“I guess so, Lieutenant.…”
Clancy exploded. “Well, damn it! Is it or isn’t it?”
Clancy’s tone woke Stanton up once and for all. “It’s clear, Lieutenant.”
“Well, thank God for that! All right—I’ll see you at eight.” Clancy hung up and then felt ashamed of himself for his burst of temper. God knew he was the last person to be bright and gay when he was dragged from sleep in the middle of the night. He turned and discovered that Kaproski had shoved a tousled head from beneath the mountain of covers and was staring at him, bleary-eyed.
“Did you say something, Lieutenant?”
“I said, go back to sleep,” Clancy said, and padded back to the living room and his couch. He lay down and pulled the covers about him; the window frame, its work done, subsided quietly, refusing any more ticks. Sleep came at once, peaceful and dreamless.
Friday—8:00 A.M.
Kaproski was in another room and Clancy was alone when Stanton came in, herding Julio Sagarra before him. The young man looked around cockily and then grinned at Clancy.
“Hi, Lieutenant. Where’s the heavy in the act?”
“Sit down,” Clancy said evenly.
“Sure. Don’t mind if I do.” The young man swung a chair around and straddled it, unconsciously emulating Stanton. He jerked a thumb back at him. “Your boy said you wanted to see me. You know, Lieutenant, this guy ain’t a bad guy, as cops go. As a matter of fact, he ain’t a bad mechanic, either.”
Clancy disregarded this. He leaned over the desk and offered the boy a cigarette, which was accepted. A light followed; Julio leaned over and drew in, and then leaned back. Clancy looked at him. “Julio, I’ve got a simple question to ask you.…”
“Which I ain’t going to answer,” Julio said. He inhaled deeply, speaking through the cloud of smoke he exhaled. “Because I don’t know.”
“Oh?” Clancy studied him calmly. “You know what I was going to ask?”
“Sure,” Julio said with disdain. “I guess you guys finally believe me now that we never furnished Lenny with no car, so it’s got to be who’s hiding him out. And I don’t know.”
“Lieutenant,” Stanton said in a deadly voice, “you want some information from this punk he don’t want to give?”
“My pal,” Julio said with disgust.
Clancy paid no attention to this exchange, either. “Julio, the question I’m going to ask you is a simple one. Where did Lenny Cervera meet Marcia Hernandez?”
“Huh?”
“You heard me. All I want to know is where Lenny met Marcia. The first time.”
Young Sagarra looked puzzled. “Why do you want to know that for?”
“Let me worry about that. Just answer the question.”
Julio shook his head. “Jeez, Lieutenant, I’d answer that one all right. If I knew, which I don’t. They was already going steady when I first come into the gang.”
Clancy listened to him, looked at him, and decided he was telling the truth. “Can you find out?”
“I guess so, sure. Somebody in the gang ought to remember. But why do you want to know for?”
“I want to mount a plaque there,” Clancy said wearily. “Bronze. On the doorpost.”
“Huh?”
“Skip it,” Clancy said abruptly. He looked at Stanton. “You go with him and bring back the dope.”
Julio stared at him, mouth open. “That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
The young man came to his feet, shrugged elaborately, stopped to review the interview in his mind, and then repeated the shrug in an exaggerated manner. He turned to Stanton. “Let’s go, mechanic,” he said, and walked from the room with his usual swagger. Stanton also shrugged in nonunderstanding and followed him out.
Clancy looked at his watch, looked at the pile of reports in the in basket, and decided he had time to look through a few before leaving for his appointment with Inspector Clayton. The sharp ring of the telephone changed his mind.
It was the desk sergeant. “Lieutenant, Captain Wise would like to see you upstairs.…”
Clancy nodded to the telephone and hung up. All I have to do to get the telephone to ring, he thought, is to start looking through reports.… He came around the desk, picked up his hat and coat, and walked down the corridor to the staircase. He mounted it slowly and turned into Captain Wise’s office. He tossed his hat and coat on a chair near the door and selected another, drawing it up to the desk.
“You wanted to see me, Sam?”
