by Otto Penzler
“Then who was it?”
“If I could answer that right now, d’ you think I’d be losing a night’s sleep?”
“See you get him, anyhow. There’s lots o’ captains want this job here.”
“That’s my worry, Shanz, not yours.”
“Well, I’m just telling you, see you get him.”
“See you mind your own business, too.”
Shanz and Trixie Meloy went out.
MacBride opened his desk and passed around the Hennessy. He downed a stiff bracer himself and lit a fresh cigar.
“Cripes,” he chuckled grimly, “this’ll mean one awful jolt to Connaught. It’ll be hard to believe that the guy got Bedell wasn’t on Connaught’s payroll.”
“If,” said Moriarity, “we only knew who the guy was sent in that tip you got.”
“That’s the hitch, Jake,” nodded MacBride. “The guy who called up is the key to who killed Bedell.”
There was a knock on the door, and Officer Holstein looked in.
“Say, Cap, there’s a Polack out here wants to see you. He lives on Jackson Street.”
At a nod from MacBride, an old man came in, fumbling with his hat.
“Hello,” said the captain. “What’s your name?”
“Ma name Tikorsky. I got somet’in’ to tell. See, I live number t’ree-twent’-one Jackson, up de top floor. I look out de window, watch de show, see. When de big fellar drop down, I hear"—he looked up at the ceiling— ”I hear noise on de roof, like a man run, see.”
MacBride jerked up. “You heard a man run across the roof?”
Tikorsky nodded.
“Is there a fire-escape back of where you live?”
“Yeah, sure.”
MacBride reached for the phone, called the morgue. In a moment he was speaking with the deputy medical examiner. When he hung up he pursed his lips, and his eyes glittered.
“All right, Mr. Tikorsky,” he said. “You can go home. Thanks for telling me. I’ll see you again.”
The Pole shuffled out.
MacBride looked at Kennedy. “Out, Kennedy. Go home and hit the hay.”
“Ah, Mac, give a guy a break,” said Kennedy. “What’s in the wind?”
“A bad smell. Come on, breeze, now. When there’s any news getting out, I’ll let you know.”
Kennedy got up, shrugged, and sauntered out.
Moriarity and Cohen regarded the captain expectantly.
MacBride said, “I just got the doctor’s report. The bullet was a thirty-eight. It hit Bedell in the chest, knocked off part of his heart and lodged in his spine. But get this. The angle of the bullet was on a slant. It went in and down.”
“Then,” said Cohen, “it couldn’t have been fired from the corner where the broad saw this guy she was beefin’ about.”
“No,” clipped MacBride. “The Polack was right. He heard a guy on the roof. The guy who was on the roof bumped off Bedell.”
“What about this guy in the gray suit?”
“I’m wondering. But we know he couldn’t have done it. A bullet from him would have gone up and hit Bedell on the left somewhere.” He tapped his foot on the floor. “Well, the show is on, boys. Bonelio, the late alderman’s buddy, has a whale of an excuse to oil his guns and start a war of his own. And Krug, the State’s Attorney, will give him protection. Bonelio will suspect the same guy we do.”
“Duveen,” said Moriarity.
“Exactly. I know just what the greaseball will do.”
“Let him,” suggested Cohen, with a yawn. “Let the two gangs fight it out, exterminate each other. Who the hell cares?”
MacBride banged the desk. “You would say that, Ike. But I’m responsible for this precinct. I’ve got one murder hanging over my head as it is. Personally, I wouldn’t care if these two gangs did mop each other up. But in a gang war a lot of neutrals always get hurt.” He put on his hat. “Let’s look over the Polack’s roof.”
The three of them went around to 321 Jackson Street, located the rooms where the old Pole lived, and then ascended to the roof. Moriarity had a flashlight. They discovered nothing to which they might attach some relative importance. They took the fire-escape down to a paved alley that paralleled the back of the row of houses and led to Holly Street.
“See here, boys,” MacBride said. “Wander around and get the low-down on Duveen’s gang. If you see Duveen, cross-examine him. Better yet, tell him I want to see him.”
