He left the house giving his hat the fancy crush and resolving to put Derby out of his mind.
Walking to the I.R.T. station took him past the church and the parish priest’s house. Only a single dull light burning behind the Venetian blinds hinted at life inside. Ryan striding the frosty sidewalk passed within a yard of that uninviting window. An adviser on Derby, perhaps? A sanctuary to keep in mind, and rely on if need be? Ryan’s mouth made a tight smile. No. Not likely.
He remembered the time that he and his mother had come here and were closeted with the priest behind that very window. Ryan hadn’t been going to church and that troubled his mother. He had agreed to the interview and he still remembered the platitudes and tired admonitions, the meaningless, emotionless words that should have had meaning and emotion. Now he had not gone to church in a long time, and that had become accepted at home. But he and his problem wouldn’t be welcome behind that reclusive window.
At the subway entrance he bought a tabloid and lost himself in the latest doings of café society.
The name Hawes did not appear on any of the mailboxes in the hallway of Gee Gee’s building. But Haas did. Ryan wisely pushed that button and was gruffly admitted to a second-floor front apartment by an elderly man who had removed the detachable collar from his shirt and the shoes from woolen-socked feet. He said Georgine should be ready in a minute, went back to his chair and continued to stare at a large television set which was portraying the adventures of Sid Caesar.
Ignored, Ryan held his hat and pondered the ways of a world that changes Georgine Haas into Gee Gee Hawes. He did not particularly like Georgine as a name, just as he did not like the heavy scent of cooking in here, or the large oval family portraits that had been hung in Old World style high up near the ceiling, or this grizzled walrus who presumably was her father and didn’t even have the courtesy—
Then she was standing there, in the same coat and carrying with her the same faint scent, a perfume of aromatic dryness, and pressing new gloves on over her fingers, smiling “Sorry to keep you waiting,” her eyes as deep and large and somehow inviting as he had remembered they were. He got up and dropped his hat and said, “Hi.”
She gestured to her father, “Guess you’ve met—’bye, Pops,” and went to the door. Ryan followed, muttering, “Good night.” Only Sid Caesar answered him.
In the hall the cooking smell was strong. Gee Gee wrinkled her nose. “I’d never have let you pick me up here if I didn’t think you were a nice, sane guy,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
A shinily gloved forefinger made a disdainful arc around the stairwell. “Usually I meet dates somewhere else. There are a lot of people I don’t want to have know that my old man’s a night watchman, and that I support the family—as much as I can.”
“I don’t think that’s anything to bother about one way or the other.”
“Neither do I. But some people do, especially in show business. You’re supposed to live at the Waldorf and eat at Twenty One.”
They had reached the street. “Speaking of which,” he said.
“Speaking of which.” She laughed and took his arm with the ease of one accustomed to taking arms. “I’m starved. You’ll learn not to ask me out to dinner, Neill.”
Ryan laughed too, and was emboldened. “That’ll take a long time. Where would you like to go? Pick one you really like.” His wallet contained almost eighty dollars; he had counted it just before dressing.
“How about Chinese food?”
Ryan did not especially like Chinese food. He said, “Well, if that’s what you’d like,” without enthusiasm. It did not occur to him that she could have said that because she knew Chinese restaurants were inexpensive.
“I really don’t care. Maybe chow mein isn’t the thing at that. You name one.”
They had reached the corner. Ryan named several, all of them expensive. That was how he felt.
Gee Gee looked her surprise. “You must have got a bonus for catching that Derby,” she said lightly.
He’d got a bonus all right.
She saw in his face that it had been the wrong thing to say. “How do you like the Blue Ribbon?” she asked quickly. “I think their food is awfully good.”
This time Ryan grinned, shrugged off his irritation and waved an approaching cab to the curb.
They ate oysters and roast duck and got to know each other better. Gee Gee paid an escort the compliment of being neither coy nor arch with him, nor yet determinedly the professional dancer. Instead she was forthright and relaxingly unassuming, as though she felt Ryan was the same sort of person. The effect on Ryan was overwhelming and happily narcotic.
