F. B. I. Showdown Read online

  Then they realized that Joe Guestler, who was in the party, was watching them closely, and they guessed that they must be giving the show away somehow. Egghead was gathering the wall and furniture covers together. He whispered, “Let’s go now. This is our chance. Ef Joe Guestler follows, throw him down the chute, but he ain’t goin’ with us so knock him on the head first, see?”

  They went past the guard and started the trek down the corridor to the chute. This was the big moment. Their mouths were dry, and a cold sweat had broken out over their bodies as they walked the long corridor that would seem so short to Parry Galowen the following morning.

  After they had shuffled a distance, they heard footsteps behind. Out of the corner of his eye Egghead looked at Johnny, Neither turned; their faces might have given the show away.

  They went round the corner at the end of the corridor. The chute was right in front of them, Egghead lifted the hatch and shoved his covers through, then Johnny did the same. Then they turned to walk back.

  A man came round the corner. It was Joe Guestler. He started to say, toughly, suspiciously: “You guys are up to somep’n! Louie says for to tell you it ain’t healthy for guys to do things on their own. If you’re plannin’ a double-cross—”

  Johnny hit him across the chin. Then Egghead brought the flat of his hand down on the staggering Joe Guestler’s head, only in the palm was his automatic. Blood flooded down into Joe’s eyes, but he didn’t know it because he was unconscious as he was falling.

  Working with frantic haste they hoisted Joe into the chute and let him ride down, Then Johnny wiped up a few spots of blood that looked conspicuous on the polished floor and then clambered feet first into the chute and followed their victim, He came down slowly, but all the same his weight, landing on the unconscious Joe, couldn’t have done him any good. Egghead gave Johnny half a minute to get clear, then slid down himself.

  They were in complete darkness, standing on a yielding floor of dirty clothing for the laundry. Both started to push with their hands against the walls of the bin, guns ready for action.

  Johnny suddenly whispered, “Here!” and a crack of light showed. Egghead stumbled across. They pushed a little harder, and a door suddenly gave and they looked into the brightness of a whitewashed loading bay.

  At once someone shouted, “What’re you doin’ there?” and immediately Johnny and Egghead came plunging out, guns raised.

  A couple of uniformed guards were directing the loading of some laundry baskets into the back of the big, cream-painted prison truck. Hefting the baskets were a couple of prisoners. Ironically, one was old Rocky, Johnny’s cellmate.

  Egghead’s voice crackled, “Don’t make a wrong move, none of yer!”

  Four pairs of hands shot up immediately. As Johnny came backing round to where the prisoners were, Old Rocky whispered, “I didn’t know this was the way you planned it. Good for you, Johnny! Don’t forget to see that brother o’ mine!”

  Johnny snapped, “Into that bin,” and shoved the two prisoners into the closet where Joe Guestler lay bleeding among the cloths. The bolt outside wasn’t very strong, but Johnny knew the prisoners wouldn’t start to attract attention for a long time, so as to give them a chance to get away.

  When he turned, Egghead was prodding the two guards into the cab of the truck, Johnny heard him say, thinly, “You want to live longer’n Parry Galowen? Then you do as you’re told, see? Drive out through the gates as if nothing’s happened. We’ll be behind among the baskets, and I’ll be watchin’ your face in the drivin’ mirror, an’ if I see you so much as bat an eyelid, so help me, I’ll give you every round in this gat!”

  The two men looked at each other. Then one said, very earnestly, “Brother, if I so much as cough I’ll know I deserve what’s coming. You betcha we’re gonna be good boys!”

  Johnny covered them while Egghead got in behind the cab, then Egghead covered them while Johnny climbed in among the baskets. The engine started. They didn’t move.

  After a minute Egghead snarled, “What in hades are you waitin’ for?”

  The driver very carefully explained, “What’re we gonna do about them doors? Someone’s gotta open ’em and shut ’em behind us.”

  Egghead snarled to the man next the driver, “Brother, that’s your job. You do it—and remember we’re coverin’ you all the time!”

