Cop Out

by Ellery Queen

  Malone hung around. Secco was still questioning Mrs. Howland. He took the log and pretended to read it. The familiar form-B. & E. and Larceny, One-Car Accident, Etc., Obscene or Harassing Telephone Calls, Non-support, Driving under Influence, Stolen and Recovered Motor Vehicles, Resisting Arrest, Destruction of Private Property, Attempted Suicide-had ghosts in it like the TV sometimes. He dropped the log and wandered over to the cabinets. Each officer had a drawer for his personal property. He opened his and fingered its contents-summons book, warning book, his copy of the motor vehicle laws, tape measure, a torn-off brass button Ellen had replaced and then found in the lining of his leather duty-jacket, a crayon self-portrait of Barbara signed bibby to my loving father in multicolor curlicue capitals, a copy of a five-year-old income tax return. He shut his drawer and took a Hershey bar from the department commissary drawer, depositing a dime in the cashbox. He stripped off the paper, dropped it into the waste basket, and chewed the chocolate slowly. Chief Secco was still talking to the widow.

  Ellen will have my hide…

  Malone took inventory. The E & J Emergikit on the counter-resuscitator, inhalator, aspirator. The two-watt, two-channel walkie-talkie. The case with the camera and flashbulbs. Nothing changes. Only for Sherrie-Ann Howland. I hope he left some insurance. It’s a dead cinch Pickney didn’t pay him enough to sock anything away. The whole town knew Pick-ney’s and Aztec’s way with a buck. And there was all that talk about Howland and Marie Briggs at Elwood’s. How do you kill in cold blood? A man had a right to live out his life, even a life as sorry as Tom Howland’s. A woman had a right to a husband, even a woman like Sherrie-Ann.

  Secco rose. Mrs. Howland got up in a different way. As if her back ached. “You sure you don’t want me to have one of the boys run you home, Mrs. Howland?”

  “I parked my car in the town hall lot.” There was nothing in the widow’s voice.

  “I could have it delivered to you in the morning.”

  “No.” She walked out, past Sam Buchard, past Malone, past the partition, through the vestibule. She walked stooped over like a soldier holding his guts in.

  “Goddam,” Sam Buchard said.

  “Oh, Wes,” Chief Secco said. “One thing. When you met Howland at the bank today and took him back to the plant with the payroll, how did he seem to you?”

  Malone was puzzled. “I didn’t notice specially.”

  “Did he act nervous?”

  “Well, I don’t know. He talked his head off.”

  “About what?”

  “A lot of nothing. Now that I think of it, maybe he was nervous. Why?”

  “All right, Wes,” Chief Secco said. “Out.”

  “Chief,” Malone began.

  “Didn’t you hear me?”

  “John, you’ll need all the help you can get.”

  “When you went off duty, Wes, what did I tell you?”

  “You said take a couple days off-”

  “Then do it. We’re under control here. I’m not about to have you come down with exhaustion. I’ve told you-more than once-this isn’t a one-man department. Believe it or not, I’ve got ten other men most as good as you.”

  “Four of them trainees.”

  “That’s my problem. You leaving under your own steam, Wes, or do I have to run you out?” Secco looked as if he could do it. He was almost sixty but he had a steer’s build and a tough face under the gray crewcut. He was home-grown New Bradford like most of the force. His father had been a dairy farmer and he had grown up tossing hay bales and stripping teats. He still had a knee-buckling grip.

  “All right, John, but just one thing. How does it look to you?”

  “An outside job, I make it. I didn’t tell Mrs. Howland, but I think Howland was in on it and got crossed. That’s why I asked you if he seemed nervous this afternoon. Now get out, will you?”

  “You can’t leave me hanging, John! What’s the indication of that?”

  “Ed Taylor says Howland all of a sudden sent him into town for coffee. Ed thought nothing of it at the time, but after he got slugged and came to it struck him funny. Howland never did that before. Looks to me like a setup: Howland got Ed out of the way so he could let the robbers into the plant. He’d probably dickered for a cut of the loot, and after making the deal they shot him down. Go home.”

