

Content

Stewart Sterling
Finger Man