With an iron-clad defense, Ralph Smith still had to remain silent when his last mile came. For a murder he’d never committed had trapped him hopelessly in the steel jaws of homicide justice.
Ralph Smith lifted his pale face from his palms as Chaplain M’Canless cleared his throat. He stirred on his hard cot, looking at the chaplain with blurred eyes. He swallowed the hard, startled knot out of his throat, wondering how long the skypilot had been standing in his cell.
“How do you feel, Ralph?” The chaplain’s robes made rustling noises softly as he came forward.
Smith’s rat face worked. “Not so good,” he said.
Chaplain M’Canless sat down beside him, laid his hand on the prison grey shirt that covered Smith’s quaking body. In three hours now Ralph Smith would die. For murder.
“I thought a prayer might help.”
The words of the chaplain brought the hint of a sneer to Smith’s hardened face. Then Ralph Smith heard the ticking of his watch. Like the beat of a heavy hammer on anvil, the steady march of throbbing time reminded him that in one hundred and eighty minutes the life would be jerked from him by high voltage electricity.
His face, strong with an evil, cruel strength, fell apart. His hands shook; perspiration squeezed from his pores like a myriad of pricking pins in the hands of tiny devils.
“Yes! A prayer!” he choked. “But first — let me tell you about it, chaplain. I’ve got to get it off my mind! It filled my head ’til I didn’t even hear you enter the cell.”
The chaplain quietly offered Ralph Smith a handkerchief. Smith mumbled, “Thanks,” and wiped his glistening face.
Ever hear (Ralph Smith said) of a guy being so smart he walked right into the electric chair? Oh, I don’t mean none of that perfect crime stuff where a killer makes one tiny slip and a smart dick spots it. My crime
It was late afternoon, months ago, when I walked into the small cafe on Maple Street. That was the very first step — walking into that café. I’ll never forget the way the sun was shining, all golden and warm, and sending the life just zinging through your bones. I especially can’t get it off my mind right now; for I’ll never see the sun shine again.
I tossed my smoke aside, giving it a flip and taking a gander at a blonde passing on the street. She smiled back, and I felt pretty doggone good when I went inside the gloomy little restaurant.
He was there, in a booth at the back. I’d never seen Sid Kilgo before, but I knew it was him. He was a big man, but his shoulders had a rounded, bent appearance, like he was lugging a heavy load. His eyes were that way, too. Full of pain, I mean. As I got closer to him, I could see the lines in his heavy face, the way he kept his mouth compressed, as if holding something in.
I slipped in the booth with him. “Kilgo?”
He nodded without speaking.
“I’m Smith. Ralph Smith.”
I lighted a cigarette as he looked me over. I guess there was something about me to make him wary. Maybe it was the way he looked at me and I had to look away. A guy told me once that I inspired distrust. I dunno about that, but more than one guy’s been afraid of me. I think Sid Kilgo was a little of both — distrustful and afraid.
But after a minute he said, “Let’s go in back.”
We walked back to his office. It was a small room, cluttered and stuffy. Just from looking at the joint you could tell a lot of work was done here.
From the small window I could see the large lot out in back. On the far side of the lot was a huge warehouse, a truck backed up to a loading ramp.
“Doesn’t look like much,” he said, with a wave of his hand toward the big lot, small fleet of trucks at one side, and warehouse.
No, it didn’t. But I wasn’t fooled. I’d seen enough of this and that business to know that the places where they’re really on the move are always the unimpressive places. When you see a warehouse going in for swank, you’ll always see a joint that is idle half the time.
He sat behind his desk and I took a cane-bottomed chair near him, sat down, and tilted it back against the wall.
“You know my business, Smith?”
“A little about it. You distribute liquor.”
“That’s right,” he said. He leaned over the desk, eyed me harshly. His voice was firm.
“And we don’t take advantage of the liquor shortage around here. You know as well as I do, Smith, that here and there over the country crooks are playing the liquor shortage for all it’s worth. We’re seeing a flurry of bootlegging that isn’t minor any longer.
“The people don’t notice it so much, this time. There are no gang killings and not enough trucks hijacked to take other news off the front pages. But the bootlegger is back, cleaning up. It’s up to people like us to stop him. We’re strictly legit in this outfit, Smith. I want that very clear from the beginning!”
