Death of a Pusher

Chapter 15

Wynn went on, “I had planned to have Lincoln and Carter cover the block where Polacek lived, today. We questioned all the tenants at Benny’s apartment house the night of the murder, and no one aside from the Ardens saw a thing, though several heard the shots and took them for backfires. We didn’t hit any of the neighbors along the block, though. Eventually we should, but in view of these names you’ve turned up, I think it’s more important to locate these two men first. Lincoln, you take Carter with you and hunt down this Harry Grimaldi. Rudowski and I will try to get a line on Charles Kossack.”

“Yes, sir,” Carl said.

At that moment Captain Spangler walked in. The lieutenant retired with the captain to the latter’s office to explain our progress so far. They were closeted together twenty minutes. Wynn finally emerged just as Hank Carter returned.

“Well, Sergeant?” Wynn asked.

“No make, sir,” Carter said briefly.

Wynn shrugged. “I hardly expected one. He surrendered the gun too easily. If Goodie White did burn Polacek, the gun’s probably in the river. Corporal Lincoln has your assignment for today, Sergeant. You’ll be working with him.”

Carter’s expression brightened at the news that he was to spend the day with Carl Lincoln instead of with the lieutenant.

Wynn said to Carl, “If you locate Grimaldi, just stake him out and report in. I don’t want the arrest loused up, because I’m hoping to squeeze the name of his wholesaler out of him.”

That was exactly what I had suggested and had been slapped down for. Apparently it wasn’t the merit of the idea Wynn objected to, but my effrontery in having an original thought.

Lincoln said, “Yes, sir. We understand.”

I handed Carl the slip of paper on which I had written Grimaldi’s last known address. “You can start here, but I’ll bet a beer you draw a blank. This is where he lived six months ago, before he went off parole.”

“No bet,” Carl said gloomily.

He and Hank Carter walked out of the squadroom.

Wynn said to me, “Last night Sergeant Carter talked to the landlady where Charles Kossack formerly lived. He didn’t get anything. I don’t suppose there’s much point in hitting her again.”

If he were asking for an opinion, he wasn’t going to get one. I was beginning to develop the same defense Hank Carter used.

“I suppose the quickest way to locate Kossack would be stoolies. You have any underworld contacts, Sergeant?”

“A few,” I said.

“Then let’s go visit them.”

I looked at him. “Together?”

“Of course. Why not?”

I doubt that Robert Wynn had any personal stoolies, for a cop as unbending as he was couldn’t get the time of day from anybody linked to the underworld. Wynn would treat anyone with a record like dirt.

I said, “It would be a waste of time, Lieutenant. My contacts would clam up if I brought along another cop.”

He looked surprised. After a moment, he asked, “Are your contacts any good?”

“I think so. I have one who knows practically everything that goes on in the underworld.”

“Who’s that?”

I shook my head. “Part of the deal is that nobody knows we’re even acquainted.”

“You can’t withhold information from a superior officer,” Wynn said testily.

“Captain Spangler says I can, sir. Even he doesn’t know who my contacts are.”

This wasn’t quite true, because Spangler did know some of my underworld contacts, at least by name. But the captain understood that a cop has to guard his private sources of information if he doesn’t want them to dry up, and I knew he’d back me if Lieutenant Wynn decided to make an issue of it.

Wynn decided not to. A trifle irritably he said, “All right, Rudowski. Go see what you can dig up. I’ll visit the landlady again and see if Carter missed anything. Check in here by phone at noon.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, and walked out of the squadroom.

People become police informers for a variety of reasons. Some hope for a break in case they themselves eventually land in a police net. Some squeal for pay, which has to come out of the cop’s own pocket because there isn’t any fund to cover such expenditures. Some inform through jealousy or because of grudges. None of these are very reliable, though I’ve used all on occasion with some degree of success.

The most reliable type of informer is an old lag who feels indebted to you for once giving him a break.

Dan (Boxer) Wilshire was such a man. He didn’t get his nickname from any pugilistic ability. “Box” is underworld jargon for “safe,” and in his prime Wilshire had been king of the safecrackers. He was credited with over a million dollars in scores when the state had salted him away on a life sentence as a habitual criminal when he was forty-five. Fifteen years later he was released on parole, a prematurely old man at sixty. He was now seventy-two.

I knew Boxer well because he’d lived on my beat along the riverfront ten years back when I was a rookie. He had decided to go straight after his release from prison, partly because a news syndicate paid him a pretty good sum for the story of his life, but mostly, I think, because arthritis had ruined the sensitivity of his fingers. He was greatly admired by unreformed crooks for his past exploits, though, and occupied a sort of professor emeritus position in the underworld. When he was released from prison, he was reputed to still have hidden somewhere a set of the finest box tools in existence. There were also the usual rumors of a hidden hoard of money, but Boxer insisted he had always spent it as fast as he stole it, and because of later events, I was inclined to believe him.

Eventually the money paid him by the news syndicate ran out, and Boxer found himself reduced to living on a remittance sent him by a married daughter. This was enough to get him by, but apparently it hurt his pride. Two years after his release, at the age of sixty-two, he made one last try for a score.