The two detectives moved off. MacBride headed back for the station-house and requisitioned the precinct flivver. A man named Garret was his chauffeur. After brief instructions on MacBride’s part, they drove off.
Twenty minutes later they stopped on Paradise Street, uptown. It was a thoroughfare of old brownstone houses that, following the slow encroachment of the white lights, had been turned into tearooms, night-clubs and small apartments, patronized mostly by people of the theatre.
Garret remained with the flivver. MacBride entered the Palmetto Club, to which an interior decorator had tried his best to give a tropical air. The manager did not know him, and said so.
“That’s all right,” said MacBride. “I don’t want to see you, anyhow. Where’s Bonelio?”
A moment later he met Bonelio in a private room handsomely furnished. Bonelio was a chunky Italian of medium height, dressed in the mode. He had smooth white skin, dark circles under his eyes, and an indolent gaze.
“Sit down, MacBride. Rye or Scotch?” he asked.
MacBride noticed a bottle of Golden Wedding. “Rye,” he said.
“Ditto.” Bonelio poured the drinks, said, “Well, poor Bedell.”
“What I came here about.”
They looked at each other as they downed their tots.
“About what?” Bonelio dropped on to a divan and lit a cigarette.
“Just this,” said MacBride. “I’m banking on the hunch that you suspect who’s behind the killing. I’m asking, and at the same time telling you, to keep out of it. We’ve never been friends, Bonelio, and don’t get it into your nut that I’m making any overtures. But I don’t want any rough work done in my precinct. I’ll handle it according to the law. You just stand aside and keep your hands off. You get me?”
“Sure. But let me tell you, MacBride, that the first pup gets in my way or monkeys around my playground, I’ll start trouble and I don’t give a damn whose precinct it’s in. I’m sitting on top of the world in Richmond City and no guy’s going to horn in.”
“I’m telling you, Bonelio, walk lightly in my precinct. I’m giving you fair warning. I’m putting on the lid and I’m locking up any guy that so much as disturbs the peace. That goes for you and your gang as well as anybody else. You can sell all the booze you want. Much as I dislike you, I’ve never bothered your rum warehouses down by the railroad yards—”
“You were told not to. The big boys are my friends.”
“Don’t take advantage of it. I could be nasty if I wanted to. And I will, if you butt in in my precinct.”
“Here’s hoping you get Duveen for the murder of Bedell.”
“Make sure you don’t try to!”
MacBride banged out, hopped into the flivver and Garret drove him back to the station-house.
Moriarity and Cohen were playing penny-ante, half-heartedly.
“What news?” asked MacBride.
“None,” said Cohen. “Duveen hasn’t been seen for the past week.”
“Hasn’t, eh? All right, we want him, then. Sergeant,” he called to the man at the desk, “ring Headquarters. General alarm. Chuck Duveen wanted. Ask Headquarters to spread the news and start the net working. I want Duveen before"—his lips flattened— ”before somebody else gets him.”
IV
Next day the papers carried big headlines. The sheets that were in sympathy with the current administration bellowed loudly and asked the public to consider the drastic measures used by the opposition to gain its own end. The others, among them the Free Press, employed a calmer, more detached tone
, and pleaded with justice to get at the root of all evil. Both Anderson and Connaught, aspirants for the offices of State’s Attorney and alderman of the Sixth Election District respectively, deplored the tragedy and promised all manner of aid in running down the person or persons who had murdered their opponent, the late Alderman Bedell. State’s Attorney Krug promised quick action in the event the criminal was apprehended. Charges and counter charges ran rampant.
MacBride, having gone home at three in the morning, did not get back on the job until noon. He felt rested and his clean-clipped face glowed ruddily from recent contact with lather and razor. He had read the papers on the way in from Grove Manor with the attitude of a man who knows the inner workings of politics and news-paperdom. In short, a slight morsel of what he read was worthwhile, and the rest was bunk— salve for an outraged public.
