Shield for Murder

2

Three well-worn stone steps led from the street to the Sixty-fifth police station. Above them hung a single white electric globe.

The district occupied a three-story brick building that seemed sturdy, and a trifle smug, in a block of luncheonettes, shoe-shops, curio dealers, and unpainted frame homes.

The Thirteenth Detective Division had its headquarters on the second floor of the building, in three high-ceilinged rooms that were separated by wooden partitions.

A card game was going on in one of these rooms the night Nolan killed Dave Fiest.

Detective-Sergeant John Odell and three of his shift were playing poker, while a reporter, Mark Brewster, lounged in the doorway, smoking and watching the game without any particular interest. Sergeant Odell slapped cards down on the desk with a steady voluble comment on the caprices of fortune. He was thickly built with rimless glasses, thinning brown hair, and a complexion the shade of top round steak.

“Ten a possible straight, nine, possible nothing, K-boy, nothing yet, and I get a miserable damn deuce. K-boy bets.”

The king was owned by George Lindfors, a thin man of about forty with gray skin and tired eyes. He seemed irritable.

“A nickel. And I wish to hell you’d stop announcing cards like you was dealing in a home for the blind. We can see.”

“The dealer’s got to call the cards,” Odell said cheerfully. “If I didn’t, you’d be crying about that.”

Mark Brewster yawned and glanced at his watch. One-fifteen. The beat had been quiet since eight. He dropped his cigarette on the floor and put it out with the toe of his shoe.

From the center room of the Division the police radio blared monotonously. Mark listened to it automatically, unconsciously.

“Where was that hold-up?” Odell said, frowning at his hand.

“Sixth and Edgeton,” Mark said. “It’s not ours.”

“That’s in the Northeast,” Lindfors said. “There’s a bakery on that corner.”

“Yeah, Peterson’s bakery,” a detective named Smith said. He was young, stockily built, with curly black hair and an aggressive confident manner. “We used to go by there on the way home from school.”

“Well, let’s play cards,” Odell said. “It’s up to you, Smitty. What’d you say?”

“Nickel.”

Mark Brewster yawned again and walked into the middle room where there were several desks, filing cabinets, a bulletin board with a number of flyers tacked onto it, and a small-scale map of the city. The floor was littered with cigarette stubs, and dusty. Green shades were pulled down over the two windows that faced Gray Street. Two detectives were dozing in chairs, and another reporter sat at the sergeant’s desk, glancing through a late paper. His name was Richardson Cabot, a man of about sixty, who dressed neatly and used a cigarette holder.

“Everything seems pretty quiet,” Mark said.

“Thank God,” Cabot said. “Let’s hope it stays this way. I remember though it was a night just like this when Slick Willie Sutton broke out of Holmesburg.”

“How about coffee?” Mark said. He knew from Cabot’s tone that he was about to retell the story of Sutton’s break from start to finish, with considerable emphasis placed on the part one Richardson Cabot had played in reporting that news to the people of Philadelphia.

“Oh, very well,” Cabot said with only a trace of disappointment in his voice. “I’d better check the morgue and a few districts first.”

“Okay,” Mark said. He sat on the edge of a desk and lit another cigarette. He was thirty, with pale narrow features, dark brown hair and alert eyes. His air of casual good humor had made him dozens of friends through the police department, and he was regarded as an efficient and trustworthy reporter, one who wouldn’t betray confidential information or jeopardize a case by breaking a story too soon.

He walked back to the card game while Cabot was making his calls. Odell was raking in a mound of silver. “Get this,” he said to Mark. “I’ve got sixes showing, mind you, showing, and Lindy bets into me with only a queen.”

“I didn’t see the sixes,” Lindfors said. “Let’s play cards.”

Mark blew smoke at the ceiling.

