Rafferty’s hours on duty with the force rotated in a regular schedule; there were three shifts—12:00 noon to 8:00 P.M.; 8:00 P.M. to 4:00 A.M.; 4:00 A.M. to 12:00 noon—and he was assigned to each time period at regular three-week intervals. At the conclusion of each six days of duty, he was entitled to ‘a 48’—a forty-eight-hour rest. But this in itself is misleading. A police officer in New York is required to hold himself available for immediate duty at any time—day and night, and while on his forty-eight-hour leave. In addition, each man on the force, from patrolman to all ranks and squads—detectives, homicide, vice, narcotics—whether in uniform or out—must carry his revolver at all times when on the streets. Rafferty, when he walked to the corner to return home with a bag of groceries, always carried his revolver. His time, all twenty-four hours of it each day, was owned by the force.
Across the room from me, Katherine Rafferty picked up a small, paperbound notebook, such as children use in school.
‘Perhaps you’d like to read these notices,’ she said and handed me the book. I took it, and glanced at the clippings... newspaper clippings set in very fine print, listing names of men for promotion. In each clipping a name had been underlined with a pencil:
1933... Emmet Rafferty temporarily assigned to the Detective Squad, Detective Third Grade.
1935... Emmet Rafferty promoted to Detective Second Grade.
1937... Emmet Rafferty promoted to Detective First Grade.
1939... Emmet Rafferty passed civil service examination, promoted to Detective Sergeant.
1941... Emmet Rafferty appointed acting Lieutenant, Homicide Squad.
But I hadn’t known Rafferty when he was a lieutenant. I remembered him as the sergeant. I closed the book and handed it back to Katherine. I arose and took my hat and told her good night. She walked to the door with me. She put her hand on my arm and looked up into my face.
‘It’s all past now,’ she said. ‘But there’s one thing you should remember. I think I can understand what happened. Why he felt the way he did about Rose Pauli. Can you understand?’
I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I can’t.’
‘Think about it,’ she said softly. ‘You will.’
There was nothing more to say.
Chapter Four
I told Swanson about my talk with Katherine Rafferty. He listened intently. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll arrange to take you in to see Captain Feinberg. If he gives you the go-ahead, I’ll tell you what I know about it.’
That afternoon I sat in Feinberg’s office. The captain was a man of medium size with the heavy, aquiline face of an old Roman. After I had explained the reason for my visit, he considered my explanation for a long time. Finally he said, ‘I don’t know that I should talk about it. We have a public relations department in the force who are supposed to handle such things.’
‘I’m not writing this for an expose,’ I said. ‘I give you my word of honor that it is strictly off the record—no magazines, no newspapers. The public relations department had nothing to do with Rafferty. All I want to do is talk to you and Swanson and a few of the others who were connected with it. Who know something about what happened.’
He nodded slowly. ‘I know when it started,’ he said. ‘I was responsible for that.’
‘That’s what I mean,’ I agreed. ‘And from there, perhaps I can understand how and why this thing happened.’
‘I guess I can tell you a little bit about it. It can’t do any harm now. Where do you want to start?’
‘Did you know Rose Pauli?’
‘No. Not as such. I never knew her personally. I saw her just once after she had been staked out, and before I assigned Rafferty to the case.’
‘What did she look like?’
‘I can show you a picture of her,’ he said; ‘that’ll be better.’ He arose heavily from his desk and walked to the door. Stepping outside, he spoke a few words to a detective. The man disappeared, and the captain returned to his desk.
‘While we’re waiting,’ I said, ‘let me ask you another question. What did you think of Rafferty?’
Feinberg chose his words carefully. ‘He was a good man. After he got on the force he made regular promotions... faster than most, not as quickly as a few others.’
‘Was he ever disciplined? Did you ever have any complaints made against him?’
‘No. He worked hard, made himself some good breaks, and took advantage of them...’
The detective walked into the captain’s office, glanced at me, and placed a picture, face down, on the desk. Without a word, he left the room. Feinberg picked up the photograph, looked at it, and handed it across the desk to me. I took it eagerly.
