20518 by Carroll John Daly

Author:Carroll John Daly [Daly, Carroll John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Threat of the Law

I FELT pretty cocky when I left that office, took a look at Flat Face who was still listening to the chirp birds, then I strutted my stuff along the Avenue.

Yep, I felt good. I had laid down the law, the only law Gentle Jim Corrigan, Armin Loring, and their kind knew. The law of the night. The law of the gun. The law of death by violence. That was talk these boys understood and didn't have any answers ready. No influence, political or otherwise ever fixed things for a corpse.

As for Mary Morse—she wouldn't need me now. She had nothing to do but just not pay.

And I didn't feel so good when I popped into my office and saw Sergeant O'Rourke sitting there. He didn't give me his usual good-natured grin—the clap on the back. He came right down to business, talked to me right out of a notebook. And what he said was true.

"Race," he said, "you and I have to have a talk. I'll talk first." He put his face in that notebook and brought words out of it. "First, the night you called me up and told me you had shot a man to death at Frank Morse's house. That man was Albert Swartz. Oh, I was glad to get Swartz dead and all that. But I came to Frank Morse's home on your call. Swartz was there dead—just as you said. And the D.A. believed your story that Swartz had made an attempt on Frank Morse's life. But Frank Morse disappeared." He coughed. "So far so good. Your pal, Inspector Nelson, didn't believe that closed the case."

"He wouldn't." I tried to appear indifferent. "He'd like to see me in trouble." And I was thinking that he could see me in a lot of trouble if Gentle Jim ever opened his face.

"Well," O'Rourke went on, "that might be it. Did you know when you went to Frank Morse's house in answer to an urgent call that his life was threatened—and I'm quoting what you told me— did you know that Morse had served a term in jail, that his own father kept it secret from everyone, and that he served his term under another name?"

"No." I saw an opening, a chance to get from under. "I didn't know it then. I found it out later. I guess he was being blackmailed by someone."

"You guess. Don't you know?"

I ducked that one good.

"You're treading on my ethics now, O'Rourke." I tried to be stiff.

"Ethics," he laughed. "Hell, Race, I'm here as your friend. I hope to leave this office as your friend—not as a police officer doing his duty. Why did Frank Morse disappear?"

That was the opening. I took it. Talked fast; talked well. But it was hard to tell if O'Rourke believed me. I said:

"I understand Frank Morse disappeared because his past was discovered. Mary Morse didn't know why her grandfather left the business to her instead of his son and her Uncle Frank Morse.

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