Power Plays (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries)

by Collin Wilcox

  “A commentator?”

  “Right. A political commentator. He did a kind of exposé thing. You know, like Jack Anderson. It was behind-closed-doors-in-Washington stuff. He was never a big-timer, though. I haven’t heard anything about him for years. Ten, twelve years, at least.”

  “I didn’t know you followed politics.”

  “I don’t, I’m interested in politicians. Or, more to the point, I’m interested in con men. And nobody runs a con better than a politician.”

  I smiled. “You’re a regular squad-room philosopher.”

  Friedman waved his cigar, burlesquing a gesture of self-depreciation. “An observer, let’s say. A connoisseur.” Another length of ash fell to the floor. Now the cigar waved in my direction, inviting me to continue. “What’s the rundown?” he asked.

  As concisely as I could, I gave him a chronological account of the Murdock homicide. As always, when I outlined a new case, Friedman sat perfectly still, eyes half closed, impassively smoking—a big-bellied Buddha in a wrinkled blue suit. When I finished the account, he nodded judiciously.

  “I like it,” he announced. “It’s got a little of everything.”

  “Thank you.” I tried to make it sound wry.

  “What you’ve got to do is work on Richard Blake,” Friedman advised. “If the murderer’s a pro, he sure as hell didn’t pick a stranger off Mason Street and give him fifty bucks to drive the murder car. By the way—” He paused, puffing on his cigar. “What about the owner of the Buick? What’s he got to say?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Canelli tried to get him at his home and his place of business this morning, but couldn’t. He’s still trying.”

  “It’s possible that Blake stole the car. That’s usually how it works. It’s beneath a hit man’s dignity to steal the car.” As he spoke, Friedman levered himself forward in his chair, dropped his cigar stub in the ashtray and sank back with a sigh. “What about Murdock’s luggage and clothing? Anything there?”

  “To be honest,” I said, “I haven’t looked at them yet. They’re still in Property. The technicians brought them in after they worked over Murdock’s hotel room.”

  “You didn’t look at his room yourself?” Mild disapproval was plain in the question.

  “I thought Blake was more important,” I said defensively. “The room will keep. As soon as I found Murdock’s room key, I had the room sealed and guarded. After Canelli finds Walter Frazer, I’ll have him and Marsten start work at the Beresford.”

  Friedman shook his head. “Not Marsten. He started at Hunter’s Point. I want him to stay on it. Let’s give Culligan to Canelli.”

  I nodded agreement, gave the orders to the squad room and called the holding cells, ordering Blake prepared for interrogation.

  Five

  I OPENED MY LEATHER badge case and banged the badge down hard on the small metal table. The table jumped. The suspect winced and turned his head away, as if to avoid a blow. But it was a sluggish, uncertain reaction. The suspect’s head bobbed loosely. His eyes were dead, his mouth was slack.

  Canelli had been right. A night in jail, without drugs and probably without sleep, had robbed Richard Blake of his will to resist. He was finished—used up. Defeat was plain in every blink of his eyes—in every nerveless, hopeless line of his body. At his forehead, the bandage was dirty and streaked with blood. He’d torn off the bandage that covered his hand, revealing an angry-looking gash, stitched in four places. His clothes were dirty and hung shapelessly on his thin body. His odor filled the small interrogation room. It was the familiar stench of sweat and dirt and body wastes, all mingled together in the unmistakable smell of fear and despair that permeates every corner of every police department in every country of the world. San Francisco’s Hall of Justice was less than ten years old: a five-story glass-and-concrete cube. The interior was finished with brushed aluminum for the glitter, with white tile and plastic for the wear. When the building was new, some optimists had predicted that modern heating and air conditioning would beat the smell. But the pessimists had known better.

  I pointed to the leather case, saying, “That’s a lieutenant’s badge, Blake. And I’m Lieutenant Hastings. I’m the one you tried to kill last night. Remember?”

  “Aw, Jesus—” Shaking his head, Blake drew the back of his uninjured hand across his running nose. “Jesus, I told the other one—that Canelli. I was just trying to—”

  “Goddammit.” I struck the table with the flat of my palm. This time he came half out of his chair. His lips began to quiver; his watery eyes first widened and then contracted, as if sudden pain racked his body. He began to tremble. His narrow body seemed to shrink, losing substance.

