Shield for Murder

17

Mark sat in a waiting room at the hospital, chain-smoking, and wondering what he would do if she died. Nothing, probably, he thought. Maybe he’d get drunk occasionally and tell his story to a favorite bartender, but that would be about all. You just didn’t do anything when people died, he knew. You just wished they hadn’t.

Ramussen came in and sat beside him in a wicker chair. “Any news at all yet, Mark?”

“No, the doctor is still with her. He said he’d let me know what’s happening.” He lit another cigarette and glanced at the Lieutenant. “And what’s with Nolan?”

“He got out of the city, it appears. We picked up a cab driver who took him over to Camden. According to his story Nolan was trying to get a ride to Atlantic City.”

“That doesn’t seem very smart.”

“I know. He’ll have his back to a wall there. But he might be trying to get us started in the wrong direction. He might be in Philly now, or holed up somewhere in Camden.”

“You’ll get him, of course.”

“Yes, I suppose so. The eight-state alarm is out, and that will make it tough for him to move around. If he didn’t have money, I’d take a small bet that we’d have him by morning. But that twenty-five thousand could make a difference. He’s liable to buy some help.”

Mark glanced at his watch. Eleven-thirty. She’d been in there an hour and a half now.

“She’ll be all right, Mark,” Ramussen said.

“Thanks,” Mark said.

They were silent a few moments, smoking and staring at the walls without seeing anything. Then Ramussen said: “You were right, Mark. The department does hang onto a bad cop too long. Cops protect each other, right or wrong, and that gives the rogue cop too much of a break.”

Mark nodded, not giving much of a damn whether he’d been right or not; but he could appreciate what the admission meant to Ramussen.

A young man in a white jacket came into the room, glanced at Mark. “You waiting for that girl in Operating?”

Ramussen stood up. “Yes. What’s the story?”

“She’s not in the best of shape, of course. Lost a lot of blood. But it was a clean wound and, barring complications, she should be all right.”

Mark let out his breath slowly. “Any chance of seeing her now?”

“Lord, no. She’s still under the anesthetic. Maybe by tomorrow morning she’ll be strong enough to talk for a while, but that’s no promise, mind you.”

Ramussen grinned and patted Mark on the arm. “I told you she’d be all right.”

“Yes, you did,” Mark said, smiling back at him.

“Well, I’ve got to get back to work. Odell lined up some stoolies to send over to Jersey, and I want to talk to them before they go. Why don’t you get some sleep?”

“No, I’ll stick around for a while.”

“Damn it, you can’t see her until morning.”

Mark shrugged. “I’ll wait,” he said.

“Okay.” Ramussen patted his arm and walked out.

Mark settled down and lit another cigarette. Surprisingly it tasted fine.

Nolan sat at the window of his room the next morning, watching the glittering patterns of sunlight in the trees along the street. He held a glass of diluted whisky in his hand and his eyes were red-rimmed and tired. Some kids were playing ball farther down the block and he could hear their shrill intense voices as clearly as if they were in the next room. All his nerves were painfully sensitive this morning. He was aware of the coldness of the glass in his hand, and the tiny spikes of starched cloth around the edge of his collar, and the heat of his clothes and the stuffy smell of the room.

There was a knock on the door and he came to his feet in a half-crouch, his hand moving to his gun.

“Who is it?”

“It’s me, Mrs. Bailey. I was wondering if you wanted some breakfast.”

“No, never mind.”

“I could bring you something if you aren’t feeling well.”

Damn her, Nolan thought irritably. Already she was making him an object of speculation. “Thanks, but I’m fine,” he said. “I’ll be down shortly.”

“Well, all right.”

Nolan listened to her move away down the corridor, and then he wandered about the room, taking a short drink occasionally, his thoughts inevitably coming to a dead-end. He was red-hot by now, the Camden police would be looking for him, and when they didn’t find him in Atlantic City they’d scour this area from top to bottom. He knew he had to move soon. But where?

He sat on the bed and counted his money. The twenty-five thousand of Espizito’s was intact, of course, and he had about thirty dollars of his own money. The six thousand under the hub cap of his car would make some mechanic happy, he thought.

