Killer Mine (11 page)

CHAPTER TWO

GEORGE LUCAS grew up on the same street I did and was all set to break into the mob when he took time out to count the cost and figured it too high. Instead, he worked his way through school and became a criminal-law lawyer. But he still looked like a crook and half the time he acted like one. His record in court was imposing. He could out-shyster the shysters anytime and if he could stick a needle up the DA.’s tail he’d take the case free.

When I walked into his office he grinned crookedly and said, “I had an idea you’d be around.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, Regan. It was just a feeling. You did okay in court. How could you afford Selkirk and Selkirk? That’s big time.”

I sat down and tossed my hat on his desk. “They came free, Georgie. Monty Selkirk figured he owed me a favor. I let him pay it back.”

“You got his kid off the hook one time, didn’t you?”

I shrugged. “He wasn’t involved. It was a phoney blackmail attempt.”

“Good to have buddies like that. Always have something working for you that way.” He flipped open a box of cigars, offered me one and when I said no, lit up himself. “So what’s with you today, Patrick?”

“Something up your alley.”

“Let’s have it.”

“You familiar with my case?”

“Everything, boy. It’s home town news, you know.”

“Yeah.” I leaned back and stuck out my feet. “Well, just to review you, I was assigned to the Leo Marcus thing. We’d picked up a rumble that he was back in the extortion racket among other things.”

George nodded and sucked on the cigar. “I heard about it He was getting up there.”

“He
was
there, friend. He ran the organizational operation along the Atlantic coast from New York to the toe of Florida. He set up a string of motels with organization money for one thing, used each unit as a local headquarters and clearing house and did it so nice and legally he couldn’t be touched.”

“Smart,” George said. “The new method. Keep it legal.”

“He didn’t quite make it. I had a tipoff that would have wrapped up the entire deal. It took eight weeks, but I had a dossier on Leo Marcus complete with incriminating evidence that would have blown the operation sky high. Just before the end of the investigation I met with two of the commissioners at a midtown hotel so they could pave the way for us to hit the operation without tipping off the papers. That night they saw what I had and knew what it meant.”

“That was your mistake, hey, kiddo?”

I nodded. “That was it. They knew I had it and when I couldn’t produce it again I was cooked. That made the money plant look real.”

George pointed with the cigar. “About the loot…”

I laughed at him. He still sounded Brooklyn. “The loot, friend, was five lousy G’s. An anonymous call to HQ said I sold out and Argenio hit my flat where he found a package of fifty one-hundred-dollar bills supposedly hidden in my closet. I was held, I couldn’t come up with my file and couldn’t account for the cash. Open and shut”

“Just like that?”

“That’s the size of it.”

“They didn’t take your departmental record into consideration?”

“Give them a break. They tried. I have a lot of friends around, George.”

“You’re not lacking in enemies, either. So go.”

I went. “I probably could have stood off the charges. The second mistake was in getting mad.”

“You always were like that, Patrick. Even when you were a little kid I used to tell you to take it easy. Think you’d listen? Hell, no.”

“So I wanted to know who put the finger on me. It came down through Marcus, but I wanted to know who passed the word. I was working the stoolies when I got tagged.”

“Like how?”

“Like I was slipped a mickey and steered out to Marcus’ place.”

“And there it ends,” he said around his cigar.

I nodded.

“You were lucky,” he told me. “One thing, you just can’t always figure a jury. You talked it up enough before Marcus got killed. You know how many guys… cops yet, heard you say you’d put so many holes in him he’d look like a screen door?”

“That was talk. You know damn well how it goes.”

“Sure, but it got done. Man, six shots in the kisser that knocked him kicking into a fireplace so that he’s half cremated before they find you both.” He leaned back in his chair, blowing smoke up toward the ceiling. “Until they found the finger that was shot off him they weren’t even sure it was Marcus. Of course, the dentist they ran down made it positive, but for a while they were shook. Hell, you… if it
was
you… did everybody a big favor. The cops should be happy.”

