As Farrell went up the worn steps of the station house with Ward he recalled an idea of Weinberg’s for an automobile account the agency had submitted ideas on: concentrate on the tail-end of the car, had been Weinberg’s thesis, festoon the rear hub caps with ceramic inlay, plaster the trunk and rear bumpers with distinctive insignia, lights and gadgets because — because, Farrell mentally added Weinberg’s stress — you couldn’t close most garage doors on the new big cars, and their rear ends hit the owners’ friends in the eye when they settled down around the barbecue pit for what he called the “oral-satisfaction-cum-getting-loaded-bit.”
In the station house two uniformed patrolmen were standing at the window of the House Sergeant’s office, and a gray-haired man in blue uniform trousers and a gray work shirt was sweeping dust and cigar wrappers and cigarette stubs down the corridor. The patrolmen glanced curiously at Ward and Farrell, then moved aside to make room for them at the window. Farrell thanked them and explained the nature of their complaint to the House Sergeant, who listened with an air of impassive suspicion, and then directed them to the Detective Division on the second floor. “That’s an investigative job you got there,” he said. “They’ll take care of you upstairs.”
“I see,” Farrell said. “Thanks.”
He and Ward went up a dusty flight of stairs. “Don’t tell me what Detweiller would say,” he murmured to Ward. “I can guess.”
They came to swinging doors and a sign that read “Detective Division” and entered a large, brightly lighted room in which several men sat about at roll-top desks typing or leafing through reports. The prevailing odor was a blend of dry wood, dusty paper and stale coffee.
A detective with a cigar looked up at them, nodded impersonally and came over to the counter. He was in his middle fifties, heavy but not fat, with a dark complexion, thinning gray hair and black pouches under his brown eyes. “Well, what’s the trouble, gentlemen?” he asked them with a small smile.
They told him their story, adding all the details they were sure of, and when they finished he was no longer smiling.
His name was Cabella, they learned later, Sergeant Anthony Cabella. He took their names and addresses, then said, “Would you step around the counter, please? I’d like you to talk to the lieutenant.”
The lieutenant, whose quarters adjoined the detectives’ squad room, said, “Yes?” to Cabella’s knock, and rose when Farrell and Ward entered his small, sparely furnished office.
The lieutenant was as tall as Farrell with a slim, controlled body and short, blond hair dulled slightly at the temples with gray; he looked like a middle-weight fighter only a few years past his prime, tidy and sure of himself, with very little expression in his pale square face and watchful blue eyes. He wore a well-cut suit with a bow tie, and Farrell found him vaguely irritating; his handshake was a projection of personality, efficiently brisk and powerful, and he established what he obviously felt was their proper relationship by letting them stand while he resumed his seat behind his desk. Glancing at them with his cold careful eyes he said: “My name is Jameson. You’ve met Sergeant Cabella, I guess. What can we do for you?”
After they had repeated their story the lieutenant glanced at Sergeant Cabella and said, “Had any other complaints of this sort?”
“This is the first,” Cabella said.
“What do you know about these punks?”
Cabella rolled his cigar to a new position, and a half-inch of ash tumbled down onto his bulging vest. “The one called Duke is Tom Resnick’s son. Tom used to be a brakeman on the old IR line before he retired. His mother’s dead. They live over on Dempsey Street, other side of the golf course. This Jerry kid must be Jerry Leuth. He was a helluva athlete at Consolidated but he never did anything with it later. Football and track. His folks own a little cleaning and pressing shop. Duke and Jerry have been traveling together since they were in school. Both of them caddied over at Pine Hills. They got a kind of clubhouse in the basement of that dead-storage garage on Matt Street. You know the place? It’s right at the alley intersection in the middle of the block, next to a candy store. Their gang call themselves the Chiefs.”
“They been in any trouble before this?”
“We never caught them, if they was.”
“Pick them up in the morning, Sergeant. Can you gentlemen be here with your sons at nine o’clock?”
“Nine or earlier,” Ward said. “It’s fine with me.”
Farrell hesitated; he had an uneasy feeling that they were going too fast. “What’s the procedure tomorrow morning, Lieutenant?”