That was plenty of money, but he didn’t know how to put it to work.

Standing, he paced the room a while, and finally an idea occurred to him; an idea he didn’t like but which was about his only chance. He walked down to the bathroom, washed his hands and face thoroughly and combed his hair. His beard looked coarse and red in the sunlight that streamed in a window, but after searching vainly for a razor in the bathroom he returned to his room and picked up his coat and hat and went downstairs. Mrs. Bailey popped out of her first floor living room as he came down the steps.

“Going out, eh?” she said brightly.

“Yes, that’s right. But first I’d like to use your phone.”

“Certainly. It’s at the end of the corridor and you’ll need a nickel.”

“Thanks.”

“Calling your brother, eh?”

Nolan fought down his anger. “Yeah,” he said and walked back to the telephone, which was on a table under a light. There was a city directory there, also, and he thumbed through it until he found the number he wanted. Dialing, he was conscious that Mrs. Bailey had returned to her living room, but hadn’t closed the door. He could imagine her long-eared interest in his conversation.

The man who answered said, “Hello,” in a pleasant cultivated voice.

“Mr. Reynolds?”

“This is he speaking.”

“We’ve got some mutual friends, Mr. Reynolds. Ramussen over in Philadelphia, for instance. I’d like to talk to you about a little problem I’m facing.”

“Ramussen? Oh, just a moment.” He was gone a few seconds, and Nolan began to get anxious. Then Reynolds was back. “I just wanted to close a door. This is Barny Nolan, right?”

“That’s right.”

“I gather you can’t talk, eh? Well, friend, you can’t talk to me either. You’re about as hot as a man can get, in case you don’t know it.”

“I know all about that,” Nolan said. “But I’ve got the stuff to break a hot spell, if you follow me.”

“Oh, I see. You have money, a lot of it?”

“That’s right.”

Reynolds chuckled into the phone. The sound irritated Nolan.

“Well, how about it?” he said. “Can you help me?”

“My friend, a wiser man than I once said that in every ordered society wealth is a sacred thing, and that in a democracy, it is the only sacred thing. You should thank God we live in a democracy. Where are you now?”

Nolan gave him the address.

“Very well. Get out of there and walk three blocks west to Seventeenth and Cooper. There’s a taproom on the corner. Take a back booth and wait for me. I’ll be along in perhaps ten minutes. Got that?”

“Right,” Nolan said, and hung up the phone.

He walked down the corridor and opened the front door. He was conscious of Mrs. Bailey’s eyes boring into his back from the front windows of the house.

Nolan strode down the tree-lined street, past the ball-playing kids and came to the taproom at Seventeenth and Cooper. He walked in and sat down in a rear booth and ordered a beer with a shot of rye from the bartender. There was nothing pretentious about this place; it looked Eke a neighborhood hang-out, with bowling machines, dart boards and a generally unadorned atmosphere.

Nolan sipped the beer and thought about Reynolds. Dwight J. Reynolds was the full name. He was a lawyer, a bondsman, a politician, a fixer, an operator. There were those who insisted he was honest up to a point; others said he was dishonest up to a point. The distinction struck Nolan as a moot one. Reynolds was not on the opposite side of the law, strictly speaking. His machinations were intertangled and intertwined on both sides of the law, and over the top and under the bottom of it, in a manner that made any clear-cut definition of his activities impossible. He worked with gangsters and school boards, racketmen and stool pigeons, reformers and gamblers, supplying them all with whatever they needed, whether that happened to be fast transportation out of town, a hideout, a judge’s ear, the repeal of a zoning ordinance or a few decks of snow. The only consistent stipulation in any of Reynolds’ deals was that money, and generous amounts of it, wound up in his hands.

Nolan knew him casually, and wasn’t happy about getting mixed up with him. Reynolds would bleed him to death, but there were other and worse ways of bleeding to death.

He came in five minutes later, a dapperly dressed man with graying hair, a tiny mustache, and alert, shifting eyes. He sat down opposite Nolan and dropped a ring of keys on the table. “My car is outside,” he said, and put a slip of paper beside the keys. “There’s an address where you can spend the day. I’ll be along in half an hour.”

