Killer Mine (4 page)

“Ex-cons still in the punk business are always suspicious characters, punk. What’re you doing here?”

“I got a broad.”

“Who?”

He waved his thumb at the gum chewer and her eyes darted back and forth between us. “Let’s see you shake her down, copper.”

“Sure.” But first I slapped him one across the mouth then gave him another across the ear. “That’s for the smart mouth, punk. Try it again.”

Some of the people watching grumbled, but just as many laughed. They didn’t like punks either. I turned to the broad and pointed to the purse in her hand. “Get it out, kid, let’s see it all. Who you are, where you live, the works.”

“Listen… !”

“You ever do time, kid?”

Her eyes said yes. Her eyes said they didn’t want to do any more, either. She opened the purse and showed me her Social Security card that gave her name as Paula Lees and a receipted bill for a room a block over. I knew what she was and the business she was in but didn’t push it at all. When I told her okay and to put it away her eyes said thanks and gave Loefert a dirty look.

By tomorrow everybody would have the story. Loefert was part of big time moving downtown, but they weren’t snot nosing this badge. When I moved them on I stood there a minute, said to hell with the subway and grabbed a cab cruising by.

It only took fifteen minutes to change the sight and sound and smells. I opened the door of my apartment and it was like being in a different world.

CHAPTER FOUR

AFTER breakfast in the cafeteria near headquarters, I went up to my desk and started clearing out details that had been laying over. In a way it was good to be on a single assignment. You had a chance to shove unfinished business on somebody else for a change, and for once you could devote yourself to thinking along a straight line.

Close to noon Mack Brissom gave his usual rap and opened the door. He had two containers of coffee, put them on the desk and settled down with a tired sigh.

I said, “What’re you doing in on Sunday?”

“That Canadian business. It’s in Homicide now.”

I frowned, shook my head, but couldn’t remember it.

“That armored car stickup in Montreal. One and half million.”

“Why have we got it?”

Mack grunted and reached for his coffee. “Not
we.
Me. You’re the fair-haired boy who don’t have to work. The two guards are dead. Both the hoods who hit the truck were tracked to the Falls, crossed over into Buffalo and are supposedly heading toward New York.”

“So catch ’em. You know who they are?”

“We know one. Charlie Darpsey. Used to be with the Brooklyn crowd. One of the guards was an ex-cop with a retirement job and recognized him from police fliers some years back. He lived long enough to pass out the name.”

“Work, slob,” I grinned.

He tipped the container up, swallowed noisily, then put it back. “Like you?” He was holding a smile back.

“What?”

“I happened to be in the Inspector’s office earlier. Seems like you touched the wrong funny bone somewhere. The squawk was loud.”

“It didn’t reach me.”

“For a while, I don’t think it will. They’re waiting to see if that kind of action gets any results.” He leaned back and felt for a smoke in his pocket. He was out and looked at me disgustedly a second because I couldn’t help him any. Then: “How’s it going?”

“Nothing yet, you know how it goes. I saw Benny Loefert around there.”

Mack nodded. “That’s what I came in to tell you about, couple of pigeons reported in that Loefert, Beamish, Will Pater and Steve Lutz have been moving around.”

“High-priced guns?”

“Yeah. All but Lutz took rooms in the area. They’re giving the place real class.”

“I shook Loefert down last night. Gave him a little bang to set him straight.”

“We heard about that too. Beat cop picked it up. You meet him yet?”

“No.”

“Nice kid. Just off probationary duty. Turns in reports like they’ll be kept for posterity. Detailed? Hell, he’d even turn in the number of spit marks on the sidewalk if he thought it necessary.”

“He’ll make out. We were all like that,” I said.

“Sure.” He got up and picked his container off the desk. “We’re going to keep track of the uptown lads. If anything comes through we’ll pass it along.”

“Right. And thanks for the coffee.”

He winked and left. I finished filing the papers, marked them for proper distribution and called for Cassidy to take care of them. Then I phoned Marta and told her I’d be over about two and to have lunch ready. She called me a housemaid-hugging flatfoot and hung up.

Sunday on the street was a day of truce. The week had been fought to a smashing climax on Saturday night and now the troops had withdrawn and cleared the field for a little while. But the signs of battle were still there, the bright flakes of broken bottles, the vomit splashes by the walls, a garbage can on its side in the curb.

