Doctor, Lawyer . . . (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries)

by Collin Wilcox

  “We’d better split up before that light gets here,” Friedman whispered.

  “I’ll take Canelli and the radio and work the left.”

  Nodding, Friedman moved off. Despite his weight and his girth, Friedman could move quickly and quietly—whenever he faced danger.

  As I stepped in front of Canelli and the patrolman, I instinctively slipped off the shotgun’s safety. I didn’t intend to shoot Williams. But I didn’t intend to let him shoot me. We were close beside the fence, picking our way through the construction debris that littered the ground.

  “I’ll search straight ahead,” I whispered to Canelli. “You search toward the center.”

  “Yessir.”

  The helicopter was approaching, its rotor whipping dust and rubble into thick, funneled clouds. I was moving close beside a low concrete buttress. The buttress was still encased in its wooden form, with reinforcing rods protruding from the concretelike spikes. As the edge of the searchlight’s glare came closer, I dropped down beside the buttress. Canelli and the patrolman did the same. The overlapping twin cones of light found us, held us exposed for endless moments, then let us go. Dust stung my eyes, gritted in my mouth, clogged my nostrils. Behind me, Canelli was sputtering.

  In darkness again, I moved cautiously forward. We were within a few feet of the first corner. Looking back, I saw Friedman and Culligan slip behind the caterpillar track of a huge crane as the copter’s searchlight touched them. Head down, they—

  Suddenly another cone of white light came on—then another. Our lighting trucks had arrived, with two searchlights on each truck. As we watched, two more searchlights blazed—then two more. Six beams shone from three sides of the excavation, relentlessly traversing the area. We were half concealed behind another abutment, this one waist-high. Cautiously I looked down into the cavernous excavation.

  “It’s sure a big hole,” Canelli muttered.

  “Let’s stay put,” I said. “Let’s see if he—”

  “Lieutenant,” the patrolman whispered urgently. “The copter thinks they’ve spotted him. They’re going to drop down right over him.”

  And in the same instant, the helicopter suddenly dipped, sluing toward the fence’s north side, adjacent to ours.

  “I think I see him,” Canelli said. He spoke loudly, over the noise of the copter’s engine. As he spoke, the copter settled over a huge stack of lumber. Barely ten feet off the ground, the copter’s blades lashed dirt and debris into whirlwinds.

  “Do you still see him?” I asked Canelli.

  “He ducked down.”

  “The copter sees him, though.” The patrolman’s voice was high-pitched, excited. “They’ve got him eyeballed, they say.”

  The lumber pile was a huge, solid rectangle of stacked two-by-fours, perhaps ten feet wide, eight feet high, four feet thick.

  “Tell our searchlight trucks to pick up that lumber,” I ordered. “Then, when they’ve done it, tell the copter to leave the area. I want to talk to him, without the noise.”

  “Yessir.”

  “And tell everyone—everyone—to keep his head down below the fence.”

  No sooner were my orders relayed than all six searchlights moved to focus on the lumber. Immediately the copter lifted, slowly gyroscoping as it roared a last time across the construction site—gone.

  I cautiously raised my head. Still behind the track of the crane, on the south side of the excavation, Friedman’s shadowed head and shoulders also rose. He stood facing me, mutely asking for orders. He didn’t have a walkie-talkie, I realized. I pointed to the fence’s northeast corner. Friedman nodded. Now his shadow was moving toward the southeast corner. From there he would move along the fence to the northeast corner. In that position he could see behind the pile of lumber, stacked perhaps ten feet from the plywood fence. Once Friedman had his position, I would move the final fifteen feet to the fence’s northwest corner. When we were both in position, Williams would be exposed to our cross fire.

  I watched Friedman cover the distance in seconds. When he’d taken cover behind another lumber pile, I moved away from the abutment, doubled over as I ran.

  I was five feet from the fence’s corner when a single shot cracked. Close beside me, a staccato shower of splintered concrete sprayed against the plywood fence. The bullet ricocheted. It was a wicked sound in the silence.

  Three shots fired. Three left.

  Unless he’d reloaded.

