š„ ā”ļø The New Racket by Dashiell Hammett - Short Story - Full Audiobook
The New Racket by Dashiell Hammett was published in Black Mask, February 15, 1924, Collected Stories. The story also appears elsewhere with the title Judge Laughed Last. https://quizlit.org/the-new-racket-by-dashiell-hammett
š Subscribe for more just like this:
BOOKS FEATURED IN THIS VIDEO
Crime Stories and Other Writings https://amzn.to/4kEnRSo
ā Links listed above are amazon affiliate links ā
00:00the new racket the trouble with this country old man covey unexpectedly exploded emphasizing his words with repeated beats of a gnarled forefinger on the newspaper he had been reading
00:17is that the courts have got a stranglehold on it law there ain't no law there's courts and there's judges and this thing you call law is a weapon they use to choke human enterprise to discourage originality and progress
00:35the portion of the morning paper upon which the old man's assault was concentrated i saw with difficulty held the report of a decision of the supreme court in connection with some labor difficulties in the west
00:51old man covey i knew couldn't be personally interested in either side of the dispute he had as little to do with capital as with labor which was very little
01:05for eight years now since the day when the street preacher had turned big dog covey from the ways of crime to become plain john covey and later old man covey
01:19he had subsisted upon the benevolence of a son-in-law his interest in this case was then purely academic but his attitude was undoubtedly tinged by his early experience with the criminal courts
01:34which had been more than superficial and i suspect that some especially bitter memory had engendered this outburst so i rolled another cigarette and led him gently along the road of argumentation
01:49the most direct path i had learned to the interior of his contrary old mind being a beak i said using the vernacular term for judge
02:01in an attempt to do all i could to stir up the portions of his remembrance that had to do with his days of youth and lawlessness is a tough job laws are complicated and puzzling
02:15and it isn't easy to straighten them out so that they fit particular cases most of the beaks do very well i think you think do you the old scoundrel snarled at me
02:29well let me tell you sonny you don't know a damn thing about it i could tell you stories about beaks and their ways that would knock your eyes out
02:40i put all the scepticism i could summon into a smile confident now that i had him you look at things from your side i replied and in those days you were on the wrong side
02:55now i don't see that judges don't make mistakes now and then they do they're only human but i never heard of a case where you could say that the judge had positively twisted the law round to
03:09that turned the trick he cursed and snorted and glared at me and i grinned my insincere doubts and the story finally came out me and flogger rorke was on the road together some years ago
03:23with a gun apiece and a couple of big handkerchiefs to hide our mugs behind when we needed to all night grease joints was our meat and we done ourselves pretty well
03:37we'd knock over a couple of nights some nights we'd drift into em separate at three or four in the morning not letting on that we knew each other and stall over coffee and sinkers till we was alone with the guy behind the counter
03:52then we'd flash the rods on him take what was in the damper and slide on no big hulls you understand but a steady reliable income
04:04we worked that way for a few months then i got an idea for a new racket and it's a darb flogger he's an unimaginative sort of jobby can't see it at first but i keep jawin on him till he gives in and agrees to take a whirl at it
04:22you never seen flogger rorke did you i thought not well he's a good guy what limey pine used to call a benny cove but he ain't no flower to look at
04:35i've seen a cartoon of a burglar once in waves and that's the only time i ever saw a face like flogger's a good guy
04:45but we had to be careful how we moved around because the bulls have the habit of picking us up just on account of his face me nobody hadn't ever took me for a lamb myself
04:57though alongside a flogger i looked pretty sweet these mugs of ours had been handicaps to us so far but now under my new scheme we're going to cash in on em
05:10we was in the middle west at the time we blow into the next berg on our list look the main drag over and go to work our guns are ditched down under a pile of rocks near the jungle
05:25we make the drug store there's two nice little boys in it i plant myself in front of one of em with one hand in my coat pocket and flogger does the same with the other
05:38come through we tells em without a squawk one of em pushes down the no-sail key on the damper scoops out every nickel that's in it and passes it over to flogger
05:51lay down behind the counter and don't be in too much of a hurry about getting up we tell em next they do as they're told and me and flogger go on out about our business
06:05the next day we pushed over two more stores and moved on to the next town every town we hit we gave our new racket a couple of whirls and it goes nice
06:17having an ace up our sleeves we could take chances that otherwise would have been foolish we can pull a couple or even three jobs a day without waiting for the rumpus from the first one to die down
06:31pickings were pretty in them days then one afternoon in a fresh berg we push over a garage a pawnshop and a shoe shop and we get picked up
06:42the bulls that nabbed us was loaded for bear but outside of running until we saw it was no use we went along with em as nice as you pleased when they frisked us they found the money from the day's jobs but that was all
