Crime Must Pay the Penalty #22

In 1951's Oklahoma oil boom, "Gusher" Bates—a grimy field worker turned criminal—transforms his rage at being blackballed into a vicious extortion scheme, sabotaging small producers' wells and demanding payment to stop the flow. When the heat from the protective league's police closes in, he pivots to swindling desperate farmers out of their land with iron-clad contracts, building an empire of illegal wealth that finally allows him to challenge the big operators who once scorned him. But power built on violence and fraud breeds only more violence, and "Gusher's" ambitions draw dangerous consequences.

In 1951, when this tale was published, Ozzie Moran was just another factory worker fed up with meager wages—until he witnesses a numbers-racket enforcer at work and sees an easier path to money. Ozzie parlays his factory connections into a lucrative collecting operation for Joey Samson's numbers empire, but a single botched payoff and a moment of brutal desperation set him on a collision course with his boss and the rest of the outfit. What begins as ambition spirals into a deadly game where Ozzie must stay one step ahead of the very men he once called allies.

Tod Falker's stickup crew pulls off a massive $331,000 robbery and buries the haul in Dale Pond Woods, but when Tod decides to muscle in on the bootlegging racket while the heat cools, he starts a brutal gang war with rival Rip Adkins that threatens to destroy everything. Now, with his operation crumbling under Adkins' superior firepower, Tod faces a desperate choice—and a mystery only he can solve.

When a botched robbery leaves Joe Jankin disfigured, he plots an elaborate heist on New York's Jewelers' Row—targeting the gold refineries that line the block. With forged credentials and a gang of uniformed gunmen, Joe orchestrates a series of brazen raids to steal his fortune and start fresh, but his past and his own nature are about to catch up with him in ways he never anticipated.