Shield for Murder

7

Mark Brewster glanced up when Nolan came out of Ramussen’s office. He hoped to learn something from the expression, but Nolan’s face told him nothing.

The other detectives continued talking as Nolan crossed the room and took a chair at an empty desk. He picked up a paper and turned to tire sports section, pointedly ignoring everyone in the room.

Mark saw now that there was an angry flush of color in Nolan’s face, and he wondered if Lieutenant Ramussen had caused that reaction. Suddenly Nolan turned and met his eyes directly; and Mark saw naked hatred in the detective’s face. The two men stared at each other for an instant without speaking, and then Nolan went back to his paper and Mark let out his breath slowly. He was aware that his heart was pumping harder than usual.

Over their heads the endless talk went on. Smitty was making a point with gestures to Lindfors and Gianfaldo.

“You guys hate the FBI because you’re snobs,” he said, shaking a finger at them emphatically. “That’s all, snobs. You think no detective is any good until he’s bald-headed and got arthritis. That’s why you moan about the G boys. They’re not as old as you, so naturally they can’t be any good.”

“You don’t learn this business in no college,” Gianfaldo said, rolling out the sentiment with the pontifical authority of a Papal spokesman; and Lindfors nodded in agreement. “I worked with them kids during the war,” Gianfaldo went on, “and all their ‘yes, sirs’ and ‘no, sirs’ and ‘empty your pockets, please’ got ’em absolutely nowhere.”

“Ah, you don’t have to shout at people to be a good detective,” Smitty said disgustedly.

“That’s all a hood understands,” Sergeant Odell said, looking up from his paper. “You got to scare hell out of ’em.” Nodding approval of his comment, he returned to his newspaper, and after that, the talk drifted easily and with no sense of digression or irrelevance onto the subject of how best to water-proof basements.

Mark lit a cigarette and dropped the match on the floor. He noticed that Nolan had been staring at one page of the paper for the past few moments, and wasn’t even making a pretense of reading. Finally he put the paper aside and turned to Mark with curious deliberation.

“I understand you called Linda Wade,” he said grimly.

Mark was instantly wary. She’d told him, of course. “That’s right,” he said, and blew smoke at the ceiling. “She a friend of yours?”

“Yeah. What’s on your mind?”

“About her?”

“Yeah, about her,” Nolan said irritably.

Mark deliberately ignored the challenge in his manner. He said easily, “I thought she might make a nice feature for the Sunday paper. She’s damn good, you know.”

“Yeah, I know that,” Nolan said. “Whose idea was this feature?”

“Mine, of course,” Mark said, and tried to appear surprised by the question. “I thought she’d be fine for the profile we do every week on entertainers, actors and so forth.”

“I thought you were a police reporter,” Nolan said, with heavy sarcasm. “Isn’t this a little out of your line?”

Mark smiled, but his hands were trembling slightly as he lit a fresh cigarette. He saw that Nolan was watching his hands, and that didn’t help any.

“I’m just trying to get ahead,” he said, still smiling. “You know, impress the boss with my selfless devotion to the cause of the Call-Bulletin. Eager Beaver stuff.”

Smitty walked over grinning and slapped Mark on the back. “Get this,” he said. “Lindfors had just announced that Harry Greb could have beat Joe Louis. I told him—”

“We were talking,” Nolan said, glaring up at Smitty. “Why don’t you give that mouth of yours a rest, anyway?”

There was suddenly silence in the room. Smitty turned from Mark and stared hard at Nolan. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry as all hell, Detective Nolan. I didn’t realize I was breaking up your important conference.” There was an angry white line about his mouth.

“It wasn’t that important,” Mark said, relieved at the interruption.

Nolan stood up and brushed past Smitty. He walked to the window and stared into the street for a moment and then wandered to another desk and sat down. Smitty watched him for a few seconds, then shrugged his shoulders, and turned to Mark.

“As I was saying,” he said meaningfully, “I told Lindfors...”

When he finished the story Mark laughed dutifully and got to his feet. It was five-thirty, time to be leaving for his appointment with Linda. He said a general goodbye and sauntered out of the room, aware that Nolan was watching him with smouldering resentment.

Downstairs, he made a few calls about the beat. There was an accident in another district, but it didn’t seem very serious. He met Cabot as he was leaving and told him that nothing was stirring.

