by Howard Fast
“The hell with your critical opinion. What happened to Compatra? Is he dead or is he alive?”
“Well, they brought in this guy last night. He was shot three times; three bullets in the heart—very good, expert shooting. A little fat fellow. He was stripped down when they found him. Naked as his own soul. They haven’t identified him yet.”
“Where are the punchy fighters that worked out at his gym? Where are the other bums and hoodlums whom he hung out with? What are you trying to tell me—that you can’t get an identification on a stiff if the stiff is Compatra?”
“That’s the way it looks.”
“Then it looks stupid to me. Wait a minute, Frank.”
He turned to Sally Dillman. “You’re going to have a lot of problems, kid, from here on, anyway. What do you think? Can you go down to the morgue with Detective Gonzalez and look at this stiff and tell us whether he’s Compatra? In any case, they’re going to identify him sooner or later, but I want identification quick. I want to establish some things and move ahead. You got the stomach for that?”
“I think so,” Sally said weakly.
“All right, we’ll give it a try. Now, Frank, I’m going to put you with her. You’re the only guy on the squad who isn’t married. All right, I want you to stay not married. I want you to behave and—don’t look at me like that. I want you with her from now on.”
“Day and night?”
“That’s right. Day and night for the time being. You work overtime. You’ll find a place to sleep. You’re still there at the St. Regis, Miss Dillman?” he said to her.
“Yes, still there.”
“O.K. Look, I want to program it this way, Frank. First thing, try to get a flash identification on the stiff with the kid here. I got a feeling Compatra’s dead anyway; a guy who’s mixed up in that kind of business, he’s almost dead at any time. And if the guys downtown say they think this is Compatra, it’s probably Compatra. But go down there and see what kind of identification the kid can give you. Go through all the stuff that they took off Compatra—nah, you said he was naked. The hell with it. Then try his office. But I don’t want you walking into Compatra’s place alone. Now, about Miss Dillman here. We won’t talk any more about what was right or wrong to do. We are going to make the presumption that Joey Compatra put out a contract on her. We will also assume that whoever has the contract does not know that Miss Dillman is paying for her own execution.”
“How can you be sure of that?” Gonzalez asked.
“Come on, even Compatra isn’t stupid enough to hire a torpedo on such a basis. The torpedo would guess that it’s got to be a frame, it’s got to be a lunatic job. With all apologies to you, Miss Dillman, it’s still got to be a lunatic job. So we got to presume that Compatra did not tell the torpedo who was paying for the contract. Now we also got to presume that Compatra wasn’t stupid enough to keep records, so we don’t know the name of the man and we are not going to know who he is until he makes his move. Do you agree with me?”
Gonzalez thought about it for a long moment, and the more he thought about it, the more unpleasant, irrational, and nightmarish the whole business became. He was looking at Miss Dillman now and he nodded and, still watching her, said, “I agree with you, Lieutenant. There’s no other way to lay it out. So at least let’s get her out of here to some place where she’s going to be safe.”
“Yeah. Where is she going to be safe?” Rothschild asked. “Suppose you tell me. Or have you any ideas on that subject, Miss Dillman?”
“I don’t know,” Gonzalez interrupted. “Somewhere—maybe the West Coast—maybe up in her home town.”
“In the first place,” Rothschild said, “we don’t make exiles. That’s lousy police work. In the second place, how the hell can she live anywhere in this country with the thought that somewhere there’s a killer walkin’ around with a contract to get her? He doesn’t know how he’s tied in. All he knows is that he’s got a name on a contract and he’s got to hit it sooner or later or where the hell does his business reputation go? Am I right?” He pointed a stubby finger at Gonzalez and said, “Just think about it a moment, Frank, and then tell me, am I right or not?”
Gonzalez thought about it. He made himself think about it. He watched Miss Dillman and he thought about it, and she watched both of them and she said, “God, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. This is all my fault, isn’t it? I made this whole thing.”
