“I suppose you know more about dealing with addicts than I do,” he said begrudgingly. “You deal with them all the time.”
The lieutenant decided to spend the rest of the morning having me go over the entire case with him to see if we had missed any angles. We both knew he was only killing time until noon, but I was too discreet to mention it, and he was too G.I. to admit it. At a quarter of twelve he decided it was time for lunch. We went down to the basement together at a quarter after.
We could hear Grimaldi the moment we approached the door to the booking room. An eerie, long-drawn-out scream of pain rose to crescendo, then gradually faded off.
The booking sergeant was glad to see us. “You better get what you want out of that guy fast and let us ship him over to City Hospital,” he said in a fervent tone. “He’s been sounding off like that every five minutes for the last half-hour. Much more, and we’ll all be as nuts as he is.”
Checking our weapons, we went inside to see the prisoner. The other prisoners gazed at us silently as we walked along the corridor, their expressions subdued. A screamer does that. You never hear another sound from any other cell while he’s putting on his performance.
The inside guard also looked relieved when we passed him.
“See how fast you can make it, huh, Sarge?” he suggested.
CHAPTER 23
Harry Grimaldi lay flat on his back, his hands gripping the edges of the bunk on either side. His eyes were squeezed tightly shut, and his chest was heaving. Every muscle in his body seemed to be twitching, and he was drenched with sweat.
“Hello, Harry,” I said.
His eyes popped open. He had difficulty focusing them because they were swimming with water.
“Get me out of here,” he gasped. “You got to get me to the prison ward.”
“Sure,” I said soothingly. “Ready to talk now?”
He went into a fit of sneezing which broke off abruptly as his whole body tensed. His hands gripped the edges of the bunk until the knuckles showed white, and his face contorted with agony.
“Oh God, oh God, oh God!” he moaned.
Because we were watching, he managed by a superhuman effort to hold back the scream. Finally the spasm passed.
“What do you want to know?” he whispered.
“You’ve been pushing horse, haven’t you, Harry?”
“Sure, I’ve been pushing!” he almost yelled. “How the hell else can you feed a habit this big? The sonovabitch got me hooked.”
“Who’s that, Harry?”
“Benny Polacek!” he yelled. “What a smooth talker that guy was. Just for kicks, he said. It can’t hurt you if you keep it under control. But you notice the sonovabitch never touched it himself. I’m glad the bastard’s dead.”
“Who made him that way, Harry?”
“How do I know? I wasn’t there.” He started to sob. “Oh God, oh God, oh God! Please get me out of here.”
“In a minute,” I said. “Where’d you get your supply, Harry? From Benny himself?”
His head moved back and forth jerkily. “He introduced me to his supplier. He got a bonus for that.”
“Who’s the supplier?”
He looked up at me beseechingly. “You want me killed?”
“I guess he’s not ready yet, Lieutenant,” I said to Wynn. “We’ll give him another hour.” I started to walk away.
“Wait!” Grimaldi yelled.
I turned back to look at him. His body was shaking again.
“Will you transfer me to the prison ward right away if I tell you?” he asked in a strained voice.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s a promise.”
Taking a deep breath, he whispered, “Carr.”
“Carr?” I repeated in surprise.
“Jack Carr, out at the White Bowl. He’s got a corner on the wholesale end. He deals direct with the syndicate.”
Wynn and I looked at each other. The lieutenant looked puzzled. “He trying to cover for Goodie White?” he asked me.
I gave my head a slow shake. “In his condition, he’s interested in only one thing: getting transferred to the prison ward at City Hospital. He’s telling the truth.”
Wynn stared through the bars at the man, then back at me. He was puzzled enough to ask my opinion. “How do you figure it, Sergeant?”
I was thinking back to the day the district attorney made his deal with Benny Polacek. I said, “Something just fell into place.”
“What?”
“Before Benny Polacek would agree to his deal with Dollinger, he insisted on getting a legal opinion from some reputable lawyer. He picked Martin Bonner, which surprised us all, because he’s about as reputable as they come. I can see now that he just picked a lawyer’s name out of the air.”