I was a rookie, only six weeks on a beat, when I caught him redhanded with his kit of safecracking tools trying to jimmy a rear window at the Meiner Department Store warehouse. Possession of the tools alone would have sent him back to prison with no hope of another parole.

Boxer turned white as a sheet when I flashed my light on him. Dropping the jimmy to the ground, he stood with slumped shoulders, looking utterly defeated.

I turned my light on the window. There was a small dent in the wooden sill where he had forced in the jimmy, but apparently I had come along before he could exert any leverage, for the lock wasn’t broken.

I said, “Let’s sit down and have a little talk, Boxer.”

We sat on a couple of wooden crates behind the warehouse and conversed for some time. After the talk we walked down to the dock, and I watched him fling his expensive tools one at a time as far out into the river as he could. When the satchel followed the last of the tools, he straightened his shoulders and breathed a sigh of relief.

“I’ll never forget this, kid,” he said. “And rest easy if you think maybe you made a mistake. I’ll never even look at another box, so help me.”

So far as I know, he had kept his word. When I moved up to plainclothes, I started collecting for the favor. Actually, though I had always liked the old man, it hadn’t been entirely youthful idealism which made me give him a break. It had occurred to me weeks before he made his slip that he would make a wonderful source of underworld information if some cop could gain his confidence. So, when I caught him, I was calculating possible future benefits at the same time as I was being compassionate.

I didn’t rub it into the ground, because he was no ordinary informer. As a matter of fact he didn’t consider himself an informer at all. I only tapped him when I needed specific information, never for a general picture of what was going on in the underworld, and he never voluntarily came to me with information. What information I got from him was given because he liked me, not through a sense of obligation. If Boxer announced that some hood I was inquiring about was a friend of his, that was that. I knew the hood would never hear from him that I had inquired about him, but I also knew that further questions would only offend the old man’s dignity.

Boxer Wilshire now lived in a basement flat on the East Side only a couple of blocks from the river. You went down some concrete steps into a cellarway and turned the handle of an old-fashioned bell on a barred iron gate.

The door immediately behind the gate opened and Boxer peered through the bars. When he recognized me, he smiled broadly and unlocked the gate. After I passed through, he carefully locked it behind me again, closed the door and led me across the front room into the kitchen.

“Have a seat, kid,” he said, pointing to a round table covered with oil cloth. “Coffee?”

“Sure,” I said.

A pot was already simmering on the stove. It always was. He poured two cups and sat across from me. His lined face looked ten years older than his seventy-two years, and his shoulders were somewhat more bent than when I had seen him last, but his eyes were still clear and bright and his body still sturdy.

The coffee was as strong and bitter as it always was. After sampling it, I said, “How you been, Boxer?”

“Good, except for this damned arthritis.” He held up both clawlike hands. “I couldn’t open a piggy bank with these things. What’s on your mind?”

“You know a Charlie Kossack?”

“That knothead?” he said contemptuously. “All he knows how to do is use a gun.”

“He been using one recently?”

Boxer pursed his lips. “Not that I know. But the word is that he’s trying to line up a partner to knock over a couple of big jobs.”

“I already know that,” I said. “You haven’t heard of him using a gun on somebody recently, have you?”

The old man’s eyes widened. “You mean a hit? He’s no hired gun, far as I ever heard. He’s just a heist artist.”

“I wasn’t thinking of him knocking anybody over for hire. But sometimes partners fall out. He’d been working on Benny Polacek to throw in with him on these jobs he had planned.”

“Oh, that. Afraid I can’t help you there. I hadn’t even heard he was dealing with Benny.”

“Have you heard any rumors as to who might have hit Benny?”

A withdrawn look appeared in his eyes. “Nothing definite enough to repeat.”

So there were rumors as to why Benny had died and who had pulled the trigger, I thought. But maybe they implicated someone Boxer regarded as a friend.

I took a stab. “How well do you know Goodie White, Boxer?”

Boxer Wilshire stared at me for a long time, then took a sip of his coffee. “You can’t live in the Twelfth Ward without knowing Goodie. Guess I know him as well as anybody in this part of town. He’s done me favors. I’d vote for him if they hadn’t taken my voting privilege away.”

That was that. If the underworld rumor was that Goodie White had taken care of Benny Polacek, I wasn’t going to hear about it from Boxer Wilshire.

I sipped my coffee before asking, “Hear any rumors about what kind of jobs this Charlie Kossack plans to pull?”

Boxer shook his head. “Just that he considers them big. Big in his book probably means a supermarket, where the take might be one or two grand. It wouldn’t be anything like the Brinks robbery. He’s pretty small time.”

I said, “Know where Kossack lives?”

The old man considered. “I think I heard he’s got a flat at the Axton.”

The Axton Apartment Hotel was on Clarkson Boulevard, only about three blocks from Benny Polacek’s apartment.

I said, “Ever hear of a Harry Grimaldi? Also known as Harry Gamble.”

Boxer thought for a moment. “Rings a vague bell. Another small-time punk, isn’t he? A pusher or something?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I don’t know much about him, or where he lives. He’s hardly important enough to keep track of.”

That seemed to be all the information I was going to get this trip. I finished my coffee and left.