The large man back of the paper-strewn desk nodded his grizzled head. “I’d like to know what you’re doing, Clancy—how things are going.” He hesitated. “That bombing yesterday.… That wasn’t too good, you know. Whose fault was it?”
“The guy who planted the bomb,” Clancy said evenly. “I talked to my men covering him, and I ate them out. But in all honesty I don’t know what else they could have done. You know as well as I do, Sam, that it’s almost impossible to really protect a man against a killer who’s determined to kill.”
“I know,” Captain Wise said, and sighed. “That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking. Was it Cervera?”
Clancy shrugged. “It looks like it, but it could have been Blount as well. He may be in town. I have a hunch he is.”
The captain’s eyebrows went up. “Based on anything?”
“Based on nothing.” Clancy looked across the desk at his old friend steadily. “Sam, I haven’t had a decent idea about this case since I was assigned to it. Do you want to take me off it?”
Captain Wise returned his look with equal steadiness. “Clancy, I’ll be honest with you. If it was up to me, I would. I’d take you off it and send you out of town until this maniac momser is picked up. But Inspector Clayton assigned you to the case, and he’s the only one can take you off. I’ll tell you the truth; I don’t like the idea of you going around the streets, open like, with your name on a nut’s list.”
“Neither do I,” Clancy said with a wry smile. “I’d like to clear it up as fast as possible if only to get Kaproski out of my bed. I’m getting tired of sleeping on the couch.…”
“That should be your only worry,” Captain Wise said with sincerity. He frowned down at his desk, avoiding Clancy’s eyes.
Clancy leaned forward. “Look, Sam. I know when you have something on your mind. You didn’t call me up here to tell me that Cervera’s dangerous. What are you trying to say?”
Captain Wise suddenly made up his mind. “All right, Clancy. I’ll tell you. Gomez is free now and I thought maybe we ought to put him on with Kaproski to—well, to cover you better.”
“And then where would I sleep?” Clancy asked sarcastically. “On the floor?” He looked across the desk with real affection at the heavy, worried face of his superior. “Look, Sam, one’s enough. Don’t fret about it. Wasting the time of one man is more than enough.” He got to his feet, picked up his hat and coat from the chair, and walked to the door. He looked back.
“Anyway,” he said quietly, logically, “we had three men on Judge Kiele, and you saw how much good it did.”
“You’re not Judge Kiele,” Captain Wise pointed out softly.
“Not yet, anyway,” Clancy said grimly. He waved and went out to the staircase.
Friday—9:05 A.M.
Clancy left Kaproski on the bench outside of Inspector Clayton’s office with a sports page to keep him company, and stepped inside. The inspector was talking on the telephone; Lieutenant Lundberg was sitting quietly before the desk. Clancy nodded to Lundberg and drew up a chair beside him; the inspector looked over and nodded without breaking into his conversation.
“Yes,” he was saying into the telephone. “Yes, Mrs. Wells. Your husband? Certainly. I believe so, or at least I can arrange it. If you wish. No, the department has no objections. When? That should be all right. Yes, I’ll see to it. Yes. We’ll discuss it this afternoon.…” He looked at the other two helplessly. “What? Certainly. Yes, I’ll do that. Good-by.”
He set the receiver back in its cradle and stared across the desk at Clancy. “That was Mrs. Wells,” he said quietly. “She wants to post a reward for any information leading to, etc. Her husband will be down to talk to you about it. She’s still under a doctor’s care.”
Clancy made a sour face. “And I’d rather not talk to either of them.”
Inspector Clayton shrugged. “That’s one of the dirty parts of our job, Lieutenant. Speaking to the relatives of victims. But still it’s a part of the job. I suggested meeting here. Actually, I ought to offer them my condolences personally. I’ve known Carol since she was a child, since her mother died.”
“When do we have to meet?” Clancy asked, with no enthusiasm whatsoever.
“Six o’clock this afternoon. Here in my office.” Inspector Clayton dismissed the subject, turning to Lundberg. “Anything new on the bombing, Bill? Outside of these reports?” His fingers gestured toward a pile of papers before him.