“First, I’ll talk to your sons, take a statement from them. We’ll determine the timetable of this trouble. When it started, then step-by-step until we’re up to date.” Jameson paused long enough to light a cigarette. “Then we’ll determine which of these punks made the threats. Or whether it was done by both of them. Which one asked for the money or, again, was it both of them. Who accepted the money and who actually hit your son, Mr. Ward. Then your boys will identify Duke and Jerry. After this — if their testimony holds up — I’ll slate these punks on charges for a Magistrate’s hearing. The Magistrate will bind them over to the Grand Jury. They’ll come up for trial, and I think they’ll get what’s coming to them.”
“You say if our sons’ testimony holds up? Suppose it doesn’t?” Farrell asked him.
“Well, in that case you’ll have to go to a Magistrate’s office and swear out a complaint against these boys. They’ll be served with a Magistrate’s warrant and ordered to a hearing.”
Ward looked dubious. “I don’t quite follow you, Lieutenant.”
“The distinction is this: I can make the arrest on a positive identification by your boys. But if they aren’t able to make an identification, or refuse to, all I can do is give Duke and Jerry a stiff warning and let them go. You see, I can’t arrest them on the strength of what your sons told you. You follow me?”
“Yes, I get it,” Farrell said. “But our boys are pretty upset by this business. They may not be in the best mood to make effective witnesses.”
“You mean they’re frightened,” Jameson said. “Do you think they’re too scared to identify these punks?”
“I don’t know,” Farrell said. “It would be a normal reaction, I imagine.”
“Certainly,” the lieutenant said. “We’ll take that into consideration. We’ll do our best to convince them there’s nothing to be worried about. You have your boys here at nine. We’ll handle the rest.” Lieutenant Jameson put out his cigarette with an economical twist of his wrist, and the gesture, plus his brief little smile, indicated that the interview was over.
But Farrell had one more question. He said, “You don’t seem at all surprised by this business, Lieutenant. Is it really so run-of-the-mill? I mean, are things like this popping up every hour on the hour?”
“What line of work are you in, Mr. Farrell?”
“The advertising business.”
“Well, if your boss dropped a job on your desk, I don’t imagine you’d be surprised, eh? You’d get at it, and get it done. Or am I wrong?”
“No, the analogy is pretty accurate.”
“Until tomorrow morning then.”
Outside on the sidewalk Ward lit a cigarette and said, “Damn it, there’s a cold fish for you. Maybe Detweiller was right. It might have been simpler to handle this thing ourselves.”
Farrell said, “The bow tie rather disappointed me, I must admit. Can you imagine Jack Webb in a bow tie? Or Sam Spade?”
“Seriously, I’m wondering if we shouldn’t have a lawyer with us tomorrow. Those cops seem awfully casual about this whole thing.”
“Don’t worry, they know what they’re doing.” Farrell turned up his collar. “Let’s get on home.”
As he drove into Faircrest, Farrell had the sensation of returning to another world, soft and quilted, gracious, fragrant and secure. The Sims were having a party. Lights shone in their dining and living rooms, and shadows moved against dra
wn drapes. A bedroom light gleamed from the second floor of the Norton home. Janey went to bed early, Farrell knew, and Wayne sat with her and read or worked on the house accounts. They had a hi-fi speaker in the bedroom, and they usually listened to records and had a late cup of cocoa or tea. Cold-creamed and snug, soothed by gentle music and something warm to drink, Janey Norton was giving her unborn child a running start at life. He saw Margie Lee, tagged by a coltish admirer, strolling up the walk to her home; light flashed on her small blonde head, and the wind brought him the high, energetic laughter of her escort.
The lights were on in the study of his own home and he knew that Barbara was waiting up to have coffee or a nightcap with him.
Everything was serene and peaceful in Faircrest, the slender branches of the trees moving gently in the wind, the homes sturdy and protective against the night.
But Farrell found no solace in the quiet peace of his neighborhood; the interview with Lieutenant Jameson had left him in a puzzled and uneasy mood.
