by Bruce Most
“Names?”
“I don’t know names, Officer Joe, honest.”
I pulled back. “What cops come in here, who’s laying the big action on you?”
She shook her head, then thought better of it. She coughed up four names. Three I didn’t recognize but one I did. Wes Jackson. Zingano’s partner in the laundromats. The man who’d stood lookout for Zingano and the uniforms unloading something suspicious in the dark of the alley next to union hall.
“Jackson bet much?” I said.
She nodded. “Horses and dogs, mostly, baseball now and then when he’s feeling hot. Heard he’s even gone down to them new casinos in Las Vegas. Stupid, you ask me, when we got new places here.”
“Places like what?”
Lili looked away, as if realizing she’d said more than she should have.
“Places like what, Lili?”
“The Tuscany, I hear.”
“The new Italian restaurant?”
She nodded. “Yeah. They set up a gambling joint in the basement a coupla months ago. Craps, bandits, roulette, that kind of stuff. Bookies use the place for a drop, too.”
I’d never eaten there. Too pricey for my piggy bank. I tucked the information in the back of my mind along with the hundreds of other tidbits I’ve gathered on the streets. Never know when one might prove useful.
Back to Jackson. According to Lili, he was into her and a bookie she laid off on for close to four grand. But Jackson claimed he’d make good on it in a few days.
“He say how?” It sure wouldn’t be out of his next paycheck.
“No, fer chrissakes. Just said he was getting’ some scratch soon.”
“That’s an old story for gamblers, Lili.”
“He seemed real definite.”
Maybe I would get lucky on this one.
Chapter 16
“I’m working on a story, Joe, a big story,” said Lou Sheppard as he crammed an enormous chunk of Reuben sandwich into his mouth. For a little guy, he ate like a heavyweight boxer.
“I’m happy for you, Lou.”
“No, seriously, I am. I want to ask you concerning rumors I’m hearing.”
We sat in a high-backed window booth in the 16th Street Grill. The reporter had asked to meet for lunch before I started my three-to-eleven swing shift. Not at police headquarters where he practically lived. Nor the Denver Press Club, his second favorite joint. No, he wanted to meet at a little dive grill downtown. That set me on alert. I should have begged off, but we went back a long way and Lou often proved as valuable a source to me as I was to him.
Bringing up rumors, however, that wasn’t good. Everybody these days wanted to talk about rumors—Bock, Zingano, now Lou . . .
I tried to joke my way out of what I feared was coming. “I thought all you printed was gossip.”
“Ha, ha,” he said, his mouth now half-full. “I’m asking because these rumors concern dirty cops.”
Shit! When it came to stories, Lou was a bloodhound that could smell a story a mile away buried under garbage.
The sky rumbled. A cold spring thunderstorm brewed over the mountains, yet the air felt crackling dry.
“Are the stories true, Joe?” He washed the remaining bite down with beer.
I would have liked to wash the whole mess down with beer, but I was going on duty so I’d settled for a chocolate malt.
“C’mon, Lou. Guys cut a little juice from a local bookie or get free haircuts for overlooking a backroom poker game. Necessary supplemental pay. Happens in every police department in the country. It’s no big deal. You been around long enough to know that.”
Sheppard chomped another mouthful of his sandwich. Russian dressing dribbled down one corner of his jaw. “This isn’t a little juice, Joe. We’re talking serious crimes. B and E, safecracking, hauling away trunkfuls of expensive merchandise.”
Trunkfuls! Like what Zingano and crew were pulling out of the trunk of a prowl car?
“Didn’t your mother teach you not to talk with your mouth full?” I said.
“My mother always jabbered with her mouth full. Don’t change the subject. Whattya know about—”
“It’s a big-city department, Lou. Bound to be a few stray rogues but I—”
“This is more than stray rogues, Joe. Rumors say an organized ring. Possibly more than one ring.”
“Yeah, so what does that prove? You got evidence? You got names?”
“I’m working on it.”
