by Bruce Most
“We need not look only to Washington to identify the red Deans of this nation,” Kane went on, his voice growing more powerful and angrier with each sentence. “Indeed, we need not look beyond the borders of our own state to bear witness to the ugliness and insidiousness of this communistic evil. A Russian espionage agent living among us, infecting the minds of our youth, died by his own hand in the very shadows of our state’s glorious capitol.”
I waited by the edge of the rocks until the senator’s words finally died with the light of the sky and the audience filed out. I waited until the bootlickers and speech organizers finished shaking Kane’s hand and slapping him on the back, their disembodied voices rising in the growing darkness. I waited until the sonofabitch reached his big red Cadillac with tailfins parked along the edge of the gravel road that led from the amphitheater back down to Colorado Springs. I came out of the shadows.
“Detective!” he said, his voice on edge.
“Get in the fuckin’ car and drive,” I instructed.
He hunted around in panic for aid but no one was close. I flashed the gun in my hand. He hurriedly climbed in. I slid in the passenger side, keeping the gun in my lap.
“Drive where?” he asked.
“Your place.”
He looked alarmed. “Why my—”
“Drive.”
The lawmaker put the car in gear and began down the twisting gravel road toward the lights of Colorado Springs.
“For a detective, you’re being—”
“You told Thornton about our chat at the Capitol building, didn’t you?”
“I said before, I don’t know this Thornton.”
I reminded him again of the gun in my hand.
“Okay, okay,” he said. “I told him.”
“He tried to kill me last night,” I said, more confident now that the shooter wasn’t Zingano. Thornton knew I was getting close.
Kane wrenched his head toward me. “What! I would never have—”
“And before that? Did you tell him I questioned you at your bomb shelter?”
“Yes, okay, then too.”
Which meant Thornton had figured out by then that I was playing the mysterious Detective Lancaster. The same detective Thornton played when he called Benedict at his home. But for whatever reason he’d chosen not to reveal my true identity to Kane.
“He called my house three days later,” I said. “Threatened to kill me. Threatened my wife and child.”
Thornton knew about dark riders and the murdered Diaz.
Kane gripped the steering wheel. “Jesus! I didn’t have anything to do with that. I swear.”
“You told him I’d found out about your scam at Amache, right?” I said.
He nodded nervously. “He’s contacted me several times since you first showed up. But I never told him to kill you. I swear. He’s a crazy man.”
“Yeah, he’s killed several people. He’ll kill you, too, once you become too much a risk to him. Maybe you already are.”
Kane licked his lips, eyes focused on the twisty gravel road.
“How do you reach Thornton?” I asked.
“I don’t. He reaches me. I have no phone number for him, I don’t know where he lives, nothing. He contacts me whenever he damn well pleases. Usually when he wants money.”
“He’s blackmailing you, too?”
In a rare moment for a politician, Kane fell silent.
“For how long?” I pressed.
“Months. He showed up one night in the Capitol parking lot after a late-night session. I hadn’t seen him since Camp Amache closed. I didn’t recognize him at first. It was dark and he didn’t have his beard. But I recognized the voice . . . and his manner. Real direct, like you. He said he needed money. Apparently ran up some debts back in St. Louis. To some unsavory types.”
“The mob?”
“I’d guess that. I’d bet gambling debts. He had a gambling problem even at Amache. He was always in need of money.”
“What did you do?”
“I gave him some petty cash, but he wanted more.”
“Blackmailers always do.”
We hit pavement and closed in on Colorado Springs.
“Describe Thornton,” I said.
“He’s shorter than you, perhaps by three or four inches.”
“Build?”
“Stocky.”
“Hair?”
“Curly. Dark brown.”
“Age?”
“Late-thirties.”
“Distinguishing marks?”
“A tattoo, if I recall. On his—”
“Right hand?”
“Yes.”
“The initials NT?”
“Yes, I think so. How did you know?”