06:59the rest was cached where we knew it would be when we wanted it and our guns were still under the pile of stones three states away we didn't have no use for them any more
07:12the guys we had stuck up that afternoon came in to look us over and they all identified us right away as one of em said there was no forgetting our faces but we sat tight and said nothing we knew where we stood and we were satisfied
07:30after a couple of days they let us have a mouthpiece we picked out a kid whose diploma hadn't been with him long enough to collect any dust yet and he didn't have to know much law for us
07:43then we laid around and took jail life easy a few days of that and they yanked us into court we let things run along for a while without fightin back until the right time came
07:57then our kid mouthpiece gets up and springs our little joker on em his clients he says meaning me and flogger are perfectly willing to plead guilty to begging
08:11but there is nothing to hold em for robbery on they were in need of funds and went into three business establishments and asked for money they had no weapons
08:21the evidence doesn't show that they made any threats whatever motives may have prompted the person in the store to hand over the contents of the various cash registers to oblige them the kid says has no bearing on the matter
08:38the evidence is plain his clients asked for money and it was given to them begging certainly and so his clients are liable to sentence of thirty days or so in the county jail for vagrancy
08:52but robbery no well son it was a riot i thought the beak was going to bust something he's a big bloated hick with a red face and a pair of nose pinchers
09:05his face turns purple now and the cheaters slide down his nose three times in five minutes the district attorney does a proper war dance with the whoops and all but we had em
09:19the old man stopped with an air of finality i waited a while but he didn't resume the story if there were indeed any more to it
09:30so i prodded him i don't see where it proves your contention i said there's no using the law as a weapon there wait sonny wait he promised you'll see before i'm through
09:45they put their witnesses back on the stand again then but there was nothing to do none of em had seen any weapons and none of em could say we had threatened em they said things about our looks but it ain't a crime to be ugly
10:02they shut up shop for days then and chased me and flogger back to the jail and we went back as happy a pair as you have ever seen we had the world by the tail with the down-hill pull and we liked it
10:18thirty days or even sixty in a county jail on a vague charge didn't mean nothing to us we had that happen to us before and got over it
10:29we were happy but that comes from ignorance in our trusted natures we thought maybe the court was a place where justice was done after all where right was right and where things went according to the law
10:45we'd been in trouble with the law before plenty but this was different we had the law on our side this time and we counted on it sticking with us but
10:57well anyway they take us back over to court after a few more days and as soon as i get a slant at the beak and the district attorney i get sort of a chill up my back
11:10they got mean lights in their eyes like a couple of kids that had put tacks on a chair and was a-waiting for somebody to sit on em maybe i think they've rigged things up so's they can slip us two or three or even six months on vague charges
11:28but i didn't suspect half of it say you've heard this chatter about how slow the courts are haven't you well let me tell you nothing in the world ever moved any faster than that court that morning
11:43before we had got fixed in our chairs almost things was humming our kid mouthpiece was bouncing up and down continuously trying to get a word in but not a chance every time he opens his mouth the beak cracks down on him and shuts him up
12:02even threatening to throw him out and fine him in the bargain if he don't keep quiet the man we'd gone up against in the garage was the proprietor but the ones in the hawk shop and the shoe store were just hirelings so they leave the garage man out of the game
12:19but they put the other two in the dock charged with grand larceny have em plead guilty sentenced em to five years apiece and suspended the sentence before you could shift a chew from one cheek to the other
12:32if the beak says in answer to our mouthpiece's squawk your client simply asked for money and these men gave it to him then these two men are guilty of theft since the money belongs to their employers
12:46there is nothing for the court to do therefore but find em guilty of grand larceny and sentence em to five years each in state prison but the evidence tends to show that these men were actuated simply by an overwhelming desire to help two of their fellow men
13:03that they were induced to steal the money simply by the ungovernable impulse to charity and the court therefore feels that it is justified in exercising its legal privilege of leniency and suspending their sentences
13:19me and flogger don't understand what's being done to us right away but our mouthpiece does and as soon as i get a look at him i know it's pretty bad
13:31he's sort of gasping the rest of the dirty work takes longer but there's no stopping it this old buzzard of a judge has our charges changed to receiving stolen property a felony in that state
13:46we were convicted on two counts and he slips us ten years in the big house on each and hitches to run end to end and does that old buzzard feel that the court should exercise its legal privilege of leniency and suspend our sentences