“...Car 45 report... Car 197, meet complainant, Ridge and Somerset.” A fire box came in with ten loud rings. Then the announcer. “Box 654 Allegheny and Broad. Car 22... Box 654. Car 610... Assist officer... Car 611, report to Ellens Lane and Crab Street. Assist officer. Car 84... Men loitering at Bainbridge and Gray Streets.”

Sergeant Odell held up his hand. “That assist officer. It was ours, wasn’t it?”

“That’s right,” Mark said. “610 is the wagon, 611 is the street, Sergeant.”

“Probably a cop with a drunk he can’t handle,” Lindfors said.

“They wouldn’t send the street sergeant on that,” Odell said. “Mark, call downstairs and see what it was, will you?”

Mark walked into the next room and picked up the police phone on Odell’s desk. He asked the operator to connect him with the house sergeant at Sixty-five.

“This is Mark Brewster,” he said, when Sergeant Brennan answered. “Did you send out the call for 610 and 611?”

“Right, Mark. Nolan’s got a dead one at Crab Street and Ellens Lane. Somebody he shot.”

“Thanks.”

Mark walked back to the card game and said, “Brennan says Nolan shot some fellow at Crab Street and Ellens Lane.”

“Yeah?” Odell tossed his cards down. “A dead one?”

Mark nodded and Odell said, “Lindy, you and Smitty go over and see if Nolan needs any help.”

“Look, don’t touch these cards,” Lindfors said, getting to his feet. “I just hooked the case ace.”

Sergeant Odell laughed at his sulky expression.

“You want to ride along?” Smitty said to Mark.

“Sure.”

“Okay, wait till I get my coat.”

Mark lit another cigarette and said casually to Odell: “What sort of guy is Nolan?” He knew Nolan’s reputation of course, and had come across him a few times on routine police assignments; but he wanted a slant on him from another cop.

Odell glanced up at him, his big face impassive. “Why?”

Mark shrugged and flipped his match away. “I was just curious. He hasn’t been here long, and I haven’t got to know him.”

“He’s okay, Mark,” Odell said. “Kind of grouchy at times, and not very sociable, but he’s all right. He’s been working out in Germantown for the last six years or so, and before that he was with Foot Traffic. He must damn near have his time in.” Odell glanced at the last man at the table, a dumpy, balding detective in his early sixties. “How about it, Joe? Hasn’t Nolan just about got his twenty years in?”

“Now, lemme see,” Joe Gianfaldo said. He ran a hand over the rough granular skin of his forehead, and twisted his lips so that the two gold teeth in the front of his mouth gleamed in the overhead light. “No, I don’t think so,” he said. “He’s about four years short.” Gianfaldo had been a detective for twenty-eight years and his one pride was a memory that was little short of miraculous. He knew every street in the city, and could name the stores or houses at most intersections, and he never forgot a name, a face or a date.

“He was appointed in ’thirty five,” Gianfaldo said, nodding. “That gives him sixteen years in the business. He’s a mean bastard.”

“In what way?” Mark said.

“He’s too damn quick to use his gun,” Gianfaldo said, turning to Mark. “He shot up two colored kids in Germantown a few years back, and then when he was in Foot Traffic he killed a sixteen-year-old boy breaking into a market out near City Line.”

Sergeant Odell leaned forward and put his big elbows on the table. “Joe, you’re getting all twisted up,” he said. “You’re forgetting things in your old age.”

Gianfaldo returned Odell’s gaze uncomfortably. “Well, I could be wrong, of course,” he said.

Mark knew better than to ask any more questions. Odell was boiling mad now because Gianfaldo had violated the first rule of the Bureau’s strict but unstated censoring code. That first rule, Mark reflected, if written down might read: bad cops are nobody’s business but the police department’s.

Lindfors and Smitty came out of the locker room and called for Mark. He joined them and saw that Cabot was also ready to go. As they went out Mark heard Odell’s voice go up a notch as he started on Gianfaldo. Smitty glanced at him as they went down the stairs.

“What’s eating Odell?”

Mark shrugged. “Beats me.”