Traffic was negligible, but the kids had that uneasy Sunday feeling that couldn’t make up into a stickball game. The young girls were out, purses swinging, jaws chewing, taking this one day to prove their respectability while their opposites tried hard for masculine worldliness with smelly vestibules and dirty stoops for a background. None of it came off. It was still a battlefield.

The bars had opened at one and so far were almost empty. The three I stopped in had just been mopped down and smelled of furniture polish.
The hell with the house, but take care of that bar!
In each place I asked if Al Reese had been in, and when they said no I told them to pass the word I was looking for him and was going to beat the crap out of him when I found him. I did him a little dirty by hinting that he was a stoolie of sorts, and in that neighborhood even a rumor like that can get a guy in pretty deep water. But at least they were taking it right. I was the tough cop came back to the street where he used to live to see a broad he grew up with. So long as everybody stayed in line, what they did was no business of mine. None at all. Anybody plays it wise, they get rapped and I could make it stick. They were getting to know that part in a hurry. That’s the way they had it figured, and that’s just what we wanted them to think.

At five minutes of two Marta opened the door for me and I could smell lunch on the table. This time she had on a dress with a billowy skirt and regular whore shoes. Only on her the combination looked great.

We ate without saying much, went out to a crummy movie house and saw a picture we had both seen a year ago. At seven we had supper at Smith’s Bar and Grill, then went back to the neighborhood for a few beers before calling it a night

Two days and the pattern was working out The word ran like a swift river in those parts and wherever we stopped conversation stopped too. Words were guarded and eyes could evade mine for no reason except I was cop. On the street the lushes and the panhandlers would throw a halfhearted ingratiating smile, then scurry away quickly.

On the way back to the apartment I saw the beat cop and crossed over to his side, holding Marta’s arm. I had never seen him, but he knew who I was and touched his cap. “Evening, Lieutenant”

“Hi.” I stuck out my hand and he took it. “Mack Brissom told me to look you up.”

He flushed and grinned. “Didn’t think he’d remember me. He was one of the instructors at the academy. By the way, I’m Hal McNeil.”

“This is Marta Borlig.”

He nodded. “I’ve seen you often, Miss Borlig.”

I nudged her in the ribs, “See, like a sore thumb.”

“Oh, pipe down,” she said pleasantly.

“Quiet around the beat?” I asked him.

“Usual stuff. Last few days a mysterious prowler scared a couple of old ladies. Guy with a face full of whiskers. Big fight two blocks over a week ago and a running feud with three families involved ever since.”

“Hard to handle?”

He shrugged and said seriously, “Nothing the rule book can’t cope with.”

“Well, good to see you, McNeil. Keep an eye on my gal here, okay?”

“That’s an easy job, sir,” he chuckled back. He walked off trying store fronts and nodding to upstairs residents. Good boy, that.

On the way to the apartment Marta stopped at the place I had avoided so long. She looked across the street to the blank face of the brick walls, then at me. “Does it hurt that much to look at it, Joe?”

The house I lived in, I thought, where hunger was a constant hazard that separated living into feasts and famines. Downstairs a guy had murdered his wife and kids while they slept and blew his own brains out afterwards. One floor up Bloody Mary started in business, first with abortions that got her the name, then to a three-bed shag joint until she made enough loot to move to the corner.

“It doesn’t really hurt at all,” I said.

“They’ll be ripping them down in a few months. All three of those buildings were condemned.”

“Twenty years too late,” I said, still picturing half-forgotten faces that seemed to be perpetually leaning out of windows staring vacuously into the street, their arms propped on faded old pillows.

“You still hate it, don’t you?”

I nodded. “I’ve always hated it. Not only the houses. This whole place. This dirty end of the city, the poverty, the squalor. Hardly a chance to get out.”

“You got out”

I said,
“Hardly.
Besides, I hated it enough.” I looked at the indifference on her face. “I can’t see how you stood it.”

“Maybe I couldn’t hate anything that much. Come on, take me home. Tomorrow’s another day.”

“Sure. Let’s go.”

I said so long in the vestibule, quick, because I didn’t feel like talking to anyone nice. The old house had turned me inside out again, and right now all I wanted was something to wash the taste out. I walked back to Donavan’s Dive, went in and got a beer. In the back something big and fat made a hurried exit through the family exit, and I felt a little better.

