The Big Heat

Chapter 15

Bannion asked the desk clerk to have some chicken soup, crackers and tea sent up to Debby. The clerk said, “Right away, certainly,” He paused, glanced around the lobby, then leaned closer to Bannion. “There was a man in asking about her five or ten minutes ago. I told him she couldn’t see anyone, doctor’s orders, and he said thanks and walked out.”

“I see. What did he look like?”

“He was middle-aged and rather flashily dressed. I didn’t like his looks, frankly.”

Some character of Stone’s, Bannion thought. “Okay, nobody sees her, remember that,” he said to the clerk.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Bannion.”

He wondered if he should call Debby, and decided against worrying her; she was okay for the moment. Stone could watch and wait now, until she tried to leave town. Then, if he still wanted her back, he could do something about it.

Bannion went out to his car and drove to Wilks’ home, which was an unpretentious, two-storied house in the Northeast area of the city. The house was comfortably shabby, and blended nicely with its middle-class neighborhood. Wilks’ establishment in Maryland was considerably more elegant.

Wilks answered the door and greeted Bannion warmly.

“Come in, come in,” he said. “Nasty night, isn’t it? I was about ready to hit the hay when you called.” He took Bannion’s coat and hung it on an old-fashioned clothes tree in the hall. “How about a cup of coffee?” he said, ushering him into the warm, well-used living room.

“No thanks,” Bannion said. “I know it’s late, and I’ll be as quick as possible.”

Wilks laughed. “I’m always ready to sit up and talk. Here, take this chair, it’s about the only one that you’ll find comfortable.”

Wilks sat down facing Bannion and re-lit his pipe. There was an evening paper on the floor at his feet, and the radio, which was within reach of his hand, was playing soft music. “Nice night to be inside,” he said, when his pipe was drawing smoothly. “Now, what’s on your mind, Dave?”

“I talked with Parnell this evening,” Bannion said. “You know he’s working on Lucy Carroway’s murder.”

“Yes, of course.” Wilks looked interested, nothing more.

“He’s come across a lead, a rather slim one, but it bears out my theory about that job.”

Wilks took his pipe from his mouth. He said, “I don’t see how this concerns me, Dave.”

“Perhaps I can show’ you,” Bannion said. “Parnell has a line on a man who might be Biggie Burrows. A doctor living in Radnor passed a man answering Burrows’ description on the Pike the night she was murdered. The man wore a camel’s hair coat, was big, dark-complexioned, and had a prominent nose. The doctor passed him at about the spot where Lucy’s body was later found.”

“Considering that it was dark, this doctor has made a rather remarkable identification,” Wilks said. “Perhaps he even stopped and chatted with the man for a few’ minutes.”

Bannion smiled appreciatively. Wilks watched him for a few seconds, and then he smiled, too, but there was a puzzled look in his eyes. They sat in silence for an instant, smiling as if one of them had said something funny.

“Well, what’s the rest of it, Dave?” Wilks said, at last.

“Parnell tells me he checked with you on this,” Bannion said, pleasantly. “I had told him, you know, that I thought Lucy Carroway might fit somehow into Tom Deery’s suicide. He called Philadelphia Homicide to see if I’d turned up anything he could connect with this big-nosed man he’d learned was on the Pike. He did talk to you, didn’t he?”

“Why, yes, I believe he did,” Wilks said.

Bannion grinned. “He told me you said my theories were just a pipe dream.”

Wilks drummed his fingers on the arms of his chair, frowning at Bannion. They were silent for as long as thirty seconds, but Bannion was still smiling. Wilks looked at his fiddling fingers, coughed and folded his hands in his lap. “All right, I told him it was a pipe dream,” he said. “What about it?”

“Why, nothing, nothing at all,” Bannion said.

“Well, what do you want to see me about?” Wilks said, frowning now.

“I want to tell you what I told Parnell,” Bannion said.

“What did you tell him?” Wilks said, with an impatient edge on his voice.

“I told him you were right, that it was a pipe dream,” Bannion said. “I realize that now. Tom Deery, Big Burrows, just a whiff of smoke, Lieutenant. Lucy Carroway was killed by a sex fiend, probably, and the chances are a hundred to one against anyone ever nabbing that character now.”

“You told him it was a pipe dream,” Wilks said slowly.

