Rogue Cop

12

It was twenty minutes later when he reached Karen’s apartment. She let him in and sat down on the edge of the sofa, locking her hands together in her lap.

“I’ve got to know just when this happened,” he said. “Right to the minute.”

“I’ll try to remember.”

Carmody saw that she was holding herself under control with an effort. Her small face was pale and strained, and her lower lip was trembling slightly. “If you can hang on you’ll be helping her,” he said. Sitting beside her, he took her clenched hands between his and rubbed them gently. “Start from the time the police picked you up here.”

“That was ten o’clock. Captain Green got here then and said he wanted me to come downtown. I told him I’d get ready. Nancy was frightened. She didn’t want to stay alone, but I said it would be all right.” Karen drew a long breath and a little tremor went through her body. “I didn’t get back until two-thirty. Captain Green showed me dozens of pictures and took his time about it. When we got back he made me wait downstairs until he radioed the local district and told them to put the police details back at the apartment. That was the first I knew that they’d been taken off. I was scared then. And when I came in I saw that she was gone.”

Carmody looked around the room. “Was there any sign of a struggle?”

“No. But she left a diamond ring on the basin in the bathroom.” Her hands tightened in his. “Wouldn’t she have taken that if she decided to walk out?”

“I don’t know. She might have forgotten it.” Carmody didn’t believe this and he saw that Karen didn’t either. “We’ll find her,” he said, squeezing her hand tightly. Then he went quickly to the phone in the kitchen and dialed Police. It took him a minute to get through to Wilson. “Jim, Mike Carmody,” he said. “I want to report a missing person. It could be a kidnap job.”

“I’ve been trying to get you, Mike. You’ve got to come in. Myerdahl didn’t buy my brief on you. He insists—”

“Jim, hold that, will you?” Carmody said. “This is the lead to Ackerman. Let’s get it rolling. We can talk about Myerdahl later.”

Wilson hesitated. Then he said, “Let’s have it,” in his crisp official voice.

“The missing person is a girl, Nancy Drake. She’s blonde with blue eyes and a good figure. About five-three, a hundred and ten, I’d say.”

“Nancy Drake? Isn’t that Dan Beaumonte’s mistress?”

“That’s right. She left, or was kidnaped from, the Empire Hotel this morning, sometime between ten o’clock and two-thirty.”

“The Empire? That’s Karen Stephanson’s hotel, right?”

“Yes. I stuck Nancy in her apartment. I thought she’d be safe here with guards at both doors.”

“Damn it, what are you trying to do?” Wilson demanded angrily. “Did it occur to you that Beaumonte’s girl might have blown the head off our only witness? You said you’d work straight with me, Mike. But you can’t drop the prima donna act, even for your brother’s murder.”

“I guessed wrong,” Carmody said. “I didn’t figure Ackerman would pull the guard detail off.”

“That was a mighty bad guess. Look, now; I’ll get an alarm out for this Nancy girl. But you get in here, understand? And bring your badge and gun. Myerdahl wants ’em both.”

“Okay,” Carmody said bitterly, and replaced the phone with a bang. When he returned to the living room Karen was pacing the floor nervously. “I can’t forget that I talked her into helping you,” she said.

“This isn’t your fault. It’s mine.”

“She’d just written a letter to her agent,” Karen said, putting the palms of her hands against her forehead. “She was sure she’d started back uphill.”

“The police of three states will be looking for her,” Carmody said. “Remember that.” He put his hands gently on her slim square shoulders. “I’ll call you as soon as I hear anything,” he said.

Carmody walked through the swinging wooden gates of the Homicide Bureau twenty minutes later, and nodded to Dirksen and Abrams who were working at their desks with a suspicious show of industry. Dirksen pointed to Wilson’s closed door and said softly, “Very high-priced help at work, Mike. Myerdahl and the D.A.”

Carmody smiled faintly at him and rapped on the door. Wilson opened it and said, “Come on in, Mike.”