  “Any hard evidence?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Mrs. Howland have any ideas?”

  “She can’t see two inches past her own miseries. Go home.”

  “Who’s at the plant?”

  “Trooper Miller. He’s waiting for the state lab men and the coroner. Go home, Wes!”

  Malone left on dragging feet, not all from fatigue.

  He walked east to the corner, turned right, did the one block past the Ford agency to Three Corners, and started up Lovers Hill.

  How did a man get to the point of kicking his whole life away? Even a life as rotten as Howland’s? Or maybe that was the answer. Howland’s wife was a drag and a drain, his job was a lot of nothing, he was going nowhere, he was in his upper fifties, and he handled a lot of other people’s money. It made some sort of cockeyed sense if you were in Howland’s shoes. He had never seen a happy look on Howland’s face, even at the times when he dropped into Elwood’s for a coffee on a cold night and caught the guy playing up to Marie Briggs.

  He wondered if the Briggs girl was involved. No, Marie was too smart. Besides, she had a thing going with Jimmy Wyckoff and it looked serious. Jimmy was a good-looking kid who pulled down a good salary as a machinist at Compo Copper and Brass. If there was anything between Marie and Rowland it had all been in Howland’s head.

  Malone felt a rush of affection for his own girls.

  Suppose I didn’t have them? Suppose Ellen had turned out i nag and a spender like Sherrie-Ann? And as lousy in bed as ihe must be? Suppose Ellen had miscarried with Bibby, as;he had done twice before and once since Bibby was born, vhen Dr. Levitt advised her not to get pregnant any more? There would be no little girl with copper curls and a valen-ine for a face and those big honey eyes full of love for the lero in her life. (And hadn’t Ellen been floored when, at the ige of six, Bibby had climbed into his lap and clutched him around the neck and looked deep into his eyes and asked, “Daddy, do you love mommy more than you love me?” He could still see the expression on Ellen’s face.)

  Malone turned up into Old Bradford Road.

  No, life would be as big a zero as Howland’s without his girls. Until he had met Ellen, with her snapping Irish eyes and tongue, he had never been serious about a girl. He had never had a girl. Only girls, and most of those had been the kind who drifted in and out of Rosie’s over on Lower Freight, and they didn’t count. He had never had any close friends of either sex before Ellen. It was Ellen, with her insight into people, who had quickly seen him for what he was and dubbed him The Malone Ranger, from which he became “Loney” to her and to her alone.

  He found himself smiling as he trudged around the curves of the S. In bed sometimes he called her Tonto, just to get her mad. (“If you haven’t found out the difference between Tonto and me yet, Wesley Malone, you need a course in sex education!”)

  He had always had to make out. His father, a cold and silent man, had worked on the roads for the state, and Malone’s memories of him were colored by the black oil he could never seem to clean off his hands and face. He had died when Malone was thirteen, a stranger, leaving a bed-fond widow who chainsmoked and never combed her hair, and four younger children. They were girls, and he became the man of the house before he had to shave. It still made him mad when he thought of the monthly check from the town welfare fund. It provided just enough to keep them from starving, and an inexhaustible supply of ammunition for the town kids. He had hunted up work for after school, swearing to himself that the first time he could make enough to turn down the town handout he would kick somebody’s teeth in. He did his studying at night-his mother insisted, with a stubbornness he now recognized as the source of his own,
that he go through high school. During the summers he mowed lawns, bagged groceries at the supermarket, farmed out for the haying season, painted divider lines on the roads. Anything to earn a dollar. He turned it all over to his mother. Money meant little to him except as it kept her from complaining.

  By the time she died of lung cancer in New Bradford Hospital, his sister Kathleen was old enough to cope with the household and the younger girls. He began bringing his earnings to Kathleen. He had supported his sisters through high school, he had seen them safely married, he had kissed them goodbye as one by one they left town with their husbands and kids, wondering whether he would ever see them again. Most of them he never had seen again, although he got a letter once in a blue moon, usually griping, they came by their complaining ways honestly. And his favorite, Kathleen, was living in San Diego on the base, her husband was career Navy, and he did not hear from her at all.

