Shield for Murder

6

It was two-thirty when Barny Nolan left his rooming house. He was working the four-to-twelve shift, and he had an hour-and-a-half to do several important things.

First there was the newspaper-wrapped bundle containing the twenty-five thousand dollars. That was under his arm as he climbed into his car. He had to put it away where Espizito would never find it. And there was the sixty-three hundred dollars he was carrying in his pocket.

Nolan knew he would have a call from Mike Espizito very shortly; and after that Mike would try to get his money back. First, he’d ask for it; and then he’d tear the city open looking for it.

Nolan was frowning as he drove slowly away from his rooming house. The wop could go to hell; he wasn’t getting hold of this money. That belonged to him now.

He drove to the garage where he bought his gas and coasted back to the greasing racks. The mechanic walked over, wiping his hands on a piece of cheese cloth.

“What’ll be, Barny?”

“Take a look at the plugs, will you? I’m having trouble starting.”

The mechanic lifted the hood and began checking the connections. Nolan took the money from his pocket and counted out six thousand dollars. The remaining three hundred he shoved back into his pocket. Then he took a small pry bar from the glove compartment and walked to the rear of the car. He squatted down alongside the right rear wheel and pried off the chromium plate that covered the hub cap. He put the six thousand inside the plate and banged it back in place with his fist.

“Everything looks okay,” the mechanic said, coming around to the rear of the car. “Maybe the points need cleaning. Something wrong with the wheel?”

“I thought the cap was loose.”

“Maybe it’s sprung or dented.”

“It seems okay.”

“Want me to pull it off and take a look?”

Nolan stifled a sudden anger. “It’s okay, I said. You can check the plugs later.”

The mechanic looked at him and wiped his hands again on the cheese cloth. “Okay, Barny, okay,” he said.

Nolan climbed into the car and headed downtown, traveling east on Chestnut Street. The twenty-five thousand dollars was still beside him on the seat, and he didn’t know what to do with it. He couldn’t leave it in his room, and he couldn’t carry it around with him; and he couldn’t risk putting it in his bank account or in a safety deposit vault.

It was a problem, but he felt he could handle it. This sort of thing was his business, he thought with a touch of pride. He was dumb about a lot of things, but he knew his job. Once he found a place to stash the money, everything would be fine. He’d sit tight for a few weeks, a month, maybe, and then he could put it to work carefully. On Linda.

Thinking of her brought a smile to his lips. He remembered the way she had patted his hand last night, and the things she had said to him, and he felt a pleasant warmth flowing through his body.

Suddenly he pulled over to the curb and parked his car. He had time to call her, to say hello, before going on to work; and so he walked into a drug store and found a telephone booth. When she answered the phone he grinned at the sound of her fresh young voice.

“Hello,” he said. “I was on my way to the District, so I thought I’d give you a buzz.”

“That was nice of you.” Her voice was cheerful.

“Look, kid, I’m due for a break around six-thirty, so how about having a drink with me.”

“Oh, Barny, I can’t. That reporter, what’s his name, Mark Brewster, is coming over here at six, and I—”

“What for?” Nolan snapped, and his big hand tightened on the receiver. “Damn it, what for?”

“He’s doing a story on me for his paper,” she said, and her voice was suddenly cool.

“Look, I told you he was a nosy punk, didn’t I?” Nolan felt the starched edge of his collar cutting into his neck, and he had an impulse to tear the phone from the wall and hurl it into the street.

“Barny, if you can’t talk calmly I’m going to hang up,” Linda said shortly. “Also, I don’t feel that I’ve got to explain everything I do to you.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Nolan said, instantly defeated and helpless. “I’m sorry, kid. Everything I say seems to be wrong. Our date is still on for tonight, isn’t it? You know we’re having a late dinner with some friends of mine. You said it was okay, remember?”

She hesitated a moment, and Nolan felt something inside him contract painfully. Supposing she said no, hung up on him. Then she said, “Yes, I remember, Barny. I’ll meet you here after my first show.” She didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic.