When I finished the second the little guy who had been watching me so intently finally caught my eye and I knew what he meant. When I left I headed west, halted in the shadow of a doorway and waited. Five minutes later the little guy came by and when I said,
“Here,”
he ducked in beside me.

CHAPTER FIVE

“YOU’RE Scanlon… Lieutenant Scanlon, right?” It was a statement rather than a question.

“Read off your dog tags, mister,” I told him.

Nervously, he poked his head out and peered down each direction before huddling back in the shadows, “Harry Wope. I got a flop upstairs over Moe Clausist’s hock shop. Work around some, but mostly it’s Social Security.”

“Done time?”

“Six weeks on a vag charge ten years ago.” He shrugged and added, “It was a bad year. Look, you won’t say nothin’ about…”

“Don’t sweat it, Harry. What do you want?”

“That fat slob Reese is after your can, Mr. Scanlon. He got the word in and…”

“I’ve heard it”

“Hell, I don’t mean downtown only like city hall. He’s lookin’ for somebody to hand you lumps. Trouble is, he can’t find nobody, but if he keeps lookin’ he sure will. He’ll blow five hundred to see you dragged out of an alley.”

“Where did you pick this one up?”

“Big ears. I was dumpin’ garbage for Hilo when he was on the phone inside. One of the windows is broke and I heard him.”

I said, “I’m not handing out favors, Harry. Why put me wise?”

Harry Wope leaned toward me, his wrinkled face turned up toward mine, his eyes squinting at me. “You don’t remember me, do you? Nope, guess you wouldn’t at that No reason to after all. Me and your father was in France together during the First World War. He saved my ass once. I used to come around when you was a kid. He only had four then when I seen you last. Knew your ma too.”

Then I remembered him. A funny guy who wore his uniform until there was nothing left of it, having Saturday breakfasts in our kitchen and eating like a wolf to make up for a week of missed meals. “Thanks, Harry. I’ll remember it”

“If I hear anything more, I’ll let you know.”

“Don’t stick your neck out,” I said.

I toured the area slowly, letting the familiar things reestablish themselves. On the side of Carmine’s grocery I ran my hand over the deeply carved initials Larry and I had put there with Doug Kitchen’s and René Mills’ underneath. A dozen layers of paint had not been enough to fill them in. At the school yard where Noisy Stuccio and Hymie Shapiro had sat in the cab of the rubbish truck and accidentally knocked it into gear the long gash still showed in the brick wall.

All dead now, I thought. We had all scrambled over rooftops together, saved empty deposit bottles for Saturday movies, reenacted those same pictures in the park, turning from cowboys and Indians into soldiers or cops and robbers, depending on what had played. Maybe the pattern had started then. Larry ate up the Indian roles. He even had a headdress and a tomahawk. At nine I was the cop. Noisy, Hymie and René went the George Raft route and fancied themselves hotshot mobsters. Doug Kitchen wanted to be a sailor, only they hardly ever had Navy movies unless they were musical comedies, and Doug felt like he had two left feet all the time.

And Marta… little Giggie… trailed us around throwing rocks at us because she was a girl and didn’t belong in the game. I grinned and felt the tiny scar at my hairline where she connected one time. She got a boot in the tail for that one and ran home bawling.

It was one-thirty when I turned the corner and walked toward the spot where Doug Kitchen had died. Down farther, across the street, a pair of drunks argued noisily about nothing; on the stoops here and there couples huddled in the darkness, taking advantage of the only time there was any privacy at all. A few loud voices bellowed from behind closed windows in the upper apartments, sounds that never seemed to change in volume or subject matter. On my side, coming toward me, a late-shift worker ambled along watching his feet until another person stepped out of the shadows, said something that made him hesitate a few seconds before he kept walking, while the other one went back into the shadows.

He passed me without anything more than a glance while I kept walking to where he had the contact, and when I reached there the girl stepped out of her spot beside the balustrade, handbag swinging, voice deliberately provocative, and said, “In a hurry, mister?”

“Nope.”

“I could be company if you want to go somewhere.”

“Sounds good,” I said. “How much?”

I sensed her smile, and saw the way she thrust her body out to accentuate her breasts and hips. “Ten’ll get you more than you have a right to expect.”

“Deal, kid,” I said. Then I took a cigarette out, stuck it between my lips and fired it up. When she saw my face her breath was sucked in so hard she nearly choked. “Hello, Paula,” I said.