  He had never played Little League ball, he had never joined 4-H or a club at high school, he had never prowled the town with a gang on Halloween, he had never gone dragging on The Pike with other teenagers when the car bug hit. Instead, when he had been able to slip off into the woods with his.22, a hand-me-down from his father which he had kept fiercely cleaned and oiled, he pretended to be a Marine-wriggling through the brush on his belly, drawing a bead on the snapping turtles that infested Balsam Lake (and never shooting except at the empty gin and whisky bottles with which the Lake woods abounded)-always by himself. Somewhere along the road he had lost or strangled the need for group enjoyment. By the time he was free and on his own, the boys he had grown up with avoided him and the girls laughed at him as a square. That was when he had spent so much time at Rosie’s.

  One of his recurring regrets was that he had been too young for Korea and too old for Vietnam. He had enlisted in the Marines instead of waiting to be drafted and spent two of his four years on sea duty in the Med, all drill and mock-landings and spit-and-polish and the whorehouses of Barcelona, Marseilles, Kavala, Istanbul; the rest of his hitch he sulked at Parris Island handing out fatigues and skivvies to frightened recruits. He was not, his C.O. told him, a good Marine, too much rugged individualism and not enough esprit de corps. He was a lance corporal twice and a corporal once; he wound up a Pfc. His only achievement of record was the Expert Medal he earned on the firing range. He formed no lasting friendships in the Corps, either.

  It was John Secco who had talked him into joining the New Bradford force. He had always looked up to Chief Secco as a fair man, his standard of goodness. Secco had an understanding of boys. His policies had kept the juvenile delinquency rate in New Bradford among the lowest in the state.

  “I won’t kid you, Wes,” Secco had said. “You’ll never get fat being a town cop. You’ll have to learn how to handle selectmen, sorehead taxpayers, bitching storekeepers, Saturday night drunks, husband-and-wife fights, kids out to raise Cain, and all the rest. A good smalltown policeman has to be a politician, a squareshooter, a hardnose, and a father confessor rolled into one. It’s almost as tough as being a good bartender. And all for a starting pay of eighty-some bucks. I’ve had my eye on you for a long time, Wes. You’re just the kind of man I want in my department. There’s only thing that bothers me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Can you follow orders? Can you work with others? Can you discipline yourself? Your Marine record says you can’t.”

  And he had said, “I don’t know, Chief. I’ve done some growing up. I think so.”

  “All right, let’s give it a try. Take your training at the state police school, and let’s see how you make out on your six months’ probation.”

  He had chalked up the best record of any recruit in the New Bradford department’s history. But he thought that John Secco still had questions in his eye. John and Ellen. They sure hold a tight rein on me. And it’s not so bad.

  ^ The porch light was on, which meant that Ellen was waiting up for him. Leave it to Irish. The Saab was in the driveway, too, not put away. She had probably left it handy in case he failed to show in what she considered a reasonable time and she decided to drive back down into town to haul him home by the ear.

  As he turned into his gate Malone paused. There was a strange car across the street, a black dusty late-model Chrysler New Yorker sedan. No one on Old Bradford Road could afford a car like that. It was parked at the Tyrell house, but the house was dark, so the people couldn’t be visiting. The Tyrells rarely had visitors, and never so late at night, they were an old couple who went to bed with their chickens. The people from the Chrysler might have been visiting the young Cunninghams next door, but the Cunningham house showed no lights, either. Maybe I ought to check it out. But then he remembered Ellen’s look at the stationhouse and decided that discretion was the better part of whatever it was.

  Malone trudged up the walk and onto his porch, reaching for his keys. He felt suddenly like dropping where he was, curling up on the mat and giving himself totally to sleep. He could not recall when he had felt so tired, even on maneuvers. I wonder what kind of hell I’d catch from that little old Irisher of mine if she opened the front door and fell over me.

  He was still grinning when he unlocked the door and stepped into the dark hall and felt a cold something press into the skin behind his ear and heard a spinning sort of voice behind him say, “Freeze, cop.”