When he hung up after an exchange of brief goodbyes, Nolan went slowly to the counter and ordered coffee from a listless waitress. It was time for him to be getting on to the Division, but he sat brooding and staring at his figure in the mirror behind the coffee urns.

What was Brewster snooping around Linda for? Why had she got so touchy when he’d asked her about it? That was what he couldn’t stand. He had no defense against her annoyance. One cold word from her and everything inside him became weak and shaky.

A man passed behind him and slapped his back. “Hi, Barny, how’s the boy?”

Barny turned and recognized Petey Felickson, a ward lieutenant he’d worked for before he got on the police force. Petey had been the Eighty-first Ward Leader’s right hand man back in the early Thirties.

“Everything’s about the same, Petey,” he said.

“Still out in Germantown?”

“No, I’m at the Sixty-fifth now.”

“Well, take it easy.”

Petey sauntered out, a small, solidly-built man with graying hair, who radiated a cocky confidence. Nolan watched him cross Chestnut Street and enter a taproom.

Nolan had hated him back in the days when there were no jobs, and Petey had his choice of tough aggressive kids, who’d do anything for a few dimes or a few beers. You took off your hat when Petey looked at you then, or the doors at the Republican Club might be shut to you for good.

Nolan had been born in the section of Philadelphia called Brewerytown and had grown up fighting the Jews from Strawberry Mansion and the Italians that came up from South Philly in loud arrogant gangs. Nolan’s father, a brawling, blustering laborer, championed Barny’s fights, and threatened to beat him senseless if he ever took any dirt from what he called the foreign element.

That was a phrase his father had picked up in some bar, and he shouted it out as if it were the most satisfying of epithets.

Money hadn’t been plentiful in the Nolan home, of course; nor had been any substitute for it such as music, good humor or gentleness. Instead, there was a nightmarish series of fights and wranglings, and endless recriminations from Nolan’s mother, a weary defeated woman who stared at everyone with an expression of baffled and haggard hate.

The only passion in Nolan’s young life had been automobiles. He knew motors and was a superb driver, arrogant and alert; and by the time he was sixteen he was making a few dollars a week hauling alcohol for a local bootlegger. He picked up the stuff on Grays Ferry Avenue, along a stretch called Wet Basin because it was a distributing point for bootleggers, and delivered it to customers in South Philadelphia. But that work hadn’t lasted.

When Prohibition came, Nolan had drifted almost inevitably into the Republican organization in his ward, and that was when he’d met Petey Felickson. There had been no work anywhere, but Petey was a key that could unlock a lot of doors. Nolan had walked himself dog-tired delivering handbills before elections, and on election days he’d worked as a chauffeur to get out the vote. His break came in the ’34 Mayoralty campaign, when the ward leader had been genuinely worried for the first time in twenty-nine years.

Barny had weighed one-ninety then, and had a minor reputation as a street brawler; and he’d used his physical endowments to chase the Democratic canvassers off the streets. He put two of them in Jefferson Hospital, and pretty soon the Democrats were afraid to step into the ward. There had been newspaper stories about it, and the Democratic Mayoralty candidate had appealed to the Attorney General for a complete investigation.

But the Republicans had won, so nothing ever came of that.

Nolan well remembered the victory celebration at Fireman’s Hall. The ward leader had patted his hard shoulder and said: “I been hearing fine things about you, my boy. You’re the sort the party needs.”

Petey had then advised him to take the exams for the police department; and six months later he received his appointment.

Great days, Nolan thought bitterly, finishing his coffee. He’d still be pounding a beat if he hadn’t accidentally got in right with old Mike O’Neill. That fluke had landed him on the detective force.

He paid his check and went out to his car. The things that happened to him were always outside his control, he thought, heading for the Division. Luck, Fate, God’s will, as his mother said. What was it that jerked him around like a dummy on the end of a string? He’d always been on the fringes, waiting for something to fall into his lap, waiting endlessly on street corners during depression, waiting for the nod from Petey, waiting for a break on the police force. Germantown had almost driven him crazy, and then he’d come downtown and found himself still on the outside, a dumb cop that bartenders treated like a sucker.

