Mourn The Living

by Collins, Max Allan

  Around three a.m. Vicki awoke suddenly and found Nolan still sitting back against the headboard with the fourth, maybe fifth cigarette tight in his lips. His grey eyes were open, two dead coals in the darkness.

  “What’s the matter? What is it? Why are you still up?”

  He didn’t look at her. “Have to be leaving soon.”

  “Is it getting to be dangerous for you to stay around Chelsey, or what?”

  “No, that’s not it . . . it’s always like that for me. It’s just that I got a feeling there’s nothing here that needs to be found out about Irene Tisor.”

  Her hands played with the blanket. “When do you have to leave?”

  “Soon, I said.” He had to figure a way to hit the Chelsey operation first—he had to get his hands on this Elliot guy and make his hit for the cash on hand and the hell with Chelsey and Sid Tisor’s dead kid.

  “Will I see you again? After you leave Chelsey?”

  “Sure.”

  “You’re not telling the truth.”

  There was no answer to that.

  She buried her head in his chest and he felt her tears on his flesh.

  He smoothed her hair. It was soft and fragrant. “Don’t pretend to yourself that you want me to stay.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I’m one or two nights in your life and that’s all I am. Accept me that way.”

  She studied him, her eyes moist. “You know something, Nolan? No, don’t object to me calling you Nolan, you’re not Earl Webb you’re Nolan and in my bed I’ll call you Nolan if I damn well please. I have you pretty well figured out. You walk around like a mobile brick wall. So cold, the ice forms on your shoulders. And you know what you are under all that ice, Nolan?”

  “You tell me.”

  “You’re all the emotions you despise to show. You’re like that gun over there. You’re a hunk of metal until you get in a demanding situation, then you explode. I’ve been with you only a few hours, but I’ve seen you kick a man in the head and later come out of your motel room looking like you just wrestled a grizzly and won. And I’ve shared my bed with you, and you were tender enough, I guess, but that damn gun of yours remained on the nightstand beside you all the while. Anybody as violent as you, and as passionate, is a fire-bomb of emotion. Now . . . what do you think about that?”

  He was silent for a moment. Then said, “I think you talk too much.”

  She laughed her warm laugh and nodded that she guessed he was right and leaned her head against his shoulder.

  “You going to stay in Chelsey, Vicki?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I have . . . have a problem or two that may keep me here.”

  “It’s your business,” Nolan shrugged.

  She smiled. “I guess you think I was out of line a minute ago with my dimestore psychology. Now here I am keeping secrets from you. But . . . everybody needs a few secrets.”

  “Sure.”

  The phone rang.

  “Who the hell would call you at this hour?”

  “Nobody.”

  “You better get it.”

  “Are you here, Nolan?”

  “Earl Webb is.”

  “Okay . . .”

  “Careful,” he told her. “Too goddamn late for a phone call. It’s going to mean something, whatever it is.”

  “Even a wrong number?” She laughed.

  “Answer it before they give up.”

  She climbed out of bed and threw a filmy negligee over her creamy-white skin. She flew down the spiral staircase that connected the balcony to the living room and grabbed up the phone, which was on the bar in the kitchenette. Upstairs, Nolan leaned back and took a cigarette from the half-empty pack and popped it into his mouth.

  From below, her voice came, “It’s for you, Earl.”

  He got out of bed, slipped into his pants and shoes and went down the spiral staircase, taking his .38 with him.

  “This is Webb.”

  “This is George, George Franco . . .”

  “What do you want, George? A little late for you to be up, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, I know it’s late, Mr. Nolan . . .”

  “Webb.”

  “Sorry, Mr. Webb . . . but I have to talk to you!”

  “About what?”

  “I can help you take Elliot down.”

  There was a hesitation at Franco’s end.

  “What’s wrong, George?”

  “Just a second, Nolan, I mean Webb, the door, I think my girl friend might be back. Jus’ a second.”

  There was silence and Nolan looked at Vicki and said, “Think he’s been into the cooking sherry again.”

