"Let's make sure that phone doesn't ring, eh?"
As he stowed the blackjack in a pocket, he let his jacket flare open to reveal the holstered revolver at his waist.
Jack Fawcett took the dirty steps two at a time, bypassing the ancient elevator. Upstairs, a murky hallway carried the pervasive odors of age and accumulated filth.
He paced off the hallway until he stood before the door to room twenty-six. Gingerly he tried the knob and, of course, found it locked.
Damn.
It had been a long shot, anyway.
Fawcett drew his .38 and thumbed the hammer back. He took a short step backward, then hit the door with a flying kick just beside the lock. There was a sound of splintering wood as the ancient door exploded inward.
Fawcett charged into a small, half-darkened room. Greasy curtains admitted dappled light, producing surrealistic nightmare shadows. Directly across the room, a slender figure was coming suddenly awake, thrashing around in tangled bed-sheets.
Jack Fawcett rushed to the bed and with one hand shoved the boy flat on his back, leveling his pistol at the upturned face. Familiar young-old eyes stared up at him with a mixture of fear and hatred. They were wild, animal eyes.
For an instant, the detective was overwhelmed by the temptation to squeeze the trigger of his .38 special and be done with it forever. His finger was tensing into the pull, his eyes narrowing, when he came to himself and shook the moment aside.
His voice was bitter, savage.
"Surprise, asshole. Flip over and assume the position."
Courtney Gilman did as he was told, rolling over and bringing clenched fists around behind his back. Fawcett cuffed them there, then used his spare set of handcuffs to shackle one of the boy's slender ankles to the bed frame.
The young man lay before him unmoving, silent. His entire being seemed to radiate an insolence — and evil — and once more Fawcett felt his hand tightening involuntarily around the .38. He controlled himself with an act of will.
Jack Fawcett knew what he had to do, what duty and circumstance demanded. He left the room, leaving the door ajar, and moved swiftly to the pay telephone at the near end of the corridor. He dropped a dime into the box and dialed the number of Roger Smalley's office.
Fawcett was surprised to note that his hands were trembling. A secretary took his call and patched him through to the assistant commissioner. In a moment, Smalley's curt voice filled his ear.
"What can I do for you, Jack?"
"It's what I can do for you, Commissioner," he said, resenting the man's haughty tone. "I've just taken delivery on that package you wanted. It's ready to be passed on."
Smalley's voice brightened instantly, losing its curt tone and becoming cheerful.
"That's excellent news. Jack, excellent. I couldn't be happier."
Fawcett felt something out of place in the man's tone, but he couldn't put his finger on it.
"Where, uh, should I deliver the goods?"
Smalley cleared his throat softly, hesitating.
"We've had a change of plans today," he answered at last. "Something unexpected. I'm going to have to meet you personally on this."
Fawcett's mind was filled with the sudden jangling of alarm bells. He felt the short hairs on the nape of his neck standing at attention.
And he remained silent, waiting for Smalley to continue.
"Jack? Are you there?"
Where the hell else would he be?
"Yes, sir, right here."
"I'm going to take delivery in Phalen Park, Jack. Follow West Shore Drive, and I'll meet you by the water. Give me forty-five minutes."
"All right. Whatever you say."
Smalley detected his nervousness, and the commissioner sounded concerned.
"Is there any problem with that, Jack?"
Fawcett's answer was hasty as he tried to cover his feelings.
"No, sir, no problem. I'll be there with the package."
Smalley's voice smiled back at him.
"Excellent. Goodbye, Jack. And thank you."
Fawcett listened to the buzzing dial tone for a full minute before hanging up. His mind was racing, trying to anticipate Smalley's plan, and coming up short each time.
Clearly, the guy had something up his sleeve, and whatever the hell it was, it could spell trouble. Jack Fawcett knew Smalley well enough by now to be suspicious of him. He only wished he had possessed such ultimate knowledge before he placed that very first call to the commissioner concerning Courtney Gilman.
Spilt milk, he told himself gruffly. No use crying.
He would keep his appointment with Smalley, there was really no choice in the matter. But he wasn't walking into it with his eyes closed either.
The assistant P.C. wasn't going to make a monkey out of Detective Lieutenant Jack Fawcett. Not a monkey, or a scapegoat. Or a corpse.
The change of plans could only mean unexpected trouble, and Fawcett knew in advance that Smalley would try to shake off as much of the shit as he could, to dump it on somebody else.
And Jack Fawcett didn't intend to make himself a handy target. It would all be so easy. Go back into that damned dingy room and unlock the handcuffs that held Courtney Gilman to the bed like a hobbled calf. Back off a few paces, and bam! One psycho in the bag.
So easy, yeah. And so impossible.
Jack Fawcett had chosen the path himself, with a phone call long ago. Now he had no choice but to follow the path he had set, and try, just try, to have some say in the way it ended up.
Cursing, the detective stalked back down the hallway to collect his prisoner.
17
For Assistant Commissioner Roger Smalley, it had been a day dominated by telephones. First, the wake-up call from Jack Fawcett had promised to ruin the day entirely, and then the second interruption from Fran Traynor, had sent his ulcers into angry, growling protest.