My mind was racing. Now I was certain of Thornton’s real identity. A killer under my own nose. I needed to lure him into the open. And then what? How could I make him pay for what he’d done without incriminating myself and Benedict?
When we reached the edge of the city, I ordered Kane to pull over at a telephone booth. I handed him a piece of paper with a phone number on it. “Call this number. Thornton will answer.”
“There’s no Neil Thornton in the phone book. I’ve looked.”
“He’s living under an alias.”
Thornton had given me his home phone number weeks back, right in front of police headquarters, and I hadn’t realized it at the time.
“Tell him you’ve got money for him,” I instructed. “A nice little bundle. But make clear it’s the last time. It’s getting too dangerous ’cuz of Detective Lancaster. Tell him to meet you at your Eagle Greetings parking lot in an hour. When he asks how the hell you found him, tell him a private detective followed him after the last time you two met. Tell him you know his true identity.”
Kane blanched under the street light. “He won’t believe me. He’ll suspect something.”
“Make him believe. If you want to salvage any hopes for becoming governor someday.”
“I told you before, nobody will believe you. Nobody cares about those Japs.”
“No, that won’t end your campaign. Thornton will end it by killing you. You’re a liability. You can identify him. You know his past. As a businessman, you know what you do with liabilities, don’t you?”
Kane wavered, then stepped into the phone booth.
The consummate politician, Kane did a good job selling Neil Thornton. Fifty-five minutes later, a two-door 1946 blue Chevy coupe pulled into the parking lot in front of Eagle Greetings. A Chevy I’d seen once before parked by police headquarters. The car slowly circled Kane’s Cadillac in the middle of the small lot before stopping in front of Kane, headlights glaring. The senator stepped out of his car. Thornton emerged after a few moments of surveillance.
“You got this private dick hiding in the bushes, or in your car?” asked Thornton.
“I don’t need him. Small shit like you I can handle on my own.”
Kane did a damn fine job keeping the terror out of his voice.
Thornton stood by his car door, eyes scouring the surrounding darkness. “You’re talking pretty big, Kane. Rehearsing for the governorship?”
“Do you want your money or not? I’m washing my hands of you.”
“How much?”
“Three thousand.”
“That’s not much. Especially when you insist this is the last of it.”
“It’s getting too dangerous, what with that detective nosing around. You need to go away while you can.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Take it or leave it.”
“Let’s see.”
Kane reached in through the open window of his car and pulled out a manila envelope. He tossed it to Thornton. Thornton ripped open the envelope and began counting. Only $1,300 was inside, all Kane could muster out of the company safe. But before Thornton could finish counting, I stepped out from behind the large Eagle Greetings sign and walked several feet before he heard me. He reached for a gun holstered behind
his back, but mine was already pointed at him.
“Don’t, Fitch!”
Simon Fitch froze.
“Hands high, fingers interlaced,” I said. The parole officer complied. I circled behind him and pulled the gun from his holster. A .38 special. I stuffed it in the back of my belt and patted down his jacket and his pants pockets. I backed away several steps. “Car keys.” He dug them out and tossed them over his shoulder. I pocketed them.
“Fitch?” questioned Kane.
“He goes by Simon Fitch these days,” I said. “A Denver parole officer.”
“Well, if we’re making introductions, meet Joe Stryker, senator,” said Fitch.
“Stryker?” said Kane. “I thought he was Detective—”
“He’s no more Detective Lancaster than I am Simon Fitch. He’s just a patrol cop.”
“Whose partner Fitch killed in cold blood,” I said to Kane. “Officer Greene in the pawnshop. One of Fitch’s parolees was Hector Diaz, the man homicide likes for killing my partner. The same Diaz found in a field with a thirty-eight slug in the back of his skull.”
“Jesus,” said Kane.
“I told you that you were dealing with rough company.”