  At the corner, I dove behind a pile of cement sacks. Cautiously raising my head, I saw the shape of a man crouched in the meager shadow of the stacked two-by-fours.

  “Throw the gun out, Williams. Come out with your hands on top of your head.”

  I heard him laughing. It was almost a girlish titter, half-hysterical. “Why should I come out, pig? What’ll happen to me if I don’t?”

  “Make it easy on yourself, Williams.”

  Eerily he tittered again. Then: “I already heard you say not to shoot me. So what’s easier than that?”

  “I told them not to kill you. But I’ve got a twelve-gauge shotgun here, Williams. It’s loaded with buckshot, and it could blow your leg off. Right at the knee. Like a cleaver, Williams.”

  No response. For an endless moment, no one spoke; no one moved. The only sound was the whir of generators from the lighting trucks and the muted noises of the city’s traffic mingled with the tinny sounds of the Tenderloin.

  “You’re already in enough trouble, Williams,” Friedman called from across the excavation’s chasm. “Give it up. Be smart.”

  “Jesus, how many times’ve I heard that?” came the shrill response. “Be smart. Give it up. Well, screw you. I’ve been giving up all my goddam life. So now I got about half the cops in the city trying to make me give up. So why the hell should I? Why should—”

  A racking sob choked off the rest. I realized that he was irrational—drunk or spaced out. Or both.

  So we had to keep him talking. “Listen, Williams,” I said. “This isn’t going to—”

  A searchlight exploded as a shot cracked. Bright baubles of filament fragments momentarily sparkled and sputtered, then died in the darkness. From behind the two-by-fours came a peal of manic laughter.

  Four shots. Two were left.

  And, incredibly, a disembodied voice echoed my thoughts: “I’ve got two shots left. There’s two of you, right? It’ll all come out even, then. Two shots, two pigs. It’ll all be—” Another manic cackle cut off the rest.

  “There’s a hundred and two of us, Williams,” I called. “But we’re trying to do you a favor. Throw out the gun, and come on out. I’m Lieutenant Hastings. If you surrender to me, you’ll get fair treatment. That’s all you can hope for, Williams. It’s all over.”

  “What’s all over?” he shrilled. “Me? Am I all over? Why? What for? You won’t find a thing on me, pig. Nothing. I’m clean.”

  I had him talking. I must keep him talking. “You took a shot at me, Williams. With your record, that’ll get you life.”

  It was a mistake.

  “It won’t get me life, you pig bastard,” he shrieked. “Because I’m not going back inside. I mean, I’m never going back inside. I’ll die first. I mean it. I’ll die, and you will, too.”

  “Nobody’s going to die, Williams.” I paused, seeking some way to calm him. “We just wanted to talk to you. But you ran. So we chased you.”

  “With a hundred men? A hundred and two?”

  “You start shooting, you get a hundred men. You know how it goes, Williams.”

  “Yeah, I know how it goes, all right.” His voice dropped to a lower note of vicious resentment. “It goes right up my ass, that’s how it goes. Just like always.”

  He could be sinking into self-pity, slipping down from his hysterical high. Momentarily, he might be less dangerous. Every drunk and every drug addict rode a roller coaster. If a cop’s timing was right—if he caught the suspect coming down—he could be a winner.

  If.

  I slowly, deliberately
stood up behind the pile of sacked cement. From his refuge in the shadows, I knew that Williams could see me clearly. With my upper torso exposed, I laid my shotgun across the topmost sack, its muzzle pointed harmlessly toward the fence. I lifted my hands free, at the same time speaking softly to the patrolman with the radio: “Tell them to hit me with one of those searchlights.”

  Moments later, I was blinking in the direct glare of white light, blinded. With my arms held away from my body, I stepped into the clear. Fifty feet separated me from the stack of two-by-fours. One step at a time, I began walking. As I walked, I spoke very slowly, very distinctly: “I put my shotgun on top of the cement there, Williams. So if you want to blow me away, now’s your chance. You’ve got a free shot. Except you should know that you’ll be a dead man. There’s another lieutenant behind you. And he’s got another shotgun, just like mine.”

