Any Woman He Wanted

by Harry Whittington

  “I’m bleeding,” I said.

  “You will be,” Mayor Bibb spoke up, “before we’re through with you. We won’t tolerate flagrant disobedience of orders any more than we’ll tolerate a police officer who engages in blackmail. The worst crime is unnecessary shooting.”

  “Is that all?” I said. “Are you through?”

  “Dammit!” Waylin’s voice was ugly, low. “Isn’t that enough?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I turned in the chair, tried to see into Fred Carmichael’s eyes through the cloud of cigar smoke encircling his head. “Mr. Carmichael, on this blackmail charge. Are you stopping payment on the check? Did your son tell you what would happen to him if you did stop payment?”

  “That’s enough insolence, Ballard.” Mitchell’s voice shook. He had never heard anybody take that tone to Carmichael.

  “That’s all right, Stewart.” Fred Carmichael leaned forward, staring at me. His lips pursed around his cigar. He removed it, glanced at it. “No, Ballard, we didn’t stop payment on that check. We wouldn’t think of it. We want it endorsed, put through the bank. We want it that way.”

  My grin matched his. “I’m sure you do.”

  “It’s not going to buy you anything, Ballard.”

  “I never expected it to. But I’m happy for your son that you decided to pay it. He’s a good boy. I like him.”

  “You brutally assaulted him,” Mitchell said in a slightly wild voice.

  “I had to talk to him in a convincing way. That’s all I did. Nobody else had ever shown him what could happen to a man who was irresponsible, destructive, grabbing. He knows now.”

  “Are you telling me my duties as a father?” Carmichael asked.

  “No. I haven’t got time. It’s already too late. But if you and the rest of the boys here had wept the kind of tears over Tom Flynn that you’re shedding over his no-good, hopped-up brother-in-law, you’d make more sense. The Palmer girl was under dope and—as you said—just out for kicks. The hell with it. And that Frank Sencho. That other member of the junior League. I used to arrest him regularly when he was part of the Luxtro mob. He was a pusher until he got hooked, and then he became just exactly what he was when he got killed—a hired gun. You’ll find it in the records.”

  Not one of them batted an eye.

  “You’ve twisted the truth in a fine fashion, Ballard,” Mitchell said. “But it won’t help you. I’m going to order you suspended and we’ll bring charges, public charges, if you try to get reinstated—”

  “Just a minute, Stewart.” Carmichael’s voice was soft “I thought we’d agreed to give Ballard a chance to straighten up.”

  Mitchell’s mouth flopped open. He resembled a pink guppy.

  “Oh?” He looked ill, confused. “Oh, yes. That’s right.”

  “As all of you men know—including Stewart—” Carmichael said, “I used my influence four years ago to keep this man on the force because I always felt that he could be a power for good. Maybe we’ve made a mistake as you pointed out, Bibb—maybe we haven’t given Ballard the proper incentive in the past four years. After all, he was a lieutenant in charge of a bureau. For four years, he’s been a detective without rank. Perhaps this has contributed to these recent lapses. As Waylin pointed out during our earlier discussion, Mike Ballard might be a fine cop tomorrow if he were promoted to lieutenant, and given some of his old responsibilities back.”

  “Sounds great, Fred,” Bibb said.

  “He’s made trouble,” Mitchell put it. “But perhaps you’re right, Fred. How do you feel about that, Mike? Lieutenant Ballard. It’d wipe off a lot of the old scores—oh, not all of them, but a promotion would show the town we wanted you on the force despite what the morning papers will say.”

  “I didn’t know there was a lieutenancy open,” I said.

  “There are always changes in the department, Mike,” Fred Carmichael said. “I know that from the years I’ve served this town. And in return for a promotion you would have to swear only adherence to duty—that you obey your superiors. Discipline is all we ask of any of our men.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  Mitchell said, “It seems to me that Mr. Carmichael is suggesting a splendid opportunity to redeem yourself, Mike. I don’t feel personally that you deserve it. I won’t even say I go for it. But if these other gentlemen do, I’ll bow to their counsel. That’s what we mean by discipline—we all have to submit to it. I’ll see you stripped of a job and facing criminal charges if you refuse.”