  The guard got down, opened the big doors and they drove slowly out into the prison compound. Johnny covered him from the back while he slowly, reluctantly closed the doors on the loading bay. Then, even more slowly, much more reluctantly, he came and took his place next to the driver. He didn’t look healthy; perhaps he was thinking of what could be coming to them.

  The driver appeared a calmer, less imaginative man. Obligingly he started across to the big gates, with the armed guards above and all around. Crouching behind the baskets, muscles tautened ready to spring into action, they heard someone call, “Okay?”

  The driver said, “Okay,” and then the truck lurched into motion again. Egghead at once moved forward so that he could see through the windscreen, while Johnny crabbed along the top of the baskets and watched the receding prison gates.

  Egghead called, “Nothin’ wrong, Johnny?”

  Johnny said, “Nothin’ wrong.” He came back, almost purring. He said, “Eggy, that sure was a swell idea of yours! The way them guards is just standin’ around, we’ll be outa the state afore they wise to what’s happened.”

  Egghead said, “Not in this truck. We gotta get a car that can fly.”

  He was looking at the backs of the guards up front, wondering what to do.

  Ten miles out on the Petersburg Highway he gave the order to pull up. Then he made the guards get out. Now even the phlegmatic driver was looking uneasy. His mate started to say, “We did what you said, so you boys needn’t think of gettin’ rough. We’re still cooperative—mighty cooperative!”

  He was looking at those guns. The driver looked at them and said, “Yeah, an’ we’ll still do as you say.”

  Egghead, green-eyed and mean, snarled, “I don’t like them clothes you’re wearin’. I’ve a mind to make two vacancies on the prison staff.”

  Johnny said, “Aw, Eggy, let’s just stuff ’em in a basket. It gets everyone peeved if you kill a warder.”

  The driver’s mate said, “Brother, you don’t know how I welcome those words.”

  Johnny went and hoisted a couple of baskets out on to the side of the road. They made the guards climb in, and then strapped them down and shoved them out of sight into a ditch. That was better than tying them, and much safer.

  Egghead rubbed dirt all over his baldness, so as to make it less conspicuous. They drove another mile, then hid the truck among some trees. The longer it took the police to find the truck, the longer they would be in getting on their trail.

  They walked the few hundred yards through a cornfield and then an orchard, and then came out on a rutty back road.

  Johnny said, “Now, that’s luck,” because there was a smart coupé sitting beside the road waiting for them. They stood in the shade of the fruit trees and looked around for the owner. After a while Johnny spotted a movement up the hillside.

  He grinned. “The guy’s up there, neckin’. He won’t be thinkin’ much about his car, I reckon.”

  Egghead didn’t smile. He never did have any humour. Johnny said, “Give me a minute—I’ll take care of this.”

  A few minutes later, Egghead eased the car into gear and they went slowly down the lane.

  Johnny said, “Where to?”

  Behind them, in the grass on the hillside, the owner of the car lay sprawled on the ground, bereft of his ignition keys and consciousness. A crying girl knelt alongside him, dabbing at the blood on his bruised temple where the butt of Johnny’s automatic had struck him.

  Egghead said, “The heat’ll be on any time now. Reckon we’ll be safer over the Virginia border.” He pulled out on to the Petersburg Road, and gave the coupé its head. They sat low
in the car, so as to keep their prison clothes out of sight.

  Hours later they were passing the sign that showed the state borderline. They were in Virginia.

  They felt safe for the moment.

  They didn’t know it was the biggest mistake they had made in their escape, taking that car into Virginia.

  CHAPTER THREE

  PROBLEM FILM

  Hymie came into the office next morning feeling unusually depressed. He had lost sleep during the night and felt grey and jaded, and the excitement of yesterday hadn’t done his temperamental stomach any good.

  He had also used up most of his footage, and the boss was tight on such things. Maybe the boss would bawl him out for using so much film on one subject.

  So Hymie didn’t say anything, and when the film was processed the boss and the two editors went into the projection room thinking they were going to see the usual routine stuff that fell to Hymie’s camera.

