by Al Fray
“Sounds pretty involved,” the younger cop said.
“Not so much. It has to be that way so that the brakes set automatically if the trailer breaks loose. It’s a safety device to keep the van from running wild.”
Domms shifted his cigar. “But you couldn’t run any air into those brakes after you’d blocked traffic?”
“That’s right,” I said. “As it turned out later, a brass fitting had come off. One of your boys helped me find the trouble.”
“I know. But what made the trouble in the first place hasn’t been established, McCarthy.”
I climbed down and pointed to the air hoses between the cab of the truck and the van.
“The one on this side. If you want to make an examination hop to it, but this ends my lecture on the how and why of air brakes.”
“No. No, I guess we won’t bother to go over the truck; if it was rigged to come apart the work won’t show. But we might talk about a couple of other things, McCarthy.”
“Go ahead. Talk.”
Domms looked at the tip of his cigar and spoke softly. “You’ve made the point, McCarthy; you don’t like cops. What else are you trying to prove?”
“Nothing. I’ve answered your questions, haven’t I?”
“Uh huh. So you have, though I don’t give a hell of a lot for your way of doing it. But I’ll return the favor and give you a little information. You’re playing with the big boys now, McCarthy, and that’s a good way to get hurt. Or did you know?”
“I don’t know anything. I’m a new man in town.”
“For a newly arrived citizen you sure get around.” he said sourly. “This mess today—it’s been cooking for a long time. The big mobs are moving in from the city and now we’ve got open gang war. I don’t know where you fit into the picture but bear in mind what I said—you can get hurt in River City.”
“Mobs and gangs are your department,” I said shortly. “My truck stalling was an accident. It could happen any time—and it could as well have helped as hindered your guys. If I’d had my breakdown in the street that your carload of killers was using for their escape they’d have been in a hell of a fix. Luck was simply running the other way, so let’s call it a tough break and dry up our tears.”
Domms was looking at me again when I finished and I could see the younger cop itching to do something concrete about all the guff I was giving them, but there wasn’t a thing they could prove and it must have been pretty obvious to both of them. A few minutes later they climbed into the official car and backed into the street, and when I tossed the rag back into the tool box and looked around, Gail Tyler was standing next to me, her eyes searching my face.
“Something wrong, Gail?”
“What did they do to you, Mac?” she asked softly.
“Who, Domms? Not a thing. I don’t know him from Adams off ox.”
“Not Domms. I mean the police, Mac.”
I drew a long time on my cigarette and thought it over. I’d had to play it that way with Domms in order to hold my standing with Vehon. I didn’t know how deeply I was in or where it would lead, but I’d gone into it without asking help or taking Domms into my confidence. I couldn’t run to him now. If it was murder and I was implicated, I’d have to stand with the mob—it was my only chance.
“I have found,” I said slowly, “that the one guy who will look after McCarthy is McCarthy. I’ve got nothing against Domms. Or any cop. And I don’t owe them a damn thing either. I expect them to remember that.”
“I don’t think you’re being quite honest, Mac.”
“About what?”
“About the police and your attitude toward them. You’re bleeding somewhere, Mac, and badly.”
I laughed a little to keep my face from showing how close to the truth she’d come. “Look who’s waving the banner,” I said. “How much help was Domms when you were trying to get a truck driver? Did he hurry down to see that you got a fair shake from the union?”
“In a way, that’s different. It isn’t really his responsibility.”
“His job involves a lot of things,” I said bitterly. “He wouldn’t have had to stretch too much to look into your problem. And when Arno Walchek was killed—Domms didn’t carry the ball very far that time either.”
“You think Captain Domms is—?”
“Taking the pay-off? Who knows?” I didn’t say any more but I thought it, and on my scales the blundering incompetent weighs about the same as an outright grafter. I shrugged my shoulders and started along the driveway.
When I stopped by Marty Bruno’s, someone had already told him the news in the stack of papers piled next to his stand.
“A big deal,” Marty said, his practiced lingers running over the coin I’d dropped on the counter. “You hear any details yet, Mac?”
“Some. My truck was a pawn in the game; she accidentally stalled and the traffic tie-up didn’t help the cops much, I guess. Domms got a tough break.”
“He gets more than his share,” Marty said, sliding my change into the tray. He said it without bitterness, without indicating that Domms was at fault.
Yet he had said it, and somehow you tended to weigh the words of this man who was blind.
When I got home, I went through the first account of Big Bob Doberman’s death in the newspaper. There was a picture from an earlier file and mention of a trial in which he beat a charge of handling narcotics. A more gruesome shot showed him sprawled in his office, a white sheet over most of him, and a couple of cops standing by. He’d gone out quick all right; his wasn’t a lingering death. At the time the paper went to press no one had connected the truck accident and they didn’t have a picture of the rig crosswise in the street. For that I was thankful.
But that was about all I had to be thankful for. I thought I’d gone in for a small thing—shifting of property, they’d said—but the water had gotten deep fast as hell. Doberman was no angel and the papers called his slaying a public service but that didn’t change anything in the eyes of the law.