Bannion said nothing. He nodded.

“What strikes me as a rather curious comment,” Wilks said. “Very smart, very intelligent, but still curious.”

“Coming from me it’s curious, you mean.”

“That’s what I mean, Dave. Perhaps we should have a drink and talk this over. I’d like to feel sure we understand each other.”

“I think that’s a good idea.”

“Excuse me.” Wilks returned shortly with a bottle of bonded Bourbon and two shot glasses. “I don’t think we need to bother with a chaser, eh?”

“Not with that kind of whiskey,” Bannion said.

“My feeling exactly.”

Bannion accepted a shot glass of whiskey and smiled at Wilks. “Here’s to sunnier days,” he said.

“Right,” Wilks said, raising his glass.

They drank and he refilled both glasses. He sat down, the drink beside him on a table, and re-lit his pipe. “Well, I’m surprised, I must say,” he said, watching Bannion with a little smile.

“You didn’t think I was that smart, eh?”

Wilks laughed. “Well, that’s putting it bluntly,” he said. His cheeks had reddened slightly with the liquor, and his pipe made a comfortable, popping noise in the still room.

“It takes some people longer than others to learn the score,” Bannion said.

“Why did you tell me this, Dave?” Wilks said, taking the pipe from his mouth.

“My reasons aren’t idealistic,” Bannion said. “I’ve got to live, that’s why. I’ve got a daughter to take care of, too, and neither of us can get by on temperament.” He shrugged. “I’ve got to work, Lieutenant. I thought of the private investigation field, since it’s about all I know. However, I wouldn’t get far without some police cooperation.”

“You would have cooperation,” Wilks said, picking up his drink. “You’ve got friends from the top to the bottom of the police department in this city. Good friends, Dave. But friendship is a give-and-take proposition. It can’t be one-sided. And friendship, the kind we’re talking about, is based on loyalty. I’ll tell you something: You could come back to the department tomorrow if you like. Or you can establish yourself as a private investigator. And in either case you’d have friends, friends who only want to be sure of your loyalty.”

“You might call Parnell, if you’re not sure,” Bannion said.

“I don’t need to do that,” Wilks said smiling. He lifted the bottle from the floor at his feet and poured two more drinks. “There’s a saying, ‘Once a cop always a cop’, and I put stock in it. You were in the business too long to forget that, Dave.” He frowned and shook his head slowly. “It was a rotten break about your wife, a dirty, rotten break. I don’t blame you for blowing your top about it.”

“I blew my top,” Bannion said. “That’s over.”

“It takes a big man to see it that way.”

“You have to live,” Bannion said.

Wilks studied him a moment, and a hard, pleased smile touched his lips. “I told you that once before, Dave,” he said. “I told you to throw your books of philosophy away. They’re full of rosy unrealities for college kids. You’ve learned more about life in the past three weeks, I think, than you have in the last three decades. You know now that you’ve got to make compromises.”

“Yes, I know that now,” Bannion said.

The hard smile left Wilks’ face. He shook his head. “This is almost funny, Dave. You know I never liked you. Does that surprise you?”

“Well, I always thought we got along all right,” Bannion said. There was an uncertain smile on his face, a puzzled little smile for Wilks’ benefit, but he was thinking: Yes, you hated me, and everything else in the world which proved that corruption wasn’t inevitable.

“No, I didn’t like you one damn bit,” Wilks said, putting down his empty glass. He was drifting into an expressive mood. “You were a little too pure for my taste, a little too sweet and innocent. And people like that get to be a nuisance, they get to be, well, critical.”

“I never meant to be that way,” Bannion said.

“Oh, hell, I’m rambling around miles off the topic,” Wilks said, laughing, and reaching for the bottle. “What difference does it make what I thought of you last week or last year, Dave? The thing is, I like you now. Not just because you got smart, but because you’re a damn big man.” He stretched his legs out in front of him and laughed. “Not just physically, either.”

Yes, you like me... I’m up to my waist in the mud with you, and we’re just a pair of happy, compromising kids now. Bannion sipped his drink, and then said, “Thanks, Lieutenant.”