“Have you seen the papers this morning?”

“I’m not here to gossip, Nolan.”

“Is the girl dead?”

“Not yet. Now stick to business. After today you’ll be beyond help. Do you understand?”

“Sure, sure,” Nolan said. “Relax, damn it. It’s my neck, right?”

“And mine, too,” Reynolds said. “This will cost you ten thousand, Nolan. Five thousand now, and five when you start on your way.”

“Okay.” Nolan fumbled for his money, counted off five bills and shoved them into Reynolds’ cold eager hands.

“Get moving now,” Reynolds said.

Nolan finished his beer in one gulp and went outside into the hot sunlight. Reynolds’ car, a Buick, was at the curb. He climbed in, started the motor, and drove away slowly, getting the feel of the transmission. The car’s smooth power was a tonic to him; he felt fine with his big hands resting lightly on the wheel and the speedometer needle climbing swiftly as he poured gas into the motor. This was like the old days, he thought, as he made a turn and shifted easily into second gear. Like the old days in Wet Basin when he was running liquor. For an instant he was tempted to let the Reynolds deal go to hell, and get out of town on his own. He could lose any State cop with this buggy. But he knew he wouldn’t get ten miles.

He found the address Reynolds had given him and coasted half a block past it before parking the Buick. Then, pulling his hatbrim down, he walked swiftly back to the weather-beaten, two-story frame house.

The door was opened by a fat untidy woman who wore a house dress and frayed felt slippers. “You wait a minute, I’ll get Morris,” she said, and slammed the door in his face.

The door was opened a moment later by a man who stood a head taller than Nolan, but was lean to the point of emaciation. His skull was narrow and a lock of long dark hair hung over his bony forehead. He stared at Nolan suspiciously.

“Reynolds told me to come here. You Morris?”

“Yeah, I’m Morris. Come in. It’s a hell of a time to be sending a hot guy here though.”

“It wasn’t my idea,” Nolan said.

“All right, come on with me.” Morris turned to the woman. “Freda, keep your eye on the street for a while, and see if you notice anybody looking out their windows this way.”

Nolan followed him to a stairway that led down to a sour-smelling basement. There Morris unsnapped a lock from the door of a room behind the furnace. “In here,” he said, leading the way. He snapped on a light and Nolan saw that the room was furnished with a cot, a table and a couple of kitchen chairs. There was no window.

Morris turned to him, an unpleasant smile on his lips. In the strong unshaded light he looked like something from a sick nightmare. “This is five hundred bucks, without maid service,” he said.

“That’s by the day, I’ll bet,” Nolan said.

“That’s right.”

“Okay,” Nolan said. He gave Morris a grand note. “I’m paid up for two days now.”

Morris accepted the bill without comment and walked to the door. He fitted the lock back into the hasp, and was about to close the door, when Nolan said, “Never mind the lock, Morris. We’ll leave the door open just in case I have some women visitors. We don’t want to make the house dick suspicious.”

“I’ve got to lock it,” Morris said, and drew his lips down petulantly. “Supposing someone comes down here?”

“Well now I’ll tell you about that,” Nolan said, and walked over and jerked the lock from Morris’s hand. “If anyone I don’t know comes down here, he’s going to be shot dead, understand? I’m not a pet monkey, Morris. I like open doors. Now how about some food?”

“That will be extra.”

“I knew that. Get me some sandwiches and coffee and a couple of bottles of liquor.”

When Morris disappeared, grumbling under his breath, Nolan removed his coat and stretched out on the cot. He stared at the ceiling, wishing he had a cigar, wishing he had a drink. Linda wasn’t dead, Reynolds had said. She was still alive.

There were two Lindas in his mind now, the one who had liked him, who had trusted him, and had been his friend: and the other one who had sold him out to Ramussen.

He didn’t think about that second Linda. She wasn’t important. They had made her do that, anyway. He thought about the first Linda, the bright and smiling one, who had patted his hand one night in the car, and who had stroked his head when he was drunk and ready to explode.

It was hot and quiet in the basement and there was nothing for him to do but think.

