Dead at the Take-Off by Lester Dent

Author:Lester Dent [Dent, Lester]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-9260-0
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 2012-11-26T21:41:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE LITTLE WIFE, REFLECTED Jackson W. Hines, has got more boy friends than a Sixth Avenue floozie.

Darkly smoldering, his handsome face mobile with excitement, Hines leaned back in his seat, closed his eyes, sucked an unlighted cigarette. He tasted the same sort of pleasure that comes to a pot hunter who sees a sitting bird.

A moment ago he had watched Mary talking with Molloy. He had a grifter’s adeptness at reading the state of people’s minds from the small things they were doing at a given moment. He had read that Molloy was someone of importance to Mary. Unable to decipher Molloy readily, he nonetheless concluded that Molloy was his wife’s lover. Hines was the kind of man who would instantly believe this.

Now he added Molloy to his list of prospects for a shakedown.

Already on his list were Costello and Carl. He had found out that both had been dating Mary, that both were in love with her. He learned this without too much difficulty, for he had some skills at gathering information. Most of the two past days he had spent at ferretting this out as a matter of fact.

His plans for Costello and Carl—now for Molloy too—were to get what he could out of them. Costello and Carl shouldn’t be hard to bleed, for he understood that air lines were strict about the deportment of their employees.

He would scare the pants off them. “I’ll stir up a stink that’ll lose you guys your jobs,” he would threaten Carl and Costello. “And don’t think I can’t do it, either,” he would tell them. “I been a soldier, see? I been off fighting in dirty foxholes, and if you think I was licking Nazis and Japs so rats like you could steal my wife, you got another think coming. Not me, brother. You don’t do it to me. And don’t whine around that you’re sorry. The damage has been done. You pay me, pal. The hell with the babe, if she’s that kind. But I want mine, and I’ll either get it, or a judge and jury will get it for me. And don’t think the courts ain’t protecting guys like me, guys who have been off fighting a war for the likes of you!”

That’s what he would say. He’d lay it on the line. He’d put it to them tougher than that too. Scare the pants off them. They’d pay, you bet. He knew how to handle fellows like Costello and Carl, suckers who didn’t know how to live unless they had a job, unless they were being bottle-fed by some big company.

“Go ahead, call a cop!” he’d bellow at them, if they got foolish and talked about police. “Call a cop, go ahead! Call one!”

He’d be in Kansas City or L.A. when he said this, where the police didn’t have anything on him. That was why he’d taken this air liner. He was afraid of the New York police, for they knew him; they didn’t have his fingerprints, but they might connect him with certain past crimes if he got their attention.

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