Crime of Their Life by Frank Kane Page B

and immune from prosecution for years. He knew what they were and what his chances for existence would be if he didn’t have enough on all of them to put them away for life. Then one day he learned that having all that knowledge could be a double-edged sword.
    Big Howie Ryder had been indicted by a federal grand jury on an income tax rap and before the ink was dry on the indictment, he disappeared. For eighteen months federal agents put out a dragnet for him, but he had completely dropped out of sight. Then suddenly he reappeared and surrendered in Albany, rather than in New York City.
    His acquittal was one of Maurie Handel’s most masterful manipulations. He had arranged for the Albany surrender so that Ryder would be under the jurisdiction of the northern federal district. Before Ryder surrendered, it was also arranged in which town in that jurisdiction the trial would be held. The day Ryder surrendered, his men descended on the town, spending money like it was going out of style. Drinks for the house were the order of the day the minute these boys walked into a bar. Contributions to local charities, big tips, parties and picnics for the kids and all at the expense of the man “who’s having the same trouble all of us have—them income tax guys trying to get blood out of a stone.”
    Then, as soon as bail could be arranged, Big Howie himself showed on the scene. He was quiet, generous, a big tipper and a free spender. The local gentry, who would be the jury to decide his guilt or innocence, were stunned. They had expected a movie gangster, hands dripping with blood, driving around in a car bristling with machine guns and filled with hoods. Instead they found Big Howie, adhering strictly to the script written for him by Maurie Handel—a big, friendly, generous visitor.
    They acquitted him on the first ballot.
    That night Maurie Handel stayed at the courthouse tying up all loose ends and Big Howie and the others returned to the hotel to celebrate. By the time Handel got back to the hotel, it was almost 3 a.m. and the hotel was deserted. As he reached the top floor, which Big Howie had rented along with the floor under it, he heard his name. He listened outside the door.
    “What do you want to kill the mouthpiece for, Howie?” a drunken voice asked petulantly. “Look what a job he done for you. If it wasn’t for him and his ideas they’d have nailed you sure.”
    From the sound of Big Howie’s voice, he was on his second bottle. “That’s just the trouble with him. He’s too smart—and he knows too much. One of these days the heat might get too much and he’d talk.”
    Handel tiptoed back down the stairs, caught a milk train to New York. The next morning he was in the special prosecutor’s office spilling everything he knew about the operation of Big Howie’s rackets. The prosecutor put him into protective custody, hid him out on a farm in New Jersey until the trial.
    At the trial, it was Handel’s testimony that sent Big Howie to the cell he never walked away from.
    Rita Keen knew all about that. She knew for how many years Maurie had hidden out, fearful every day that the next knock on the door would reveal some of Big Howie’s boys. It wasn’t until the last couple of years that he had felt safe, secure enough to agree to come out of hiding and to start enjoying life again. Like this.
    She stole another glance at Liddell, wondered whether in him Maurie had finally come face to face with the firing squad he had been expecting all these years.
    Jack Allen was listening to Mrs. Phelps with half an ear. He was wondering how Liddell could have spent any time in Barbados and still have no trace of a tan, let alone a sunburn. Normally, even a one-day stay on the island would show some effect—
    Mrs. Phelps broke off in the middle of a sentence, frowned at the cruise director. She wasn’t used to having people listen to her with only half an ear. Especially since she was in the habit of more than paying her