It was a glossy black-and-white picture of a woman in her middle twenties, taken by a theatrical photographer. Her hands were posed delicately, covering her bare breasts, and her face smiled back at me with abrupt sensuality. Invitation was written broadly in the half-closed eyes, heavily shadowed by artificial lashes. The picture ended at the waist, but her body was arched, taut as a bow, from head to navel. There was a feeling of restrained voluptuousness, of thinly concealed passion buried beneath the polished veneer of the picture. I examined her face again carefully, noting the full lower lip narrowing into a mysterious shadow at the corners of her mouth. The shadow tugged at her lips, curling into a brooding, knowing, sybaritical promise... insinuating many things. The sheer, feminine impact of the woman was undeniable. ‘So that’s Rose Pauli?’ I said softly.
Feinberg merely grunted his assent. ‘A tramp,’ he said, ‘a bitch. I’ve seen plenty like her.’
‘Then how do you explain it?’
‘I don’t. Some things you can’t explain. Of all the professions in the world, I think doctors, ministers, and cops know people better. And between the doctors, ministers, and cops... the cops know most. Doctors only know people when they’re sick or dying; ministers know them usually with then-best foot forward in church; but cops know them day in and day out... in trouble or not.’ He opened the drawer of his desk and removed a large cigar. Removing the wrapper carefully, he lighted it, and leaned back in his chair. ‘But sometimes, people can’t see things clearly, or they can see so clearly that they perceive things others do not.’ He motioned toward the picture. ‘What is there about Rose Pauli? She isn’t beautiful. But what is a beautiful woman, anyway? How many movie stars are really beautiful? Damned few; maybe two or three at the most. But they all have something. Something you can’t put your finger on. Maybe Rose Pauli had that something. Or maybe she had that something and there was only one person it would work on. And that person was Emmet Rafferty. Do you follow me?’
I nodded. ‘But there’s one other thing,’ I said. ‘Perhaps he was the only person, as you said, who could see clearly enough to perceive it.’
‘In this case, I don’t think that’s right,’ he said. ‘He was ready; and she lit the fuse.’
‘You mentioned that you started it. Tell me about it.’
‘All right,’ he said, ‘but I’ve got to block you in a little on the background first. Emmet came into Homicide—it was in 1941 I think—and because of certain reasons, which it isn’t necessary to explain right now, there is no rank of sergeant in the Homicide Bureau. So, as a sergeant on the Detective Squad, he was automatically raised to an acting lieutenant in Homicide. I was a full lieutenant at that time, and his immediate superior.
‘In 1942 we get a buzz from the Los Angeles force. It seemed there was a little private gang war going on they couldn't figure out. In the L.A. area, there'd been a smalltime gang operating with about six members. They were potentially very dangerous, but up to about a year before, hadn’t swung out into the big time. Then over the course of the year, one by one the members of the gang were found dead and distributed around the countryside. Five of them; dead. The sixth one, a guy named Eddie Stack, had been caught on a killing in a holdup in Wisconsin, and he was in the can serving a life sentence. Stack's gang had been wiped out completely. The L
.A. cops didn't know by who... or why it was done. They thought maybe a new mob might be moving into the area, and it was just a prelim to a real gang war like Chicago had in the twenties. But they had no lines on any such new gang. The L.A. cops went to Wisconsin and talked to Stack, in prison, but he declared he knew nothing about it.
‘Now, maybe Stack was lying... and maybe he wasn't. But there was always the chance that he was. There was one other person who might know something about Stack’s activities... and those of his gang. That person was Stack’s wife. To the best of the knowledge in L.A., she had never been actively mixed up with any of the goings-on of the boys in the gang, but there was always the possibility Stack might have talked to her or let drop some information... or even she might have stumbled on something accidentally.
‘Before she married Stack, she had been a strip-teaser in a bunch of cheap bars on the West Coast. After Eddie got sent away, she had to go back to work. First, she went to Chicago and worked there for a few months; then she came on to New York.’
