by Ed Lacy
“See? Nothing. I don't see anything!” she said, hysteria loud in her voice. “I remembered that you contributed before, this morning. That's all.”
People were staring at us. I let go of her arm. “Excuse me. I was... uh... thinking of something else. Here.” I dumped a handful of change in the can.
“Thank you so much.” She recovered herself, clumsily tried to pin one of the red buttons on my lapel.
I shoved her hand away. “I already got my badge, the real one.”
Walking toward the precinct house I told myself I had to watch it, I damn near hurt the woman. And tomorrow, this smart-aleck specialist would probe and ask a lot of stupid questions. Hell, I never had no confidence in docs, except for Art.
As I walked up the steps of the police station, which looked like all New York City police buildings—older than God— I decided I wasn't going to see the specialist. What could he tell me? What point was there in being sliced open, letting them sample the lousy tumor? It always turns out you have it.
The desk man told me Bill was busy but phoned my name in. I stood by the desk and wiped my face, the humidity was as bad as yesterday. I put a couple of mints to work in my mouth and now I could almost see the taste, like I was chewing something misty and black.
There was an air of excitement around the precinct. Nothing noticeable, not a lot of activity, but you could sense it. Every time a couple of guys passed the desk they'd be talking with each other in low voices. And there would be a sort of rush in their steps. I waited long enough to finish a mint, blotted the sweat on my face again, asked, “Is Ash alone?”
“I think so, but Lieutenant Ash is very busy and doesn't...”
I walked back toward the detention cells, past the “Post Condition" board, then up a flight of steps and pushed open Bill's door. He was sitting behind a stack of afternoon papers on his desk, a pair of scissors in his right hand. Although his office only had one small window and Bill was wearing a white-on-white shirt, a brown bow tie, and a double-breasted brown suit, he looked cool. Always a dapper joker, his thin hair was combed back over his almost bald noggin, and he had that youngish look to his puss, like he never had to shave. Except for putting on a little weight and losing a lot of hair, he hadn't changed much in all the years I'd known him.
Looking up from his newspapers, he said, “Hello, Marty. I didn't forget you, I'm busy.”
“I see that,” I said, sitting down in the other chair in his drab office. “You reduced to cutting out paper dolls?”
“You hear the news?”
“Yeah. I heard about all the news I can take for today.” I grinned at him. “So what's new?”
He shook his head slowly. “Marty, I'm in charge of the Detective Squad here. It don't look right for you to be busting in without...”
“If I hadn't busted into a lot of places when we were partners, you'd still be walking a beat now.”
“Maybe,” he said softly. And smugly, I thought, as if thinking, But I'm a lieutenant now and you're just a hotel dick in a fourth-rate dive. “But you know how it is, I have to... well... keep up a front of authority around here.” He waved his hands in the air, as if shoving something aside. “What I mean is, this is a police station, not an old-pals club.”
“Looks kind of clubby to me, Bill,” I said. “Way all these cops off duty wear sport shirts sticking outside their belts. I remember when you had to dress when going off duty.”
“The shirts are cool and they cover a hip holster. That's how the shirt idea started, down in Cuba. Always having revolutions and the lads wore these shirts over their hips to hide the guns they were sporting.”
“Sorry I never went to Cuba. They say the fishing is great down there.”
“What the hell we talking about Cuba for?” Bill jabbed a pile of newspapers with his scissors. “It's the damnedest thing, Bochio swore he'd get Cocky, said it a dozen times we know of, yet the sonofabitch has been in Miami for two weeks, locked in a hotel room with his lawyers. Break that alibi!”
“How's Marge and the girls?”
He put the scissors down and stared at me like I was nuts. “They're fine, except Selma has a virus. Look, Marty ...”
“I remember Selma, she's the youngest. Had blond hair, didn't...?”
“Look, Marty, I'm busy—busy on a murder, so if all you dropped in for was to ask about Marge and the kids, okay, I'll tell them you asked. Now, let me work. Whole damn force is upside down on this one.”
“Which one?” I asked, considering making a crack about Bill's pay-off—maybe he thought I came with dough. But he was very touchy about it, blew up if I even talked about it.
Bill sighed. “Wish I was like you, could just ask 'Which one?' Thought you said you heard the news? They found Cocky Anderson's body up in the Bronx this morning, with a .38 slug through his left ear. You know what that means?”
“What?” I asked as if I cared.
“When Bochio first started out as a strong-arm punk, he ran with a gang that used a slug through the left ear as their trademark for people who knew too much. Also, it's an open secret that old Albert swore he'd get Cocky after the jerk made a pass at Bochio's daughter—tried to rape her is the way I heard it. Should be an open-and-shut case, only nothing shuts, nothing even moves. Damn, a tough one has to break in a hot spell like this—I was set to drive the kids up to Orchard Beach this afternoon for a swim.”
“If he was killed in the Bronx, where do you come in down here?”
