The Last Cop Out (11 page)
They had the guy in a loft over the garage in Brooklyn. He was tied to a chair, his hands and feet numb from the loss of circulation, and all he could do was moan softly behind the tape that covered his mouth. What made it worse was that he couldn’t see. The last thing he remembered was the sharp crack against the back of his head and then total darkness. The darkness was still there behind a cloth whose knot was biting into the wound on his scalp.
When Frank Verdun came in with Slick Kevin, Bingo Miles and Shatzi Heinkle stood up respectfully. The guy in the chair moaned and rolled his head.
“Who is he?” Frank asked.
“All his I.D. reads is William R. Hays. He’s from East Orange, New Jersey.” Bingo pointed to the open attaché case on the floor. “He was in Chicago and Cleveland on the right days. He sure looks like the picture, Mr. Verdun.”
Frank pointed toward the case. “Check it,” he told Slick. He walked over and stood in front of the man in the chair. “He wears glasses?”
Shatzi held out a broken frame and several pieces of the lens. “Same kind as in the picture. They broke when we took him.”
“Clean snatch?”
“We used Bingo’s cab. No problem at all. He wanted to go to the Hilton.”
Kevin finished going through the papers and dropped them back in the case. “He’s got a good cover, Frank. Fabric salesman to upholstery places.”
“Check him out all the way, Slick.” He glanced at Bingo and Shatzi. “You two keep him here and take care of him. I don’t want anything to happen to this guy until we know all about him. He might have a lot to tell us.” He took an ink pad and a white card from his pocket, went behind the chair, daubed the man’s fingers on the black sponge and rolled his fingerprints onto the card. He only used one hand and two of the prints were messy, but they were enough. When he dried the card off he put it in an envelope and stuck it back in his pocket.
The guy moaned again and a wet stain darkened his trousers.
“Your call was a pleasant surprise,” Helen Scanlon told him. “I really didn’t think you’d want to see me again.”
Gill told the waiter to bring more coffee and lit a cigarette. “My turn to apologize for being so rough on you. I could have been nicer in the office ... or more hospitable at home.”
“It wouldn’t become you, Mr. Burke.”
“Can’t you call me Gill?”
“All right.”
“Don’t figure me for a social outcast, will you.”
Helen Scanlon smiled gently, playing with a cube of sugar. “You remind me of my father, always the dedicated policeman. Nothing else mattered.”
Gill reached out and laid his hand over hers. “In case you’re interested, this isn’t question and answer time. I felt like inviting you out to dinner because I had you on my mind all day.”
“Why?”
“Not because you work in the Frenchman’s office. They don’t stop me from rousting them if I want to and if I need information I don’t have to play any games to get it, either. I wished to hell I knew why I wanted to see you, but I don’t. I just wanted to, that’s all.” He felt annoyed at himself for some reason.
“You really don’t know much about women, do you?”
“Depends. Why?”
“Because you just gave me the best reason of all,” she said.
“I did?” he said querulously.
She laughed again, turned her hand around and squeezed his. “Do you know what would happen if some journalist saw us together and decided it would make a good story?”
“Limit that to just a couple of journalists, baby. The rest were all on my side and as for the other couple, I’d scratch them so fast it would make their eyes cross. Besides, we’re both old news now anyway. Anything that could be said has already been said.”
“Not with you, Gill. You still have a lot more to say.” She took her hand away, glanced around her and reached into her handbag. She found the small oblong she wanted and handed it to him. “Whose picture is that?”
He took it from her, looked at it barely a second and asked, “Where did you get this?” It was the photo of a man at the counter of a car rental agency.
“A box of them was delivered to Mr. Verdun today. He had them separated into six groups and had them picked up by a man from the main office. He was on the phone for over an hour and was very excited about something. When he was out of the room for a minute I went in to leave some mail and picked one out of the pile.”
Gill said, “Damn,” and looked at the picture again. He could tell it wasn’t an original, but had been recopied from a positive print, but for identification purposes, it was as good as the one that had come in from Cleveland. “Who were the photos sent to?”
“I don’t know. The packages were unmarked.”
“Recognize the guy who picked them up?”
“No. I’m sorry ... he came and went too fast. I was busy at the files.”
“This is good enough.”
“Who is it, Gill?”
“A guy they think killed a hood named Holland in Cleveland.”
“Important?”
Gill Burke nodded and tucked the photo away. “Your outfit’s got a pipeline directly into the police department.” He watched the frown pull her face tight. “Don’t let it bother you. That’s nothing new either.” He called the waiter over and gave him a bill with the check, then said to Helen, “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
Outside, a light mist was blowing in from the northeast, making a halo around the street lights and laying down an oily slick on the pavement. Con Ed had a night crew digging a hole in the middle of the street, a yellow flasher diverting traffic around the obstacle.
Gill said, “Where would you like to go?”
“If I told you, would you really believe me?”
“Sure.”
“I want to go and straighten up that clutter you call home.”
“Why?”
“Because I just
want
to and I don’t know why.”
want
to and I don’t know why.”
Burke flagged down a cab and they got in.
The man in the restaurant who had made the hurried phone call looked vainly for another cab. There wasn’t any in sight, and the one he had wanted to follow was turning left at the far corner. He swore softly and started walking.
Gill wondered how the hell it took a woman two hours to do something he couldn’t manage in a week. Two hampers and a pillow case of laundry got washed while she put everything else in order and wouldn’t even speak to him while he sat nursing a couple of tall drinks, watching the way her body moved under the old blue oxford police shirt. Her legs were long and athletically contoured like a dancer’s. The shirt was a big one, but her breasts swelled it tight, the tails just long enough to be decently indecent.
