Death of a Pusher

by Deming, Richard

  It was one of the nicest backs I ever washed. Despite my reduced stamina, I found myself getting so interested in the chore, I decided not to stop with her back. Stripping to the waist, I turned her around and lathered her front, too. Presumably she had already washed that once, but she seemed not to mind.

  By the time I had soaped her to the waist, I was even more interested. Taking off the rest of my clothes, I climbed into the tub and did a complete job.

  When she decided to reciprocate the favor, I had my second bath within two hours. By then I had completely forgotten that Beverly had been an earlier visitor.

  Neither of us got quite dry, because we were in too much of a hurry. We let the sheets absorb the moisture our towels had missed.

  Though I had managed to forget my earlier session with Beverly, my system didn’t. April never did get her drink, and I didn’t get my information until morning. I fell asleep on her shoulder and slept right through.

  Sunlight slanting through the Venetian blinds and falling on my face awakened me. Thinking I had overslept, I jumped out of bed and hurriedly glanced at my watch. I breathed a sigh of relief. The sun must have just come up, for it was only seven A.M.

  April opened one blue eye to look at me, then closed it again. Leaning over her, I shook her shoulder.

  “Go away,” she said, eyes tightly squeezed shut. “Wanna sleep.”

  Peeling back the sheet, I rolled her over on her stomach and gave her plump little bottom a resounding smack. With a gasp she swung herself around to a seated position and glared at me.

  “Sorry, kitten,” I said. “But I have to make a report to a very G.I. lieutenant in an hour and a half, and he’s going to want to know what I learned from you. After I leave, you can go back to bed and sleep all day if you want. But on your feet right now. You can brew some coffee while I shave and dress. We’ll talk about Benny over coffee.”

  Pouting, she rose and tenderly felt her posterior. Placing her back to the dresser, she peered over her shoulder into the mirror.

  “That’s a dirty way to wake a girl up,” she complained. “I can see your handprint.”

  “If you don’t rustle up some coffee fast, you’ll see one on the other cheek,” I threatened.

  She made a face at me. “Woman beater. Don’t I even get kissed good morning?”

  Walking over to her, I tilted up her chin, planted a firm but quick kiss on her lips, then took her by the shoulders and faced her toward the door. Lightly I slapped the cheek which wasn’t already red and she scurried out of the room.

  Fifteen minutes later, when I entered the kitchenette fully dressed, she was seated at the table, still without a stitch on. Cups, sugar, and cream were already laid out, and the coffee pot was merrily perking.

  “The only food in your refrigerator is butter and jam,” she said. “But I found a loaf of kind of dry bread in your cupboard. Want some toast?”

  “All right,” I said.

  I’d never had breakfast served by a naked woman before. It was pleasant but distracting. April burst out laughing when I stuck a piece of toast in my eye.

  “Want me to dress?” she asked. “I didn’t because I plan to take your offer and go back to bed as soon as you leave.”

  “Don’t bother,” I said, wiping jam from my eyebrows with a paper napkin. “Time’s running short and we have to talk.”

  She took a sip of her coffee. “I’m afraid I’m going to disappoint you. I really don’t know a thing about Charlie Kossack.”

  “You said he was a friend of Benny’s. You must know something about him if Benny was your boy friend.”

  “Benny and I were pretty torrid for a time,” she admitted. “But I realize now I hardly knew a thing about him, let alone about his friends. All I know about Charlie was that he and Benny had some kind of business deal pending.”

  “Oh?” I said. “With the business Benny was in, that must have concerned dope.”

  She shook her head. “It was something new he wanted Benny to go in with him. The first time I met Charlie Kossack was about three weeks ago, at the club. Benny always caught the first show, and Charlie was at his table when I came over to sit with Benny between shows.

  I just caught the tail end of their conversation as I walked up to the table. Charlie said something about Benny being in a sucker business, and they could both make a fortune if Benny would get out of it and throw in with him. Then Benny cut him off to introduce me, and they didn’t talk business any more. But a couple of times after that Charlie came in the club while Benny was waiting for me, and asked when Benny would be ready to start operations. The night you arrested Benny they were talking about it, as a matter of fact.”