“Sure,” I said, puffing on my fag. “I’m just a shipping agent and nothing more.”
Maybe he didn’t like my grin. He stood over me. “Remember, Smith, you got to keep your fingers clean around here — no poison booze, no cutting the standard brands. We’re fighting a little war all our own. If the bootlegger wins and the Drys come back, we’re going to see racketeers ramrodding towns, people taken for a ride, innocent people made to suffer, and graft like an ugly disease.”
“You make it sound big.”
“It
“Sure,” I said.
Well, I thought to myself, every guy has a right to his own opinion. Me, I ain’t got any. Some people think Prohibition is the thing — maybe they’re right. I’m not arguing that. But as I left his office and saw all those beautiful trucks standing idle, I started having ideas. Did I tell you, Chaplain, that I’m a guy awful long on ideas?
I knew I’d have to play it careful. I was a stranger in town and began sounding things out — talking to drivers, saloon keepers. You know the sort of thing.
I never tipped my hand once, but before the month was over, I had a couple of Big Names in my little black notebook, the knowledge of which drivers needed dough the most, and so on. It was perfect. The Big Names would cover a smart guy; a few of the drivers would haul the stuff at night; the rest of the bunch didn’t even need to know what was going on.
In my dreams I saw hundreds of big, marching dollar marks; it was the sweetest setup I’d ever come across. Only one thing in my way — Sid Kilgo, who was too much a square John. I began thinking the problem over...
I watched Sid while I was working. He’d pass me with, “Hello, Ralph,” and I’d mumble back to him. Then I’d stare at his back until he was out of sight. Honestly, I began to hate the guy. Or maybe it was just the fact that he was so damn dumb and honest.
But I covered all that. Chaplain, maybe I should have been an actor. I played it neat. After a few days I would slap him on the shoulder, buy his lunch, tell him what a great guy he was. Then he invited me out to his house one night. And I knew I was making with the speed. I’d see the setup now from inside out.
He had a brick bungalow on a middle class street. Nice house. Venetian blinds in the living room, big, square modern furniture. As I walked in and shook hands with him, I was thinking.
He was pouring us a drink when there was a faltering step at the doorway. I turned and saw a thin, old man. An ancient man. His body was like sticks in his blue suit, his face like leather that’s aged and wrinkled in the dark for a hundred years. He squinted at me, coughed, and Sid Kilgo said:
“Ralph, this is my father, Justin.”
I shook old Justin Kilgo’s hand. “My son has told me how well you are fitting in the business,” he said, smiling.
“Sure,” I said. “It’s an easy place to fit in.” I stifled the urge to rub my palm on my trousers. Shaking his hand had been like holding a cold, slick fish.
“In fact,” I said, turning to Sid Kilgo, “I like this town a lot. I like the people. I like the way Sid runs his business, his honest, upstanding attitude.”
Chaplain, I ain’t kidding — I got just the right inflection in my tone. It even made Sid Kilgo redden a little in embarrassment.
I paused, laughed nervously like I was flustered. “I’m no good at making speeches, but I been waiting to meet a guy like Sid Kilgo a long time. I... I knew that first day in the office — well, we know each other a lot better now. I think Sid thought I had ideas that first day.” That nervous laugh again. Both of them joined in.
“But you know me now, Sid,” I said, “and that’s really what I wanted to talk to you about tonight. I want to buy in with you. I want to keep this thing going the way you’ve started.” I fished in my pocket, and hauled out two grand I’d been hoarding for a rainy day.
“I’ve been saving years for this,” I said, “for this very moment. I didn’t know exactly what I was saving the money for. I just knew I wanted to be in business sometime. Now I know which business.”
They looked sharply at each other. Sid handed me a drink and we sat down. The old man coughed rattlingly in the silence.
“Let me get this straight,” Sid said. “You want to buy a share of the company?”
“Right the first time! Look,” I went on quickly, “maybe you’ve never had the idea of having a partner — but a good partner who knows his job as well as I’ve shown you I know mine never hurt any man. And think of this — when liquor becomes plentiful again, the business is going to grow. This two grand will help.
“We’ll put our heads together, knock out ideas. When we can get merchandise again, we’ll make real money. You, Sid, can handle the executive end. I’ll take care of distribution. It’ll be a mighty sweet team, pal.”
