Late Payments

by Michael Z. Lewin

  As the first customers were allowed to leave, Powder left too.

  He drove farther out the Pike, to Leonardo’s.

  Powder had hardly taken a place at the bar when he was tapped on the shoulder. He turned to face Earle Nason.

  “Thought we might be seeing you,” Nason said.

  Powder said, “That’s very prescient of you, Mr. Nason.” He slipped off his stool.

  Nason led the way to Jimmy Husk’s office. Mister Jimmy, looking fresh in his tuxedo and jewelry, sat at his desk.

  He rose as Powder and Nason entered.

  “A drink. Lieutenant?” he asked.

  “Not this time,” Powder said.

  “Not a social call,” Husk stated. He sat again and sipped from a tall glass of what appeared to be tomato juice. Powder pulled a straight chair from against the wall and placed it so he sat directly in front of Husk.

  “Why did you do it?” Powder asked.

  “I’ve got a dozen witnesses to prove I’ve been here all night.”

  “That’s almost a confession on its own,” Powder said. “When does a guy like you have a dozen witnesses to his whereabouts except when he knows he’s going to need them?”

  Husk shrugged and then shook his head. “Everybody knows that Billy Sorenson and I were not good buddies, but . . .” He shrugged again.

  “How about witnesses to the whereabouts of your in-house hit man here?” Powder asked.

  “Now just a—”

  “Hush, Earle,” Mister Jimmy said. “He’s just trying to rile you.”

  “He’s shouldn’t say things that mean I—”

  “Control, Earle! Control is the key, all right?”

  “All right, Mister Jimmy.”

  Powder said, “To say I ‘try’ to rile him is like saying I ‘try’ to get water to run downhill. It’s not exactly hard.”

  “Lieutenant Powder,” Husk began, “I wouldn’t say I had a blameless past, but I run a straight operation now and for sure I didn’t have anything whatever to do with Billy Sorenson’s demise tonight.”

  “But you knew about it,” Powder said.

  “Bad news travels fast.”

  “You knew about it before it happened,” Powder said.

  Husk shook his head. “No.”

  “All right, you suspected it before it happened.”

  “I’m no fortune-teller.” Husk smiled at Nason.

  Powder glared, in silence.

  Husk said, “I may have heard rumors that Billy was associated with certain . . . indiscretions, and that those indiscretions maybe were about to catch up with him.”

  “What indiscretions?”

  Husk sipped again. This time he stared at Powder, saying nothing.

  Powder stared back.

  Husk raised his eyebrows. “Why should I help you?”

  “Can you help me?”

  “Could be. But what with the stupid accusations you been slinging at me lately . . .” He shook his head. “You know, my analyst says you probably got to be a real mixed-up-guy. I give you that amount of help for nothing.”

  “That amount of help I don’t need.”

  Husk shrugged. “So why should I do anything for you?”

  “Why does my suggesting that Earle didn’t shoot your brother by accident all those years ago cause trouble for you now?”

  “It shouldn’t, of course,” Husk said coolly. “Specially since it isn’t true. But, as it happens, sayings things like that, if they got around, it would be kind of awkward for me just at the moment.”

  Powder rubbed his face with both hands. “Tell me something,” he said. “Are the cops who leaned on me in your pocket or just hanging from your watch fob?”

  “It’s not like that,” Husk said. “I run a straight, classy operation, like I said. But in this business not everybody is as clean—or constructive—as me. Some of your colleagues in the higher ranks, guys I’ve known for a long time, they see that I am sort of a helpful oasis in the desert.”

  “You’re saying you pass them information in return for protection?”

  “That’s crude. I don’t operate crude. We got a positive civic relationship, that’s all.”

  “Don’t they know that you paid Earle to shoot your way into this operation?”

  “That is not what happened,” Mister Jimmy said again, annoyance creeping into his voice for the first time. “It just so happens I got a couple of business deals with old pals of Arnie’s coming up that it wouldn’t help if my benevolence toward Earle was remembered out loud just now.”