Paula Lees’ face was a pale oval in the yellow light of the match. Her mouth started to quiver, and for a second I thought she was going to make a break for it so I reached out and took her arm. She shook her head and almost whispered, “Please…”

“You could take a fall, Paula. Soliciting… a vag rap. Maybe eighteen months in detention.”

She caught the implication of that one word…
could.
“What… do you want, Mr. Scanlon?”

“Where’s your place?”

Paula looked back over her shoulder. “Right here.”

“Let’s go inside then.”

The tiny flat was typical of all the others around it, existing within a myriad of smells both human and vegetable. The walls were scratched and dirty, the paper peeling, the plaster cracked, and no attempt at rejuvenation could dent the squalor of the place.

Her apartment consisted of two rooms and a bathroom someone had made out of a closet, a combination living room and kitchen with an adjoining bedroom. Paula didn’t get the picture straight. She headed for the bedroom immediately and started to undress. She had her blouse and bra off and the zipper down on her skirt when I said, “Put them back on, kid.”

She jerked her head around. “But…”

I didn’t let her finish. “I’m not taking a pay-off in trade.”

Fractured modesty suddenly overcame her then. She edged behind the door and when she came out again she was dressed, spots of red showing high on her cheekbones and her mouth drawn into a tight, angry line. “I’m not doing any special tricks, Mr. Scanlon. None of that fancy stuff…”

“Sit down and shut up.”

Paula spun around at my tone, licked her lips nervously and did as she was told. After a minute of staring at her shoes she looked up and said, “Well?”

“How many kids working this street, Paula?”

She thought about it, shrugged and said, “Just me. It ain’t too good here.”

“Why stay?”

Her eyes seemed to crawl to mine. “Because
they
won’t let me go nowhere else.” I didn’t say anything. I just sat there. She added, “When Bummy Lentz and Loefert came down I scratched Bummy up and told Loefert off. Now they don’t let me off this block, the bastards.”

“Still the same old routine, isn’t it? Hoods still pushing the hustler trade. Where does Loefert come in?”

Paula shook her head. “He didn’t do nothing but make a call to the right guy.”

“Al Reese?”

She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.

I grinned. “Bummy won’t bother you any more. He got tanked on some bad booze with a wood alcohol base two weeks ago and died in Bellevue.”

“So the call still goes.”

“Maybe,” I said. “I’ll get the heat off you, but you get the hell off this street and find a job. There’s enough work in this town without wearing your tail out.”

“And for this you want what?” she challenged.

I said, “You’ve been out there every night, haven’t you?”

Paula nodded.

“Your name didn’t show as a witness to Doug Kitchen’s death.” When she looked down at her feet again I knew I had her. Like everybody else, she had been interviewed by the Homicide team but gave a negative answer. “You saw it, didn’t you?”

She knew what would happen if she tried to lie out of it. She’d sweat it out downtown with a soliciting charge over her head. Silently, she nodded again.

“Let’s hear it, kid.”

For a few seconds she sat there, then glanced up resignedly and said, “I saw him coming down the block, all right. Hell, I didn’t know it was him. He stopped and waved to somebody across the street who was going by under the light, but it was too far for me to see who it was. I saw him start to cross over and so did the other guy, then Doug sort of stopped, talked a little bit and began to back up. All of a sudden he started to run and this other guy, he just shot him right in the back. When Doug didn’t fall he shot twice again, and he fell right on the sidewalk. That other guy… he just walked away up the street.”

“What did you do?”

“Do? I went back inside, that’s what I did. I didn’t come out until the next morning. And I told a John I was going see him that night too.”

“Anything recognizable about the other guy?”

Paula shook her head. “It was too far away.”

“Think some more, Paula. A kill always has something special about it. Once you see it happen you don’t forget it very easily.”

Tight lines appeared at the corners of her eyes and she suddenly looked older than she was. “Honest, Mr. Scanlon…” She paused, bit her lip, then said, “It ain’t nothing, but that other guy… he let out a yell like.”

“What kind of yell?”

“Just a funny yell, then he shot him and walked away. It wasn’t loud, but I heard him. There wasn’t traffic or nothing right then. I heard him yell, that’s all. It didn’t sound right. I was scared. Honest, Mr. Scanlon…”

“Forget it, Paula.” I got up from the chair and slapped on my hat.

