F.B.I. Showdown: A Classic Suspense Novel. Gordon Landsborough

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СКАЧАТЬ Johnny Delcros, with Egghead Schiller and a man named Joe Guestler, were perhaps the ringleaders. There were about a dozen planning a break, all long-term men with only a part of their sentences completed. Delcros was in for another five years—he had been convicted on five charges of robbery with assault. One of the charges hadn’t been his, and he lived now with a sense of grievance and injustice.

      Schiller—he’d never had any hair since the day he was born, but had never quite realized what a handicap it was in his life of crime—Schiller was in on a ten-year rap and had served two only. Guestler was one of the Savannah Gang, and he’d got life for his part in an automobile hold-up in which a girl had been assaulted and her escort killed while trying to stop them getting away. Erd Savannah had been given full penalty, and Guestler was lucky to have got away with life.

      Louie Savannah, Erd’s kid brother, Ed Hankman, Jud Corbeta, and one or two other boys were in on the proposed break. Hankman and Corbeta were both part of the old Savannah Gang and were serving fifteen years apiece. Louie, who had only been eighteen at the time of the stick-up, was also in for fifteen.

      That length of time all in one place isn’t to be contemplated calmly, so the Savannah Gang had got together to plan a break out. They weren’t getting far when Egghead Schiller and Johnny Delcros were invited to join in the attempt. Egghead was Johnny’s pal, and Johnny knew of a way of getting guns into prison. He wouldn’t tell anyone, not even Egghead, how he did it; but they knew he wasn’t talking tall words, because one day he showed them a Smith & Wesson .38, and a week later he had ammunition for it. Egghead had an idea it was Johnny’s girlfriend who brought the stuff in, and one of the warders was paid not to look when the things were passed. He couldn’t see how else it could be done.

      But Johnny had the damnedest ideas for a prison break. His idea was to get enough guns, start shooting and rush the wall, get over, and drop down to where his dame would be waiting with a fast car. That was the only thing the Savannah Gang could think up, also.

      Egghead used to listen, but didn’t say anything. This day he heard Johnny come out with his theory about blinding the warder up on the wall with a reflecting mirror and then he told him what was on his mind.

      They shuffled round, heads bent, dust coming up from the sun-dried concrete as their feet stirred it into motion. Egghead looked up at that high concrete wall, with the catwalk twelve feet above their heads, and the railed walk right on top of that twenty-foot high ring of ferro-concrete. There were guards leaning along that top rail, and more guards lounging about the catwalk.

      Egghead looked everywhere but at Johnny Delcros, while words came thin and harsh through his tight-drawn lips. And he said, “You got somep’n crawlin’ in your head if you think I’m gonna try’n get over that wall with you.”

      Johnny looked everywhere but at Egghead and snarled, “Hey, you ain’t got cold feet, have you?”

      Egghead said, dispassionately, “I would have, ef I joined in a break over the wall—permanent cold, I guess, along with the rest of me.” He looked at one solitary white cloud that drifted against the blue of the North Carolina sky and whispered, “I got me better ideas, Johnny. But they don’t include the Savannah mob.” He made a nasty sound in his throat. “Them dumb clucks!”

      That was better—Egghead wasn’t quitting and was talking of other ideas.

      Johnny said, quickly, “If you got better ideas, Eggy, you don’t go without me, see? I’m gonna bust outa this place, if it’s the last thing I do.”

      Egghead pacified him. “Sure, Johnny, we bust out together when we go, but we don’t need more’n you an’ me, so we don’t say anything to the Savannah outfit, see?”

      They shuffled around on probably the last circuit before the whistle went for form up for the cellblocks. Egghead spoke with care, stopping when any of the prisoners were near enough to hear. It wouldn’t be nice for them if the Savannah mob got to know they were being double-crossed—even in jail things could happen.

      Egghead’s voice came thinly to the fight-calloused ears of his buddy. “I never did like the idea of rushin’ that wall. One or two of us might get over, but what ef you’n me stop this side o’ the wall with a bullet in us? That’d be no go, now, wouldn’t it, Johnny?”

      “So what? So I got to doin’ some thinkin’. We’ll let the Savannah boys go ahead with their plan, but we’ll sneak out ahead of ’em, see?”

      Johnny said, “Why don’t we tell ’em, Eggy? It would be better, in case they find out themselves. They’re poison, that mob.”

      “Sure they’re poison. That’s why we say nothin’—nothin’, d’you hear, Johnny? You’n me’ll make this break together. There’ll be no room for the Savannah mob, an’ ef we tell ’em, d’you think they’ll let us go without ’em?”

      A prison guard came down and started shouting for fall in. Johnny said, viciously: “I want for to paste him cross the mouth before I leave this joint. For why? Because that guy shoves us around more’n any other guard, an’ I don’t like being shoved around.”

      Johnny wanted to hear the rest of the plan.

      He got it over the evening meal. Egghead spoke above the noise of a thousand prisoners eating. There was a lot of noise, because the men said the food was getting worse and it had always been moderately lousy. Some of them set up a clamour with their plates and mugs, but it didn’t get them anywhere, and they shut up when the prison guards swooped quickly down among them. But it was a good opportunity for Egghead to get on with his plan.

      “Remember the time they gave Erd Savannah the gas? They got a workin’ party to clean up the death chamber the day before, remember? You’n me were on that job. We had to wash down the paint, scrub the floors, and put a shine on everything. You’d have thought they were afraid Erd might take his custom to another jail ef he didn’t like the look of his last sleepin’ room.”

      Johnny spoke through a mouthful of slush, cynically, bitterly. “That wasn’t for Erd. That was for the Governor, who’s a sensitive li’l lily an’ doesn’t like to see dirt, the lousy sonofasoandso.”

      Egghead got impatient and said, “Sure, sure, I know all that. But—d’you remember the covers for the walls an’ auditorium seats? The ones to keep the muck outa the gas holes? They got sent away for a quick clean, so’s they could be put up again when the show was over.”

      Johnny said, “We took ’em to the laundry chute and dropped ’em down to the bin.”

      Egghead said, “We gotta fix ourselves on to that cleanin’ up party next tine they fumigate anyone. Next time we’re goin’ down that chute together, see?” Johnny forgot and started to look at Egghead, recovered and stared down at his plate of food again. Egghead’s voice went on, “That bin’s only a floor below. I guess it won’t hurt us. And it opens into the loading bay where the laundry truck is!”

      Johnny was rapidly cottoning on.

      Egghead whispered, “Don’t you see, Johnny, that’s better’n goin’ over the wall with the Savannah mob. They’ll be on the run from the second the break’s attempted. Now, us, we might get half an hour or an hour’s start before anyone sees we’re missin’.” He leaned closer. Louie Savannah saw the action, and slowly put down his spoon.

      Egghead said, “We gotta have guns, both of us, that’s all. We stick the truck driver up, then lie back among the baskets an’ let him drive out through the gates. СКАЧАТЬ