  I paused. In the silence, on cue, I heard a metallic click: an unlatching and latching, then a final click. It was the unmistakable sound of a shotgun shell being rammed home, more chilling than any words of warning.

  “I’m telling you, pig—get back.”

  “I’m not going to get back, Williams. And you know it. You know that I’m going to walk right up to you, and you’re going to—”

  Flame spouted in the darkness; a shot cracked. Behind me, a bullet thudded into wood.

  “You weren’t aiming at me, were you, Williams? Because at this range, you couldn’t miss. Not with this light.”

  “There’s another shot,” he screamed. “There’s one more left. And it’s all for you.”

  “I know, Williams. Just one more.” I was within twenty feet of him. My knees were trembling now; my stomach heaved. My throat had suddenly gone dry.

  “Don’t come any closer. I’m warning you.”

  “Give me the gun.” My voice rasped, croaking. Did he know that I was frightened? Could he hear it in my voice? Did the others know?

  “I—I’ll kill you.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  Less than ten feet separated us. Now I was out of line with the searchlight; I could see him plainly. He was crouched on his knees, both hands holding the revolver. The revolver was aimed squarely at my chest; the muzzle was trembling violently.

  “If you pull that trigger, Williams, you die. Right now. Right here. The other way, you’ll live. Whatever we hang on you, you’ll still live.”

  “You—you’ll never know about it, pig. Because you’ll be dead, too.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. I’d rather take my chances with a pistol bullet than with buckshot. A .38 makes a nice clean hole.”

  Five feet remained.

  “Stop, you son of a bitch. Stop right there.”

  “No way, Williams. Give me the gun.”

  I was able to touch one corner of the stacked wood. He scrabbled back on his haunches, toward the fence. The gun was wobbling in a wide, wild arc. I could hear his teeth chattering as he tried to speak. He began to stutter. As I moved the final few steps, I saw his finger tighten on the revolver’s trigger. Slowly, the hammer was lifting; the chamber was rotating.

  But I couldn’t lunge.

  I could only take one last step.

  As the hammer raised the last fraction, I heard him scream. The muzzle jerked aside as starred blossoms of flame flashed close beside me. I felt the full force of the muzzle blast—felt the concussion hammering my ears. Cordite choked me; multicolored lights and shadows momentarily blinded me. As I sagged against the lumber, I was aware that he was moving—running. Searchlight beams converged on him as figures materialized atop the plywood fence, dropping one by one to the ground like uniformed acrobats. As I blinked against the lights still flashing behind my eyes, I saw Friedman coming toward me. He held his shotgun across his chest, at high port arms.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “No comment.” I tried to smile—unsuccessfully. I couldn’t speak—couldn’t look at him. I heard the rhythmic latching and unlatching of his shotgun’s slide as he methodically ejected live shells. Then I heard a succession of clicks as he reloaded the gun, leaving the chamber empty. It was inexorable police procedure: after a shotgun is fired, or cocked for firing, all chambers must be cleared, all guns uncocked.

  I realized that my eyes were closed—that I couldn’t stand without supporting myself with one hand braced against the two-by-fours.

  “You can get yourself together,” Friedman said quietly. “I’ll get him down to the Hall. Take your time. Maybe in an hour or so we’ll have a few answers from him. Meanwhile, you’re out of the spotlight, if you’ll pardon the pun. So relax. Breathe deeply. But don’t laugh for a while. In my experience, laughing only leads to hysterics.”

  Which made me want to laugh.

  Nine

  “I’M SORRY,” I SAID, sharply shaking my head as I made for the elevators. “I can’t talk about it now. Later, maybe. When I’ve talked to the suspect.”

  “Is that where you’re going now, Lieutenant?” one of the reporters asked, half skipping as he kept pace beside me.

  “Yes.”

  “We heard you were a real hero tonight,” another voice piped good-naturedly. “A real macho performance, according to Lieutenant Friedman.”

  I tried to smile. “If Lieutenant Friedman says so.” At the elevator, I pushed the Up button.

  I checked my revolver with the third-floor duty officer and walked down the short hallway to Interrogation Room A. Like the center court at Wimbledon, Interrogation Room A was reserved for the main event. Nothing in departmental regulations specified that Room A was set apart. It was simply a matter of tradition—like Wimbledon.