He insisted she select something from the huge, tempting pastry tray over her protests about her figure and her job, and he told her she had nothing to worry about with such obvious sincerity that Gee Gee, who was used to compliments, was stirred. They got on well, and when she remarked idly that after such a meal there was nothing like an espresso Ryan instantly suggested taking a taxi down to one of the little Italian coffee shops in the Village. It was an extravagant gesture and Gee Gee, embarrassed because she had never intended to suggest that, protested again. But Ryan looked so disappointed that she gave in.
In the cab they sat quite close together and Gee Gee asked questions about his job, and Ryan answered them, meanwhile dismissing a temptation to try putting his arm even ever so lightly around her shoulders.
“What’s it really like?” she asked. “Being a detective, I mean. I know it’s not like in the movies and so on. You don’t get cases like that Derby one often, do you?”
“Not often,” said Ryan, and knew he had let irony edge his voice. “Most of the time it’s routine, little things you run down day after day. A lot of it is taking over after a uniform man has made an arrest and developing information, motives and such to use in court. You don’t run around with a magnifying glass making deductions.” It made him a little bitter.
But she was genuinely interested. “Then what do you use? Handcuffs and a gun?”
“Mostly your feet,” Ryan grinned. “And sometimes your head. Handcuffs, sure, when you’re making a collar—arresting someone. Never your gun if you can avoid it. That’s the last resort.”
She said, “Uh huh,” understandingly in the cab’s warm darkness but he knew she did not understand what that meant at all. How many civilians did? She went on, “I guess it’s like show business. Everybody who’s not in it thinks it’s glamorous and exciting every night. But it’s routine, too. Except for the opening nights—I guess they are like the nights when you arrest someone like Derby.”
“Yes.” He could never get completely away from it. So why try? “Derby’s something special, all right.”
“Derby is? Was, I’d say.” She sensed this was dangerous ground from his voice, but she had the feminine impudence born of knowing she was liked. Anyway, what was eating him? “Derby’s all taken care of—remember?” she said.
But Ryan could not respond to her lightness.
She had not expected him to keep looking like that. She said contritely, “I just remembered Ed emphasizing that night how you two had taken care of Derby.”
Ryan recognized the need for getting away from this. “Sure,” he said. “That’s right. Derby’s all washed up. And speaking of that let me tell you something that happened one night down on South Street.”
But telling the oft-told anecdote, he could not help wondering if she was looking at him a little oddly, and just how friendly she was with Jack Sandalwood, and how often she saw him. And whether she ever had repeated what Jablonski had said that night.
* * * *
In the coffee shop they sipped black, deliciously bitter coffee drawn from a monstrous hissing machine and sprayed with oil from a sliver of lemon zest. Afterward they went out into the cold black night and walked through Washington Square, p
ast a few hardy oldsters still playing chess by lantern light, and other, darker benches with occupants silent or murmurous. They did not say much, but she took his arm and they walked through the shadowy park content with each other’s company and with the awareness that the other was content too.
They walked a long time, past show windows filled with impossible lamps, best-sellers or copies of last month’s Paris originals. Once she murmured, “You know, Neill, you’re an awfully restful guy to spend an evening with,” and looking quickly, Ryan saw her eyes were closed even while walking and yet she was smiling.
Jeez, thought Ryan. He wasn’t thinking of Derby now.
They walked a long time like that.
* * * *
He knew the Village pretty well, but after an hour he found they were on one of those little side streets that angled-off another street, and he knew he had taken a wrong turn. It was dark and empty and Gee Gee said, “Golly, where are we?” Ryan said he had pulled a boner, but that at the next corner they should be able to see where…
She pressed a little closer to him in this dark uncertainty, and Ryan put his arm around her waist—how slender, even encased in that thick coat!—and doing that was not surprising to him at all, or remarkable, but natural, and he pulled her closer to him and she raised her face. He started to find her lips…
He saw the movement only as a flash of furtive white, a something on the left that instinctively pulled him from her, and then the man was there, crouched, menacing, barefoot, although not registering immediately in Ryan’s consciousness despite the white shirt and snarling brown face, his left hand holding high a clean knife.
