John D. MacDonald

Blackmail Breeds Bullets

Chapter One

The Wire Noose

The dim hallway bulb being kaput registered on Lew Bardock’s mind, a lesser annoyance among greater annoyances. Sherry’s two rooms was the only ‘apartment’ on the fourth floor of the aged and shabby brownstone, but the rent was enough for the landlord to have a live bulb in there night and day, even if it was only twenty watts.

Lew Bardock was worried about the hot money in Sherry’s apartment, and so the dead hallway bulb awakened no warning bells in the back of his mind.

Lew reached for the keyhole of Sherry’s door — and was conscious of two things at once. A tiny streak of light at the door frame, a streak which shouldn’t have been there. Also something that brushed the sleeve of his dark suitcase as he reached out with the keys.

Before he could react his right arm was yanked violently up in the air, his fingers punching through the opaque glass of the tilted transom, something hard biting into his wrist.

Lew gasped with the pain of it. Only his toes touched the floor. The door of Sherry’s apartment swung open. A strange young man reached and tapped the left side of Lew Bardock’s chest. He then patted Lew’s suitcoat pockets.

Lew felt blood on his hand and wrist. The strange and very pretty young man whistled softly through his teeth. He had an out-of-season tan; more than a suggestion of wave in his hair; perfect and regular features and large eyes, luminous in the half light.

“What do you want?” Lew demanded.

The pretty young man kept whistling. He took a crisp white handkerchief out of his pocket and wrapped it around his knuckles. Lew realized that the strange young man had been waiting, a loop of wire suspended in front of the doorknob, the wire leading through the partially open transom, his eye at the crack in the door. And now the wire was firmly tied inside the room.

Lew struck out clumsily with his left, but he was unable to brace himself. It was a feeble blow which missed its mark, hit the whistler on the chest, knocked him back a half step. The young man smiled cheerfully, stepped in and chopped Lew under the right eye with a short right. It put new strain on Lew’s wrist and the pain nearly blacked him out.

He half spun around. The pretty man caught him with another chopping right as he swung back. Again Lew tried a feeble punch, then buried his face in his crooked left arm. The right hook into his middle was like being hit with a sledge.

Lew took four more in the middle and he could not hold his left arm up any longer. It sagged and he lost count of the blows. The pretty man had stopped whistling. He was beginning to grunt with the effort. Lew saw him through a deep red haze of pain. Then the blows stopped hurting. They were merely thick sounds in Lew’s ears.

He hung slack in the wire and waited for the next one. The next one didn’t come. He opened his eyes. The pretty young man was gone.

Going high on his toes to take some of the torment off his chest, Lew felt inside the door frame with his left hand. For a long time he could not find the end of the wire, At last, reaching up, he felt it. It was looped around and around the lever that worked the transom. He unwound it. The tension was suddenly released and he fell full length, half in Sherry’s apartment. He squirmed the rest of the way in, kicked the door shut and lay on his back.

So this was Dr. Auglitz’ response! Neat and to the point. Not a word spoken. But the inference was clear: keep your nose out of my business, Bardock.

Lew rolled onto his hands and knees, grabbed the corner of the couch and got dizzily to his feet. He stumbled over to the scarred record player, lifted the lid, pulled up the turntable, slid his fingers under the edge of it and took out the four folded bills. So pretty boy hadn’t located it.

Lew had a feeling that he would very much like to meet pretty boy again. Auglitz had hired amateur talent. A pro would have fixed him for a ten-day hospital stay.

He didn’t examine his lumps until he took a long cold shower. The wrist was the worst. The braided wire cable had bitten into the flesh. He stared at himself in the mirror, said softly, “Aren’t you the one!”

He was a big man with sloped, powerful shoulders; coarse black hair; hard, tight planes in his white-skinned, muscular face. There were two bad cuts inside his lower lip, bruised swellings on each cheekbone and a lump on his left temple.

His watch said quarter of two. No time to feel sorry for himself, or nurse wounded pride. Rance, his boss, was expecting him at three. Lew began to hurry, moving with a hard economy of motion.

He had known that Sherry would not be in. And he had planned where he would hide the money. Sherry as usual was at one of her perennial double features. There was a razor-blade slot in the bathroom medicine cabinet. Lew took the bottles out, and unscrewed the cabinet from the wall. He folded the four bills into a tiny wad and wedged them down in the hole with the rusting blades. Then he replaced the cabinet.

Just as he was tightening the last screw, he heard Sherry’s key in the lock. He turned the water on quickly, turned it off after he was certain she was in the apartment. He walked casually out.

“Why, Lew darlin’!” Sherry said. “What on earth happened to that big old ugly face?”

He grinned at her. Just to look at her was enough to twist a warm knife in his middle. Ever since that night at the Village spot. Right from the moment she had stepped into the spotlight. She couldn’t sing. He knew music and he could hear the little quintet struggling to back her up when she shifted the key on them.

What had hit him was the contrast. That fragile and delicate and beautiful face, just as clear in every line as a fairy tale princess, combined with that wise, mature and earthy body which seemed to have a life of its own — a sardonic, mocking, life independent of the wide and innocent gray eyes in the doll-like face.

And then she had become a fever in his blood. The job of hers had folded and she couldn’t get another. Lew had realized, with a sudden awareness of his own helplessness, that she was absolutely devoid of any moral sense. She would leave him in a moment to go to someone who could buy her the thirty-dollar shoes, the fluffy and expensive dolls she loved, the five-dollar nylons, the forty-dollar perfume, the huge rare steaks, the chill and golden martinis.

Sherry ran to him and held him tight and muzzled her doll’s face in his throat and made little purring sounds — while he remembered the way his savings had melted, the salary which, at a hundred a week had seemed ample, but was suddenly a very minor income indeed.

He thought of the shameless way he had padded his expense account, and he held her close and buried his lips in her pale hair. And he thought of this new thing he was doing, this shady thing that would soon mean no more job, no more future — and he hated his own helplessness, his own inability to pull free of her.

But he couldn’t visualize existence without her, without the way she would curl into his arms and run her fingers through his coarse dark hair.

She had the constant greedy look of a child asking for candy; a child with sticky lips, glutted with candy, but asking for more, and more, and more.