  “You’re offering me a deal,” Powder said.

  “More or less.”

  “What can you put up?”

  “A lead on Sorenson.”

  “What else?”

  “That seems like quite a lot to me,” Mister Jimmy said.

  “It’s not my case.”

  “All right. How about a little information you probably don’t have on Sidney Sweet?”

  Despite himself. Powder reacted to the name.

  “So,” Husk said, “we have an agreement? You keep your stupid suspicions about Earle in the confines of your head.”

  “And you give me Sweet and Sorenson.”

  Husk raised his eyebrows. ‘Not ‘give.’ Just leads.”

  “OK,” Powder said. “Deal.”

  Husk nodded.

  “Tell me about Sweet,” Powder said. “They’re part of the same thing,” Husk said. “Did you know that Sidney Sweet testified in Gary for the FBI?”

  “What about?”

  “What the hell do you think he’s going to testify about?”

  “Organized criminal activities?”

  “And because of him, a lot of guys, former business associates, became relocated to federal correctional facilities. He traded for immunity and a deal to be set up in a new life.”

  Powder waited.

  “The FBI brought him here. Changed his face. Give him a house, some money and a job.”

  “Is this general knowledge?”

  “No. Definitely not.”

  “Then how do you know?”

  Husk shrugged. “Sweet—his real name is Norman Frankling—he likes night life. He used to come here and met Earle’s sister-in-law. Sunny. That’s her name, isn’t it, Earle?”

  Sourly Nason said, “Yeah.”

  “They meet. They do the love-and-marriage bit. At some point he opens up to her. Maybe it was early, to impress her; maybe later. I don’t know. She tells her sister. Her sister tells Earle. Earle tells me. I don’t want trouble so I make sure none of them tells anybody else. And there it ended.”

  “So, what happened to Sweet?”

  “That I don’t know. But,” Husk said, pausing to drink from his tomato juice, “as it happens, the son of the man who was in charge in Gary is trying to get back in business. He is a bit of, you know, a head case. But word is he had suddenly been talking revenge for what happened to his father. They like that kind of talk—revenge— in towns like Gary. And if it’s spectacular, so much the better. Word is that with one or two repayments for his father behind him, the kid will have the kind of business support that hasn’t been available to anyone up there for years.”

  “So, is Sweet alive or dead?”

  Husk shook his head. “I don’t know. He either heard what I heard and got out to be on the safe side, or he didn’t hear and the son found out from somebody who he was and repaid his debt.”

  “You wouldn’t have warned him or anything civilized like that, I suppose?”

  Husk shrugged again. “But the point is, the same kid from Gary owes Billy Sorenson.”

  “Owes how?”

  “Well, after Sweet’s testimony broke the thing open, it seemed that the kid’s father was about to turn too. Now he could have done some real damage, about how the Gary operation was tied in with the other operations all along the lake and in Chicago. So certain parties in Chicago looked around for somebody to take the guy out before he provided that kind of information.
Billy was that somebody.”

  “And is that generally known?”

  Husk wagged his head slowly from side to side. “I suppose so. Billy liked to be the big shot, especially in front of the ladies. He maybe dropped a lot of hints. Not that it’s something people like you could prove.”

  “Of course.”

  “Billy Sorenson was a bad kind of guy,” Mister Jimmy said reflectively. “On his way to where he was, he did contracts, pushed a bit. All kinds of stuff. Small time, mind you, but with big self-importance. Know what I mean? Not a credit to the nightclub business. A bad kind of guy.”

  “I’m sure he was.”

  “So the lead you want is this kid from Gary.”

  “Whose name is?”

  “Painter,” Mister Jimmy said. “Henry Painter, Junior.”

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Powder sat in his car outside Leonardo’s for several minutes. He was uncertain what he wanted to do.

  In the end he drove back to The Blue Boot.