Later, because I didn’t feel like going out on the town, I built myself a strong whisky and soda, tried to interest myself in a TV show, failed, and when I ran out of petty things to waste time I went through the paper once more. At one in the morning I was still trying to sell myself on an idea—that a man does what he can and sometimes he strikes a sour note and the bottom drops out, but it isn’t really his fault.
In an effort to wash away my part in Doberman’s death I marshaled all the facts. Well over four years had passed since that afternoon in the River City National Bank when Pop Walters had been shot down. I thought about the wandering I’d done in the time since then, and why I had come back to River City. Could Big Bob Doberman have been a part of that reason, one of the planning committee behind that attempted robbery? Could be, and if so he had earned the reward he collected today.
And he was no good. Mentally I went through the newspaper account and sorted out the times he had beat his rap by dint of a high-priced legal beagle and assorted witnesses who failed to appear on behalf of the prosecution. The paper was plenty courageous now that Doberman was dead, and they ran quite a list. He’d come to power during the last years of the noble experiment, a hood working his way up in the bathtub liquor days, and by the time of repeal he had a solid foot in the door. Numbers racket. Some hint of an attempt to organize the street-walkers and small cat houses into a paying cartel, a brush with the unions that didn’t quite jell. Civic groups had tried to do something about him. So had the law, but not very successfully. There wouldn’t be many tears shed over his passing. A public service, the papers had said.
Civic improvement!
Tear down the tenements and build a housing project!
Dig up the streets for a new super freeway!
Bring in a silenced gun and burn down a gang leader!
But no matter how I clothed the thing in alibis I always came back to one salient fact. This was murder and I was an accessory to the fact.
Chapt
er 13
Five days later the grand jury listed Doberman’s case as “death at the hands of persons unknown.” The buzz of activity immediately following the killing subsided; Doberman slipped from page one and then out of the news altogether. And for me—a plain brown envelope in the mail. Not insured, not registered, and not even a return address, but when I opened it twenty-five ten-dollar bills in well-worn currency slid out onto the table.
It was one lousy damn feeling, the sight of that dough. It was the proof of my part, however blind, in the murder of Doberman. I bent the cash into a roll, slipped a rubber band around it, and bounced the blood money in my hand.
The hell of it was I still knew almost nothing. I had no real evidence. I wasn’t even sure that either Ward or Vehon were actually present at the killing. Going to the law with my tale would only land me in the pokey and that was about the absolute size of it. Mentally I weighed the avenues open to me.
Leave now? Hike out to the railroad yards and tuck a boxcar under my arm—run while my skin was still whole? It had merit, that thought, but I pushed it aside. I had run once from River City; I wasn’t about to do it a second time.
Go to Domms? Or slide past him and contact the boys on Uncle Sam’s payroll? I gave that a little thought too, but what would I tell them? It always came back to where I started—no real evidence.
The third possibility: ride along and play for the break, in the hope that I’d be in solid enough to get a real part in the next big move. Maybe if they trusted me enough they would cut me in on the fundamentals of something really big, something that included both Vehon and Ward, and perhaps then—But the first item to be considered was that of my new wealth. Being careful not to let it bubble to the surface would be a good idea. And a tight lip would help too. There was no need to get careless just because Doberman’s death was almost forgotten by everyone except the police.
On a Friday night I ran into Doreen again, in a bar this time, and by the looks of things she’d been there quite a while before I arrived. She was built like a movie star and couldn’t look anything but good but tonight she’d obviously been doing a lot of drinking and there was a carelessness about her appearance. Her dress was a little too far over on one side and a white slip strap showed at the shoulder. Her lipstick wasn’t exactly straight; she’d neglected to wipe away a small spot of excess powder along one cheek. I thought about Doreen and her part in the Doberman deal. Had she known that we were wrapping ourselves up in cold and calculated murder? She could have, and I was beginning to wonder if she was trying to numb her nerves by bathing them in gin.
I didn’t like the looks of it. A little loose talk from her might make trouble. My truck was there—it wasn’t a thing you could deny, once the background was sketched in and I was rubbing elbows with the law, so Doreen worried me a little. She came toward me now and sat at the bar, something she shouldn’t have done, everything considered, but she put a hand on my shoulder and smiled up at me.
“Hi, Mac. What’s on the agenda tonight?”
“One drink. Then I’ll be on my way,” I told her.
“And where is your way, Mac?”
I glanced across the bar and caught the barkeeper’s attention. “Cuba Libre,” I said.
“Cuba. Coming up.” He reached for half a lime and the squeezer and I turned back to Doreen.
“Where are your friends tonight?” I asked.
“My friends?”
“Ed Vehon. And Sam Ward.”
“What about McCarthy?” she asked, and rubbed her cheek along my arm. “Isn’t he my friend?”
“Sure,” I said.
She glanced around and then lowered her voice. “We did all right, didn’t we, Mac?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said. “I’ve got a bad memory. Worst in town.” The cold drink slid across the bar then, and I paid and drank up. All of it. Real quick, and then I slid off the stool and let her hand fall off my shoulder. “Be seeing you around, Doreen.”
