The Big Heat

Chapter 12

Larry Smith pulled up in front of the Parkway Building the next morning at ten o’clock. The day was bright and sunny, with a clean bracing wind blowing, and it suited Larry’s mood perfectly. He.had left the brunette from the nightclub several hours before, after a very gay night. She was good, all right, he thought, smiling as he left his car. That wise little look on her face wasn’t misleading; she’d been around. He had stopped at a Turkish bath on the way home, a place where he kept a change of clothes, and had got the works; steam bath, rubdown, facial massage, shave. There was a ruddy color in his cheeks and his body was limber and relaxed, ready for a day of work, plans and excitement.

He was whistling as he opened the door of his modern, four room apartment, brilliant now with the morning sun. Everything was glinting with it; the bright yellow drapes, the blond, maplewood furniture, the cocktail shaker on top of the big combination bar and record-player. Larry was still whistling as he strode through the short hallway into the living room.

A hand struck his back and knocked him flying into the middle of the room.

Larry staggered forward, almost going to his knees under the force of the blow, and his gray, snap-brim hat bounded off his head and onto the floor. He turned quickly, confused and mad, his lips drawing back hard against his teeth.

A big man in a trenchcoat stood blocking the entrance to the hallway. His shoulders filled the opening, and his lined, tired face was as hard as a clenched fist.

“What the hell do you want?” Larry said.

“You know who I am?”

Larry moistened his lips. “Yeah. You’re Bannion.”

“Your first question was stupid then, Larry. You know what I want.” Bannion came toward him slowly, his hands hidden in the pockets of his trenchcoat. “Let’s don’t make it messy,” he said. “Let’s just talk.”

Larry faced Bannion, his legs spread, and forced a tough confidence into his face. “You’re way out of line, friend,” he said. “Don’t make a fool of yourself. I’ll have you locked up for breaking-and-entering.”

“I haven’t broken anything yet,” Bannion said. “I used a pass key, a souvenir from my cop days. What job did Slim Lowry do for you?”

“You must be nuts,” Larry said. He took a step toward Bannion, feeling suddenly strong and unafraid. This was the character Lagana and Stone were worried about, he thought. Another slob of a cop. “Look, turn your big tail and clear out of here,” he said, snapping the words out harshly. “I got no time for dopes this morning. Go on, beat it.”

Bannion’s hands shot out, terrible hands on the ends of long, powerful arms, and closed relentlessly about Larry’s throat. He pulled Larry close to him, slowly, effortlessly, ignoring the futile flurry of blows on his chest and shoulders. Larry’s tongue came out between his teeth and his knees lost their strength. Only Bannion’s hands held him upright.

“What did Lowry do for you?” Bannion said.

Larry tried to talk, but the words, loud and frantic in his exploding brain, died under Bannion’s hands.

“You’ll get one chance,” Bannion said. “When I let go, start talking. If you don’t, I’ll finish the job.” He opened his hands and Larry went down to his knees, gasping air into his cracking lungs, massaging his throat with his hands.

“Okay, talk,” Bannion said.

Larry raised his head slowly. Bannion loomed above him, pitiless and terrible, a blurred, shimmering figure in his moist eyes. He had been close to the death he feared; his soul had been ready to slip away from him, to leave his body cold and hard and useless in the grip of Bannion’s hands. He choked on the thought, and a vast, weakening self-pity welled up in him he shouldn’t be treated this way, he thought sniffling, he’d only been doing his job.

“They told me to get you,” he said. The words came out in a high, relieved squeak. He caught Bannion’s legs gratefully and pressed his face against the cold, smooth cloth of his trenchcoat.

“Who are ‘they’?” Bannion said.

The voice was high above him, sounding from a place that was cold, lonely, remote.

“Stone, Max Stone. I got Slim to put the bomb in your car. We didn’t want your wife.” He shook his head, crying. “It was a mistake, you got to believe me.”

“Why did Stone want me out of the way?”

“I don’t know. Honest to God, I don’t know.”

He heard Bannion sigh; he tried to shout that he was telling the truth, but the hands were around his throat again, jerking him to his feet...

Bannion believed him at last. Larry lay huddled on the floor, shaking his head feebly, trying to touch Bannion’s leg with one entreating hand. He couldn’t talk; only his seeking hand expressed the love and fear of what had destroyed him forever.

“You’re through, little man,” Bannion said in a low voice. “I’m going to spread the word that you talked. Stone will know in an hour, Lagana five minutes later. You picked the wrong racket, little man. You might have been a happy bookkeeper. Now you’ll never have the chance.”

He walked out of the apartment, closing the door softly, with a little click of finality, on Larry’s sobs...