“Beer talk, Lou. That’s all you got, beer talk. You get this nonsense from Eddie Chandler? He talks swell in his beer.”
“It’s not beer talk,” he said. “Uniforms are cracking jokes. An old lady calls dispatch and reports a burglar in her basement. Dispatch tells her to go down and get the burglar’s badge number. They’ll pick him up at morning roll call. Kids on the street are playing cops and cops.”
I’d heard the jokes, too. Since Benedict’s murder, they no longer were funny. And the behavior of Zingano and his friends suggested there was a kernel of truth to the jokes. But I didn’t buy that the department was infested with dark riders.
“You got shit, Lou. Gossip and jokes. I’m fuckin’ riding with a partner who writes a crazy newsletter on little green men who visit earth. Gossip and jokes ain’t facts, Lou. You of all people oughta understand that.”
“I don’t think it’s a joke.”
“Then why are you asking me?” I said. “Sounds like you’ve already got your sources. I’m not one of these rumored dirty cops, if that’s what you’re asking. I don’t know any. You got names, Lou? Can you name one dirty cop?”
“I’m asking ’cause one name came up you know.”
Swell. My mouth went dry. I sucked at my malt.
“Benedict Greene,” said Lou.
Double swell. “Ah, come on, Lou. You don’t believe that any more than I do. Benedict was as clean as they come.”
“Yeah, Saint Benedict. But I’m not sure what to believe. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I trust you.”
Yeah, good ole trustworthy Joe Stryker.
“Jesus, you gotta a lotta fuckin’ nerve showing up with accusations my dead partner was a dirty cop. Who the hell’s your source?”
“You know I won’t tell you that.”
Bock! It had to be Bock. It’s a wonder he didn’t throw in my name, too. Or maybe he did . . . or maybe he thought it was too risky at the moment, since I was alive and could bite back.
“Why would a rumor like that get started, Joe? Why Benedict Greene? Rumors often have a basis in fact.”
I sucked a long drink of malt and set down the glass. My hand dragged through something sticky on the table.
“Some guys on the force resented Benedict,” I said. “They didn’t call him Saint Benedict out of love. They’re kicking him now that he’s dead and can’t defend himself. Jesus, the man wouldn’t accept a free cup of coffee.”
“You’re saying he wasn’t a burglar?”
“He was my partner. Don’t you think I’d know if he was a burglar?”
He took another belt. “Yeah. Doesn’t mean you’d tell me.”
“Fuck you!”
I stared through the dirty window out onto 16th Street. The last of the streetcars disappeared last year. I missed their boxy shapes and grilled cow-catcher fenders. Cars ruled now, clogging the downtown streets to the point city officials banned free parking to help ease traffic jams. The suburbs sprawled in all directions. The ten-cent Sunday newspaper was all but gone, and what the newspapers were printing was nothing but gossip anyway. And cops were getting dirtier by the day. The city was going to hell.
Sheppard squirted catsup on his greasy fries, stuffed a wad in his mouth, and started talking. His mother woulda been proud. “Why you so pissed, Joe?”
I looked back at him. “Benedict was a good cop and I don’t want to see his name dragged through the mud because of unfounded cop gossip. You’ll ruin his family.”
“Guys are saying things weren’t right
the night he got killed, Joe.”
I glared at the reporter. “They’re full of shit, Lou. I was there. It was just dumb-ass bad luck. Unless you think I’m a burglar, too.”
The reporter took longer than he should have to say, “No, of course I don’t.”
“Then keep Benedict’s name out of your story. If I see it, you’ll never get a lick of help from me again.”
“Give me the facts, Joe. That’s what I need.”
“The facts are in my offense report I gave Bock and his pals.”
Christ, Detective Bock breathing down my neck, now Sheppard. Along with the mysterious $3,500 loan Benedict took out against his house and the apparent blackmail note Ellen found, keeping my partner’s name out of this was becoming impossible.
Any story on dirty cops raised another problem. It could drive Zingano and Jackson into lying low, hindering my chances of finding Benedict’s killer.