  There he sought out Harold Salimbean. When he got Salimbean alone, he passed on what he had been told about Henry Painter’s connection to Billy Sorenson.

  Harold Salimbean accepted Powder’s information with more skepticism than might have been expected. Powder’s unusual and repeated presence made Salimbean uncomfortable. But when asked. Powder said only, “I was talking to somebody about something else. This just came up.”

  Powder gave Salimbean Painter’s address, but he said nothing about his own contact with Painter.

  Salimbean gave up on his disquiet with Powder. He returned to his job, which was to pursue active leads through the night and prepare the case for a day detective to take over in the morning. To that end he ordered a patrol car to go to the address Powder had given.

  Powder left The Blue Boot.

  From his car he called to ask whether his observation request on Martha Miles’s house had produced anything. It took a while as patrol cars in the area were contacted, but Powder finally learned that at about a quarter to one a man had been seen leaving the premises on foot with a small bag. The patrol car had followed the man as he walked toward town. Because the instruction had been to watch the house, the man had not been stopped and eventually the car drove on. Nothing else had been seen.

  Powder drove slowly back to Police Headquarters.

  He went up to the Computer Section. Through the glass he saw Tidmarsh towering over Fleetwood’s wheelchair. They appeared to be laughing, though Powder heard no sound.

  Powder watched for a minute. Then went back to his car.

  He drove to Martha Miles’s house.

  Two patrol cars were parked outside. Not only were the lights on downstairs as well as up, a few neighboring houses showed lights as well. Powder suspected the patrolmen had been none too quiet on their arrival.

  It was nearly 3:00 A.M.

  As he watched. Powder saw Painter and the two policemen come down from the upstairs apartment. There was no sign of any resistance. Painter was handcuffed, as befitted a murder suspect, but the cuffs were in front of his body—not behind his back—and the three men seemed to be chatting pleasantly. Painter was bundled into a secure back seat and the patrolmen drove away.

  Powder sat until the police cars were out of sight.

  He got out of his car. He went to Martha Miles’s door. He rang the bell.

  When there was no quick answer, he rang again, continuously.

  From behind the door a voice asked, “Who is it?”

  “Police,” Powder said.

  There was another delay. Powder heard sounds from inside the apartment. He began ringing the bell again.

  Martha Miles opened the door.

  “Oh! Leroy!” she said. “I didn’t realize it was you. I thought it was, you know, police.”

  She stepped back and let him in. She wore a short black nightie with a light, white dressing gown hanging open. She said, “Why didn’t you say it was you?”

  Powder said nothing but walked deep into the room and turned around.

  Miles closed the door, saying, “You’ll never believe what has happened. The police have arrested that Painter man.” She spoke easily, unconcernedly.

  “I believe it,” Powder said.

  Turning, Miles smiled slightly and said, “You know it’s pretty late if you’ve decided you aren’t so tired after all.”

  “Oh, I’m tireder than ever,” Powder said.

  “Well, what then? Hungry?”

  He stared at her hard, frowning. “I am fully aware that I have been set up,” Powder said.

  She smiled, seeming to think it was a light comment she hadn’t gotten the point of. When Powder did not return the smile, she said, “What do you mean?”

  “I know that your intentions with me are not what you’ve said they were.”

  “I never claimed my intentions were honorable, Leroy.”

  He approached her and waved a finger. “You contrived our reacquaintance.You maneuvered my being here to see Henry Painter tonight while someone he wanted dead was being murdered. You have set me up to be his alibi, presumably while he was having somebody else do his dirty work for him. I don’t know what your connection to Henry Painter is, but I’ll tell you now: I do not like being used. I will not stand for it. And I will get to the bottom of it. You can save yourself a lot of trouble, a lot of heartache, and maybe a lot of prison time by telling me what is going on, and telling me now.”

