Called by a Panther

by Michael Z. Lewin

  Stupid games. Why couldn't they just give me a phone number to call in emergencies? I'd promise not to tell anybody. I'd memorize it and not write it down. Unless it was backward or upside down or something.

  In a pan I burned the notes and broke up the ashes. I went into the porch and offered them up to the sweet breezes of May.

  Then I came in and sat for a while. Wasn't there something useful I could be doing?

  A bright white hanky in the window.

  Jesus!

  The telephone rang.

  The sound cut me back into real life again.

  “Albert Samson,” I said.

  A man said, “I saw your commercial tonight and I just wanted to tell you that I think you suck.”

  The Scum Front called a few minutes after nine.

  A woman's voice said, “Three.”

  With a sense of real relief I took the handkerchief out of the window and headed into the night.

  There was nobody using phone number three, so I stood in the hood and pretended to be looking for a number in my notebook.

  I didn't do it well. I wouldn't have believed me.

  On the other hand there was nobody around to perform for. So it became a philosophical question: if there is no one to lie to, is it a lie?

  Well, a jerk is a jerk, that's what I say.

  Wittgenstein would agree.

  There was no call after six minutes.

  I went back to my car and moved to telephone number four. At this location there was major action. A man and a woman walked by arguing.

  I moved on to telephone five.

  Handkerchiefs!

  The telephone rang.

  I answered it and said, “About time.”

  The Bear said, “You can fuck off, Samson.”

  “What?”

  “You're finished. I was against trusting you in the first place, you treacherous bastard. I hope you'll be able to live with yourself because any deaths are entirely your responsibility, you and your cop friends. I don't know how you did it but—” She was interrupted by a voice behind her.

  I said, “I don't know what you are talking about, but I need to see you.”

  She hung up.

  I stood holding the receiver for a full minute. I didn't know what had happened.

  My “cop friends”?

  They can't have meant Ryder and Hollenbaugh. They must know that if I was going to betray them I wouldn't invite police in the front door.

  But what?

  Cop friends. I didn't get it.

  Finally I hung the phone up.

  I went home.

  There was nothing else I could do.

  I put the handkerchief in the window again. It was my only link.

  Then I saw there had been a telephone call while I was out.

  I played the message. A pitiful male voice said that he thought his wife was cheating on him. She said she was out playing bridge with their son, but the kid was a momma's boy and might be helping to hide her infidelity. The voice asked if this was the kind of problem that I might be able to help with. It left a telephone number.

  As a born-again Go-for-It Detective, was this the work I was trying so hard to drum up?

  Well, maybe Bobbie Lee of the missing tooth and carburetor was about to take on another job.

  I wished I still kept a whiskey bottle in my desk.

  I waited by the phone into the night.

  Chapter Thirty Two

  A NEW DAWNING BROUGHT the need to answer a critical question: should I contact the police and tell them what I knew?

  If so, when?

  If so, what?

  But at eight-fifteen the decision was taken out of my hands. The police, in the form of Jerry Miller, called me. He said, “Al, there's something I'd like to talk to you about. Do you think you could come down and see me?”

  “What, you mean like lunch?”

  “Before lunch. This morning. Now.”

  “Has something happened, Jerry?”

  “No, no,” he said without conviction. “I would just like to have a little talk. What time do you think you can get down here?”

  A little after ten-thirty his secretary waved me straight through to his office.

  “O.K., sport,” I said. “What the hell is going on?”

  “Sit down,” he said.

  He had the same air of reserve that he'd had on the phone and I thought about battling him all the way down the line. But I didn't have a clue what it was about. It might be personal. It might be that he had decided to leave Janie at last and he wanted help with his farewell letter.

  I sat down.

  He said, “We have briefings first thing these days.”

  I waited.

  “Scum Front,” he said.

  I waited silently again, but this time because I couldn't have said anything if I'd wanted to.

  He said, “Reviewing. You know. What guys did yesterday on the case. Latest pronouncements from on high. And this morning, Al, you can imagine what I felt when I caught your name.”

  I nodded and swallowed and tried to locate my voice. “I . . . I had a couple of guys come around.”

  “So I read,” Miller said. He picked up some papers from his desk. But he didn't look at them. He looked at me. “Anyhow, so when I heard the name I asked Ryder for his report.”

  I went for “injured innocent.”“What's the problem?”

  Miller didn't answer the question. He waved the papers slowly. “You made a call from a public phone, right?”

  “Right.”

  “To—”

  “Only she was out. What is the problem, Jerry?”

  “Well, I don't know if you know, there's a new gadget available on phones.”

  “Is this going to take long? Because I've got a young daughter and I don't want to miss her fiftieth birthday party.”

  “When we get a call in the department, this gadget automatically gives us the source telephone number and the location of the phone the call is being made from.”

  I waited.

  “The information goes on a rolling computer thing so we keep records for thirty-six hours before they get wiped to be replaced by the new calls. The same equipment can be put on other phones and because of the importance of the Scum Front case we've got all the pay phones in central Indianapolis hooked up. The Scummies use them to call Cab-Co.”