There was a crowd at the intersection of Crab Street and Ellens Lane when they drew up in Smitty’s car. Lindfors and Smitty got out and walked over to Nolan who was talking with a street sergeant and two uniformed men from the Sixty-fifth.

Lights were on in rooming houses on both sides of the street and people were peering out curiously.

Mark walked down to the lane where Nolan was standing with Lindfors and Smitty beside a huddled body that lay face-down on the brick paving.

“Who is it?” Smitty said to Nolan.

“Who sent for you guys?” Nolan said, glancing from Smitty to Lindfors.

“Odell told us to come over.”

Nolan put a cigar in his mouth and took his time about lighting it. “It’s Dave Fiest,” he said, flipping the match toward the body in the lane. “I was bringing him in and he made a break. I let one go in the air, and then tried to bring him down. It was a little high, I suppose.”

Smitty squatted beside Dave Fiest’s body. “What do you suppose he made a break for?”

“How the hell would I know?” Nolan said.

Lindfors said, “Where did you make the pinch?”

“Over at Broad and Crab.”

Smitty turned the body over and went through the pockets. He found several hundred dollar bills, an empty wallet, a letter postmarked Miami from one Sol Ninski, a hotel key, a sterling silver combination cigarette case and lighter, the stub of a theatre ticket, a palm full of change, a pair of toy dice, and a piece of paper torn from a restaurant menu with a phone number on it.

Two men from the wagon came down the lane with a stretcher. Smitty put the collection of personal effects back in Dave Fiest’s pockets, and then stood up and brushed the knees of his trousers. Mark saw him glance at Lindfors; and saw the faint smile on his bps.

“Okay, you can have him,” Nolan said to the men from the wagon.

Mark Brewster lit a cigarette as the body was carried out of the lane. He had known Dave Fiest casually and had very little feeling one way or the other about his death. His murder, he amended mentally. For he was quite certain that Nolan was morally guilty of having murdered Dave Fiest. Mark had covered a police beat long enough to know when a cop was doing his job right; and this present case was an impressive example of a cop casually behaving like an executioner simply because he had the legal right to use a gun. Still, Mark thought, attempting against his inclinations to look at all angles of the situation, murder was a man-made term to describe a certain kind of killing. And maybe it wouldn’t fit here. Off to the semantic labyrinth, he thought tiredly. Well, what would fit? Manslaughter? At the very least. If you gave Nolan every break, it was manslaughter. Smitty and Lindfors knew that too, he guessed. Their knowledge and complicity was in the brief, unamused smile they had exchanged when Smitty finished examining the gambler’s body.

Mark took a few sheets of folded copy paper from his pocket and walked over to Nolan. He nodded to him and said, “My name’s Brewster. I’m with the Call-Bulletin. Could you give me a fine on what happened?”

“You can see for yourself,” Nolan said.

Mark forced himself to smile. “I need a few details.”

“Well, what do you want?”

“The details,” Mark said quietly.

The two men appraised each other in the filmy light from a street lamp. Nolan was a big man, inches taller than Mark, and weighing well over two hundred pounds. There was a bulge of fat about his waist, but he looked strong and powerful. His features were thick, coarse, and his complexion was ruddy with animal health, He was hardly handsome, yet there was something oddly compelling in his heavy jaw and hard sullen expression. His eyes were light blue and as steady as glass. The hair that showed beneath his gray fedora was a rusty brown.

“I’m busy now, Brewster,” he said, turning away. “See me at the District.”

“We’re on deadline now,” Mark said.

Nolan wheeled back, to him, his face and eyes angry. “What the hell do I care if you’re on deadline? I’m not working for the Call-Bulletin. You want to blow this into a big story, don’t you? Well, there’s nothing to it. A punk tried to make a break and got shot. That’s all.”

Smitty and Lindfors came over and Smitty slapped Nolan on the back. “Brewster’s all right, Barny. He’s been with us at Thirteen for years. He’s okay.”