Everything in his life was gray and empty. His family, his job, his wife. Nothing worked.

Nolan suddenly hammered a fist viciously against the steering wheel. What in the name of God was wrong? Why was it always like this?

Then, mercurially, his mood changed. He was thinking of the past, he told himself, beginning to grin. Everything was different since he’d met Linda. That had been the turning point; she’d given him confidence. He was no longer on the outside waiting for something to happen. Unconsciously Nolan touched the newspaper-wrapped bundle at his side and then drove the last few blocks with a musing little smile on his lips.

He parked across from the station and put the bundle of money in the glove compartment. It would be okay there for a while. But by tonight he’d have to find a permanent place for it...

When he walked into the Division, Sergeant Odell glanced up at him and jerked his finger toward Lieutenant Ramussen’s door.

“The boss wants to see you,” he said.

“Okay.” Nolan walked around the counter and tossed his hat on an empty desk. There were three other detectives on hand, and Mark Brewster was reading a paper at the window. He stifled an angry impulse to slap the paper out of his hands and ask him about Linda. But that would wait. He was aware of a curious tension in the room. The other detectives, Lindfors, Smith and Gianfaldo, were pointedly ignoring him. They had been talking baseball when he came in, and now, after a brief, too-casual glance at him, went on with their discussion.

Nolan walked over to Ramussen’s closed door and knocked sharply. When the lieutenant answered he opened the door and stepped into the big bare office.

“Close the door and come over here,” Ramussen said.

Nolan did as he was told.

Lieutenant Ramussen was a tall rangy man with scanty brown hair and bright blue eyes. His features were lean, composed and unrevealing. But his disturbingly bright eyes gave his face an expression of bold deliberate challenge. Prisoners had difficulty meeting his steady gaze, and even his detectives complained occasionally among themselves that it got on their nerves.

When he smiled, however, the wrinkles about his eyes changed his expression completely; but he wasn’t smiling now.

He flicked Nolan’s typed report with his middle finger. “This stinks like hell,” he said. “You had no excuse for killing Dave Fiest, Nolan.”

Nolan shrugged. “I tried to bring him down. The shot went high.”

“I know, that’s in the report. Now get this, Nolan. You’re new in my Division. You’ve got a reputation in the department for being pretty quick to use your gun. Well, I’m not letting that influence me. I don’t care what you did anywhere else, but here, by God, you’re going to use some judgment. Do you understand?”

Nolan hesitated long enough to verge on insolence. Then he said, “Sure, Lieutenant.”

Ramussen’s eyes grew brighter. He studied Nolan for a few seconds, and then he said, rather unexpectedly: “I’m a cop first of all, remember that, Nolan. I’ll stick with any man of mine who gets into trouble doing police work. But I won’t stand for another instance like last night. Got that?”

“Okay,” Nolan said.

“I want a 590 on this for the superintendent,” Ramussen said. “Get it on my desk by tomorrow morning.”

“Okay,” Nolan said, frowning. A 590 was a file customarily prepared on cases that were not officially closed, and where there was some evidence of incompetence or dereliction on the part of the detective handling the job. It was a police officer’s apologia for his judgment and conduct, and in it he could introduce material that would be considered too detailed or too extraneous for the more usual report.

“Okay,” Nolan said again. His face was impassive, but, despite the 590, he felt like grinning. He’d write up a 590 every day in the week for thirty thousand dollars. It was a nice trade.

“That’s all,” Ramussen said.

Nolan nodded to him and walked to the door.

“Oh, there’s one other thing.”

“Yeah?”

The Lieutenant was glancing at another report and fumbling in his vest pocket for his glasses. “Mike Espizito called here a while back. He wants you to get in touch with him.”

“Mike Espizito?”

“That’s right.” Ramussen put on his glasses. “I told him I’d give you the message.”

“Thanks,” Nolan said. He wanted to ask if Mike had said anything else; but he knew that wouldn’t be wise. “Thanks,” he said again, and walked out of the office.