“I’ll grab a bite first,” Stanton said, and came to his feet. “You want a sandwich or anything from across the street, Lieutenant?”
“Artists and writers,” Clancy said a bit grandly, sweeping the two coins into his pocket. “Maybe they need to starve to do a good job, but I never heard it said of police lieutenants. I’m getting a decent meal again today.” He grinned and stood up. “I’m getting into the habit, and I like it.”
Wednesday–1:45 P.M.
Clancy had just finished giving Kaproski his instructions and was walking with him up to the desk, when Patrolman Martin pushed his way through the heavy precinct doors dragging a small man behind him. The patrolman’s raincoat was in shreds; beneath it his jacket could be seen to be ripped. His face was bleeding from a bad gash that had torn open one cheek. He unlocked the handcuffs that held him to the smaller man and flung the other viciously onto a bench beside the desk. Kaproski automatically moved over between the prisoner and the door, but the small man made no effort to move.
“Tried to mug me!” Martin growled. “The bastards! In broad daylight the little bastards tried to mug me!”
Clancy stared at him. “What happened?”
“They was three of the little bastards! They jumped me over by the park. In broad daylight!” Martin was fuming. He put his hand to his face and stared at the blood that came away, but his mind was elsewhere, back on the assault. “The rain had just let up. I was on the other side of the street when I seen them. They looked like they was arguing about something, getting ready for a fight, and then they started really swinging at each other so I crossed over in a hurry to break it up. And then all three of the little bastards ganged up on me!”
“Nobody around?”
“They was a dozen people around!” Martin said hotly. “More! But do you think any of them bastards would come and help me? Me, a cop? Don’t make me laugh!” He certainly didn’t look like anything could make him laugh; he looked down at his ripped raincoat and wiped his bloody hand against it. “Bastards!”
Clancy turned to the silent figure hunched on the bench.
“What’s the idea, buster?” The little man looked up and through the police lieutenant above him; his manner exhibited nothing except complete disdain, as if the proceedings had nothing to do with him.
Kaproski moved closer. “Lieutenant,” he said darkly, “you want I should open him up?”
“No,” Clancy said. A sudden frightening thought came to him and he swung sharply back to Martin. “Did they take anything from you?”
“Yeah. My gun.” Martin flicked back the shreds of his raincoat and lifted the torn skirt of his jacket to show his empty holster. The reason for his delay in the announcement was evident in the shamefaced bitterness of his voice; for a policeman to lose his service revolver was a bad mark on his record. His voice tightened a bit as he tried to explain.
“The three little bastards slugged me and when I went down they dragged my coat open and snaked my gun out. I thought they was going to plug me, but they run off into the park.” He looked at the indifferent figure on the bench and his voice hardened. “All except Little Orphan Annie here. I kept ahold of him!” He drew out a handkerchief and held it against his bleeding cheek.
Clancy frowned; his eyes were sharp. “What did the other characters with him look like?”
Martin grimaced, remembering. “They was all little guys, like this monkey here. They didn’t have on raincoats or any coats at all—just jackets. Dark ones, like his. And they didn’t have on neckties; they had the shirt collars on the outside. And no hats. None of them was wearing hats.” He thought a moment and his eyes ranged over the little man on the bench. The object of his inspection didn’t even bother to look away. “As a matter of fact, Lieutenant, the whole three of them looked the same. And they was all dressed the same.”
“Did you see where they came from?”
Martin shook his head. “They was all just standing there when I first seen them, arguing. I don’t know where they come from.”
“What did they say? When they were slugging you?”
“They didn’t say nothing.” Martin’s eyes narrowed as he recalled this odd fact. “You know, Lieutenant, now that you ask me that, that was a funny thing. They didn’t say one solitary word, none of them, all during the whole thing.”
“I see.” Clancy thought about this for a moment and then turned to the prisoner. “All right,” he said brusquely. “Open up. What was the big idea back of this?”
There was complete silence; the little man stared at him with disinterest for a moment and then turned his head to stare with equal disinterest at the wall beside him.
