I gave me car a workout on the way north. The manila envelope was on the seat beside me. Jerry, who had compiled it? Or Bobby, who had lived it?
A state cop stopped me for speeding on Route 60. I showed him my buzzer, and for once it worked.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THAT early in the day, the smell of hamburgers grilling still dominated the smell of beer in Hamling’s Bar and Grill. It was a small place on 16th Street a few blocks north of the White House and Lafayette Park and not far from our office on F Street. There was a long bar in front where a couple of lushes were getting an early start and arguing about the Washington Redskins, three of those bowling machines opposite the bar and eight or ten booths in back.
“Hey, Chet. We’re back here.”
I saw Jerry half stand up in one of the rear booths. I went back there. Another man sat across the table from Jerry, nursing a beer.
“Boy, you can scare the life out of a guy. Trouble, the man says. What kind of trouble?”
“I have to see you alone, Jerry.” I was annoyed that Jerry had company.
“Wait a minute, Chet. I want you to meet Ernie Dygert.”
The man seated across from Jerry craned his neck to look at me and show me a slow, lazy smile. He had thick, dark hair that came down in a very low hairline, heavy brows on a thick ridge of bone, eyes so deep-set that you only saw the socket shadows in the dim light, a wide nose that had been broken and heavy, sensuous lips. His head was huge. If the rest of him matched it, he would be an enormous man.
“Maybe I can name your trouble, Drum,” he said. “Sit down. Sit over there next to your boy.”
“Your reputation came in with you, Dygert,” I told him. “Take it and get out of here.”
Dygert’s lazy smile stayed put. Jerry smiled up at me nervously. “Hold your horses,” Jerry said uneasily. “Give Ernie a chance to talk, will you, please?”
“No,” Dygert said. “I want to hear all about my reputation.”
“That’s easy. I can give it to you in one word. We’re in the same business. You make the business stink, Dygert.”
Dygert laughed. The sound was deep in his throat. “I netted a hundred grand last year, big shot. Enough to buy and sell you how many times?”
“Remind me to tell the Bureau of Internal Revenue. Now get lost.”
Dygert made circles with the bottom of his beer glass on the table. Jerry lit a cigarette, took two anxious drags and crushed it out. Dygert asked me: “If I named your trouble?”
“Name it.”
He laughed again. “I can give it to you in one word too, big snot. Lord.”
Jerry must have seen my eyes. “No, wait a minute, Chet. You got it all wrong.”
Maybe I did have it all wrong. Maybe this just wasn’t my day. I made a move toward Dygert, then stopped. I thought about his reputation. He had made the wire services regularly and Time magazine two or three times. He had retired under fire from the D.C. police force, where he’d been number-two man on the vice squad to set up his own detective agency. That had been less than two years ago. Since then he’d had his fat finger in every dirty pie that the Potomac fog couldn’t hide. He used wiretaps and he used infra-red cameras, he used telephoto lenses and cops living off the badge, he used second-rate politicians riding the brittle bright trail to nowhere and he used Washington’s morbid fear of the wrong kind of publicity. With all of it he had made a mint of money and the law had not wanted to or had not been able to touch him.
“My rep ain’t the only thing that came in with me,” he said. “One of my ops came in, too. Nice young guy name of Trowbridge? You see, one of my clients, tnat pays a thirty-grand retainer for a year’s work, has an expense account waiting for smart young cookies like Jerry here. I’ll give it to you straight, Drum, so we can stop beating around the bush. Some of that folding green can be yours too if you say the word.”
Jerry wouldn’t meet my eyes. Up front someone ordered two hamburgers all the way. A kid slammed a loud strike down the miniature alley of one of the bowling machines. I said, because at the moment I had nothing else to say, “You little punk, you told me you came straight out of the Army.”
“Leaving out six weeks I worked for Ernie first. Christ, Chet. My old man gave the Bureau fifteen years and got shot to death in an alley behind a Miami luxury otel he couldn’t have afforded a weekend in. When my time comes I don’t want to go like that.”
“You’re working for Dygert?”
“He already told you.”