  “You saw Benny earlier that night?” I asked.

  “I used to see him every night. He drove me to work. We got to the club about twenty after eight and found Charlie having dinner there. Charlie said he wanted to get things settled one way or the other that night, because if Benny didn’t make up his mind, he was going to look for another partner. Benny said he had an errand to run, but Charlie could come along and they’d discuss it on the way. I think they took Charlie’s car and Benny left his on the lot.”

  “That figures,” I said. “Benny had a driver that night. The errand was to meet a new customer in an alley and sell him a pop of heroin.”

  She made a face. “And to think I worried about the slob when he didn’t come back. He was supposed to pick me up when I got off at two. Next day Charlie phoned to tell me he was in jail. How he got my number I don’t know, because the phone is listed in my landlady’s name. Maybe Benny gave it to him.”

  “Just what did he say when he called?”

  “Only that Benny was in jail. Claimed he didn’t know why, but he thought Benny might appreciate me bailing him out. So I grabbed my checkbook and headed for headquarters like Lady Bountiful. You know the rest.”

  I asked her what Charlie Kossack looked like.

  “He’s a tall, lean guy. About six-two, I’d say, but I doubt if he weighs over one-fifty. About thirty-five with dark, slick hair and a thin face. Dresses pretty well.”

  The description touched a vague chord of memory, but I couldn’t quite pin it down.

  CHAPTER 14

  I drank some of my coffee before asking, “Do you have any idea who might have killed Benny, April?”

  She shrugged. “Anybody might shoot a guy in his business.”

  “He ever mention any enemies?”

  “The subject never came up. He was supposed to be a salesman, not a racketeer, so he would hardly have told me if anybody was gunning for him. I would have asked too many questions he couldn’t answer without letting me know he was involved in something shady.”

  “How about friends other than Charlie Kossack?”

  “He didn’t seem to have any real friends. I met a lot of his acquaintances.”

  “Ever hear him mention Goodman White?”

  She looked surprised. “The councilman from the East Side? No, not that I recall. Most of the people he knew seemed to be just barroom acquaintances.”

  “Name a few.”

  She knitted her brow in thought. “Well, there was a Tom Boyd we used to run into at a place called Rex’s Tavern. He was a bookie. A fellow named Jim Walsh tends bar there, and he seemed to be a friend of Benny’s, too. I don’t think he had any business association with either, though. He had a lot of casual acquaintances like that who aren’t worth mentioning. I only met one man who seemed to have a business relationship with him. We ran into him in a bar one afternoon and Benny introduced him as a salesman for the same firm he worked for. They both laughed when he said it, but I didn’t get the joke at the time. Looking back, I guess the man must have been a pusher, too.”

  “What was his name?”

  After thinking for a minute, she said, “Gamble. I remember because the bartender kept making puns about his name concerning gambling. Harry Gamble. We met him in Zek’s Tavern down in the Polish section. Benny used to ta
ke me to places on the South Side quite a lot. Said he grew up in the district.”

  I asked, “Know where this Harry Gamble lives?”

  She shook her head. “I never saw him before or since. But you might find him at Zek’s. I got the impression from the way the bartender kidded him that it was his regular hangout.”

  Finishing my coffee, I glanced at my watch. It was five after eight.

  “I have to scoot,” I said. “Can you think of anything else?”

  After musing for a time, she shook her head again.

  “You need cab fare to get home?”

  “Who’s going home?” she asked. “There’s nothing there but a room. I’ll sleep away the morning and go shopping this afternoon. If I knew when you planned to get home, I might cook you dinner.”

  After thinking this over, I decided why not? Nobody would disturb her in the apartment, and it might be nice to walk in to a home-cooked meal for a change.

  I said, “I’ll have to phone you after I learn the lieutenant’s plans for me. He may decide to work us right through the night. I’ll try to phone about four.”