  Secretly, I congratulated myself. Blake was ripe for the picking. I turned to the uniformed guard and gestured for him to leave. I’d already posted a homicide detective behind the two-way mirror, securing the observation room. If a visitor arrived—an assistant D. A. or a deputy chief—the inspector would use the red light to warn me. For what I intended to tell Richard Blake, I didn’t want unfriendly witnesses.

  Bracing my hands on the table, I leaned close to the suspect. His chair scraped the floor as he moved away from me. I dropped my voice to a low, dead-level note as I said, “It doesn’t matter what you thought you were shooting at, Blake. All that matters is what I say you were shooting at.” I let a beat pass as I looked down into his pale, twitching face. Then: “If I say you were trying to kill me, then that’s how your indictment reads. Do you understand?”

  He didn’t respond, didn’t look at me.

  “That’s why I wanted you to see the badge,” I said softly. “I want you to know who you’re dealing with. I want you to realize that it’s my choice. If I say so, you’re dead. It’s up to me. Now—” I drew a deep, deliberate breath, at the same time straightening, stepping back, finally sitting in a small steel chair that faced the table. “Now, you’ve been through all this before. You know how it goes. You know I’m the one you talk to, if you want to help yourself. Do you understand?”

  He sat huddled in his chair. He was hugging himself now, both hands clutching his scrawny biceps. He was staring fixedly at the table. Sweat covered his face.

  Suddenly I reached forward, striking the table with all my strength. “Answer me, goddammit,” I shouted.

  Shuddering sharply, he desperately raised his watery brown eyes. “I—yes. I—I know what you mean. I understand.” Timidly, he nodded. “But I—Jesus—I can’t—” His voice trailed off as his eyes fell. Finally he whispered, “Listen, Lieutenant. I—Jesus—I’m a junkie. It—it’s not a bad habit. Nothing heavy. But—” Hopelessly, he shook his head.

  “I know you’re a junkie, Blake. I know all about it.” I let a long moment of silence pass while I watched him shivering, still hugging himself. Then, speaking softly, I said, “When you tell me what I want to know, I’ll get you a methadone shot. I’ll have you sent to San Francisco General. They’ll take good care of you. They’ll wash you up, and put you in a clean bed, and they’ll give you a methadone shot. In an hour you’ll be in heaven, Blake. All it takes is an order from me. Just my signature, on a piece of paper. That’s all it takes.”

  Raising his head, he searched my face with desolate eyes, looking for some sign of hope. Finally, stammering, he said, “I already told him everything I knew. I swear to God, Lieutenant. I gave him everything I had.”

  “No, you didn’t, Blake. You gave Canelli nothing. Crap. That’s what you gave Canelli. Nothing but crap.”

  He began shaking his head in a loose, helpless arc. “No. I—I gave it all to him. You can check.”

  “I want the name of the one that hired you, Blake. And I want it now. Right now. Because if I don’t get it—if I walk out that door without a name, then it’s your ass. You’ll fall for murder one. Never mind what you were shooting at last night. Forget that. Just think about that dead man in the back seat, with the ice-pick hole in his heart. Because he’s all yours, Blake. If you won’t
help us—if we can’t find the one who ran away—then he’s all yours.”

  “But I—”

  “You’re stupid, Blake,” I said quietly. “You don’t even have intelligence enough to try and save yourself. You’re about to fall for murder one. Nobody thinks you really committed the murder. You’re too weak to do it. You’re a small-timer—a nickel-and-dime hood. You don’t have the intelligence to plan a murder. You don’t have the guts, either. You’re nothing. You know it, and we know it. But you’re all we’ve got, Blake. So we’ll take you. We’ll put you away, no question. With your record you’ll be inside until you’re an old man.” I paused, letting him think about it. Then: “It’s your choice, Blake. You can fall for murder one—or you can fall for grand-theft auto. You choose.”

  As if he were trying to focus his gaze, he squinted and blinked, looking at me. He licked his lips before he ventured: “Grand-theft auto? Is that what you said?”