Lundberg shook his head discouragedly. “Nothing useful, Inspector. We’ve more or less determined that the bomb was set in a book of some sort, but we thought that all along. It was triggered on opening the cover. We didn’t find any pieces that would indicate it was actuated by a timing mechanism, and I think we’ve seen this sort of thing before. Like I told Clancy; in those loft fires Marcus set. Anyway, we judge it to be a fairly big book, and we know it was bound in calf. We guess two sticks of dynamite, first from the site of the book and also because of the general extent of the damage in the room. But we haven’t found one damn thing that would help identify the bastard who planted it.”
“How about fingerprints?”
“The judge’s, his secretary’s, and a few that look old that could belong to anyone—from the kid who brought up his lunch, to the cleaning woman that swept the place out each night.”
He dug out a cigarette and lit it broodingly. “Our men checked—or maybe tried to check would be a better way of putting it—on anyone who might have been seen around that time with a book, either in the corridor itself, or even in the building, but you know the Criminal Courts Building, Inspector. It’s like looking for somebody carrying a book in the public library. And to listen to the people we checked on, either everybody had one, or nobody had one. Plus the fact that he could have been carrying it under a topcoat, or in a brief case.…” He sighed. “Go fight City Hall.…”
He turned to Clancy, remembering something else. “And we didn’t find any radio speech, either. Not in any of his drawers, or anywhere else. And his secretary said she never saw it.…”
“I know,” Clancy said. “He made his speeches off the cuff.”
Inspector Clayton frowned at this subject but didn’t question it. He turned to Clancy. “And how about you, Lieutenant? Any ideas at all? What did you find out about Cholly Williams and Phil Marcus? Moneywise, I mean?”
“For what it’s worth,” Clancy said dully, “they didn’t have a pot between them. Williams made a bare week’s pay pushing a truck, and that’s all he made. And Marcus was bit by a horse once, and it took. He went up to Sing Sing owing Big Benny two thousand dollars from bum bets on the nags.”
“Which could be interesting,” the inspector said thoughtfully.
“That’s what I thought at one time,” Clancy said discouragedly. “Now I don’t know what to think. Or even how.”
“Well—” the inspector began, but the telephone interrupted him. Clancy leaned back in silence as the inspector answered it. The conversation was mainly grunts on the part of the inspector, and when he finally hung up he looked across the desk at Clancy without expression.
“That was Captain Wise,” he said slowly. “He’s requesting a transfer for you. He wants you to be put on some duty, until Cervera is picked up, where there’s less chance …” He hesitated and then stopped, his eyes steady on the other.
“It’s up to you,” Clancy said evenly. “I’m not afraid of what Cervera might do to me, and you know that, Inspector. But the truth is that I haven’t set the world on fire on this case.…”
“No ideas at all, Clancy?”
Clancy shrugged. “Oh, I’ve had a few hot flashes, but they’re certainly nothing to write home about. I’ve got Stanton out right now, checking on something that didn’t click to me, but even if I get the answer I want—and I’ll tell you right now I don’t even know what answer I want—I still won’t be anywhere. If you want to take me off the case, it’s strictly up to you.”
“It’s up to both of us,” Inspector Clayton said. “However, if you feel—” The telephone interrupted him once again and he picked it up with a scowl that was as close as he ever permitted himself to exhibit anger.
“Hello? What? Oh, for Heaven’s sake! Tell him to check with Personnel, or Records! My Lord! And Sergeant, no more calls unless they’re important, will you? I’m trying to get some work done here.…”
He refrained from slamming the receiver down, simply because he had long since trained himself never to give way to his emotions. “Damn all telephones …!”
“I know what you mean,” Clancy said idly. “I’ve come to a point where I even dream about them. Telephones and telephone booths, both.” He looked at the curious expressions on the other two faces and nodded seriously. “I mean it. It’s absolutely true. I’ve had this same dream, almost, for the past two nights. About telephones.…”
He stopped suddenly, frozen. Later he was never able to say exactly where in his speech he saw the first break in the clouds. The telephone booth of his dreams suddenly materialized before him in his mind’s eye; and the corner of the street where Marcia Hernandez lived, and the fenced-in playground, and the wide steps of the Criminal Courts Building with Cervera advancing up the steps toward him, pistol flaming. He stared at the inspector with widened eyes without seeing him. “Telephones.… Holy Mary Mother of God!”
