Dead Sure

by Herbert Brean

  “I’ll have to take off the cuffs.”

  “Just unlock one of them.”

  Ryan did and threw Derby his jacket. “Put it on.”

  “Where we goin’?” asked Derby.

  “Out,” said Ryan. “And we’re not coming back.” Derby put on the jacket.

  Jablonski folded the brown paper bag to make a trough of it, and poured the fine, whitish-yellow dust into his left hand. He walked over to Derby. “Cover me, Neill,” he said.

  “You get the hell away from me,” said Derby.

  Ryan took out his gun.

  “Turn around,” Jablonski told Derby.

  “Go to hell,” said Derby.

  Jablonski pushed his foot against the back of Derby’s knee. Derby buckled, partly turning, and Jablonski swung him around, half-falling, still farther. Then carefully, deliberately, he blew the powder in his left hand over the front of Derby’s wool jacket. Derby swung a flailing blow at Jablonski’s hand but it was more a gesture of protest than of attack. Jablonski laughed.

  “What the hell is this?” asked Derby, and began dusting himself off ineffectually.

  “That fixes you,” said Jablonski.

  That fixed him. You always try to find any possible trace of the criminal at the scene, Ryan had been taught at the police academy. And you always try to find some trace of the scene or victim on the criminal. Either one can convict; getting both is ideal.

  “What is that?” Derby was saying anxiously, over and over. “What was that? Was that junk? What was that?”

  “That,” said Jablonski, “was a little piece of plaster from the lamp you hit the old lady with, Harry. And now it’s all over you, and it places you at the scene—even better’n the C-note. And all the Farraguts in the world can’t explain that dust in your jacket. You can’t cross-examine a spectroscope, Harry.”

  As Derby frowned in concentration, his hands slowed their dusting movements. He had no idea of what a spectroscope was, but he had a sure sense of evidence and an animal’s quick instinct for the moves of the enemy. He looked at the two of them. The older one was smiling sarcastically. The other bastard was wooden-faced, giving nothing to nobody. But he didn’t have to. Derby got the general idea. They were framing him.

  Frustration had always produced only one reaction in Derby. Jablonski saw it coming in the swelling of his shoulders, but before his mouth could begin a warning, Derby charged, head down, fists hooking, one of them flapping a handcuff.

  Jablonski had just reached his revolver when one knotty fist caught the side of his head and knocked him off balance and backward. Derby leaped after him and Ryan saw Derby’s long bony knee drive up and catch Jablonski in the stomach. Jablonski uttered a loud wordless cry and his revolver slipped out from his coat and skittered across the floor toward Ryan.

  For a second Ryan could not shoot; they were too close together. Jablonski swayed forward on unhinged legs, holding his stomach, his face ghastly. Derby stepped back to bring a roundhouse punch up from the floor. Ryan fired.

  The shot missed Derby, but it stopped him because it reminded him of Ryan. With hardly a lost motion he wheeled, took a quick boxer’s shuffle forward and swung at Ryan. Jablonski began sagging to the floor.

  Ryan stepped backward; he had seen the punch coming, but the force of it spun Derby half around. Ryan coldly thumbed the hammer of his gun. The quiet click ended Derby’s outbreak. He knew what it meant—and the revolver just three feet away was pointed directly into his stomach. Ryan was looking at him.

  “Start swinging again,” he said. “Come on. Give me an excuse.”

  They looked at each other while the tension went out of Derby. “Face to the wall and hands up against it,” said Ryan, and Derby obeyed. Ryan picked up Jablonski’s gun.

  From Jablonski came a soft sigh.

  “How is it, Jabby?”

  “’M okay…all right in a minute. He…got me with his knee…”

  Ryan had played football; he knew how long it would hurt and how much. Jablonski groaned, trying not to.

  There was a knock and the door swung open timidly. Mrs. Daniels stood in the doorway, and behind her a stringy individual in gallus-draped pants and a woolen undershirt.

  “Is—is everything all right?” She looked inquiringly toward Derby.

  “You go to the telephone,” Ryan began.