“Spell it out for me, kid.”
“I’ll spell it out for you,” Dygert said. “This country’s full of bleeding-heart internationalists who’d turn us into a second-rate power if they had the chance. My cient’s willing to spend money to stop them. And where I come in is to smear them if smearing them’s the only way. There’s room for you, Drum, and you get an expense account that would choke a Congressman. This here Lord guy is small-time, but he’s a start. Well?”
Eagerly Jerry explained, “It’s a chance to make money and do a patriotic service at the same time, don’t you see? Ernie says the way to get off the hook on his thing is to set up a phony breaking-and-entering deal in our office. You know, to make it look like the Lord file was stolen? Then—”
“They’ll rake you over the coals,” Dygert went on for him. “That’s where the expense account comes in. We can buy your way out of it, Drum. Then, from now on, you do your digging straight. No clients to squawk, get it?”
I asked Jerry, “Why don’t you tell Laurie Lord all about it?”
“That’s different, Chet. You don’t understand. You don’t want to understand. Don’t you think it rocked me too when Mr. Lord killed himself? Don’t you think I tried to stop him? Besides, no one asked him to take up with that little whore of his.” He shook his head, as if I was the young kid who needed straightening out. Then he smiled and asked, “Say, how’d you make out with her, anyway?”
Dygert leered. “Man, I’d like to do some research in that myself. Well, is it a deal, Drum?”
“I’ll tell you,” I said. He leaned toward me expectanty, one big leg out from under the table. I picked up his half full glass of beer and threw its contents in his face.
He got up, yelling. I heard a funny kind of low growl, an animal sound. It came from my own throat. There are times when the world crowds you and the only release is violence. This was one of those times. I wanted to hurt Ernie Dygert. I had that, and I had my fists, and everything else went away.
HE WAS a big man, bigger than I am, and I pack a hundred and ninety pounds. We squared off and he hit me. It jolted me, but I didn’t feel any pain. He might have beat me, but he couldn’t have hurt me with a sledge hammer. He hit me again and when I didn’t go down it began to worry him. I hooked my left at his race. His right whistled past my ear and we went into a clinch. I pushed him away. We glared at each other and stood two feet apart, slugging. That didn’t last long. He went over backward on the table. I stood there for a second breathing through my mouth, then dove after him. The table collapsed under our weight. We didn’t try to wrestle on the floor. We got up breathing raggedly through our mouths, and started slugging again.
They would remember that fight in Hamling’s. It almost wrecked the place. He drove me toward the front and the bar cleared like magic. For a moment another face intruded on our private world of violence. Next to the face was a sawed-off bat, and it swung. That was the barman. He didn’t hit anything. One of us hit him and we were alone again.
Then Dygert had the jagged neck of a broken bottle in his hand. I don’t know now he got it. I don’t know how I took it away from him, but I did. I threw it away because I wanted to use my fists. We slugged again. I remember picking myself off the floor; I don’t remember falling. Then Dygert went down and when he got up he got up slowly. I hit him again. My arms were too heavy to hold up but he didn’t counterpunch. I swung slow soggy-sounding blows at his face. Pretty soon I was swinging at air. I leaned against the bar.
No one touched me. No one was there for me to hit, not even Jerry. I wanted to hit him too. Everything was blurry.
“That’s your answer, you son of a bitch,” I said. But by then I was talking to a uniformed cop.
CHAPTER EIGHT
MAYBE we ought to put some novocain in that before sewing it up, son,” the police doctor said.
He was a garrulous old man with small, pink, steady hands, and it probably, made no difference to him whether he was sewing up the latest candidate for the police medal or a sex fiend. He plucked at my eyebrow with those small pink fingers, then slipped the novocain needle in. After that the brow felt like leather, and he put six stitches in it with thick black thread and a curved needle.
Detective Lieutenant Danny Kubisek squirmed his big rump on the edge of his desk and growled, “No charges, Mr. Hamling? You’re sure?”
Hamling was a short fat fellow with very little hair. “Naa, no charges, Lootenant. The big guy already give me a check to cover the damages. I won’t make a complaint.”