Wilks shifted forward on the edge of his chair. “It’s a relief to talk to you, Dave. You were always intelligent, and now, thank God, you’re almost smart. You know we don’t make all the rules. We take orders in certain cases, because it’s human nature for some people to run things and other people to be run. And is there anything wrong with that? Hell, it’s the story of the world. If you don’t take the orders, if you decide to be a hero, does that change things? Not one damn bit. They find someone else who’d do the job, and your personal little revolt is just a waste of time. If you don’t take it someone else will, by God.” He glanced down at the papers at his feet and suddenly swore, angrily and fluently. “Now look at this mess they’re stirring up,” he said, kicking at the top front page with his foot. “Three stories there about us, about what they call our corruption and inefficiency. They’re just trying to sell papers. They don’t fool me. Do they think this is going to do any good? Dave, you can scream about gambling and politics until you’re blue in the face, but you can’t change human nature.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Bannion said, smiling.

“What? Oh, sure. I’ll have a nightcap, too.” He glanced at the empty glass in surprise and then laughed. “I don’t remember the last one, if you can believe it. Well, happy days.”

“We can use some.”

“Yes, we can use some happier days,” Wilks said, sighing and rubbing his forehead. “Frankly, Dave, I don’t know what’s going to happen. Everything is very touchy. Damn, it’s a rare night when I can get to sleep lately. It’s not like the old days. The papers are after us in earnest now, and the politicians of the other party are after our heads. We’ve done as well as most administrations, I’d say, but reform groups are unreasonable. They want blood. It will blow over after elections, I’m sure, but right now, before elections, things are almighty damn tense. That’s why the Deery matter was so bad and why it had to be handled so carefully.” He glanced at Bannion. “You know that, don’t you, Dave?”

“Sure, sure,” Bannion said, looking only casually interested. It was a good act; he suddenly had an idea what Deery’s suicide had meant to the city.

“They couldn’t be too careful about it,” Wilks said.

“Naturally.”

“Then the Carroway girl started talking, and you got into it,” Wilks said, shaking his head. “It was one of those nightmare things that just won’t stay covered up.” Wilks finished his drink, and when he put the glass down his face had changed, had smoothed over and closed. He glanced at his wrist watch smiling. “Well, time goes fast in pleasant company, doesn’t it?”

Bannion knew Wilks was through talking. He had to gamble now, shoot the works behind his hunch. He said, “Deery left a note, didn’t he?”

“Where’d you hear that?” Wilks said sharply.

Bannion shrugged. “It just figures. Otherwise, why all the excitement?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Wilks said, rubbing his hands together slowly.

“Was it pretty strong?”

“My God, yes. I’ve never seen it, but I understand it’s absolute dynamite. It wasn’t just a note, it was twenty typed pages of names, dates, figures—” Wilks stopped, shrugging helplessly. “It was the works, Dave. A blueprint of the organization’s structure.”

“Where’d he get the dope?”

Wilks swore. “Deery was no boy scout. Until eight or ten years ago, he was in up to his neck. He collected the gambling take from the police districts throughout the city, and got his, of course. Also he sent up dummy books for the amusement-tax office. Then he wanted out. Said he had his and was satisfied. Well, they let him go, they believed the bastard. And this is the way he repaid their confidence. He made records of everything — how gambling districts are lined up street by street, with police districts to avoid any misunderstandings. What captains get what, how much they keep, how much is passed on to the Inspector, the Superintendent’s office. He named the judges and magistrates on Lagana’s payroll, and listed what they get for continuing gambling cases indefinitely, and for handing down suspended sentences.” Wilks shook his head and reached for the bottle automatically. “He went into the tax rebates, the most ticklish area in the whole damn business. Amusement-tax rebates, contractor’s rebates, personal and real property rebates — you know what that could mean if it got out, Dave? He had the list of businesses owned by Lagana and Stone, and by Waxman in Central, and O’Neill in the Northeast, and how they got special city contracts and tax breaks of every kind imaginable. And anybody in the city who ever used city material in building his home — and there’s a lot of those, don’t think there isn’t — is down there in black and white, too. Well, you can see the stink this would cause before elections? You can guess what the papers would have done with it. Well, then the Carroway girl started talking to you, and they simply couldn’t afford to have any attention directed toward Deery, because if the papers got scratching around they might have turned up this business of the note.”

“Well, why don’t they burn the damn thing?” Bannion said.