“You know what slugging a cop can get you?”
There was still no answer. Kaproski’s jaw hardened; he started forward. Clancy waved him back, still frowning at the bored-looking little man before him. The prisoner appeared to be about thirty years of age, dressed as Martin had described his assailants, with a pallid face as expressionless as the wall he was staring at. For one brief instant he raised his eyes, but brought them back immediately to the stucco surface.
“O.K.,” Clancy said at last, tightly. “Frisk him and book him and toss him into a cell. We’ll get the story of his life later.” He walked over to the small man and with sudden thought bent down and fingered the lapel of the other’s jacket. The little man did not even pull away. Clancy looked up, his forehead puckered in a frown. “And give him a nightgown to wear. I want to see these clothes of his.”
The desk sergeant had his pen poised over the register. “What name do we use, Lieutenant?”
“Call him John Doe.” Clancy turned back to Martin. “And you’d better see a doctor about that cheek of yours. You’ve got a nasty cut. What did they slug you with?”
“A chunk of pipe. About a foot and a half long,” Martin said. “I remember I seen one of the guys waving it around during the argument, like he was going to crown one of the others, before I went over to break it up.” He drew away the handkerchief and stared at the bright red blood on it almost curiously. His hand carried the swab back to his cheek, probing the area gently. “The bastards like to knocked my eye out.”
“Just three of them the size of this runt?” Kaproski snorted. “You must be getting old, Martin.”
Martin eyed him coldly. “It should just happen to you someday …”
Clancy interrupted the exchange. “Well, you better get that face looked after.” He turned to Kaproski. “And you can hold off on that assignment I gave you for a while. Get this man downstairs in a cell and bring me back his clothes. And keep your hands off him.”
“Sure, Lieutenant,” Kaproski said, and reached out to drag the small prisoner to his feet. “Let’s go, Superman …”
Wednesday–2:30 P.M.
Kaproski came into Clancy’s office and dumped a pile of clothing on the desk. He stood back, rubbing the knuckles of one hand into the palm of the other. “He’s a tough little monkey,” he said, half-admiringly. “Old Silent Sam himself.”
Clancy looked up sharply. “I told you to lay off him,” he said with irritation. “You know I don’t go for that sort of thing. One of these days you’re going to cost the department a conviction with those big hands of yours you can’t keep to yourself!”
Kaproski looked surprised. “He slugged a cop, Lieutenant.”
“We have laws to handle people who slug cops,” Clancy told him coldly.
“Sure, Lieutenant,” Kaproski agreed equably. “We also got cops getting slugged just too damn often.” He shrugged. “Anyways, I only give him a little tap for luck. I bet his mother hit him harder the first time she caught him swiping pennies off the dresser.”
Clancy stared at him a moment and then shook his head wearily. “Forget it.” He turned his attention to the pile of clothing and then looked up again. “Where’s the stuff he had in his pockets?”
“Here.” Kaproski handed over a small folded wad of money. “And he had this around hi
s neck under his shirt.” He fished out a medallion on a gold chain and laid it before Clancy.
Clancy picked up the medallion and chain, studying them. They were both new and glistening. He looked up. “Did he try to stop you from taking this from him?”
“Old Silent Sam? Naw. He wasn’t in any position to argue, and anyways he didn’t.” Kaproski shook his head. “And anyways, why should he? It’s a St. Christopher medal for travelers, and he ain’t going nowheres.”
Clancy turned the medallion over; there was nothing on it a bit different from the one he had at home himself, other than its newness, and nothing that could possibly serve for identification. He shrugged and laid it to one side, picked up the small folded wad of money and then looked up at Kaproski in surprise.
“This is all?”
“That’s the works,” Kaproski said definitely. “Every last thing he had. Not a handkerchief, not even any loose change. Not even a key or a billfold. All of his regular pockets were empty; that dough there was in his watch pocket.”