At nine the following morning Farrell sat with Jimmy in the lieutenant’s office. The day was bright and clear, and sunlight filled the room, brightening the surfaces of desks and filing cabinets, and revealing the seams and cracks of age in the plaster walls and old wooden flooring.
Ward and his son, Andy, had arrived first, and Jameson had already heard Andy’s story. Now he was listening to Jimmy, a cigarette burning in his fingers, his careful eyes studying the boy’s face and hands. Jimmy was making a good impression, Farrell felt; he told a straightforward, believable story, and his occasional lapses of memory and errors in minor fact only strengthened its credibility. Jameson interrupted him a few times to establish or clarify certain points, but for the most part he listened in a close, serious silence, a faint frown above his careful eyes.
The lieutenant knew his job, it was obvious to Farrell; he had gained the boys’ respect by impressing them with the gravity of their accusations.
When Jimmy finished his account Jameson picked up his phone and told Sergeant Cabella to bring Duke and Jerry upstairs to the Detective Division. Then he smiled faintly at the two boys, giving the impression, it seemed to Farrell, that this was a rare indulgence. “We’ll go outside in a moment or so,” Jameson said. “Duke and Jerry will be there. With them will be three other men who look about their age. One of them is the House Sergeant’s son, the other two are young patrolmen. They won’t be in uniform, of course. Your job will be to pick out Duke and Jerry from this group. There’s nothing for you to be worried about. You do your part, then we can do ours. Do you understand?”
Both boys nodded solemnly, and Jameson said, “Very well. In we go. One thing, Mr. Ward and Mr. Farrell, I’ll have to ask you not to say anything while I’m talking to your sons. Is that clear?”
Farrell said, “Yes,” and Ward nodded and patted his son on the back. “Let’s give them hell, Andy.”
In the Detective Division’s wardroom five young men stood with their backs to the long wooden counter, flanked by Sergeant Cabella and a plainclothes detective. The metallic voice of the police radio cracked through the room and Ward, after a last worried glance at his son, sat on a windowsill and fumbled for his cigarettes.
Duke was at one end of the line beside Sergeant Cabella and Jerry was in the middle, his big powerful body dominating the group. Both wore red sweaters with black Indian heads sewn on the front, and they seemed unaffected by the businesslike tension in the room. Jerry’s blond hair was still tousled from sleep and he yawned occasionally and ran a hand over his broad, dull features. Duke leaned against the counter, his weight supported on his elbows, and his feet crossed negligently at the ankles. He was startlingly handsome, Farrell thought, with clear, fresh skin glinting like copper in the strong sunlight. He was carefully groomed, the points of a white shirt vivid against his sweater, and thick, black hair brushed smoothly back from a high, well-shaped forehead. His expression was arrogant, but his features were saved from mere toughness by the alert contempt in his dark-lidded eyes.
Jameson sat down in a straight-backed chair with the boys on either side, his arms about their shoulders. “All right, let’s get this over with,” he said in a pleasant voice, and with that a silence settled over the room. “Now, Andy,” he said, “tell me this: do you recognize any of these young men? Have you seen them before? Take your time. We’ve got plenty of that.”
Andy hesitated; he rubbed his red hair and touched the lump on his nose with a tentative finger. He stared at the line-up with a tense little frown gathering above his eyes. “What?” he asked in a high, surprised voice. “What did you say?”
“Do you recognize any of these men?”
Duke, Farrell noticed, was smiling softly, watching the two boys with what seemed to be good-humored interest. Turning his eyes toward Cabella he murmured, “Do you mind if I smoke?”
“Shut up!” Cabella said.
“Will you answer my question, Andy?” the lieutenant said.
Andy Ward frowned at the floor. “It was a long time ago,” he said.
“Now, Andy, you told me that two boys made you give them money, ten dollars, wasn’t it?”
“I guess so.”
“And because you didn’t give them an extra five dollars they beat you up. Are these boys in this room?”
“Well, it was kind of dark.” Andy nodded vigorously without lifting his eyes from the floor. “That’s why I can’t — I mean, it was real dark. Night time. It was hard to see anything.”
