The Last Cop Out (6 page)
He looked out at the glassy green water again where they were still boating the dolphin. A warm breeze sifted through the screen and he could smell the salt and sun-drenched air. It should have smelled nice, but it didn’t. The other smell was too powerful and he knew what it was because he had smelled it before, several times, and the strange smell of fear you never forget.
Silently, he nodded to himself, then wrote out a telegram for Artie Meeker to send to the Frenchman. They’d lay off Gill Burke until he became a threat to the organization again and this time there wouldn’t be any smear campaign ... just a nice, quiet permanent disappearance that would completely eliminate the source of annoyance once and for all.
He called Artie in, gave him the coded message and instructions, then leaned back in his chair. He should have been satisfied, but he wasn’t, and frowned. That damned smell was still there.
The stiff drink didn’t do a thing to steady Mark Shelby’s nerves. His stomach was acting up again and his throat was dry no matter how much scotch he poured down it. Helga, the busty Swedish blonde he kept in the apartment on the East Side, sat cross-legged on the sofa, naked under the sun lamp, hoping he wouldn’t get drunk and start to slap her around again.
Not that she minded. He always used his open hand and it was a small price to pay for what he had given her. Most of the money was safe in the bank or tied up in securities, her charge accounts were paid promptly, the clothes and furs in the closet were all new, all expensive and all hers. Once or twice a week Mark Shelby would come up for a couple of hours of sex, be teased into arousal with the erotic love games she was so practiced in, then with five minutes of oralistic activity he would be reduced to limp impotency until the next time. He always called before he arrived, giving Nils a chance to leave and get a little stoned at having his own sex life interrupted.
Mark stood at the bar, stripped to his shorts and poured himself another drink. Helga looked at the clock, then switched off the sun lamp. She was good and tan, with no strap marks showing. She ran her fingers through the natural blond silk of her hair, then softly stroked her pubic area that was almost the same color.
“Mark dear,” she said.
“Shut up.”
She didn’t know if he was mad at himself because even the love games couldn’t get him erect, or if it was his business again. The past two weeks he had been unusually irritable and she wondered why anybody in the wholesale grocery business should be so upset. The way prices were, one would think he’d be overjoyed. Men were funny, she thought, even a solid citizen from Trenton, New Jersey, who had a frigid wife who liked to play bridge every day rather than take care of husbandly needs. She smiled inwardly. When she and Nils were married it wouldn’t be like that at all. He would never need another woman. Before he left for work she would weaken him with an orgasm, and when he walked in the door at night she would be standing there naked so that he would throw her on the couch right in front of the cleaning woman who would gasp with embarrassment and run off, only to peek at them from behind the curtains. At night they would make wild sounds and laugh at the creaking and wrenching of the bed boards and one day have the whole thing collapse on the floor as a result of their outlandish exertions.
It was either the way she was sitting, a little glistening of wet reflecting the shaft of sunlight, or the scotch that was getting to him, but Mark Shelby felt the fingers of arousal touching his groin. He put the glass down, took one moment to study the ornate candle in the jade holder that was the centerpiece ornament arranged on the back bar, then he slipped his shorts down, let them fall to his feet and walked across the room to where she was sitting. He stood in front of her and she looked up at him and smiled, knowing what he wanted.
When her mouth touched him he groaned and shuddered. Gill Burke, the incessant funerals, the awesome thing he had accomplished, the terror of Papa Menes’ almost unlimited power ... they all swept away in pounding hardness and the sudden gush of manhood, leaving him soft and vulnerable once more. Before he sank to his knees in fatigue, his head resting on her bare, warm thigh, all he could think of was a small, flickering flame that could scorch whether it was lit or burned out.
The photo of Mark Shelby that Gill Burke studied was twenty-eight months old and showed him coming out of a fashionable midtown bistro, smiling at someone cropped out of the picture. It had been taken privately with a telephoto lens from the building opposite the restaurant. Since Mark Shelby had no record, there was no official police front and profile shot of him and Shelby was notoriously camera shy.
Bill Long said, “The case is closed, Gill.”
“Yeah, I know,” Burke told him. “You got the gun, the motive and the man all at one time, except the man was a corpse.”
“A police officer shot him during the course of a holdup. He was wearing Berkowitz’s gold watch and when we checked his room out we found Manute’s wallet along with a lot of other stolen items.”
“How often do chintzy holdup men keep souvenirs. They aren’t
that
stupid.”
that
stupid.”
“They are if they’re stupid enough to pull a robbery.” Burke glanced over another of the sheets, reading it to the end. “No track record at all on this guy. He even held down a job.”
“Part time,” the captain said.
“That’s more time than any crooks work.”
“Not always. It makes a good cover. The guy was a loner, had a drinking problem and wasn’t too bright. Check his income. He couldn’t support a drinking problem on that and eat too. He had to supplement his income. Hell, Gill, you know it’s an old story.”
“Berkowitz and Manute were processing film they had shot. There wasn’t any dough in the joint and none of their equipment could be fenced very easily. It wasn’t the kind of place a holdup artist would hit.”
“Gill ... they were in a partially deserted area, alone, and that guy ... what’s his name ... Ted Proctor just saw an easy target. As far as we could determine, Berkowitz had over a hundred bucks on him and Manute was probably good for fifty. Enough to justify a holdup, anyway.”
“And Mark Shelby was in the area about the same time.”