“Why don’t I dig around for you, Lou,” I offered as a stall. “See if I can come up with anything. See if there’s any truth to your so-called dirty cop ring.”
Sheppard shook his head. “City desk won’t let me sit on this much longer.” He rose. “Gotta go.”
“I’d be very very careful with this story, Lou. It’s not just my partner’s name you could damage. It’s the whole damn department.”
He tossed money by the remains of his Reuben. “Truth isn’t pretty. You of all people know that.”
Brian Donlevy’s world-weary voice oozed out of the radio on the workbench while I leaned under the hood of the Studebaker tinkering with the carburetor. His Steve Mitchell character was on another dangerous assignment, this one in Cairo, and he was in a jam. That seemed to be his MO: getting in and out of jams. A bit far-fetched for my taste, but it was a helluva lot better than the phony Richard Diamond.
Paula came into the garage and said, “You almost done, Joe?”
“Getting there.” The engine had been idling rough for several days.
“It’s Friday night. You’re often on shift Friday nights. Let’s go someplace.”
I reached for my beer perched atop the radiator and took a slug. “Go where?”
“Dancing at the Troc.”
“I don’t feel like dancing. Got to get this car running better.”
“Sammy Kaye is playing at the Rainbow.”
“I don’t want to go dancing, Paula.”
“We could see a movie. Samson and Delilah is at the Denham.”
“I can’t stand Victor Mature. Besides, what about Olivia? She won’t like Victor Mature any more than I do.”
“We’ll get a sitter.”
“At this hour?”
“There’s a fifteen-year-old girl down the street. She might be available.”
“We’ve never used her before.”
“I’ve talked to her and her parents. She seems like a dependable kid.”
“‘Seems’ doesn’t sound very certain. How can we trust her?”
“When have you become so distrustful of babysitters?”
I stuck my head back under the hood.
“You actually want to spend Friday night working on the car?” she said.
I straightened up and glared at her. “Christ, Paula, you used to bitch because I was gone too much. So I quit my extra job as a mechanic. Now you’re bitchin’ ’cause I want to stay home.”
“When you are home you’re not home.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You sit in your chair and listen to the radio and guzzle beer and you don’t say ten words to me or Olivia.”
I sank against the side of the car. “I’m sorry, honey. It’s been tough at work, what with Benedict’s death. I try to leave it at the station.”
“Yet it always comes home. It comes in on your clothes like campfire smoke. In your attitude. It comes home in ways you don’t realize.”
“Such as?”
“When you don’t talk to me, or you talk about inconsequential things, or you’re overly affectionate or overly cold. I can tell what kind of shift you’ve had without you saying a word. But I never know why you’re feeling what you are. You don’t talk to me about your work.”
I looked at her in disbelief. “Why would you want me to bring up my work? You hate my work.”
“You’re right, I don’t like it. I won’t ever be a good cop’s wife. I won’t worry or suffer in silence. I don’t like the hours, I don’t like the pay, and every day you leave for work I dread you won’t return home. Like Derek and Benedict.”
“Then why do you want to talk about it?”
“Because I love you. You’re a good man and a good father despite yourself. You’re a good cop. Maybe what I don’t like more than anything is you walling me off from your world . . . even if it is a world I don’t want to be part of.”
I shook my head. “That makes no sense.”
“You’ve been a cop for five years and I still don’t have the vaguest idea what you do each shift. What you like and don’t like about your job. What risks you take. Whether you get scared.”
For a moment, I almost gave in, I almost spilled the truth. Get everything I was doing off my chest. Yet I couldn’t bring myself to do it. She would leave me again, I was certain.
I downed a swallow of beer. It was turning warm. “It’s best you never know.”
“No, it’s not. Your job is like a mistress on the side you think you’re keeping secret. Yet I know you have one.”
“You’d leave me if you I told you I had a mistress.”
“I’m not sure what I’d do. But I don’t like what we have. I don’t know what it feels like to lose a partner . . . What hell you must be going through. You’ve barely spoken of Benedict since the night he died.”