Helen had pulled her hair back and tied it in a ponytail. Her face was shiny with sweat and she hummed some silly little tune, smiling while she worked. Gill got one of those odd feelings in his stomach again and went downstairs to get the stuff out of the drier and when he got back she had finished.
She pulled the biggest one of his bath towels out of the laundry bag and told him, “Put your own things away. I don’t know your system. I’m going to take a shower.”
When he had everything sorted and the bed remade, he went back to the living room and refilled his glass. The shower was still going and his hand was shaking. What the hell, he thought, he was getting virgin symptoms. He was picturing her naked in there behind the closed door, her hands soaping her own bare flesh, drying those luscious curves to a pinkish glow with her image a vivid reflection in the full-length mirror.
How would she come out? Totally nude? The towel knotted like a chenille sarong and a look of subtle desire in those deep, dark eyes? Or would she be expecting him to push the door open, exerting the prerogative of the aggressive male?
Shit, broads never disrupted him before. They’d been there from the cuddly little society blonde in the penthouse who had been crazy about him to the flinty pro who had demanded payment for services rendered and it had all been the same. Physical necessity, opportunity and satisfying, but nothing to have to think about. Now he sat there with a mental tourniquet around half a hard-on, all shook up about a woman behind a closed door.
When she came out the jolt was even worse because she was all dressed and the things he had expected to see still had to be imagined and he wished to hell somebody would loosen that damn tourniquet or untie it altogether.
She looked happy and pleased with herself, and after she took the highball out of his hand to take a long, cooling drink, she handed it back and said, “Thank you, Gill. You may think I’m a ding-a-ling, but I had fun.”
He grinned at her. “You’re nuts, all right. A little supper sure went a long way.”
She let out a deep-throated laugh and picked up her coat. “Home time, big man, and I can get my own cab.”
He put down his glass and walked her to the door. She slipped into the coat he held, belted it and turned around. When he kissed her he tried to be just saying good night and thanks for the evening and all the maid work, but the tourniquet was coming undone and the fire was starting to rage and he knew he wasn’t going to be able to put it out, so he said, “Now I haven’t got any more excuses to lure you back.”
“You’ll think of something,” Helen told him. She squeezed his hand and gave him an impish look. “Or maybe I will,” she added.
When he heard the elevator doors close he went back inside and finished his drink, annoyed because his mind always sought a devious answer. She was a cop’s daughter who worked for the syndicate and she had done him a favor. But had he done her one too without knowing it?
He opened the drawers of his desk where she had dusted. Nothing seemed out of place. His notepad and wallet on the end table had been pushed back to make room for a coaster for his glass. He couldn’t tell if they had been looked at. He thought again and looked at the hidden compartment where the armament was stored. Everything was in place.
There had been nothing in the metal waste basket in the kitchen except the papers he had burned and the empty milk carton he had thrown in later. He should have checked to make sure everything had burned fully, but he had had to leave and had forgotten about it. There really wasn’t that much to bother about, but the metal waste can had been emptied anyway.
It could have been simple habit. It could have been something else.
Gill undressed and went to bed, lying there on the cool sheets, his hands folded under his head while he let his mind ramble in idle thought around the bits and pieces that made up the scramble they called a world.
In the Brooklyn garage loft Slick Kevin hung up the phone and turned to the Frenchman. “He did two raps for auto theft and assault with a deadly weapon. Got out eight years ago and nothing on him since.”
Verdun nodded slowly and looked at the quaking figure still tied in the chair. A bachelor who lived in Jersey and could have other phony Jersey identities. His boss vouched for him and he made a good living, but he made up his own schedule, didn’t have to account for his itinerary as long as the orders came in and had an expense account so low it had to be honest in view of the profits and nobody ever asked for confirmation. He had been in two of the places at the right time, now all they had to do was push a little.
“Get to work on him,” he told Shatzi and Bingo.
Shatzi grinned, poured a half can of starter fluid over the charcoal in the pail and set fire to it. When it was going good he slid the irons and the pincers under the briquettes and lit a cigar. Bingo started ripping the clothes off the bound figure and wrinkled his nose in disgust. Between the shit and the piss fright, he stunk like hell.
Frank Verdun and Slick Kevin went downstairs and got in the car. They’d know about it when he talked. Meanwhile, everybody knew what the orders were and all they could do was wait. Only business routine could make the Frenchman tired. When it was time to kill he could stay awake and alert for days at a time. He yawned, ready for a good night’s sleep.
Maybe, Gill thought. It was a probability that couldn’t be overlooked. They had handed her the dirty end of the stick and it was her syndicate friends who took her off the hook. She was a woman and women can carry a big hate a long time. They could even nurse a little hate until it got bigger than it deserved to be. They could have strange loyalties, like a whore to a pimp who took her money and slapped her silly anyway. Maybe handing him that photo was a sucker trap and her want a chance to go through his effects.
If the probability was an actuality he’d know about it soon enough. He wasn’t that dumb even though his cock wasn’t too bright. He could still picture her in the shower. He put the thought out of his mind and went to sleep.
In the hotel suite the phone jarred Frank Verdun awake. He cursed, picked up the receiver and snarled, “Yeah?”
“It’s Shatzi, Mr. Verdun.”
“Watch what you’re saying.”
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