He let it sink in, then went on. “Sentol, from what Ted knows about it, was originally called a ‘conscience remover.’ Properly administered, it allowed you to fulfill the desires of the primary passions like love or hate or fear. In your case it would be hatred. You wanted to kill Marcus so the drug removed any restrictions on you for doing so.”
“That is,” I said, “if it was administered.”
“Of course.”
“Now things are getting a little too obvious, aren’t they?”
Nolan shrugged, dragged in deeply on his cigarette, letting out the smoke in a controlled grey stream. “There are only two possibilities. One… you killed him. Two… somebody else did and arranged very elaborately for you to be the patsy.”
“That makes me pretty important.”
For a few moments Jerry sat there studying the ash on his cigarette, then he turned those cold eyes on me and said, “Just what did you have on Marcus?”
His tone was a patient one. Waiting was nothing new to him at all. I said, “You remember when I was assigned to Marcus?”
He nodded and pulled on the smoke again. “I knew that you had been assigned, but not the nature of the deal.”
“Orders came from the top. Only six people knew that I was to concentrate on Marcus. I could work in my own way and nobody was over me directing the operation. There was a limited fund made available so I could buy information if necessary and if I had to work outside normal jurisdiction I was guaranteed quick cooperation with other departments. It was set up pretty much like with the Parker kidnapper and the Small-Greenblatt spy thing.”
“I remember them both.”
“In brief, Leo Marcus’ operation was the result of the heat put on the Syndicate ever since the Apalachin raid. The Syndicate couldn’t function as a unit and rather than have it fall apart into fragments that would be difficult to reassemble later, they set it up into sections that would operate individually until they were ready to bring them back under one head again.
“Marcus had the choicest bit. He had the money spots from New York to Miami and you know how he ran them. He was a strong-arm character right out of the Capone books but shrewd enough not to get caught. My opinion is that he was the most vicious hood the Syndicate ever had and he didn’t get knocked off any too soon.
“Anyway, I waited him out. I had the law of averages working for me. Along the line he made a couple of mistakes and before he found out about them and covered up, I found out about them and had him cold.”
“For instance,” Jerry prompted.
“He killed a kid in a drive-in down in Georgia. He was drunk and there was a girl involved. He fractured the guy’s skull with a billy and the girl ran off in a panic. Leo’s companion in the car, a small-time local hood working for him, did Leo a favor and found the broad and scared her off. I found the hood. It didn’t take much to persuade him that Leo didn’t like live witnesses to a murder and he talked up nicely. He even went further… he gave me the sap Leo had used on the kid complete with prints, the kid’s blood and hair particles, signed a statement and promised to testify at the trial, although with the evidence at hand it wasn’t necessary. He was held in the local jail, word spread fast, and the next day he was dead of food poisoning with nobody able to explain how. But like I said, his death wasn’t quite necessary.”
“So you had to go,” Nolan said.
“Something like that. Or else they had to get the information I had.”
“Why didn’t you turn it in while you had it?”
“Because the deal wasn’t set up that way. The commissioners knew it and didn’t ask for it. The procedure had already been established. They just saw what I had, that’s all. That was enough.”
“What did you have on the operation?”
“In general, a breakdown of Atlantic system. Leo’s unit owned and operated a string of motels, all nice and legally complicated. Each place was a drop where the mob did business. What facts I had on individuals weren’t worth pressing. That would come later. The primary job was to outline the operation so a team could move in for the big kill later.”
“And now it’s gone,” Nolan said dryly.
I shrugged. “I could duplicate it from memory, but what good would it do. By now the system has changed completely. The only real bit then was the murder evidence that would have sent Marcus to the hot squat.”
He snubbed the cigarette out and waved to Vinnie for more coffee. “The Brotherhood is getting pretty nervous. Their big wheels aren’t supposed to be getting messed up in two-bit kills.”
“It happens,” I said.
“But only once, Regan. They get touchy about those things. Nobody is indispensable. If a wheel is likely to make trouble for the mob, then out he goes. Look what happened to Dutch Schultz when they thought he was going to knock off Dewey.”
I sipped at the coffee, staring at him across the cup. “I know. I was thinking about that. And like the man said, therein lines the puzzle.”
Nolan frowned and didn’t answer me.
“Never before did they bother to get so damn elaborate about it. Always it was just a few rounds from a chopper.”
He put his cup down and wiped at his mouth. “Sometimes it’s worth while, especially if they got a tailor-made patsy like you seemed to be.” He grinned when he saw my mouth go tight and added, “Now what do you want from me? You didn’t come here to rehash most of what I already knew.”
“Who tipped Argenio?” I said.
He seemed to stiffen under his coat and finely drawn lines showed at the corners of his eyes. When he looked at me it was with annoyance. “You know anonymous tips, Regan.”
“Sure, but not on a cop with a good record.” I waited a second then said, “Why the sudden push?”
He nodded soberly and sat back, still not liking the talk. “This is under the hat, kid. The tip was made to our office. Argenio took it, called the commissioner because the tipster said to do it, and the commish in person directed Argenio to get to your place.”