It was impossible.
But the little man, legs braced wide, knife high, screamed, “Hello, whore man!” and rushed at them, head down, knife reversed for an upward belly thrust.
Ryan pushed her behind him as the man leaped forward, head low like a tackier in football, knife wavering up. Ryan kicked hurriedly and his overcoat spoiled his aim. His toe grazed the other’s thigh, and turned him but did not stop him.
Ryan grabbed for the knife as he came in, missed, grabbed wildly again, caught the man’s wrist and twisted it. A knee pumped up and caught him, but his right arm lay across the man’s upturned face and he pushed it down, bending the man’s head back. Then he lost his balance and felt himself falling. He scraped desperately for footing and went over the curb, stumbled into the street and went down on a knee and saw something leaping. Gee Gee screamed; he did not hear her.
He rolled and made the knife-man almost miss with his leap. Ryan found his pistol even with the man partly on top of him. He pulled it out and shoved it into the brown, intent face and the knife-man incredibly opened a snarling mouth and bit down on the pistol’s short barrel, yanking with his teeth. He’s crazy, Ryan realized. You don’t use your gun on a mental case.
Light came from somewhere although Ryan would remember sensing that only later. Gee Gee screamed again. Ryan wondered if he would ultimately have to shoot, and if so how he might make sure of hitting the right shoulder.
He saw the knife flash suddenly and he gathered strength from somewhere (a taxi horn honked) to push up with arm and body and knees. The little man toppled sideways and for the first time Ryan managed a punch. It was only with his left hand, and it hit the man’s face, still holding the gun in his mouth, but did not dislodge him. The knife started flashing again and he had to let go the gun to grab that arm. He didn’t stop it entirely because he felt something graze his chin even though he was holding the man’s arms while he wrestled like a maddened monkey, sitting on Ryan, holding the gun in his crazed mouth.
A shape stood over them. “Take the gun,” Ryan gasped and she bent over and wrested the pistol from the man’s jaws. Ryan arched his back and moved him a little, then in desperation let go one writhing wrist to swing at the vague face. The punch landed and the man went sideways and Ryan rolled over and kicked him and then, on his knees, punched him again. Someone said, “Hey, for God’s sake!” and there was more light and the knife’s blade glittered on the black asphalt. Ryan grabbed for it.
So did the little brown-faced man and she entreated, “Here, here,” and handed him his pistol. He put it on the man who still lunged forward on his knees, fingers clawing for the knife, and Ryan got up and kicked again and this time he caught the knife-man in the stomach which was what he had intended the first time and the man flew back.
A voice said, “Listen, Buster, that ain’t no way to fight.”
For the first time he looked beyond the range of his assailant. Two taxicabs had stopped in the street, their headlights illuminating the scene. A big, fat driver whose belly had burst his pants was looking outrage at Ryan.
Ryan pulled out his badge. “Under arrest,” he said with thick meaninglessness and went to the brown-faced man. He searched the man and found he was naked under his pants and bloodied shirt.
“You,” said Ryan to the cab driver. “There’s a call box up on the corner. Tell them to send a radio car here right away.”
Gee Gee looked at him, her face white and her eyes haunted. “Jesus,” she said. “Your chin.”
It was bleeding.
Only after the first radio car got there and dozens of neighbors had come down into the street did someone go up to the knife-man’s apartment in the house opposite. They discovered his wife and two babies were dead, their throats slashed as they slept. He was a Puerto Rican busboy in an uptown hotel, the neighbors said, who had lost his job three days before.