“The supposed witness retracted his statement. He was parking lot attendant and had only seen Shelby once before when he dropped off his car.”
“Balls.”
“That’s what he swore to.”
“A parking lot beside a mob-owned restaurant. He had seen plenty of Shelby.”
“You’re pushing, Gill.”
“Mavbe, but it was the pushing I did before that got me laid out like a squashed bug.”
“You were after Papa Menes, friend.”
“A rung at a time and you reach the top man, Bill. Somehow I was just about to shake the apples out of the tree when they cut the branch out from under me.”
“Forget it, will you?”
The side of Burke’s mouth curled in a smile. “Would you?”
“No.”
Burke laid the papers down on the desk and stretched in his chair. For a minute or so he stared at the ceiling, then leaned forward and stared at his friend. “How’d they work it on me, Bill?”
“You’ve been a maverick a long time, Gill. That citizen’s committee instituted the probe.”
“Their two lawyers had mob connections.”
“No way of proving that.”
“Why didn’t somebody try to cover for me?”
“Because we all have ourselves to protect, Gill, you know that. They gave only what facts that were drawn out the hard way. Nobody volunteered a damn thing.”
“The papers had a field day. The TV boys pulled me apart.”
“You always made sensational news. When you shot those three guys in that subway it gave them something to chew on.”
“Bill, those guys all had guns. Some of those bastards in the crowd grabbed them and ran when I dropped them.”
“You almost started a race riot.”
“Don’t believe it. There were plenty of cool heads there.”
“Why didn’t they speak up then?”
“And get labled Uncle Tom? Get the boot by their own people? Maybe if my life was on the line they would have, but I was just another cop getting the squeeze and squeezes aren’t new to them. Those guys were all carrying the loot they lifted from the heist and the shooting would have been justified even if I thought they had a gun.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Begin where I left off.”
“Here we go again,” Long said resignedly. “Just keep in mind what they wanted you back for. There’s one hell of a gang war brewing and they’re hoping you might be able to add that one touch that could stop it.” The Captain paused, watching Gill’s face. It was the kind of face you couldn’t read at all. “Do you think you can, Gill?”
“It’s a possibility,” he said, “but I don’t suppose they’d mind a few fringe benefits on the side.”
“Like what?”
“Like putting a crimp in the whole fucking syndicate.”
“You’ve been away too long, Gill. They’re too big. It can’t be done.”
“In the pig’s ass it can’t,” Gill told him. “Somebody’s doing it to them now.”
When the eleven o’clock news was over, Gill Burke switched off the TV and poured the rest of his beer into his glass. It had been a long day and tomorrow would be even longer and he was looking forward to getting to bed early.
The sudden rasp of the door buzzer made him snap his head around wondering who the hell it could be at that hour. Any friends he had would have called first and anybody else he didn’t want to see. He put the glass down and picked up the .45 from the table, then stood to one side of the door and yanked it open.
She was in a short sweater and skirt combination with a white raincoat thrown loosely over her shoulders, and her hair was a dark frame for startled, wide brown eyes and a rich, full ruby mouth.
Helen Scanlon said, “Are you going to shoot me, Mr. Burke?”
Burke smiled with his lips, but his eyes remained impassive. With a casual movement he put the gun inside his waistband. “Not tonight.”
“Aren’t you going to ask me in?”
“These are hardly visiting hours.”
“Make an exception.”
“Come on in then.” He made a deprecating motion with his head toward the apartment. “Don’t mind the mess. I wasn’t expecting company.”
“Apparently not since you’ve lived here. You aren’t very ,neat, Mr. Burke.”
“Who gives a shit,” he told her. “Can I make you a drink?”
“No, thank you.”
“Then get to it.”
“Don’t be so abrupt. May I sit down?”
Gill waved toward a chair and eased himself down in the worn recliner. Something, he thought, was very, very screwy.
“I’ve come to apologize,” she said.
“For what?”
“My remark about you being a turncoat.”
“How about being as repulsive as a skinless rat?”
“Did that really get to you?”
Burke shrugged and sipped his beer. “That’s nothing compared to some of the things I’ve been called.”
“But it got to you.”
“Just the repulsive part.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. The sincerity in her tone was real.
“Why?”
“Because I overheard Mr. Verdun making a phone call. He said you were a policeman again and poking around. Apparently you are some sort of a threat to his ... business.”
“You’re damn well told I am.”
“Mr. Burke ... things get very confusing sometimes.”
“Don’t believe everything you read in the papers. How old are you?”
“Thirty.”
“You don’t look it at all.”
“How old are you?”
“A hundred and ten.”
She smiled gently. “You don’t look it either.”
“It’s all mental, kid.”
“Why are you a threat to them?”
“Because I made a career out of trying to break them.”
“You know it isn’t possible, don’t you?”
“That’s what everybody seems to think, but they’re wrong. What goes up can come down.”
“My father thought that too.”
“Joe Scanlon had just obtained the murder weapon used to gun down a key witness who could have testified against Papa Menes and six other top men in the syndicate. The fingerprints of the killer were on that gun and it would have brought the walls tumbling down around some important political figure. The mob had him run down by a stolen auto and they retrieved the gun. It was classified as a hit-and-run accident.”
“There has never been any proof otherwise,” she stated flatly.
“If a little old lady were still alive ... the one who heard the last words he ever spoke, she’d tell you differently.”
“What little old lady?”
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