The Peddler by Richard S. Prather

Author:Richard S. Prather [Prather, Richard S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fawcett Gold Medal
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

chapter eleven

Frame and Kelly were with Angelo when Tony arrived at the office. Tony shut the door behind him and walked over to the desk behind which Angelo was sitting. Angelo looked up at Tony with his yellowish eyes hard.

“You fixed things good, Romero.”

Tony leaned forward, his hands flat on the desk top. “What’s the matter with you? That trigger-happy yentzer tossed a pill at me. I’m supposed to catch it in my teeth? Hell, he just got through plugging Rock. I didn’t go there to shoot the guy; it just happened.”

“All right, all right. I know, Romero. Frame and Kelly told me about it. But there’s hell to pay now.”

“He was running the house. His pals on the force will find that out soon enough. When that hits the papers—”

Angelo laughed. Then he stopped laughing abruptly and dug into his desk for a cigar. “His pals on the force,” he mimicked. “I keep forgetting how innocent you are underneath, Romero. The morning papers will say that a noble, fearless, honest officer of the vice squad was shot in cold blood by a hoodlum. There’ll be references to houses of ill fame and intimations that the fearless Sergeant Jorgensen was investigating undercover vice, killed in the line of duty.” Angelo stuck the unlighted cigar in his mouth and chewed on it viciously. “Every preacher in town is going to start screaming about White Slavers and the poor, innocent girls forced into lives of shame.

“And listen, Romero.” Angelo’s voice dropped lower as he leaned forward across the desk, looking seriously at Tony. “No matter what kind of slimy, no-good bastard Jorgensen was, he was still a cop. All cops are pure—when they get killed. Jorgensen is the next name on the Honor Roll of the San Francisco Police Department; you can depend on

that. And the one crime cops have to solve is a cop kill. If they didn’t, cops would get knocked off like ordinary citizens. So … Jorgensen’s fellow police officers must get his killer. It’s simple self-defense.”

Tony ground his teeth together. He was mad, furious, but he didn’t really know what to be mad at. Angelo? The cops? The lousy world? Himself? The mess was even worse than he’d figured, even if he hadn’t been able to think about it much yet.

“O.K.,” he said. “What’s next, then? I’m not gonna go down and say, ‘I did it; beat the hell out of me.’ So what happens?”

“You get out of town. Tonight. I know how these things work, Tony.” Angelo’s voice was a little calmer. “They’ll get the killer; and he’ll probably be convicted, sentenced, maybe even sent to the gas chamber. But, Tony, it doesn’t have to be you.”

Tony fished in his pockets, nervously got out a cigarette and lit up. “It better not be me,” he said.

Angelo’s eyes narrowed slightly. “You leave tonight. This is the situation, Tony. While you’re out of town, you’re no good to me here. But we always need new girls for the houses. Particularly now that you’ve done such a good job of picking up business.

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