  She smiled in confusion and Nolan half-grinned and the receiver coughed the sound of a gun-shot.

  Nolan dropped the receiver as if it were molten and ran out the door and down the steps to street level. He wasn’t wearing a jacket—just a T-shirt—and the cold air hit him like a pail of water.

  From the doorway above Vicki called down, “Nolan . . . what are you doing . . . ?”

  “Wait here,” he said. “Somebody just got shot. Stay put, don’t let anybody in but me.”

  “But . . .”

  “Shut the door and wait, Vicki,” he told her, wheeling around to face the deserted courthouse square, marked only by a few scattered parked cars whose owners lived in apartments over stores. Down the street a light was on in George’s penthouse above the Berry Drug.

  Nolan ran to the corner, turned and slowed into the alley. He kept the .38 in front of him and made sure the alley was empty. Then he jumped up and pulled down the fire escape and climbed to where he had used his glass cutter to get in the day before. He elbowed the cardboard patch and it gave way easily. He slipped in his hand, unlocked the window and crawled into the apartment.

  There was no one inside except George, and he was over by the door, dead, his head cracked like a bloody egg.

  The killer had used a .45, Nolan thought, or possibly a .38 at close range. Plugged George right square in the forehead with it. Effective. Not particularly original, but effective.

  The killer hadn’t bothered to hang up the phone, which was making the loud noises the Bell people use to persuade you to hang the damn thing up. Nolan slipped it onto the hook and heard sounds coming from the drug store below.

  He climbed back out the window and down the ’scape and dropped silently to the ground. Cautiously he made his way around to the front of the store, wondering if the killer had made his way out yet.

  Then Nolan heard tires squealing away from a curb down the street from behind him.

  In the alley he found a back door, still open, where the killer had hot-footed it from the drug store to a car parked along the side street. Nolan could see it in the distance, blocks down. It was a dark blue Cadillac having no trouble at all disappearing.

  He stood there for a while thinking, cold as hell and just as he was wishing he’d brought his cigarettes along, a blue-and-white squad car sidled up next to him. “Chelsey Police” was written on the door in small print, as if they were ashamed of it.

  A man in a nicely-pressed light brown business suit stepped out of the squad car, flanked by two uniformed officers. The plainclothes cop had a tanned, weathered face, a shrewd, tough cop’s face, and that was one of the worst kinds. The cop being a plainclothes meant he was probably one of the smartest, most experienced officers of the Chelsey force. Which didn’t necessarily mean much. Nolan figured being a top cop on Chelsey’s force was an honor akin to being the harem’s head eunuch.

  The cop motioned the uniformed pair up the ’scape and into George’s apartment, everyone obviously knowing just what to expect. A few minutes after they went in, one of them, a scrubbed-faced type, looked down at the cop who was standing below with Nolan and said, “Yup.”

  The cop smiled. “What’s that you got in your hand?”

  “It’s a gun.”

  “You got that filed with the city?”

  “I got,
” Nolan said, stuffing the .38 in his waist band, “a closed mouth till I see a lawyer.”

  “I’d tell you to keep your shirt on, pal, if you were wearing one.” The cop’s tough face broke into a wide grin. “I sure hope you haven’t fired that thing lately.”

  Nolan didn’t say anything. Why didn’t the cop take the gun from him?

  The cop kicked at the loose gravel in the alley, like a kid kicking pebbles into a stream. “You might be interested to know that within the past hour, hour and a half or so, the fair city of Chelsey has been seriously blemished. Blemished by three, count them, three . . . murders. Murders committed, strangely enough, with a .38.”

  “Who’s dead?”

  “So you decided to open your mouth? I don’t see any lawyers around.”

  “Who?”

  “You’re a regular owl, aren’t you? Okay mister, I’ll tell you. The Police Chief, one Philip Saunders, found dead on the floor of his apartment, a bullet in the head. An alleged musician at the Third Eye, one Broome, no other name known, found dead on the floor of his dressing room, a bullet in the head. And I assume we have a similar problem with George Franco, up there. You might say fat George has a weight problem—a dead weight problem.”