His eyes began to get thoughtful, and I knew I had him, I painted a wonderful picture. I really painted it. When I left there that night, Sid Kilgo had my two grand to put in the bank tomorrow and I had his John Hancock on a piece of paper. I was his partner. In the event of his death, I controlled the business. He’d just put his John Hancock on his own death warrant.
After that, Chaplain, I got pretty thick with the guy. I learned what had put all that misery in his face. He’d married a blonde from Chicago. They’d stayed married about two months and she had suddenly run away. He went to Chicago and found her — on a slab at the morgue.
She’d had a boy friend before she’d married Sid. She’d gone back to the boy friend, stayed with him in Chicago a few days, then decided to hightail it back to the husband. They’d had a violent argument, and the boy friend had knocked her off.
It was as simple and sordid as that — a crime of passion, the papers called it. The guy was a fellow named Alonzo Threkkle, and this Alonzo Threkkle got away clean.
But that wasn’t all that was bothering Sid Kilgo. I was at his house the night the doctor told old man Justin Kilgo that he couldn’t last over a couple of months. I watched Sid Kilgo’s face go white as the doctor left his father’s room. And do you know, Chaplain, I began to hate to have to kill Sid. There was the blonde, the crime of passion, Alonzo Threkkle, a father who couldn’t live more than a couple of months.
I lay and tossed all night, thinking of it. But I set my teeth against the pity. Business is business, and I knew I was going to knock him off.
Well, Chaplain, I had my own ideas about knocking a guy off. Nothing elaborate for me. I’d read the case histories of over a hundred murders by that time. I’d seen how guys had built elaborate schemes only to overlook some tiny detail that tossed them in the death cell.
I read how one guy rigged up an alarm clock with a razor blade on the hour hand which would cut a string and ignite a fire with a fancy contraption. He was going to roast his wife, while he had an airtight alibi at the time of the fire — but they found the alarm clock and some trick of fate had kept the razor blade from burning off the hour hand. So the guy walked the last mile.
None of that for me. I was going to be like the guy who shot a woman on a busy street with sixty-seven witnesses watching. The guy got off scot-free. Each one of the witnesses had become so excited at seeing murder done, he had told a different story from all the others.
Now I wasn’t going to get no sixty-seven witnesses together, but I was going to keep it that simple.
I began inquiring into the private life of a Big Name. Sure now, I’m a pretty smart boy, Chaplain. I got the lowdown on a business deal the Big Name had turned. I had dope enough on him to shoot him in the pen for the rest of his life. And he had such a lovely home and a wife and kid he’d go through hell for. Which was just perfect.
The Big Name cursed and started to throw me out of his house. Then he begged and pleaded. Finally he sat down as if his short, fat legs could hold him no longer. His eyes shot wildly about his library. Then he said with a sort of groan:
“All right, Smith. I’ll be at your house tonight at nine o’clock,”
I fired a smoke, tossed the match on his Oriental rug and said, “Thanks, old top. I’ll do you a favor sometime.”
I left his house, drank in the sight of his wide lawn and shrubbery that must have cost a couple grand. That calmed my nervousness a little. It wouldn’t be long now ’til I’d have a joint like a palace with a lawn landscaped like this one.
The Big Name knocked on my door at exactly nine o’clock. I’d come up in the town by this time and was living in a small, neat cottage. I gave my housekeeper the night off. The Big Name and myself were alone.
He took the drink I offered him, his hand shaking so that he almost spilled it. “Take it easy,” I said. “We’re going to play some rummy. For one hour. Then I’ll leave for a few minutes. But you’re gonna tell the cops — if any ask you — that I didn’t leave at all. Catch?”
He caught. He swallowed three drinks in quick succession. I laughed and dealt the cards.
No one had seen me. I was sure of that when I eased up on Sid Kilgo’s front porch. I glanced at my watch in the moonlight. Ten minutes after ten.
I knocked on the door. Sid opened it. I don’t believe he ever saw who shot him. But somehow I could see his face plainer than as if it were day. I saw his eyes widen as the gun in my hand roared once. I saw the blood spurt out of his forehead. I could almost see life itself washing out of him.