Bannion drove back to center-city through bright, winter sunlight. He stopped at a drugstore and made two telephone calls, both of them to men with wide contacts in the police and gambling sets of the city. He gave both the same story; he knew who was responsible for his wife’s death. Max Stone. Larry Smith had talked. Neither of the men he called wanted to be involved; they were cautious, non-committal, relieved when Bannion rang off; but they were on the phone themselves a moment later with the news.

Bannion paused in the street to light a cigarette. A man approached him smiling awkwardly. “Can I borrow a light, Mister?” he said.

“Sure.”

The man was tall, with yellow hair that needed cutting, and thin bony wrists that stuck several inches out from the sleeves of his coat. He looked like someone’s country cousin on a first visit to the big city.

“Nice day, ain’t it?” the man said, still grinning.

Bannion held a light to his cigarette, and the man bobbed his head gratefully, and said, “Thanks, thanks a lot, mister.”

“Don’t mention it.” Bannion flipped the match away and walked down the sidewalk to his car. The man with the yellow hair leaned against a building and watched him, smiling around the cigarette in his mouth.

Bannion drove back to his hotel, adding up the information he had gathered. It was the big boys, as he’d thought, Stone and Lagana, who had tried to get him, and had got Kate by mistake. He had been nosing about a No Trespassing sign, so they decided to put him out of the way. It had started with Deery’s suicide. Lucy Carroway had thought there was something odd about it, and, for voicing her suspicions, had been tortured and killed. He had dug into her murder and had been taken off the case. Then, after he had tipped off Jerry Furnham of the Express, they had tried for him and got Kate.

Everything flowed inevitably from Deery’s suicide. There must have been an angle to it he hadn’t seen, something which spelled trouble for the big boys. They’d gone into action when Lucy Carroway had talked, closed the big fist. That was the way they preserved the status quo, kept their harmless, little city-wide bingo game operating. Kill, cheat, lie, destroy! While cops looked the other way and judges handed down suspended sentences. This was their city, their private, beautifully-rigged slot machine, and to hell with the few million slobs who just happened to live in the place.

The desk clerk gave him his key, and said, “There’s a woman waiting for you, Mr. Bannion. I sent her up to your room, because — well, there wasn’t anything else to do. She was the one who was here the other night.”

“I see, thanks. Are you sure she was alone?”

“Oh, yes, sir.”

Bannion went up to his room and rapped lightly on the door. There was no answer, no sound from inside. He turned the knob gently, then pushed the door in and stepped aside. Nothing happened. The shades were drawn and an edge of sunlight cut into the darkness, spreading a suffused grayness over the worn rug. Bannion stepped into the room and saw Debby lying on the bed, her face turned toward the wall. He looked at her, annoyed and puzzled, because of the angle of her head he didn’t see the bandages, immediately. When he saw them he frowned and closed the door.

“What happened, Debby?” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed.

She wasn’t asleep; her eyes were open, reflecting the thin sunlight in tiny points. “I didn’t have anywhere else to go,” she said. “I couldn’t — think of anywhere else.”

“That’s okay.” He snapped on the bedside lamp. She turned her face from the light. “Don’t do that,” she said.

“Debby, tell me what happened.”

She still wore the black cocktail dress, the gold sandals. There were ugly brown patches in her bright hair, and her face, the half of it that wasn’t bandaged, was very pale.

“Max did it,” she said. “After I came back last night. He threw coffee in my face.” She began to cry weakly. “The big bastard. The big bastard. He doesn’t care what he does to people.”

“You’ve seen a doctor?”

“They took me to one, I guess. I woke up this morning in a room next to his office. I got up and walked out and came here. I... I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. Turn off the light, Bannion. Please.”

“All right, Debby.” He snapped off the light and picked up the phone. He told the operator, a cool and sensible woman, that he wanted another room on this floor for a friend of his, and a doctor.

“Can’t I stay with you?” Debby said, when he put the phone down.

“Yes, I’m getting you a room.”

“I want to stay with you. You’re not afraid of him, are you, Bannion?”

“No, I’m not afraid of him,” Bannion said. He took off his hat and coat and put them on a chair. She wanted sympathy now, protection, he thought, going into the bathroom for a glass of water. That was just dandy, except that he had no sympathy left for anyone.

The doctor got there ten minutes later, a plump balding man with a no-nonsense manner, and strangely kind, worried eyes. Bannion helped him get Debby into the adjoining room. They undressed her and put her into bed. The doctor gave her a sedative, and started changing the bandages on her face. She pushed at his hands, and said. “Don’t look, Bannion. Please.”