“It wasn’t me.”

“Your gun. Your prints. Paraffin test. You’re there out drunk. You made threats. You had a great motive. It’s pretty strong, Patrick.”

“Was
pretty strong, remember?”

He grinned and nodded. “Selkirk’s a good lawyer. So what do you want from me?”

“My five grand. It was impounded. There might be a technicality or two involved, but since I have the name, I want the game. That five G’s Argenio found is mine, right?”

George’s face got real bright. “An interesting thought, Patrick. You played the ponies, hit a goodie, now spill out the tax and it’s yours. I think it can be arranged.”

“Then arrange it. Whoever planted that loot is financing his own funeral.”

He leaned forward, the concern on his face showing in the tight lines around his mouth. “This might louse you up in the department.”

“The hell with ’em. They can’t do anything but clear me. But I want that cash.”

“Sure, Patrick, I’ll get it for you. Anything else?”

“Yeah, one thing. Represent me at the departmental trial.”

“Sure, but what about meanwhile?”

“You know me, Georgie boy. I’m nobody’s slob.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of. You packing a rod?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Later?”

“If I have to.”

“Like I said,” he repeated. “What about meanwhile?”

“I want my badge back. They’ll probably try to shuffle me off to some obscure division, so make a deal. I’ll keep nice and clean and out of everybody’s way. Otherwise I’ll really raise a stink. They’ll know what I’m talking about.”

“So do I, kid. The picture’s clear. You’re just asking for a bucketful of trouble and an early death.”

“Didn’t I always?”

“You did. That you did. You’re such a damn big target it’s a wonder you ever stayed alive this long.”

I picked my hat off his desk and slid it on. “Take care of me, Georgie boy.”

“Just like the old days,” he said.

I nodded. “So now I got a mouthpiece. Fine comedown for a cop.” I grinned at him. “Just like the old days.”

Jerry Nolan always ate Saturday lunches at Vinnie’s. The menu was wop clam chowder with all the breadsticks you could eat stacked up like cordwood in the middle of the table. Vinnie automatically dished up a plate for me and had it at the table as soon as I sat down. When I said hello he nodded, the reserve plain on his face. I was something he wasn’t used to. Ordinarily everything would be black or white, but now something was grey and he wasn’t used to it.

“You’re taking a long time,” I finally said to him.

He paused, a half a breadstick heavy with butter halfway to his mouth. “What are you getting at?”

“You. Your damn insistence upon the letter of the law all the way. By now you should figure yourself for a sanctimonious bastard in a departmental sense.”

His face tightened and he bit into the breadstick, waiting.

“The law, buddy,” I said. “It proved me innocent. Remember? You’re the one always sounding off about the sanctity of the law. Now the law has acted. I’m clean. Come off it. Like you tell everybody else, don’t figure yourself bigger than the law so that when the law acts you refuse to accept the verdict.”

His neck reddened and he bent his face toward his plate. His eyes flicked up momentarily and he nodded, trying to conceal a self-conscious smile.

“Okay.”

That’s all he said, and I knew everything was all right again. Nolan was a funny one, a hell of a tough cop, but square all the way. His hatred for hoods was a terrible passion but nothing compared to the way he felt about crooked cops. He had had a hard time swallowing the thing that had happened to me, but now it was dead and buried.

I said, “I picked up something.”

“New?”

“To me, anyway. A redhead helped me into a cab that night.”

“She wasn’t there when you got out. You took that ride alone,” he reminded me. He spooned his chowder up again, then: “You weren’t followed, either. I questioned Rivera about that myself. He was positive.”

“The redhead set up the address. Damn it, I had been mouthing off about Marcus and she had me driven there.”

With a patient gesture he put his spoon down and wiped his mouth. “I know, Regan. I heard it all. I’m not stupid. I checked out everything that night personally. I didn’t pass any of it on because there was nothing conclusive. It’s pretty typical of people who have been drinking to help another drunk into a cab. Nobody makes sense. Everybody’s at the ha ha stage. The driver gets paid and goes along with things. Any cabbie will drop a drunk off at an address. He won’t get wrapped up over it.”