She looked up into his face and said, “Lew, darlin’, a stinky little job that pays you peanuts — and you have to take beatings! We ought to be in the big money, Lew. You’re smart. But you’re just a man that people walk on, darlin’. I want somebody who’ll kill dragons for me, and bring home the hide. Green hide with big dollar signs on it, darlin’. And all you bring home is a busted face.”

She pouted and whirled out of his arms. “No, go away, Lew. Don’t touch me.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her about the money he had hidden, and how he had gotten it, and why he was going against all his training and double-crossing both the agency and the client. But she might queer it, and there was more where that four thousand came from.

He left, slamming the door behind him.

Rance was a human praying mantis. Painfully sharp and lean, elbows threatening to punch through the shiny blue sleeves. Small head, enormous eyes and the look of being about to pounce.

As Lew shut the door behind him and took the chair across the big walnut desk from Rance, he said, “Sorry I’m late.”

“Oh, we’re all glad you could break away, Mr. Bardock. We’re unimportant down here. We just employ you.”

Lew sighed and looked around at the paneled office, the dirty old pictures of the original John Brill standing beside the train robbers he had captured back in the days when the agency was a pup. The discreet “new look” of the agency was due to the efforts of Socialite John Brill III, a man of fifty who knew the right people and knew how to solicit their business delicately.

“My master’s voice,” Lew said, tipping his hat back off his forehead, lighting a kitchen match with his thumbnail.

“When do we stop taking money from the baby-food king, Lew? And who has been beating on your face?”

“I can’t answer either question. Not ethically, Rance. Hell, you know that we agreed with Mr. Tobias Schane that the little business he gave the agency was to be strictly between him and the agent in question. We’re charging him for that privilege. He hates to think of what might happen to any report I might send in.”

“Seventy-three years in business,” Rance moaned, “and still they think we’re dummies. They think we have people working here who would pick up a juicy hunk of data and cut themselves a slice. How’s the job going?”

“I can’t even tell you that. We give the man what he pays for.”

Rance insisted, “Suppose it’s too big for you? Suppose I read your name in the paper, Lew?”

“A detailed report will be mailed the day after my obit hits the paper. Then, for the honor of the team, you can rush out and avenge me.”

“Lew, there’s a new one coming up. One where I can use you. A very plush Fifth Avenue men’s shop. It looks like the manager, the cashier and two of the salesmen are in on it together. We may get confirmation to go ahead with it tomorrow morning.”

“Don’t count on me, Rance.” Bardock thought, don’t count on me from now on because I’ve stepped over the line, Rance.

As he went out the door Rance called after him, “Watch yourself, Lew!”

Lew headed away from the office, thinking that the world looked different. Before he had started the double-cross he could walk down any street and look any man in the eye. He could still do it. But only with an effort. There was something crouched and dirty inside his mind, something that made him want to turn his eyes away.

But of course the answer was to think of the hot sun on some faraway beach, of Sherry’s golden body soaking up the sun, of a nice little stack of dough, enough for long idle wonderful days with Sherry — until the money ran out...

Linda Schane was late. Lew Bardock stood under the clock in the hotel lobby, glad that the interview with Tobias Schane was over. Both Tobias Schane and Rance were getting impatient.

The memory of Schane’s red puffy face, the irritation in his voice, was clear in his mind. “Damn it, man! You knew two weeks ago that my daughter, Linda, had gone through her bank account, sold her jewels, mortgaged her car. You knew two weeks ago that she flatly refused to tell me who was bleeding her. That spells blackmail, man.”

Lew had finally quieted Schane by telling him that these things couldn’t be rushed without endangering Linda. At last Schane had let himself be convinced and had paid another week’s fee in advance, plus certain questionable expenses which he didn’t question.

Lew leaned against the wall under the clock and moodily wondered what puffy Tobias Schane would say if he knew that Bardock was also working for Linda Schane. He cautioned both of them against speaking to the other about employing him.

At last he saw her. She came quickly through the crowd. He thought of her as a girl fashioned of the clearest and bluest ice. Each line of her perfect body was autocratic and aristocratic. An odd one to be mixed up with Auglitz.

“Sorry I’m late,” Linda Schane said. He noticed that she did not do two things that Sherry would have done. Linda did not offer any excuse for being late, and she did not comment on the battered look of his face.

He grinned at her and took her arm and walked her toward the cocktail lounge. The faint blue lights around the circular bar were the only lights in the room. They took a table along the wall, sitting side by side on the padded bench.

He saw that she was troubled. She spent too long taking off her gloves, aligning her purse with edge of the table, finding her cigarettes. He held the light.

“He... he phoned me today, Lew. Just as I was leaving the house to drive down. In that nasty, silky voice, Auglitz told me I needed another treatment. An expensive one, Lew. He wants me to come in tomorrow at three.”

“How much?”

“Five thousand.”

Lew turned on the bench. Her clear oval face was dim in the light. “Linda — why won’t you tell me what he has on you?”

“No, Lew. No. I — won’t tell you.”

He shrugged. “You just make it tougher. You make me go in cold, And now I’ve got to hit you too. But not for so much. My expenses are running high.”

“I brought two hundred.”

“It’ll have to do.” In the darkness she pressed the folded bills into his hand. She had removed her gloves. Her fingertips were cool.

He said, “Can you pay Auglitz tomorrow?”

“I can pay him a great deal now, Lew. I told you about the bonds. I finally got George to sell them and agree not to tell father. George put the money in my account. Quite a sum of money. Of course, it will cut my income quite a bit.”

“Okay, you pay Auglitz tomorrow. Get the money in twenties. Make a list of serial numbers.” Lew cleared his throat before asking, “Now — did you put on your thinking cap like I asked you?”

“Why do you have to know the names of the others, Lew?”

He made his tone angry, “I told you that I can’t hit the guy cold. You gave me four names, Three were right and one was a dud. Who else has gone to Auglitz that you know of.”

“I can only think of two. I heard that Marcia Quate used to go to see Auglitz. And Ronny Kriss, the automobile designer, went to him. The other people I saw in Auglitz office were strangers.”

“Why did you go to him in the first place, Linda?”

