Crime Incorporated #3

Floyd Hamilton, James Boardman, Fred Hunder, and Harold Brest orchestrate a daring escape from Alcatraz during a cement detail, seizing a guard and hiding him before making a perilous bid for freedom. With time running out and the risk of discovery ever-present, they must navigate a narrow plank across a barbed-wire fence to reach the bay, relying on stealth, timing, and each other’s nerve.

When Bill Howton is found dead in his garage with a bullet to the forehead, Lieutenant Barvis suspects murder, noting signs of a struggle and emptied pockets, but something about the scene feels off. Reinvestigating, Barvis discovers Howton recently took out a large insurance policy with double indemnity for a violent death, then returns to the garage to examine a peculiar scratch on the wall that doesn’t reach the ceiling.

Chic Anson is pressured to sell his cherished Yorke University athletic letter to buy a birthday gift for his father, but when he refuses, a mysterious man offers to buy it—only to vanish into a criminal underworld that uses the letter as a disguise. As the gang's leader, a former college athlete, returns to town under a new identity, Chic finds himself hunted after the letter is stolen, forcing him to uncover the truth behind a scheme that ties his past to a string of high-stakes robberies.

June Joyce, a woman with a past, tricks cab driver Tom Jadey into helping her pull off a robbery, then disappears—only to reappear months later when Tom, determined to catch her, finally tracks her down. When she admits she was desperate and broke, he offers her a new plan: team up to target wealthy drunks, using her charm and his cab as a perfect cover. The story follows their uneasy partnership as they pull off their first con, but the question remains: how long can such a risky scheme last?

Ten years after a bank robbery he witnessed, Bill Dennis sees the same man staring at him again—this time in 1946—and fears a repeat. The man, later identified as George Norton, shoots wildly at police before dying, leaving behind a note confessing to the original crime and revealing his suicide was driven by guilt.