“There’s a hitch. Mrs. Deery got the note, and she’s hanging onto it.”

“She’s an intelligent woman, isn’t she?”

“Yes, yes of course. She’s playing ball.”

“Then, there’s nothing to worn’ about.”

“No, I suppose not, but it was a damn bad week.”

“Well, it’s always darkest before dawn, they say,” Bannion said. He covered a yawn and smiled. “It’s been a long day, hasn’t it?”

They stood up and Wilks patted Bannion’s big hard shoulder. “I’m glad we had this talk,” he said.

“I am, too. It’s meant a great deal to me,” Bannion said.

“Don’t worry about your plans, Dave. We can throw things your way, and don’t forget it. If you need a little capital—”

Bannion waved the offer aside. “I can handle it alone, I think,” he said.

Wilks came onto the front porch with him and they stood there in the quiet darkness for a few moments talking about the weather. Finally Wilks slapped his shoulder. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for bed,” he said.

“You’d better get inside before you catch cold.”

“Right. Goodnight, Dave.”

“Goodnight, Lieutenant.”

Bannion watched Wilks enter his house, watched the door close, and his face changed slowly. He stood there a moment, breathing slowly and deeply, and then he turned and went quickly down the steps, his heels ringing like iron on the dry, frozen wood...

Mrs. Deery stood in the doorway of her apartment, lips parted slightly, her eyebrows raised in surprise. She was ready for bed; her silver-streaked blonde hair was tied in the back with a wide blue ribbon, and her skin was oiled and shining with cold cream. “I thought you were the boy from the drugstore,” she said in her low, precise voice. “I called them to send over some things I’d forgot—” She didn’t complete the sentence, not from confusion, but because she obviously felt it required no further amplification.

“It’s a night of coincidences, Mrs. Deery,” Bannion said. “I met him outside and took over the errand.” He held out a neatly wrapped package.

“Well, thank you,” Mrs. Deery said, and moistened her lips.

“We don’t have to worry about the boy from the drugstore now,” Bannion said.

“It’s rather late, you know,” Mrs. Deery said.

“I want to talk to you,” he said, and walked toward her slowly, hands deep in his pockets. She backed away from him, more annoyed than frightened, into the hallway of her apartment. When Bannion closed the door, she said, “You’re acting very strangely, Mr. Bannion.” She glanced down at the peach-colored robe, and then up at him with a prim, dramatic school expression of alarm. “I’m not dressed for company, you know.”

“Don’t think of me as company,” Bannion said. There was a light in the living room, but the hallway and Deery’s study were dark. He snapped on the hall light, and walked into Deery’s study and did the same there. “Light and lust are deadly enemies, Mrs. Deery,” he said. “That’s from Shakespeare, the British playwright.” He glanced around; the ashtray had been emptied, the typewriter covered, but nothing else had been changed.

“What do you want?” Mrs. Deery said.

“I should have seen it, of course,” he said, quietly. He glanced at Mrs. Deery who stood in the doorway regarding him with lady-like exasperation. “I should have seen it because it wasn’t here,” he said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think you do. Tom Deery, a cautious, methodical man, shot himself in this room. His insurance policies were clipped together, his household bills were paid, his whole life was wrapped up in preparation for an orderly death. Still there was something missing — the one thing Tom Deery wouldn’t have forgotten was missing.”

“I think you had better go, Mr. Bannion.”

“The note, that was it,” Bannion said. “There had to be a note. It was inevitable, and its absence should have been instantly noticed. Tom Deery wouldn’t kill himself without leaving a note to explain his reasons.” He glanced at her, his face hardening. “He left a note, of course. Where is it?”

Mrs. Deery sat down on the arm of the easy chair. She looked surprised but far from shaken. “You must be a fool, Mr. Bannion,” she said. “I suppose it was clever of you to find out about it, but you’re certainly stupid if you think I’m going to take it from my pocket and hand it to you.”

“I’ll get it,” Bannion said.

“Oh, no you won’t,” she said, in the tone she might use to deny a child’s unreasonable request. “That note is my trust fund, and I’m not giving it up — to you or anyone else.”

“Trust fund, eh? Then Lagana’s paying you to keep it quiet.”

“Certainly.” Mrs. Deery swung a slippered foot slowly. “I discussed the note with him the day after Tom shot himself. He agreed to pay me a handsome amount of money, in yearly installments, if I destroyed the note.”