“Anything on the girl yet?”

“No, but the alarm is out.”

Carmody walked into the office and took off his hat. Captain Myerdahl, acting superintendent of the department, sat in a straight chair beside Wilson’s desk, puffing on a short black pipe. Standing at the windows was Lansing Powell, the city’s District Attorney. Myerdahl was a short stocky man with a coarse dark complexion, and small blue eyes that glittered like splinters of ice behind his rimless glasses. He was a tough and shrewd cop, who took his responsibilities with fanatic intensity. As a rookie he had supported his wife and family on two-thirds of his meager salary and spent the remainder on Berlitz lessons to modify his heavy German accent. He had moved up slowly through the ranks, never compromising his standards, and giving every job the full measure of his dogged strength and intelligence. Detectives and patrolmen hated the discipline he enforced but they relished working for him; in Myerdahl’s district a cop could do his job twenty-four hours a day without worrying about stepping on sensitive toes.

Myerdahl stood solidly behind his men when they were doing honest work, and he couldn’t be intimidated by threats or pressure. Now he looked up at Carmody and took the pipe from his mouth. “I asked the lieutenant for an unfitness report on you this morning,” he said bluntly. “But I didn’t get it. Instead I got some excuses. Well, I don’t take excuses. I’ve got no use for wealthy cops. They’re in the wrong business. So you better find another one.”

Carmody’s expression remained impassive. “They should have tied a can to me years ago,” he said. “Was that all you had to say?”

“That’s all I got to say.”

“How about listening to me then?” Carmody said quietly. “I’ve got a case against Bill Ackerman. I want to give it to you.”

“Hah! You think I’d believe you?”

“Forget about me. Listen to the facts. Ackerman’s your target, isn’t he?”

“I’ll get him with men who aren’t carrying his money.”

“Now just a minute,” Powell said, cutting calmly through the tension. “I’m interested in Carmody’s information, Superintendent.” He came around Wilson’s desk, a tall, slender man who wore horn-rimmed glasses and conservative clothes. There was a scholarly, good-humored air about him, the intangible endowment of a good family, excellent schools and a background of noteworthy achievement in the law and politics. But his graceful manners camouflaged a shrewd and vigorous intelligence, as dozens of defense attorneys had learned to their clients’ dismay. Perching on the comer of Wilson’s desk, he smiled impersonally at Carmody. “In my job I’m forced to use instruments of dubious moral value,” he said. “I understand the superintendent’s position, but I can’t afford the philosophic luxury of observing absolute standards. Call it fighting fire with fire, or whatever you like. I don’t justify it or condemn it. It is a condition I accept. However, let me say this much, without any personal rancor, I don’t like using crooked cops. To me they’re a lost and frightening breed of men, and I would prefer to keep as far away from them as possible.” He studied Carmody’s hard impassive face, a curious frown gathering about his eyes. “You’re what some people call a smart operator, I suppose. I’ve known others like you, and I think I understand your reasoning processes. When you join the force it occurs to you in time that there is a way to make the job pay off more handsomely than the taxpayers intended. In short, to cheat, to trade on your position of public trust. What doesn’t occur to you is that the same course is open to every man in the department. They can cheat, or play it straight. Thank God, most of them play it straight. But you don’t give them credit for that. You see their honesty as stupidity, their integrity as a lack of nerve. This is why I find you rather frightening.” Powell shrugged and crossed his long legs. But he was still frowning thoughtfully at Carmody. “You rationalize your dishonesty with more of the same deadly cynicism,” he said slowly. “You say, ‘If I don’t take the graft then someone else will.’ This isn’t logic, of course, it’s merely an expression of your lack of faith. If you were logical you would test the proposition by being honest. Instead, you simply assume that everyone else is dishonest. You prejudge the world by yourself and steal with the comforting defense that you’re only beating the other crooks to it. The thing you—”

“That’s an excellent speech, sir,” Carmody said abruptly. “I’d like to hear the rest of it sometime. I mean that. But I want to talk now.”

