Murderers' Row Read Online Free PDF Page B

business-like. He waited until his partner was in position to back him up before he waved me out with the gun. “Now get out slowly—”
    They drove me back the way I’d come. Presently they left the big highway and took me by smaller roads to a building equipped with a tall radio mast, where they turned me over to the county police, with a sigh of relief. They were state cops. Their primary job was seeing that people didn’t kill themselves, or each other, on the public highways. Suspected criminals, even loud-mouthed ones, were just a sideline with them.
    The county officers searched me and put me through the fingerprint routine. They also searched the little Ford, which had been brought around by somebody. At least I deducted that was what a couple of them had been doing outside when they came back in with my suitcase— Lash Petroni’s suitcase, to be exact. Mine reposed in a Washington hotel room that was beginning to seem more remote every minute. As for Texas, it was already as unattainable as paradise.
    They went through the bag and discovered the switchblade knife hidden in the lining. That had been Mac’s idea. When helping an agent build a cover for a particular assignment, he’s apt to get carried away by creative enthusiasm. I’d thought the knife unnecessary as a prop, but it’s always reassuring to have some weapon along, so I hadn’t fought it very hard. Maybe I should have. It certainly didn’t make the police feel more kindly towards me now, although it did convince them of my low character.
    Then we waited. I offered my blustering Petroni act again, got no takers, and subsided on a bench in sullen silence. After a while, the door opened, and a man came in. He was stocky and white-haired, with a heavy, impassive cop face. His uniform was neat enough, but it had seen lots of wear.
    â€œHere you are, Tom,” one of the office help said. “Name: James A. Peters, Chicago. About six-four, about two hundred, dark suit and hat—well, look for yourself. Picked up at eleven-seventeen about twenty miles west on U.S. 50, driving a blue Falcon two-door, Illinois plates.”
    â€œThat checks right down the line.” Neither policeman looked at me, but I didn’t think it was accidental that I was present to overhear the conversation. I was being informed, I gathered, that they had the goods on me and I might as well confess. “What’s this?” the white-haired man asked, touching the knife on the counter.
    â€œWe found it in his luggage, hidden behind the lining.”
    The white-haired one picked up the knife and carried it over to me. He stood over me for a moment without speaking, tossing the knife contemptuously into the air and catching it again—closed, of course, or he’d have cut himself badly. He was probably pretty good with his police revolver, and maybe even with his bare hands, but knives were out of his line and he was proud of it.
    So many of them are, these days. Jim Bowie would be startled to hear it, as would Jim Bridger and Kit Carson and all the rest of those rugged old-timers who opened up a wilderness with their Arkansas toothpicks and Green River blades; but nowadays there’s supposed to be something very underhanded and un-American about a knife.
    â€œI’m Sergeant Crowell,” the white-haired man said. “Tom Crowell.”
    â€œIf you drop that,” I said, “and damage it, you’ll buy me a new one.”
    He caught the knife and looked at it again, raising his eyebrows. “You admit it’s yours?”
    â€œDamn right it’s mine,” I said. “And I want it back, along with my cuff links and cigarette case and all the rest of the stuff those jerks have been pawing through like they owned it.”
    â€œA knife like this is illegal,” he said.
    â€œBe your age, Sergeant,” I said. “Wearing it may be illegal in certain places, but you know as