“Fault is not a factor here,” Rothschild said, and as far as you making it, I’m afraid that’s not the case, Miss Dillman. Whoever made this situation of guns for hire, it’s not any of us here in this room or my department either. It was made a long time ago and it adds up through a lot of bad years and it develops on itself, and I think it’s best that we leave it right there. When a cop begins to become a philosopher, he’s no more good as a cop.
“So what do you say, Frank?” he asked Gonzalez.
“I don’t know,” Gonzalez replied. “The more I think about it, the more confused I get. But it seems to me that the answer is up to Miss Dillman. We can’t make her a pigeon. We can’t tie her up to a tree like some kind of white-hunter lamb. We’re no big-shot white hunters. We’re cops, that’s all. And we got no obligations to anyone except Miss Dillman, as far as this is concerned.”
“We got an obligation to ourselves,” said Rothschild. “We got an obligation to our work. Maybe it’s lousy work. I don’t know what you think, Frank, but I put you down for one of them smart cops who thinks this is only lousy work. Maybe it is lousy work, but that doesn’t change the fact that we got an obligation to it.”
“I still say,” Gonzalez said stubbornly, “that what we got an obligation to is Miss Dillman here. Now it’s up to you.” He faced her directly. “What do you think, Miss Dillman? What do you want to do? We can get you out of the city. We can get you on a plane. It’s up to you.”
“Where?” she asked. “You know I ran away once, but death is not something that you can run away from. Please, Detective Gonzalez, I appreciate that you are making this my decision and I don’t want to have to make a decision that’s going to be difficult for you and for Lieutenant Rothschild, but I ran away from death once. I can’t go through that a second time.”
“Do you know what the alternative is?” Gonzalez asked her.
“I can guess,” she said. She had full control of herself now. She was not trembling and she was not frightened. “I think—I’m not sure—but I think I can go through it without being too frightened. I think you have to find the killer, don’t you? And you have to use me to find him, and if he doesn’t kill me, he kills another.”
“That’s right,” said Rothschild.
“In other words,” Sally said, “I must be set up as a sort of a target, or lamb, as Detective Gonzalez said, or something to draw this killer, and when he’s drawn, you’ll try to protect me.”
“That’s a euphemism, Miss Dillman,” Gonzalez exclaimed. “What does it mean, ‘we’ll try to protect you’? Nobody can really protect anyone against death. If a man sets out to kill the President of the United States, and he’s a good, practiced killer, then I doubt if anything can protect the President of the United States unless they put him in the White House and lock the doors and surround it with armed guards. So when we say, Miss Dillman, that we will try to protect you, you should understand exactly what we mean. We will try. That’s all.”
“You’ll try,” Rothschild said evenly. “Don’t scare her. You’re God-damned good.”
“I think I understand.” Sally Dillman nodded. “I think I understand almost exactly what it means and all the consequences that go with it. Do you want me to think about it a little?”
“That’s right, think about it a little,” Rothschild said.
She thought about it and they watched her. She leaned back—perhaps not with her eyes closed, but with her lids lowered—and watching her, Gonzalez studied her and remembered what he could of her story. He wondered how she felt and she, in turn, wo
ndered how they felt. But the curiosity was greater on the part of Gonzalez. She was to him a figure beyond easy understanding. She was foreign. She was alien. She changed without causation familiar to him.
Finally she said quietly and gently, as a schoolteacher might say something in answer to a question of one of the kids in her class, “I’ve thought about it and I have made up my mind. I don’t want to run away.”
“All right,” Rothschild said, “then that’s plain enough. I’m glad you said what you did, Miss Dillman. Otherwise you’d never again get a peaceful night’s sleep in your life. Now, I am going to assign Detective Gonzalez to you. He’s a good man. He’s very smart, but that doesn’t keep him from being a good man. He will be with you all the time. I wish I could say, “I will give you three men, Miss Dillman, and each of them will be with you eight hours a day.’ But I can’t do that. I don’t have the whole police force of New York at my command. We got just so many men here and unfortunately we got too much work for the number of men that we have. So, for the moment, it’s got to be Detective Gonzalez.”