  “There ain’t one in this building. Did you shoot—”

  “You with the pants on,” said Ryan. “You get over to Second Avenue to that all-night hamburger joint and call Spring seven three one hundred. Got that number?”

  “Listen, mister, I gotta get some sleep.”

  Jablonski was trying to get up.

  “What’s the matter with your friend?” said Mrs. Daniels.

  Ryan turned enough so they both could see the revolver in his hand.

  “You call that number,” he said. “Right now!” He spoke doggedly. “Spring seven three one hundred. Tell them an officer is in trouble here. Get going.”

  The stringy man hitched up a gallus. “Okay,” he said. “Okay,” and left.

  “You shoot your friend?” asked Mrs. Daniels.

  “Get him some of your whisky,” said Ryan.

  She went downstairs without a word.

  Jablonski was rubbing his abdomen, methodically and painfully. “Wipe off the beer can,” he said, “and get rid of that paper.” His voice was a croak.

  You nervy old son of a bitch, thought Ryan, as he pocketed the brown paper. Your guts must hurt like hell, but you still remember that Derby mustn’t have a chance to prove what we’ve done.

  “Right, Jabby.” It was the first time he had ever felt genuine respect for Jablonski.

  “Hey, Derby,” Jablonski croaked. “Listen. My belly hurts. See? But it’ll stop after a while. And just think, Derby. Some night soon, you’ll burn. Think of that. And you know what? That night it’ll be me who’s home drinkin’ beer. And waitin’ for that flash on the radio. What do you think of that, Derby?”

  It was a very silent room when he stopped.

  “You can be thinking of me when you get that jolt, Derby. ’Cause I’ll be thinking of you.” His jaws moved unnaturally, and he retched.

  From outside and below came the onrushing sound of an automobile moving fast. Ryan heard the clump of heavy feet on the stairs and then there were two blue uniforms and silver shields and alert faces in the doorway.

  They looked awfully good to Ryan.

  CHAPTER 6

  Fresh-Made Tracks in the Snow

  There was a small knot of men standing in front of the shadow-scrawled old precinct station when the radio car pulled up. Ryan paid no particular attention to them. He wanted only to get Derby inside and booked, and to find out how badly Jablonski was hurt. During their fast trip up the empty, late-looking avenue he had once asked, “How is it, Jabby?” and Jablonski had replied from the front seat, “Oh, it’s okay,” carelessly, as though he had forgotten the whole thing. But his voice hadn’t sounded right.

  Jablonski got out of the car painfully, and was walking half-bent-over toward the stone steps when a flash of blue-white brilliance engulfed them. Another flash came. Ryan, walking with his hand on Derby’s arm, felt him stiffen in terror. Ryan hadn’t expected the news photographers to get there so fast; then he remembered that one of the prowl car crew had called the news in on the car radio.

  Derby held his handcuffed hands to his face. It made a fine, cringing picture. The flashes burst over them like waves again and again as they went up the time-scalloped steps of the precinct station. Ryan was not only blinded by them but oddly unnerved. He could almost feel the flashes against him, like wind blasts.

  Lieutenant Paul Bauer stood outside the desk area at the foot of the stairs, his dark eyes watchful and jaw unyielding under grayed brows and bristle of pompadour. But Ryan sen
sed Bauer’s held-in elation. And in the other men, the uniformed sergeant behind the high dark oak desk, the patrolman with him, and the detective coming down the old stairs, you didn’t have to sense it at all. They looked at the tall shambling figure being led in and grinned jubilantly. This was one the department had won, and the whole precinct was filled with the clubhouse spirit of a winning ball team.

  “Why’sat guy bent over?” a photographer asked his reporter, and the reporter said, “What’s the matter, Jabby? You hurt?”

  Bauer shouldered into the little group of journalists that clotted around them. “Take Derby upstairs,” he told the prowl car crew. “Chief inspector’s on his way.”

  “Yes, sir.” Derby’s chin was touching his breastbone as they pushed him forward.

  “You hurt, Jabby?”

  Jablonski did a good job of straightening up. “No, sir. He—he kicked me in the belly. It—ah, hurt for a while. I’m all right now.”