“I... I had a bad experience when I was quite young. A year ago I started dreaming about it again. Beth Lovell told me about Dr. Auglitz, how wonderful he was, and how he could really get down into your subconscious and relieve the tension.”

He mused, “Funny you should be the one in the family that needs a head doctor. That sister of yours is the—”

“Gerry doesn’t enter into this!” she said sharply.

“It must be rough on her, Linda. Two sisters, one built like a race horse and the other one like a mud pudding.”

“She... she is very dear to me, Lew.” There was a hint of tears in her voice.

He ordered a second round of drinks. He said, “Can I buy you a dinner?”

“No thank you. I’m going back to the house. When will I see you again, Lew?”

“Tomorrow night at seven under the clock. I don’t want to keep harping on this, Linda, but if you can try to think of anyone else who may have gone to the guy...”

Back in the lobby she turned and looked up into his face. He was surprised to see tears in the eyes of the girl who was made of ice. “Lew,” she said softly. “If you can — do anything, I’ll be forever indebted to you.”

“This is just a job with me,” he said harshly.

Bardock watched her walk to the exit, tall, slim, controlled. He wondered for the hundredth time what sort of dirty mess Linda had fallen into that gave Dr. Auglitz the hold over her.

Chapter Two

Prescription — Blackmail

She had told him how Auglitz had operated. His sales talk. “My dear Miss Schane, The common psychoanalytical method is all very well. The specialist eventually gets to the root of the matter. But it is all very tiresome, very long and very expensive. In Vienna just before the war we perfected a better way. It was used by your own armed forces.

“You must trust me of course. Rather than listen to you talk all around the subject for many months, I inject you with a harmless drug called sodium-amytal which, shall we say, relaxes the censor in your mind. Then I subject you to standard hypnotic technique and I question you, I find the black places in your mind. When you recover, we talk it all over and you are immediately cured. It is that simple. Miss Schane.”

Linda had told Lew Bardock how she had thought it over and then had come back to keep the appointment for the treatment. The drug had given her a faraway feeling, a misty remoteness, through which her words came but dimly. She remembered very bright lights, insistent questioning, the monotonous sound of her own voice.

When Linda came out of it she found that had told Dr. Auglitz everything. Whatever that could be.

At the next appointment, Auglitz had taken her back to a tiny projection room beyond his office and had seated her in a comfortable chair.

On the screen had flashed her face, slack and dull. She had heard the whole story over the sound track. The film had been edited to remove Auglitz’ questions.

When the lights had gone on Linda had turned to Auglitz in fury, and he had explained that it was an expensive, but more accurate way of taking notes.

Her anger had faded away. Back in his bright office the doctor had faced her across the desk, smiled gently and said, “The quickest way to remove this guilt of yours, my dear, is to have a private showing of my film record to your father, sister and fiancé.” He held up his hand to still her protests. “If that is distasteful to you, we can possibly cure you without calling them in. If you will come back one week from today, I can give you an appointment. A half hour will cost you five thousand dollars.”

The sunlight was shining through the office windows. Auglitz had a calm smile. But there was nightmare in the office.

Linda had refused. He had told her to think it over. Auglitz got his five thousand, in cash. Since then there had been other treatments, other payments, more nightmare in the sunlit professional office where Dr. Auglitz wore a crisp white jacket and a calm smile.

“Some people are never entirely cured,” he told her...

Ronny Kriss opened his apartment door. Kriss was a brown little man with sharp eyes, a seamed face and a look of alertness. His hand was in the pocket of his smoking jacket.

Lew Bardock lounged by him, smiling, waited until he heard the door shutting, then whirled, clamped tight on Kriss’ arm at the elbow, dipped into the pocket and took out the flat automatic.

Kriss rubbed his arm. Lew smiled and handed him the automatic. “This is just to show you that it isn’t that sort of a conversation.”

Kriss took the automatic, laid it gently on a table. He led the way into a study-workshop. A model automobile stood on a big table, its lines sleek and lovely. Lew looked at it with interest.

“A Los Angeles outfit is setting up to make a sports car,” Kriss said. “Like it?”

“Very much.”

The air was tight with strain. From a tray in the corner Kriss took a bottle, said, “Plain water?”

“Straight, please.”

Kriss sat opposite him, the glass held firmly in a brown hand. “You intrigued me over the phone, Mr. Bardock.”

“Didn’t I, though! You bit like a hungry bass. The pressure is really stiff, hey?”

“I don’t say a word, Bardock, until you prove to me that you know what you’re talking about.”

Bardock shrugged. “Dr. Auglitz is a clever and unscrupulous blackmailer with a new working method. I am a private operative. I have a client who has hired me to unjam her. I think I can do it. But it’s not police stuff. I just move in and untie one knot and move out. Auglitz stays in operation. I have reason to believe, confirmed by the gun business at the door, that he has you in a knot too. For a consideration I will extricate you at the same time.”

Lew was watching closely and he saw the sudden gleam of hope in Kriss’ sharp eyes. “How much?” he said.

“This isn’t a shake-down, Kriss. It’s an employee-employer relationship. I take your money and do a job for you.”

“How much.”

Bardock had been estimating the cost of the apartment, the value of the furnishings. “Two thousand. In cash.” He remembered the thousand dollar bills. “Nothing over a hundred dollar bill.”

“How do I know you can do it?”

“You don’t.”

“How do I know you even have any chance of doing it?”

“I know three little words. Sodium-amytal, movies, psychoanalysis.”

Kriss finished his drink. He smiled. “You come considerably cheaper than Auglitz. But you’d better be good, Bardock. I could have Auglitz killed for five hundred. But I know and he knows that killing him would guarantee just the sort of publicity I can’t stand.”

“Put the money in a sealed envelope and I’ll pick it up here tomorrow night at the same time.”

It was a brick colonial in a very good neighborhood, surrounded by ample lawns. The walks and the asphalt drive were powdered with snow. A maid ushered him into a long living room where a white birch fire was laid, ready for the match.

Marcia Quate walked quickly in, her eyes alert and feline, tiny puffs of flesh under them, lines across her throat.

“Yes?” she said haughtily.

“I phoned. I’m Bardock.”