“This didn’t come out at the trial.”

“I said it was inconclusive. You had enough against you. I didn’t have to make it any worse.”

“Thanks.”

“My pleasure.”

“You overlooked one thing.”

“Now I know.”

“All right, tell it to me,” I said.

“You were slipped a mickey sometime that night.”

“Thanks for realizing it. You know why?”

“Sure. So you could kill off Marcus.”

I shook my head. “You know damn well that would be a stupid trick. I was too far gone to do anything. I was set up for a conviction and you know it. Anybody that drunk would have the cops asking questions long before a jury would.”

Nolan leaned back in his seat and reached for his cigarettes. When he had one lit he said, “You know the ingredients in a mickey?”

I nodded. “Sure. Generally chloral hydrate. For the knockout kind, anyway.”

“That’s right. But the restriction on its use is that it knocks you out or doesn’t knock you out. If you went under you wouldn’t be able to act of your own volition. However, during the war the Germans came up with a new one. A simple formula change brought the desired results, but when certain initial effects had worn off, the subject had physical action without mental control and no later recollection.”

A small fire started deep in my belly. “Go on.”

“It was called Sentol. It allowed a person to come out of a stupor, perform an act, then go back into a stupor again.”

“This didn’t come out at the trial,” I said coldly.

“I realize that. Again, it was inconclusive. When you were found you were given the usual balloon test for drunks. The percentage was against you. The kind of a dosage you could possibly… and I said
possibly…
have been given, would have allowed you to drink enough to genuinely get drunk, at least enough to go past the critical percentage point in your blood. By all known tests, you were chemically drunk.”

“So why this sudden slant?”

“Ted Marker, up in the lab, is probably only one of the few familiar with Sentol. Occasionally he tests for it. Unfortunately, too much time had passed for a positive result, but what he found was curious.”

“Being curious and uncovering facts are pretty far apart.”

“Sure, but that’s as far as he got. The analysis showed a couple of indications of the presence of Sentol. It was a bare possibility.”

Then I realized just how far out on a limb they had gone for me. In one way I could have been victimized by that damn drug, but just as surely I could have killed Marcus.

He let it sink in, then went on. “Sentol, from what Ted knows about it, was originally called a ‘conscience remover.’ Properly administered, it allowed you to fulfill the desires of the primary passions like love or hate or fear. In your case it would be hatred. You wanted to kill Marcus so the drug removed any restrictions on you for doing so.”

“That is,” I said, “if it was administered.”

“Of course.”

“Now things are getting a little too obvious, aren’t they?”

Nolan shrugged, dragged in deeply on his cigarette, letting out the smoke in a controlled grey stream. “There are only two possibilities. One… you killed him. Two… somebody else did and arranged very elaborately for you to be the patsy.”

“That makes me pretty important.”

For a few moments Jerry sat there studying the ash on his cigarette, then he turned those cold eyes on me and said, “Just what did you have on Marcus?”

His tone was a patient one. Waiting was nothing new to him at all. I said, “You remember when I was assigned to Marcus?”

He nodded and pulled on the smoke again. “I knew that you had been assigned, but not the nature of the deal.”

“Orders came from the top. Only six people knew that I was to concentrate on Marcus. I could work in my own way and nobody was over me directing the operation. There was a limited fund made available so I could buy information if necessary and if I had to work outside normal jurisdiction I was guaranteed quick cooperation with other departments. It was set up pretty much like with the Parker kidnapper and the Small-Greenblatt spy thing.”

“I remember them both.”

“In brief, Leo Marcus’ operation was the result of the heat put on the Syndicate ever since the Apalachin raid. The Syndicate couldn’t function as a unit and rather than have it fall apart into fragments that would be difficult to reassemble later, they set it up into sections that would operate individually until they were ready to bring them back under one head again.