“Okay, okay,” he said, and went back to his own room. He made himself a drink and raised the shade to let in some light. He sipped his drink, and stared out the window at a row of uniformly dull office buildings, and beyond them the switching tracks of the Reading. His thought turned slowly about Lagana, Max Stone, and finally, Deery. Thomas Francis Deery. The automatic little cog who handled the police department’s paper work, who lived with a cool, detached blonde, and had had his fling with a blonde, a gay likable blonde, Lucy Carroway. What was so damn odd about that. Not much.

Deery had had a place in Atlantic City years ago; had he been taking a little cut then? Deciding, for some reason, to go straight, he had sold the place, and settled into an uneventful sort of life, enlivened only by his arm-chair traveling? Was that the way it had worked out? You desert the reality of Atlantic City and the pay-off for the unreality of Spain and the Fiji Islands. It was a nice, simple equation.

The doctor came in, looked Bannion up and down, and said, “I’ve got two prescriptions here to be filled. Who did that to her?”

“Her boy friend, which I’m not,” Bannion said. “How is she?”

“Well, she’s comfortable now,” the doctor said, the coldness gone from his voice. “She should sleep.”

“How about scars?”

“Probably. It’s pretty hard to say.” He put the prescription form on the bedside table. “See that she takes these according to the instructions. I’ll be back tomorrow morning to take a look at her.”

“Thanks, Doctor.”

The doctor put on his overcoat and hesitated at the door. “Who’s the boyfriend, by the way? This is a police matter, if she’ll prefer charges.”

“I don’t know,” Bannion said.

“He shouldn’t get away with this.”

“Well, something may happen to him someday,” Bannion said.

The doctor glanced at him curiously, and then cleared his throat and said, “Yes, yes of course. Well, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Bannion went in to see her after the doctor had gone. The tension of pain had faded from her forehead, and her hands rested palely outside the covers.

“You’re going to be okay,” he said. “You probably feel better already.”

“That’s the dope he gave me working,” she said. “How’ll I look, Bannion? Did he tell you?”

“He said you can’t tell yet,” he said.

“You talked to him about it, didn’t you? Will I be scarred?”

“Settle down, Debby.”

“Oh, sure, that’s easy. What did he say?”

“There might be a scar. But that’s not definite.”

She was silent, her fingers playing restlessly on the covers. “A scar isn’t so bad,” she said. “Anyway, it’s only on one side. I can go through life sideways.” She turned her face to the wall. “He told you I’m messed up for good, didn’t he?”

He lit a cigarette, and frowned slightly. She surprised him by saying, “You don’t give a damn, I know. You’re a real tough guy.”

“It doesn’t matter what I think,” he said. He knew she was right; he was too cold and empty to care about anyone. He didn’t care about her face, he wouldn’t care if she solved her problems by jumping out the window. He wouldn’t even be relieved; it simply made no difference.

“You can’t live that way,” she said. “Not caring about people, I mean. Not about me, but about someone. You ought to at least get a dog.”

“Don’t worry about me. Don’t worry about anything, Debby. You’ll be okay. Get some sleep now.”

“I’ll be okay when I get Stone,” she said. “I’ll get him, don’t worry.”

“Forget him, Debby.”

“No, I won’t forget him.” Her voice was drowsy. “He’ll wish I had, though, someday.”

When she was asleep Bannion turned off the light and locked her door. He picked up his things from his own room, and the prescriptions, and went downstairs to the desk.

“This is important,” he said to the desk clerk. “The girl in the room next to mine is sick. I want you to get these prescriptions filled for me, and don’t let anyone go up to her room. Get that? I don’t care if they claim to be her father, her mother, or her parish priest. Nobody sees her. If anyone tries to, you pick up the phone and yell for the cops. Use my name. Bannion. They’ll know it, I think.”

“Certainly. We’ll be careful.”

“Thanks very much.”

Bannion left the desk and walked toward the revolving door. He was halfway there when a voice said, “Hey, Dave, wait a minute.”

He stopped, turning, and saw Furnham, the Express reporter, and a tall, stooped, gray-haired man coming toward him; they had been sitting in a sofa at the side of the lobby. Their hats were still on a nearby chair.

“We were waiting for you, Dave,” Furnham said. “This is my boss, Emmet Lehto, managing editor of the Express. He wanted to meet you.”

Bannion shook hands with Lehto, who had a thin shy face and a pleasant smile. “Not only meet you, I want to talk to you,” he said.

“I’m pretty busy now.”

“Would you sit down long enough to have a cigarette?” Lehto said.

“All right.”

They walked back to the sofa. Furnham collected the two hats and put them on a table. Bannion took the straight chair. “Well, what is it, Mr. Lehto?” he said.

“Have you been following the papers this week?” Lehto said.

“No, I haven’t had time.”