  * * *

  It’s got to be I’m dreaming. I did fall asleep out there. This can’t be for real. Not my house, Ellen, Bibby.

  “Don’t do it,” the spinning voice said. “I just as soon shoot the top of your head off.” It turned in another direction. “See if he’s heeled.”

  Malone heard someone say, “Where’s my wife and daughter?”

  “Just stand still, fuzz.” The muzzle dug in.

  Rough hands ran up his body. Another man, a strong one. The hand scraped his left nipple and found the butt of the revolver sticking out of his shoulder holster, the one he used off duty. The hand came out and he felt lighter, lost.

  “I got it,” a second voice said. This one was as rough as the hands, but muted, a gargly purr like a cougar’s.

  “Put the lights on,” the first voice said. It sounded happy. “Let me have it, Hinch.”

  Hinch.

  “Just a minute, Fure.”

  Fure?

  The lights went up. The first thing Malone saw through the archway was Ellen in the parlor perched like a Sunday school kid on the edge of her mother’s New England rocker. She still had her coat on. Her face was the color of milk with the butterfat skimmed off.

  “Can I move my head?” Malone asked.

  “Like a good little cop.” The spinny one.

  Malone moved his head and came to life. The two men were wearing masks. If they had meant to kill they would not have cared if he and Ellen saw their faces. He let his breath out.

  The masks were ridiculous. They were fullface and skintight, brown bear faces. The bear face on the little man was too big for him; it was wrinkled up like something unwrapped after a thousand years. The big man’s fitted. The little one was a fashion plate. The big one was strictly motorcycle mugg, a hard case.

  They go to the trouble of wearing masks and then they say each other’s names out loud. Don’t ever take chances with the dumb ones, John said, they either panic like animals or they like it.

  The man called Fure liked it. He was now holding two guns, his own and Malone’s. His was a seven-inch automatic, a foreign handgun. At first Malone thought it was a Mauser. But then he saw that it was a Walther PPK, a gun popular with continental law officers. Must be stolen. There had been nothing European in either voice.

  That’s the gun they killed Tom Howland with. The gun the little guy killed Howland with. It would have to be the little guy. He digs guns.

  Fure was digging Malone’s gun. The eyes behind the bear mask were crazy with joy. He had the Walther in his left armpit now and he was turning Malone’s revolver over and over in his gloved hands.


  “A Colt Trooper, Hinch. Six-shot,.357 Magnum. You ought to feel the balance of this baby. You’re a pal, fuzz. Here.” He handed the Walther to the big man. “Where’s the ammo belt goes with this?”

  “I don’t keep it in the house-” Malone stopped. Fure was laughing. He reached into the hall closet and straightened up dangling the ammunition belt. The holster was empty, the bullet holders were full. “Naughty, naughty. Okay, fuzz. Inside with wifie.”

  Malone went into the parlor, his own gun digging into his head.

  “Not near her. On that sofa over there.”

  Ellen’s eyes followed him each inch of the way, saying do something, don’t do anything.

  He’s a shrewd bugger for all his dumbness. He figures that together we’re strong, apart we’re helpless. Malone felt the rage rising. He sat down on the sofa.

  “Ellen. Where’s Bibby?”

  “Upstairs with the woman.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “I don’t know. I think. I found them here when I got home. They won’t even let me see her.”

  The woman. Then there were three of them. Apparently Ed Taylor had not seen the woman. Making it tougher for John and the state boys. They’re looking for just two males.

  “Your kid’s okay for now, Malone,” Fure said. He was running his hand over the Colt as if it were alive. “You want her to stay that way you jump up and roll over. Hinch. The bag.”

  Hinch reached behind the sofa and came up with a black bag. He handed it to the fashion plate. It seemed to Malone that he did it very slowly.

  “It’s yours.” The bag landed in Malone’s lap. Fure scraped Ellen’s treasured antique crewel chair over to him, the one with the shaky legs, and dropped into it. He kept fondling the Colt. They had to turn their heads to face him.

  “What do I do with this, Fure?” Malone asked.