The telephone had even conspired to vex him in its silence, refusing to connect him with Benny Copa when he needed the goddamned hoodlum most.
Only the last call, again from Jack Fawcett, had promised relief from a day fraught with potential disasters. Maybe, just maybe, the pieces were starting to fall into place.
Smalley could proceed with his plan now, full speed ahead. And the added embellishment promised by Fawcett would tie the whole thing up into one bright, shiny package.
An early Christmas present, sure. Why not?
But the damned telephone was ringing again!
Smalley punched a button to answer the ulterior office line, and his secretary's sultry voice issued from the speaker at his elbow.
"I'm sorry, Commissioner, but there's a Mr. La Mancha on line one, calling from the Justice Department."
La Mancha.
Smalley went cold for an instant, his hands clenched into fists on the desk top. Then he forced himself to relax, inch by inch.
"Thank you, Vicky," he said, pleased to find his voice in perfect control. "Put him on, please."
There was a click, and a moment of dead air followed by a humming sound, then Smalley sensed another presence on the line.
"Assistant Commissioner Smalley here," he said jovially. "Can I help you?"
"I wouldn't be surprised."
It was a deep voice, firm and strong. Knowing, somehow. You could read a million things into that suggestive intonation. Smalley fought to keep his imagination from running away with him. How much could the damned guy know, after all?
"Is there something St. Paul can do for the department?" Smalley asked.
La Mancha's answering tone was curt.
"Forget the department, guy. I just had a chat with Thomas Gilman about his family problem."
Smalley stiffened in his chair, fighting the involuntary tremor in his limbs. He forced his voice to remain strong and even.
"What? I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about."
"I'm talking about Thomas Gilman. I believe you know him — and his son — very well."
Smalley felt as
if his world was about to collapse around his ringing ears. He gulped a deep breath and held it for an instant, letting it out slowly as he fought to marshal his thoughts, to control the painful rumbling in his gut.
"I'd like to know who I'm talking to," he said at last. "If you're not with Justice..."
La Mancha cut him off again.
"Spell it with a small J. And the who doesn't matter, compared to the what."
Smalley was growing more and more confused.
"Well, then..."
"We're talking about murder, Commissioner, times five. And the one who got away."
Smalley tried to put the man off, stalling for time.
"It sounds like you want our homicide division, Mr. La Mancha. I could give you the number."
"I've already spoken to homicide," the caller told him simply. "My next call goes to the media."
"What?"
It was as if an invisible fist was clenched around Smalley's vocal cords, and he cursed his own lack of control.
The stranger's answer chilled him to the bone.
"I have a tape here with me that the city editors should be interested in," he said.
Smalley's mind was filled with a crush of conflicting, near-hysterical thoughts and fears. A tape? From Gilman? Had the yellow son of a bitch broken down and spilled his guts to a G-man, for God's sake?
No, La Mancha had already indicated he wasn't with the department. Okay. A blackmailer could be handled, paid off in more ways than one.
"Perhaps, uh, if you filled me in on the details..."
Before Smalley could finish the sentence, he heard the hissing sound of a tape in motion, and over all the sound of two familiar voices.
One voice belonged to his caller, the man named La Mancha.
The other belonged to Thomas Gilman.
". . . broke down under questioning and... he confessed... to rape and murder."
"You got a phone call."
Silence. Smalley could picture Gilman's head bobbing in assent.
"From a lieutenant named Fawcett?" "Who? No, I don't recognize the name. I was called by Assistant Commiss..."
Mercifully, the tape ended, cut off in mid-syllable.
Roger Smalley sat dumbly in his chair, feeling numb, shaken to the very fiber of his being. For an instant he almost panicked at the thought of those recorded words coming over an open line, but he calmed himself. No one could tap his phone without his learning about it in short order. He was the Assistant Police Commissioner, for Christ's sake!
The voice of the man called La Mancha was back on the line, demanding Smalley's attention, calling him out of himself.
"Heard enough, Commissioner?"
There was, surprisingly, no mocking tone in the words. The man seemed almost... well, almost sad, somehow.
Smalley's answering voice was low, taut.
"What is it that you want?"
La Mancha's answer came back at him without hesitation.
"Toni Blancanales, safe and sound."
And that was all.
Smalley risked everything on another stall.
"What makes you think..."
He never got it out. La Mancha's voice was a razor slicing across his words, terminating them in mid-sentence.
"I also had a talk with Benny Copa. He was cooperative to the last." Smalley's mind flashed back to his unanswered phone call of some time earlier. He guessed that Benny C. wouldn't be answering any more calls for a while — if ever.
"I see." It was all the commissioner could manage at the moment.
"Here's the deal," La Mancha said briskly, not waiting for any questions. "Deliver the lady in good working order, and I'll give you an hour's head start before I start making calls."
Smalley saw red for an instant, his hands clenched into tight fists before him. He imagined the smell of something burning in his nostrils.
"You can't be serious!" he snapped, when he recovered himself enough to speak.
"Is that your answer?" La Mancha asked.
"What?"
Smalley was suddenly confused, his anger blunted, thrown off stride by the simple question.