  The boss was giving orders and being critical as usual, until suddenly he saw men carrying a bound figure. After that he shut his fat mouth and saw right to the end of the film in silence.

  Then he went out and crossed to his office, and Hymie and the editors trailed after him. Hymie let his plump body settle inside a big, leather-upholstered chair and felt for a cigarette. He found he had run out and he didn’t like to ask for one, so he sat and felt even more fed up.

  The boss, fat white hands playing with an expensive, gold-mounted presentation pen, said, “What’n hades are we gonna do with that film, Kolfinkle?”

  Hymie said, weakly, “I thought it was a good story.”

  The boss’s eyes looked worried inside his fat face. He complained, “The hell, it’s too good. Why should this happen to me?”

  One of his editors spoke. It was G. Rudolph Reimer. Reimer was thin-faced, bitter, sarcastic. He was efficient, but that didn’t make anyone except the boss like him.

  He said, “That film should be handed over to the police.”

  The boss said, shortly, “You’re crazy. This company can’t afford to get mixed up in things like that.”

  Reimer said, thinly, “It wouldn’t be because you knew someone in that lynching party, would it?”

  The boss kept his eyes down and Hymie saw that he was uneasy. He tried to sound surprised, but it kidded no one.

  “I don’t get you? Who should I know?”

  Reimer said, evenly, “Frank Descoign.”

  It startled Hymie. He’d never met Frank Descoign, but he knew the name. The Descoigns ran a big chain of movie-houses all down as far as Atlanta in Georgia, and were about the biggest renters of their newsreels. Now he looked at the boss and began to understand.

  The boss suddenly said, very hard in his manner, “I never saw anyone I recognised. Bring that film up to me and we’ll leave it in this office until I know what to do about it.”

  Reimer’s thin, cynical voice said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if somehow it got lost or destroyed if it came into this room.”

  The boss snarled something, then pulled himself together and sent them off for the film. He walked over to the window when he and Hymie were alone together. After a while he said, “You don’t need to have to tell anyone what you saw, do you, Kolfinkle?”

  Hymie hadn’t even considered telling anyone, so he said, “Why, sure, no, boss.”

  So the boss turned and said, “Maybe I can fix you a raise or something if you keep your mouth shut. God, I gotta do something. D’you think the Descoigns would buy our films if we handed this reel over to the police? And what’n hell would we do for money if the Descoigns pulled out on us?” He started to get worked up, and then Reimer and the assistant came in with the can.

  The boss said, “You can go, Kolfinkle. I want to talk to Reimer.”

  Kolfinkle eased his fat torso out of the chair and walked across to the door. He knew he was being sent out of the office so that the boss could square Reimer and his assistant to keep their mouths shut. He thought that Reimer would probably be difficult. There was something hard and brittle about the fellar....

  When Hymie had gone, the boss cased back in his chair and got a box of cigars out of a lower drawer. They were pretty good cigars at that. He shoved the box under Rudolf Reimer’s nose and said, thick-throated, “Help yourself. They’re okay, these.”

  Reimer watched him closely, his face thin and mottled red where the capillaries came near to the surface; there was a hooded effect to the droop of his eyelids that shaded cynical, sarcastic eyes. His head shook as he said, thinly, “I don’t go for cigars.” He went on, “I don’t hold with smoking at all,” and his voice was contemptuous and a rebuke at the same time, saying without words, “Smoking’s for small boys who never grow up.”

  The boss’s eyes flickered but he said nothing. He shoved the box before the assistant-editor, a plump young man named Rod Blackhurst. Blackhurst was too young for the job and didn’t learn fast, but the boss wouldn’t pay more, so Reimer had to manage with him.

  Blackhurst hesitated before taking the cigar. He couldn’t make this out; usually the boss gave rockets, not cigars. So he watched the boss while his plump fingers fumbled with the cigar band.

  The boss selected one, pulled out a pansy cigar-cutter at the end of a close-linked chain, then got his wet lips to work on the end until it was comfortable. And then he lit up, When he had finished he said, “That film.” They all looked at the can on the table. “It’s hot. It’d cost me a fortune if it was shown. I can’t afford the loss of business and the time hanging around the courts, see? So...you gotta forget you ever saw it, understand?”