“That’s odd,” Clancy said thoughtfully, and laid aside the wad of money for the time being in order to study the clothing. He picked each piece up in turn, looking carefully at the seams, turning out the pockets, staring at the slightly cleaner places where labels had once advertised a manufacturer or admitted a size, and had since been removed. Clancy shook his head disconsolately.
“Let’s see his shoes.”
Kaproski slid them over. They were small, fitting into Clancy’s hand almost as a woman’s shoe would. The stitching along the welt had been done by hand, and the soft almost suede feel of the fine leather gave the sensuous sensation of stroking warm flesh. Vastly expensive and unfortunately, vastly unidentifiable. The lining that normally carried the width, size, and manufacturer’s code had been neatly sliced away; no marking disturbed the sole, and the rubber heels had been ground down to obliterate any secrets the molded design might allow to escape.
“Professional,” Clancy murmured, almost to himself. He sighed and went back over the pieces of clothing once again, but they revealed nothing new. He studied the small jacket again, carefully, holding it up before him, turning it about slowly. His eyes narrowed in speculative thought. Then, with a shrug, he pushed the pile of clothing to one side, set the fancy shoes on top of them, and unfolded the wad of money.
A slip of white paper detached itself as he unfolded it, falling to the floor. Clancy bent down and picked it up. He laid it to one side while he counted the bills; there were four five dollar bills and three ones, all crisp and crinkling new. He glanced at the numbers from force of habit and then shook his head at his own optimism—the chances of a bank registering bills of this small a denomination was nil. He moved the money to one side and picked up the slip that had been folded in with the money.
It was a narrow strip of paper and scribbled across it in figures of red ink was the following:
11/16/1500/26.20/57.26
Clancy turned the slip over; the back was blank. He reversed it again and stared at the numbers for several minutes, his eyes half-closed, his brain attempting to make some sense from them. Kaproski had been standing behind him, silent, watching the search; now he cleared his throat and pointed to the slip in Clancy’s fingers.
“What’s them numbers, Lieutenant?”
“You tell me,” Clancy said, frowning. “I haven’t the faintest idea. I only wish I did.”
Kaproski moved around to the front of the desk where Clancy could see him. His voice was even. “Lieutenant, I can open that monkey up, if you want. Professional or no professional. Hell, we ain’t exactly amateurs, and he ain’t knee-high to an ant.”
Clancy looked at him stonily. “I doubt if you could. This is no punk from around the corner. This is a highly trained professional character who probably does and says just what he wants to, and no more.”
“He still has to hurt,” Kaproski argued. “And he still ain’t any bigger than a baby midget. You want to find out anything he knows, Lieutenant, just say the word.”
“Forget it,” Clancy said decisively. “Anyway for now.” He thought about it awhile and then shook his head. “No, forget it. You’d just be wasting your time. Lock all of this junk up. Make out a receipt for the money and the medal and leave it at the desk. I’ll keep the slip.”
“O.K., Lieutenant.” Kaproski’s voice was tinged with disappointment.
Clancy remembered something else; he looked at his watch. “And Kap—it’s about time for your ward to show up, isn’t it?”
“My ward?”
“Yeah,” Clancy said. “Young Martinez, our shoe-shine boy. How did he do last night, by the way?”
“Oh, him.” Kaproski nodded, his face clearing. “He didn’t do too bad, considering it was the first time he ever tried it. He’s learning.” He started to hold out one of his size thirteens as an example; the rain had eliminated it as a possible advertisement for the boy’s skill. He pulled it down. “Anyways, he’s getting the idea. And the boys were pretty good with him.”
“Good,” Clancy said, and forgot the boy as quickly as he had remembered him. “O.K. Lock up those clothes and get me that receipt.” He leaned back in his chair a moment, placed his hands back of his neck and tugged, trying to loosen the tension of the muscles. “Christ! I’d like to see the day we only had to worry about one thing at a time!”
“A dream,” Kaproski said, and picked up the pile of clothing.
Clancy swung around as the big detective left the room, picking up the telephone. “Sergeant, is Captain Wise in?”
“He’s in his office, Lieutenant. You want me to ring him?”