“What am I going to tell my mother?” Gonzalez asked.
“Your mother,” Rothschild snorted. “Thirty-three years old—he asks me what is he going to tell his mother. God damn you Ricanos, I don’t understand you and I’ll never understand you. There’s a phone outside at your desk. Call up your mother and tell her whatever you have to—and then take Miss Dillman down to the morgue and try to make the identification. And, so help me God, this one can be the big for you or it can be lousy for you, and don’t make it lousy.”
“I won’t make it lousy, and meanwhile I wish you wouldn’t talk so tough and try to act like a movie detective.”
“You know what that kind of back talk to me is going to get you,” said Rothschild. “It’s going to get you kicked out on your a—on your butt—and back into uniform.”
He turned to Miss Dillman. “You’ll forgive me. With some of them I got to be like this.”
And then to Gonzalez, “All right, get out of here and call your mother.”
Gonzalez went into the next room and picked up the phone. Rothschild meanwhile asked Sally Dillman if she was hungry and did she want something—maybe a piece of pie or a sandwich and a cup of coffee?
She said yes, she would love a cup of coffee. “I would love a sandwich, too,” she added. “May I pay for it?”
“Even the bums around this precinct eat on the house,” said Rothschild. “Let this one be on me.” The lieutenant then picked up his telephone and ordered.
“Coffee with cream?”
“With cream,” Sally Dillman said.
“With cream,” Rothschild said into the phone.
Outside Gonzalez was talking to his mother in Spanish. Sally Dillman, who had taught Spanish, found herself putting what Gonzalez was saying into the strange, formal English that Spanish made in direct translation.
“Mother mine,” Gonzalez said, “please do not worry about me. I have a late assignment and it may take me through tonight and through tomorrow night as well … No, no, it is not dangerous … But I tell you it is not dangerous … Why do you want me to swear it is not dangerous? We always have this same argument about my being a policeman. Being a policeman in New York City is not dangerous, Mama. It is not like being a policeman anywhere else. Nothing ever happens in New York City … What do you mean I should not lie to you? Who says that I am lying to you? I will cross my heart that I am not lying to you … What kind of a thing is that to say to me—that I am in mortal sin because I have crossed my heart. I am not in mortal sin; I am not lying to you. Mama mine, what can I do to prove it to you? All right, Mama, look, the lieutenant is sitting here. He is the big boss. You understand, Mama? The commander. The man who is over me. He tells me what to do and there is nothing I can do, Mama, please. I am not doing this deliberately to break your heart into a thousand pieces. Please, Mama, you will not worry. Please, you will not worry? You promise me that you will not worry? Thank you, Mama. Adios now.”
CHAPTER
5
“IT’S a funny thing about my mother,” Gonzalez said to Sally as he led her toward the door of the precinct. “She worries about me. You know she keeps after me, ‘Frank, get married. Frank, get married.’ I suppose she says that so many times I just don’t hear it any more. Then I say to her, ‘All right, Mama, you worry about me. I’ll get married. I won’t be around here, you’ll worry about me more.’ Then she says to me, ‘No, no, when you get married, I stop worrying about you.’ Well, that’s the way she is—unreasonable. But—” He swallowed the rest.
“But you don’t get married,” Sally said.
“You know the way it is. You’ve got an excuse all the time. You haven’t found the right girl or something like that. I got another excuse. I’m trying to pass the Bar. So I keep taking courses. I don’t study enough. I got too much work. And the years go by and still I’m not a lawyer. And I say to myself, ‘First I’m going to be a lawyer, and then I’m getting married.’ Now hold on,” he said to her. “Let’s begin to use our heads.”
