The Ambulance Made Two Trips
"You may be right." Brink told him. "He's never exactly given me his
name. He just calls up every so often and talks nonsense."
"What sort of nonsense?"
"He wants to be a partner in this business," said Brink without
emotion. "He's been saying that things will happen to it otherwise. I
don't believe it. Anyhow nothing's happened so far."
* * * * *
Detective Sergeant Fitzgerald tried at one and the same time to roar and
to swallow. He accomplished neither. He put his finger in the bowl of
his pipe. He jerked it out, scorched.
"Look!" he said almost hoarsely, "I was tellin' you when the phone rang!
We got a police force here in town! This's what we've been tryin' to
get! You come along with me to Headquarters an' swear to a complaint--"
Brink said interestedly: "Why?"
"That guy Big Jake Connors!" raged the detective. "That's why! Tryin' to
threaten you into givin' him a share in your business! Tryin' to burn it
down or blow it up when you won't! He was just a small-town crook, once.
He went to the big town an' came back with ideas. He's usin' 'em!"
Brink looked at him expectantly.
"He started a beer business," said the detective bitterly. "Simultaneous
other beer dealers started havin' trouble. Empty kegs smashed. Trucks
broke down. Drivers in fights. They hadda go outta business!"
"What did the cops do?" asked Brink.
"They listened to their wives!" snarled Fitzgerald. "They begun to find
little grabbag packages in the mail an' with the milk. Fancy perfume.
Tricky stockin's. Fancy underwear they shoulda been ashamed for anybody
to know they had it on underneath. The cops weren't bribed, but their
wives liked openin' the door of a mornin' an' findin' charmin' little
surprises."
"Ah," said Brink.
"Then there were juke boxes," went on the detective. "He went in that
business--an' trouble started. People'd drive up to a beer joint, go in,
get in a scuffle an'--bingo! The juke box smashed. Always the juke box.
Always a out-of-town customer. Half the juke boxes in town weren't
workin', on an average. But the ones that were workin' were always Big
Jake's. Presently he had the juke-box business to himself."
Brink nodded, somehow appreciatively.
"Then it was cabs," said Fitzgerald. "A lot of cops felt bad about that.
But their wives wouldn't be happy if anything happened to dear Mr. Big
Jake who denied that he gave anybody anything, so it was all right to
use that lovely perfume.... Cabs got holes in their radiators. They got
sand in their oil systems. They had blowouts an' leaks in brake-fluid
lines. Cops' wives were afraid Big Jake would get caught. But he didn't.
He started insurin' cabs against that kinda accident. Now every
cab-driver pays protection-money for what they call insurance--or else.
An' cops' wives get up early, bright-eyed, to see what Santa Claus left
with the milk."
"You seem," said Brink with a grin, "to hint that this Big Jake
is ... well ... dishonest."
"Dishonest!" Fitzgerald's face was purplish, from many memories of
wrongs. "There was a guy named Burdock who owned this business before
you. Y'know what happened to him?"
"Yes," said Brink. "He's my brother-in-law. Connors or somebody insisted
on having a share of the business and threatened dreadful things if he
didn't. He didn't. So acid got spilled on clothes. Machinery got
smashed. Once a whole delivery-truck load of clothes disappeared and my
brother-in-law had to pay for any number of suits and dresses. It
got him down. He's recovering from the nervous strain now, and my
sister ... eh, asked me to help out. So I offered to take over. He warned
me I'd have the same trouble."
"And you've got it!" fumed the detective. "But anyhow you'll make a
complaint. We'll get out some warrants, and we'll have somethin' to go
on--"
"But nothing's happened to complain about," said Brink, quite
reasonably. "One broken window's not worth a fuss."
"But somethin's goin' to happen!" insisted the detective. "That guy Big
Jake is poison! He's takin' over the whole town, bit by bit! You've been
lucky so far, but your luck could run out--"
Brink shook his head.
"No-o-o," he said matter-of-factly. "I'm grateful to you, Mr.
Fitzgerald, but I have a special kind of luck. I won't tell you about it
because you wouldn't believe but--but I can give you some of it. If you
don't mind, I will."
He went to the slightly dusty, partly-plastic machine. On its shelf were
some parts of metal, and some of transparent plastic, and some grayish,
granular substance it was hard to identify. There was an elaborate
diagram of something like an electronic circuit inside, but it might
have been a molecular diagram from organic chemistry. Brink made an
adjustment and pressed firmly on a special part of the machine, which
did not yield at all. Then he took a slip of plastic out of a slot in
the bottom.
"You can call this a good-luck charm," he said pleasantly, "or a
talisman. Actually it's a psionic unit. One like it works very well, for
me. Anyhow there's no harm in it. Just one thing. If your eyelids start
to twitch, you'll be headed for danger or trouble or something
unpleasant. So if they do twitch, stop and be very, very careful.
Please!"
He handed the bit of plastic to Fitzgerald, who took it without
conscious volition.
Then Brink said briskly: "If there isn't anything else--"
"You won't swear out a warrant against Big Jake?" demanded Fitzgerald
bitterly.
"I haven't any reason to," said Brink amiably. "I'm doing all right. He
hasn't harmed me. I don't think he will."
"O.K.!" said the detective bitterly. "Have it your way! But he's got it
in for you an' he's goin' to keep tryin' until he gets you! An' whether
you like it or not, you're goin' to have some police protection as soon
as I can set it up."
