He turned the police car and drove back toward the Elite Cleaners and
Dyers establishment. As he drove, he growled. His eyelid had twitched
twice, and each time he'd been heading into danger or trouble. The fact
was dauntingly coincidental with Brink's comment after giving him a
scrap of plastic from the bottom of that crazy machine. These things
were on his mind. He couldn't bring himself to plan to mention them, but
he needed to talk to Brink again. Brink could testify to threats. He
could justify arrests. Sergeant Fitzgerald had a fine conviction that
with a chance to apply pressure, he could make some of Big Jake's hoods
and collectors talk, and so bust things wide open. He only needed
Brink's co-operation. He drove toward the Elite Cleaners and Dyers to
put pressure on Brink toward that happy end. But he brooded over his own
eyebrow-twitchings.
When the cleaning establishment came into view, there was a car parked
before it. Two men from that car were in the act of entering the Elite
plant through the same door the detective had used earlier. He parked
his car behind the other. Fuming, he crossed the sidewalk and entered
the building. As he entered, he heard a scream from the back. He heard a
crashing sound and more screams.
He bolted ahead, through the outer office and into the working area he
had not visited before. He burst through swinging doors into a
two-story, machinery-filled cleaning-and-dyeing plant. Tables and
garment racks and five separate people appeared as proper occupants of
the place. But something had happened. There was a flood of
liquid--detergent solution--flowing toward the open back doors of the
big room. It obviously came from a large carboy which had been smashed
as if to draw attention to some urgent matter.
The people in the room seemed to have frozen at their work, except that
Brink had apparently been interrupted in some supervisory task. He was
not working at any machine to clean, dye, dry, or press clothing. He
looked at the two individuals whom Fitzgerald had seen enter only
fractions of a minute earlier. His jaw clenched, and Fitzgerald was
close enough behind the bottle-breakers to see him take an angry,
purposeful step toward them. Then he checked himself very deliberately,
and put his hands in his pockets, and watched. After an instant he even
grinned at the two figures who had preceded the detective.
They were an impressive pair. They were dressed in well-pressed garments
of extravagantly fashionable cut. They wore expensive soft hats, tilted
to jaunty angles. Even from the rear, Fitzgerald knew that handkerchiefs
would show tastefully in the breast pockets of their coats. Their shoes
had been polished until they not only shone, but glittered. But by
professional instinct Fitzgerald noted one cauliflower ear, and the
barest fraction of a second later he saw a squat revolver being waved
negligently at the screaming women.
He reached for his service revolver. And things happened.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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