“I’m going over there,” I said.
“What for? The situation’s under control.”
“He’ll get himself shot, and I want him alive. If you need me, you can have communications contact me at the scene by radio. There’ll be plenty of radio cars there.”
“Okay,” Carl said. “You’re the boss.”
When I hung up, Doll was staring at me aggressively. “You’re no national guardsman,” she said. “You’re a cop.”
I smiled at her.
“How’d that guy get my number?” she demanded. “It’s unlisted.”
“We guardsmen have ways,” I told her.
“Sneaky ways,” she said. “And to think I was all ready to climb in bed with you!”
“You’ve changed your mind?”
She glared at me. “Just get out of my apartment, please, Mr. Policeman.”
“I’m going,” I said, and left.
CHAPTER 26
The street in front of Little Artie’s tavern was packed with vehicles. In addition to a number of squad cars and felony cars, there was an ambulance, a fire emergency truck and a hook-and-ladder. Why the last, I don’t know, but one always seems to show at a shoot-out. Somebody must call for it, or it wouldn’t be there. Maybe the theory is that it may come in handy in getting cops to a roof, but I have yet to see a hook-and-ladder perform any function at the scene when some nut has holed himself up and is shooting at cops.
Police had roped off both ends of the street to hold back spectators. I left my car, showed my badge to a uniformed cop and ducked under the rope.
There was no areaway either side of the building housing Little Artie’s tavern. The buildings all ran together, forming a solid front. Consequently Artie, in the flat over the tavern, could cover only the area directly in front of him, unless he made a target of himself by leaning out of a window. A few cops were crouched behind vehicles in his range of view, but most were in doorways or pressed against the front of buildings either side of the tavern.
Oddly, no firing was going on either from the police or from the windows of the flat.
I worked my way up to the center of activity, keeping well in toward the store fronts. Just this side of the tavern, I found Lieutenant Harry Anderson and Sergeant Max Cole in the recessed doorway of a clothing shop. I slipped into the doorway too.
Harry Anderson said, “Hi, Matt,” and Max Cole merely nodded.
“What’s the situation?” I asked.
Anderson said, “We’ve got the back covered as heavily as out here. And we’ve got a man in the tavern. But the only entrance to the flat is a street door, and it’s locked and bolted. We can’t get a battering ram to it because Artie can see the door from his windows.”
“Weren’t a couple of cops inside once, when they tried to arrest him?”
Anderson shook his head. “The door was bolted then. The action started when they pounded on it. Artie opened up from one of the upstairs windows and got one in the leg. We’ve been trying to talk him out, but he isn’t having any.”
“Who’s been doing the talking?”
“Captain Ward. He’s in a doorway the other side of the tavern with a power megaphone. He hasn’t been getting any answers, unless you call an occasional pot at some cop who shows his head an answer.”
I asked, “How’s Artie armed?”
“So far he hasn’t used anything but a pistol, but there’s no telling what he has up there.”
There was the crack of a pistol shot from above, then the whang of a slug grazing the fender of one of the squad cars across the street and skipping off again. I glanced that way in time to see a visored blue cap hurriedly duck out of sight.
A volley of fire from pistols, carbines and one sub-machine-gun answered the single shot. Bits of glass from the upstairs windows tinkled downward. Then there was silence again.
“What’s the plan?” I asked.
“Captain Ward just ordered tear gas. The guy with the launcher should be working his way into position behind the cars across the street any minute now.”
“I know Artie pretty well,” I said. “Maybe he’d listen to me.”
“Want to try the megaphone?”
“I’ve got a better idea. There must be a phone in the flat.”
Anderson stared at me. “You want to phone him?”
“Why not? If he answers the phone, at least I can get him to listen.”
The lieutenant pursed his lips. “Might be worth a try.” Raising his voice, he called, “Hey, Captain.”
“Yeah?” the voice of the head of the Homicide Division called back from beyond the tavern.
“I’ve got Matt Rudd over here. He knows Nowak personally and wants to try phoning him. Want to hold off on the tear gas long enough to give it a try?”
After a moment of silence, the captain said, “I suppose another five minutes wouldn’t hurt.” Then we could hear him talking in a lower voice, but couldn’t make out the words. I assumed he was speaking into a walkie-talkie, issuing instructions to hold the tear gas until further orders.
“There’s your go-ahead,” Anderson said to me. “Now all you need is a phone.”
“The tavern’s the nearest,” I said.
Sticking my head cautiously out of the doorway, I looked upward. There were three front windows to the upstairs flat, all open a few inches from the bottom. They might as well have been wide open, for only a few shards of glass remained in any.
Slipping out of the doorway, I scooted the few yards to the recessed entrance to the tavern. There was no reaction from above. Either Artie hadn’t seen the maneuver, or I had moved too fast for him to get in a shot.
Dinny O’Toole was still behind the bar and a uniformed officer was looking out the front window. I didn’t recognize the officer, but he seemed to know me, because he said, “Hi, Sarge. Little hot out there, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I said. I went over to the bar. “Give me your bar phone, Dinny.”
The old man was taking all the excitement calmly enough. The sparkle in his eyes suggested he was enjoying it.