He stamped out of the cleaning-and-drying plant. Automatically, he put
the bit of plastic in his pocket. He didn't know why. He got into his
car and drove downtown. As he drove, he looked suspiciously at his pipe.
He fumed. As he fumed, he swore. He did not like mysteries. But there
was no mystery about his dislike for Big Jake Connors. He turned aside
from the direct route to Headquarters to indulge it. He drove to a
hospital where four out-of-town hoods had been carried two days before.
He marched inside and up to a second-floor corridor door with a
uniformed policeman seated outside it.
* * * * *
"Hm-m-m. Donnelly," he growled. "How about those guys?"
"Not so good," said the patrolman. "They're gettin' better."
"They would," growled Fitzgerald.
"A lawyer's been to see 'em twice," said the patrolman. "He's comin'
back after lunch."
"He would," grunted the detective.
"They want out," said the cop.
"I'm not surprised," said Detective Sergeant Fitzgerald.
He went into the sick room. There were four patients in it, none of them
looking exactly like gentle invalids. There were two broken noses of
long-ago dates, three cauliflower ears, and one scar of a kind that is
not the result of playing lawn tennis. Two were visibly bandaged, and
the others adhesive-taped. All of them looked at Fitzgerald without
cordiality.
"Well, well, well!" he said. "You fellas still here!" There was silence.
"In union there is strength," said Fitzgerald. "As long as you stay in
one room everybody's sure the others haven't started rattin'. Right?"
One of the four snarled silently at him.
"It was just a accident," pursued the detective. "You four guys are
ridin' along peaceable, merrily takin' the air, when quite inadvertently
one of you almost blows the head off of another, and he's so astonished
at there bein' a gun in the car that he wrecks it. And when they get you
guys in the hospital there ain't one of you knows anything about four
sawed-off shotguns and a tommy gun in the car with you. Strange!
Strange! Strange!"
Four faces regarded him with impassive dislike. The bandaged ones were
prettier than the ones that weren't.
"That tommy gun business," explained Fitzgerald, "is a federal affair.
It's against Fed law to carry 'em around loaded. And your friend Big
Jake hasn't been leavin' presents on the White House steps. Y'know, you
guys could be in trouble!"
Three pairs of eyes and an odd one--the other was hidden under a
bandage--stared at him stonily.
"Y'see," explained Fitzgerald again, "Big Jake's slipped up. He hasn't
realized it yet. Its my little secret. A week ago I thought he had me
licked. But somethin' happened, and today I felt like I had to come
around and congratulate you fellas. You got a break! You're gonna have
free board and lodging for years to come! I wanted to be the first to
tell you!"
He beamed at them and went out. Outside, his expression changed. He said
bitterly to the cop at the door: "I bet they beat this rap!"
He went downstairs and out of the hospital. He started around the
building to his car.
His eyelid twitched. It twitched again. It began to quiver and flutter
continuously. Fitzgerald stopped short to rub the offending eye.
There was a crash. A heavy glass water-pitcher hit the cement walk
immediately before him. It broke into a million pieces. He glared up.
The pitcher would have hit him if it hadn't been for a twitching eyelid
that had brought him to a stop. The window of the room he'd just left
was open, but there was no way to prove that a patient had gotten out of
bed to heave the pitcher. And it had broken into too many pieces to
offer fingerprint evidence.
"Hah!" said Fitzgerald morosely. "They're plenty confident!"
He went to Headquarters. There were more memos for his attention. One
was just in. A cab had crossed a sidewalk and crashed into a plate-glass
window. Its hydraulic brakes had failed. The trouble was a clean saw-cut
in a pressure-line. Fitzgerald went to find out about it. The cab driver
bitterly refused to answer any questions. He wouldn't even admit that he
was not insured by Big Jake against such accidents. Fitzgerald stormed.
The owner-driver firmly--and gloomily--refused to answer a question
about whether he'd been threatened if he didn't pay protection money.
Fitzgerald raged, on the sidewalk beside the cab in the act of being
extracted from the plate-glass window. An open-mouthed bystander
listened admiringly to his language. Then the detective's eyelid
twitched. It twitched again, violently. Something made him look up. An
employee of the plate-glass company--there were rumors that Big Jake was
interesting himself in plate-glass insurance besides cabs--wrenched
loose a certain spot. Fitzgerald grabbed the bystander and leaped. There
was a musical crash behind him. A tall section of the shattered glass
fell exactly where he had been standing. It could have been pure
accident. On the other hand--
He couldn't prove anything, but he had a queer feeling as he left the
scene of the crash. Back in his own car he felt chilly. Driving away,
presently, he felt his eyelid tentatively. He wasn't a nervous man.
Ordinarily his eyelids didn't twitch.
* * * * *
He went to investigate a second memo. It was a restaurant, and he edged
the police car gingerly into a lane beside the building. In the rear,
the odor of spilled beer filled the air. It would have been attractive
but for an admixture of gasoline fumes and the fact that it was mud. Mud
whose moisture-content is spilled beer has a peculiar smell all its own.
He got out of his car and gloomily asked the questions the memo called
for. He didn't need to. He could have written down all the answers in
advance. The restaurant now reporting vandalism had found big Jake's
brand of beer unpopular. It had twenty cases of a superior brew brought