“Your brains die when you buried yourself in that hotel? Marty, you know Cocky Anderson had 'interests' on the docks here. For the love of tears, I have every man I can get my hands on out snooping, canceled all vacations.”
“Bochio ain't no hood, and anyway he's been in Miami as you said. Ask me, he's out of the picture. Even that daughter angle is bunk. Cocky was getting too big for the syndicate and they took him out. But the hell with that. I didn't come to talk about rats and punks.”
“Just what did you come about, Marty?”
“Oh... nothing special. Just dropped in to talk.”
“About what?”
“What do you mean, about what? Bill, you're the oldest friend I got. Can't a guy drop in to chat with a buddy?”
“Marty, are you sick?”
“Why? Do I look sick?” I asked, and couldn't stop my voice from shaking.
Bill stood up. Except for the little pot belly he was as lean and wiry as ever. “Marty, I don't like to give you a short answer, but I'm up to my eyeballs in work and you breeze in and talk about Cuba, then about the wife and girls, and then you just want to talk. Damnit, Marty, the pressure is on me, real pressure. Some other time we'll talk about old times.”
“All right, Bill,” I said getting up. “I didn't know you were so busy. Matter of fact I did drop in to talk about Lawrence. He wants to be a cop and I don't want him to have a bad time of it because of me.”
Bill sort of groaned and sat down again. “Don't talk to me about these auxiliary cops. They're driving us nuts.”
“Why?”
“Look, if you ask me this is all a lot of crap—if they think New York City might be bombed, then build air-raid shelters, real shelters. In a real bombing what the hell good will a batch of jokers in white helmets do, or all these drills and the rest of it? Ask me, it's just to keep the people on edge. But nobody asks me. The point is some boneheads downtown made a mistake assigning these tin cops here. This is a water-front section. They belong uptown where things are quiet. Don't worry, they won't be here long.”
“I thought they had their own setup?”
“They do, up to a point. They got some stuffed do-gooder that's a major or some damn thing in charge of them here, and he's such a strutting jerk, somebody is due to clip him. Most of them are crackpots anyway.”
“Lawrence is a bit cop-happy, but otherwise he's a serious kid.”
“Marty, I'm not saying they're all jerks, but you know what happens when you get volunteers. Everything is tossed
in, including the bottom of the barrel. For every sincere kid like Lawrence, you get a dozen uniform-happy characters who are only looking for a chance to get away from their wives, walk around looking important.”
“Me, I don't think there will be a war, but you can never tell. But to get back to Lawrence, watch out for him.”
“I will. He's an intelligent kid.” Bill looked up at me. “Since when did you get so fatherly over him?”
“Since last night. He wants to be a cop, a real one, and I have a hunch he's eager beaver enough to build himself up, pass the exams. All right, with my name he's starting with two strikes and I don't want him to do anything that will make him look foolish now, when he's on this volunteer-cop kick. Last night he was all excited about some crazy butcher and a phony holdup.”
“I know, he came to me with that. He's green and full »f too much pep—thinks he has to prove himself, live up to the Bond name, all that. Don't worry—as an auxiliary there isn't much of a jam he can get into.”
“He can make a false arrest, like he almost did with that wacky meat chopper. Bill, he's a silly kind of kid and well... kids today can't take care of themselves the way we did.”
“Bull. Marty, the kids today are a lot smarter and tougher than we ever dreamed of being.” He stood up again. “Don't worry about him. Couple of weeks and he and the rest of these tin badges will be way uptown, putting in their hours directing traffic, or something. While he's here, I'll keep an eye on him. Marty, when this Anderson mess blows over, I'll have you out for supper some night and we'll talk.”
“Marge would sure love that; she could never stand the sight of me. All right, Bill, don't call me, I'll call you,” I said, and walked out. I heard him say, “Now, Marty, I told you I'm swamped ...” as I walked down the stairs.
On the way back to the hotel I had a sudden longing for watermelon and stopped in at the corner coffeepot. I told the old-bag waitress to give me a double hunk and she asked, “What you doing, Marty, eating for two?”
“That's it.”
She thought it was funny and showed me all her bad teeth in a laugh. “Something as big and ugly as you pregnant!”
“Honey, you don't know how much pregnant,” I told her.
I washed down the bad taste in my mouth with a couple of glasses of iced coffee and I was belching before I reached the hotel lobby. Lawson nodded at the office behind him, said, “Mr. King is quite upset over that rug. He wants you to call him.”
“Tell him I couldn't care less,” I said, walking past the desk and into the hallway that took me to my room.
There was no sense in stalling. I locked the door and took off my shirt, tie, and shoes—to be comfortable—then I sat down and wrote a short note to Flo telling her about my gut. I didn't know why I wrote her, she wouldn't give a damn. But then I had to leave some sort of note.
I got out my Police Special. A gun can be the most beautiful or the most ugly thing in the world—depending upon which end you're looking at. Right now it looked ugly as hell.
I sat on the bed and put the muzzle in my mouth, tasting the oil. In a few seconds King would have another rug to get himself in an uproar over. For some reason that seemed funny to me.