The one item that drew his attention was anent the fact that Adolph Shanz was to run for alderman in place of the late Alderman Bedell. This made him chuckle bitterly. As committee-man Shanz had been, ever since he was elected, clay in the hands of Krug and Bedell. If elected for alderman, he would be one of Krug’s most pliable tools.
The police net was spread for Duveen. The city was combed up, down and across. But the man was not caught. The only information available, gleaned as it was from old familiar hangouts of the gang boss, showed that Duveen had not been seen for a week. A day passed, and then two and three, with the man still at large.
Wherefore, on the fourth day, Captain MacBride was convened for a solid hour with the Commissioner of Police, a man who ran the Department and gave quarter nowhere. The meeting took place in the morning, and before noon MacBride was back in the station-house. There he held a brief consultation with his assistants.
In conclusion, he said to the sergeant at the desk, “When Kennedy, or any other of his breed drifts in, tell him I have a statement for the press.”
Alone in his office, he drank his first bracer and started his first cigar of the day. He chafed his hands vigorously, paced the floor with a little more than his customary energy, trailing banners of excellent cigar smoke behind him. A beam of sunlight streamed through the open window. On the telephone wires that passed behind the old station-house, birds were swaying and chirping. MacBride’s eyes were keen and narrow with thought.
An hour later, when he was writing at his desk, a knock sounded on the door.
“Come in,” he yelled.
Kennedy came in. “What the hell’s this I hear about—”
“Sit down. Glad to see something can work you up and make you look as if you weren’t dying on your feet.”
“Come on, spill it, Mac!”
“My wife’s birthday.”
“Cripes—”
“Should see the new spring outfit I bought her. Kennedy, she gets younger every day. Well"—he cleared his throat with a serio-comic air— ”look who her husband is.”
“For the love o’ God, what’s the matter, are you batty?”
MacBride grinned—one of his rare, broad grins that few people knew, outside of his wife and daughter.
“All right, Kennedy,” he said. “I said I’d give you a break when I started broadcasting. I’m broadcasting. Tune in. Early this morning Detective Moriarity picked up a man for violating the state law regarding the possession of concealed weapons. This man was carrying an automatic pistol.
“He was cross-examined by Captain Stephen J. MacBride—don’t omit the J. Intense questioning brought out certain interesting facts, in the light of which Captain MacBride hopes to apprehend—and don’t insert ‘it is alleged’— Captain MacBride hopes to apprehend the man who killed the late Alderman Bedell within the next twenty-four hours.
“For certain reasons known to the Department alone, the informant’s name will not be divulged for the present. Suffice it to say that during the course of the cross-examination it was learned that this man was the one who phoned anonymously to Captain MacBride about one hour before Alderman Bedell was murdered, warning him that the murder was prearranged.”
He rubbed his hands together. “How does that sound? Pretty good for a plain, ordinary cop, eh? And I never took a correspondence course, either.”
“But who’s this guy you picked up?” demanded Kennedy.
“You heard me, didn’t you? He’s under lock and key right here in the precinct. Put that in, too, Kennedy. He’s locked up at the precinct. But who he is—that’s my business for the time being. Headquarters is standing by me to the bitter end on that. Now pipe down and consider yourself lucky I’ve given you this much. Here, sink a drink under your belt and see that story gets good space.”
Still curious, Kennedy, nevertheless, went out. Within the hour other reporters got the story. It would be on the streets at four that afternoon.
Moriarity dropped in, when MacBride was alone, and asked, “Think it will work, Cap?”
“Man, oh, man, I’m banking everything on it right now. It’s a bluff—sure, a hell of a big bluff. And if it doesn’t trap somebody or give me a decent lead I’ll take the razz. Just now the underworld is stagnant, Jake. This will be the stone that stirs the water. We’re supposed to have somebody here who knows who killed Bedell. Whoever killed him, will make a move. What that move will be, I don’t know, but I’m ready to meet it.”
Moriarity was frankly dubious. “Dunno, Cap. Maybe I’m short on imagination. You’re taking a long chance giving out the news we got a mysterious somebody picked up and locked in.”