Wynn merely gave me an inquiring look.
I said, “Dollinger let him to talk to Bonner from a pay phone. As a matter of fact, the D.A. dialed the number and introduced Benny to Bonner over the phone. Then we all backed off so that Benny could converse with his lawyer privately. In the middle of the conversation they were cut off. Or at least Benny pretended they were cut off. Actually he’d finished his conversation with Bonner. Like gullible little marks, we gave him another dime to call Bonner back. Only he called Jack Carr instead, and got instructions on what to say.”
It took a moment for it to sink in. Then Wynn said slowly, “I’ll be damned. Carr sure must be able to think fast on his feet. I guess Goodie White was telling the truth after all. His loyal assistant tried to frame him.”
I looked back at the prisoner. “Where do you pick the stuff up, Harry? Right at the bowling alley?”
His head gave a jerky nod. “He keeps it somewhere under the showcase where the bowling balls are. Nobody notices. They just think we’re buying some kind of bowling equipment.”
His body tensed again, and suddenly he started to scream.
Turning away from the cell, we walked over to where the guard stood.
“You can call an ambulance now and get him over to City Hospital,” I said.
The guard shuddered a little. “I’ve seen the third degree before,” he said. “But this is rougher than a rubber hose ever was. How do you sleep nights, Sarge?”
The guard was only a patrolman, and it was indicative of the way Harry Grimaldi had affected Wynn that the lieutenant didn’t blast him for speaking like that to a sergeant. Wynn wanted nothing but to get out of there. He walked on without a word, and I followed.
Upstairs we checked out an F car and headed for the White Bowl. En route Wynn said, “I don’t think Captain Spangler’s instructions about letting you do the talking to Goodie White apply any more, Sergeant. The time for tact is over. I’ll handle things when we get there.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
When we parked on the lot at the bowling alley, we spotted Lincoln and Carter seated in another F car a few slots away. We walked over to them.
“He’s inside, Lieutenant,” Carl said. “There’s no point going in there, because he knows both of us by sight.”
“Stand by,” Wynn ordered.
The lieutenant and I walked on to the main entrance and inside. Jack Carr was again behind the lane-reservation desk.
“Back again, gentlemen?” he said with a grin.
Wynn asked coldly, “Where’s Mr. White?”
“In the bar, Lieutenant.”
“Go get him,” Wynn said to me.
Walking over to the entrance to the cocktail lounge, I glanced in and saw Goodman White seated at the bar. When he looked my way, I crooked a finger at him. Coming over, he gave me an inquiring look.
“Lieutenant Wynn wants to see you,” I said.
Shrugging, White accompanied me over to the desk. “Afternoon, Lieutenant,” he said pleasantly.
Wynn merely nodded. Turning to Carr, he said, “We’ve had Harry Grimaldi, alias Harry Gamble, in a cell in the felony section since yesterday morning, Carr. He went thirty hours without a pop before he finally broke. In you
r business you must have seen lots of guys carrying monkeys. They’ll do anything for a pop. They’ll confess their most intimate secrets.”
A wary expression grew in Jack Carr’s eyes. Goodie White asked, “Who’s Harry Grimaldi?”
“One of your trusted employee’s pushers,” Wynn said frigidly, without taking his eyes from Carr’s face. “Your assistant is the wholesale distributor of heroin in this town, Mr. White. He operates right from behind this desk. He’s been passing the stuff to pushers right under your nose.”
Carr said in a high voice, “You must be nuts, Lieutenant.”
Wynn said, “You were pretty cute. When the district attorney started to squeeze Benny Polacek, Benny figured a way to phone you for instructions without Dollinger knowing who he was talking to. And you threw a real curve. You told him to confess that his supplier was Goodman White and agree to set him up. Then, after Polacek was released from jail, you had him phone White and give him that nonsense about needing five left-handed bowling gloves. Probably White would have told him to dunk his head if you hadn’t advised him that Benny was a good customer and suggested White should do him the favor. The gloves were never ordered, of course. When your boss told you to put in the order, you merely waited a few days, then told him they had come in. He phoned Polacek, and Polacek told him he’d be in for them at seven o’clock in the evening two days later. If he had showed, White would have handed over the package you furnished him, thinking it contained the gloves. After the pictures were taken and the cops closed in, it would have turned out to be horse instead of bowling gloves.”