  I glanced at each of them. They weren’t going to spell it out again. They didn’t have to. I really did not have much choice unless I wanted all out. And I just was not ready.

  I shrugged and they accepted that as binding and suddenly I was a detective lieutenant again.

  Carmichael smiled. “I was sure we could settle this matter—if we just sat down and talked about it. If we just—” he stared straight at me “—understood each other.”

  Then he picked up the telephone receiver, dialed while he smiled in apology. “Pardon me, gentlemen. I hate to do this, but I want to make a little call.” He waited a moment and then he said, “All right, Lucy. Put the coffee on. I’m coming right home.”

  That broke up the meeting.

  I went out to my car and decided to leave it. Doc Yerrgsted’s office windows were dark. He had found something in those two bourbon bottles, even if it was only sleep. Doc asked little for himself these days.

  I felt a faint tinge of regret that he failed to invite me to drink one of those pints with him. Maybe he would feel better tomorrow—then I suddenly remembered that I was a lieutenant again, and I doubted that Doc would even speak to me after he found that out.

  I felt lonely, but I shouldn’t have. I had company. They stepped out of the shadows and walked along with me. They could not seem to get close enough to me, they were so friendly. They hated the thought I might get away from them. One of them even jabbed a gun snout hard into my kidney.

  “Just don’t do nothing foolish, Ballard,” one of them said.

  The gun bit into my flesh again. I glanced around the darkened parking area. There was only one light in the whole empty block of parking space. This was in a telephone booth near the rear wall of the building. Suddenly I knew what Fred Carmichael’s phone call, just before the meeting in Room 817 had meant.

  I glanced over my shoulder. “Which one of you boys is Lucy?”

  The one with the gun laughed. “We both are,” he said. “And the coffee’s on. Let’s go.”

  21

  There was no coffee perking in this room where the two goons took me. But we had fun without refreshments. They took turns working me over. They were not really tough. They were new generation punks, kids who had been living high off the hog. They tired easily. But one of them would hold the gun with the safety off while the other one battered me.

  Still between them, they were enough.

  I lay on the floor, bleeding. When I stared up at them, they looked ten feet tall. I tried to push up, couldn’t make it and decided the hell with it. I’d make them use that gun—as they probably would, anyway, in the end. I remembered Clemmons and Hogan and wondered why all the preliminaries.

  Finally one of them caught me by my collar, pulled me up and slammed me into a straight-backed chair.

  “One thing you got to give this boy, Getz. He’s tough. He can take it” Rosson laughed and smashed his gun into my face. “Hell, he’s really tough. He cleaned out the mob once, four years ago, all by himself.”

  “Yeah. I heard about that.”

  Rosson brought the gun around again in a sweeping blow The room was spinning, and when the metal struck my face, I barely felt the pain. The air turned a brighter red, the ringing in my ears was louder, that was all. I had no clear touch with reality any more.

  I was on the floor again, but I could still hear their voices. They were laughing and joking until a banging on the door silenced them. I heard the sound of a door being unlocked.
<
br />   Fred Carmichael’s voice was the next sound I recognized, incongruously, as if in a dream. But I knew this was no dream. “Is he unconscious?” Fred wanted to know “I told you two I wanted to be able to talk to him.”

  The two goons caught me and hauled me back to the chair.

  “He can hear you, boss. He can’t talk much, maybe, but he can hear.”

  “He’d better—it’s almost daybreak,” Carmichael said. “I’ve got to get home. Keep that gun on him, Rosson.”

  “Boss, you got nothing to worry about”

  Carmichael bent over me. “Can you hear me, Ballard?”

  It took a long time for me to nod—messages kept getting scrambled inside my head—but I finally made it.

  “Do you know now who is running this town, Ballard?” Carmichael asked.