  “We’ll run you down to the hospital.”

  “It ain’t that bad, Paul. Honest.” Not for anything would Jablonski miss all this.

  Someone plucked Ryan’s sleeve, and a tubby young man with horn-rimmed glasses said, “Holcomb—the Mirror. You’re Ryan, eh? Congrats—great job! Hey, is it true he’s admitted it?”

  A twinge of nervousness assailed Ryan. This had to be done carefully. One intimation about that hundred dollar bill—but the best thing always was to tell the truth as nearly as possible. “Well, yes,” he said hesitantly. “He even sort of boasted about it.”

  “Boasted? And him already a three-time loser?” And Ryan knew he should not have said that. Jablonski ought to be here to do the talking.

  “How’d you happen to spot him?”

  He told the story in three scant sentences. The reporter kept looking at his watch because he had to call the city desk immediately. He said, “And the loot—you got the dough, huh?”

  Ryan started to say affirmatively, “Oh, he had—” and stopped barely in time.

  But Holcomb caught the meaning.

  “He had the dough on him?”

  Full-blown panic now. His thoughts flew like leaves in a gale.

  Another reporter who had been listening repeated the question. “Derby had the C-note on him?”

  “He had some of the dough.” Ryan said wildly and pushed past them. “I got to get upstairs.”

  The other reporter said, “But wait—”

  “Not now. Later.” Ryan took the stairs two at a time. As he did, air fanned coldly against his moist brow.

  In the squad room off the head of the stairs, Lieutenant Bauer sat at his scarred desk, Jablonski comfortably alongside him. Somewhere Jablonski had obtained a cigar and its blue fragrance fumed the room. Bauer pushed a rickety chair toward Ryan and continued his conversation. “He admitted it, eh?” he asked Jablonski.

  “When we were alone he did,” said Jablonski.

  “Well, he sure ain’t talkin’ to McGonigle.” The telephone at his elbow jingled. Bauer said, “Seventeenth Squad Lieutenant Bauer” into it in one breath, then, “Yeah, Ed…yeah…yeah… Jabby and Ryan…right, kid,” and hung up.

  “Furtig,” he said. “He’s been out with the others making the dock joints.”

  “He can go to bed now,” said Jablonski magnanimously. But Ryan knew how Furtig must be feeling—relieved, but envious.

  Apparently Bauer knew too. “Well, you know how it is,” he said to Jablonski. For a man of his authority and background Bauer had a very mild voice. “Besides, the papers have been making such a—well, I guess you haven’t had a chance to see them. You guys have really done a job in case you didn’t know it.”

  Jablonski complacently licked a cigar leaf back into place. “Listen to this,” said Bauer and began reading from a paper he fished from the wastebasket.

  “…out and out anarchy… Hoodlums have taken over… While the commissioner has said…responsible citizens will bear in mind…action by the Governor…election next year in which…”

  Bauer finished it and laughed. “Well, what else should we do?” he asked briskly. Ryan remembered that Bauer had been on duty for almost twenty-four hours. He said, “Well, there’s the delicatessen to check, Lieutenant.”

  “Huh?”

  “We picked him up going into a delicatessen on Third to get some beer. He probably broke one of the tens there. He gave another to the landlady. I’ve got that.”

  “Good. Anything else?”

  “He said he got the dough from a loan shark but didn’t know the guy’s name. We better run that down before Farragut gets something arranged for him.”

  “Right. How much did he have on him?”

  “Oh,” said Jablonski, and Ryan began, “Well…”

  Jablonski said easily, “We didn’t have time to give him a complete frisk, Paul. Maybe it’s in his shoe.”

  Bauer said, “Yeah,” and scratched his unshaven chin. “McGonigle better know that right away.” He got up.

  “One other thing, Paul,” said Jablonski. “The lab oughtta go over that wool jacket of his very carefully. He hit the old dame with a lamp and it busted over her. That heavy wool would be perfect for picking up little bits of lamp plaster.”

  “Good deal.”

