The Chair Cheater

The Chair Cheater

By PAUL ERNST

Etext from pulpgen.com

The Phantom Detective, January 1937

Round by Round, Check Gavey Outpointed the Law, but Fate Was a Different Kind of Opponent

THE C Deck steward from the S.S. Moravia was a scrawny little man. His front teeth were too large and too prominent for his thin face. His mouse-colored hair stuck up in a cowlick behind and hung down wispily over his left eye in front. He was very much afraid of Check Gavey, but his fear was overcome to some extent by the knowledge that he was indispensable to the sinister-looking gangster.

Gavey, dressed in blue serge much different from the loud checks he usually affected, stared at the steward with eyes like black basalt. He moved slowly in his easy-chair, like a snake shifting its coils. Beside Gavey, his underworld pal, Slim Pujo, stood with slouched shoulders and smoked a butt. The gangster said coldly:

“You're getting three grand now, and three more when we land at Guatemala. Six grand.

That's a grand more than the reward out for me, so you'd be nuts to try and cross me.”

The steward from the steamer Moravia moistened his lips.

“I wouldn't double-cross you anyway.”

“If you tried it,” Check Gavey said evenly, “you'd be very sorry. Okay, pal. Run along now and get things ready on the boat.”

The steward nodded, looked into Gavey's deadly eyes, gulped, and left the apartment. Gavey lit a cigarette and got to his feet.

“Ten o'clock. Time to get down to the mortuary. The boat pulls out at one or two in the morning, and they're due to pick up the stiff about eleven.”

“You're a smart guy, Check,” said Pujo.

“I'm smart,” nodded Gavey. “That's why I've lasted this long. Sidewalks clear?”

Pujo stepped to the window. He pulled the drawn shade back a crack and looked out.

“Nobody in sight.”

Gavey slid the automatic from his shoulder holster and checked it. He snapped it deftly back in place and put on his dark, inconspicuous topcoat. This was followed by a soft hat with the brim turned down.

“They haven't got wise to this hideout yet,” he said. “But they would, pretty soon.”

“Yeah,” said Pujo, putting on his own coat and hat. “The cops are tryin' hard, this time.”

They turned out the lights of the cheap tenement apartment and went down dark stairs to the street door. Gavey hesitated.

“Wish we had a tommy-gun. But it's too bulky.”

He opened the door and stepped onto the sidewalk, with Pujo beside him. Pujo's car was down the block, waiting. They started toward it.

A patrolman rounded the corner and came toward them. Both men stiffened.

“Just walk along,” Gavey breathed.

“If he ever gets a gander at your pan—” muttered Pujo.

“Shut up. Keep moving.”

But Gavey slid his gun from shoulder to topcoat pocket. He walked along with his hand gripping it, head down so the hat brim shielded his too- publicized face.

The two got to the cop, started to pass. Then something about the attitude of the two, with their heads down to hide their faces, drew him.

“Hey, you two.”

He started back toward them.

“Keep going,” whispered Gavey through his teeth.

“You. Hold it a minute!”

GAVEY and Pujo stopped. They turned, slowly. The officer got a look at Gavey's face—the face of one of the most wanted men in the country.

“By God—Gavey!”

Fire lanced through Gavey's coat pocket. The cop spun half around and fell with his hand on his gun. Someone shouted up the block. Gavey and Pujo leaped to Pujo's car and raced off with tires screaming on dry asphalt. They slowed four blocks and two turns away, with no pursuit to bother them.

“Damn it,” said Pujo. “Of all the lousy breaks—”

Gavey shrugged stonily. “The hell. I'm on my way put of the country anyhow. Besides, they can't chase you any harder for five bump-offs than for four—or six, or eight, or whatever it is,” he added indifferently.

They turned at decorous speed onto Seventh Avenue near Christopher Street.

“You sure the guy will be alone at Abel's Parlors?” Pujo asked.

“Sure I'm sure. Usually there isn't anybody there after eight. When a stiff is due to go out later, this one guy, Abel's handyman, sticks around. Then he goes home, and Abel opens the joint himself about nine-thirty in the morning. That'll be the first anyone knows anything's happened at the mortuary.”

Gavey drew at his cigarette.

“By nine-thirty tomorrow morning, the Moravia'll be a good many miles out. And nobody'll have sense enough to connect it with what happens at Abel's anyway.”

Pujo inclined his head again in the dimness: they were running with the little dash-light out, of course.

“You got brains, Check. I think you'll get away with it.”

“Sure I will. There isn't a chance of a slip. It's the only way, too. A snake with my face couldn't crawl out of this town, the way they're watching at the bridges and the tunnel and the docks for me.”

The car swerved into Christopher Street.

“I'm the hottest guy in town,” Gavey said, not without a certain distorted vanity. “The cops have dropped everything else to nail me. Well, maybe they'll feel better when they see another cop stiff with a Gavey slug in him.”

“What do we do to the little guy working for Abel?” Pujo asked without taking his eyes from the street.

“What do you think?” Gavey retorted with a mirthless smile. “I'm takin' no chances at all, Slim. I'm cheating the chair, no matter how many guys stand in the way!”

Pujo nodded. Then he said, carelessly:

“Got dough, Check?”

“About sixty grand,” replied Gavey, patting his coat.

Pujo blinked. His hands stiffened on the steering wheel, then relaxed.

“Hot stuff, from the Cattleman's Bank, Slim,” Gavey said slowly. “I can pass it in Central America. You couldn't, here.”

“Listen—I wouldn't try to cross you—”

“I know, Slim. Sure, you would not.”

The car slowed a minute later.

“There's the joint, up the street,” Gavey said. “Abel's Funeral Parlors. Over a month I've been waiting for one of these joints to get something I could use. Now—it's here. Retired sea captain by the name of John Harvey. Died here on a visit with his wife and daughter. Body to be shipped back with the family to Guatemala, where he made his home.”

THE car stopped. The two got out. No one remotely resembling a cop was in sight. They crossed the