  Reimer said nothing, but looked pink and mean and malignant. Blackhurst started to nod, started to say, “Sure, boss, I get you,” and then tailed off because he didn’t quite understand what it was all about. He fiddled around with the unlit cigar and cleared his throat noisily.

  The boss looked at Reimer, then turned his fat-faced unpleasantness on to the uncertain Blackhurst. “I guess you like your job here with me, Blackie?” Blackhurst nodded and cleared his throat again but said nothing. The boss went on, “You wouldn’t get another job like it, at your age. Okay, you keep the job as long as you keep your mouth shut about this.”

  Blackhurst nodded dumbly. He didn’t want to lose this job, because he was sure he’d never be able to persuade any other firm to take him on in a similar position.

  The boss said, trying to infuse a note of kindness into his voice, “You c’n go now, Blackie. But just remember....”

  When they were alone together, the boss’s manner changed. His voice came harshly now, and his eyes looked wicked within the deep folds of fat on his cheeks. He knew that Reimer wasn’t to be moved by threats of dismissal, and he adopted other tactics.

  He rapped, “I know you, Reimer, know you better than you think.” Reimer glowered sarcastically, unmoved by the statement, apparently. So the boss went on, “You’re a born troublemaker, an’ this seems something good to start a shindig with.” He pulped the end of his cigar with stumpy teeth, then delivered his broadside. “If you think you are goin’ to make trouble for me, just get it inside your head that I’d make a heck of a lot more trouble for you, brother!”

  Reimer said, coldly, “You tell me how.”

  The boss said, “I know somep’n about you, Reimer. You never served your time in the Army. You served three years in a Federal Penitentiary, didn’t you?”

  Reimer got to his feet. He said, “So?”

  The boss said, “Right now they’re purging the film world of all anti-American influences. Do dirt on me an’ I’ll blacklist you and no one’ll ever take you on. That means you’ll be washed out as a film editor.”

  Now Reimer said nothing. Instead he crossed slowly to the door, his head bent as though brooding on something.

  As he was going out, the boss threw after him, “And you know somep’n, Reimer? I got other things here I know about you—not nice things.” He was tapping his forehead with a fleshy forefinger; there
was a fat sneer on his heavy face. Reimer thought he might be bluffing, but he couldn’t be sure. He said nothing and went out, closing the door softly behind him.

  He went out on to the street, crossed to a bar, and got a tall glass of light beer. He was thinking all the time he was drinking. When only froth clung to the inside of the glass, he rose, a decision made, and crossed to a phone box. From a diary he selected a number and asked for long distance. When someone answered he spoke.

  He spoke in German.

  Back in the office the boss slipped on a light summer coat, picked up the can, and went for his car. He drove steadily out to his house in the country—an unusual performance for the boss, who lived around his desk most waking hours. His wife was surprised to see him, and was even more surprised when all he did was set fire to a can of film down at the bottom of their garden, then return to his office.

  The boss should have felt relieved, now that the can of hot film was destroyed, but instead only forebodings of trouble assailed him. Intuitively, he knew that there was going to be trouble over that film—plenty trouble for all concerned.

  He decided that at the first opportunity he would fire Hymie Kolfinkle. Anyway, he couldn’t afford to keep the guy, now he’d given him a rise.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ENTER THE FEDS

  There was a police car standing by the cream coupé, a couple of cops with their hats off in the afternoon heat lounging in the cool shade of a tall tree by the curving, pleasant roadside. It was a lonely spot, without buildings of any sort in sight, though everywhere around were trees and cultivated fields that looked good farmland. The soil was the dark rich soil of Virginia, and the vegetation was lush, thick and green.

  A big black sedan came fast round the bend, then slowed with a squealing of breaks and slipping tyre treads at sight of the police. The cops stirred and came slowly, questioningly, out on to the lane. Two men got out of the sedan. They were young, alert, pleasant-faced; they walked with the ease of athletes in constant, arduous training, and both were big enough to look down on most men.