The Murderers by Fredric Brown

Author:Fredric Brown
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 2021-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

“Would you? Commit murder, I mean? I mean, seriously.”

Charlie lighted a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and blew the smoke out his nose before he answered. “Of course I would. For enough money to let me live the way I’d like to live—the way we were just talking about. And if I figured that the risk of getting caught was slight.”

“How slight is slight?” I asked him.

“A hundred to one against getting busted. Maybe higher if it was for enough money. That’s what’s wrong with the filling station bit. Or any kind of stickup. Hell, man, we could hold up a filling station tonight and, a hundred to one, get away with it. But we wouldn’t get more than enough for like a weekend binge. So if we wanted to get solvent we’d have to keep on doing it and the odds would keep going up on us. Like mathematically, you take a hundred-to-one chance fifty times and the odds are even you’ll get caught. Don’t think I haven’t thought about it. Maybe everyone does, when the going’s tough. Like it is now for us. But for real money, hell yes, I’d commit murder.”

“Or for a real break?” I asked him. “Like a fat role on a TV series you think you’d get if a certain producer—?”

“Like a fat role I know I’d get.” He laughed harshly. “You think I haven’t thought about putting Manny Radic out of his misery? That I wouldn’t, if I could figure good odds on getting away with it?” He stubbed out the cigarette he’d taken only a few puffs on. “Willy, there’s nothing easier to get away with than murder—if you don’t have a personal motive for killing your victim, if you’re not going to be suspected or investigated or grilled in connection with the crime. Or if you’ve got an alibi, a solid alibi, like being in New York while the murder happens in Los Angeles. So the fuzz won’t even think of you in connection with it. Dig me?”

“I dig you. But would you be specially suspect in case Manny Radic got knocked off?”

“Hell, yes. It wouldn’t take the fuzz much asking around to come up with my name. Probably other names too, but I’d definitely be on the list. And the others might all have alibis and leave me sticking out like a sore thumb, if you’ll forgive the cliché. And trying to rig a fake alibi would be even more dangerous than having none at all. Gangsters can get away with it, but not ordinary schmoes like us. Who do you know that’d risk his own neck to swear to a fake alibi for you?”

I nodded slowly, wondering.

Charlie was wound up now. “Nothing easier to get away with than killing a stranger. Get him alone, kill him, walk away. Unless you’re stupid, try it at the wrong time and get caught, what risk are you taking?”

“How about the passion for confession? The Raskolnikov bit, like in Crime and Punishment?”

“Nuts. That’s strictly for psychos, Willy.

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