  Getting up, I rounded the table to kiss her good-by. Winding her arms about my neck, she pulled me down against her.

  After a moment I tore myself away. I had to, or miss work.

  I logged in at eight-twenty-five. Hank Carter was already there, but neither Lieutenant Wynn nor Carl Lincoln had yet showed.

  “Did you get any kind of line on Charlie Kossack?” I asked Carter.

  Walking over to a table where some papers lay, he picked up a photostat of a record card and silently handed it to me.

  The description on the card fitted what April had said about the man. He was listed as thirty-six years old, six feet two, and a hundred and forty-five pounds. When I looked at the mugg shots at the top of the card, I realized why the description had sounded familiar. About six months before he’d been in the morning show-up on suspicion of armed robbery, but had been released when a witness picked somebody else in the show-up as the person who had robbed him.

  Charles Kossack’s record explained why he had been pulled in on routine suspicion on that occasion. He had a total of twenty-six arrests, starting at age sixteen with grand theft, auto, and working up to include everything from assault with a deadly weapon to armed robbery. There was even one arrest on suspicion of homicide.

  Out of ten arrests as a juvenile he had taken only one fall, for grand theft, auto, and had drawn eighteen months in industrial school for it. He’d served a year of the eighteen. He’d beaten fourteen of his sixteen raps as an adult, once taking a fall for ADW and once for armed robbery. He had served a year of hard time for the former and five years of a five-to-ten for the latter.

  “Nice guy, isn’t he?” Carter said when I handed the card back.

  “That’s what makes a cop’s work so rewarding,” I growled. “Juries keep releasing these slobs, and when they do take a fall, the parole board turns them loose. This guy should have drawn life as a habitual years ago.”

  “He’s managed to break most of the Ten Commandments,” Carter agreed, examining the card. “Maybe there’s hope, though. He missed one.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He’s never made a graven image.”

  When I failed to smile, Carter said, “I said he never made—”

  “I heard you,” I interrupted. “I only laugh at new gags. The first time I heard that one, I was a rookie. Got an address on this guy?”

  He looked wounded. “One, six months old. He was on parole until six months ago. We checked it last night, but he’d moved the day he got off parole and left no forwarding address. That’s par for the course. They always do. We put out a local and an APB on him.”

  I told Carter I had to go up the hall to Records, and if the lieutenant came in before I got back, to tell him I wouldn’t be long.

  At Records I asked the girl on the desk to see if there was anything on a Harry Gamble. When there wasn’t, I told her to try the moniker file on the off chance that Gamble was a nickname.

  In a few minutes she came back with a card.

  “Harry the Gambler, also Harry Gamble,” she said. “Real name Harry Grimaldi. Just a minute and I’ll pull his file.”

  She went away again and returned with a thick manila folder.

  Harry Grimaldi had a record even longer than Charlie Kossack’s. He was only thirty years old, but had spent eight years behind bars. Like Kossack, he had started with grand theft, auto, as a juvenile, had worked his way up the underworld ladder of success by subsequently being picked up for questioning on simple assault, ADW, possession of lottery tickets, possession of narcotics (three times), armed robbery (four times), and suspicion of homicide. He had taken falls only twice: eighteen months in industrial school as a juvenile, of which, like Kossack, he had served only a year; ten years on two counts of armed robbery as an adult, of which he had served seven and a half years of hard time before being thrust back into society by an indulgent parole board.

  According to the file his moniker stemmed from his willingness to bet on anything at all, from horses to how long a housefly would wander over a piece of bread before flying away. Like Kossack, he had been off parole about six months. His last known address was a rooming house on the North Side.

  I copied the address down, though I knew it was unlikely he still lived there. As Hank Carter had said, habitual criminals had a habit of moving the minute they got off parole. April French had gotten the impression that he was a regular customer at Zek’s Tavern, which suggested he might now live near it. And Zek’s was clear down in my old neighborhood on the South Side, on Kosciuszko Street.