Something collapsed behind her proud eyes. Something went out of her. She didn’t ask him to sit down. Bardock went over to the couch, sat down and tapped his cigarette on a blunt thumbnail.

She was more difficult than Kriss had been, this Mrs. Quate. Far more difficult.

But he had seen the collapse inside her and, hating himself, hating his methods, using sharp and brutal words, he drove Marcia Quate into tears, and from the tears he got the answer he wanted. There was a wall-safe and Lew took the seven hundred and made arrangements to pick up the other three hundred.

Six thousand. When it broke he’d have enough to take Sherry across the border, enough to grease a few palms and buy citizenship in some other country. Ten thousand was the target.

Lew needed more names.

Not one of them could raise enough for him. Auglitz had bled them dry.

Bardock left Marcia Quate and went back to the city...

In the evening Linda Schane was waiting under the clock. Lew went over to her and they walked toward the lounge. But they were stopped at the door by a young man whose eyes blazed with anger.

“I thought I’d find out what this was all about, Linda,” the young man said coldly.

“Don’t be a fool, Tommy!” she said wearily. “Don’t play parts for me. I don’t appreciate it.”

Tommy mimicked her tone. “Tommy, I’m sorry, dearest, I’m busy tonight. And tomorrow night too and the night after that.” He changed back to his normal voice, “If you want to break it up, Linda, for heaven’s sake do so! Don’t sneak behind my back and meet this — this gentleman friend.”

“Please, Tommy.”

“I’m going to your father and find out what this is all about. He will certainly be mighty interested in who you’re seeing.”

“You wouldn’t!” she gasped.

“Oh, but I would.” Bardock could see that the boy meant it.

Lew said harshly, “Come inside and have a drink on me, kid. I want to tell you something.”

“Thank you. I will,” Tommy said.

At the table Bardock said, “Kid, you had to follow her and get into something that doesn’t concern you and—”

“Anything that concerns Linda—”

“I know. I know. But this is a little different. This is out of your range, kid. Your girl friend, if you’ll shut your mouth long enough to listen, has gotten herself involved with a professional leech. One of those people who prey on past indiscretions. This leech has been bleeding your girl friend. I’m hired by her to get her out from under.”

Tommy stared at her. “But Linda! Why couldn’t you tell me? What on earth have you ever done to get blackmailed for?”

Linda gave him a long look. “I’m afraid I’ll never tell you that, Tommy.”

“But there shouldn’t be any secrets between us.”

“This is going to remain a secret, Tommy.”

Bardock saw the look of doubt on the young man’s face, saw the way he was wrestling with the idea that his princess had clay feet. So Bardock said casually, “This leech has taken almost her last dime, kid. You ought to feel sorry for her, not give her a bad time.”

Tommy’s face was impassive. He said, after a long pause, “Linda, unless you can tell me what you did to be blackmailed for, I think we’d better call the whole thing off.”

Bardock saw her lips tremble once and then tighten. “Nice to have known you, Tommy.”

The young man get up and left the table without looking back.

“Well that,” Linda said, “seems to be that.” She caught her breath and then began to laugh. The laughter was out of control. The woman of ice was breaking up before Lew’s eyes. Linda turned streaming eyes to him and said, “You saw it, didn’t you? You saw he was interested only in my money, and that’s why you told him I was broke. Thanks, Lew. Oh, thank you!”

He reached ever and held her hand tightly, saying, “Easy, Linda. Easy.”

She put her other hand over his and bent over. Her shoulders shook silently. A tear struck Lew’s wrist, like a drop of wax from a tilted candle.

Bardock watched her fight for control, watched her win, watched her lift a proud chin and smile at him. “You know,” Linda said, “it’s good to find out. I mean, to find out now — instead of later.”

“It’s easier to find out than it is to stop loving them,” Lew said. He thought of Sherry and of what he had done to himself for the sake of Sherry.

By the end of the week Lew had his ten thousand, garnered from seven employers. Sherry was at the movies. He sat in her apartment, staring at his shoes, smoking one cigarette after another.

The money belt around his middle was plump with the smaller bills. The big bills, six thousand worth, were behind the medicine cabinet in the bathroom.

Lew had just come from the office. Rance had looked at him queerly and had said, “This is dragging out too damn long, Lew. Obviously it’s a blackmail case. Why haven’t you broken it, or asked for help?”

Rance had demanded a target date and Lew had named one. The day after tomorrow. According to plan he would leave tomorrow on the plane with Sherry. Rance didn’t know that. Lew lit a cigarette from the butt of the other. He tried to think of how it would be.

The ten thousand would last for a long lazy time in Guatemala. But what would happen when it was gone. Bardock thought of killing Sherry. That would be the logical end of it, Killing her would be akin to breaking a glass against the fireplace, a glass from which you wanted no one else to drink.

There would be hate in killing her. Hate because of what she had made him do to himself. Hate because of what he had become. Bardock felt soiled and stained and old.

Tomorrow was the day to leave. He had to leave. Rance would soon be wise to him. And Auglitz had already sent the pretty boy around for that neat and clever job. That unprofessional job. Since that time Lew had been continually on guard, and he had started wearing the belly gun tucked inside the waistband of his trousers.

The phone rang and when he picked it up a man’s voice said, “Sherry?”

“Not exactly,” he said dryly. The line clicked and went dead. He wondered who was calling her. It didn’t make much difference. Not as long as she was leaving with him tomorrow.

Lew put on his topcoat and left for his own apartment. Time to pack. The cold rain was freezing in shale ice on the sidewalk, In the morning he would pick up Sherry and the rest of the money from the hiding place and catch the plane. The night was dark. He reached inside his coat pocket, felt the crackle of the envelope that held the plane tickets. He tried to find reassurance, and found nothing but a sense of guilt and pending catastrophe.

Chapter Three

The Man in the Shadows

Bardock’s coat collar was turned up against the wind. As he started up his steps to the outside door Lew saw a faint movement from the corner of his eye. Another move from Auglitz. He hoped it was the pretty boy. He saw that the man was in the heavy shadows. There had been a furtiveness about that faint movement that had given the man away.