They were in front of the door when he stopped her. He said to her carefully, “Now, that’s the squad car right there in front of the building. That man who’s driving it is Detective Gleason. He’s a very dependable man. The way we will do it is this—we will go out together, but I will be on your righthand side. And you stand slightly behind me. We’ll go right down the stairs, across the sidewalk, and I’ll open the door of the squad car, and you go into it. Just like that—quietly. You go into it—you sit down on the seat in back and just drop your head. Bend over so you’re no target. Now I’m not being dramatic. I think maybe you’re a nut, Miss Dillman, but I don’t think you’re crazy. So when I tell you to do certain things, don’t think I’m crazy. Just do exactly what I say. Is that agreed?”
“Agreed,” she replied seriously.
“All right. Now,” he said. He opened the door and then he pushed her back and closed the door again.
“What is it?” she asked him.
“There’s a man across the street—a little way off toward Lexington Avenue. Not that one; the one across the street. Take a good look at him. Have you ever seen him before?”
As Sally Dillman looked at the man, Gonzalez watched her. Gonzalez had already memorized the man. He decided that he was about twenty-three years old, about five-ten or -eleven in height, blond hair, blue eyes, black trousers, white shirt, dark tie, light-gray tweed sports jacket. At this distance he couldn’t tell much about the shoes, but he would have guessed that they were expensive. The man was well dressed. He had an Ivy League look, and he was standing alertly, across the street, and not doing anything—just watching the precinct.
Sally Dillman turned to Gonzalez and said that she didn’t know him.
“You’re sure?” Gonzalez insisted. “You’re absolutely sure?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen him before. Anyway, I don’t think he’s a killer. He doesn’t look like a killer.”
“They never do,” Gonzalez said. “Let’s get into the car now like I told you.” He opened the precinct door and, with his arm locked in hers, moved her down the steps and across the sidewalk and into the car slowly, surely, without haste, but without pausing. And in the car the pressure of his hand bent her over. She had forgotten about that.
“You remember when I tell you something, you do it!” he said, his voice hard and sharp now. “You don’t forget. You do what I tell you. You understand that?”
“I understand,” she said.
Detective Gleason started the car. Gonzalez didn’t have to tell him where to go. He drove expertly and precisely—westward past the young man standing on the sidewalk, left on Lexington Avenue, and then left again and east to the express highway. Gonzalez twisted around and watched the street behind them through the window. When at last they entered the express highway, the East Side Highway going downtown, he sighed and relaxed and stretched out on the seat next to Sally Dillma
n.
“All right, Gleason,” he said, “you can take it easy now. Miss Dillman, it’s all right. We’re not being tailed.”
“Thank you,” she said coldly. “Where are we going now?”
“Down to the morgue to look at the body. You said that was all right. You haven’t lost your nerve, have you?”
“No, I haven’t lost my nerve.”
“But you think,” Gonzalez said, “that man back there on the street, he wasn’t a gun. Because he was a nice clean-cut type. You’re pretty sure of that, aren’t you?”
“What did you call him?”
“A gun. A gun is a killer. A torpedo. Torpedo is a fancy word. It’s Hollywood talk. A gun is a simple word.”
“You like simple words,” she said, “don’t you?”
“I like direct words that mean what they are.”
“You think about words, don’t you? You don’t just use them.”
“Maybe yes, maybe no. But why do you think he wasn’t the killer back there? Why do you think he wasn’t the man with the contract? Don’t be sore at me because I yell. It’s important to know why you think what you think. Me, I just get excited and yell.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s just the way I felt.”
“All right, I’m going to be a little nasty to you. I’m going to tell you why you felt that way. You felt that way because he looked like the clean-cut type, the all-American kid, a boy from college. The type you like to think about romantically, the type you’d like to know. Joe College. Blond hair, blue eyes, conservatively dressed. He wears a tweed jacket. It doesn’t scream or clash. So, because he’s that way on the outside, you got him spotted immediately. He’s no gun. He’s a nice boy. He’s someone you can depend on. Is that right?”