“Yeah, he’s all right,” Lindfors said. “The boss gives him everything.”

“Well, what do you want?” Nolan said to Mark, making no attempt to conceal his anger. “Let’s get it over with.”

Nolan’s hostility struck Mark as curious; but just as curious, he thought, was his own instinctive dislike of the detective. The hatred between them was as palpable as a stone wall.

“How did you happen to arrest him?” he said.

“He was taking a bet at Broad and Crab Streets, so I made the pinch. We were walking along, west on Crab, when he makes a break down the lane here. I yelled at him to stop, and fired a shot over his head. But he kept going. So I let one go at his legs. But the shot was a little high.”

“What were you charging him with?”

“Gambling, pool selling, loitering.”

“I see.” Mark made quick notes. Then he said, “Who was the character Fiest was taking a bet from? Anybody you knew?”

“Never saw him before.”

“Why didn’t you arrest him?”

Nolan swore. “You trying to tell me how to do police work?”

Smitty glanced at Mark with a puzzled expression. “We don’t pick up the suckers, Mark. You know that. Just the bookmaker.”

“All right, what else?” Nolan said.

“You just fired the two shots, one over his head, and one at his legs?”

“Don’t you listen when somebody’s telling you something?” Nolan said.

“I’m just making sure I have it straight,” Mark said.

“Well, there’s no mystery about it. For God’s sake, see me at the District if you need any more.”

“I think I’ve got enough.” Mark hesitated deliberately, then said: “And thanks.”

Nolan turned without answering and strode out to the sidewalk.

Smitty fell in step with Mark as he left the lane. “Want a ride back to the District?”

“No, I’ll find a phone around here. But thanks.”

“Look, don’t worry about Nolan. He’s all right. Kind of sullen, but okay.”

“He’ll never creep into my heart, I’m afraid,” Mark said.

“Well, don’t let it worry you,” Smitty said, and walked across the street to his car.

Cabot had been hanging about in the background, and now he came over and said, “Did you get everything, Mark?”

“I think so. Let’s find a drugstore. I’ll fill you in then,” he said.

“Fine,” Cabot said. “I was just going to talk to Nolan when you latched onto him.”

Mark stood at the intersection, staring down the lane where Dave Fiest had died. The crowd was drifting off to their homes or to taprooms. Everything seemed anti-climactic. Mark lit another cigarette, for some reason reluctant to leave.

He listened without interest to the comments of the few men and women who lingered at the scene.

“Let’s go,” Cabot said, touching Mark’s arm.

“Okay.”

They walked two blocks to an all-night drugstore where Mark gave Cabot the story of the shooting. Then he went into a phone booth and called his paper.

He talked to an editor on the city desk, told him briefly what he had, and then was switched to Paul Murchison, who was on re-write.

“This is Brewster,” he said. “I’ve got a shooting.”

“Ah, yes, the name is familiar,” Murchison said. “I must have seen it on a book jacket or in some latrine. Now who are the persons of your tawdry drama?”

“Dave Fiest is the victim. He was shot by a cop, Bernard Nolan, of the Thirteenth. Nolan. N as in nothing.”

He heard the faint rattle of Murchison’s typewriter. Then Murchison said, “N as in no-damn-good, you mean. I knew that bum when I covered Germantown. What happened?”

Mark gave him the story and Murchison whistled softly into the phone. “That’s rather raw, even for Nolan, who isn’t noted for his diplomacy. He’s got no reason to shoot a man picked up on a gambling charge. Hell, he could have sent out a call on the police radio and they’d have picked Fiest up in an hour.”

“Well, he shot him, and it didn’t seem to bother him.”

“No, it wouldn’t. He’s a very bad guy, Mark. Hell, I think he’s killed five or six people since he’s been on the force. All fine of duty, naturally. I remember one time he shot two colored kids in Germantown, killed both of them too, because they ran when he put a light on them.”

