Which Way to Die? Read Online Free Page B

jerked his thumb. So they were both looking that way when the car passed. It was a man behind the wheel, wide-shouldered, with rugged, handsome features. He was hatless and wore his blond hair in a crew-cut.
    Baer looked startled. He opened his mouth, then shut it at Corrigan’s head-shake. There was no point in upsetting Mrs. Grant and Alstrom. The Buick had disappeared by the time Andy Betz backed into a parking place and they got out of the limousine.
    To Corrigan’s surprise, Betz joined them on the sidewalk. Mrs. Grant noticed.
    â€œAndy’s anxious to see Frank, too,” she said coldly. “They’re very close.”
    â€œYes, ma’am.”
    Then Corrigan spotted the black Cadillac across the street. There were four men in it. His brown eye sharpened.
    â€œExcuse me,” he said to Alstrom. “Mr. Baer and I had better check out that car over there. You and Mrs. Grant go on ahead, sir. We’ll meet you in the Warden’s office.”
    Alstrom, Mrs. Grant, and the chauffeur stood frozen.
    â€œWho is it?” muttered Alstrom.
    â€œProbably nobody to concern us, Mr. Alstrom. But under the circumstances I think it’s a good idea to look over a parked car with four men in it. Please go on in. We’ll handle whatever it is.”
    Corrigan and Baer waited until they were admitted through the main gate.
    Then Baer said, “That was Harry Barber driving the Buick.”
    â€œYes,” Corrigan said. “But right now I’m more interested in the Cadillac.”
    They crossed the street. The Cadillac’s windows were open. Baer laid both paws on the front sill on the driver’s side and gave the man behind the wheel a once-over, not lightly. Corrigan stared into the rear.
    Marty Martello sat on the far side. He was a dark man with swimming black eyes and a Mediterranean face. Masseurs had kept his body sleek except for a slight middle-age paunch. Curly black hair graying at the temples and the expensive custom-tailored clothes he wore gave him the look of a banker, or an aging character actor.
    Between Martello and Corrigan sat a squat, wide man with a pea-head and the muscles of a wrestler. He had come by them more or less honestly before Marty Martello took him on as a bodyguard; he had wrestled professionally under the monicker of Little Jumbo. His legal name was Leroy Barth, Corrigan knew; he had had occasion to check Barth’s yellow sheet more than once.
    Corrigan was acquainted with the two men in the front seat as well; he had had both on the pan several times on suspicion of everything from simple assault to homicide. The tall skinny one in the driver’s seat was Benny Grubb, once wheel man for a stickup ring before he fell into the safer and more lucrative job of wheeling the mighty Martello.
    The other occupant of the front seat, a wiry character with a knife-scarred face and totally dead eyes, was Al (the Acid Kid) Jennings. The nickname had been well earned. Tossing acid into the faces of union organizers had been his M.O. in his labor-racketeering days.
    Corrigan looked them over one at a time, deliberately. The three hoods with the racketeer chief glanced at him stonily, once, then looked away. Martello did not look away. He returned stare for stare. If he was bothered by the icy eye examining him he did not show it. Perhaps he was more concerned than he allowed to appear. He was the first to break the silence.
    â€œSomething on your mind, Captain?” He had a soft, almost womanish, voice.
    â€œSomething,” Corrigan said. “Aren’t you a long way from home, Marty?”
    â€œYou want to know what I’m doing here?”
    â€œI went to school, Marty. I can add one and one.”
    Martello exposed white teeth. “Why not? Call me nosy. I want to see if four years’ hard time has made any changes in those scum that killed my daughter.”
    So much for amateur planning. Corrigan wondered how many others had