Bardock snapped his fingers in the gesture of a man who has forgotten something. He went slowly back down the steps, walked into the wind. When a gust hit him he grabbed his hat brim and bent low enough so that he could risk a backward look. A bulky shadow had drifted out and was following him. It was not the pretty boy.

Lew decided that it would be best to let the man give away his hand, even if it meant the risk of a bullet. It seemed almost obvious that if it was a case of bullets, he would have been shot the moment he first noticed the slight movement.

Yes, the man was big. Thick through the shoulders.

Bardock paused to look at a window display. He watched the reflection in the glass, saw the big man slow his pace, glance behind him, pull his right arm back. Another amateur!

Lew pulled his lips back against his teeth in a mirthless grin. He whirled under the big man’s punch, getting the full power of back and shoulders into a left hook deep into the man’s middle. The man bent sharply at the middle, his mouth sagging open. Lew saw, as the streetlight struck the man’s face, that he was a sullen, powerful-looking man in his late thirties or early forties,

Lew smashed him under the ear as he fell, then cursed silently as he heard an official voice fifteen feet away roar, “What goes on here!”

The cop’s black rain cape shone in the light, and he was scowling.

Lew grabbed his assailant’s arm and tugged at him and said, “Officer, my friend slipped on the ice.”

“It looked to me like you hit him.”

“Hit him! I was trying to grab him as he fell.”

The blow in the stomach had rendered the man beyond speech. He came slackly to his feet.

“He looks funny,” the cop said. “Has he been drinking?”

“Just a little,” Lew said. “I’ve got to get him home.” As Lew said that, his foot somehow slipped violently over and knocked both the big man’s feet out from underneath him. Lew had hold of his shoulder and as the man fell, he turned toward Lew. Lew was down on one knee. The man’s mouth slammed against Lew’s other knee.

“You lost him again,” the cop said. “Here, I’ll help you get him up.”

Between them they got the man on his feet. He was making small mewling sounds.

“Hit his mouth that time,” the cop said. He cautiously let go of the man.

Lew said, “Come along now.” He tugged on the man. A shade too hard. The man lurched toward the wall. Lew fell against him and the man’s head hit the wall solidly. He went limp. Lew made violent efforts to hold him upright, but Lew himself slipped to his knees. Lew came up fast and felt the thud as he butted the man squarely in the face, heard the second thud as the back of the man’s head hit the wall again.

The man slumped and his chin bounced off Lew’s knee and he lay on his back,

“Slipped,” Lew said helplessly.

“By dam’, I wouldn’t want you helping me home, fella. You’re the clumsiest dam’ man I ever saw! You nearly killed him that time.”

“Officer, will you watch him for a minute. My car’s right up around the corner. I can bring it down here and we can get him in it.”

“Maybe it ought to be an ambulance he should be having.”

“He’s fine. See? He’s breathing.”

When Lew got to the corner he looked back. The cop and three morose bystanders were staring down at the man on the sidewalk.

He circled the block, went up to his room and took a bottle from the closet floor. He drank deeply. The liquor didn’t seem to touch him, It hadn’t touched him ever since he had started taking the money from Auglitz’ victims.

“Did you get the tickets, Charles?” Sherry asked. The pretty young man with the out-of-season tan slid onto the stool beside her and patted his pocket meaningfully.

They were in a cocktail lounge in Pennsylvania station.

“It worked just like I told you it would,” Sherry said. “Lew put two more thousand behind the cabinet the day before yesterday. Beating him up hurt his pride.”

“Don’t you think you ought to let me hold onto the money?” the pretty man said.

“No, darlin’. Sherry can take care of it.” She giggled. “I took the money and left Lew a note. I told him thanks for everything.”

The pretty young man licked his lips. “Was that smart? Bardock will go over there and find your clothes gone and find the note and maybe he’ll catch us.”

“Not a chance, Charles. He called up and I told him to stop around at four. Our train goes at five after, doesn’t it? How can he figure out in five minutes where we are?”

Charles looked dubious. “He could stop by earlier. With this sleet the planes are grounded. He might figure it right, that we’d be taking a train from Penn Station.”

“You worry too much, darlin’,” Sherry said, yawning.

The pretty young man stood up. “Finish your drink. The train is made up. We’ll get the bags from the checkroom and go aboard.”

They quit the cocktail lounge and went out into the station.

Lew felt like a man in a dream. Sherry would head south with the money. She hated the cold. She would never travel by bus. The planes were grounded. He walked down the underground platform. The second porter he asked said, “Blonde lady? One come on this car a half hour ago, sir. A fella with her. They’re in Compartment C. Tickets through to Miami. I’ll show you.”

Lew gave him the bill. “Never mind. I’ll take a look.”

He went to the end of the car and tapped lightly on the door of Compartment C.

“Tickets, please,” Lew said softly.

He heard the bolt click back. The moment the door started to open, Bardock threw his shoulder against it, knowing that if he was wrong, apologies would be almost impossible.

Sherry sat on the seat, her legs tucked under her. Her high-heeled snakeskin shoes lay on their sides half under the seat. A bottle rested beside her.

Pretty boy, his face white, was scrambling to his feet in the corner.

“Lew!” Sherry whispered. “Lew, darlin’!”

Lew leaned his back against the closed door. He knew that he was going to kill Sherry.

Pretty boy rushed him. Lew took a hard right over the ear, shook his head to clear it, Pretty boy was biting his under lip, his eyes wild as he threw another punch.

Lew counter-punched, chopping down with his right fist, opening pretty boy’s mouth, turning him into a wavering scarecrow. But pretty boy reached for the neck of the bottle.

Lew took the belly gun from the waistband of his trousers. Sherry gave a whispered scream as she saw the gun. Pretty boy lifted the bottle. With a full arm swing, Lew slammed the revolver flat against pretty boy’s mouth and nose.

Pretty boy staggered back. He swung the bottle wildly to the side to regain his balance. It swept in a horizontal arc, hit with a sickening, smash against Sherry’s delicate face, smashing her nose to a flat pulp.

Pretty boy fell to his knees. He lifted both hands and held them to his ruined face. His eyes melted with tears and the blood ran between his fingers. His shoulders shook with his silent weeping.