La Mancha's voice came back at him, this time with a note of resignation in it.
"Goodbye, Commissioner."
Suddenly desperate, Smalley clutched at the desktop speaker with palsied hands, as if to forcibly stop the other man from hanging up.
"Wait, dammit!" he blurted. Then he felt, tickling the back of his mind, the germ of an idea. "All right," he said reluctantly, "you've got a deal."
"Where and when?"
And suddenly Smalley knew the answer. Hell, he knew allthe answers.
"You know Phalen Park?" he asked slowly, fighting to keep the new excitement out of his voice.
"I'll find it," La Mancha told him.
"Okay. Meet me on West Shore Drive, let's say in an hour."
There was no immediate answer, and Smalley assumed the guy was thinking it over.
"Safe and sound, Commissioner," La Mancha said at last. "Otherwise, all bets are off."
"How do I know I can trust you?" Smalley countered.
"What choice do you have?" the stranger asked simply.
Roger Smalley had no ready answer for that one, but it didn't matter, because the line was already dead, an obnoxious dial tone filling the room until he hit the speaker switch and silenced it.
The assistant commissioner sat quietly, thinking and cursing to himself, laying the last of his battle plans that warm morning. This La Mancha, whoever the hell he was, appeared to have him by the balls, and it wasn't a comfortable feeling.
Well, let the bastard think that way. Just let him.
Roger Smalley wasn't done yet. Not by a long shot. And Mr. Smart-ass La Mancha would wind up wearing his own balls for a bow tie before the afternoon was out.
You could take that to the bank.
La Mancha had gained the early advantage in their conversation via the element of surprise, but the shoe was on the other foot now. When the guy kept their appointment in the park, he would meet with asurprise arranged by Assistant Police Commissioner Roger Smalley, no less. A fatal surprise.
Smalley lifted the telephone receiver, thought better of it, then cradled it again.
No, it wasn't likely that his phones were tapped, or his office bugged, but he hadn't survived this long on the force with the wise guys on one side and the headhunters from Internal Affairs on the other by being careless.
It might be a sign of paranoia, but what the hell. These were paranoid times he lived in, after all. A grin crossed Smalley's face as he thought of a psychedelic poster that had seen brief popularity in the head shops a number of years earlier: "Just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean they aren't out to get you!"
And amen to that.
Well, "they" could be surprised right alongside Mr. La Mancha.
Smalley rose from his desk and made ready to leave the office. He had plans to finalize and a surprise party to orchestrate. When it was over, he just might come back and take his attractive secretary out to lunch.
In an hour he would be home free. Free and clear.
18
The automobile bearing Fran Traynor, blindfolded, to her unknown destination slid smoothly to a stop. Throughout the ride, of which she remembered very little, she had been primarily conscious of the throbbing pain in her skull where Smalley had struck her, and of the moist, threatening palm that rested heavily on her right thigh.
But now the car had stopped, and the hot hand was withdrawn. She felt cool air upon her face as the doors opened on both sides, and the seat lurched as her unseen companions exited. Immediately, a hand was groping for her, fingertips trailing deliberately across the curve of one breast before locking onto her arm in a painful grip. Fran tried to pull away from that imprisoning hand, but there was nowhere to go, no place to hide.
She let herself be pulled from the car and led along a concrete drive, then over grass to another walkway.
"
This way, babe," a male voice prodded from her left. "Watch your step."
She felt gingerly ahead of her with one foot, locating steps and taking them carefully, one at a time. She both heard and felt a door open in front of her, and then she was propelled through it, into the cool interior of a building. From the sounds and smells of the place, and the carpeting beneath her feet, she knew she was inside a house.
There were hands on both her arms now, guiding her left and right through what felt like a maze of corridors. Fran was becoming disoriented, cursing silently to herself as she realized that in her present condition, a simple living room filled with furniture could be made to feel like a winding labyrinth.
She recognized the feeling of a corridor, and had begun to count her paces when the guiding hands suddenly brought her up short, turning her sharply to the left. Keys rattled in a lock, and another door was opened for her, another hand shoving her inside.
Behind her head, blunt fingers tugged at the knot of her blindfold, and suddenly it came free, whisking across her face and disappearing behind her.
"Sit tight, doll," the leering voice said. "Maybe we can have some laughs later."
Fran half turned toward that voice, but the plain wooden door was already snapping closed, keys grating in the lock outside.
She stood there for a long moment, blinking her eyes to regain her full sense of sight. The room was dimly lit by a bare bulb overhead and was apparently without windows or other access to the world outside.
"Fran? Is that you?"
The lady cop whirled around, shocked by the sound of a familiar female voice close behind her. She was surprised to see the face of Toni Blancanales regarding her from a corner of the room.
The girl crossed quickly to her, taking one of Fran's cold hands in both of hers.
"Toni!" the lady cop blurted. "What are you doing here?"
Toni was red-eyed from crying, her face pale, hair disheveled.
"Some men came to my apartment," she began haltingly. "They had guns, and... and..."
The girl broke off, trembling slightly, and Fran slid a comforting arm around her slender shoulders, leading her back to the small couch that was the room's only furniture.
The Violent Streets te-41 Page 10