“Well, as editorial writers say, the administration has been under heavy fire,” Lehto said, smiling slightly. “But it’s probably not going to be enough to affect the elections. Something more dramatic is needed, I’m afraid. You know how people are. They see things, and still don’t see them. They know about the politician-hoodlum tie-up in the city. They know that city contracts go to hoodlum-controlled contracting companies, who cheat the tax-payer with sub-standard materials, and whose only thought is to squeeze as much profit as possible out of the job. They understand that ten or fifteen years of this causes the city’s parks, schools, roads and public buildings to depreciate more than they would in fifty years of normal care and up-keep. Still they do nothing about it. Maybe they feel they can’t; maybe they aren’t angry. Our intention is to get them angry, Bannion.”

“Well, that’s fine,” Bannion said, after a pause. “Let me wish you luck.”

“We thought you could help us,” Lehto said.

“I’m no newspaperman.”

“We have more than news columns in the paper. There’s an editorial page, too. If there’s anything you want to say, any pressure you might like to exert, we could help you do it.”

“I’m not interested in the sociological angles of corruption,” Bannion said. “I’m after the men who killed my wife.”

“We’re after the same people. For that and other crimes. Do you see any reason why we can’t work together?”

“Yes. You’re crusaders. My motivations aren’t so lofty.”

“What difference does that make if we’re trying to achieve the same result? Bannion, the people of this town need a fire-cracker under their tail. If we can slap them across the face with a big story, something they can’t ignore, they may use their God-given but atrophying common sense and let some clear air into the city next month.”

“A big story, eh? You think I’ve got one?”

“Yes, I do. Why was Lucy Carroway murdered? Why was your wife killed? Why does a cop have to quit the department to find answers to those questions? That’s the story, Bannion.”

“Possibly it is,” Bannion said. “But I don’t have it yet. And I won’t get it here.”

Lehto stood up, smiling rather reluctantly. “You want to work alone, I know. The trouble is the rest of us want to get into the act. It’s a job that will be a pleasure to do.”

“I’m hoping so,” Bannion said. “Sorry I wasn’t more help. Goodbye.”

There was a gray Chevrolet parked directly before the entrance of the hotel. Burke, from Homicide, was at the wheel, watching the revolving doors. When Bannion appeared, he climbed out of the car, his long face solemn. He pointed a finger at Bannion. “Bang!” he said softly. “Just like that, big boy.” He wasn’t smiling.

“Charades?” Bannion said.

“It ain’t funny. Come here and meet our friend.”

Bannion followed him to the side of the car. Carmody was in the back seat. He waved to Bannion. Shackled to his wrist, was a sullen-looking man with yellow hair that needed cutting.

“The hayseed is Joe Hoffman from Chicago, and he’s no hayseed,” Burke said. “You know him, Dave?”

Bannion stared at Hoffman, the long, awkward-looking man who might have been someone’s country cousin on a first trip to the city. He remembered lighting a cigarette for Hoffman not two hours ago. “Yes! I’ve seen him,” he said.

“Well, that’s good,” Burke said dryly. “You probably know that he’s been tailing you around town all day. You probably also know that he works for Ryan in Chicago.”

“No, that’s news,” Bannion said. He glanced at Burke. “I should say thanks, I guess. How’d you get him?”

“A cop at the airport recognized him when he got off the plane last night,” Burke said. “This cop, who must be new on the job, passed the information on to the Hall. I mean, his sense of duty sounds like something only a new man would have.”

“Yes, I got your fine sardonic touch,” Bannion said. “Then what?”

“We checked the hotels and found him,” Burke said. “Carmody and I started after him this morning, and he started after you. We picked him up about ten minutes ago. He was parked across the street in a rented car, with a forty-five on his knee.” Burke glanced into the car at Hoffman. “I’m glad to say he’s got no permit for the gun. We’ll find out who brought him into town.”

“I can tell you,” Bannion said.

“The hell you will,” Burke said, with a little smile. “I want to get it from him.” He pointed a finger at Bannion. “Remember, big boy, it could happen. Stay awake.”

“Okay,” Bannion said.

Burke slapped his arm and got back into the car. It moved out from the curb, picked up speed and disappeared in the traffic.

“You may need our help, after all,” Lehto said.

Bannion looked over his shoulder. Lehto and Furnham were standing just outside the revolving door of the hotel. Lehto’s long, shy face was serious.

“You’ll hear from me when I do,” Bannion said.

He walked down the block, irritated and angry. This job was all his, his alone. He didn’t want help from anyone.

Muscle had got him this far; now he had to use his head. The secret lay with Deery, a dead man. He would start with him now, the automatic little cog who handled the department’s paper work and spent his nights reading about the bullfights in Spain, and the fertility charms at Pompeii.