“Colored boys often die running,” Mark said, and decided that he was being sententious. “What else do you know about him?”

“Well, he shot a drunk one night on Allegheny Avenue, near A Street. Claimed the guy attacked him.” Murchison laughed shortly. “The alleged attacker was all of five feet tall, and probably weighed a sturdy ninety-five pounds, in addition to having been pickled thoroughly in some variety of bonded Sterno. Then there was a sixteen-year-old boy. Nolan claimed the kid was trying to break into a food store. He went up before the civil service commission on that one, but you know how it is. Who the hell’s going to call him a liar? The witnesses are all dead.”

“It’s a lousy shame,” Mark said, and was surprised at the heat in his voice.

“You keep out of it,” Murchison said. “Take an elderly gentleman’s advice, and leave Barny Nolan alone.”

“Hell, I won’t do anything about it, but it annoys me to see a character behaving like God Almighty because he’s got the right to use a gun.”

“Forget it,” Murchison said. “A bad cop is a rarity, despite what the stone-headed man-in-the-street thinks. But I think I’ll look up Nolan’s other cases in the library. Maybe the boss will go for a rundown on his homicidal propensities in the line of duty. Hell, the Superintendent might even see it.”

“That’s an idea,” Mark said. “Good luck.”

He left the booth and sat at the drug counter to wait for Cabot. He ordered coffee and passed the time in an unsuccessful attempt to float his cream from a spoon onto the surface of the coffee. The waitress watched him curiously. Finally she said: “You hear about the shooting down the block?”

“Yes, I did,” Mark said. He glanced up, saw that she was a blonde, nearing forty, with streaked hair and a bitter mouth.

“A cop shot a guy,” she said. “You can have cops.”

Mark thought of Lindfors and Smitty and Sergeant Odell, and, of course, Lieutenant Ramussen. They were hard-working, fairly decent men, not too-bright about many things, but extremely bright about their business; and while they weren’t as easy-going and tender-hearted, as say, hair-stylists, they weren’t mean for the sake of meanness, or cruel or bitter or without mercy.

He said, “There are some good cops, too.”

“You can have ’em all,” the waitress said. “Lemme tell you something.”

She told him a long story about a cop who had beaten up her father after shaking him down for fifty dollars. Her father, it seemed, had had an interest in a truck that ran untaxed alcohol into the state during prohibition.

Cabot joined him a little later and drank a cup of coffee gratefully. He was getting too old to cover a district, Mark realized. Cabot couldn’t handle re-write or general assignment, and that left nothing but a job in the library or the district. His paper was on his neck all the time for better coverage, and were threatening in their kindly way to send a copy boy out to take over if he didn’t shape up. And Cabot had a sick wife and a thirty-four year old son in a sanatorium.

“I’ll check the beat when we get back,” Cabot said now, putting a cigarette in his holder. “And thanks for the story, Mark. The office liked it pretty well.”

“You’ve given me plenty,” Mark said, smiling at him. “Let’s go.”

They walked the four blocks to the District. The rain was still falling gently and the center of the city was dark and quiet. At the station Mark checked the house sergeant’s room to see if anything was going on, and then went upstairs. Lindfors and Smitty were playing Casino in the middle room, and Lieutenant Ramussen’s office was dark. Cabot sat down at Odell’s desk and began a patient check of the beat, calling all the districts, the morgue, Accident Investigation, and the Fire Board.

Mark lit a cigarette and watched the Casino game. He pushed his hat back on his head, and in the strong overhead fight his face was pale and tired.

“Nolan gone?” he said.

Smitty nodded. “He put his report on the boss’s desk, and cleared out just a few minutes ago. Why? You need something?”

“No, I had it all.” He drew on his cigarette, and said, “And that’s that.”

Smitty glanced at him oddly. “Yes, Mark, that’s that.”

There was nothing overt in his voice or manner. But Mark knew a line had been drawn between him and Dave Fiest’s death. And beyond that line he wouldn’t be welcome.