I didn’t have a pair of handcuffs, so I yanked Fitch’s lightweight jacket halfway down his back to his elbows, crudely hobbling his arms. We marched him seventy-five yards to a less public place, Kane’s bomb shelter.
The entire way, the parole officer threatened to expose Kane for helping me. But the senator remained silent, smart enough to recognize that the risk of exposure wasn’t a bad trade-off considering the alternative of being murdered.
Lights shone inside Kane’s house. His wife was puttering in the kitchen, but she couldn’t see us in the darkness. Their dog was nowhere in sight. Kane unlocked the padlock to the bomb shelter and pulled back the heavy metal hatch. We got the PO down the ladder without breaking his neck. I forced him to sit Indian style in the middle of the floor, his jacket still hampering his arms. Kane stood behind me to one side.
Fitch scanned the gloomy shelter. “Whattya you planning to do with me?”
“I’m trying to decide.” I squatted in front of him. “I could drive you back to Denver. Leave you in your car trussed up like a turkey for Thanksgiving and make an anonymous call to homicide to come get you for multiple murders.”
“Which you can’t prove,” he said defiantly.
“It’s true that I can’t pin all of them on you,” I said. “Like the Jap girl at Camp Amache.”
“I dunno no Jap girl at Amache.”
I walked behind him and twisted his right hand to expose the initials tattooed near the juncture of his thumb and forefinger. The tattoo I’d seen in his office. NT.
“These aren’t the initials of an old girlfriend like you told me, are they?” I said. “They stand for Neil Thornton. Your fingerprints will match official records and prove you worked at Camp Amache. That’s where you and the good senator here ran your scam on the internees. Bilked them out of their life savings. That samurai sword you have in your office. You called it a war souvenir. My bet is, it was one of the many possessions you two stole from them. That’s where you knew Marcus Raschke and a guard named Benedict Greene. Both now dead.”
Fitch shrugged. “Which proves nothing.”
I walked around in front of him. “No, probably not. And frankly, like your pal here says, nobody cares much about a long-dead Jap skirt. Hector Diaz, on the other hand, he’s a problem for you.”
Unease entered the PO’s eyes for the first time.
“You murdered Diaz because he suspected you murdered Benedict and set him up to take the fall.”
Fitch laughed. “The little prick wanted money and special privileges as a parolee or he’d sing to homicide. These guys are never bright. You never blackmail your parole officer. But you still have no proof.”
I pulled his gun from behind my back. “Diaz was shot with a thirty-eight. Like this one. Slug probably will match. I’d also guess the tire tracks the dicks found in that onion field will match those on your Chevy out there. You figured nobody would suspect his PO. When they take a hard look at you, friend, you’ll melt like shit under a hot sun.”
Fitch had the look of a man who knew he’d fucked up.
“But we can make a deal,” I said, thinking of the deal I’d made with Zingano. “You have bargaining power on your side, friend.” I looked at Kane. “Isn’t that what politics is all about, senator, bargaining power?”
The politician licked his lips and shifted the weight on his feet, like a kid standing before the principal, but said nothing.
“What deal?” asked the PO.
“You take the rap for Diaz’s murder or I save homicide the trouble and just kill you myself.”
Fitch shifted uneasily on the floor. “You’re gonna kill me for murdering a spic? A three-time loser? Throw your career down the toilet?”
“No, I’d kill you for murdering my partner. And the senator would love to see you dead, too. You’re a danger to him as long as you’re alive.”
“Wait a minute!” burst out Kane. “You didn’t say anything about killing him. I’m not going to be party to a murder.”
I glared at him. “You’ve already been party to several murders, Senator.”
He fell silent.
The fear in Fitch’s eyes signaled that he knew I was willing to carry out my threat. Was I?
“Here’s how it’s gonna work,” I said. “I leave you tied up in your car along with your gun and tip off the cops to pick you up for Diaz’s murder. You make up some story that you two got into a fight. Maybe over gambling debts. I don’t care. The point is, you take the rap for Diaz. You’ll be out in eight to twelve. Fifteen tops. As you said, nobody cares about the murder of a three-time loser. If you play it smart, that’s all you’ll go down for, though god knows you deserve more.”