The compartment reeked with the stench of the spilled liquor. Spilled liquor, Sherry’s perfume, and the tiny salt-sweet odor of blood.

Lew lifted the revolver and aimed it at Sherry’s throat, his finger tightening on the trigger, the hammer beginning to lift. A few ounces more pressure.

Sherry looked at him and her eyes were glazed with an enormous fear. Lew felt the need of her die inside him. He faced a stranger, a gun leveled to shoot a stranger.

He cursed softly, replaced the gun in the waistband of his trousers. Sherry’s purse was beside her. Lew took it, backing away from her hands that reached out like claws. The money was there. He shoved it into his pocket, threw her purse back on the berth.

He knew that plastic surgery would never return Sherry and the pretty boy to their original appearance.

As Lew reached the end of the car the train had begun to move. He stepped off onto the platform, leaned against one of the pillars and watched the train disappear down a dark curve underground. His eyes stung for a moment.

It had been all loss and no gain. He thought of the beating he had taken, of the look that Rance would give him. The anger welled up inside him, as clear and cold as water from a deep spring.

Bardock called the Schane home in Westchester from the station. After a long wait he got Linda on the line.

“This is Lew Bardock. I want you to come to the city. Immediately.”

“There’s a cocktail party here and—”

“Come to town. There’s something I want you to do.”

After several seconds Linda said, “All right, Lew. I’ll make some excuse.”

“Drive down, Linda. I’m taking a room at the Traynor. I’ll be in the room. Phone me from the lobby and come up.”

He saw Linda’s quick look of distaste as she glanced around the room. A bed, a chair, a window, a table, a bureau and a worn rug, All rancid and old with too much life, too many people, too much despair.

Lew shut the door. Linda looked steadily at him and said, “I talked to Mr. Rance today.”

“Rance!” he gasped.

“Yes, Lew. And I don’t know why I came here. We talked for quite a while. You see, I know now that you don’t intend to do anything on my case.”

“Then why did you come?”

“A woman’s reasons. Curiosity, maybe. Or maybe only because you have looked so... so unhappy. So very unhappy.”

Lew lit her cigarette and his own. She sat on the chair by the window. He looked down into her eyes and told her exactly what he had done and why he had done it, and how it had come out. He did not spare himself. At the end he said, “Pretty, isn’t it? A delicate and sensitive little epic of love in the big city.”

Linda reached out and held his wrist tightly. “It’s over, Lew. Don’t keep hurting yourself any more.”

Lew smiled grimly. “I’m hurt all right. I’m all through. You know that. So does Rance. But I’ve been pushed around a little. Tonight I do what I should have done in the beginning. And I do it right, Linda.”

“How do you mean?”

“Tonight, with your help, I take Auglitz. No holds barred. From force of habit I cased him a little. He lives on the top floor of that two story building. His man servant lives in, and the office girl goes home at night. She’ll be long gone by now. There’s the phone. Call him up and say you want to buy his films with a lump sum payment. Make it forty thousand. That ought to make his tongue hang out.”

“But won’t he suspect something?”

“He will, but he’ll also be curious.”

“What good will it do?”

“He doesn’t know me by sight. I’ll be just a family retainer you brought along to sit in your car and hold the dough until you make the deal. There’s what we’ll use for the money, the two phone books. I picked up some paper and string. It ought to get me in the door. The rest is up to me. That’s when you get behind the furniture and keep low.”

Linda made the phone call. Bardock listened to her. She did a good job of it. She hung up. “He wants me to come over at nine-thirty.”

Suddenly she was in his arms. He held her tightly, looking down into her eyes, feeling the birth of something between them. Her lips were not cloying, candy-sticky, greedy. A woman’s lips. Clear and true.

Lew pushed her away. “Forget it, Miss Schane,” he said roughly. “Forget you know me. I’m just doing a job for you and after that’s done, Rance will figure out whether to prosecute me or not.” He laughed. “I thought you were made of ice or glass.”

“Glass has been known to break under an abrupt change of temperature,” she said demurely. “Be careful tonight, Lew. Very careful.”

Chapter Four

Shoot Fast — Think Fast

At last the door opened again and Linda stood there. She beckoned to Lew. Linda had her coat off and she hugged herself, elbows in her palms, the wind touching her hair. Bardock snapped his cigarette out into the street, picked up the carefully wrapped package and went up the six stone steps to the front door. He could see someone behind her.

Dr. Auglitz was a smiling, middle-sized man in his fifties, thin hair brushed carefully across a bald spot. He wore a maroon felt smoking jacket.

As Lew came into the hallway, Dr. Auglitz shut the door, lightly patted Lew’s pockets, armpits, waist. “If you don’t mind,” he said politely. “We can’t afford chances. Please take your package straight down this hall and put it on the desk inside the office.”

Lew walked straight ahead. Linda and Auglitz followed him. He placed the package on the corner of the desk and turned, keeping his right hand close to the package.

The big man who had attacked him on the street appeared behind Auglitz, said loudly, “He is Bardock!” The man wore tape across his nose and his mouth was puffed.

Dr. Auglitz lost his ready smile. He stepped aside and said, “Punish him, Andrew.”

Andrew, his eyes venomous, rushed Lew. He rushed with a clenched right fist drawn back, a fist as big as a sledge.

Linda screamed once. Lew poised himself, watched the fist smash toward him. He turned abruptly to the left and snapped his head back so that the big fist went by his nose. As it did so Lew clamped both hands on the thick wrist, turned the rest of the way so that his right shoulder was tucked firmly under Andrew’s armpit. He levered down on the wrist, bending over as he did so, utilizing Andrew’s forward rush. The big man completely cleared the desk, his arms flailing the air. He struck the far wall with a thud that shook the floor and collapsed, face down, motionless.

Before Andrew even hit the floor, Lew had turned toward Auglitz. He started forward, then stopped his arms slowly lifting. Auglitz had a look of complete determination and the wide muzzle of the Army Colt, pointed at Lew’s middle, was as steady as a rock.

“Please sit down, Mr. Bardock. In that chair.”

Lew tried to estimate the man’s determination. He did not move toward the chair. He heard a soft sound behind him and his knees sagged as something thudded against his skull behind his right ear. Lew moved one step toward the chair and sat down.

