As he shuffled some papers, Cyril Abbott said, “How you feeling, Taylor?”
“Not so good,” I said.
“Relax. Everything’s under control so far.”
“It’s getting Clevenger on the jury that’s got me worried,” I said.
* * * *
I was more worried on that point than I was about the witness.
The witness had been one of those fluke things. The killing had looked perfectly routine, just another job, though a little out of my usual line.
It was the only time I’d taken on anything outside the Syndicate. I’d been with the Syndicate quite a number of years. I guess I’d grown to take the job for granted. I was never touched by the law. Few professionals are. We’re given an assignment, flown into a strange city. Our man is pointed out to us. We choose an immediate time and place. We perform our service and are whisked out of town.
The Len Doty job had seemed simple. A scrawny, down-at-the-heels crook, he’d arrived here recently and taken up residence in a fourth rate hotel.
I’d studied Doty’s movements for two days. A thin, harried, nervous man, he’d seemed to have a lot on his mind. He’d been under a strain, as if something big was imminent in his life.
I was the imminent something, only he didn’t know it.
I’d tried to approach this job with the same lack of feeling I had on Syndicate jobs. But here I’d been doing my own planning, and not enjoying the security you had when you were a cog in a huge machine.
By the end of the two days, I knew I had to get the job done. I was feeling a growing nervousness. I didn’t go for solitude. I wanted to be back in the big town, having a drink with men I knew or stepping out with a particular woman who was gaga over my tall, dark ranginess.
I’d kept the thought of fifteen grand—what Doty was worth dead—in the front of my mind. What could go wrong? It was the same as all the others, nothing to connect me with Doty. He’d die, and I’d disappear. The case would eventually slip into the local police department’s unsolved file. There may be no perfect crimes, but the records are full of unsolved ones, and the record was good enough for me.
I decided on the time and place. Both nights, late, Doty went from his flea-bag hotel to a greasy spoon far down on the corner for a snack before retiring.
The block was long and dark, with an alley at its midpoint connecting the street with one that ran parallel to it. It’s always wise to choose an alley that’s open at both ends.
The parallel street was a slum section artery, crowded with juke joints, penny arcades, hash houses. In short, the kind of street to swallow a man up.
I knew the Syndicate big-shots had a rule of planning they tried never to break. Keep it simple.
I kept it simple. The plan was to shoot Doty with a silenced gun in the alley, walk to a garbage can, ditch the unregistered, wiped-clean gun, continue to the crowded street of joints, mingle, catch a city bus to the downtown area. There, I’d return to the good hotel where I’d registered under an alias, take a cab to the airport, and return to the big city fifteen grand richer.
Doty came from his hotel at the expected time. In the mouth of the alley, I listened to his footsteps on the dark street.
When he came abreast of the alley, I said, “Doty.”
He stopped.
“Come here,” I said, “I want to talk to you.” I let him glimpse the gun.
He began to shake. He looked around frantically.
I pushed him twenty feet into the alley. He pleaded for his life.
The sound of the gun was a balloon popping. Doty’s knees gave way, and he fell dead.
At that moment, the witness had screamed, long and loud as only a frizzy-headed blonde, in cheap clothes and makeup, can scream. She and her boy friend had decided on the alley as a short cut from one of the amusement places on the parallel street to the tenement where she lived.
Her boy friend was having none of it. He took off on the instant. The girl was right behind him, but just the same she’d glimpsed my face.
Two more balloons had popped in the alley, but in the darkness the shooting was bad. I’d missed her. Then I’d violated another Syndicate rule. I’d panicked—run straight out of the alley almost into the arms of a beat cop who’d heard the screams and was charging up for a look-see.
The cop was no sitting duck. He was big and fast—and armed.
I dropped the silenced pistol and held both my hands up as high as they’d go.
The Syndicate of course had never heard of me. I’d put myself out on the limb. Still, I had dough to hire Cyril Abbott. First day he’d come to jail to see me, he’d asked how much the job had paid. I’d had sense enough to say ten grand. He’d taken the whole ten and told me not to worry.
It was like telling me not to breathe. Maybe a lawyer as foxy as Abbott could cast some doubt on the blonde’s testimony. After all, the alley had been pretty dark. I’d faced the street glow only briefly. And everything had happened awfully fast.
* * * *
The big question—to me—was whether or not this overbearing old lady Clevenger qualified to sit on the jury.
The D. A. buttered her up with those boyish, friendly brown eyes. “Your name please?”
“Mrs. Clarissa Butterworth Clevenger.”
“You’re an American citizen?”
“Of course.”
“Do you have any moral or religious convictions against capital punishment which would disqualify you to sit on a jury in a capital case in this state?”
“None whatever, young man.”
I reached for a handkerchief to wipe my