“I think playing it smart would be for me to take my chances they can’t convict me.”
“You don’t go to trial, Fitch. You plead guilty to the judge and do your time. You do anything to get yourself off, that’ll get you dead. I’ll see to that.”
Fitch craned his head. “Why aren’t you trying to stick me with your partner’s murder?”
“I wish I could. I’d love to see the state execute you for killing a cop. Preferably by cutting your throat. But my life seems to be full of compromises these days.”
“Why all this trouble to protect your partner?”
“It’s what partners do for each other, Fitch. You wouldn’t understand that. He has a wife and kid. All they’re left with are his pension and memories—what a good cop he was, what a good father, what a good husband. I want ’em to keep those memories. I want the guys in the department to keep those memories. I want to keep those memories. A trial revealing the wrong road he went down trying to pay off a blackmailing scumbag like you would ruin those memories.”
It wasn’t just Benedict and his family anymore, I thought. Bock was after my ass and the small matter of my lying and withholding evidence. But Fitch didn’t need to know that.
“A good cop?” sneered the PO. “The guy covered up a murder. He burglarized stores, he—”
I whipped his gun across his skull, toppling him on his side. I knelt by him as he moaned down in his throat. A large welt mushroomed around the gash on his forehead.
“Hey, what are you doing?” barked Kane. He took a step toward us but my scowl warned him to back away.
I tapped the gun barrel on Fitch’s nose. “See, that’s the kind of talk I don’t wanna hear outa your mouth. That’s the kind of talk that’ll get you killed.”
I stepped behind Fitch and pulled him by his shirt collar back into a sitting position. I walked around front while he struggled to regain his bearings.
“Now shall we try this again?” I said. He groaned what I took as a yes. “I’m going to make some guesses about the hell you brought down. You shake your sorry ass head if I’m wrong. Where I h
ave questions, you provide answers. Do that and you might stay alive.”
He nodded slowly.
“You were blackmailing Benedict over Amache. Just like you were Raschke and Kane. He took out a bank loan to pay you and became a burglar in blue to pay off the loan. Did he finally decide he had enough? Is that why you killed him?”
Fitch hesitated. I waved his gun in front of his face. “Yeah, okay. He went to Raschke and confessed he was committing crimes to make payoffs. Said it was worse than facing up to Amache. Saint Benedict, you guys called him, right? He tried to convince the professor that the two of them should call my bluff. Of course, the commie didn’t want that. He didn’t need public exposure about a dead Nip girl on top of his commie problem. So he ratted on Benedict. Probably figured deep down I’d take care of things.”
Benedict had gone into the swamp and died trying to get out.
“Why the pawnshop? That was a high-risk place to kill him. Right in front of me.”
“I needed to make it appear he was killed in the line of duty. Otherwise, homicide would figure it was personal and would keep digging. They wouldn’t let go. Not a murdered cop.”
“So you framed Diaz by stealing his commando knife and planting the watches you stole from the pawnshop in his apartment,” I said. “And threw in the rumor Diaz was working for dirty cops for good measure. Anything to keep their investigation away from you and Kane.”
Fitch shook his aching skull and managed a smile. “Pretty ingenious, if I say so myself. And I thought it was even better that you were his partner. A cop who’d already lost one partner to murder during a robbery and was always at odds with the department. Then lose another one right in front of you. Figured that might throw a monkey wrench into things, too. Throw the suspicion on you, or at least cast doubt with whatever damn story you came up with. Gotta say, I just didn’t count on you being so damn persistent.”
“Jesus!” I kicked Fitch in the stomach and he keeled over and threw up.
“Stryker!” protested Kane, stepping toward me, then stopping when I held up Fitch’s gun.