He moved quickly through the short hall, holding light and gun behind him, shifting the light at the last moment to the crook of his right arm as he reached the door, then pressing the latch with a quick left-hand to throw the door open and bring the gun up as he grabbed the flashlight under his arm.
Derby was wearing a neat bow tie of blue checks, a white shirt and a dark suit. A slouch hat of thin felt was pulled low over his right eye; he carried a trenchcoat and he looked young. He winked rapidly in the flashlight beam.
“What is this?” he demanded in an unexpected voice. “I want to see Mr. Ryan—Detective Ryan, I mean. Isn’t this where he lives?”
Ryan kept light and gun on him. Derby could not see beyond the light. He blinked uncertainly.
“All right,” said Ryan.
“Oh. My name’s Derby, Mr. Ryan. Ken Derby. I’m Harry Derby’s brother.”
Then Ryan understood—and suddenly felt ashamed of the .38 and thrust it into his slacks. He said, “What’s on your mind?”
“I just want to talk to you. Sort of off the record, as they say.”
“You’re talking to me.” It annoyed Ryan to have been frightened.
“It would be better inside.” Derby’s brother raised his face to the light. “This will take a little while.”
“Come on in,” said Ryan. He did not know exactly how to deal with this, and that annoyed him too. He followed the younger Derby into the living room, switched off the television in mid-commercial, said, “Sit down,” waved to the sofa and sank into the deep, worn, leather chair that had been his father’s. When he raised his hands negligently behind his head the pocketed .38 made a hard knot against his thigh.
“I’m Ken Derby,” said his visitor again. “Harry’s my—my older brother.”
“Quite a brother.”
“Maybe. Anyway, that’s why I’m here.”
“Why?” said Ryan.
Ken Derby looked uneasy. “I want to find out what’s happened to Harry,” he said with an air of dogged determination. “I’ve been talking to his lawyer. I just don’t get it.”
“Don’t get what?”
“Look. You’re a cop. I suppose that you figure anyone connected with Harry is a—crook, or a heel.”
Meeting only with affirmative silence, he continued, “We know what Harry’s record is. My sister and me, I mean. Harry’s like my father was. On the docks and—well, a bum. Let’s face it. But the rest of the family isn’t like that. My sister isn’t, and my mother wasn’t. And I’m not.”
Ryan kept staring at him.
“The hell with that. Here’s what I came to say. And understand, I’m on the level. You can ask about me down at Triple-A. I drive a truck for them—Triple-A Delivery on Varick Street. You ask if Kenny Derby’s okay. And my sister. She—”
“You went into that.” Ryan said it knowing it must anger Derby into saying more than he had come to say.
And Derby took it that way. He got to his feet threateningly—virtually as tall as his brother although not as muscular. Still, Ryan liked the feel of the .38 against his thigh.
“Okay,” said Derby. “Then I’ll go into this.”
“Before you do,” said Ryan, interrupting in a way that he knew would not soothe Derby, “just bear in mind that I’m a police witness against your brother. I can’t discuss details of a case that is going to trial.”
“You don’t have to discuss anything,” said Derby grittily. “You’ve just got to answer one thing. Maybe you don’t want to answer it. But I came here to ask it to your face, and I want to see your face when you answer.”
Ryan looked up curiously.
“You got a case against my brother,” said Derby. “I know that. And he’s got a bad record. But almost everything you’ve got against Harry could be coincidence. The witnesses, the ten dollar bills, all that. The one thing you’ve really got against him is that there’s some kind of dust on his jacket that is supposed to prove he was in that old lady’s apartment.”
Ryan said, “What gives you that idea?”
“It was mentioned at the examination.”
“So you’ve been talking to Harry’s lawyer.”
Derby looked alarmed. “Suppose I have? Is that against the rules?”
“No. But do you want to argue with the scientists? They say that dust—”
“I don’t want to argue with anyone,” said Derby doggedly. “If my brother is really guilty.”