Goodie White said in a voice as high as Carr’s, “Jack tried to frame me? Why?”
Wynn shrugged. “Probably for a mixture of reasons. Benny had been offered immunity for turning in his supplier. Carr was probably afraid that if he didn’t throw the cops somebody, Benny would turn him in. Then, too, he’s the second most powerful political figure in the ward. With you out of business, I suppose he figured he could step in as councilman. You would fire him from the bowling alley as soon as you realized what he had done to you, of course, but with the money he must have salted away from wholesaling dope, he could probably buy the place.”
White was staring at Carr, who merely stared back at him belligerently.
Wynn said, “You wouldn’t have had a chance of beating the rap, Mr. White. All your story about the left-handed bowling gloves would have gotten you would be a horse laugh. Carr and Benny would of course deny knowing anything about such an order, and there wouldn’t be any record of the order in your files. You could scream frame until you were blue, but you would have taken the rap.”
Jack Carr said tightly, “You’ve got a lot of proving to do, Lieutenant. So far I haven’t heard a thing but guesswork based on some junkie’s delirious babblings.”
I put in my bit. “Maybe a search beneath the display counter will turn up the evidence we need.”
“Got a search warrant?” Carr flared at me.
“I don’t think we need one.” I glanced at White. “This is your place, Goodie. You have any objection to us searching it?”
“I’ll even help you,” the plump councilman said.
Jack Carr attempted to bar our way when we started behind the counter. When Wynn irritably shoved him aside, he swung a haymaker which would have floored the lieutenant if it had connected. Fortunately Wynn jerked his head back so that it only grazed his jaw.
I was past the lieutenant then. Carr tried for me, too, but I caught the blow on my left palm and laid a hook on his chops that didn’t travel more than a foot. It set him on the seat of his pants clear beyond the other end of the counter.
His eyes were still crossed when I jerked him to his feet and snapped on the cuffs behind his back.
Beneath the showcase was a shelved cabinet in which score sheets were kept. We might have missed the hiding place if Harry Grimaldi hadn’t told us where to look. But when we found nothing but blank score sheets, we examined the cabinet carefully, finally measuring the depth of the shelves. They were six inches narrower than the top of the showcase.
It still required some probing before we discovered the sliding panel at the rear of the bottom shelf. The stuff was neatly packaged in small envelopes of about fifty grains of pure heroin each. There were twelve dozen envelopes, with a total retail value, after the stuff had been cut, of over twenty-five thousand dollars.
CHAPTER 24
When we uncovered the cache, Goodie White looked at his ex-assistant with an expression of revulsion on his face.
“You louse,” he said. “How many kids do you figure you’ve put on the skids?”
Jack Carr sullenly looked at his feet.
White turned to me. “I don’t understand all of this, Matt. Did he kill Benny Polacek too?”
“We’ll get the answer to that when we get him down to headquarters,” I said.
“If he did, why? Seems to me it loused up his original plan.”
I shrugged. “Maybe Benny backed out and was going to turn him in. Don’t worry, we’ll find out. I’ll let you know.”
When we led Carr outside, we told Lincoln and Carter to follow us back to headquarters.
Contrary to popular conception, more crimes are solved through police interrogation than through scientific methods or brilliant deduction. Once we get hold of a suspect whom we’re reasonably certain is guilty, it’s only a question of time before he breaks down under interrogation and admits everything. We don’t use rubber hoses. In fact, we don’t lay a hand on him. It isn’t necessary if you know the techniques of interrogation.