  The thing which interested me most was his three pickups for possession of narcotics. It made it seem likely that this was the same Harry Gamble whom Benny Polacek had introduced to April French as a “salesman” for the firm he worked for.

  You can’t take file folders out of Records, but they’ll photostat record cards for you. I carried a fresh print of the card back to the squadroom with me.

  Wynn and Lincoln had both logged in by then, but Hank Carter was no longer in the squadroom. Carl Lincoln was studying Charles Kossack’s record card.

  The lieutenant seemed in a more amiable mood than usual, this morning. He asked, pleasantly enough, “What were you looking up at Records, Rudowski?”

  “An associate of Benny Polacek’s, sir. He’s in the moniker file as Harry Gamble, but his real name’s Harry Grimaldi.” I handed him the photostat. “There’s good reason to believe he’s a pusher who gets his supplies from the same source as Benny did.”

  After studying the card, Wynn passed it on to Carl. “You get his name from the French girl?”

  “Yes, sir.” I related that April had told me about the man.

  When I finished, the lieutenant grunted. “Get anything else out of her?”

  “You already know about Kossack. Seems he was trying to get Polacek to go into some kind of deal with him. From Kossack’s record, that probably was something like sticking up supermarkets. The night we picked up Polacek, Kossack drove him to the rendezvous in his own car, but apparently he wasn’t in the narcotics business with Benny. According to April they were discussing this deal at the Palace, and when Benny announced he had to run an errand, Kossack offered to drive him because he wanted to continue talking business.”

  “Hmm. She know how to get in touch with Kossack?”

  I shook my head. “She has no idea where he lives. And she isn’t holding out. She’s willing to cooperate all down the line.”

  “I imagine,” Wynn said dryly. “Where’d you question her? In your bedroom?”

  When I simply ignored that, he said, “Get anything else out of her?”

  “Nothing of value. The names of a few barroom acquaintances. I thought if we moved in on this Grimaldi character, we might squeeze the name of his supplier out of him. If it turned out to be Goodie White, we’d have a pretty good case, in spite of Goodi
e’s shenanigans about left-handed bowling gloves.”

  Wynn’s good humor evaporated. “You taking over the strategy planning of this case now, Sergeant?”

  I merely looked at him.

  “Well, are you?”

  “No, sir,” I said in a voice as cold as his. Turning to Lincoln to avoid talking to Wynn any more, I asked, “Where’s Hank?”

  “The lieutenant sent him up to the lab to hustle Abbot with that comparison test.”

  Wynn said, “While we’re waiting, I’ll outline today’s assignments. There’ll be plenty of men in and out of the squadroom on the day trick, so we won’t need to leave a liaison man here. We can give messages to whoever happens to be around.”

  Carl nodded as though the lieutenant had said something profound. I felt like kicking him.

  CHAPTER 15

  Wynn went on, “I had planned to have Lincoln and Carter cover the block where Polacek lived, today. We questioned all the tenants at Benny’s apartment house the night of the murder, and no one aside from the Ardens saw a thing, though several heard the shots and took them for backfires. We didn’t hit any of the neighbors along the block, though. Eventually we should, but in view of these names you’ve turned up, I think it’s more important to locate these two men first. Lincoln, you take Carter with you and hunt down this Harry Grimaldi. Rudowski and I will try to get a line on Charles Kossack.”

  “Yes, sir,” Carl said.

  At that moment Captain Spangler walked in. The lieutenant retired with the captain to the latter’s office to explain our progress so far. They were closeted together twenty minutes. Wynn finally emerged just as Hank Carter returned.

  “Well, Sergeant?” Wynn asked.

  “No make, sir,” Carter said briefly.

  Wynn shrugged. “I hardly expected one. He surrendered the gun too easily. If Goodie White did burn Polacek, the gun’s probably in the river. Corporal Lincoln has your assignment for today, Sergeant. You’ll be working with him.”

  Carter’s expression brightened at the news that he was to spend the day with Carl Lincoln instead of with the lieutenant.