“No,” Clancy said. “I’ll go up and see him.”
He dropped the receiver on its hook, got to his feet, and looked over his desk, as if wondering what data to take with him. But there wasn’t anything concrete to substantiate his theory; all he could take with him were his fears and suspicions. He tapped his shirt pocket to make sure his cigarettes and matches were in place, picked up the enigmatic slip of paper, and started towards the corridor.
8
At a few minutes before three o’clock that afternoon, a man walked into a small branch bank near Coney Island and slipped a note through the teller’s window. The note stated that the man was desperate, that he was holding a grenade beneath his raincoat, and that if he did not receive all of the small bills in the teller’s cash drawer at once, without fuss, he would pull the pin and toss the grenade over the glass enclosure. The teller, a young man and recently married, took no chances but followed instructions. He later told police that, at the moment, he was far from convinced that the man really had a grenade, but he saw no future in taking any chances.
He could not have been more correct in his attitude, for as the bandit took his hand from his pocket to reach for the money, he accidentally pulled the pin of his weapon. The teller just had time to fall on his face after seeing the horrified expression on the thief’s face. He escaped with minor cuts, protected by the barricade of the counter; the man was blown to bits. Some of the bills on the counter-top were also destroyed, but they were covered by insurance.
Wednesday–3:15 P.M.
Captain Wise looked up from his cluttered desk as Clancy entered the office. He noted the serious look on the lieutenant’s face and put his work to one side, nodding gravely toward a chair. Captain Wise knew Clancy in all his moods, and he knew something important had come up.
“What’s the problem, Clancy?”
Clancy sat down, brought a cigarette from his shirt pocket and lit it. He shook out the match slowly, trying to formulate his thought. The eyes he turned toward the larger man across from him were brooding. He took a deep breath.
“Sam, I think I’ve got bad news. We had a very odd thing happen a little while ago. Three fellows mugged a uniformed cop on his beat—in broad daylight—and took his gun away from him. And got away. Or rather, two of them got away; Martin, the cop, held on to the third one. We’ve got him d
ownstairs in a cell, but he won’t talk. Not a word. Not even to tell us to go to hell.”
Captain Wise leaned forward, a frown appearing on his face. “What’s Martin got to say about it?”
“It wasn’t his fault,” Clancy said. “The way they worked it, it could have happened to you. Or me.” He reported Martin’s description of the affair. “Very professional.”
Captain Wise nodded. “And you think the whole thing was rigged just to get his gun?”
Clancy moved his head up and down. “I do. And that’s only a part of it. This character we have downstairs has foreign clothes; four inside pockets in his jacket and two watch pockets in his pants …”
“Any identification in the clothes?”
“None. All the labels were removed from everything; no laundry marks, no nothing. Even the bottoms of the rubber heels on the shoes had been buffed to get rid of the maker’s design.”
“Anything in the pockets?”
“That’s another thing,” Clancy said. “He had twenty-three dollars in brand new bills—the kind you get at banks—and this slip of paper.” He reached across the desk, handing Captain Wise the slip. The captain took it and studied it with a frown.
“What is it?”
“God knows,” Clancy said, and took it back, slipping it into his pocket.
Captain Wise frowned at him. “But you think it’s important?”
“It has to be,” Clancy said quietly, “because we don’t have another damned thing.”
“And that’s all he had?”
“Absolutely all. Not even a handkerchief.”
Captain Wise reached for his pipe and cradled it in one huge hand, deriving some unknown source of satisfaction from the feeling of the cold briar. His eyes were steady on the worried face across from him. “You think it could be tied into these UN rumors. That’s it, isn’t it?”
“It almost has to be,” Clancy said evenly. “The man we have downstairs looks and acts like a professional killer. Nothing in the pockets, no marks, no labels—and these three men jumped a cop for his gun. No local talent would take on a job without having a weapon lined up, but someone who had to come in through Customs and couldn’t take a chance on having anything found in a search …” He shrugged. “Well, then it makes sense. And it’s the only way it could make sense.”
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