“What are you going to… do with me?”

“Not a thing, kid. Vice isn’t my specialty. I’m not here on a case. It’s just that I knew Doug Kitchen when we were all living around here. As far as you’re concerned, I’ll do what I said I’d do. If you’re smart you’ll get your tail off this street too.”

She believed me then and something changed in her eyes. “Gee,” she told me, “it’s hard to believe a cop would… well…” Paula lowered her eyes demurely, then caught mine again. Briefly, she glanced toward the bedroom. “If you’d like… I could show you… like real special things and…”

“Uh-uh,” I said. “I got all I can handle right now,” I lied.

But she didn’t know it and smiled as if she did.

The reports had listed only one other witness who wasn’t sure of what he had seen at all, a drunk coming out of a stupor he had laid on all day, who had seen the kill from the stairway going into the cellar at number 1209. The first shot made him look up and on the next he had seen Doug fall. Then he ducked down below the cement wall and stayed there. He thought he remembered a guy standing in the street but couldn’t be sure and he wasn’t the kind of witness you bothered pressing. If anybody else saw the incident he wasn’t talking. Right now the department had their own stoolies asking around, but in that neighborhood there was a natural, inborn reluctance to even mention anything that would make any more trouble than was already there, so it was doubtful if anything would turn up.

Walking back I reviewed what the sheets had stated. René Mills was found dead behind a building and only one person had mentioned hearing what could have been a gunshot and wasn’t sure of the time. Hymie Shapiro was killed inside his car where it was parked outside his apartment. Noisy Stuccio was shot in the tenement where he lived with the TV turned on full and if the sound hadn’t been up so high that the guy downstairs came up to complain, the body wouldn’t have been found for days.

Somebody was doing it nice and neatly. Very pro.

And there was one thing I was sure of. It wasn’t over yet. Interwoven in the wild hodgepodge of murders there was a peculiar pattern. So far the theme of it hadn’t emerged yet, but it would. It would. It was just too bad that somebody else would have to die before it showed all the way.

When it did I’d be there and a killer would be under the end of my gun with the big choice of dying on the spot or sweating it out in a mahogany and metal chair with electrodes on his legs and one on his head that was the big, permanent nightcap.

There was one more stop I wanted to make before the night was over. I walked one block, turned the corner and went in the vestibule beside Trent’s candy store and struck a match to look at the nameplate over the bells on the wall. A tarnished copper strip read R. CALLAHAN and I nudged the button. A minute later the automatic trip clicked on the door and I pushed it open, went up the stairs to the landing and waited outside the door.

Fifteen years ago Ralph Callahan had been retired from the force, but he had spent his life on the beat in his own neighborhood and you could never take the department out of the man. His eyes would still see, his mind classify events with practiced skill, even though he wasn’t active, but like every other retired police officer, he still had certain privileges extended him by the city including carrying a badge and a gun if he chose to.

When he opened the door he made me with a glance, nodded curtly and said, “Come on in, son.”

“Hello, Ralph.” He was a big guy even yet, filling out his pajamas in a stance that marked thousands of days in a uniform.

He waved me to a kitchen chair after closing the bedroom door softly. “The missus is a light sleeper,” he told me and sat down on the other side of the table. “Now… don’t remember you, but you look familiar.” I started to reach for my badge, but he waved me off. “I know
what
you are all right, son.”

I grinned at him. “Joe Scanlon. You laid a couple across my behind with that stick of yours when I was a kid.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “Now where are you?”

“Homicide. Special detail right now. Marta Borlig’s working it with me.”

“Damn, ain’t the department getting tricky?” He studied me a few seconds, then leaned forward on the table, his hands folded together. “Those four kills?”

“Uh-huh. Smell anything?”

“If I did I would have reported it. Nobody knows a thing.”

His eyes watched me shrewdly, and I said, “There’s another interesting angle.”

“That’s what I was waiting for you to say. Loefert and the others showing up?”

“That’s right,” I agreed. “What does it look like to you?”

“They’re out of place around here, that’s what it looks like. The only rackets going on are small stuff. Numbers, a few books, that sort of thing. A few hustlers work around, but it’s all normal procedure, and not big enough to crack down on. Hell, nobody’s got enough money in this neighborhood to lay on hard.”