“I’m willing to take it, Jake. It’s a bluff—the biggest bluff I ever pulled in my life. Just play with me, Jake. Appear mysterious. All you’ve got to keep saying is that you picked a guy up— but no more. I’ve got all the keys to that cell and nobody, I don’t care who he is, is going to see that it’s empty.”
“Gawd,” muttered Moriarity, “I hope you don’t get showed up.”
“That’s all right, Jake. Cut out worrying. Just play your part, and if the breaks go against us, I’ll take the razz personally.”
Moriarity wandered out, far from overjoyed.
At four the news spread. Quick work, mused many—an important prisoner in the hands of the police already, with the account of the murder still vivid in the city’s mind. And the mysterious tone of it; that was intriguing, MacBride holding the man’s name a secret.
MacBride read three different sheets.
The Free Press mentioned his name more than the others. That was Kennedy’s work. Good sort, Kennedy, even though he did get on a man’s nerves at times. Kennedy’s column was well-written, concise, cool, almost laconic.
At four-thirty a big limousine pulled up before the station-house. State’s Attorney Krug, a large, faultlessly groomed man, innately arrogant, strode into MacBride’s office swinging his stick savagely.
“Look here, Captain,” he rapped out, “what is the meaning of this? I refer to the late editions, and to this fellow Moriarity picked up.”
“What does what mean?” MacBride wanted to know, unperturbed.
Krug struck the floor with his stick. “Why, as State’s Attorney of this county, I think it is no more than pertinent that I should be informed of such important news before it comes out in the newspapers.”
“Dark secret, Mr. Krug,” said MacBride. “The Department’s prisoner. When we get through with him, we’ll turn him over to the State Attorney’s office.”
“But I should like to have a preliminary talk with the fellow, so that I may go about preparing briefs. I tell you, Captain, action is what is necessary.”
“I agree with you. But as it is, Mr. Krug, the prisoner is still in the Department’s hands.”
“Nonsense! We can have just an informal little chat. I want to see the fellow. What is he called, by the way?”
MacBride shook his head. “The whole thing is a dark secret. When I spring it, everybody’ll know.”
“But dammit, man, I am State’s Attorney! I demand to interview the prisoner!”
“I ought to
add,” put in MacBride, “that I have the backing of the Department. There’s the phone if you care to call the Commissioner.”
State’s Attorney Krug departed in high heat, bewailing the fact that the Department was trying to double-cross the very efficient State’s Attorney’s office.
“You know why he’s in such a hurry, Jake?” MacBride asked Moriarity.
“Sure. Stage a fast trial, get a quick conviction. It’d help him for re-election.”
MacBride chuckled grimly. Moriarity drifted out, leaving the captain alone.
It was about half an hour later that the door swung open, and a tall, broad-shouldered man entered casually. He kicked the door shut with his heel, stood with his hands thrust into his coat pockets, a cigarette drooping from one corner of his mouth. His face was deeply bronzed, his eyes pale and hard as agate.
“My error,” he said, “if I didn’t knock. Thought I’d drop in and see why you’ve been looking for me.”
“Sit down, Duveen.”
“I’ll stand.”
MacBride leaned back in his chair. “Are you heeled?”
“No. Want to look?”
“I’ll take your word. But you’ve got one hell of a lot of nerve to come in here.”
“Open to the public, ain’t it?” Duveen gushed smoke through his nostrils. “I want to know what’s all this crack about you looking for me.”
“Where have you been for the last ten days?”
“I don’t see where that’s any of your business. I was touring. I took a ride to Montreal. Get up on your dates, skipper. I’ve been gone two weeks. Scouting around for good liquor. Got two truckloads coming down for the election— and afterwards.”
“Counting on Anderson and Connaught getting in?”
“Yup.”
“Won’t do you any good. Connaught’s going to clean up this district, and you’ll never be able to buy off Anderson.”
“All I want is the bum Krug out. Well, you were looking for me. Here I am.”
“About that Bedell killing.”
“What about it?”
“You’ll need a strong alibi to prove where you were on that night, Duveen.”