Kubisek nodded, neither liking nor disliking it, but probably glad he wouldn’t have to appear in court on his own time when the case came up. He could have slapped us with disturbing the peace, but they don’t usually when no charges are pressed and what happened happened indoors. He’d sat on the edge of his desk while the old police doctor cleaned us, sewed us and made small talk. During that time I’d begun, to ache in places I hadn’t know I d been hit. I felt a little sick to my stomach and wished I could go home for some sleep.
If it was any consolation, Ernie Dygert looked worse than I did, with bruises and contusions all over his face. But that didn’t change Dygert and his plans, and it didn’t change Jerry and what Jerry had done.
After the doctor went out Kubisek said, “You ought to have more sense than that, Drum.”
I didn’t say anything. I’d known Lieutenant Danny Kubisek on and off for years. In my business it’s not smart giving any cop anywhere a reason to chew you out.
“Well,” he said wearily, “I guess all of you can beat it.”
Hamling went out first while Dygert and I got dressed. Then I went outside with Jerry and Dygert. The desk sergeant didn’t even look up at us.
“They’re going to run you guys in,” Dygert predicted while we waited for a cab on the street. “Don’t forget it and don’t try to run away from it. Get it over with. Remember, breaking and entering. Stick to that story and you’ll be all right.” His face looked puffy and swollen in the glow of light when he lit a cigarette. It was almost dark out. “Listen, Drum,” he said. “Okay, you made a mistake. I’m willing to give you a break, and we can still be in business the way I spelled it out for you this afternoon. What do you say?”
Instead of answering, I went to the curb and hailed a cab. But it had a passenger and went cruising by.
“Well, Christ, man, you did a damn stupid thing in there this afternoon. You know that, don’t you? I said I was willing to give you a break and forget it. Why don’t you give me a break and climb on board?”
“I wouldn’t give you a bent match to pick your teeth with,” I said.
Jerry looked unhappy. He put a hand on my shoulder and said, “I thought I was setting it up for you, Chet. I thought you’d really go for it.”
“Get your hand off me. We’re through, Jerry. Go clean your stuff out of the office and beat it. I don’t want to look at you.”
I started to walk away from them and bumped into a man coming the other way in the steady flow of rush-hour pedestrians. “Why don’t you look where—” he started to say. Then he saw my face, shut up and hurried on. When I looked back, Jerry and Dygert were getting into a cab.
I walked three blocks, found a cab for myself and got driven home.
THEY were waiting for me in the lobby of the apartment house where I live, which is not far from the Uline Ice Arena. One of them wore the uniform of the Virginia State Police, a trim man with dark eyes punched in under a beetling brow. The other was a big fellow in mufti. I had never seen him before.
“Don’t bother ringing for the elevator, Drum,” the Virginia trooper said. “You’re not going up.”
“All right, Captain Masters,” I said.
The big fellow came over and showed me his buzzer. “Lieutenant Malawister of D.C. Special Forces,” he introduced himself. He looked tough and competent, with jug-handle ears, a gaunt face and small steady eyes so dark brown they almost looked black. “They want to ask you a few questions down in Prince Charles County. You’ll go?”
I shrugged, and Malawister looked relieved. Captain Masters said, “Then I guess you don’t—have to drive down with us, Del.”
“No, I’ll go. The fresh air will do me good.”
Captain Masters stared at me. “Fresh air, the man says. Well, come on, Drum.”
We went outside with them flanking me. The state police car was parked around the block. No one said anything until we were inside. A uniformed driver sighed when we climbed in and shoved a science-fiction magazine over the sun visor. I had caught a glimpse of its cover, which showed a bug-eyed monster about to ravish a girl with incredible mammalian development, and smiled.
“You think it’s funny?” Masters said. “I warned you last Friday, Drum. I made a fool of myself with Sheriff Lonegran because of you. I warned you.”
“If you’re that mad,” I said, “a law professor named McQuade must have called you.”