“The call go through the switchboard?”
“That’s right, but it wasn’t monitored. It came in at eleven-ten p.m., and Jackson, who was on the PBX, had too many calls going to monitor any single one.”
“Neat, wasn’t it?” I asked him.
“Let’s say effective.”
I sprung it on him quickly. “What do you think of Argenio?”
He didn’t like it. His face showed as much. “Fourteen years on the force, he did all right. He has three commendations.”
“I have twelve. That wasn’t the question.”
Nolan leaned forward, his hands gripping the edge of the table. His voice was quiet, but had a hard edge. “Look… he’s my partner and has been for two years. He’s covered me in a lot of tight places plenty of times. What do you expect me to say?”
“That’s what any partner is supposed to do. For all those heroics he draws a regular wage. Now answer the question.”
I saw his fingers relax and the indecision come into his eyes. “I don’t know. He’s a hard apple. He’s hard on everybody and he’s harder on himself. You tangled with him once.”
“I knocked his damn ass off,” I said
“Okay. He’s strange, let’s say.”
“Susceptible to a bribe?”
“Plainly, no. I know that he was offered some big loot, but he wouldn’t touch it.”
“You don’t like him, though, do you?”
“No,” Jerry said, “I don’t like him. Nevertheless, that doesn’t change matters. He’s a damn good cop with nothing against him and there are others that I feel the same about so an opinion like mine isn’t worth anything. What are you getting at, anyway?”
“He seemed to move pretty fast, busting into my apartment to follow up an anonymous tip.”
“He was ordered to.”
“I could have been contacted. I wasn’t that hard to find.”
“The stuff was gone and he found five grand in unexplained
dough.”
“He didn’t figure a plant?”
“Damn it, Regan, we all figured a plant. It was too pat. Maybe we could have done something if you didn’t go off on a bat and…” He paused, shook his head and nipped another butt out of his pack.
I said softly, “You’ll keep looking around?”
He nodded, lighting the cigarette. “I’ll look around.”
I finished my coffee and climbed out of the booth. When I reached for the check Nolan waved me off, his face still impassive. I said, “If you want me, leave a call at Donninger’s.”
His mind closed on the name, remembering the phone number from other contacts we had made there. “What will you be doing?” His voice was the wrong tone. It wasn’t cop to cop any more.
I said, “Something new has been added, remember?”
“Oh?”
“Somebody had to take Marcus’ place.”
I wasted the day doing legwork around some of the old places, but things weren’t the same any more. In a way I was still a cop, but a cop under suspension isn’t quite a cop and there was more lip than talk. I let it go for a while and the wise guys knew what it meant. If the suspension didn’t stick I’d be back to talk to them again and there were going to be some sore faces around. To people like that you talk better with your hands than your mouth. A few still had impressions of the last time we had to talk and rattled off some, but not enough to steer me onto a direct line.
Time. It all took time. You don’t go after the big ones overnight. I let it be known around that I was still looking and those who saw my face knew just how badly I wanted somebody. They knew what would happen when I found that somebody and they knew that I wasn’t going to stop looking for anything or anybody.
The word would go around and nobody would like it a bit, but there wasn’t a thing they could do about it at all. Except one thing.
Somebody could make sure I got killed.
When I got home I was tired and dirty and needed a shave. I climbed under the shower and soaked the dirt and sweat off, shaved without drying down, then wrapped a towel around me and went outside to the kitchen for a cold beer and a sandwich.
For a while I stood there eating, watching the traffic go by on the street below. For a change it was a quiet evening. Before the night was over the chart said there would be from nine to fifteen unexplained deaths, three murders of passion, several hundred cuttings and probably a dozen nice clean shootings with the persons involved apprehended before morning. Rapes, muggings, burglaries numerous, but unnumbered on the chart.
What the chart didn’t show was the subtle creeping thing that was the soft kill. Voters who supported corruption and taxpayers who paid for it. Out there in the evening the big ones who constituted the royalty of vice were getting dressed to preside over their dominions. The serfs would pay hidden tribute by name dropping. Their direct overlords would pay direct tribute in different ways. In a way, everybody paid a tribute and if you didn’t like it there was a place to put it. You know.
Whoredom was dead in the city, the papers said. The administration had announced very solemnly that aside from those pursuing the world’s oldest profession along the street and an occasional call girl working limited operations, generally apprehended, that organized whoredom was dead, dead, dead.
Why didn’t someone tell them about Madison Avenue’s Miss Mad? She published a brochure of her wares and for a thousand bucks you got pictures and backgrounds of three hundred and seven of her “models.” Her name was Madaline Stumper… Miss Mad to the trade… and she lived in the good seventies with a million a year coming in. She paid off half that million to the Brotherhood and another quarter of it to certain ones in the city. But what the hell, anybody can live on a quarter million a year, can’t they?