Powell nodded. “Okay, Carmody. What have you to tell us?”

“A story about a man named Dobbs. A man Ackerman is afraid of.” He gave it to them in rapid detail, his trained mind presenting each fact in its damaging order. When he finished the attitude of the men facing him had changed; Wilson was grinning with excitement, Myerdahl had hunched forward to the edge of his chair and Powell was walking back and forth before the desk with a grim little look on his face. And the atmosphere of the room had changed, too; it was charged now with excitement and tension.

“Well,” Carmody said, “is it a case?”

“It may very well be,” Powell said. “It’s a logical inference that Dobbs took photographs of Ackerman participating in a robbery and murder. The robbery isn’t important, but the murder can still send him to the chair. And I’m quite sure that Dobbs has taken every precaution to make his case against Ackerman airtight. The pictures are probably in a vault, and his attorney probably has a letter instructing him to present them to the police in the event anything sudden and fatal happens to Dobbs. Ackerman must be efficiently trapped, or he wouldn’t have paid off all these years. He would simply have shot him. So our job is to find the pictures.”

“We can get them,” Myerdahl said, thumping the desk with his fist. “A court order can open vaults. And we’ll smoke out his lawyer. Or if the letter is with his family, we’ll drag them back and make them talk.”

“It will finish Ackerman,” Powell said, turning to Carmody. “But it doesn’t touch Beaumonte or the organization.”

“I can wrap them up for you,” Carmody said.

“How’s that?”

“I’ve got a witness they won’t like,” Carmody said. “A man who knows every name, every date and every pay-off connected with the city’s rackets. He’s been on Beaumonte’s payroll for six years and he’s willing to talk. Can you use him?”

“I most certainly can,” Powell said. “Who is he?”

“Me,” Carmody said quietly.

A silence grew and stretched in the smoky room. Wilson let out his breath slowly and Myerdahl rubbed his jaw and studied Carmody suspiciously. “Well,” Powell said at last. “You’ll be an almighty big help. But since there’s a good chance you’ll go to jail, why are you doing this?”

“I’m tired of that question,” Carmody said, shrugging his wide shoulders. “And what difference does it make? If we get a case, what else matters?”

“Several things,” Powell said, smiling slightly. “The most important thing, however, is to make men like you recognize the difference between right and wrong, to make you realize that you’re responsible for understanding the distinction. We can get Ackerman and Beaumonte a good deal easier than the border-line cases who support them by a cynical indifference to their moral obligations. That’s why I’m interested in your motive. Is it just a grudge? Or is it something a little different, a little better perhaps?”

Carmody was about to speak when the phone rang. Wilson picked it up and said, “Yes, go ahead.” He listened a moment, a slow frown spreading over his face, and then he nodded and said shortly, “Let me know the minute anything else comes in.” Replacing the phone he looked at Carmody. “That might be Nancy Drake, Mike. Radio has picked up a report from a New Jersey traffic car. They’ve got an accident a mile south of Exit 21 on the Turnpike. The victim fits the description of Nancy Drake. But the identification isn’t positive.”

“It’s positive,” Carmody said slowly. “They took her out and killed her. Because she gave me the lead that may hang them.” There was no anger in him, only a cold and terrible determination. He looked from Powell to Myerdahl, breathing slowly and deeply. “You two did all the talking so far,” he said. “Now listen: while you were talking they killed her like they’d swat a fly. Dobbs will be next, then me, then any other fool who gets in their way. They know they can get away with it because while their guns are banging you sit talking and drowning out the noise. There’s no case against them here, there’s nothing but talk. And I’m sick of it. You treated me like a leper because I wanted to help and I’m sick of that, too. Now I’m going to settle this without any more conversation.”

Carmody backed toward the door and Wilson said, “Don’t go off half-cocked, Mike.”

