The Last Cop Out (31 page)
“Do I try?”
“Sure. What difference does it make now?”
“Probably none.”
“Then call Lederer and the crew. Get this mess cleaned up and we’ll move.”
Long made a wry face. “Yeah, let’s do that.”
In the doorway, Helen was watching them both with unbelieving eyes, her hand clamped over her mouth to keep from getting sick.
16
Lederer got there with the medical examiner and stayed while the detectives took everything down and the morgue crew moved out the bodies. The TV crews and the reporters were covering everything and this time Lederer was glad to have them on tap, because he was able to throw them a big one for holding down the news about the murder of Richard Case. Now he could blow everything in one grand gesture and in the back of his mind he could see the upcoming election and almost see his name up there for the Big Seat.
He even had good words for Burke and his admiration for Bill Long’s action was apparent to everyone. Having a witness in Helen Scanlon made it even better and when Burke said he had more to do and would finish the report in the morning, Lederer was more than happy to turn him loose.
In the car, Bill Long chewed on his lip with amazement. “He bought it,” Long said. “They all bought it. They bought the biggest con I ever saw. They bought it and they have to keep it. I even have to back you up on it and I know better.”
“You don’t know anything, Bill.”
Helen squeezed his arm. “Please, Gill.”
“Want me to tell you what I know?” Long asked. There was a near-note of humor in his voice, like that of a man who has seen just too much and had to laugh at anything that was anticlimactic.
“Yeah, Bill. Tell me.”
The captain leaned back in the seat, his head resting easily against the cushion. “Not too long ago, in a certain South American country—and you read about this in all the papers—mobsters were being found dead all over the place. Big hoods, little hoods ... sometimes singly and sometimes in bunches. Occasionally they were in the open, other times they were in hiding, but they were carefully tracked down, shot to death and left lying where everybody could see them.
“For a while they thought it was another gang war, but it wasn’t that at all. They finally found out that an execution squad was at work and the only pros that could handle that kind of action were part of the police force.
“Oh, the crime rate sure dropped down to zero and the mobsters got the hell out of that country in one big hurry and maybe the situation was the better off for it, but it left a funny feeling in everybody’s stomach because the more you kill the easier it gets and with a force that big, powerful and deadly, it could turn its talents someplace else when it ran out of punks to gun down.
“Luckily, it didn’t seem to go any further, and it was pretty damn effective, so not much more was said about it. It was practically forgotten. But let’s suppose it was well remembered by somebody who saw how the pattern could be used right here in the United States. Not only used, but modified and sophisticated to such an extent the ramifications took on unbelievable proportions.
“First, it would take a pro who was familiar with as many details of the syndicate operation as anybody could be. He had to have knowledge, the time, the ability and the money to plan it out and put it into effect without ever risking exposure himself. He had to work them against themselves and when only a few were left, put the frosting on the cake with a completely legal maneuver that left him successful and satisfied.”
Burke drew into the curb outside the apartment building and cut the switch. When he got out, Helen and Bill Long followed him. The captain looked at the building and Burke said, “Shelby had an apartment here.”
“It’s not in our files.”
“It is in mine,” Burke told him.
As Burke expected, there was no apartment listed under Shelby’s name, but when he flashed his badge and gave his description, the doorman remembered Mark and said he visited Miss Helga Piers in 21A. In fact, he added he was there that very evening and had left quite hurriedly a little after ten o’clock.
“You have a passkey?”
“Yes, I have.”
“Then you’d better come with us.”
“Sir,” the doorman said, “don’t you have to have . . .”
“We can get a warrant in five minutes or you can do it the easy way,” Burke told him.
One look at those eyes of his and the doorman didn’t hesitate. He led them to the elevator, took them up to the top floor and pointed out the door. While Helen and the doorman stayed to one side, Burke and Long flanked the door and looked at each other.
A thin line of light lined the sill and from inside a TV program rambled on. There was another sound too, an intermittent wail of hysterical laughter coupled with an overtone of anguish.
Burke pushed the doorbell and waited. Nothing happened. He tried it again and there was no answer. He snapped his fingers and the doorman opened the lock with his passkey. Gill turned the knob, threw the door open an inch and looked back at the doorman. “Beat it,” he said.
They went in together, guns ready, spreading out inside, poised like cats, taking in the entire situation in a fraction of a second.
Nobody came at them.
All they heard was the TV and the strange wail, with an odd aromatic smell permeating the air. With professional caution, they picked their way through the area to the living room until they got to the arch and saw the remains of the furniture and the nearly naked wreckage of the woman who squatted on the floor in a pool of her own blood, rocking and writhing in pain, a lit candle in front of her that she kept hacking at with a knife in ineffectual, weary motions.
Bill Long had seen a lot of things, but this one almost made him sick. The terrible beating she had taken was beyond anything he had witnessed before and whoever did it had to be so twisted he never should have lived through his own birth.
Gill yelled for Helen and this time there was no fear or disgust in her. It was a woman recognizing the emergency and becoming equal to it. She didn’t even give them time to phone, making them help her get Helga on the couch, finding the towles, the compresses and the medication until the eyes that were so blanked out from shock suddenly became alive from pain and all she could say was, “No . . . no ... please, no more.”
