The Black Hearts Murder (6 page)

“Seems to me you could use some,” McCall said mildly. “The Supreme Court has made it quite clear that arrested persons are entitled to legal counsel from the moment of arrest, before being questioned, unless they knowingly waive. Your prisoner just demanded permission to call his lawyer, and your response was to tell him to shut up. You've already laid the ground for reversal of any conviction you may get against him, Mr. Volper.”

Volper started to puff up. “You sound like a lawyer.”

“I am.”

“Oh? Which bar?”

“Illinois.”

“I see.” Volper seemed to be considering his options. Finally he said, “As it happens, I haven't asked Mr. Rawlings anything yet, so his constitutional rights haven't been violated. And Mrs. Franks, as you heard me tell her, isn't under arrest.”

McCall shrugged. “I could give you an argument about her right to a lawyer, too, but it's your bailiwick, Mr. Volper. I hope you won't mind my observing?”

Volper's expression suggested that he minded very much. At this moment a little half-bald man wearing oversized horn eyeglasses stuck his head timidly into the squadroom. At sight of District Attorney Volper he looked relieved and hurried over. He had the look of a minor executive, and McCall put him down as ten years younger than he looked, which was fiftyish.

“I hurried fast as I could, Mr. Volper,” he panted, trotting up. “I mean after I got your message.”

“Oh, Mr. Cordes,” the district attorney said. “Thanks for coming. Though I did expect you sooner.”

“I was out of the studio when you phoned—didn't get back till just now.” His look of worry deepened. “What did you want me for?”

The little man was a floor-starer, and McCall almost expected Volper to take him by the chin and jerk his head up. But all Volper said was, “Do you recognize anyone here, Mr. Cordes?”

The newcomer wrenched his gaze from his study of the floor and looked uneasily from face to face. When he reached the face of LeRoy Rawlings, he drew back, a startled movement. “He's the one,” he quavered. “He's the one!”

“The one who, Mr. Cordes?”

“The messenger who delivered the package from Harlan James!”

“You're sure of that, Mr. Cordes?”

“Oh, yes. Oh, yes!”

“I never saw this honky before in my whole life,” LeRoy Rawlings said.

“That was a pretty positive identification, Rawlings,” Volper said with a smile. “But I'll tell you what I'll do with you. You tell me where Harlan James is hiding out and I think I can promise you the charge against you will be nullified.”

“You know what, pig?” Rawlings said, spitting at Volper's shoe. “Go screw.”

SIX

McCall had never witnessed an official identification like this one. A black man was to be identified, and only one black man was present. Apparently the lineup technique was not part of Banbury's law enforcement system.

He decided for the time being to remain in the role of observer.

“You fool, Roy,” Mrs. Franks said. “Don't you know you're just playing their game?”

“I'm a man!” Rawlings said.

“You're an idiot.”

Volper smiled again. He ordered Lieutenant Cox and Sergeant Fenner to take Rawlings downstairs for booking while he questioned Mrs. Franks.

The little man named Cordes asked uneasily, “You through with me, Art—I mean, Mr. Volper?”

Interesting slip, McCall thought. The BOKO station manager wasn't very bright. Of course he and his boss Gerald Horton would be hand-in-glove with the district attorney.

“For now, Mr. Cordes, for now. I'll require you to appear in court later, of course, as a witness.”

“Well, sure.” The little man shuffled. “Well. I guess in that case I'll run along.”

“You do that,” Volper said.

The question was, was Cordes party to a police frame-up, or had his been a genuine identification? It was hard to say. At any rate, it merited following up. McCall raised a hand in a general goodbye and sauntered after Cordes. He managed to catch up with the little man at the elevators.

Cordes glanced around at him self-consciously.

McCall stuck out his hand. “They've got bad manners in there, Mr. Cordes. My name is McCall.”

The station manager's handshake was as feeble as McCall had expected it to be.

“Benjamin Cordes is mine, Mr. McCall. Are you with the detective bureau or the district attorney's office?”

“Neither,” McCall said. “I work for Governor Holland,”

“Oh,
that
McCall! Pleased to meet you, Mr. McCall.”