  “Jerry, I know about that. I saw it in action. I was sitting in my car dealing with some serious calories and I saw cops coming out of the woodwork to get at that phone in the shopping center.”

  “Yeah, but maybe you didn't know that the equipment also records the time the calls are made.”

  “Yeah? So?”

  “Well, when I looked at Ryder's file on you it included a copy of the calls made at the phone in question.”

  “Jerry, the point!”

  He sighed and said, “Two things bothered me, Al. I can't quite believe what I'm thinking, but I can't shake them either.”

  “What, for Christ's sake?”

  “First, there's the call you said you made.”

  “It's there, isn't it?”

  “Oh yeah. It's here. But the problem is the time.” He looked at me. “It's nineteen minutes before the Scum Front call to Cab-Co.”

  “So?”

  “So you told Ryder—and me just now—that you saw patrol officers come into the shopping center and seal off the phone. You watched them from your car while you ate a chocolate bar.”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “But it also says here that you didn't see anybody use the phone.”

  “Your reading's come on a lot. Soon they'll let you start the Dick and Jane book where Spot does dirty things with his ball.”

  “See, the picture I get,” he persisted, “is that you're in your car able to watch our guys around the phone a few minutes after a Scummie uses it, but somehow you didn't see anybody at the phone or near it before then.”

  “What am I supposed to do? Make it up? If yo
u'd told me I was supposed to devote my attention to a phone booth I would have done it.”

  “Could you do me a favor, Al? Could you draw me a little sketch of the parking lot and where you were parked and where the phone was and where you got the candy from?”

  “Yeah, I could do that. But why should I? All you're doing is saying you don't believe me when I say I can notice cops screaming into a mall but I can fail to notice somebody putting a quarter in a slot.”

  “You're a trained observer, Al.”

  “I guess I forgot to take my field glasses. But am I supposed to make it up? O.K. I saw a seven-foot guy in a Pacers uniform dribbling something round that had wires sticking out and ticked.”

  “No, of course you aren't supposed to make things up.”

  “Well, what's your problem, then? Do you think I'm a Scum Fronter?”

  “Nooo,” he said, like with two-percent “maybe” in it. “But you're not the most contented member of our community.”

  “I'll moo for you.”

  “It's not a joke, Al.”

  “O.K. It's not a joke. So tell me this. Suppose I am involved with the Scum Front. Do you think I would be so stupid as to make a call for them and leave my fingerprints?”

  He shrugged.

  “I do know about fingerprints, Jerry. They've been around for a long time. Even Mark Twain knew about fingerprints.”

  “And there's this other thing,” he said.

  “You better say it quick, before I get into trouble for assaulting a police officer.”

  “You don't like being pushed around like this, do you?”

  “No, I don't.”

  “Well, Ryder has this rep,” Miller said.

  “Congratulate him for me.”

  “He's abrasive. He's not polite. We get complaints on him. Everybody knows about Ryder. There are jokes. There's a break-in at a church where the minister is ninety years old, people say, ‘Send Ryder. He’ll get a confession.’ ”

  “So?”

  “In his report,” Miller said, “Ryder said how cooperative you'd been with him, Al. And I asked him myself, and he said the same. 'All please and thank you' was how he described you.

  Miller and I looked at each other.

  Miller said, “A cop comes to your door. This is a cop who thinks he's too important for routine work. This is a cop who once broke the skull of a drunk who didn't call him 'Sir.' He comes to your door and he interrupts whatever you are doing and he takes up your time asking about a phone call you made that is none of his business. Undoubtedly he shouts at you to put you under stress to see if you act like a terrorist. Maybe he roughs you up a little.

  Probably he noses around your place. And you, Al, you do not take his badge number. You do not make sarcastic cracks that show him up for the asshole he most certainly is. You do not refuse to answer his questions. You talk to the guy and play it his way and nod and smile and say how you know he's just doing his job. And that, Albert, is just not like you. You eat situations like this with a brown-sugar topping. The better mood you're in, the more of a meal you make out of it. It's fun to guys like you. But, for some reason, not this time. This time you're smiles and sunshine and 'all please and thank you.' So I ask myself why. And I ask you, why, Al? Why?

  Chapter Thirty Three

  I GOT OUT OF POLICE headquarters without wearing handcuffs. What I did wear was guilt and a distinct sense of the world closing in on me.

  I put it back on Miller. He and I had lunched, right? He'd bellyached about how the Scum Front stuff was eating away at the morale of the police department. Then—strictly coincidentally— my prints had come up and a cop came around. It would have been actively obstructive, quite apart from simply stupid, to give a cop a hard time in circumstances like that. Even a bad cop.

  Right?

  Don't I know the difference between something serious and something I can joke about?

  Wasn't the fact that Miller was giving me a hard time evidence that I was right to take Ryder's crap, because the Scum Front was driving all cops crazy? If I'd made a crack with Ryder he'd probably have shot me.