Reynolds arrived within half an hour. He walked into the room briskly and sat down in a straight-backed chair. “Now it’s time for serious work,” he said, as Nolan sat up rubbing his jaw. “I’ll tell you what, Barny. Your best bets are Nova Scotia or Mexico. You can have your pick, an igloo, or a hacienda.”

“What’s the difference?”

Reynolds shrugged. “As far as I’m concerned, none. But I’m not going there, you see.”

“How could I get to Nova Scotia?”

“It’s a very simple matter. We’ll hire a private pilot from around this area to fly you there. Don’t look surprised; it’s done all the time for hunting trips. It’s a no-questions-asked deal. The pilot takes you to Burlington, Vermont, first, where he wires ahead to the Canadian customs official at the airfield in Nova Scotia. That’s to let them know when you’re arriving and how many are in the party. The customs man meets the plane. You aren’t allowed to leave it, by the way, until he checks your papers. But all he requires for entry is some proof of identity, such as a driver’s license. I’ll get one for you today. After that, Barny, you’re on your own. You’ll have Canadian travel papers, and you can get a commercial flight from Moncton field to Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, or anywhere in the Dominion for that matter. How does it sound?”

“Sounds nice and simple. How come more people in trouble don’t use that route?”

“A good many of them do, as a matter of fact. But most of them don’t have the money to hire my services.”

“Canada is out,” Nolan said. “I never did like that place.”

Reynolds looked annoyed. “Let’s not become whimsical, Nolan.”

“It’s Mexico for me,” Nolan said. He had never been to Mexico, but he knew of its climate, its tequila, its women. Even after paying off Reynolds he’d have about thirteen or fourteen thousand dollars. That should provide a pleasant few years, he thought.

“Okay, it’s just as simple to get there. Of course, the difficulty in both cases is that you can’t get out quite so easily. Coming back, you’ll have to clear through United States customs and that’s a different matter.”

“Let’s don’t worry about that,” Nolan said, with a humorless smile.

“Very well. I’ll make reservations for you today and get you what identification you’ll need. Meanwhile I suggest you get a bath and a shave. And get a clean shirt from Morris.”

“Okay,” Nolan said.

Morris came in as Reynolds was standing to leave. He carried a tray on which there were two sandwiches and a pint milk bottle full of coffee.

“How about the liquor?” Nolan said.

“All right, all right, I’ve got to go out for that,” Morris said, and stalked out, a sullen expression on his face.

“What a creep,” Nolan said, picking up a fried egg sandwich that was cold and greasy.

“He’s all right. I’ll see you about seven tonight.”

Morris returned in half an hour with two fifths of bonded Bourbon. “This is twenty bucks,” he said.

“You’re a real spender with my money, aren’t you?”

“Why don’t you find somewhere else if you don’t like it here?”

Nolan took a crumpled twenty-dollar bill from his pocket and threw it on the floor. “There it is, you bastard. You’ll look natural crawling for it.”

Morris picked up the bill and put it in his pocket. “I’ve had some tough boys here, Mister. They found it all right. Slick Willie Sutton was here, and the Lanzettis. They had manners. You can always tell a punk by the way he pays off.”

“Damn you,” Nolan said. He put his hand over Morris’s face and shoved him through the door. “Go upstairs and dream about Slick Willie and the Lanzettis, but keep away from me, understand?”

Morris stared at him, trembling and tearful, and then he turned and went up the stairs, taking them three at a time with his long skinny legs.

Nolan opened one of the bottles and took a long drink. He sat down on the cot and thought about Linda. The first Linda, the real one. He drank half the bottle before stretching out and closing his eyes. His gun was beside him, within an inch of his right hand.

The whisky made him feel immensely peaceful. He floated gently in space, his thoughts turning slowly about Linda. Possibly she could meet him in Mexico some day. He could see her in a white dress, her arms and legs browned by the sun, coming across a hotel lobby to him with the bright quick smile on her face. There would be palms everywhere and flag-stoned terraces and strong drinks decorated with mint and ice. Everything would be very clean, and Linda would be smiling.

Nolan raised the bottle.