“Sure,” he said cheerfully, lifting the phone from the back bar and stretching the cord to set it in front of me.
“Know Artie’s number upstairs?”
“Nope.” He heaved the phone book off the back bar and dropped it in front of me.
I found the number and dialed. It rang for so long, I was on the verge of giving up when the ringing suddenly stopped. There was silence on the other end.
“Artie?” I said. “This is Matt Rudowski.”
The silence continued for several seconds. Then a thick voice said, “What the hell you want?”
“What’s the matter with your voice?” I asked. “You been hit?”
There was a slurred chuckle. “Those guys out there can’t even hit the building half the time. I’m drunker’n a skunk is what’sa matter with my voice, Mattie boy. Been drunker’n a skunk all day.”
His irrational behavior suddenly became understandable, in view of what Dinny had said about his drinking habits. I said, “Thought you never drank anything but coffee.”
“Only when I get a real jolt, Mattie boy. Stuff drives me nuts. Guess I really blew it this time, huh?”
“You haven’t been behaving very normally,” I understated.
“Sonovabitch Nick stabbed me in the back. Your best friend stabs you inna back, whataya gonna do? Have a few jolts is whataya gonna do. Only that makes you mad ‘stead of settling your nerves. Guess I really fixed the sonovabitch, didn’t I?”
“I guess you did, Artie. Now how about calming down instead of making things worse? Why don’t you give it up?”
He emitted a drunken chuckle. “You stupid enough to try to reason with a drunk?”
“What do you hope to accomplish by holding out, Artie? It’s only a matter of time before they take you.”
“What’ll I ‘complish by giving up?” he countered. “They’ll give me the ‘lectric chair.”
“You’ll get a fair trial, and you’ve got money enough to hire top attorneys. But no lawyer can defend you against bullets.”
There was a dull, popping explosion from outside, the tinkle of glass from above, then three more popping explosions from outdoors.
“You sonovabitch,” Artie yelled thickly. “You kept me onna phone while they pumped in tear gas shells!”
There was a click and the line went dead.
Slamming down the phone, I strode to the front door and glared outside. A uniformed cop with a tear gas launcher was just pulling back behind the protection of a squad car. Another was draped across the hood of a second car, directing a sub-machine gun at the flat’s windows.
A series of rapid pistol shots sounded from above. Then the machine gun chattered.
Artie must have rushed to one of the windows and stood erect in full view when he fired off those last wild shots, for he pitched forward right through it. His body dropped right in front of me, hitting the sidewalk with a sickening crunch.
I went outside and looked down at all that was left of Little Artie Nowak. Cops began to close in from all sides. The thick figure of Captain Tom Ward was in the foreground.
In my anger I was on the verge of blasting out a superior officer for jumping the gun and not giving me a full chance to talk Artie out alive. Then I decided there was no use in sounding off. Artie would be just as dead, and I’d only get myself in trouble.
I didn’t even speak to Captain Ward. I stalked off up the street, ducked under the rope and climbed into my car.
CHAPTER 27
I had calmed down by the time I got to headquarters. I wasn’t even sore at Tom Ward any more. After all, he had been trying to smoke out a dangerous armed man who had wounded one cop and was shooting at others. And I certainly felt no grief for Little Artie. I began to feel a little ashamed of myself when I realized my pique stemmed solely from Artie having died before I could get a confession out of him for the murder of Kitty Desmond.
Before going upstairs, I stopped at Records on the first floor. There was no file on Donald Tupper. I gave him one by listing him in the sex-offender file as a suspect to be routinely picked up in rape cases where the assailant’s identity was unknown.
It was a quarter of five when I walked into the vice squadroom. Carl Lincoln was still there, and Ritter and Webb of the marijuana detail were also in off the street. They were playing three-handed pinochle.
All three threw me casual greetings. Carl said, “Excitement over already?”
“Yeah,” I said in a weary tone.
“What’s with you?” Carl asked. “You look like you lost your last friend.”
“Not a friend,” I said. “Just a murder suspect. Artie decided to go down with flying colors.” I described what had happened.
Ritter said, “He must have been nuts.”
“Just drunk,” I said. “Seems liquor drove him nuts. You planning to log out at five, Carl?”
“Sure. I’m not about to play pinochle on my own time. It’s your bid, Webb.”
Webb said, “I pass.”
I walked out, took the elevator to the third floor and went down the hall to a door labeled: Handwriting and Document Identification. Big, cumbersome Al Gould was just putting on his hat to go home.
“Want to hold up a minute, Al?” I asked.
“Sure,” he said, hanging up his hat again. “I was jumping the gun by a couple of minutes anyway. What you got?”
I took the sympathy card from my pocket and handed it to him. After examining it, he looked at me inquiringly.
I said, “You got a five-seven for Little Artie Nowak on file?”
A form five-seven was made out by all persons arrested in St. Cecilia except drunks and traffic violators. On the front of the card, in his own handwriting, the suspect wrote his name, address, place and date of birth, occupation, place of employment, name and address of nearest relative and the date he completed the form. On the reverse side there was a section for physical description, then spaces in which he had to both write and print the complete alphabet, first in capitals and then in small letters. There was also a space in which he had to write the numbers one to twenty.