“Fine,” Cabot said, screwing a cigarette into his holder. He was two hours late, which was about standard for him. “I was out to see my boy this afternoon,” he said. “They’re trying a new gadget on him this week. Some kind of electrical stimulation. Sounds very hopeful.”

Cabot’s son was in a home for incurables with paralysis of the spine. It wasn’t likely anything could ever be done for him. “Well, that’s fine,” Mark said. “Hope you get good news on it.”

He told Cabot he was going to be gone for an hour or so, and left the District.

Upstairs, Nolan watched the clock. He knew that Brewster was on his way to see Linda. Irritable and moody, he sucked on his dead cigar and brooded about that meeting. Also, he did some thinking about Espizito. He’d have to call the wop tonight. Nolan ran a hand through his hair. One minute things were beautiful, the next it was all a mess.

Smitty strolled over to him and put a smile on his face. “Nolan, I’m sorry I yapped off. Let’s forget it, eh?”

“Sure, sure,” Nolan said.

“And, while it’s none of my business, I think you’ve got a wrong slant on Brewster. He’s a good guy. You’ll find.”

Nolan hurled his cigar onto the floor and came to his feet with amazing speed. “Why don’t you mind your own business?” he said in a trembling voice.

Smitty had plenty of guts, but something in Nolan’s eyes made him uncertain. He shrugged, and said, “Okay, if that’s the way you want it,” in a careful voice, and walked over to the windows and looked into the street.

Nolan glared at his stiff back for a moment before picking up his hat and striding out of the room.

Sergeant Odell looked at Lindfors and Gianfaldo. They shrugged: Lindfors turned his palms up, and Gianfaldo stared at the ceiling.

Odell frowned at his hands for a few seconds, and then, sighing, lifted his considerable bulk from his chair and went over to the lieutenant’s office. He knocked, then went in and closed the door after him.

“Boss, we got a little personal problem outside,” he said. “Nolan just blew his top at Smitty. Things like that can get out of hand pretty fast, you know.”

Ramussen leaned back in his chair and his eyes were very bright and hard.

“What’s bothering Nolan, Sergeant?”

Odell shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s just touchy, I guess.”

“Would you imagine he’s worrying about that shooting last night?”

“Why should he?” Odell said.

“I’m asking the questions,” Ramussen said, and smiled.

“No, I don’t think he is,” Odell said, relaxing slightly. “It’s no novelty for him to shoot somebody.”

Ramussen stood and paced the floor behind his desk. There was a thoughtful expression on his face. “You know, Sergeant, the loyalty police officers have for each other is a very uncritical emotion. It’s like love, in that respect.”

“I don’t know that I get you, sir,” Odell said.

“Well, it’s not profound, God knows,” Ramussen said. He sat down again and picked up a report. “Let me know if anything like this happens again.”

“Yes, sir.”

Downstairs Nolan walked into the brightly lighted roll-call room and found it empty. He turned into the House Sergeant’s office, where Sergeant Brennan, a calm elderly man, was typing out his duty sheets.

“That reporter go out?” he said.

“Cabot or Brewster?”

“Brewster.”

“He was using the phone outside in the hall a few minutes ago. If he’s not there I expect he’s gone. Cabot’s outside on the steps with the turnkey.”

Nolan cursed pointlessly and walked back into the roll room. Hearings were held here, and one wall was dominated by the high Magistrate’s bench. On the opposite wall were pictures of smiling men in uniform. Underneath the pictures were brass plaques giving the dates of the men’s line-of-duty deaths.

Nolan rubbed his chin, trying to pin down the frustrating sense of anxiety he was experiencing; but there was no room in his thoughts for anything but the reporter and Linda.

He realized with a touch of apprehension that he was dangerously edgy. There was nothing to get worked up about, he told himself angrily. This was his second chance at a good break from life, and he wasn’t going to muff it. Everything else had always turned sour on him, but now he had the opportunity to begin from a new foundation. He had Linda and the money, and he could make a clean fresh start with those two things.

He sat down on a hard wooden bench that ran along the wall of the roll room, and slowly, deliberately, unwrapped and lighted a cigar. This slight physical activity calmed him down, and, as he savored the rich strong smoke, his nerves and muscles relaxed, his tensions eased. Tonight was going to be fun, he thought, puffing contentedly on the cigar. He was taking Linda to dinner at Mike Lavelli’s home, and Mike was one great guy. They had worked together years ago in Accident Investigation, and Nolan had bumped into him again just a few weeks back on a case. Mike had seemed delighted when Nolan told him he had a girl, so Nolan had suggested they get together for a drink sometime. He had no friends to introduce Linda to, and this had worried him; but Mike had immediately suggested that Nolan bring his girl out to dinner at his home, so that problem was solved. That was like Mike, Nolan thought fondly. A liberal, good-hearted, smiling guy. A real pal. He was sorry they’d never got together in all those years since he’d left Accident Investigation.