The elevator door on the left slid open. A uniformed officer was in the car. McCall was interested to observe that Cordes attempted no further conversation until the elevator reached the lobby. The little man was visibly relieved when the officer left them.

“It's a funny thing,” he confided to McCall. “Ever since I was a boy I've been afraid of policemen. Isn't that silly?”

“Not always,” McCall said, and Cordes laughed uncertainly. “By the way, Mr. Cordes,” he went on as they strolled toward the street doors, “I understand that, in your description of the messenger who delivered the tape and letter, you were only able to give the police a rough approximation of his height and weight, and his skin, I believe you said, was quite dark. You were also quoted as saying that all black men look alike to you. Or did I get it wrong, Mr. Cordes?”

“Oh, I didn't mean it that way,” the station manager said quickly. “Not that way at all! I just meant that it's hard to, well, describe a Negro face. I mean to differentiate it from other Negro faces.”

“Why is that?” McCall asked.

“Well, I don't know.” Cordes seemed offended. “Anyway, as you saw, I certainly had no trouble recognizing his face when I saw him again just now.”

“Then you'd never seen Rawlings before he delivered that tape?”

“No.”

They were now abreast of the arch into central district. Lieutenant Cox, Sergeant Fenner, and LeRoy Rawlings were ranged before a counter about twenty feet beyond the arch.

McCall said, “You couldn't be mistaken in your identification?”

“Definitely not, Mr. McCall. I'm positive he was the man.”

At the glass-paneled exit, half in and half out of the door, McCall paused. “Suppose it develops, Mr. Cordes, that LeRoy Rawlings comes up with an alibi for this morning? Would you still maintain that he was the man who delivered the letter and tape?”

Cordes began to look suspicious. “I just said I was positive, Mr. McCall. I don't know what the governor's trying to do, but it sounds to me as if he's sent you here to whitewash the black element—”

“That's hardly the word I'd use,” McCall said dryly.

“You know what I mean! As for an alibi, I'd be surprised if Rawlings doesn't come up with one. Every time a member of the Black Hearts has a run-in with the law, it turns out he was in the company of a dozen other Black Hearts at the time of the offense. An alibi by LeRoy Rawlings or any other Black Heart wouldn't impress me. No, sir, I'm certain he was the messenger.”

McCall held the door for him, and the little radio station manager stepped through with dignity. He was not going to make an easily damaged witness, for all his Milquetoast manner. He possessed a stubbornness, an armature of steel, shared by many small men.

“I'm not in Banbury, by the way, to whitewash—or blacken—anybody. The governor's interest is in seeing the city remain peaceful, whatever the problems.”

“Of course, of course, Mr. McCall. Sorry I got mad.” Cordes held out his hand. “I'd sure like to get you on a panel show at BOKO. Would you be interested?”

McCall shook the little thing. “Not right now, Mr. Cordes. I'm still in the observation stage. Pleasure to have met you.”

“Same here.”

Cordes trotted down the marble steps, waving. McCall stepped back into the building. The trio was still at the booking desk; Rawlings was emptying the contents of his pockets.

McCall went the other way, to the information desk. He asked where he might find a pay phone, and the officer told him that there was “a whole raft of them” outside the press room.

McCall found the booths, but before phoning Maggie Kirkpatrick he glanced into the press room. It was empty.

He looked up the number of the Banbury
Post-Telegram
and dialed it. It took him seven minutes by his watch before he heard her voice.

“You have a wonderful paging system, Maggie. I could have reached de Gaulle in less time.”

“I was in what we girls euphemistically call the powder room. One of the guys had to beat on the door. What's up?”

“I'll give you a tip in return for a favor.”

“Shoot, Mike,” Maggie said promptly.

“LeRoy Rawlings is being booked right now on the charge of aiding a fugitive felon to evade arrest. About ten minutes ago Benjamin Cordes, station manager of BOKO, positively identified Rawlings as the messenger who delivered the tape and letter.”

“You're a doll!” Maggie said.