Andrew moved around so that Lew could see him. His bruised lips were smiling. He reached out with an animal quickness, his fingers splayed on Lew’s forehead, his thick thumb pressed into the corner of Lew’s eye, sending crimson needles of pain into his brain. Lew tried to fight away, but his head was firm against the high back of the chair.

“Not yet, Andrew!” Auglitz snapped. The pain went away. Lew saw Auglitz’ face through spinning dots of flame.

“Mr. Bardock,” Auglitz said, “You shouldn’t have given Mr. Kriss your right name. Under the drug he told me of you. I sent Andrew after you, but I’m afraid you used him rather badly. Check the package, Andrew.”

Thick fingers tore open one corner. “Telephone books,” Andrew said with disgust.

“I am disappointed in you, Miss Schane. This is going to cost you a great deal of money. You obviously need a good many more treatments. But first Mr. Bardock needs encouragement. Prepare an injection, Andrew.”

Andrew went to a wall cupboard. His thick fingers were surprisingly quick and adept in preparing the needle, filling it from the upended vial.

He came toward Lew with it. Lew braced himself in the chair.

“Take your injection like a little man, Bardock,” Auglitz said, “Or Miss Schane will have an unfortunate accident. She might trip and fall against the barrel of this gun. It’s quite hard, you know.”

Lew realized that Andrew could knock him unconscious and give him the injection while he was out.

“It’s just sodium-amytal, Mr. Bardock.”

The needle stung. Lew shut his teeth hard against the sensation of sleepy lethargy that began to sweep over him. His vision misted slightly and the room wavered. Auglitz, smiling, took a gold watch from his pocket, let it swing back and forth in a leisurely arc a few feet from Lew’s eyes. Lew found that he couldn’t keep his eyes from tracking the path of the spinning watch.

“You are having a hard time, Mr. Bardock,” Auglitz said. “You are very tired. You can barely keep your eyes open. So sleepy. Soooo sleeeepy. Go to sleep. Go to sleep...”

Lew let his eyes follow the watch and he fought back the lethargy, the terrific willingness to give in. He thought of the pain behind his ear, and he concentrated on that pain, on Linda’s lips, on anything that would enable him to struggle against the soft voice, the invidious influence of the drug.

Lew let his eyes shut, trying to remember Linda’s vague description of how she had acted while under hypnosis.

He sat very still. Auglitz voice cracked like a whip. “Open your eyes!”

Lew opened his eyes, stared blankly at Auglitz.

“Your name!”

He made his tone dull, and it was no great effort to do so. The drug made him feel as though he were moving in a thick gray fog.

“Lewis Bardock.”

“What is your business?”

“I am an operative for the Brill Agency. Private investigations.”

“Hired by Miss Schane?”

“Yes sir.”

“What was the object of this infantile trick?”

“I was going to make you talk and tell where we could get the films.”

“How absurd, indeed! A boy scout antic. You must be of enormous value to your agency. What proof do you have against me?”

“Certain documents. Signed.”

“Where are these documents?”

Lew remembered how Linda had said that even under the drug she had refused to answer certain questions. He did not speak.

“You hid the proof carefully?”

“Yes.”

“You hid the documents where I could not find them?”

“Yes.”

“But you stupidly brought them here with you, didn’t you, Lewis?”

“Yes.”

Dr. Auglitz face looked three times normal size. He was smiling in triumph.

Auglitz said to Linda, “You see how we must step carefully around the question which he refuses to answer. I had to do the same with you, you know.” He turned back to Bardock.

“Which pocket are they in?”

“They are not in my pockets.”

“So? Do you think Linda still has them in her purse?”

“Linda hasn’t got them.”

Auglitz frowned. Then his frown went away. “Of course! Very devious of you, Lewis. The phone books! Get them, Linda.”

Bardock bit down again on the inside of his lip, fighting for self will. It would depend on the next ten seconds.

Linda brought the package in. “Open it,” Auglitz said, “and find the papers for me, Linda. I am curious to know which of my clients were so bold.”

Bardock heard the sound of the paper being removed from the phone books. He moved, so that Auglitz’ eyes would shift back to him.

The sound of the shot came to his drugged ears sounding as though it had been fired in a box of cotton wool. It was followed immediately by a second shot. He pushed himself to his feet, moving with turgid effort, with muscles that were like slabs of cold lard. The stentorian roar of the automatic in Auglitz’ hand seemed oddly to jar his foot and, looking down he saw that the slug had bitten a half circle out of the protruding sole of his shoe.

Auglitz staggered over to the desk, stood with both palms flat against the glass, blood dropping slowly and heavily onto the glass, each drop making a tiny pattern of red exclamation points in a circle around it.

Lew knew that he had to move, and quickly. Linda Schane stood with the automatic sagging in her lax hand, her eyes wide and strained. He knew that she would be no good for several minutes. Feet thudded toward Linda. He could not get to Linda in time.

The automatic was close to Lew’s foot. He bent with painful slowness and picked it up. Something about the drug made it feel soft and loose in his hand. He brought the weapon up in a slow arc, not able to move it quickly enough.

Andrew clubbed him with a heavy fist, turning from the girl to answer this new challenge from a man supposedly heavily drugged. Lew felt himself float backwards, strike the floor without pain.

Andrew kicked at him and Lew got his hand on Andrew’s ankle, the man fell across him. Lew got his left arm around Andrew’s neck, hugged him close and with nightmare slowness, with muscles that would not respond properly, he chopped Andrew again and again behind the ear and on the back of the head with the barrel of the heavy gun.

Lew stopped only when Linda, sobbing in fear, caught his arm. She helped him out from under the limp weight of the servant, helped him to his feet.

Auglitz had slid down to his knees, the bridge of his nose resting against the edge of the desk.

Bardock shook his head, but he could not clear it completely. The room was still a place of loose and shifting angles.

He walked heavily to Auglitz, pulled the man back so that he sat down. Auglitz looked up at him with a white face, with vanished composure.

“Very few people can fight against that, Lewis,” he said weakly. “If you will fix a tourniquet—”

Blood soaked Auglitz’ white jacket at the chest and at the elbow. The arm seemed to be bleeding the most.