  I managed to speak past the blood leaking out of my mouth. “Hell, Carmichael—I’ve always known.”

  Carmichael’s voice rasped, “Don’t outsmart yourself, Ballard. I can use you if you fall in line, but I’m wasting no time on you if you don’t. This beating is just insurance. You’ve still got your lieutenancy—but you’ll be working for me.”

  I stared up at him through the faint film of blood across my eyes. “I wondered why you didn’t finish me off, as you did Clemmons and Hogan.”

  He snorted. “Clemmons and Hogan weren’t worth bothering about. But you know your way around. You could be of some value to me. But I don’t waste time on bad investments, Ballard.”

  Even if I had been thinking clearly, I would not have anticipated his fist. It came up fast and there was more power in it than in everything his goons had been throwing at me. For a moment I thought my head had come off. I went off the chair and struck the floor, sprawling. I tried to move and could not. Carmichael kicked me in the mouth.

  From the top of a mountain I heard his voice. “The pay isn’t bad if you work for me, Ballard.”

  He turned and walked out. Rosson and Getz followed him. I heard the door close, and then heard only silence.

  I was in Doc Yerrgsted’s office when he got there. I had found the two pint whiskey bottles in his wastebasket—both empty. When he entered I was in his swivel chair, my face on his desk blotter.

  I think I had passed out. I came awake when Doc shook me by the shoulder. I saw his eyes flinch as he looked at my face.

  “By hell, boy,” he said. “You’ve got to stop playing in that block.”

  “Can you fix me up?” I rubbed coagulated blood from my mouth.

  “I gave up performing miracles years ago,” Doc said. He was opening his medical kit “The churches were complaining. But I can patch you up so you won’t frighten intelligent people between here and your home—I can’t guarantee the reactions of morons. In the meantime I can be arranging for your plane passage—”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He was working on me, moving quickly, with an old expertness that was part of him by now. “I had a phone call this morning, Mike. I don’t even know who was calling. He said to tell you no hard feelings as long as you stay in line.”

  “I’ve got the message, Doc.”

  “Don’t do it, Mike,” Doc said, and I began to feel better. “Don’t sell out— as I did.”

  “The hell with you, Doc.” I tried to make a grin. “What makes you think I’d do things you do. If I could, I’d heal the sick and put you out of business. Just now I’m tired. So goddam tired.”

  “Sure you are. I’ll fix you up and you get on home, get in bed. I’ll buy your plane ticket, make all arrangements. Any particular place you’d like to go?”

  “No, Doc,” I said.

  22

  I walked out to my car. People stared. The way Doc had my face wrapped up, I looked like something they’d dug out of an Egyptian tomb. Only I knew better. There was more life in any two thousand-year-old mummy than I felt right then.

  I drove home, and didn’t let myself think. I undressed and fell across my bed. I slept all day. Off and on I dreamed of Naomi Hyers, Morgan’s redheaded fiancée, and of taking a trip with her someplace. But I never found the place.

  The phone worked overtime, waking me.

  I sat up in the darkened room. For a long time I didn’t know where I was. When I tried to move, the room spun. The luminous hands of the clock on my night table stood at seven. The darkness at the windows was deepening. I had slept all day.

  I reached out for the phone and the room danced crazily. I closed my fist on the receiver, clinging to it somehow and pressed it hard against my ear.

  “Mike.”

  “Yes?”

  “Grace. Grace Gault, I hate to bother you. Ernie was due home two hours ago. You know Ernie. Always right here. I haven’t heard from him all day. Something was troubling him when he left this morning. I don’t like to be a fool, but I’ve got a terrible feeling—I’m afraid something has happened to him.”

  Her worry was contagious. I contracted it instantly. Whenever Ernie had to deviate from his normal time table, he always let Grace know. If he had failed to check in with Grace he was in trouble.

  For her sake, I tried to make light of the fear we both felt. “What could happen to him? He was probably held up somewhere by the job. I’ll check. I’ll find him and cart him right home.”

  “Will you, Mike?”

  “I said I would. Now stop worrying.”