  “You might say that,” Nolan said, “if you were a fucking comedian.”

  “You’re getting nasty, mister, you aren’t in any position to get. . . .”

  “I got an alibi.”

  “Swell,” he said.

  “An on-the-level alibi. She’s got a name and everything.”

  The cop’s mouth twisted. “You really do have an alibi, don’t you?”

  “That’s right.”

  He scratched his head, shrugged. “Well, then . . . you’re free to go. Nice talking to you . . . mister, uh, Nolan, isn’t it?”

  Nolan froze.

  “It’s Webb,” he said. “Name’s Earl Webb. From Philadelphia.”

  “Tell me all about it.”

  “You going to charge me with something?”

  The cop scratched his head again. He did that a lot. “I would, but I can’t make up my mind between breaking-and-entering, carrying a handgun without a permit, and, well, murder. You got a three-sided coin on you?”

  “Take me in or don’t take me in.”

  “What if I said I got a deal to make with you, mister . . . ah . . . Webb. And that if you keep your side of the bargain, I’ll let you walk. Without so much as a citation for loitering. Interested?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You got somewhere private we could go?”

  “Maybe.”

  The cop was through talking. Now he was waiting.

  “Okay,” Nolan said. “Let’s go.”

  2

  THE COP’S NAME was Mitchell. Nolan introduced him to the now fully awake, fully clothed Vicki Trask, who looked much fresher than four-o’clock in the morning. She was wearing a blue and red candy-striped top and a white mini skirt.

  “I’m sorry to barge in on you so late, Miss Trask.” Mitchell tried to look embarrassed and was fairly successful.

  “That’s all right, Mr. Mitchell. Would you two like anything to drink?”

  “Something soft would be fine,” Mitchell told her, “if it wouldn’t be any trouble.”

  “Cokes, Vicki,” Nolan said.

  The girl walked to the bar and iced two glasses. Mitchell and Nolan sat, the cop wondering with his eyes if they should begin speaking and Nolan shaking his head no. When Vicki brought them the Cokes, Nolan told her quietly to wait for him in the bedroom and she followed his command, scaling the spiral staircase wordlessly and disappearing into the balcony above.

  Mitchell said, “I’ll put it to you straight, Nolan. You are wanted for questioning in half a dozen states . . . Illinois one of them. Matter of fact, it’s kind of a coincidence, because just this afternoon I was glancing at a bulletin on you . . .”

  “Can it.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said can it. I’m not wanted for a goddamn thing.”

  The cop bristled. “Who the hell do you think you . . .”

  “Okay, Mitchell. You want to haul me in?”

  “I . . .”

  “You don’t have a thing on me.”

  “I have half a dozen circulars . . .”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Now wait just a damn . . .”

  “Bullshit! How’d you know who I was?”

  Mitchell swallowed thickly. “Anonymous tip late this afternoon. We were told you were in town. Of course we recognized the name. . . .”

  “Oh? What’s my real name?”

  “Your real name?”

  “My real name. You don’t know it. How about military service? Got anything on my distinguished service medal?”

  “Of course I know about your medal, what do you take me for?”

  “I take you for a piss-poor bluffer,” Nolan said. “When I was in the service, I got a little mad and beat the hell out of a military cop. Got a bad conduct discharge. That was under my real name, which nobody I can think of knows outside of me. And even I forget it sometimes.”

  “You’re a real smart fella, Nolan.”

  “You aren’t. What do you want?”

  Mitchell’s jaw was tight, his teeth clenched. “I could run your ass out of this town so quick, your head’d spin. . . .”

  “Then do it.”

  “What?”

  “Do it. Run my ass out. Make my head spin. Put any more pressure on and I’ll leave on my own.” Nolan leaned forward and gave the cop a flat grin. “But I don’t think you want me to leave.”

  Mitchell’s face split into a wide smile and he helped himself to one of Nolan’s cigarettes in the pack lying on the table. “Okay, Nolan. I guess I’m too used to dealing with punk kids who scare easy. You see through me like a window. You’re right. I don’t want you to leave.”

