Day of Wrath (25 page)

He made a puzzled face to indicate that the name rang
no bells. So I explained the drug deal to him, leaving out any mention
of the Caldwell boy or of the missing girl.

"What I really want to know," I said when I'd finished,
"is whether any drug dealers have put out a contract on him. Or if anyone
had a big enough grudge to have wanted to give him grief."

"What kind of grief?" DeVries said.

"Murder."

He smiled as if I'd named one of his kids. "You know there
are an awful lot of people in this city dealing drugs, Harry. And every
damn one of them is dangerous if he's pushed hard enough."

"I realize that, George. But let's narrow it down to heroin
or cocaine dealers. And from what I know about Clinger, the deal that fell
through was probably a large one."

"
That's a much smaller ballpark," DeVries admitted. "You
have any idea why the deal fell apart?"

"I think that one of his backers dropped out at the last
moment, leaving Clinger holding the bag."

DeVries scraped his chin with a dirty thumbnail. "That
could do it, all right. Those boys tend to get mighty anxious where money
is concerned, especially if they'd fronted some of the stuff."

"That's what I figured."

"I'll see what I can do," he said, leaning back in his
chair. "And give you a call tonight."

After finishing with George, I dragged myself back down
to a phone booth in the lobby and rang up Central Station. I wanted to
talk to Al Foster, who was the closest thing to a friend I had on the force.
But he wasn't at his desk. I told the duty sergeant to tell him I'd drop
around in a half an hour, hung up, and walked out into the day. I spotted
a little storefront bar and grill across the square and gazed at it longingly.
I knew that liquor was the last thing I needed with a concussion. I also
knew that it was the first thing I needed if I was going to stay on my
feet. I tossed a mental coin; when it came up tails, I tossed it again
and walked across Elm to the bar. The bartender—a chunky Irishman with
a shock of red hair and a square, pit-marked face—didn't look terribly
impressed with my wounds. But in a Court House bar, he probably saw his
share of bruises and bandages daily.

I ordered a Scotch and another. And by the time I put
the three dollars on the bar, I was feeling moderately improved. I knew
that I'd probably pay for those drinks again, later in the day, when the
buzz wore off. But there was always more Scotch, I thought cheerfully.
Like death and taxes, it could be depended on.

I almost enjoyed the drive over to Ezzard Charles. The
pain in my head was still there, but it had withdrawn a pace or two into
the distance. And the nausea had gone away completely. Even my ankle felt
better, as I stepped out of the car and walked to the Police Building. 
I sailed past the desk sergeant and up to the second floor—to Al F oster's
tiny oflice. I didn't even bother to knock.

He was bent over his desk when I walked in. All I could
see of him was his shiny bald spot and the smoky white line of the cigarette
in his mouth. When he looked up and saw me standing there, his long rubbery
face went slack and the cigarette drooped between his lips, like a tongue
depressor.

"You're getting too old for this business, Harry," he
said in his high-pitched, sardonic voice. I sat down on a corner of his
desk and said, "You may be right."

"
Who did it?"

"A boy by the name of Logan."

He nodded listlessly. "And next time, his name will be
Smith or Jones."

"You worried about me, Al?"

"Have you taken a good look at yourself in a mirror lately?"

"
There was one in a bar in Elm Street," I said. "I stared
into it for a while."

"I'll bet," he said drily. He made a little pile of the
stuff on his desk, then slapped his hands on top of it like a paperweight.
"You push too hard, Harry. You always have. Sometimes it's smarter to let
up."

He was usually the most impersonal of men, and the sudden
solicitude surprised me. Maybe it was the booze, but I found myself getting
angry. "I'll take care of my house," I said coldly. "You take care of yours."

"And what does that mean?"

"
It means you've got a cop in homicide who may be taking
his orders from outside the department."

Whether it was true or not—and I was hoping Al could
tell me—he hadn't liked to hear me say it. That was police business,
and I was an outsider. He took a deep breath and said, "Take it up with
the public prosecutor. I don't want to hear about it."

"
It's important, Al," I said.

"Yeah, it's always important when a cop's involved."

"
Will you give me a chance to explain?"

He tamped the cigarette out in a tin ashtray and shook
a fresh one from a crumpled pack. His eyes had gone cold and vague, as
if he'd stopped caring about what was said. I went ahead and told him anyway.
Because I was a little drunk and a little angry and because whether he
wanted to hear it or not, I wanted to say it. I told him everything about
the case, from the Segal girl's disappearance through Lavelle's visit.
And then I told him what I suspected.

"Bannock's in the Croft family's pocket, Al. I don't know
how firmly, but he's in there. And if he can make the case without involving
Irene Croft, he's going to do it."

"And why not?" he said. "There's no proof that she and
Clinger are involved in the Caldwell boy's murder."

"Maybe not. But they could be involved and we'd never
know it, because the Crofts don't want the question to come up."

He took a drag off the Tareyton and squinted at me through
the smoke. "Take it up with Bannock," he finally said.

"I'm taking it up with you, A1."

"And I told you I don't want to hear it," he snapped.

"
Bannock knows his business."

"Yeah, he's a credit to the force."

"You son-of-a-bitch," Foster said. "You don't even have
a case, and you've got him convicted?"

"
That's why I'm talking to you, Al, instead of to a grand
jury."

He scowled at his desk.

I said, "All I'm asking you is whether it's possible whether
Bannock could be a crooked cop."

"Anything's possible," he said coldly.

"Will you look into it?" I asked him. "Just nose around.
See if he's connected?"

"I'll think about it," Foster said.
 

I WASN'T SURE THAT FOSTER WOULD FOLLOW UP ON what I'd
asked him to do. But then I'd asked him to do what, in his book, was a
dirty thing—to impugn the integrity of a brother officer. The fact that
Bannock might actually be implicated in a conspiracy to obstruct justice
was beside the point. No cop likes to fink on another cop—it was really
that simple.