I suspected Artie would have a card on file, because years back, before he fell under the protection of Nick Bartkowiak, he had been pulled in a number of times on gambling and soliciting charges. In St. Cecilia it was the custom for hoods who eventually gained some political influence to quietly arrange for their old criminal records to disappear from the files, but they usually don’t think of anything but the central file. There always remains an odd card or two stored in places outside the records division.
Al Gould went over to the small file drawers covering one side of the room from floor to ceiling, ran his gaze over them and finally pulled out a drawer.
“Yeah, he’s here,” he said, removing a card.
I said, “See if he matches the printing on that sympathy card.”
Gould sat at his desk with both cards before him and studied them through a magnifying glass. It took him about thirty seconds to come to a conclusion.
“Sorry, Matt,” he said with a shake of his head. “Artie didn’t do this printing.”
“You sure, Al?”
He gave me a wounded look. “This is my business, Matt. You want a technical explanation of why he couldn’t have?”
“I trust you,” I said. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. Thanks, Al.”
“Anytime,” he said, putting the sympathy card back into its envelope and handing it to me.
I put it back in my inside breast pocket.
When I got back to the squadroom, Carl Lincoln was logging out and Ritter and Webb had already left.
“Who won?” I inquired.
“Nobody. We didn’t have time to finish the game. We saved the score until next time.”
I said dryly, “What dedicated cops we have around here. You won’t even play pinochle overtime.’”
Carl grinned at me. “You can play pinochle in barrooms, where the surroundings are pleasanter. See you tomorrow, buddy boy.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Bring your walking shoes.”
“The factory district again?” he asked in a pained voice.
“Uh-huh. All day long. If we don’t bring in a few streetwalkers soon, the captain is going to start asking sarcastic questions about what our function is around here.”
“Sometimes I wonder myself,” Carl said.
When he had left, I took the sympathy card out of my pocket again and frowned down at it. If Little Artie Nowak hadn’t sent it, who had? I was sure it must have come from the murderer, because no one else could have known Kitty Desmond was dead at the time the card was mailed.
Then, without advance warning, light suddenly struck.
“Of course,” I breathed aloud. “It couldn’t be anyone else.”
Captain Spangler came from his office, looked around and said, “Nobody from the night trick here yet, Rudowski?”
“No, sir,” I said. “I’ll be around a few minutes if you want to leave.”
“Good,” he said. “My wife is expecting me on time tonight. We’re having guests.”
He ducked back into his office and returned wearing his hat. I was left alone in the squadroom.
I looked at the table where Carl had been seated when I left the squadroom earlier that afternoon. The slip on which I had written Doll Fenner’s phone number still lay there. Sitting down, I dialed the number.
Doll’s voice said, “Hello?”
“This is Matt,” I announced.
Her voice turned frigid. “You’ve got a nerve phoning here. And you just wait till I see Jolly. I’ll give her a piece of my mind for foisting off a cop as her boy friend.”
“Cops aren’t necessarily poison,” I said. “Besides, she did it more or less under duress. The masquerade didn’t do you any harm, did it?”
“It made me make a fool of myself.”
“How do you figure? I
was all ready to take you up on that offer when we were interrupted.”
“The offer is permanently withdrawn,” she said coldly. “What do you want?”
“You still interested in seeing Kitty’s murderer caught?”
There was a period of silence. Then she said, “I don’t want to do anything that would get Artie after me.”
“Artie didn’t kill her,” I said.
“He didn’t?” she said in a surprised voice. “How do you know?”
Lieutenant Dell Hendricks, the night watch commander, walked into the squadroom. I waved him a greeting as he started to log himself in.
I said, “It’s too long a story to explain. Believe me, he didn’t kill her. I need the answer to just one question. Did Kitty tell you where her date was the other night?”
“Sure. She always told me everything about her dates. She went to the Leland.”
“I mean the second one. When she went out about two A.M.”
Lieutenant Hendricks disappeared into the captain’s office, which was also his office at night. Cutler and Wayne of the night trick arrived and logged in.
Doll said, “That was at the Leland too, only on a different floor. I asked if she wasn’t afraid to go back there after rolling her first date, but she said it was a big hotel and she wouldn’t be anywhere near the first John’s room.”
“Thanks,” I said quietly. “That’s all I wanted to know, Doll.”
“Wait,” she said. “What’s this all about?”
“You’ll read about it in the papers,” I said. “You’ve been a big help.”
I hung up.
CHAPTER 28
According to the sign in the center of the Leland’s lobby, which listed the scheduled events of the Tile and Plastic Manufacturers’ Convention, there had been a meeting from four to five P.M., but nothing was scheduled after that until a seven P.M. dinner. It was now five forty-five.
I checked at the desk to make sure the four-to-five meeting hadn’t run overtime, and was told it had broken up promptly at five. I took the elevator to the third floor and knocked at the door of room 318.
Harold Warner was in shirt sleeves when he opened the door. He looked surprised to see me.
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