  I shrugged. “If you cooperate—tell the whole story—you might not even get that.”

  “Not—not even that?” He spoke timidly, tentatively—as if he were a child, being offered candy from a stranger.

  “It’s like I said, Blake. You can have it the hard way or the easy way. Either you tell us the whole story—give us a name—or you don’t. Your choice. But remember—” I pointed to the door. “If I walk out of here, you’re dead.”

  “Either way, I’m dead,” he muttered. “Either way.”

  “That may be. But that’s your problem. I can help you with the law—maybe. But how you run the rest of your life, that’s your problem.”

  Once more he began to shake his head helplessly. Suddenly it seemed as if I could see his whole desperate life revealed in his pale, formless face: the little kid without friends—the teen-age sneak thief—the contemptible bit of human flotsam that nobody wanted, everybody used. Like an insect, Richard Blake had been born to scuttle away from the light.

  He knew it, too. The truth tore at his face like a spasm of mortal pain. I saw him close his eyes tight against the sudden anguish. With his eyes still closed, tears streaked his cheeks: two tears, one squeezed from the corner of each eye.

  When his eyes came open, he was ready to talk. He sniffled and wiped at his nose with the back of his hand. Whenever I interrogated a junkie I carried Kleenex. Silently—waiting for him to talk—I handed over a tissue. He wiped his eyes, wiped his cheeks and then blew his nose. Dropping the tissue on the floor, he said, “His name is Thorson. That’s all I know. Just Thorson. He—he gave me fifty bucks, like I said last night. He picked me up at the corner of Polk and Sutter, at quarter of ten. That was the whole thing—the whole deal. Everything. I swear it. I never saw him before he drove up. He told me what to do, and I did it. I did everything he said. The whole thing didn’t take more than ten, fifteen minutes. He drove up, and asked me if my name was Blake. Then he slid over, and told me to drive. As soon as I got in, he gave me the fifty. He told me what to do—and I did it, just like I said. We went to the Beresford, and he told me to wait in the passenger zone.” As he talked, his eyes darted uneasily around the room. Now, though, he looked directly at me. “Do you know where the Beresford is?” he asked anxiously.

  I nodded. “On Sutter. Go ahead, Blake. Keep talking.”

  “Yeah. Well, he—he got out of the car. In front of the hotel. Thorson. And he went to a phone booth, about a half block away. He talked for maybe a minute, no more.

  Then he came back and got in the car. But this time he got in the back. He said that a guy was going to come out of the hotel, and he was going to get in the car. In back.

  When the guy got in, I was supposed to turn on the radio—music, real loud. I was supposed to turn the mirror up, too, so I couldn’t see in back. Then I was supposed to drive down Sutter, and turn left on Kearny and then left on Columbus.”

  “And is that the way it happened? Just like that?”

  He nodded fervently. “Just like that. The guy came out of the hotel and came right to the car.”

  “Did you see him—get a good look at him?” He shook his head. “No. I wasn’t supposed to look at him. I was supposed to look ahead. Straight ahead.”

  “Did you hear them say anything to each other?”

  Again, he shook his head. “No. Nothing. I had the radio on, like I said. I didn’t hear a thing.”

  “When did you first learn that Mur—that the passenger had been killed?”

  “Not until the accident, Lieutenant. I swear to God.”

  For a long, silent moment I stared at him. Then, as if I wanted to believe him but couldn’t, I slowly, regretfully, shook my head. “When there’s a killing,” I said, “there’s noise.”

  “But there wasn’t,” he said plaintively. “I swear to God, there wasn’t. Besides, I had the music on, real loud. It was rock music. I couldn’t hear a thing.”

  Staring at him hard, I saw him struggle to meet my gaze, fighting desperately to convince me. Finally I decided to say, “He was hit on the head. There was a fight, probably. You had to’ve heard something.”

  Letting his eyes fall, he gave up the struggle. Slowly, hopelessly, he shook his head.

  So he was telling the truth. Only the truth, not believed, could defeat him so completely. He’d told me everything—almost.

  “After the accident—” I said finally. “What happened then?”

  Briefly he managed to meet my eyes, searching for hope. I didn’t respond—didn’t allow my face to change. I didn’t want him to know that I believed him.