  “What do you want from me, Mitchell?”

  “Your help, in a way. Look, I got no bulletins on you, but I sure as hell know about you. A lot of cops across the country’ve heard the scuttlebutt about you and your one- man vendetta against the Chicago outfit.”

  “It’s no vendetta.”

  “I heard . . .”

  “You heard wrong. I steal from them. That’s it. I get a kick out of upsetting their applecarts. For money. And I’m staying alive when they send people to kill me.”

  “You admit you’ve killed?”

  “I’m not going to lie to you. There’s no court stenographer sitting here. I’ve killed in self-defense and skipped hanging around for an inquest, sure. I stick in one place that long I get dead quick.”

  “You don’t look like the type who’s afraid of much of anything.”

  “Only idiots fear nothing. If I can fight something, then no sweat. But you can’t hold ground and fight a bomb in your room. Stay in one spot long enough and they find a way to get you.”

  Mitchell leaned back and smoked slowly and thought.

  Nolan reached for a cigarette and said, “Make your pitch, Mitchell. Let’s have it.”

  Mitchell smiled. “You know how long I’ve lived in Chelsey, Nolan?”

  “No, and do you think I give a damn?”

  “I was born here. It was a nice little place for a long time, friendly, homey, very Midwest, you know? Called it the intel-lectual corner of Illinois, too, because of the university. . . .”

  “Get to the point,” Nolan said. “If there is one.”

  “All right.” Mitchell’s face hardened; it was deeply lined, more deeply lined than that of the average man of thirty-five or so years. “I could make things rough for you, Nolan, if I wanted to. I could hold you long enough to find out who you are, especially since you kindly informed me of your trouble during your stay in the army. The army keeps records. Fingerprints and such. A bad conduct discharge shouldn’t be hard to trace.”

  “If I was telling the truth,” Nolan shrugged.

  “I don’t know what you’re after, Nolan, but
I know enough about you to have a general idea. You came to Chelsey to hit the Family’s local set-up, right?”

  Nolan just looked at him.

  “Now, off the record, as they say . . . what I want is the man in charge. Give him to me. Then maybe I can start cleaning this town up a little bit.”

  “And you’ll give me a free ride home, I suppose?”

  “As long as I get the goods on the head man, you’ll be free to go. With anything you might relieve him of in the way of cash.”

  Nolan said, “You don’t have any idea who your ‘head man’ is?”

  “I’ve been trying to find that out for over a year, since I first started to realize just what kind of corruption was going on here. You don’t mean you already know who he is?”

  “Found out the day I got here.”

  “How?”

  “Never mind that. You said your police chief, Saunders, was killed tonight?”

  “One of three dead . . . so far.”

  “Well, Saunders wasn’t in charge, but he was in up to his ass.”

  “I knew it!” Mitchell slammed fist into palm. “That son- of-a-bitch has been crippling the force since the day he took office.”

  “What about the next man killed?”

  “Broome? We think he was involved in some kind of narcotics ring. There was heroin in his blood stream at time of death, and we found a hypo in the room and some H. Couple hits worth.”

  “Broome was a junkie and a pusher and a creep. But my money says he’s outside help linking Chelsey to a drug supplier.”

  “Broome?”

  “That’s right. The Boys in Chicago, the mob in New York, they wouldn’t send a punk like Broome in, because he was a user. But maybe he used to work for the Chicago or New York mob before he got hooked, and still had connections to a supplier.”

  Mitchell was confused. “This is beginning to go over my head.”

  Nolan didn’t like explaining things, but to handle Mitchell properly, the cop had to be told what was going on. Narcotics, Nolan told Mitchell, were hard to organize; by nature they were a sprawling thing, a pusher here, a pusher there, nothing that could be controlled easily. For years the Commission hadn’t bothered even trying to control it. But the last seven, eight years, Nolan explained, had changed things: the eastern families had put on a big push to organize narcotics once and for all, and with large success.