He clutched the door jamb, made a gulping noise. All the pain that his wife and Alonzo Threkkle and Justin Kilgo’s swiftly approaching death had put in his face went away. His eyes rolled up in his head, closed, and his face relaxed. I had already wiped the gun — which I’d picked up years back and which wasn’t registered — and I dropped it at his feet just as he began to crumple.
He hit the porch as his father began hobbling down the stairs. With the old man’s faltering footsteps in my ears, I faded in the darkness.
So that was that. Nothing to it, Chaplain. Murder is easy. Sure, I’m one smart boy. I kept the Big Name at my house until after midnight. No one could ever doubt the Big Name’s testimony. I had enough stuff on him to know absolutely without a doubt that he’d swear I hadn’t left my house from nine o’clock on. And when he swore that, he would be, of course, accessory after the fact. He could never go back on it.
See what I mean, Chaplain? What the hell if the whole town did know in its collective hearts that I’d killed Sid Kilgo! I’d laugh at them and snap my fingers in their faces. Let them prove it! It was so damn simple nobody could ever prove it.
After the Big Name scurried out of my house, I had a couple drinks and went to bed. It was bad, then, for I kept seeing Sid’s face and the pain and life washing out of it.
Then I heard their knock and went downstairs. There were three of them, but this Pete Blane did all the talking. He shoved me in a chair, fired questions at me. He told me that Sid Kilgo was dead. But after he had talked to the Big Name, Pete Blane apologized. I laughed at him, and he took his two stooges and left the house.
I was safe. I went to bed.
I was awakened by a hellish pounding on the front door. I stared at the window. It was just breaking dawn. I shivered, wondering what the hell was up, and slipped on a robe. I went downstairs, blinking sleep out of my eyes. It was Pete Blane and his two stooges.
Pete said, “I’m arresting you for murder, Smith.”
“The hell you say! I’m clean. I got an alibi!”
“Not for this murder, you haven’t.” He clicked handcuffs on me.
“Take these damn things off! I’ll have you busted. I didn’t murder Sid.”
“I’m not talking about that murder, Smith. I’m talking about old Justin Kilgo, Sid’s rather.”
I got weak in the knees. “Justin...”
“His housekeeper came to work just a few minutes ago. She found him dead in the kitchen. He’d been shot through the Chest. The M. E. said he died about an hour ago.”
“But that don’t mean a damn thing! Why would I kill Justin?”
“Maybe because he saw you murder his son.” Pete Blane gave me a hard jerk and I went stumbling after him. My blood was so chilled it caused knots to gather about my heart.
“But look, Blane,” I pleaded. “You’ve got no evidence.”
He laughed in my face. “I’ve got the best evidence ever given to a D.A. On the cream-colored linoleum of his kitchen floor, Justin Kilgo wrote your name as his killer, Ralph Smith, wrote it with his own blood while he was lying there.”
I knew then what he had done, Chaplain. But how could I ever prove that Justin Kilgo, knowing he was going to die so soon anyway; knowing, too, that I was the only one who had any possible motive for killing his son — how was I to prove that the old man had committed suicide and pinned it on me?
The chaplain looked about the tiny cell, not seeing anything really, just thinking. He looked back at Ralph Smith in his prison grey. He listened to the watch tick.
“And there was nothing you could do?”
“Sure,” Ralph Smith said bitterly. “Plenty. In the first place there are several Ralph Smiths in this town. With a slick lawyer I could have tied the jury in knots.”
“Yes?”
“Sure, I could have claimed my real name is something else. The slick lawyer could have planted a letter or note in Justin Kilgo’s things showing he knew days before he wrote that name on his kitchen floor that I’m not Ralph Smith. No jury would have believed, then, that he meant me.”
“I know,” Chaplain M’Canless said. “I can see that. But having lived here as Ralph Smith, you would have to prove that your name is something else.”
Wearily, Smith nodded. “And I could do that. But they might have lynched me in this town. They called it a sordid crime of passion...”
“You mean...?” the chaplain gasped.
“How do you think I knew of Sid Kilgo’s setup in the first place?” Smith buried his shaking face in his palms. “Yeah — I could actually prove that I’m Alonzo Threkkle...”
The chaplain recovered his composure somewhat. “Shall we pray?” he said softly.