  A patrolman stood outside the room’s small metal door. Seeing me, the patrolman stood a little straighter. Nodding to him, I stepped to the door’s foot-square, inch-thick window, which was wire-reinforced. I saw the twitching, sallow-faced suspect seated behind a small metal table. Culligan stood in front of the table, wearily shaking his head as he said something to Williams. Friedman sat with half-closed eyes, hands folded across his stomach, listening. As I tapped on the window, Friedman’s eyes opened suddenly. He nodded to me, got to his feet and came out into the hallway, signaling for the uniformed man to go inside.

  “I was just about to come get you,” Friedman said, sweeping the deserted hallway with a cautious glance.

  “Have you got something?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “Come on, Pete.” I gestured with quick exasperation. “I’m tired. I’ve had it.”

  “Come in here.” He led the way into Interrogation Room B. I sat on the table—and waited. I knew that Friedman had discovered something—knew that he expected me to coax him for the information. But, this time, I couldn’t make myself join in the game.

  “What we’ve got,” he began, looking involuntarily at the closed door, “is maybe the beginning of a real puzzle. A puzzle within a puzzle.”

  “All right.” I shifted on the metal table. “Tell me how it goes.”

  “Do you remember that the FBI listed the .45 as having been recovered by law enforcement?”

  “Certainly. But we agreed that it could’ve been—”

  “Wait.” He raised a pudgy palm. “That was the .45, about which we glibly assumed that the FBI must’ve goofed—for the first time in recorded history.”

  “For the first time in publicly recorded history.”

  He smiled. “Agreed. But now we come to the Browning .380, with the Cat Williams fingerprint on the magazine, mercifully as clear as a picture.”

  I waited.

  “Cat Williams,” Friedman said, “claims that he hasn’t had that gun in his possession for three or four months.”

  “What would you expect him to say?” I asked, impatient with the suspense Friedman was trying to generate. “Would you expect him to admit that he used the gun on Bates?”

  “Certainly not,” he answered promptly. “But neither would I expect him to give us a story that we could check.” He
paused. Then: “Williams says that the police picked up the gun when he dropped it.”

  “What?” Startled, I sat up straighter.

  Friedman was nodding owlishly, plainly pleased that he’d finally gotten a reaction.

  “Well?” I said irritably, “are you going to tell me about it, or just sit there looking smug?”

  Withdrawing a dog-eared spiral notebook, Friedman recited from its pages: “Three or four months ago, Williams says that he was walking north on Mason Street—minding his own business, if we can believe him. The time was about 10 P.M., and it was a Wednesday. He was—”

  “He remembers the time and the day, but can’t come closer than ‘three or four months’?” I asked dubiously.

  Friedman shrugged. “That’s what he says.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do,” Friedman answered judiciously. “Like many other hoods before him, Williams paled visibly at the prospect of being nailed for a murder he might not’ve committed—and especially a big, page-one murder that the D.A. would love to prosecute for career-building reasons. So Williams wants to deal—badly. Besides, he’s a junkie. I promised him a little methadone.”

  “All right.” I rubbed my eyes. “Sorry. Go ahead.”

  “He was walking north on Mason,” Friedman said, “when he heard that a heavy type named Carson was looking for him. Carson thought Williams had burned him on a drug transaction, apparently. So Williams hotfoots it over to the Bikini Bar, on Taylor Street, where a bartender friend is holding his piece for him—the .380 Browning. So, no sooner does Williams get the piece, than Carson busts into the bar through the front door. Williams doesn’t wait. He starts blasting with the .380. Carson goes down. Naturally, the bartender will no longer hold Williams’ piece for him, because now the piece is hot. So Williams is out on the street—running. Just about then, a black-and-white car turns the corner. Williams runs across Taylor and enters a blind alley from which he knows he can get out through a restaurant run by a customer of his—a Greek, to whom Williams gives a special discount, for exactly a situation like this. Because Williams is pretty sharp. He’s got heroin customers distributed all over the Tenderloin who get trade discounts in exchange for favors, or information or whatever.”