  Right?

  I wore Miller down. Eventually he began to realize that what he'd thought of as a perception was actually the mental aberration of a restless policeman whose home life was nearly as complicated as his professional life.

  And once I got him onto Janie, I was in the clear. Before I left he told me a joke that was circulating in the department: what is the difference between a wife and a terrorist?

  “I don't know, Jerry. What is the difference between a wife and a terrorist?”

  “You can negotiate with a terrorist.”

  I laughed for him.

  On the answering machine there was a message from Bobbie Lee. She asked when and how I would like to take possession of the color version of her drawing.

  I called back immediately. I got her answering machine, who coughed to clear her throat and sounded about eighty. She said, “Bobbie Lee is not to home just now. You want to leave a message, I'll tell her soon as she sets foot inside the door. I got a pencil.”

  I left my name and suggested that Bobbie Lee might come by my office on the way to her evening assignment.

  And I thanked the machine, who said, “Oh, 'tain't no problem,” and then hung up.

  I sat in my chair for a minute and doodled to see if I could think about what I should be doing. But brain activity was an uncomfortable process and my doodles were all dress-shaped and faceless.

  I went outside, down the stairs and around to the luncheonette. It was early for lunch. I ordered food anyway.

  But not the chili. I needed all the love I could get.

  While Norman poked at my cooking food as if it were already me, I played the pinball machine.

  When he slapped the plate on the counter I lost my final ball. I ate in silence and left a ten-cent tip.

  On the way back upstairs my brain made its play. I decided to put the hanky in the window again and give it an hour. If there was no call I would go out to Cecil Redman's house and try to make some progress there.

  Chapter Thirty Four

  TWO LITTLE GIRLS WERE playing with an empty three-wheeled baby carriage in front of Cecil Redman's house.

  It was a kind of dare. The kids stood several feet apart on the sidewalk and took turns pushing the vehicle at each other as hard as they could. Could you hang on to it and not fall down? Were you brave enough not to jump out of the way? The carriage's eccentric motion was the wild card and sent them both into fits of giggles. Only a thin strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street kept the shuttle from coming under traffic regulations. It was vigorous, funny, dangerous kid stuff and I wanted to play.

  But the modern Go-for-It Detective doesn't get to play games just any old time he feels like it. Instead he goes to front doors and plays games of his own.

  My knocks were answered by a short woman with glossy cheeks and bright eyes who looked up at me as if she had answered doors belligerently all her born life. “What you want?” she inquired.

  “Is Cecil Redman here, please?”

  “What for you want Cecil?”

  “I want to talk to him about something.”

  “He ain't done nothing.”

  “I just think he can help me.”

  “If he do, you be the first.”

  “Is he around?”

  “No, he ain't 'around'.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “Could be.”

  I smiled. “I'm not a cop.”

  “I know you ain't a cop,” she said. “You too squishy soft the way you talk for a cop. You more like a . . .” She studied me with a practiced eye. “You more like a cyclopedia salesman.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “He ain't buying nothing.”

  “I ain't selling nothing.”

  She closed one eye and half smiled and said, “Or maybe you a runner for the numbers. Somebody do you a favor and give you the job, you pr
omise to stay off the booze. Somebody knew your poppa.”

  “I wish I was half that interesting.”

  She studied me again and decided. “You know the club?” she asked.

  “What club?”

  “Ain't no real club. But it ain't no headquarters neither.”

  “No?”

  “What goes on there has more to do with the other end.”

  “Excuse me.”

  “You don't get it, do you?”

  “No.”

  “They calls it a head quarters.”

  “Ah, ah.”

  “You stupid, huh? Well, you better join the club.”

  The woman stepped out onto the porch and pointed down the street. “It be a little white building over 24th Street, other side of Illinois. They got a sign on it say 'HQ.' They do all their plottin' and plannin' in there.”

  “And he's likely to be there?”

  “That's what I said, ain't it?” She shook her head a couple of times and turned her back on me.

  The pickup truck was parked in front of “HQ.” The building had once been a little grocery, according to the remains of advertising on the wall. But it was clear that, like so many of the others in the area, it had long been neglected.

  Yet now it was being used. In black paint below the roof there were big letters and little letters. The big letters read “HQ Club.”

  The little letters read, “H-elp save our Q-uarters.”

  I could hear men talking inside.

  I knocked on the piece of wood that had replaced the glass in the door.

  The talking stopped. But nothing else happened. I knocked again and I heard footsteps.

  The door opened and a huge man frowned down at me. He said, “Now, what is all the racket about?”

  “Sorry to bother you,” I said, “but I was told I could find Cecil Redman here.”

  The man's expression did not change as he turned slightly and called inside. “Cecil. Looks like you been forgetting to pay your liquor bills again.”

  Without moving his head, the man winked the eye closer to me.

  From inside I heard, “Say what?” Also some quiet laughter.

  “Man here wants you, Cecil. He looks mean as hell.”

  “Aw shit.”