“I’m doing fine.”
“You don’t act like you’re doing fine.”
Harsh orchestra music swelled out of the radio.
“Do you want me to go to the bug doctor, Paula? Like you wanted me to after Derek was killed?”
“You can’t keep moping around the house.”
I turned back to the engine. “What I need is peace and quiet.”
When I finished working on the carburetor, I left. Olivia was in bed and Paula was nursing a Scotch.
The carburetor was running better, so I drove to a bar on Dahlia Street in northeast Denver called the Mountain Man Lounge. After the bookie Lili Webb dropped Wes Jackson’s name as a heavy gambler, I’d done some discreet nosing around. I learned he often worked this lounge off-duty, presumably through Zingano’s security company.
With Lou Sheppard and Detective Bock breathing down my neck, I was coming to realize I needed to get closer to Zingano’s security business, to see if I could confirm that he was running a crew of dark riders. What I would do with that confirmation, if true, I didn’t know at this point, considering Benedict might have been part of it. But I couldn’t do anything until I confirmed whether the “rumors” were more than rumors.
In light of my earlier clashes with Zingano, I needed a backdoor way to get into his operation. Wes Jackson might be the door.
The Lounge was standing room only. A thick blue haze swirled around the low red ceiling lights. From the attached dance hall in the back, a small band played a whiny country tune. The closest thing that evoked the era of fur trappers was beer served in Mason jars. The rest of the joint was burgundy colored vinyl booths, lighted Schlitz signs, and a buckled linoleum floor ankle deep in crushed peanut shells.
I spotted Wes Jackson in his uniform leaning against one end of the bar near the dance hall. A half-empty Mason jar sat next to him. I ordered my own jar of Coors and made my way toward the dance hall as if I had no idea Jackson was there, then acted surprised when I saw him.
“Hey, Jackson,” I yelled above the drunken laughter and whine of the band.
He tensed as I approached. “Whatchya doing here, Joe? This ain’t your neighborhood, is it?”
“Nah,” I said, wondering how he k
new it wasn’t my neighborhood. “Me and the old lady got into a scrap and I needed some fresh air. Went to a friend’s not far from here to let off steam, but he wasn’t home. I’ve never been here, so I thought I’d drop in. Didn’t know you were a gunslinger here.”
Jackson nodded. “Weekends, mostly. I like the music.” He lifted his Mason jar and grinned. “And the free beer.”
Extra money, but nowhere near enough to pay off $4,000 in gambling debts to Lili Webb.
I surveyed the crowd. “I hear this is one tough place. Bar fights as often as Ted Williams hits singles.”
Jackson nodded and patted his .38 special. “It’s why I’m here. Wild west, that’s for sure.”
I took a swig of beer and watched the bartender slap a newspaper across the head of a man in a cowboy hat conked out at the bar. The man jerked awake, ordered another shot, and went back to sleep. The country band droned on like a dentist’s drill.
“You working this for Zingano?” I asked.
Jackson turned his head slightly, as if wondering whether my drop-in wasn’t random. “Yeah. Mostly I help him with paperwork, arranging assignments, that kinda stuff. But I like working this place.”
“For the beer, right?” I joked. We both took drinks. “Say, I need to get some off-duty work like this. Anything that pays. That’s what me and the old lady were fighting over. We got debts but she wants to buy more shit. You’re married, right, Wes? You know how that goes.”
He nodded sympathetically and took another belt. He relaxed a little, though his eyes continued to scan the room. Doing his job.
“A gig like this pay well?” I asked.
He shrugged. “It’s okay.”
I wrapped my hands around the Mason jar. “Anything would help. Though to be honest, I need a lot more dough than ‘okay.’”
“Yeah, don’t we all.”
“No, I mean it. I haven’t worked extra duty for the department for a while, and no part-time mechanics job, either, so the bills are piling up, what with our daughter and all. I need some serious coin.”
“Yeah, well good luck on that.”
“Benedict used to work for you guys, right?”