Feinberg smiled and knocked the long ash off the cigar. ‘Of course, here in New York, we don't permit strip-teasers—at least not technically—so she had to change her billing to ‘an exotic dancer,’ but what she did was pretty much the same as what she had been doing in California and Illinois, except maybe she had to wear a few more pieces of cloth. Anyway, Mrs. Stack was in New York and working in a dive, they didn't know where. They asked us to check.
‘We staked her out in a joint in the Fifties over between Sixth and Fifth Avenues, somewhere. She was working under the name of Rose Pauli. After we get her located, Los Angeles asked us to keep a string on her and try to find out if she knew anything... if she was carrying on a correspondence with contacts in L.A. and things like that...’
The years unfolded from the picture as Feinberg talked.
He shoved the picture across the desk and Rafferty scrutinized it closely. ‘Anyway, that’s the story,’ said Feinberg. ‘See if you can establish a contact with her.’
‘Okay,’ said Rafferty. ‘Is there anything in it for us?’
‘I don’t think so,’ replied Feinberg. ‘This is strictly a West Coast kick. We’re just doing them a favor. They’ll return it sometime.’
Rafferty handled the photograph. ‘No expense account?’ asked Rafferty.
‘No expense account,’ said Feinberg.
‘I’ll follow through on it myself,’ said Rafferty.
‘Okay,’ said Feinberg, ‘if you got the time.’
‘I got the time,’ agreed Rafferty.
Rafferty sat through the 1:00 A.M. floor show. The small, dimly lighted club was filled with servicemen, sitting knee to knee at tiny tables, drinking watered-down liquor at high prices. Waiters forced their way through the closely packed tables, holding trays of drinks above their heads, swaying and changing pace with the ease of dancers. On the dance floor entertainers worked in the faint light of a blue spot, singing against the din of voices, dancing half unseen in the darkness and smoke. Rafferty beckoned to his waiter. ‘That gal that danced and sang,’ he said, ‘I’d like to meet her. I think her name was Pauli. Ask her to come over, will you?’
The waiter shook his head and picked up Rafferty’s half-filled glass from the table. ‘Can’t do it,’ he replied. ‘There’s a law against the entertainers mixing with guests.’
‘For five bucks it could be done,’ said Rafferty. He handed the waiter the bill, who tucked it in his pocket without a change of expression. ‘It still can’t be done,’ he told Rafferty, ‘but I can give you a piece of advice. If I wanted to meet her, I’d walk down the street half a block to the hash joint. There’s a break of an hour before the next show, and most of ’em go down for something to eat this time of night.’ He wiped off the table with the end of a soiled towel.
‘You want another drink?’ he asked. ‘If you do, okay. Otherwise, your bill is six bucks.’ He handed Rafferty a grimy piece of pasteboard.
‘For two drinks?’ asked Rafferty.
‘Two drinks... and cover charge.’
Rafferty paid the bill and walked down the street. Part way down the block, a small lunch counter was wedged in a narrow slit between two larger buildings. He stood for a moment, his hat pushed back on his head, looking in the window. A single counter, with a line of stools, ran down one side of the restaurant, leaving enough room for a small aisle. Back of the counter, a counterman was drawing coffee from a large nickel urn, and at the far end a short-order. The stools in front of the counter were only partly filled; seated on one of them was Rose Pauli. Casually Rafferty lit a cigarette, snapped his hat down over his forehead, and opened the door. He drifted down the aisle and onto the stool beside her.
She gave no indication that she knew he was there. In front of her was an empty sandwich plate, with cold French fries remaining on the side. In her hands, resting on the counter, she cradled a thick mug of coffee. Her wheat-colored hair, bleached in places to the point of silver, was bound up in a bright-colored scarf. She was still wearing her heavy stage makeup and the artificial lashes looked stark in the flat overhead light. Tightly buttoned and belted around her was a navy blue trench coat.
The counterman approached, and Rafferty ordered hot cakes. The girl beside him set her coffee on the counter and opened a large bag on her lap. From it, she removed a pack of cigarettes and shook one loose and placed it in her mouth with one practiced motion. As she looked for matches, Rafferty leaned over and struck a light for her. ‘Here’s one,’ he said.
