Jay Waitkus

Excerpted from Jay Waitkus' Crime Chronicles: Pursuit by Arthur Stringer

Chapter 3

IT was the Commissioner who did the talking. Copeland, as usual, lapsed into the background, cracking his dry knuckles and blinking his pale-blue eyes about the room as the voices of the two larger men boomed back and forth.

“We’ve been going over this Binhart case,” began the Commissioner. “It’s seven months now — and nothing done!”

Blake looked sideways at Copeland. There was muffled and meditative belligerency in the look. There was also gratification, for it was the move he had been expecting.

“I always said McCooey wasn’t the man to go out on that case,” said the Second Deputy, still watching Copeland.

“Then who is the man?” asked the Commissioner.

Blake took out a cigar, bit the end off, and struck a match. It was out of place; but it was a sign of his independence. He had long since given up plug and fine-cut and taken to fat Havanas, which he smoked audibly, in plethoric wheezes.Good living had left his body stout and his breathing slightly asthmatic.

He sat looking down at his massive knees; his oblique study of Copeland, apparently, had yielded him scant satisfaction. Copeland, in fact, was making paper fans out of the official note-paper in front of him.

“What’s the matter with Washington and Wilkie?” inquired Blake, attentively regarding his cigar.

“They’re just where we are — at a standstill,” acknowledged the Commissioner.

“And that’s where we’ll stay!” heavily contended the Second Deputy.

The entire situation was an insidiously flattering one to Blake. Everyone else had failed. They were compelled to come to him, their final resource.

“Why?” demanded his superior.

“Because we haven’t got a man who can turn the trick! We haven’t got a man who can go out and round up Binhart inside o’ seven years!”

“Then what is your suggestion?” It was Copeland who spoke, mild and hesitating.

“D’ you want my suggestion?” demanded Blake, warm with the wine-like knowledge which, he knew, made him master of the situation.

“Of course,” was the Commissioner’s curt response.

“Well, you’ve got to have a man who knows Binhart, who knows him and his tricks and his hangouts!”

“Well, who does?”

“I do,” declared Blake.

The Commissioner indulged in his wintry smile.

“You mean if you weren’t tied down to your Second Deputy’s chair you could go out and get him!”

“I could!”

“Within a reasonable length of time?”

“I don’t know about the time! But I could get him, all right.”

“If you were still on the outside work?” interposed Copeland.

“I certainly wouldn’t expect to dig him out o’ my stamp drawer,” was Blake’s heavily facetious retort.

Copeland and the Commissioner looked at each other, for one fraction of a second.

“You know what my feeling is,” resumed the latter, “on this Binhart case.”

“I know what my feeling is,” declared Blake.

“What?”

“That the right method would’ve got him six months ago, without all this monkey work!”

“Then why not end the monkey work, as you call it?”

“How?”

“By doing what you say you can do!” was the Commissioner’s retort.

“How’m I going to hold down a chair and hunt a crook at the same time?”

“Then why hold down the chair? Let the chair take care of itself. It could be arranged, you know.”

Blake had the stage-juggler’s satisfaction of seeing things fall into his hands exactly as he had maneuvered they should. His reluctance was merely a dissimulation, a stage wait for heightened dramatic effect.

“How’d you do the arranging?” he calmly inquired.

“I could see the Mayor in the morning. There will be no Departmental difficulty.”

“Then where’s the trouble?”

“There is none, if you are willing to go out.”

“Well, we can’t get Binhart here by pink-tea invitations. Somebody’s got to go out and get him!”

“The bank raised the reward this week,” interposed the ruminative Copeland.

“Well, it’ll take money to get him,” snapped back the Second Deputy, remembering that he had a nest of his own to feather.

“It will be worth what it costs,” admitted the Commissioner.

“Of course,” said Copeland, “they’ll have to honor your drafts — in reason.”

“There will be no difficulty on the expense side,” quietly interposed the Commissioner. “The city wants Binhart. The whole country wants Binhart. And they will be willing to pay for it.”

Blake rose heavily to his feet. His massive bulk was momentarily stirred by the prospect of the task before him. For one brief moment the anticipation of that clamor of approval which would soon be his stirred his lethargic pulse. Then his cynic calmness again came back to him.

“Then what’re we beefing about?” he demanded. “You want Binhart and I’ll get him for you.”

The Commissioner, tapping the top of his desk with his gold-banded fountain pen, smiled. It was almost a smile of indulgence.

Chapter 10

THE fugitive sat in a short-legged reed chair, with a grip-sack open on his knees. His coat and vest were off, and the light from the oil lamp at his side made his linen shirt a blotch of white.

He had thrown his head up, at the sound of the opening door, and he still sat, leaning forward in the low chair in an attitude of startled expectancy. There was no outward and apparent change on his face as his eyes fell on Blake’s figure.

He showed neither fear nor bewilderment. His career had equipped him with histrionic powers that were exceptional. As a bank-sneak and confidence-man he had long since learned perfect control of his features, perfect composure even under the most discomforting circumstances.

“Hello, Connie!” said the detective facing him. He spoke quietly, and his attitude seemed one of unconcern. Yet a careful observer might have noticed that the pulse of his beefy neck was beating faster than usual. And over that great body, under its clothing, were rippling tremors strangely like those that shake the body of a leashed bulldog at the sight of a street cat.