“First you talk and then you get the tourniquet,” Bardock said.

“I’ll soon be too weak from loss of blood to talk. One bullet ripped across my chest and the other shattered my elbow.” There was an undercurrent of anxiety in Auglitz’ voice.

“Where are the films?”

“Please. My arm.”

“Doc,” Lew said heavily, “I don’t care if you bleed to death. I really don’t.”

“Wall safe. Behind the print on the far wall.”

Bardock motioned to Linda. She went and took the print off the wall, disclosing the barrel safe. Auglitz said:

“Left eleven, right eighty-six, left forty-one, right six.”

Auglitz had to repeat it. Linda, moving like a frightened ghost, got it open. There was a box of labeled film reels, 16 mm. Bardock saw her find the one with an adhesive tape strip on the metal labeled “Schane.”

“The tourniquet,” Auglitz gasped.

Bardock had trouble thinking clearly, but he felt as though the effects were lessening a bit. “No tourniquet. You’re too smart a guy to have your eggs in one basket, Auglitz. Where are the copies? You had prints made.”

“No. I swear.”

“Then bleed to death, damn you.”

“Garrison Trust. Safety deposit box. Name of John Butler. Box number three eighteen. Copies of each film. Andrew has key, rented box—”

Auglitz slumped over onto his side. His breathing was getting shallow. Bardock stirred him with a heavy foot. “Wake up, pal. Only one line of defense. Come on now. Where’s the other copies?”

“No. I swear. Tourniquet. Quickly. Please.”

Linda, her teeth chattering, clung to Bardock’s arm. “Don’t let him die, Lew. Don’t. I shot him, Lew.”

He pushed her away. “Give, Auglitz. Give quick or I’m going out.”

Auglitz’ voice was a weak whisper. “False back in — in wall cabinet — behind my desk...”

Bardock sighed. “Phone police emergency, Linda.” He found a towel, tightened it above Auglitz elbow with the letter opener from the top of the desk, Auglitz had barely the strength to hold it.

There were five people in Rance’s office. The windows were gray with dawn. Bardock sat near the old-fashioned desk.

Linda, her eyes shadowed and a wisp of hair across her pale forehead, sat trim and erect near the fireplace.

Rance knelt by the fire. The hardwood logs burned steadily. From time to time he threw a loose film spool onto the logs.

The police official stood, his back to the room, staring out the window, sucking at his pipe. The man from the District Attorney’s office perched on the edge of the big desk.

The phone rang. Rance stood up and took it.

“Auglitz will pull through,” he said.

“When we check,” the police official said, “I have a hunch we’ll find his credentials are faked.”

“Of course,” the D.A.’s man said, ‘“we don’t know what the hell you’re doing at that fireplace, Rance. Destroying evidence is quite a serious matter. You wouldn’t be doing that, would you?”

“Hell, no,” Rance said.

“Tomorrow, I mean today,” the D.A.’s man said, “we’ll take that Andrew to the bank. There might be some evidence in that box. But Andrew tells me he’s been storing something for you there.”

“Yes. Some home movies, Nothing to do with the case, you understand.”

“Let’s go, Bill,” the police official said. “Meet us at the bank at ten, Bardock, so you can pick up your — home movies.”

The two of them left. Rance tossed the last of the duplicate set on the fire, dusted his palms as though to brush off filth.

Rance sat down at the desk. He said to Lew, “You understand, Lew, that after you deliver the reels to me, the ones from the bank, you’re all through here.”

“It would seem that way,” Lew said wearily.

“When you came in yesterday, Lew, you should have remembered to pick up your paycheck. You’ve been eager for payday lately. Not picking up the check looked funny. That’s what started me investigating you, you know.”

“I don’t see why a man should be penalized for using his head,” Linda said firmly.

Both men stared at her. Linda said, “Tell Rance what you told me, Lew. Tell him how you decided to pretend to represent those other people just so they’d tell you more about Auglitz. Tell him how you wanted to give me the money to hold in my account where it would be safe, with instructions to give it to Mr. Rance if anything happened to you. But I was afraid to take the money.”

Rance stared at her. “But, Miss Schane! Why, when I talked to you, didn’t you say—”

“Should I have trusted you on sight, Mr. Rance? I had to check with Lew first.”

Rance stared in consternation at Lew. “Is this true?”

Lew shrugged and swallowed hard. “I work in my own way, Rance. You heard the lady.”

“Why didn’t you squawk?”

“If you want to think I’m crooked, I’d just rather not work here. In fact, if you want me back, you’ll have to boost the ante a little.” He stood up, unstrapped the money belt and tossed it on the desk. He tossed the wadded bills on top of them. “Stick this stuff in the safe, Rance. I’ll distribute it tomorrow.”

“Lew, I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” Rance said.

Lew grinned. “The obvious fooled you the same way it fooled Auglitz. He didn’t stop to think that with a razor blade a phone book can become a good place to hide a gun. I put it there because I knew I’d be searched at the door. I was going to open the package and grab it. Then I had to hope that Linda would have the guts to use it.”

“I’ll clear your raise with Brill.”

Bardock walked to the door. “Come on, Linda. We both need coffee...”

Fifteen minutes later, sitting beside Lew on a stool, Linda stirred her coffee, looked up at him and said in a small voice, “Auglitz was blackmailing me because I told him about what I saw the day my sister—”

Lew reached over and touched her lips with one finger, cutting off her words. He said, “I don’t want to know. I’ve been such a heel that I’d like to go on thinking that maybe you were one once. It will give us something in common.”

Linda smiled at him. Her eyes danced. “You sound as though you would like to have something in common with me. Is this a proposition?”

“Lady, you own me. With a little quick thinking, you bought back my reputation.”

“And bought you along with it?”

“I’m a rough commodity,” he said.

She leaned closer to him. Through parted lips she whispered, “And let the buyer beware.”

They both began to smile. Outside the morning sun broke through the mist and the city began to come awake.

Content

John D. MacDonald
Blackmail Breeds Bullets

Chapter One The Wire Noose

Chapter Two Prescription — Blackmail

Chapter Three The Man in the Shadows

Chapter Four Shoot Fast — Think Fast