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Authors: Mickey Spillane

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BOOK: The Last Cop Out

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Lederer stretched his tall frame in the chair and scowled.

“His dismissal wasn’t entirely unjustified, even by you, Captain.”

“You’re no cop. How the hell would you know?”

“Because you’re cop enough to know that rules are rules. The police department is a public service governed by specific regulations.”

“Sometimes those regulations aren’t enough to serve the public, either.”

“Nevertheless. Gillian Burke was a specialist and he kept files in his head he should have committed to the department. Somehow he made contacts and had sources of information the entire department can’t duplicate.”

“Now you’re admitting he was a good cop.”

“In that area... yes. Nobody ever denied it. His attitude and actions about other things was far from being above reproach. In fact, they were almost criminal.”

“He wasn’t dealing with solid citizens, Mr. Lederer. Whether you like it or not, he got results.”

“And the department got the blame, don’t forget that.”

“No, I don’t forget it. I know how money can buy enough heat to get anybody bounced out and nobody asks where that money comes from. It takes money to buy picket crowds in front of the mayor’s office and get people to write letters and the TV bunch to slant the newscasts.

“Do you really know how close he was to busting up the whole fucking syndicate? Did you know that he had gotten on to something so damn big it would have blown the top right off their operation and guaranteed you guys a hundred lifetimes in jail?” Long paused, turned his lip up disgustedly and continued. “No, you didn’t know ... but they sure as hell knew something was going to pop and beat Gill to the punch by delivering the heat in your direction. They made you guys pull the cork and take the teeth out of the tiger and even when it was over he would have given me what he knew, except I didn’t have the guts to ask him to. A week later when he had time to think it over he wouldn’t have given anybody the sweat off his balls. You made him look like a slob, but when you take a close look at the picture, you sure as hell can see who the real slobs are.”

“You’re getting out of line, Captain.”

“Let’s say I almost did. I was about to tell you more.”

“Don’t jeopardize yourself on his account, Captain. You know he deliberately withheld evidence on the Berkowitz and Manute murders.”

“Why would he cover for two dead guys who made dirty movies? You could see better stuff in any Times Square sex joint than those stags they were turning out. We confiscated the whole lot and identified every last man and woman who did the bits and there wasn’t a one worth messing with. We couldn’t even stick a charge on them.”

“Sergeant Burke could have spoken in his own defense.”

“Certainly, and have you guys blow everything he was working on.”

“Police work isn’t a solo operation, Captain, or have you forgotten?”

“Like hell it’s not, and I don’t forget that either. There are some cops who can get things done their own way and you leave them alone to do it. They never hear of time off or vacations because they’re damn well dedicated to the job and when you take that type out of play you leave one hell of a hole in the line you couldn’t fill with a hundred pencil pushers.”

“Perhaps we’d better get back to the proposal.”

“Gill is going to tell you to piss up a stick.” Before Lederer could answer Long held up his hand. “No, it’s not a metaphor. He’ll just look at you and say to go piss up a stick. In fact, he might even get a little more diagramatic. Remember what he said at the hearing? Remember what he told all those slobs face to face afterwards? Now he’s had more time to think of better things to say.”

“Still...”

The big cop stopped him with a twist of his mouth. It was an odd smile that worked its way up to his eyes and he sat back in his chair and let all the tension ease out of his body. “You know, Mr. Lederer, I think I will put your proposal to him. I’ll tell him every damn detail of it ... how the D.A.’s office wants him to cooperate as an agent of their department, giving of all his time, energy and experience ... and knowledge ... out of the goodness of his heart and love of police work and abject desire to be taken back in the good graces of a batch of ingrates, without salary or recognition. Then I want to put down his verbatim answer and deliver it on an inter-office memo where everybody from the desk clerk to the mayor’s office can see it.” He paused and grinned at the uncomfortable expression on Lederer’s face. “All I can say is whoever runs your think tank must do it in a pointed cap.”

When he got done, Bill Long sat back and waited. He watched Gill finish the sandwich, then down half his beer and finally blurted out, “Well, say it.”

“Say what?”

“For them to piss up a stick.”

“For a police officer, your language is atrocious, Captain.”

“Oh, shit. Say anything then.”

“What took them so long to ask?”

The cigarette almost fell out of the captain’s mouth. His eyebrows arched up into his hairline and a look of bewilderment made Gill’s lips crack in a smile. “What the hell’s going through your head, Gill?”

“Just remembering.”

“You
like
the idea?”

Burke shrugged and finished the rest of his beer. “Part of it.”

“Why?”

“Let’s call it a sense of ego.”

“You’re not going to do it, are you?”

“Tell them I’ll think about it.”

“Look, stupid, you can fall right into a trap again. They’re caught right in the middle of some kind of crazy mob war they can’t do a thing about and wouldn’t they just love to have a fall guy handy. No matter which way it goes you’ll get screwed. Come up with an answer and they take the credit ... mess things up and you’re the patsy. You’re no cop any more and if you stir up those stinking hardcases you’re dead. There’s no way of winning and every way of losing.”

“Maybe”

“Screw maybe. You know the score as well as I do. Besides, there’s something more.”

“You mean about the Frenchman being in town?”

Long looked at him a few seconds before he asked, “How the hell would you know that?”

“Some people I know don’t care if I’m a cop or not any more. They still pay back favors.”

“Frank Verdun would like nothing better than to see you hit.”