  “As soon as we got hit,” he said, “Thorson yelled at me to back up, and get out of there. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t go forward, because of the Mercedes. And a pickup hit us in our bumper, in back. He stayed there so I couldn’t back up. The driver, he was hot. He started to get out of the truck. So then Thorson, he grabbed my shoulder, hard.” As he spoke, Blake unconsciously touched his right shoulder. “He spoke real low, right in my ear. And his grip, I remember it was real strong. Real strong. And he said, ‘There’s a dead man back here—’ Something like that. And all the time he’s clamping onto my shoulder like you wouldn’t believe. So then he tells me to run. ‘Get out,’ he says. ‘Run. But don’t attract attention.’ Something like that. And then he opened his door, and he got out. So then I—Christ—I looked in the back, and saw the guy, dead. So then I—Christ—I ran. And you know the rest of it.”

  “How’d you happen to have a gun? You always bring a gun along with you?”

  “Because I—you know—” He waved a slack hand. “I just carry a gun, most of the time. Because—” He hesitated, frowning. “Because what I do, it’s dangerous. So I—carry a gun.”

  “What is it that you do, Blake?”

  “Well, I—you know—I push a little of this and a little of that.”

  “Drugs, mostly?” I asked the question quietly, conversationally.

  “Well—” Helplessly, he shrugged. “You know.”

  I nodded, letting a beat pass while he squirmed. Then: “Let’s get back to Polk Street.”

  He looked at me warily. “Polk Street?”

  “When Thorson picked you up. On Polk Street, you said.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” He nodded. “Right.”

  “I want you to tell me exactly what he told you. Everything. Every word.”

  “Yeah. Well—” He frowned, earnestly puckering his eyes and furrowing his forehead. “Well, like I said, he told me the route—told me we were going to pick up someone at the Beresford. And—oh yeah—” He looked up at me, as if to ingratiate himself. “He said, ‘The guy we’re going to pick up owes me money. A lot of money. I’m going to have to talk to him.’ Something like that.” Now his expression was anxious as he scanned my face.

  “Is that all?” I looked at him impassively.

  “Yeah—” Disappointed, he dropped his eyes, and wiped his running nose. I handed him another Kleenex. “Yeah, that’s all. Except for the streets, and the turns, that’s all he said. That’s every wo
rd.”

  In silence, I watched him wipe his forehead, wipe at his eyes and blow his nose—then drop the tissue on the floor. I let the silence continue until he began to move uncomfortably in his chair.

  “You’re sure that’s all. You’re positive. You’ve told me everything—the whole story. From beginning to end. Is that right?”

  “Well—” He shrugged, spread his hands, shrugged again. “Well, yeah. Sure. That—that’s right.”

  After another long, brutal moment of silence I sprang the trap: “How’d he know your name, Blake?”

  “Wh-what?”

  Elaborately patient, speaking slowly and distinctly, I said, “You just told me that before you got in the car, he knew your name. How?”

  Unable to answer, he stared at me with round, foolish eyes.

  “You’re lying to me, Blake,” I said softly. “You’ve been lying all along. You said you never saw him before he picked you up. But you also said he knew your name. How’d he know your name, if he’d never seen you before?”

  “I—”

  “Last night you told Canelli you did see him before. You told Canelli he stopped you on Mason Street. Right?”

  “I—he—”

  “Last night you were lying to Canelli. Either that, or you just lied to me. Isn’t that right?”

  “I—”

  “Isn’t it?” My hand crashed down on the table.

  “I—Jesus—yes. But—”

  I rose from the chair and stood over him. I watched him struggling with it—trying desperately to think it through and save himself. Sweat glistened on his face. Unheeded, mucus streamed from his nose.

  “Say hello to murder one, sucker.” I turned and moved one slow, deliberate step toward the door—then another. Two more steps and I would reach the door. Playing out the bluff, I’d have no choice but to turn the knob and leave the room.

  “No. Jesus. D—don’t leave. Please, Lieutenant. Please. Jesus, don’t leave.”

  At the door, I reached for the knob.

  “He phoned me,” he blurted. “Thorson phoned me, the night before. I swear to God. That’s when he told me his name.”