  When Bauer had gone Jablonski looked sideways at Ryan and smiled a slow, satisfied smile. But Ryan could not smile back. In the last ten minutes something had changed. He did not feel friendly toward Jablonski, and he did not know why. He just wanted to get this over and get out of here.

  There was the sound of many feet on the stairs and Ryan, looking over his shoulder, saw Betty Leonard and Mrs. Lombardi go down the hall with two detectives. “The witnesses,” he grunted.

  “It’s a hundred to one they make him,” said Jablonski, and that made Ryan feel better. He took a cigarette from Bauer’s pack and was lighting it when Jabby muttered, “Hey!” and got awkwardly to his feet. “Good evening, sir,” he said very respectfully.

  Ryan turned around. A lean man of medium height with a red, knobby face and angry eyes stood in the doorway. His overcoat’s velvet lapels framed a high, starched collar, a tasteless flowered necktie and a huge stickpin. He held his head and shoulders hunched forward aggressively as though he expected to encounter violence and expected to return it.

  “You Jablonski?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’re Ryan.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ryan had not shaken hands with the chief inspector of the New York police department since the day four years before when he graduated as a rookie patrolman. Now the chief inspector’s hand closed on his roughly, as on a nightstick, but the harsh eyes softened.

  “You’ll be hearing from the commissioner,” said Patrick Pembroke. “But I wanted to tell you to your faces what a fine bit of work you’ve done tonight, men. A fine bit of work.” His voice became music. “I thank you for it, and so does every man in the department.”

  He looked at both of them approvingly and Ryan, who knew that at the age of sixty-four the chief inspector had gotten out of bed and driven here simply to say those words to them, felt his throat close.

  “Thank you, sir,” said Jablonski.

  “It simply shows that heads-up police work can score every time. Have you got a case?”

  “We’ve got a case, sir,” said Jablonski with unexpected mildness. “This is the end of Derby.”

  “Good. The sooner he burns, the better.” The matter-of-fact voice was indescribably cold. “You’ve seen what the papers have said about us. You’ve given the commissioner the ammunition to answer them with. He’ll make use of it later today, if I’m any judge.”

  Once again the ancient, bony hand shot forward to each of them. “Thank you, Jablonski. Thank you, Ryan. A good job. Good night, men.” He went out with slow, cold dignity.

  Gol
ly, what a guy, Ryan thought, and out in the hall the chief inspector turned and came back so quickly that for a second he feared he had uttered the words aloud. He was tired and confused enough to do that.

  The old man was looking at him. “Ryan,” he said reflectively, and the faintest brogue edged his words. “Someone mentioned your name is O’Neill Ryan.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I once had a man under me named O’Neill Ryan. This would be years ago. Young sergeant, he was.” The chief inspector spoke deliberately now. “It was on the shoo—on the confidential squad. He was a fine man or he’d never got there so young. Later some hoodlums—” the knobby face hardened—“some hoodlums met him one night in Carmine Street. They killed him.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The chief inspector’s eyes flickered. Then they measured Ryan. “A relative perhaps?” he said softly.

  “My father,” said Ryan, and all the events of the long night welled up in his throat and to his eyes.

  For a long time the harsh angry gaze engaged Ryan’s. “Your father,” said Patrick Pembroke. “He was a good man. A good man. Good night, Ryan.” He went out.

  Ryan fumbled another cigarette out of Bauer’s pack and kept his head down.

  “Jeez, kid,” said Jablonski. “I didn’t know your old man was a cop.” There was a new respect in his voice.

  “Forget it,” said Ryan thickly, and had to wait a minute. Then he said, “He’s really quite a guy, isn’t he?” At that moment Ryan would have gone after a cityful of Derbys for the chief inspector.

  They heard Bauer coming down the hall.

  “Oh, Paddy’s a right gee,” said Jablonski carelessly. He breathed out a cloud of strong smoke. Then, “What’s he saying, Paul?”

  Bauer’s face was lined with weariness. “Nothing, as you might expect. But the gun looks good. It’s a .38, and it was a .38 slug that killed the victim.”

  “How about the witnesses?” said Ryan.

  “They picked him like a flash.”

  That made Ryan feel even better.