Ryan did not feel like answering that.
A door opened behind him and he heard Eleanor say, “Oh, I didn’t know—” and concluded she had come out of her room without her dress on. He said evenly, “You said your brother is guilty. Do you have any doubts?”
“No,” said Derby. “I don’t have any doubts. I don’t have any doubts at all.” Ryan caught a subtle meaning in that and tried to ignore it.
“Then I don’t get you,” he said. But a premonition had flared in his mind, swift and ominous as the darkening of an ocean sky before a storm. “If you’ve talked to Farragut, you know that the scientific evidence—that the dust the lab men found on your brother’s jacket—is unmistakable proof.”
“That’s just what I’m getting at,” said Derby.
“What, for God’s sake?”
“Mr. Ryan, how did that dust get on my brother’s jacket?”
Derby’s thin, light-eyed face burned across the lamplit room into Ryan’s mind, and time became endless. Ryan’s body flickered with impulses—to leap up, or kick over a chair or yell. Instead he must sit quietly and prepare to speak quietly.
“It got there,” he said, “when your brother smashed the lamp across that old woman’s head.”
“No,” said Derby. “It didn’t.”
“Then how?”
“I don’t know,” said Derby meekly. “If I knew, I could save Harry.”
Ryan snorted. “That’s only one part of the evidence against Harry. There were plenty of witnesses. There’s a bank clerk—”
Derby stood up, his lean frame drooping wearily.
“No.” His voice was weary too. “You don’t understand, Mr. Ryan. And I know you can’t discuss this and I didn’t come here to—to—well, try to fix anything. But it’s like I said. You have a case against Harry but a lot of it could be coincidence or mistaken identity or something. The one thing that’s impossible to figure is that dust. I was hoping maybe you’d be—be honest enough to tell me about that. But maybe you really don’t know about it.”
Ryan could stand this no longer. He too got to his feet. “Why?” he shouted. “What the hell do you want explained to you? Your lousy hoodlum brother killed an old woman. He’s guilty of murder. He deserves the chair and he’ll get it.”
Eleanor’s door opened again. Ryan heard her say, “Neill? Is there anything wrong?”
“Maybe he’ll get the chair,” said Derby steadily. “But he doesn’t deserve it. Because he’s not guilty of murder, Mr. Ryan… Harry did not kill that old woman. I know.”
“Neill?” called Eleanor anxiously.
Ryan could see only Ken Derby’s pale, taut face. He was conscious of the rise and fall of his own chest. “How do you know?”
“Because Harry was with me that afternoon,” said Derby; “No one will ever believe it because nobody knows it but me and Harry. He went around on my truck route. I was supposed to have a helper that afternoon and the helper, he didn’t show up—he’s a fellow that plays the horses and, well, you know. I had two big pieces to deliver way uptown that afternoon and I stopped off at the house and picked up Harry to help me. That’s against the rules, but I didn’t want to get Dom, that’s the helper, in trouble. And I knew Harry could use the dough. He’s been broke for quite a while.”
“But—” Ryan could not get his thoughts together. He was afraid to say anything or do anything that would make i
t any worse than it already was. An inspiration came from somewhere. “If he helped you make deliveries, then someone must have seen him.”
“I doubt it. You’re bonded on this job. If the company discovered I’d used an unbonded helper, let alone a guy with Harry’s record, I’d get fired so fast it’d make your head spin. Harry stayed out of sight, mostly. Oh, he ran a few light pieces in on the way uptown. But I really needed him only for the heavy work. One heavy piece was a refrigerator to an apartment up in Harlem and no one saw us take that in at all. The other was way up in the Bronx and we just dropped this stove on the porch of a new house. There were some carpenters working there inside, but—well, you know how much people notice something like that.”
There was silence. “That’s why I wonder about that dust, Mr. Ryan.”
“If he had an alibi,” said Ryan harshly, “why didn’t he say so?”