It was only two-thirty P.M. when we got back to headquarters. The four of us threw questions at Jack Carr until six o’clock without getting him to admit a thing. Wynn sent Carter and Lincoln to eat at six, while the two of us continued to pound at the man. At six-thirty Carter and Lincoln came back, and Wynn and I went to eat.
After that we took him in relays. By eight he was beginning to contradict himself and make a few minor admissions. By nine he had admitted being the local wholesale supplier of heroin. By ten we had the names of twelve pushers he had been supplying. At ten-thirty he gave us the name of the syndicate contact who brought him the stuff from out of town and told us where and when he was supposed to make the next contact with the man to receive a shipment.
But he steadfastly refused to admit that he knew a thing about Benny Polacek’s death. By eleven we began to believe him.
At eleven-thirty we had him sign a statement admitting all his misdeeds except murder. Then we took him down to the felony section, had him thrown in a cell, and quit for the night.
Since we had put in a fifteen-hour day, Lieutenant Wynn generously told us we didn’t have to report for duty until ten the next morning. I got home shortly after midnight.
The spring lock on my apartment door hadn’t caught again, as I discovered when I shoved in the key and the door opened from the pressure. Resolving to call my landlord about it the very next day, I closed the door from inside and pressed hard against it until I heard the bolt click home.
A lamp was burning in the front room, which surprised me, for I certainly hadn’t left it on that morning. Walking into the bedroom, I switched on the overhead light and discovered I had a visitor.
Beverly Arden lay sound asleep on the bed in her favorite bedtime wear: nothing but a long-sleeved blouse. This time it was a black one, unbuttoned and hanging open.
My first reaction was to be irked. It would be a fine situation if I had walked in with another woman. Then, gazing at the rhythmic rise and fall of her bare breasts, I began to forgive her. Despite a fifteen-hour day, I wasn’t particularly tired, for I had gotten in seven hours’ sleep the night before and ten hours the night before that. I decided it was kind of pleasant to find such a nice surprise waiting.
Hanging my suit coat in the closet, I went over to the bed and ran my eyes up and down her softly curved body. She was certainly well built, I thought. It was a shame she always
insisted on retaining that one garment. I had the desire just once to see her completely nude.
On impulse I rolled her over on her stomach and, before she was awake enough to know what was going on, jerked the blouse down over her shoulders. Another quick jerk and it came off with the sleeves turned inside out.
Beverly swung around to a seated position, stared up at me in confusion, then realized she was stark naked and an expression of consternation crossed her face. Her arms went across her bosom to hug herself.
But not in time. I had already seen the tiny scars from countless needles on the insides of her forearms.
For a long time I gazed at her, and she stared back at me whitely. Finally I let out a long breath.
“No wonder you’re so impulsive,” I said heavily. “I should have known when you practically threw yourself at me the first time we met. Junkies don’t have any inhibitions.”
Jumping from the bed, she snatched up her blouse and tugged the sleeves right-side out. Slipping it on, she rapidly buttoned it to the throat, grabbed her skirt from the back of a chair, and stepped into it. Momentarily she sat on the bed to slip on high-heeled shoes. Then she jumped up again and headed for the door. All the time she hadn’t looked at me once.
Beating her to the door, I put my back against it.
“Not so fast, Beverly,” I said. “How long have you been on the stuff?”
“Is that any of your business?” she asked frigidly.
“I think so,” I said. “I’m investigating the murder of a pusher who was killed while you were present. It seems kind of significant that you turned out to be a junkie. You were one of Benny’s customers, weren’t you?”
“Suppose I was?” she flared. “I didn’t kill him. You think I’d cut off my own source of supply?”
I studied her consideringly. “That’s another thing. You don’t exhibit any of the symptoms of withdrawal. Where are you getting it since Benny died?”
“I’m not. I kicked the habit.”
I gave my head a slow shake. “Nobody kicks it that easy. Your brother’s been easing you over the hump, hasn’t he? He has access to all the narcotics he needs. Except heroin, of course. That’s illegal even in hospitals. What’s he been substituting to keep you from shaking apart? Morphine?”
Death of a Pusher Page 15