“More talk,” Carmody said, smiling unpleasantly. “Keep it up! Mr. Powell, tell them about right and wrong and the evil in the city’s scout packs. Myerdahl, come up with some stories of your early days as a cop. Talk your heads off, but for God’s sake don’t do anything.”

“I’d suggest you relax if I thought it would do any good,” Powell said pleasantly.

“You’re suspended!” Myerdahl shouted, leaping to his feet.

“You’re suspended, too,” Carmody said. “In a big tub of virtuous incompetence. Maybe that’s why I went crooked. Because I got tired of you good little people who can’t get anything done.”

He walked out and pulled the door shut behind him with an explosive bang.

State troopers had channeled all northbound traffic into one lane to by-pass the scene of the accident. The darkness was split by the red lights of squad cars parked on the grass off the highway. Carmody pulled up behind them and walked down to the gully where a fire-blackened convertible lay upside down, its wheels pointing grotesquely and helplessly at the sky. Men were working around it, measuring skid tracks, beginning the tests on brakes, wheel alignment, ignition system. A uniformed patrolman stood beside a small, blanket-covered figure on the ground. Carmody walked over to him and said, “Has the doctor gone?”

“Yes. He couldn’t do anything. What’s your business?” he added.

“Metropolitan police,” Carmody said opening his wallet. “I want to check an identification.”

“Sure, Sarge. Go ahead.”

Carmody knelt down and drew the blanket gently away from the small figure on the ground. He stared at her a moment, his face grim and hard in the flaring shadows thrown by the police lights. The fire, rather miraculously, hadn’t touched her face or hair. She must have crawled halfway out the window before the smoke and flame got her, he thought. For half a moment he stared at the frozen, inanimate pain on her face, at the leaves and twigs caught in her tangled blonde hair. He kept his eyes away from the rest of her body. You didn’t get back to show business, he thought. You just got murdered. He put the blanket over her face and got to his feet.

“Do you know what happened?” he asked the uniformed cop.

“I heard the talk,” the cop said respectfully; the look in Carmody’s face made him anxious to help. “She was alone in the car when the first motorist got to her and pulled her out. But nobody saw the crash. She lost control about fifty yards from the bridge, judging from the skid tracks. Then she barreled down here and tipped over.”

It was phony all the way, Carmody knew. Nancy had never been behind the wheel of a car in her life.

“She didn’t have much of a chance,” the cop said, and shook his head.

“Not a ghost.”

Carmody walked up the grade to his car. The single line of traffic passed him on his left, moving slowly despite the shouted orders from the troopers. Everyone wants a glimpse of tragedy, he thought, while faces peered out of the slowly moving cars, eager for the sounds and smells of disaster. Carmody looked down the hill at the blanket-draped figure on the ground, and then he slipped his car into gear and headed back to the city.

Half an hour later he rapped on the door of Beaumonte’s apartment. Footsteps sounded and Beaumonte, in his shirt-sleeves, opened the door, the big padded roll of his body swelling tightly against the waistband of his trousers. Without a jacket he didn’t look formidable; he was just another fat man in a silk shirt and loud suspenders.

“I’m in kind of a hurry, Mike,” he said, not moving aside. “What’s on your mind?”

The long room behind was empty and Carmody saw three pigskin bags in the middle of the floor. “You’re taking a trip?” he said.

“That’s right.” Beaumonte’s smile was a grudging concession which didn’t relieve the annoyance in his face. “I’m catching a plane in half an hour.”

“You asked me to find Nancy,” Carmody said. He walked into the room, forcing Beaumonte to step aside, and tossed his hat in a chair.

“Well, where is she?” Beaumonte asked him anxiously.

Carmody faced him with his hands on his hips. “She’s under a blanket, Dan. They pulled her out of a wreck on the Turnpike about an hour ago. She’s dead.”