For the first time in days I smiled—if you can smile with a gun between your teeth—as I pushed the safety off.
Two
At five after ten that night Dewey pounded on my door. I was in a drunken haze—I'd knocked off over a pint in an effort to get up courage and as usual liquor had let me down; all that happened was I went to sleep for a few hours.
I stumbled out of bed and never felt so awful, worse than when Art told me I had cancer—for the first time in my life I knew I was a phony, a damn coward.
I couldn't understand it; I'd risked my life plenty of times without a thought. I'd even played Russian roulette once when I was young and well crocked. “If you're not afraid to die, then there's nothing to be scared of” was the motto I'd lived by, yet when my own personal chips were down, I didn't have it—I didn't have it at all.
All right, if I didn't have the guts to do it myself, I'd have to figure out some way of getting killed, because I sure wasn't going to take the slow torture of cancer. It wouldn't have been so hard to stop a bullet when I was on the force, but now... Who the hell bothers shooting a house dick? A lousy...?
Dewey knocked again, said softly, “Marty, the cop is here, your son.”
“All right, all right.” I went to the bathroom and washed out the taste in my mouth with tooth powder, ran some water over my face and hands. I slipped on my pants and opened the door. Dewey asked, “What's the matter with you? I been buzzing all night.”
“I'm sick.” The cold water had done the trick, I was pretty sober.
He looked past me and saw the empty pint beside my bed. “So I see. You're a fine one, not even giving me a taste for my cold. Things went smoothly tonight.”
“Yeah?” It was a welcome shock to realize from now on I didn't have to give a damn how anything went—except to figure out a way of dying before the damn cancer got me on a slab.
“Business been pretty fair with the girls. Must be due to it getting a little cooler tonight. What about your son? Don't help things having a cop hanging around the lobby.”
“You mean he's in uniform?”
“No, but I know he's a cop. I don't like it.”
“Forget him—send him in.”
I kicked the fallen soldier under the bed, straightened up the sheets a little, waved a towel around to get the sweaty stink out of the air.
Lawrence came in, said, “The character out at the desk tells me you're sick.”
“Heat got me down. Take a chair.” The kid had a crew cut like Lawson, was wearing a polo shirt and slacks. He looked better out of uniform. Except for his scrawny neck, he had a neat build for his size.
He slapped my bare stomach. “Still got your rubber tire. Remember how you used to tell about the times you were in the ring and the other guy would waste his punches on your pouch, leave your chin alone, and how you could take it down there all night long?”
I said yeah and looked down at my gut, the fat and the muscles under that, and now under the muscles a lousy tumor waiting like a booby trap. I sat on the bed, changed the subject with, “What's new on Cocky Anderson?” I winked at him. “Speaking of remembering, when you were a young snot you clipped out crime stories like other kids did baseball pictures. What's your dope on this one?”
He winked back. “Okay, keep on riding me, Marty. All I know is what the papers have. Medical examiner claims Anderson had been dead for about twenty-four hours when some youngsters stumbled on his body. The papers say Anderson hadn't been around his usual spots for the last few weeks, but then he'd been a difficult one to keep tabs on. That's about all. Oh yes, they think he was shot someplace else, then dumped in this lot.”
“Bochio still shouting off his mouth down in Miami?”
“Sure. The papers have him saying he's sorry somebody beat him to the killing. Bochio's daughter is reported to have collapsed. I suppose you knew Anderson? What is—was— his name, Rocky or Cocky?”
“Both. He came out of the army a pork-and-bean middleweight, but smart enough to give up the ring. Then he became a muscleman, had some luck—sort of a throwback to the old-style trigger-happy hood, except he used his fists. That's when they started calling him Cocky Anderson, way he used to swagger around. For a time he was a syndicate cop, then branched out on his own, bucked them. He was rough—and dumb.”
“What's a syndicate cop?” the kid asked—like a kid.
“A punk a little more rugged than the other creeps, keeps them in line. You all out to solve the big murder too, Lawrence, like a movie dick?”
He sat down on the bed beside me. “Gather you don't think much of me as a prospective policeman, do you, Marty?”
“What I think is anybody is a fool to become a cop. Talked to Bill Ash today. He says you volunteer coppers get in his hair, that you're a b
unch of screwballs,” I said, wondering why I was baiting the kid.
“I wouldn't go that far; we're a fair sampling of any bunch of volunteers. You have the sincere fellows, some jerks, and a few angle lads—wanting to get in on the ground floor, hoping this will be a good thing, moneywise, in time. For the higher-ups, there are some good-paying jobs, the usual political plums.”
“Think your night stick will beat an atomic attack?”
He grinned again. “I know what Lieutenant Ash thinks, and in a way he's right—if we really expect a war we should build shelters now. But then, even a little preparedness is better than none at all. Hell, Marty, you know why I'm in it—gives me a taste of being a cop.”
“Are you still working on the big liverwurst mystery?”