Farrell could almost feel the boy’s fear; it was a physical thing, as much a part of the room as the smell of cigar smoke, dry paper, as tangible as the chairs and desks and old cracked flooring. The expression on his son’s face troubled him; Jimmy was obviously as frightened as Andy Ward, but he was watching Duke with fascination, a reluctant but unmistakable admiration shining in his eyes. Duke probably seemed a heroic figure to him, Farrell thought; arrogant, contemptuous of authority, a lone and swashbuckling cavalier, a more glamorous figure than prosaic, businesslike cops, a more adventurous one than fathers concerned with the humdrum details of daily existence. The reflection disturbed Farrell. That Jimmy and Andy had lied and stolen out of fear was not the whole truth; half of it maybe, but not all of it. There was something else...
Lieutenant Jameson questioned Jimmy then, but Jimmy parroted Andy’s story, a painful flush of fear and shame riding up in his cheeks. The lieutenant went over his palpably made-up story twice, using a patience that Farrell couldn’t help admiring, but Jimmy stuck stubbornly to the one important point: it had been dark when he met the boys and he didn’t know what they looked like.
Finally Jameson got to his feet. To a plainclothes detective he said, “Take Duke and Jerry downstairs and hold them there.” He did not appear to be surprised or disappointed at the way things had turned out; his manner suggested that this was simply the daily grind, routine and typical. To Sergeant Cabella he said, “I’m going to talk to Mr. Farrell and Mr. Ward in my office. Would you find something to interest their boys for a few minutes? Let them look through the wanted file, or show them how to take fingerprints. We won’t be long.”
Duke straightened up from the counter and smiled indulgently at the lieutenant. “Look, we’ve been nice and cooperative so far, but would it be too much to ask what this is all about?”
“I think you know,” Jameson said.
“Honest, I don’t. I’ll look it up in my diary, if you’ll just give me a line on the date.”
Jerry put a hand over his mouth to smother a laugh, and Jameson said sharply, “Downstairs with them, I told you.”
Sergeant Cabella took Duke’s arm. “Move, hero,” he said.
Duke shrugged and smoothed a strand of hair from his forehead. He turned then and looked directly at Andy and Jimmy. “You’re good kids,” he said. “If they put words in your mouth, spit ’em out.”
Sergeant Cabella gave him a shove that sent him sprawling along the counter. “Didn’t you get the message?” he
said.
Duke smiled faintly and smoothed his hair down again, but as he sauntered from the room, Farrell saw the cold fury in his eyes.
Lieutenant Jameson closed the door of his office and asked Ward and Farrell to sit down. “Well, they were too scared to identify them,” he said, perching on the corner of his desk and lighting a cigarette.
“Wait till I get Andy home,” Ward said. “I’ll give him something to be scared of in spades.”
“That’s up to you,” Jameson said. “But I don’t imagine it will help things much. We have this problem with adults, too, you know. Sometimes out of fear, sometimes downright laziness. Whatever the reason lots of good witnesses simply won’t help us prosecute.”
“So what do we do now?” Farrell asked him.
Jameson was silent for a moment, apparently interested in the glowing tip of his cigarette. “Well, we could get an identification from them without too much trouble, I think,” he said at last.
“How?” Ward said.
“If we separated them and told each boy that the other was telling the truth — they’d come clean then. Right now they’re stuck together — miserably, I’d guess — in a lie. Split them up and they’d tell us what we want to know.” He glanced from Ward to Farrell. “Well? Do you want me to try it?”
“Hell, yes,” Ward said, with a touch of impatience in his voice. “Let’s do what we have to.”
“How about you, Mr. Farrell?”
“I don’t know.”
Ward said irritably, “What don’t you know, John?”
“I don’t like it. I think it would be a mistake to trick these boys into telling the truth. They’ve got half a notion, I suspect, that Duke and Jerry are heroes right now, tougher than their fathers or the police. If we lie to them it may only confirm their feeling that we can’t handle this problem by legitimate means.” Farrell made an impatient gesture. “Damn it, the important thing is that our kids don’t trust us. And they don’t trust Lieutenant Jameson or those detectives outside either. I want the truth out of them, but I don’t want to badger them into it with sleight-of-hand gimmicks.”
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