Several of them had seen the fight, or the latter part of it, from their windows, and had seen Gee Gee wrest the gun from the madman’s jaws. When the reporters came they were eager to talk. When Ryan and Gee Gee, after his scratched chin had been treated in a nearby admitting room, appeared at the local precinct station, they were photographed together. Finally he took her home, apologizing for the melodrama, embarrassed by the evening’s ending and still seeing the knife flashing down. He didn’t try to kiss her.
But next day New York read the news, straight from the dark, greasy pavement of Barrow Street:
HERO COP NABS BABY SLASHER
And under its headline one paper added:
DANCER HELPS MAKE ARREST
CHAPTER 13
The Empty Passage
The capture of Derby had made Ryan a one-day hero, but when he returned to work now it was as a celebrity. To the newspapers the combination of show girl, young cop and maniacal killer was a perfect one, and they made the most of it. At a time when the department was under general opprobrium Ryan seemed to be proving singlehandedly that a policeman could be as capable, alert and humane as the most indignant Constant Reader could wish, and the very newspapers that had devoted lead editorials to the rising crime rate now spent flattering front-page space on the work of an unknown rookie. One editorial compared him to the almost legendary Johnny Broderick, and Winchell’s Girl Friday column asked, “Why don’t they call rookie detective Ryan Rockie instead?”
Ryan felt the difference among his associates. Technically, he was still a beginner, but only technically. Now in some subtle yet palpable way he had acquired importance and weight. Even the older men in the station house treated him with the grudging respect of envied prestige. That was pleasant, but to Ryan it sometimes seemed his progress had been too rapid to be healthy, a suspicion heightened by the haunting awareness of what would happen if the truth about Derby got out.
As the opening of Derby’s trial drew near, Ryan found himself waking up nights in unrecallable fear, and his daytime thoughts turned often to his father.
What would he have thought?
* * * *
Late one wintry afternoon Ryan found himself in Carmine Street.
He did not try to analyze what had led him there after a routine day’s work; he simply knew he wanted to be there.
But after he turned into the
thoroughfare his mind flooded with the remembered scent of carnations and roses that had filled their home then. And with the huge black case in the living room, his father motionless in it, and the ride to the church, his mother in unfamiliar black; a neighbor had kept Eleanor. And all the policemen who had been there that day in uniform.
“Do you remember him, Neill?” his mother sometimes asked. “Really remember him, I mean?”
A man so enormously tall that the silver shield on the heavy blue uniform was always out of your reach, even on tiptoe. A good-humored man who liked to play and swing you around and carried a rosary in his hip pocket. No, he couldn’t really see him. The living memory of his father had been distorted by the photographs kept in honored places in the living room and on his mother’s bureau. Yet he did remember him, and vividly. Not as a physical being but as a kindly benevolence, a refuge of understanding and admiration, who had been something to him that no one else could ever be.
“Of course,” he would say. “Of course I remember him.”
He had come here before when he was sixteen. Rummaging through his mother’s bureau for a handkerchief one day, he had come upon the envelope of old, crisp news clippings, and had read with sickening shock that pressed tight tears to his eyes what had happened to his father.
Sergeant O’Neill Ryan had been investigating collusion between a lieutenant in a downtown precinct and a gang of young burglars, and he had caused the arrest of three of them as well as suspension of the lieutenant. Some days later he had been lured—how was never learned—into a dark passage between buildings on Carmine Street at night, and two groups of hoodlums had started down it from either end.
As he lay dying on an operating table, drooling blood, one eye sightless, he had described or named five of the seven attackers. It had taken the department years to hunt them down. Two had died in the electric chair, two were in Dannemora and one was dead, shot in a holdup after serving his time. The other two were wanted to this day, and the revolver that Sergeant O’Neill Ryan had carried and fired three shots from that night was still preserved for ballistics tests in the police headquarters annex, in case one of the slugs ever turned up in a prisoner or in a corpse. The case would never be closed as long as there was a chance of one of them being alive.
Dead Sure Page 11