She looked up. There was surprise and deflated pride on her face but I grinned and nodded and walked out. A fast tour of the haunts turned up nothing. Summer and the warm twilight had emptied buildings. People were out on the streets or in the park and Fogarty’s was like a morgue. A few of the gang were hanging around Marty Bruno’s place so I made a small purchase and shot a little bull with the boys, then picked up a paper and went home.
Saturday morning I made one purchase of note, a used car, but I had to keep the picture straight so I didn’t go in for anything fancy. Not that dough was a problem; the five hundred recently added to the fourteen C notes already in my money belt would have bought a first-class used car or, along with small payments, set me up in business with a new jalopy, but it wouldn’t have been smart. So I went instead to one of the lemon orchards along First Street, shoved my hands into my pockets, and sauntered through an acre and a half of assorted motoring merchandise. A salesman descended upon me with all the eager determination of a newly made Fuller Brush Man and immediately launched into a spiel as old as the business itself.
I showed a little interest in an ancient junk, he beckoned me across the lot to look at a last year’s Chev, and eventually we settled on something in between—a Ford coupé with several seasons behind it but the condition of the upholstery said that the car had received good care and that’s a fair indication that the motor might have been carefully handled. I checked for pedal wear, backed her around a little, opened the door and leaned out for a peek at the stern while I revved up the motor. There was no telltale smoke pouring from the tail pipe and that was good. The automatic shift seemed to be in fair shape.
We wept on each other’s shoulders about inflation and the price of everything these days. He bled over the cost of the thorough reconditioning which he swore his company gave to each and every used car passing through its lot and I wrung my hands over the modest scale paid truck drivers. When we finally arrived at a price I could have slipped the zipper on the vault under my shirt and bought three more cars just like the Ford but instead I let him call Tyler Trucking for a credit rating, dropped a small down payment on his desk, and shouldered twelve monthly installments for the balance. Then I picked up Gail and headed toward the ball park.
“Have you heard from Carl Bloomquist yet, Mac?” she wanted to know as we cruised along.
“Who’s Bloomquist?” I asked, but I’d known Carl for a long time. A fellow Swede, Carl was a hardware merchant with a big business and he believed in plowing some of the profit back into civic improvement.
“He’s chairman of the group sponsoring Little League,” Gail was saying, “and he wants to get you interested. I gave him your phone number this morning.”
“I was downtown. He missed me.”
“You’d like him and I think you would have a lot of fun if you get into Little League baseball, Mac.”
“I’m over the age limit; I don’t think they’ll let me play.” I laughed, and turned into the park.
We watched the game and when we were going toward the car a little later, Carl caught up with us and gave me the pitch about working with the kids.
“Henley’s going east next month,” Carl said, “and we were hoping you’d take over the Cubs. Takes a little time to manage a team of small fry but you’ll have a lot of fun too. How about it?”
Bub was looking at me expectantly and I felt Gail’s hand on my arm but there was an angle to be considered. I was looking ahead to some of the things that could happen in the near future. I’d come back to River City to help clean up a rotten situation but so far all I’d accomplished was to get myself in up to the ears. And it could get worse: I could wind up looking out from behind the eight ball any day.
I thought about that and how the kids look up to a coach or a lifeguard or a scoutmaster. That person is tied up with—well, with morals, I guess, and it would be a blow to those kids if a guy in that position was convicted on an accessory to murder charge. I told Carl no and though he said I should think i
t over, I shook my head.
“I know what I can do and what I can’t do,” I said, “and one of the things I can’t do is take on the ball team. Thanks for asking, but it’s no dice.”
By the time I’d had dinner, bummed around town a while, and then headed home I’d forgotten all about Carl and Little League, and when I parked my hack in front of the apartment building and went into the hall, I heard my phone ringing. I opened the door, slammed it behind me, and caught the receiver off the hook.
“McCarthy,” I said. There were several seconds of silence and when the voice came over the wire it was feminine, thick, hesitant, and very obviously drunk.
“Mac, you old son-a-gun, I didn’ think you’d ever get home. Why’n’cha come on down and have a drink?”
Chapter 14
“Doreen,” I said softly, “where the hell are you?”
“In a bar. Where should I be?” She said it slowly—too slowly and just a trifle thick in the tongue. This kid was beginning to worry me.
“So what bar are you in?”
“The Purple Onion. C’mon down, Mac, and we’ll have a real ball. I’ve been missing you, Mac, and—”
I ran a fast analysis while she babbled on. She was slipping over the line fast, becoming a lush, and lushes are apt to talk out of turn. I couldn’t do much about her drinking but I could make sure she wasn’t spouting off in a bar with twenty people around to laugh and listen. Someone might stop laughing long enough to think a little.
“I’ll be right there, baby,” I said. “Don’t do anything until you see me, huh?”
“Li’l old Doreen will be right here, Mac, so you—” It sounded like she was getting set to dribble on for a spell and I didn’t want to argue so I simply replaced the receiver and started for the door. I’d never been in the Purple Onion but I knew where it was, a small dive where the drinks are cheap and strong, the crowd noisy. It was one of those places where you could get into a fight real fast over anything at all. I hopped into the Ford, and headed for the south side of town.