The Price of Murder Read Free Page B

out for a year and a half. He was back in Hancock, and he seemed to be doing very well indeed.
    Lee Bronson was twenty-six. He had work he liked. The pay was low, but the acceptance of the book took the sting out of that. There would be more books, and there would come a day when he could either go on teaching or give it up, as he chose. He had a bride men turned in the street to stare at. The world was a fine place, that December.
    Danny lost again the following March, the same month they found the house on Arcadia Street and moved out of the dingy furnished apartment. Lee went down to see him, before he was sentenced. Danny was a little heavier. He was a week away from being thirty. He was very depressed, and he marveled bitterly at his bad fortune.
    “Twice before I got picked up, Lee, and neither damn time had I done what I got sent up for. This time it’s worse, almost. Now, get this: I’m way uptown, at Sonny’s. I’m at the bar, a little loaded, but minding my own business. It’s four in the afternoon. Day before yesterday. I got a date in the bar. She’s coming in to meet me at five. The bar is empty except for a couple down the bar. They’re having a fight. I’m paying no attention. I’m just there drinking my drink, damn it. The woman isn’t bad looking, not bad at all. They’re both drinking and barking at each other. All of a sudden she comes down, takes thestool next to me, grabs my arm and says I should buy her a drink. It’s nothing to me. So I do. You know that’s a nice place. A good trade. No trouble. He comes down. She won’t look at him or talk to him. He’s a big joker. My size. Maybe fifteen years older. He starts grabbing at her. Rough like, I tell him to take it easy. The bartender tells him. But no. The big shot has to grab me by the shoulder, spin me around and swing. I ducked my head and he hit me right on top of the head. It hurt. I was drinking. I wasn’t so lucky it left a mark where he hit. It’s still a little sore, but no mark. Enough is enough. I rush him right back into a corner, fast. Wham, wham, wham. Maybe I hit him four five times, every one right down the alley. I had to hold him up for the last one. Nothing dirty. No knee. Nothing. Like a gentleman I did it, every one on the mouth and he bleeds all over the place. I let him drop, got my hat off the stool next to mine and left a buck tip out of my change and took off. They don’t know me so good there. But you see, I got this date I got to come back for. I come back and I’m grabbed. I think it’s like a joke. No joke, kid. Assault. The big guy’s name is Fitch. He’s big news. A banker from Detroit and he stops there when he’s in town. The bitch he was fighting with is his wife. He once upon a time loaned Sonny some money, I hear. So it goes down like this, and this is what the three of them say, the only witnesses. I come in loaded. I make a pass at his wife. He objects. The bartender tells me to leave. So I beat up on the banker and walk out. Busted his jaw, not too bad, and ruined a lot of expensive dentist work. I give Kennedy the picture. No dice. It’s too hot. Maybe I’m not worth the trouble. So here I go again. Jesus, Lee!”
    And he went again. He was given a one to ten, that curious sentence that means a man is eligible for parole after one year but, in the discretion of the warden and the parole board, can be kept for the full ten.
    Daniel Bronson served two and a half years, less one month. He came to see Lee when he was released. He was a silent and sour man. He had found a job, prior to release, with a trucking firm, the owner of which, having done time in his youth, was willing to hire ex-convicts andmen on parole. Lee had asked him if it was a blind, a myth for the parole people as other jobs had been the other times he had been released.
    “No. I’ve been a sucker long enough, kid.”
    “Going straight?”
    Danny’s smile was slow and savage. “This late? I’ve lived very well. I