“Hello, Jim!” answered Binhart, with equal composure. He had aged since Blake had last seen him, aged incredibly. His face was thin now, with plum-colored circles under the faded eyes. He made a move as though to lift down the valise that rested on his knees. But Blake stopped him with a sharp movement of his right hand.

“That’s all right,” he said. “Don’t get up!”

Binhart eyed him. During that few seconds of silent tableau each man was appraising, weighing, estimating the strength of the other.

“What do you want, Jim?” asked Binhart, almost querulously.

“I want that gun you’ve got up there under your liver pad,” was Blake’s impassive answer.

“Is that all?” asked Binhart. But he made no move to produce the gun.

“Then I want you,” calmly announced Blake.

A look of gentle expostulation crept over Binhart’s gaunt face.

“You can’t do it, Jim,” he announced. “You can’t take me away from here.”

“But I’m going to,” retorted Blake.

“How?”

“I’m just going to take you.”

He crossed the room as he spoke.

“Give me the gun,” he commanded. Binhart still sat in the low reed chair. He made no movement in response to Blake’s command.

“What’s the good of getting roughhouse?” he complained.

“Gi’ me the gun,” repeated Blake.

“Jim, I hate to see you act this way,” but as Binhart spoke he slowly drew the revolver from its flapped pocket. Blake’s revolver barrel was touching the white shirt-front as the movement was made. It remained there until he had possession of Binhart’s gun. Then he backed away, putting his own revolver back in his pocket.

“Now, get your clothes on,” commanded Blake.

“What for?” temporized Binhart.

“You’re coming with me!”

“You can’t do it, Jim,” persisted the other. “You couldn’t get me down to the waterfront, in this town. They’d get you before you were two hundred yards away from that door.”

“I’ll risk it,” announced the detective.

“And I’d fight you myself, every move. This ain’t Manhattan Borough, you know, Jim; you can’t kidnap a white man. I’d have you in irons for abduction...I’d have the best law sharps money could get. You can’t do it, Jim. It ain’t law!”

“What t’ hell do I care for law?” was Blake’s retort. “I want you and you’re going to come with me.”

“Where am I going?”

“Back to New York.”

Binhart laughed. It was a laugh without any mirth in it.

“Jim, you’re foolish. You couldn’t get me back to New York alive, any more than you could take Victoria Peak to New York!”

“All right, then, I’ll take you along the other way, if I ain’t going to take you alive. I’ve followed you a good many thousand miles, Connie, and a little loose talk ain’t going to make me lie down at this stage of the game.”

Binhart sat studying the other man for a moment or two.

“Then how about a little real talk, the kind of talk that money makes?”

“Nothing doing!” declared Blake, folding his arms.

Binhart flickered a glance at him as he thrust his own right hand down into the hand-bag on his knees.

“I want to show you what you could get out of this,” he said, leaning forward a little as he looked up at Blake.

When his exploring right hand was lifted again above the top of the bag Blake firmly expected to see papers of some sort between its fingers. He was astonished to see something metallic, something which glittered bright in the light from the wall lamp.

The record of this discovery had scarcely been carried back to his brain, when the silence of the room seemed to explode into a white sting, a puff of noise that felt like a whip lash curling about Blake’s leg. It seemed to roll off in a shifting and drifting cloud of smoke.

It so amazed Blake that he fell back against the wall, trying to comprehend it, to decipher the source and meaning of it all. He was still huddled back against the wall when a second surprise came to him. It was the discovery that Binhart had caught up a hat and a coat, and was running away, running out through the door while his captor stared after him.

It was only then Blake realized that his huddled position was not a thing of his own volition. Some impact had thrown him against the wall like a toppled nine-pin. The truth came to him, in a sudden flash; Binhart had shot at him. There had been a second revolver hidden away in the hand bag, and Binhart had attempted to make use of it.

A great rage against Binhart swept through him. A still greater rage at the thought that his enemy was running away brought Blake lurching and scrambling to his feet. He was a little startled to find that it hurt him to run. But it hurt him more to think of losing Binhart.

He dove for the door, hurling his great bulk through it, tossing aside the startled Portuguese servant who stood at the outer entrance. He ran frenziedly out into the night, knowing by the staring faces of the street-corner group that Binhart had made the first turning and was running towards the waterfront.

He could see the fugitive, as he came to the corner; and like an unpenned bull he swung about and made after him. His one thought was to capture his man. His one obsession was to haul down Binhart.

Then, as he ran, a small trouble insinuated itself into his mind. He could not understand the swishing of his right boot, at every hurrying stride. But he did not stop, for he could already smell the odorous coolness of the waterfront and he knew he must close in on his man before that forest of floating sampans and native houseboats swallowed him up.

A lightheadedness crept over him as he came panting down to the water’s edge. The faces of the coolies about him, as he bargained for a sampan, seemed far away and misty. The voices, as the flat-bottomed little skiff was pushed off in pursuit of the boat which was hurrying Binhart out into the night, seemed remote and thin, as though coming from across foggy water.

He was bewildered by a sense of dampness in his right leg. He patted it with his hand, inquisitively, and found it wet. He stooped down and felt his boot. It was full of blood. It was overrunning with blood. He remembered then. Binhart had shot him, after all.

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Excerpt from Jay Waitkus' Crime Chronicles™ e-book series. Cover image by NZ Graphics.