“Wrong, buddy. So I shot him. He lived and beat the rap. It was all part of the game and in the past now. The Frenchman is too much of a pro to bother tapping out an old adversary.”

“You know why he’s here?”

“Certainly.”

“I suppose you got an idea of what’s going on.”

Burke’s shoulders made a gentle shrug. “There are several possibilities.”

“Name one.”

“Somebody doesn’t like somebody else,” Gill said.

Frank Verdun listened to the reports impassively. He didn’t appear to be deep in thought, but every fact was registering in his mind, falling into categories and probabilities. There were new faces in the conference room of Boyer-Reston, Inc, this time that Mark Shelby didn’t like but didn’t dare disapprove of because they were faces that belonged to the Frenchman’s private squad, the kind of faces that might have followed Attila the Hun. Six of them had investigated every detail of the killings, buying, forcing and smelling out every bit of information that was available. Bits and pieces had cropped up that not even the police were aware of and now it was all laid out to be studied.

When the discussion was over the Frenchman said, “No two descriptions match. No guns match. The methods all taste the same and the target is just us. You’re split down the middle about it being one man or different men. That’s no answer.”

For two weeks Mark Shelby had been thinking the same thing. He tapped his pencil against the table top until he had their attention. “It could be a team trained by one man.”

“Sounds reasonable,” the Frenchman agreed, “but that makes it an organized operation with a higher chain of command. If that were so, by now there would have been a secondary stage going. So far nobody’s moving in at all. You don’t pull off all those hits and let it go at that. Somebody wants something big and something bad.”

“What does Papa Menes say about it?”

Verdun’s voice was quietly deadly. “You like it where you are, Mark?”

Shelby took the push, but not all the way. “I’m fine,” he said.

“Good. Then stay fine. I’m speaking for Papa Menes. Remember it.” He paused and looked the room over again.

“We’re up against an organization. That’s one. They’re damn smart and damn good. That’s two. There’s one hell of a showdown coming up. That’s three.”

When he stopped, Arthur Kevin said, “Who do we look for, Frank?”

“The hit men. They won’t be contract boys, you can bet on that. They’re right inside the organization itself. That’s their weakness. All we need to do is get on top of one of them and he’ll scream his head off. We can backtrack him to the day he was born and no matter who’s pulling this crap, we’ll find them and it’ll be the last time it ever gets tried again.”

Nobody spoke at all.

Frank’s eyes had a reptilian glitter and he smiled. “Everybody scared to ask how?”

There was a general scuffling in the seats and a subdued murmur of disavowal.

“Maybe you don’t get the picture all the way,” the Frenchman said. “They’re picking us off from the top down until they can get to where they can handle us. Believe me, it’ll never happen. So like Papa Menes wants, you stay on the streets and in the open and take your chances on getting hit. You don’t have to make it easy, but you don’t run either. We got the soldiers out covering everybody and even if we lose a few more, we’re going to get somebody sooner or later. That’s it. Meeting’s over.”

That night they lost two more. They weren’t gunned down. They simply took advantage of an option they had prepared for long ago, an unobtrusive exit with a suitcase full of money to a strange little country where the food was lousy, the water worse, but where there was safety in a new identity and total disassociation from a world that meant sudden death if they dared return. In view of the circumstances, it was assumed that they had fallen to the enemy who had added another dimension to its method of operation.

The other meeting three miles farther downtown was reminiscent of kids who were kept after school waiting to be lectured by the principal. There was a sense of uneasiness you could almost feel and the seven persons waiting for Gillian Burke and Bill Long to arrive were still trying to develop statements that wouldn’t make them look like complete fools.

When they finally walked in everybody nodded politely, took their seats at the table with Gill at the far end opposite the district attorney. Gill gave Bill Long a wry smile and took them off the hook. “Let’s start off without any bullshit,” he said.

That got their attention right away. Lederer stifled a cough and the man from the mayor’s office dropped his pen.

“You got yourselves a hot chestnut and nobody knows how to handle it. The computers all came out zero and now you need all that beautiful inside stuff that used to be available for the asking. You guys’ll sure do anything when it gets warm, but I don’t blame you a bit. I’d do the same thing myself.”

“Mr. Burke ...” the district attorney started to say.

“Can it, I’m talking,” Gill told him.

The D.A. said nothing.

“Don’t tell me you give a damn about the people who got bumped off. Each one down is one more you can close the files on, but when a bite come out of their organization and they close ranks enough to lean on the right people, you start sweating. So now you want me back in again. Okay, that’s what you want and I’ll come back.”

All the eyes were on him now.

“Conditionally, that is,” Gill continued. “I haven’t told you what I want yet.”

“There weren’t any conditions stipulated, Mr. Burke,” Lederer said.

“Naturally. You’re trying to get everything for nothing. Just don’t forget ... you’re the ones doing the asking, so I lay down the ground rules or go home. Take it or leave it.”

“State your conditions,” the district attorney said.

Gill nodded, looked at each one in turn, his face an angular mask of hard competence. “An official position, access to all police files and materials, guaranteed cooperation of any department I choose and no interference from any political faction.”

“Are you sure you don’t want a salary,” Lederer asked insolently.

“Being public-spirited, a dollar a year will do.”

“You expect to take a year to find out who’s behind these murders?”

“Mr. Lederer,” Burke said, “those weren’t murders.”

“Oh?”

“They were killings.”

“What’s the difference?”