“Wait, there's more. Volper had Harlan James's sister, Mrs. Isobel Franks, brought in for questioning about her brother's whereabouts. So far he hasn't come up with anything either from her or Rawlings but a few insults from Rawlings.”

Maggie was apparently taking notes. “Is that it, Mike?”

“That's it. Now for the quid pro quo.”

“What can I do for you? And keep it clean.”

“I want you to phone Prentiss Wade and pass on to him what I just told you. Don't give him your source of information.”

“Volper hasn't let Rawlings use the phone?”

“Nor Mrs. Franks. Will you phone Wade right away?”

“Before I file the story, Mike. Thanks!”

When McCall got back to the lobby, the three men were no longer at the booking counter. McCall glanced toward the elevators just in time to see the door of one close behind Lieutenant Cox and Sergeant Fenner. Rawlings was not with them. Presumably he had been deposited in a detention cell.

McCall found himself heading back toward the city hall and wondered why. He had no reason to seek out Mayor Potter again so soon … Laurel Tate. That auburn hair will do it every time, he upbraided himself as he turned right on Grand Avenue, and he drove to his hotel. He was seeing her in the evening, anyway.

The thought made him think of Beth McKenna, Chief Condon's girl Friday; and thinking of her blonde hair made him think of Maggie Kirkpatrick, who was nobody's girl Friday and had black hair besides.

The trouble with you, McCall, McCall told his alter ego in the bathroom mirror, you get hungry too often.

With an effort he shut the girls out and phoned Governor Holland, using the governor's private line. He reported the events of the day in detail.

“Looks as if old Heywood Potter was dead right,” Sam Holland said. “The opposition's really trying to stir up race trouble to win support on their law-and-order issue.”

“I'm sure that's District Attorney Volper's motive, Governor. Whether or not Gerald Horton is in on the play I can't say yet, although it would make sense that he is. I haven't met either mayoralty candidate yet.”

“Well, you stick with it, Mike. You have my backing for anything you have to do to prevent a confrontation there, even if it hurts us politically. Your first consideration is to preserve peace. At any cost.”

It was such orders, not his substantial salary, that had long since won Mike McCall's total loyalty. McCall could not have worked for most politicians; his personal code, fashioned out of the rough-and-tumble of Chicago's south side during his boyhood, the hard lessons of the Marine Corps during his young manhood, and his law training at Northwestern, called for absolute honesty in public office. Sam Holland was the rarest of politicians: he refused to compromise his moral principles.

They had met when Holland had been a state senator and McCall a private detective. The case, involving the murder of a fellow-legislator and close friend of Holland's, was badly tangled in skeins of venality; it taught each man the virtue of the other, and they became friends. One of Holland's first acts on winning the governorship was to offer Micah McCall a job as his assistant for confidential affairs—his personal troubleshooter. The very large salary that went with the job came out of Governor Holland's pocket. “I don't want you on the state payroll,” the governor had said. “That makes you subject to all sorts of pressure. This way you're accountable to only one man, Mike, me.”

The years had knitted them together in a tight weave. Holland had at his elbow an honest man he could trust completely, and McCall had found an honest man he could serve with a clear conscience.

It had been argued about the state that a multimillionaire could afford a moral code that to other politicians would have been a disastrous luxury. To McCall these were fighting words. It was true that Samuel F. Holland could have bathed in his millions. But McCall had done homework on Holland's origins, and the arithmetic checked out: he had been honest and uncompromising as a poor man, too.

McCall stripped down to his shorts, closed the vanes of the blinds, and stretched out on the bed. He had been up at four
A.M.
in order to catch the early plane, and he was tired. He glanced at his watch: a quarter to three. There was still plenty to do before his date with Laurel. He set his mental alarm clock for four o'clock and was asleep in thirty seconds.

SEVEN

McCall awoke at three minutes to four.

He stretched, wide awake and refreshed. Then he picked up the bedside phone and called police headquarters. He asked for the detective bureau and Lieutenant Cox.

The lieutenant chuckled. “Hank Fenner and I enjoyed the law course you gave our fearless district attorney this afternoon, Mr. McCall.”