“You’re all right,” Helen told her. “We’re friends and we’ll help you.”
“Help . . . me?”
“That’s right.” She waved to Gill and said, “Better get the ambulance now.”
He made the call, then followed Long over to the bar. The entire back section was wrecked, a large religious picture and a plaster statue lying in smashed pieces on the shelf. The cop said, “Crazy. She dragged herself all over the place in that condition. You see that blood trail?”
“I saw it.”
“It doesn’t seem possible.”
Burke looked at the red splotches around the back of the bar and on the shelving. There were other smears on the end table and the arm of a chair were she had propped herself as she pulled her wracked body around the room. “Maybe she was motivated,” Burke said.
“What ... to get to a religious picture?” He kicked over a four-legged metal holder, looking at the wax fragments in its base. “Maybe you’re right.” He picked the holder up and showed it to Burke. “I guess people who got a strong religious conviction can do damn near anything. She thought she was dying and wanted to light a candle to herself.”
“Then why was she chopping at it with that knife.”
“Maybe it’s part of her religion,” Long said sourly.
“Gill ...” Helen was waving him over to the couch.
“She coming around?”
“He told her his name was Norris. He was keeping her, all right, but do you know she knew who he really was?” Before he could answer she held out a cheap magazine folded open to a full-page picture of recognizable faces. “She had it under the couch. She pointed him out to me.”
He glanced at it, flipped the cover over and tapped his finger under the issue date at the top. “This is this month’s copy.”
Helen got the message and nodded. “She just found out who he really is. That poor kid.”
Burke said, “Come here, old buddy.” When the captain walked up Gill showed him the photo. “There’s your man,” he said and tapped the photo of the one in the background.
“Mark Shelby,” Long said softly.
“I hope you feel better now,” Burke said.
“About him,” Long grated, “but not about you. You’re still a bastard.”
Helga’s hot eyes stared at the two of them, her mouth working, trying to form words. Bill Long had to be sure. He held the picture out, his finger indicating Shelby. “That the one who did it?”
Her nod was affirmative. “He . . .”
“Don’t try to talk,” Helen told her.
She made a feeble motion with her hand and her mouth worked again. “He got . . . mad about ... something. Then he ... found about . . . Nils.”
“Nils? Your husband?”
She shook her head. “Friend. We were . . . going to ... marry. Take his . . . money and ... run away.”
Burke said, “You want me to call this Nils for you? Look if . . .”
The pain in her eyes washed out into one of incredible sorrow and tears flowed slowly onto her cheeks. “Nils . . . was here. He saw me . . . and he ... ran away . . . too.” She managed to force a gruesome smile to her lips. “All gone. Nothing left . . . at all. Only his ... beautiful candle. He ... loved the candle. Now I . . . kill that ... damn thing.”
It hit Burke first, the entire implication of the whole thing, the beauty of the way Shelby had disguised it. He walked to the middle of the floor, blew the candle out and picked up the blood-stained knife she had tried to kill the candle with. He ran the tip of it down the side of its foot-long length, rammed the blade into the crack and pried the waxen cylinder open.
The rolls of microfilm were stacked one on top of the other and when Burke held it up for Long to see he said, “The ultimate proof, friend. We just got it in time. If that candle kept burning it would have destroyed the whole bundle. Old Shelby was covering every angle, even to a built-in self-destruct. Who the hell would blow out a religious candle anyway?”
“Someone with no religion, maybe,” Long said. “Or no conscience. Like you.”
“Go fuck yourself,” Burke said.
Bill Long gave him a tight smile. “You see I’m right. You
are
the one. A whole execution squad wrapped up in one man. There was a time when you would have jumped me for saying what I just did, but you can’t now because you know I’m right and you never could fake me out.”
are
the one. A whole execution squad wrapped up in one man. There was a time when you would have jumped me for saying what I just did, but you can’t now because you know I’m right and you never could fake me out.”
“Don’t you ever quit?” Gill asked him.
“Not on this one. I think I’m going to burn your ass on this one, Gill. I won’t even have to try hard because I know what’s been on your mind since the very beginning. There’s only one guy you’re really after, the top man of the whole schmear ... Papa Menes. He’s still alive and still holds the power and even if what’s on those films can indict him he’ll get away before he can be convicted. There are plenty of places he can go and still be head man in the operation. Luciano did it, a few others did it, living out their old age in lush comfort in the old country, still pulling the strings to stay on their ego trips.
“But you can’t let that happen. You started it all rolling and now you have to finish it. Someday, when I have time, I’m going to make a project out of you. I’ll backtrack every move you made. I’ll dig up everybody you ever contracted or used ... I’ll have your entire operation detailed down to the last iota and perhaps the civilized world will realize what kind of a terror they harbored.”
Burke gave him a flat grin. “Maybe the uncivilized world will realize it too. The joke would be on you then . . . if all the crap you’re spouting was true.”
“It’s true enough,” Long smiled back. “The past might be too difficult to prove at the moment, but the future move will be easy because I know it has to happen.”
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