She looked at him indifferently. ‘Thanks,’ she said. She blew the smoke into the air, and picked up her cup, dismissing Rafferty with her gesture.
‘You’re working at that club down the street, aren’t you?’ he asked.
‘Sure,’ she replied, not looking at him.
‘I saw you tonight. I thought you were pretty good.’
‘Beat it,’ she said. ‘I’m tired.’ She turned her shoulder slightly, hunching it higher, cutting him off.
‘Look,’ he said, keeping his voice friendly, ‘I’m not trying to be fresh. It’s just that I never had a chance to talk to anybody in a show before...’
‘Go on home to the wife and kids,’ her voice was flat.
‘I’m not married,’ he said. ‘I don’t have a wife and kids.’ He said it without hesitation, as a wedge to pierce her armor of indifference.
She turned and looked at him deliberately, slowly scanning his face. He was suddenly conscious that the bridge of her nose was broad and low, but the bones in her cheeks were etched high and sharp under the skin. The deep blue of her eyes blazed coldly under the makeup. ‘What’d you do, buy off one of those cheap waiters?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he denied it, ‘I was in the place the other night and saw you. I just happened to stop in here for something to eat.’ He grinned at her, his smile lighting his face, and she slowly returned it.
‘Those damned waiters in that joint would sell their own mothers for a fast buck,’ she said, returning to her coffee. ‘How come you’re not in the army?’ she asked, her suspicions returning. ‘You said you weren’t married...’
‘Too old,’ said Rafferty. ‘I’m just over the limit.’
‘You don’t look thirty-seven,’ she said.
‘I am,’ he replied. The counterman placed the check before her, and Rafferty picked it up. ‘I’ll buy,’ he said.
‘Big deal!’ She turned and walked to the front of the restaurant. Rafferty put a bill on the counter and caught up with her at the door. He held it open and followed her out to the sidewalk. A tall woman, her eyes were nearly level with his, and she turned and faced him momentarily, and in the rose light of a neon her face was softened.
‘Rose!’ he exclaimed. ‘You look like a rose... I like your name.’
‘That’s nice,’ she said. Then she began walking up the street toward the club. After several steps, she paused and called back, ‘Thanks... for the dinner.’ Rafferty watched her until she reached the club.<
br />
The following night he again slipped onto the stool beside her. ‘Hello,’ he said, ‘I’m back. Order big... order the works tonight.’ She smiled at him in part amusement. Her eyes were no longer coldly blue, but deep and a pansy violet, and he felt himself caught up in an excitement such as he had never known. Then her indifference lashed out again, and she turned away.
‘Back for more, sucker?’ she asked.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I can take it...’He paused and added, ‘If it’s worth taking.’
There was something in his voice, a new note, a touch of the steel which she understood that caught at her attention. She regarded him with a new interest. ‘What do you do?’ she asked.
He shrugged. ‘Whatever I can.’
‘Such as?’
‘You name it,’ he said, smiling.
But she didn’t. She considered her words. Then she opened her compact and examined her lipstick carefully. Closing the case with a snap, she said, ‘It’s none of my business, anyway.’ She stepped away from the stool and walked to the door. Rafferty paid the checks and followed her.
He accompanied her down the street, walking slowly. He could occasionally catch the fragrance of her perfume, a heavy mixture which might have been cheap, but it blended with the scent of her body, still warm from the efforts of her performance, and it stuck in his nostrils animal-like and sensual. At the entrance to the club, they stood to one side partly concealed by the sides of the canvas marquee.
She put a cigarette in her mouth and asked him for a light. Over the flame she looked quickly into his face. ‘Are you planning to look me up every night?’ she asked, her voice conversational.
‘Maybe,’ he said.
‘Then maybe we should get something straightened out. I’m not settling for dinners at hash stands,’ she said. ‘And I’m not interested in getting tied up and bossed around by some guy who takes everything he can get, and doesn’t... and can’t... give anything in return. You understand?’
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