Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine Annual, No. 3, 1973

“Who talked?” the tallest of the men facing the wall cried out passionately. “I’ll kill the— Who talked?”

“You talked, Jeff,” Thompson told him, deftly slipping three pairs of wrists into the three sets of handcuffs he had brought along. “All right, Carl. Make your call.”

When the last of the paper work had been completed and the prisoners processed and the lieutenant’s congratulations duly savored, Carl Robey cornered his partner in the station-house locker room.

“All right,” the gray-haired man said grimly. “Give. Before I go out of my feeble mind trying to figure it out. How did you know they were planning to knock that particular safe over? And why three sets of handcuffs, instead of two or four?”

Thompson smiled as he lit a cigarette.

“It was easy, given the original hunch,” he said. “You remember that neither of us was happy about Jeff settling down in our precinct after the parole board turned him loose the last time, since we both had him figured for a real wrongo. I kept checking with his parole officer, and a month ago he told me he’d had unconfirmed rumors of Jeff’s cutting corners on his parole regulations, hanging out in taverns in wrong company, that sort of thing.

“I knew he was up to something, so I went by his rooming house one day and coaxed his landlord into giving me a look at his room. It was about what you’d expect, except that in one corner I saw an expensive-looking hi-fi unit with a quarter inch of dust on it, indicating that it wasn’t being used. I knew right then how I was going to find out what Jefferson was up to. I spent ten minutes hooking up the speaker in the hi-fi so it was operating as a microphone, and then I ran a wire—”

“Wait a minute!” Carl Robey protested. “Wait a minute! You changed a speaker into a microphone? What kind of talk is that?”

“All speakers are microphones, properly converted,” Thompson replied. “Usually you need an amplifier, because there’s a loss of power, but it’s no great trick. Just take the wire leading—”

“Spare me the lesson in electronics,” Carl Robey said gloomily. “You know I never made it out of the sixth grade.”

Thompson smiled. “All I did was run a wire from the converted speaker down to the basement, then brought in my voice-actuated portable tape recorder and connected it up in a closet to which the landlord gave me the key. Every morning I’d run in and put on a fresh reel of tape and take off the full one. I’ve got a stack of tapes at home in which Jeff outlined the entire job.

“I knew everything about it except the date, although I knew it was going to be this weekend. I think Jeff didn’t tell even his partners when he planned to move in to prevent exactly what happened.”

“So if you knew all this, why’d you have me losing sleep?” Robey demanded indignantly. “We could’ve scooped ’em in their room and wrapped ’em up.”

Thompson shook his head.

“Most courts won’t accept that kind of evidence,” he explained. “Now, anyway, although I believe they’ll come to it. They should, since they’re taking away so many of the lawman’s tools.” He smiled at Robey. “Simple, wasn’t it?”

“Not for me,” his partner said emphatically. “The Wizard of Oz has nothing on you, boy.” A slow grin spread over his broad features. “Crime prevention — that’s the name of the game!”

“This time the name of the game was tape,” Thompson said.

“Okay, okay,” Robey said. “You know what worries me? After this, what do we do for an encore the next time the lieutenant lines us up on a job?”

“When we need it, I’ll think of something,” Thompson said.

“I wouldn’t bet against it, partner,” Robey said.

Together they went out into what was left of the night.

Extreme Shock by V. A. Levine

A man who lived in his private hell... a girl who had spent her life keeping him there... Somehow I had to get past certain death to bring them together for the, last time — before I walked into the waiting bullets...

* * *

It was a cool November wind that blew me into the United Nations Secretariat early that Tuesday morning.

I took the escalator to the second floor of the conference building and strode down the corridor to the security office. I unlocked the door to my glass cubicle, the one reading CASIMIRO LOWRY, Assistant Chief, U.N. Security, removed my coat and sat behind the desk. I lit a cigarette and watched a tug pulling a string of barges downriver. I checked my watch. Eight-forty-five. The phone rang.

“Miro-san.” It was the boss, Inspector Ryonosuke Akutagawa. “Konnichi-wa. Good morning. Come and have some tea. We have things to discuss.”

I came, slowly. He had a case. I needed a vacation. I had one scheduled for Friday. It looked like I was out of luck.