“I don’t think he really believes he needs one. And he knows it would get me in trouble if it came out he’d been riding with me—him especially with his criminal record. Harry’s funny. He’s sort of proud that I—well, I’ve got a job and always gone straight. And he still thinks that he can’t be convicted.” He added irrelevantly, “He wants to fight it through himself. He’d kill me if he knew I’d come here.”
The full meaning of it began to sink to the bottom of Ryan’s understanding. As it did he felt cold and shaky, and he knew Ken Derby was watching him.
Ignored, Eleanor firmly closed her bedroom door.
Derby turned and picked his hat off the sofa. Ryan’s gaze remained fixed on the emptiness where Derby had been.
“I hope,” said Derby, “that if you hear anything about that dust business, you’ll be honest.”
Ryan followed him to the door, said, “Good night,” and closed the door after him, and wasn’t aware of any of it.
He went back to the living room, lit a cigarette and inhaled it deeply. He snuffed it out, and then wished he had not snuffed it out and started to light another and then stopped. He had to pull himself together. He had to-think this straight through. He picked up a fresh cigarette and lit it.
Christ!
The clock tolled ten-thirty. It was time to start getting ready for work.
He was in great shape for it.
CHAPTER 9
Dom the Tailor
A hunchback named Frank Yett ran an untidy candy store just off First Avenue in the fifties. He dealt in pop, comic books, ice cream and novelties, and he took horse race bets on the side. Since this was the kind of neighborhood in which the police liked to keep track of neighborhood gossip, they let Yett make book as long as he took bets from adults only and passed on to them whatever he learned of police interest. Recently he had reported that a teen-age gang war was about to break out.
There was also a man who dealt in used cardboard cartons, lived in East Sixty-third Street and had been missing for two days. His car had been identified as one that ran down a pedestrian and then sped on along Bruckner Boulevard. On this night Jablonski and Ryan had been told to cruise the area where the teen-age war might break out and also to drive past the carton-dealer’s apartment occasionally.
It was not cold for November. But it was so foggily humid that the black asphalt was streaked with damp sheen under the street lights and the motor of the well-traveled police sedan responded under Ryan’s foot with unwonted power and quiet. They had had a couple of minor runs, but by three-thirty they sensed this would be a quiet night and so they might as well eat leisurely. There was a place on Third near Fifty-eighth Street that served hot sandwiches made with Italian sausage fried in onions and peppers.
At a quarter of four Ryan emerged from it carrying three sandwiches and two cartons of coffee. They pulled into a side street, switched off the lights and with even the radio quiet ate in aromatic silence for a few minutes, sharing the third sandwich.
Jablonski sighed contentedly. Tomorrow night would be his last tour of duty. He did not feel any sentimental twinges. All he could think of was taking it easy for a couple weeks. But something Ryan had mentioned earlier still bothered him. He sloshed his coffee around in the cardboard cup to stir up the sugar in it, drank, made a switching sound with his tongue against a bad tooth and drew a cellophane-sheathed cigar from his vest pocket.
“Well, did this guy offer any proof his brother was riding around in that truck?” he asked as though they had been talking about it for the last half hour.
But each knew what had been in the other’s mind.
“No. He just said—”
“He didn’t say why Harry’d do a thing like that?”
“Well, he needed help with these two heavy pieces like I said, and Harry needed the dough. He got the helper’s check, I guess.”
“But he didn’t say that anyone saw Harry in the truck—anyone but himself, I mean?”
“That’s right.”
Jablonski crumpled the cellophane and threw it contemptuously to the floor mat. “He’s not even a good liar.”
“Why do you say that?”
“He’s just trying to help Harry, that’s all.” He lighted the cigar and growled through jets of smoke. “Maybe that damned lawyer… I wouldn’t put anything past Farragut.”
“But why does this Ken Derby know so much about the dust on the jacket? If Harry didn’t tell him—well, why does Ken say if he knew how it got on the jacket he could prove Harry innocent? I don’t get it, Jabby. He—he sounded so damned sure.” Ryan knew he was sounding like a rookie, but he couldn’t help it.