“What is it, Clancy?”
Clancy held up one hand unconsciously, warding off speech; his brain was racing, uncovering all the little problems that had been bothering him for so long. “Of course …!”
The inspector was bent forward, leaning over his desk, his eyes intent upon the other. “Clancy—what is it?”
Clancy came back from the faraway land of his jumbled thoughts. He was on his feet, hat clenched tightly in his hand, with no conscious memory of having arisen. “Inspector—can you spare me right now? I think I finally see … I’ve got things to do.…”
He turned and pushed through the door without waiting for an answer, his dark eyes gleaming. He did not acknowledge Lundberg’s open mouth with so much as the usual warning against flies; in fact without even the normal goodby. His voice boomed back at the men in the room, muffled by the already closing door.
“Kap! Let’s go!”
To Lieutenant Lundberg’s complete surprise, the inspector—instead of calling Clancy back peremptorily—merely leaned back in his chair and smiled across the desk at him. And then, to Lundberg’s even greater surprise, Inspector Clayton—albeit poorly from lack of practice—winked.…
Friday—10:20 A.M.
Clancy swung his old sedan into the curb, bringing it to rest alongside one of the street telephone booths that had played so great a part in both his waking and sleeping hours the past few days. He slid from the seat, leaving Kaproski to handle the irate traffic cop who was already on his way over from his intersection, ticket book in hand. Clancy pushed his way into the booth, fumbled a dime loose from the change in his pocket, and hurriedly dialed.
There was a brief wait, and then the telephone was answered by a familiar voice. “Hello?”
“Hello, Porky. Any word yet on the breakout?”
Porky Frank was both shocked and disappointed in Clancy’s tactics, and he made no attempt to disguise his feelings. “Mr. C.! You’re breaking all the rules of the game.…”
“I don’t have time for games today,” Clancy said testily. “Just give me answers.”
“Well, all right,” Porky said with resignat
ion. “But it’ll cost you more. Or it would if I had anything for you. Which I don’t.”
“Nothing?”
“But nothing. Like zero. In fact, like the zero-zero at the bottom of the little wheel of fortune. I’ve checked around, and that breakout is as much a mystery to the big boys as it is to us common folk.”
“That’s how it goes,” Clancy said philosophically, and got down to the real reason for his call. “Porky, you know all the big-money boys in town, don’t you? The boys who loan dough on little or no security except maybe your right arm?”
“Mr. C.!” Porky said chidingly. “Isn’t the graft enough?”
“I’m not in a kidding mood right now, Porky,” Clancy said tighty. “Do you or don’t you?”
“Assuming you don’t mean the Chase Manhattan, or the First National,” Porky said, in no way brought down to size by Clancy’s outburst, “but guys like Manny Klopper and the Squeezer, I certainly do. Too well I know them. They’re the first-pay boys, and an honest bookie is always low man on the tote pole.…” He thought a second. “Hey, I just made a funny.…”
Clancy was not amused. “Yeah. Look, Porky, I want you to contact them and try to find something out for me. It’s a long, long shot, but it just may work. And when you get it—yes or no—I want you to send it over to my office by messenger. As soon as possible.”
“Have we given up meeting in bars?” Porky asked curiously. “For Lent? That was months ago.”
“I told you I don’t have time for games today,” Clancy said impatiently. “Now here’s the story, and the dope I’m looking for.…” He spoke rapidly but concisely into the instrument. Porky, at the other end, filed away the information in his sharp brain; his eyebrows raised as he listened, but he made no comment. Porky knew when to be cute and when not to be.
“Will do, Mr. C.,” he said softly when Clancy had finished.
“If there’s anything to find,” Clancy said.
“If there is we’ll find it,” Porky said, and hung up.
Clancy pushed through the doors of the booth and walked out to the car. He nodded to the traffic cop who was leaning on the sill, still gabbing with Kaproski about some department boxing matches they had both been in, and slid into the driver’s seat. The cop stood away with a friendly wave as Clancy put the car in gear and started down the street.
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