For five years the bright boys have been trying to track down the marijuana traffic and make feeble excuses when they can’t ring the bell. Hell, everybody close enough to the business knows about Hymie Reeves seeding out abandoned farms in Orange County with the stuff and going in at the right time to harvest it. If a cow gets drunk on the loco weed the farmers generally attribute it to “fallen apples” and let the cow sober up. If somebody spots it growing it gets chopped down in a burst of civic pride and glory with pictures in the local papers. If nobody sees it grow, Hymie comes in at the right time with a pickup and harvests it out on a dark night and makes a bundle. It’s only a weed. No cultivating. No care. It mixes with the sumac, grows like crazy and is an invitation to ride the horse that comes later. Great. Just great.
And on the waterfront the big H comes in like on a pneumatic tube in a department store and so long as the right people get paid hardly anything gets tipped. The fraction of all the stuff that gets stopped by the cops is really only a diversionary tactic to satisfy, an understaffed agency and satiate the press. But the tips are for real and the boys go in. They pick up the stuff and it’s worth the raid, but meanwhile a hundred times as much goes though and what’s lost gets written off just like in business.
The soft kill. Like a gorgeous, wonderful, but syphilitic whore.
Behind me the phone rang and I snapped out of all the things I had been thinking. I put the beer down and picked it up. The voice on the other end said, “Mr. Regan? This Mr. Regan?”
I couldn’t place it at first. “This is Regan.”
“I told you I’d call, Mr. Regan. This is Spud, from the Climax, remember?”
“Oh, sure, Spud, what’s up?”
“I found the redhead, Mr. Regan. Rivera backs me up on it.”
Across the room from me there was a mirror and when I looked into it I was grinning. There was no reason to grin at all and looking at the reflection was a peculiar thing. I was grinning, but I couldn’t feel it on my face at all.
I said, “Where, Spud,” and tried to keep the excitement out of my voice.
“Tonight’s paper,” he said easily. “Two pictures in the News. Front and page three. She was found dead in the river. The cops say an apparent suicide.”
Suddenly the hot feeling in my gut went away and left a tightness and when I looked back in the mirror I wasn’t smiling any more at all.
I said, “Thanks, Spud.”
And he told me, “My pleasure, Mr. Regan. I hope you can still do what you have to do.”
“I will,” I said, and hung up.
CHAPTER THREE
THE front page was a body shot over a caption showing the police launch in the background and a pair of cops laying out the still wet figure of a woman. The story inside was accompanied by a full-face photo of a lovely girl in her late twenties with soft, flowing hair curling down around her shoulders highlighting a sensual, full-lipped smile. The picture was one taken from a wallet she had in her suit jacket and the brief news account stated that she was identified as Mildred Swiss from her Social Security card and driver’s license. No cause was given for the drowning, but the police suspected suicide and were checking all Missing Persons reports and looking for the next of kin.
I studied the face again, closer this time. The photo was more than a simple snapshot. The clarity was unusual and the posture too professional for an amateur job. And there was that thing about her mouth and the provocative slant to her eyes.
Not everybody was riding my back. Van Reeves in the records section and I had had too many contacts for him to pull out the stops and hedge on things like this. One time he had been caught in a trap too and knew what it was like. He was glad to hear from me and told me so.
I said, “Favor, Van.”
“Listening.”
“A girl was fished out of the river last night. Redhead named Mildred Swiss.”
“Yeah, I saw it.”
“Any request on her I.D. come through your department?”
“Not yet. Should it?”
“Eventually. They probably sent her prints directly to Washington, but see if she was listed as a cabaret performer in the city. She looks the type.”
“Will
do. Can you hold on?”
“Sure.”
Van didn’t take long. He came back, picked up the phone and I could hear him rustling sheets of paper in his hand. “Got it, Regan. She’s a naturalized citizen of Polish origin with an unpronounceable last name. Last address is in the Fifties, but it won’t do you any good because they tore all that section down for a new hotel and she never renewed. Parents deceased, no listed relatives.”
“Who sponsored her into the country?”
“Parents. Home in Linden, New Jersey, where they died. Looks like they got here during the war and sent for her later. I’ll have to pass this on.”
“Anything in the other files?”
“No criminal record in this city. Something may turn up somewhere else. What are you thinking of?”
“She’s a type, Van.”
“Hunch or you know?”
“Just one of those things. Thanks.”
“No trouble. Glad you put me on it. Call anytime.”
“It’s nice to know you still have friends,” I said.
“Nuts. You’d be surprised. Now you’ll have more than ever.”
“Sure,” I told him sarcastically and hung up.
After so many years you begin to read the signs. You can see things in expressions and make the nuances of oblique fact channel themselves into paths nobody else would ever notice. It was part of being a cop and a part that nothing but experience and a tiny, ingrained feeling could give you.
Mildred Swiss looked like a type and her background had the little hooks you could hang certain probabilities on. She had steered me into a murder rap and now that it had come unglued, she was dead. Lucky coincidences just don’t come that often. The laws of chance are too strange, too varied.
I grinned and sucked my breath through my teeth, knowing that someplace out there in the crosshatch pattern of the city somebody was sitting and waiting, guts churning with anxiety because I was loose and I’d be looking. He’d be playing a big game and the stakes were absolute.
There was no coming back from the dead.
That was the absolute.
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