  “I can’t help it. Two men were here at five o’clock looking for him. I told them he might be at the station. But they said they’d looked there. They worried me. I can’t help it”

  I asked a few questions, got her description of the two men, and said, “Okay. So I’ll find him for you. Will you stop worrying?”

  I put my feet carefully on the floor, afraid it might not be there. When I stood up, I almost fell. But I knew I had to keep going. Whether Ernie was alive or dead, time was running out.

  I made it to the living room, had two long slugs of bourbon. After the first screaming rage of pain through me, I felt better.

  I sat at the phone and began making calls. I didn’t ask for Ernie Gault. I said I wanted to find two guys named Getz and Rosson. I sat there in my underwear and shivered, but I found out what I wanted to know. When I got up and went back into the bedroom to get dressed, I could almost walk straight.

  I parked on Halsey near Maistre’s Bar, went up the stairs in the Brick-alter Building. It was old, dry, musty, and dark.

  It seemed a long way to the third floor. The room number I had been given was 308. I paused outside the door. A single dim bulb provided the sole illumination for the narrow corridor. Distantly, I could hear street noises.

  I took out my gun, pushed off the safety. For a moment I listened at the door. I could hear two men inside, talking, but not what they said. I put my shoulder against the rotted, wooden door. It gave.

  Getz and Rosson were sitting at a table with beer and sandwiches. They came up, moving fast. When they saw me, they hesitated for the space of a breath.

  I didn’t. I shot Getz first because he was nearest me. I got him in the hip, and he went flopping back against the wall, raging with the agony of a shattered pelvis. All the fight went out of him.

  I didn’t wait to check him. I had to shoot Rosson in the shoulder because he was going for his gun. He kept trying for it. I shot him again, in the same shoulder, a little lower. He spun around knocking a chair over as he hit the floor.

  I collected their guns as pure precaution. They didn’t even care. Getz was yelling for a doctor and Rosson was insane with fear that I was going to kill him. I didn’t bother telling him if I’d meant to kill him, I’d have done it with the first shot.

  I told them to quit crying. I found a phone, called the department and ordered a wagon. Getz screamed, wanting an ambulance, but I told him he was lucky to get a wagon and not to push his luck.

  Rosson was whimpering. “We was just doing our job.”

  “And I’m just doing mine,” I said. “Now it’s up to you. I ca
n finish this— or you can stay alive for the wagon and somebody might even get you a doctor. Take your pick.”

  Rosson was shaking all over by now “What do you want?”

  “A cop named Ernie Gault,” I said. “And I’ve got no time to waste. Where is he?”

  I brought the gun up. They couldn’t talk fast enough. The only trouble was they both tried to talk at the same time.

  I knew where the abandoned quarry was. I drove out there, pushing my old car as fast as it would go. I hit the turnpike with my horn wailing, and cars pulled over.

  I was doing ninety before I reached the cut-off, stepped on the brakes and slewed into the side road. It was shell-paved, but so narrow that in order to pass, cars had to go off on the shoulders on each side.

  I drove with my gun across my lap and the two I had taken from Getz and Rosson on the seat beside me.

  I felt better that way.

  As I drove, I felt my insides twist with contempt for these hoods, all of them, including the sweet-smelling Fred Carmichael. Carmichael claimed to be something new in racketeering power, but using this quarry showed what kind of imagination these slime had. Luxtro had used this place when he had a body he wanted to dispose of.

  I heard the car ahead of me even before I saw it. And when I saw it, I knew I’d struck pay dirt. The black sedan was racing toward me, hell-bent to get away.

  I felt the sickness fill my insides. If they were trying to leave, Ernie might already be dead.

  I didn’t stop to think about it. I swung the Olds hard, and then backed it, parking it across the narrow strip of road. Nothing on wheels could get around it between the car and the thick trees on each side.

  The car lights came racing toward me. At the last minute the driver slammed on his brakes, rolling right up against the Olds.

  Three hoods came out of that sedan, guns drawn.