“Dead?” Beaumonte stared at him incredulously. “No, you’re kidding,” he whispered. His face had turned white and his lips were beginning to tremble. “She can’t be dead,” he said, shaking his head quickly.

“I saw her. She burned to death.”

Beaumonte put both hands over his face and lurched blindly toward the sofa. He sat down, his body sprawling slackly on the cushions, and began to cry in a soft, anguished voice.

Carmody lit a cigarette and flipped the match toward the ashtray. He watched Beaumonte’s efforts to get himself under control with no expression at all on his face.

“I loved that girl,” Beaumonte said, in a choking voice. His eyes were closed but tears welled under the lids and coursed slowly down his white cheeks. “I loved her and she never looked at another guy. She was all mine. Where did it happen? Who was with her?”

“She was alone,” Carmody said.

It took several seconds for this to register. When it did, Beaumonte opened his eyes and struggled up to a sitting position. “She never drove, she couldn’t,” he said hoarsely. “What are you saying, Mike?”

“She was murdered,” Carmody said.

Beaumonte shook his head so quickly that tears were shaken from his fat cheeks. “Ackerman said he wouldn’t hurt her,” he cried in a rising voice. “He said he wouldn’t touch her.”

“And you believed him. Like I believed you when you said you’d give Eddie forty-eight hours.”

“Why did he kill her?” Beaumonte said, mumbling the words through his trembling lips. “He didn’t have to do that. I could have kept her quiet.”

“She was killed because she told me about Dobbs,” Carmody said coldly. “That’s going to hang Ackerman. And it may hang you, too, Dan.”

Beaumonte began to weep. “Mike, please. I been through enough.”

“You’ve put hundreds of people on the same rack,” Carmody said bitterly. “I could laugh at you if you were lying in hell with your back broken. Now get this: you and Ackerman are going down the drain and I helped pull the plug. I’m going with you, but that seems a fair price. You can sweat out the next six months in jail, or you can die right now. The choice is yours.”

“What do you mean?”

Carmody took out his revolver and shoved the barrel deep into Beaumonte’s wide stomach. “I want the name of the guy who killed my brother,” he said gently. “And his address.”

“Ackerman made the plans,” Beaumonte said, his voice going up in a squeal. “He got a guy named Joie Langley from Chicago.”

“Is he still in town?”

Beaumonte wet his lips as he stared into Carmody’s cold gray eyes. “Don’t shoot, Mike,” he whispered. “I’m talking. Langley’s staying in a rooming house on Broome Street. The address is 4842. Ackerman didn’t want him to leave while there was a witness who could finger him. If he couldn’t get rid of the witness, then he planned to get rid of Langley. Langley’s got no money at all, and he can’t move. He’s a bad kid, Mike.”

“I’ll make an angel out of him,” Carmody said, putting away his gun. “Now don’t move until I’m gone.”

When the door closed Beaumonte struggled to his feet, breathing heavily, his eyes glistening with tears. Sweat was streaming down his body, plastering his silk shirt to the slabs of flesh that armored his ribs. He walked around the room, wandering in a circle, occasionally moaning like a man goaded by an intense, recurring pain. Finally, he went to the telephone, lifted the receiver and dialed a number. Staring at the wall, he wet his lips and attempted desperately to get himself under control.

A voice said, “Yes?”

“Ackerman? This is Dan.”

“I thought you’d gone. I told you the ceiling was ready to fall in,” Ackerman told him shortly.

“Carmody’s picking up Joie Langley, Bill. He’s spread the story about Dobbs. Now he’s after his brother’s killer. I thought you’d like to know.”

“Is he alone?”

“Yes.” Beaumonte put the phone down abruptly and walked to the bar. While he was making himself a strong drink the phone began to ring. Beaumonte stared at it and sipped his drink. He wasn’t crying any more; his pale face was set in a haggard expression of hate. “Go after him, Bill,” he whispered to the ringing phone. “He’ll pay you off for me, he’ll send you to hell.”