Nolan smoked his cigar slowly, not worrying about Mark Brewster any more. He knew now that he had let his imagination prod him into a rage. Thinking back on it, he felt embarrassed about the scene he’d had with Smitty. Smitty was a good kid, Nolan thought, in a generous mood now. Smiling almost shyly at the way his thoughts were running, Nolan decided to go up and apologize to the kid. That would show the whole shift that he was no sorehead, that he was big enough to admit when he was in the wrong.

He stood and strode down the corridor toward the stairs that led up to the Detective Division. The front door of the station house banged open, and a detective named Senesky from Germantown came in and waved to him. Senesky was a frail, white-haired man in his middle sixties, and Nolan had always found him to be a rambling bore.

“What y’say, boy?” Senesky said, coming toward him with his crooked old man’s walk.

They met at the foot of the stairs and shook hands. Overhead, a green-shaded light cast a sick unhealthy glow on the old man’s face.

“Speak of the devil,” Senesky said, laughing at Nolan. “We were just talking about you yesterday out at the Forty-first.”

“Yeah? Who?”

“You know, the boys out there and that reporter, Mark Brewster.”

Nolan studied him carefully. “What were the boys saying?”

“We were talking about that fellow you killed, that Dave Fiest.”

“How did Brewster happen to be out there?”

Senesky scratched his head. “Damned if I know,” he said at last. “He just dropped in, around noon it was.” He laughed and patted Nolan’s arm. “You don’t take any chances with these bums, do you Barny? Why the hell should you? That’s what I kept telling ’em yesterday.”

“And what were they telling you?” Nolan said dryly.

Senesky looked embarrassed. “You know how the talk goes,” he said. “Doesn’t mean a damn thing, I always say.” He moved toward the steps. “Nice seeing you again, Barny. I got some papers to give Ramussen. He’s upstairs?”

“Yeah, he’s upstairs,” Nolan said, and took hold of the older man’s arm. “But let’s finish our talk. The boys think I shouldn’t have shot Fiest, eh?”

“No, not by a damn sight,” Senesky said hurriedly.

“Who was doing all the talking?”

“Well, you know how Spiegel is,” Senesky said. “He’s mad at something all the time. Hell, nothing anybody does is ever right according to him. You know how he is, Barny.”

“Yeah, I know how he is,” Barny said. Spiegel, Nolan thought. The tough and lippy Yid. “What did Brewster have to say?”

“Nothing at all that I remember,” Senesky said. “He just listened.”

And now he’s listening to Linda, Nolan thought. He’d have to put a stop to that habit of Brewster’s.

He released Senesky’s arm. “Take it easy, Pal.”

“Yeah, see you around, boy,” Senesky said, and went clattering up the stairs gratefully.

Nolan wandered back to the roll room, frowning and unwrapping a fresh cigar. He stood still for a moment, staring at the pictures of the dead policemen, who smiled across eternally at the bench of Justice. Why in the name of God did cops always get their pictures taken smiling? What the hell was so funny? Every station Nolan had ever worked in had its complement of dead smiling heroes on the wall. They should smile, he thought.

His good humor was gone. Again he was sullen, nervous, irritable. Everything was following the old bleak pattern, he thought wearily. Just when things seemed bright and rosy, the roof fell in.

He took a nickel from his pocket and tossed it up and down in his palm a few times. Then, sighing, he walked to the phone and dialed Espizito’s club.

The man who answered said Espizito was busy. Nolan gave him his name, and a moment later Mike Espizito’s soft, pleasing voice was in his ear.

“Hello there, Barny. How’s the boy?”

“Fine. You called, I understand. What’s up?”

“I’d like to talk to you tonight, if you’re not busy.”

“I’m working four to twelve, you know.”

Espizito laughed good-humoredly. “I keep late hours, too. Supposing you stop by for a drink when you finish. Okay?”

“Sure, Mike.” Nolan studied the receiver, a grim little smile on his lips. “I’ll be seeing you.”

“Good.” The phone clicked in his ear.