  Martha Miles said stiffly, “That’s a very pretty little speech. Excuse me if I don’t have the faintest idea what you are talking about.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “You didn’t seem so unhappy with our reacquaintance two nights ago.”

  “I was suspicious from the start. I was seeing how far you would go with whatever little plan you were working up.”

  “Just how much detail did you put in the report you filed, Leroy?” Miles, now angry, asked. “Did you tell them what you touched? What you kissed? What you put into me? Did you fake it, Leroy? Because if you did, you were very convincing and the special effects you left behind were tremendously realistic.”

  “Something is wrong,” Powder stated. “And I intend to find out what it is.”

  “Is it wrong for a woman to feel lonely? Is it wrong for a lonely woman to want to do something about it? Is it wrong for her to respond even when the man she is with is rough and aggressive and indelicate and not very sensitive? I don’t see that as being so wrong. But then I’m not a cop. I’m not a person with no feelings except suspicion, no emotions except hate. Is that how all cops are? God! I must be in a desperate condition to expect to get the warmth I need from someone like you.” She held her face in her hands. She cried.

  Powder stood silent in front of her, breathing deeply himself.

  She cried and he stood, for a long time.

  Finally she stopped.

  “If I am wrong, then I’m sorry,” he said, but unapologetically.

  Before she screamed at him to go, he was on his way.

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Powder’s furious confusion about Martha Miles had not subsided by the time he returned to the corridor outside the police computer room.

  Looking through the glass panel, he saw only Fleetwood inside. He passed to the door, opened it, and stomped in.

  Fleetwood was engrossed in a pile of papers next to a display screen and didn’t look up until Powder drew close. “Hi,” she said.

  “What you got?” Powder asked gruffly.

  “We’re not done yet.”

  “I can see you’re still working,” Powder said, louder and more aggressively than was appropriate. “I didn’t think you were playing computer baseball.”

  “We have made some real progress,” Fleetwood said.

  “Well, three cheers for that. I’m glad it’s been more fruitful than giggle, giggle, giggle all night long.”

  “What the hell is wrong with you, Powder?” Fleetwood asked sharply, finally r
ealizing that his needless aggression was not going to fade. She drew herself up in her chair. “What business do you have waltzing in here with some kind of sore head when it’s us that’s been doing all the work? How do you have the nerve? Even if you’ve got a terrible crick in your neck from looking for hemorrhoids, there’s no call to take it out on other people.”

  Powder stood and glared and fumed and glowered and pouted.

  But after a silence he said, “You’re right. I’ll try again.”

  He left the room and closed the door.

  As he turned to reenter it he saw Tidmarsh walking up the hall carrying a wastepaper basket upside down. On it were balanced two cups and some candy bars.

  “Hail Powder!” Tidmarsh intoned. “Goest thou that room into? Wouldst open door?”

  Powder breathed deeply. He swallowed hard. He opened the door.

  Tidmarsh passed by him. “Haha, fair Carollee! Foodstuffings on a plastic salver, upturned empty basket, symbol of life. And see! Imbibables and sweet, oh, sweet comestibles! And too, greet friend Powder, a hale fellow, well met.”

  Fleetwood did not speak.

  Powder, having followed Tidmarsh only as far as the open doorway, said, “I’ve forgotten what I wanted to talk to you folks about. When you’ve got something to tell me I’ll be in Missing Persons.”

  Powder sat for a few minutes on one of the foam-filled plastic-upholstered chairs placed for people awaiting attention from one of the Missing Persons officers.

  Then he rose and pulled the four chairs away from the wall. He arranged them in a row. He stretched himself out on the “bed.”

  His great skill: being able to sleep virtually anywhere, anytime.

  The first thing he was conscious of was something tracing his lips: the length of one, the other, the first again.

  Then he knew it for a fingertip. He puckered to it. The finger passed slowly to other parts of his face.

  After a time Powder, eyes still closed, rolled toward the finger and reached out. His hand hit the steel frame of a wheelchair.