As I walked downstairs and out to the car, I decided not
to count on Foster's help. Which left me feeling very much alone. My only
hope was finding Grace and getting her to talk to me about the Caldwell
boy's murder. She wouldn't make much of a witness in her high heels and
feathered hats, but I didn't really need a witness—just the threat of
one. It had occurred to me, as I was talking to Foster, that the Croft
family was peculiarly vulnerable to threats. It was the threat of scandal
that had started the whole conspiracy. And that morbid fear of scandal
could be turned against them, if I could. manage to convince Lavelle that
it would be smarter to let the truth come out than to go ahead with the 
cover-up. And to convince him of that I needed to know precisely what had
happened on Wednesday afternoon. I needed to know at least as much as the
Crofts did about the boy's death.

Of course, my plan was predicated on the assumption that
there was something to cover up—that Bobby Caldwell had not died at the
hands of some hophead with a very bad temper. And the only way to confirm
that assumption was to talk to someone who knew the truth.

I stood beside the Pinto and gazed up over the domed roof
of Music Hall at the green fringe of hillside on the eastern horizon. It
was time to make that climb again, I thought. To the top of Mt. Adams,
where I hoped Grace would be waiting with what I needed to know.

That Saturday afternoon, Mt. Adams seemed filled with
a sleepy beauty. The cobbled streets, the colorful houses had the dazed,
sun-suffused look of a town in the tropics. White walls and dark spaces.
All life gone torpid and weary. I coasted down Hill Street, past Corky's—its
doors wide open, the bar just a woody gleam amid the dark, empty tangle
of chairs and tables. Below me, the Ohio made a muddy, glistening path
between the steep green hills on either bank. The river had the imposing
look of a borderline that afternoon—something to be crossed over. But
then I was thinking ahead to the ferry and the farm.

I dropped down to the Celestial Street plateau and parked
beneath a hackthorn on the south side of the street. Up the block, the
black roof of The Pentangle Club twinkled in the sun. My head had begun
to feel heavy again and I had to blink to focus my eyes. It was the concussion,
coming back to life. I wanted another drink. I wanted to go to sleep, like
that sunny hillside. To curl up and forget Bobby Caldwell and Robbie Segal
and Grace. But I made myself walk the length of the block, past the wrought-iron
fences and the blank wooden facades of the tired houses, up to the long
porch. I stopped for a moment on the bottom step, wondering if she would
be inside, as Joey had said she would be on a Saturday afternoon, or if
she had bolted like Annie when she'd realized how dangerous a place Clinger's
farm had become. I actually held my breath as I mounted the stairs and
stepped through the door. And let it back out—in a long, grateful sigh—when
I found her sitting on the stool, humming a melancholy tune.

"Grace?" I said softly. She stopped singing and looked
up.

Her pale face filled with pain when she saw me. Her eyes
touched at the bandages on my head and the purple bruises on my cheek,
and she brought her hand to her own temple and held it there, like a sympathetic
salute.

"My Cod. My God, your head."

"
If it wasn't for you, it would have been much worse,"
I said and felt a rush of gratitude to her that made me blush. I looked
away—partly because I was embarrassed and partly because I needed her
help again and didn't know how to ask for it.

She lowered her hand and touched delicately at my cheek.
Her fingers felt like snow.

"I didn't really see—last night. I didn't know how badly
they'd hurt you. Those sons-of-bitches," she said furiously and her eyes
slid from my face to the floor. "I'm sorry."

"You don't need to apologize," I told her. "You saved
my life. They would have killed me."

She looked up and started to say something—something,
perhaps, in explanation. But when she saw my bruises again, she merely
nodded.

There was no subtle way to ask, so I came right out with
it. "I need your help again, Grace. I need some information?

She shook her head. "I can't. They know I know you, now.
And they don't like it. I just can't, Harry."

"If you can't, then who can?" I said to her. "If you can't,
then Bobby Caldwell might as well not have  lived."

"I'm telling you they'll kill me, Harry," she said desperately.
"I'm sorry for Bobby, but I have to think of myself."

I studied her for a moment and couldn't bring myself to
threaten her or cajole her—not after what she'd done for me. "All right,"
I said heavily. "I'll find some other way."

I turned to leave. I was through the door when I heard
her whisper, "Wait."

I looked back.

"You just can't leave her there," Grace said with a kind
of exhausted compassion.

"Do you mean Robbie?"

She nodded. "I heard them talking this morning. Irene
and Logan. You can't leave her there. Theo's all she's got, and he's weak."
She said it bitterly.

"You want to go somewhere and talk about it?"

She looked over at Joey, who was rinsing glasses and stacking
them on the bar. "I guess we better," she said.

"But you've got to help me, man. You've got to get me
out of this city."

"I'll get you out," I promised her.

"To L.A.," she said.

"All right. To L.A."

"Then take me to that funky apartment of yours and let's
talk."

As we walked out of the bar into the waning sunlight,
I couldn't help asking her, "Why did you change your mind?"

She looked straight ahead—at the sleepy, unpeopled street.
"Why did I help you last night?" she said in a bemused voice. "Good Karma,
I guess. Good for the music."

And very good for me, I thought.
And for Robbie, too.

When we got back to the Delores, Grace walked directly
to the bedroom and sat down on the edge of the mattress. She looked considerably
less resolute than she had when we'd struck the deal in Mt. Adams. But
then she had good reason to be afraid. If the Crofts found out about her,
she might end up as another
quid pro quo
in Jerry Lavelle's insurance
policy. That was why I couldn't use her as a witness. No matter what she
told me, I was going to leave her out of it. It was the only certain way
to keep her safe.