Masters shoved me to the far end of the rear seat. Lieutenant Malawister went in front with, the science-fiction fan. “Dr. McQuade called Sheriff Lonegran,” Masters said. “Now sit still over there. I don’t w ant to hear the sound of your voice.”
We drove like part of a funeral procession across the Memorial Bridge and down Washington Boulevard to Shirley Memorial Highway in Virginia. I wondered if they had picked up Jerry too. It was after ten when we reached College Station.
SHERIFF LONEGRAN was waiting with his morose and sleepy look outside the sheriff’s office when we arrived. It was a red brick colonial building in the pattern set by William of Orange College, two stories, with bars on the windows of the second floor. Lonegran and Malawister were introduced and shook hands, but Lonegran couldn’t get his eyes off me.
“He put up a fight?”
“Came like a lamb, Sheriff,” Malawister said.
“Look at his face.”
“He walked in on us with a face like that.”
Lonegran nodded, still looking sleepy, still looking morose. It was only when his face changed that you had to worry. His face changed suddenly, one eye opening wide and the other remaining in its perpetual squint. He said, “You want a receipt for the merchandise, Lieutenant?”
“I just want a bus ticket back home, Sheriff.”
Lonegran scrawled a note and gave it to him. “Show this to Charlie Roy over at the bus depot, all right?”
Malawister said it was all right, shook hands all around but not with me, and left.
“How’s about a cup of coffee, Matt?” Lonegran said.
“Thanks, no. Pinky probably wants to call it a night. So do I.”
“Well, thanks for picking him up for me. Man, look at that face, will you? Wouldn’t surprise me if he was bruised all over like that.”
Masters shrugged.
“No, Matt. I want you to take a good look.”
Masters’ eyes narrowed, but he looked me over.
“Fists?” Lonegran said.
“Would be my guess, Rog.”
“And you had a good look? A real good look?”
For a moment I thought Masters would be annoyed, but then he smiled and said, “Heck, Rog, I could draw a map of his mug.”
“Well, I just wouldn’t want anyone saying I did anything like that to the overnight guests over here.”
“I won’t forget how he looked all chewed up, Rog.”
“Well, see you.”
“Night.”
Masters went back to the car, and it drove off.
&nbs
p; It was suddenly very quiet outside the sheriff’s office. I could smell wood smoke. Far off, a dog yapped. Lonegran’s bark almost matched it. “Inside, you!” Then he looked morose and sleepy again. I turned and took a step toward the open doorway. Lonegran shoved me so hard I stumbled over the doorstep. He came in behind me and shut the door. We stood in a wide room with a railing partitioning off three desks on the left side, a corrridor and a staircase straight ahead and a locked rifle rack with a dozen greased and polished Winchesters on the righthand wall.
Lonegran leaned against the railing, his barrel-chested, wide-shouldered torso looking huge and his sawed-off slightly bowed legs looking almost withered.
“How much trouble you think you got?” he asked.
“You tell me, Sheriff.”
“Don’t get snotty.”
“I don’t know how much trouble.”
“That how you’re gonna answer all my questions? You don’t know?”
That one I didn’t answer at all. Lonegran’s questions were tough, but he still appeared morose and sleepy. He wanted me to rile him.
“Who beat the crap out of you?”
I didn’t answer that one either. If I told the truth, a fight between me and Dygert might make things look bad for Jerry. I had already decided, more or less, to let Dygert and Jerry deal the cards. I owed that much to Jerry Trowbridge, Sr. Because I’d been with him that night in Miami, and one of us had had to lead the way into that alley. Trowbridge was my senior partner, and he’d gone in first. They had been waiting in the dark shadows near the alley’s entrance. They let him go in about five yards before shooting him in the back. A half hour later, with the help of the local police, I’d flushed them out. But that hadn’t helped the dead man.
“I said, who beat the crap out of you?”
“I cut myself shaving, Sheriff.”
He moved fast, even faster than he had when he knocked Jerry down in the lobby of the old administration building of William of Orange College. He came off the railing and clubbed the side of my neck with his fist. It felt as hard as a rifle stock. I gagged, took two steps back and didn’t quite fall down.
Violence Is My Business Page 5