Jablonski laughed a short, bitter laugh. “I’ll tell you why. Because he’s trying to shake your testimony, that’s why. Farragut put him up to that, I’ll bet you anything. He’s trying to make you less certain. Yup, the more I think of it…”
“Yes, but…”
“The Regal’s closing.”
Ryan started the car and drove it slowly, lights out, to the cross street and parked. The Regal, a bar and grill across the wide avenue, closed at four a.m. The proprietor usually locked up and left by himself with the night’s receipts. Ryan and Jablonski could watch his block-long walk to the subway entrance from here.
The sedan filled with cigar smoke. Ryan twisted his window down a little.
“Don’t forget these guys are brothers, Neill.”
“Oh sure, I realize that.”
“Probably Harry does ride with him occasionally in that truck,” Jablonski mused. “Probably cases joints that way.”
“I don’t know about that. I think Ken’s honest. He wouldn’t let—”
“You think, huh? Personally I wouldn’t trust any Derby.”
“The younger one hasn’t any record,” said Ryan. “I checked.”
“There he goes.”
The interior of the Regal had gone dark. Now its big sign blinked out. A man came away from the doorway’s shadow and walked hurriedly down the street. They waited until he disappeared down a subway kiosk.
But Ryan did not start the motor. He had been steeling himself. Now with his hand on the switch, looking straight ahead, he said, “Jabby, do you think there’s a chance he’s innocent?”
Jablonski removed the wet cigar from his mouth and turned his head to look at Ryan. Ryan uneasily stepped on the starter and slipped the transmission into first.
“Wasn’t it you that took the C-note out of his wallet?” asked Jablonski at length. “Innocent, for God’s sake!”
“I know, but—” Ryan was doggedly determined to get it all out. “Like his goddamned brother said. That dust is the one thing that convicts him for sure. And we know how that got there.”
“God awmighty, Neill. You’re getting nuts. If you’re serious—I can’t believe it, but if you are, check on that alibi and see for yourself. Why, that’s the most—and don’t forget Derby himself told us he was home sleeping. He didn’t say nothing about a
truck ride. If I ain’t right, you can come out to my new place and—and eat all you want on the house for a month.”
Ryan grinned. For the moment at least, Jablonski’s hearty disbelief reassured him. “I’m glad the deal went through, Jabby. The Green Lantern Inn, eh?”
“That’s it, and you’re welcome any time.”
The radio said it was four ten a.m. Ryan wondered if he might catch Gee Gee if he called the club, but he did not like Jablonski to know he was calling her. Jablonski said. “Coast back to Sixty-third Street again and see if the guy’s come home.”
Ryan complied. He felt better for having talked about it. But he still felt a little wordless uneasiness that was like the gnawing of a grave worm.
* * * *
The office of the Triple-A Delivery Corporation was a glassed-in room in the corner of a grimy garage that by mid-morning contained only a few immaculate black vans. An old-fashioned iron stove kept the office overheated and the sagging chair in which the proprietor, a heavy man named Nichols, sat sprawled, scented the hot air with the stink of rotting leather. The wall behind Nichols was papered with calendars old and new, all depicting long-legged girls in advanced stages of undress. Ryan flipped the badge on his wallet toward Nichols.
“It’s a routine matter,” he said, “so for the present we’d prefer that no one knows anything about it. Especially the people involved.” He looked down at Nichols. “That’s important,” he said.
Nichols’ thyroid-bulged eyes, big as olives, looked up under thick lids. “I understand.”
“You have a driver named Kenneth Derby. On November seventh he’s supposed to have had a run that required a helper.”
“Could be.”
“Do you keep any records that’d prove whether he did or not—and would they show who the helper was?”
“November seventh?” Reaching behind him, Nichols took one of half a dozen clipboards hanging from worn brass hooks and began riffling the long yellow sheets on it with a wetted thumb.
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