“And you did?”

“Of course not. That would have been silly. When I talked with him the note was already in my safety deposit box, with a letter to my lawyer asking him to deliver it to the Director of Public Safety, in the presence of the press, in the event of my murder.” She smiled slightly. “The note is not only a trust fund but an insurance policy, you see. Mr. Lagana will make sure that nothing happens to me.”

“And you told Lagana about Lucy Carroway, I suppose.”

“Why, certainly. You intimated she might know more than she had already told you. That worried Mr. Lagana. Perhaps Tom had told her about the note he was writing or planned to write. She might keep talking, and that was very dangerous, Mr. Lagana thought.”

“So she was tortured to find out what she knew, and then she was murdered,” Bannion said. “You’ve got a lot on your soul, Mrs. Deery.”

“I’m not worrying about it,” Mrs. Deery said smiling. “I had no affection for Lucy Carroway. Do you think it’s pleasant to realize that such a person is having an affair with your husband? I can tell you it isn’t. I hated her, quite frankly, and I have no tears for her now. But I’m no ghoul. I’m sorry her end was so unpleasant.”

“You’re lying. You’re delighted at what happened to her.”

“You have a horrid mind,” she said, smiling up at him, her eyes wide and bright. “Poor Lucy. What a ghastly finish to her shabby little life.”

“You wouldn’t have it any other way,” Bannion said.

She smiled ruefully, as if caught in a small deceit. “You’re right, I believe. I’ve saved the newspaper stories about it, and re-reading them satisfies something deep inside me, Air. Bannion. Something not very nice, I’m afraid. But then I’m not a nice person. I’m glad she got paid off fittingly.”

“You were also glad that your husband blew his brains out,” Bannion said. “And you were glad to find the note. The note he left to make amends for what he had done. You denied him that chance, again quite happily, I’m sure.”

“Oh, Tom was a fool,” Mrs. Deery said, shrugging. “I have no sympathy with death-bed confessions. He was no angel. He was smart. He made enough for us to live decently — at first. He had soul-struggles about it, and finally decided to live on his salary. He never cared about me, of course. He didn’t care that I had no clothes, no jewels, none of the things a woman might expect out of life. It was after his affair with Lucy Carroway that he turned over a new leaf, and isn’t that a ridiculous development, by the way? Imagine anyone seeing the light through an association with that tramp! At any rate, like all men who’ve been tied to their mother’s knee, he suddenly turned back to religion when he lost his nerve. Oh, he got very religious and saintly, Mr. Bannion. He spent eight years worrying about his sins, and finally he decided to absolve himself by ‘telling all’ in a note and blowing his brains out.” She smiled contemptuously. “Fortunately, I got the note instead of the papers.”

“And you’ll hang onto it,” Bannion said slowly. “A whole city is dying in the hands of a gang of thieves, but you don’t care a bit. You’ll protect Stone and Lagana, you’ll save murderers from the chair, you’ll let justice be kicked into the alley, just for the sake of a mink coat and a diamond brooch.”

Mrs. Deery laughed softly, and then wet her lips with the tip of her small, pink tongue. “Go on, Mr. Bannion, you’re really amusing,” she said.

“And you’ll cheat your husband out of his last chance to ease his conscience,” Bannion said, in the same slow hard voice.

“Yes, yes, yes,” Mrs. Deery said, snapping the words out fiercely. “I’ve suffered, and now it’s over. I’m going to enjoy life to the hilt now, and none of your dreary’ moralizing affects me in the least.”

“You think the coming years are going to be good?”

She seemed amused at the question. “Certainly, I do.”

“You’re wrong.”

“They’ll be wonderful years,” Mrs. Deery said, and began to laugh.

“There aren’t going to be any years at all,” Bannion said slowly.

“What do you mean?”

Bannion’s face was hard and gray as he took the gun from his shoulder holster. “Can’t you guess, Mrs. Deery?”

“—You won’t do it.”

“The note will be delivered, then,” Bannion said. “The note with the papers present. That’s the big heat, bright lady. For Lagana, Stone, the rest of our city’s thieving bastards.”

Mrs. Deery slid from the arm of the chair in one fluid, slack movement, and went to her knees before Bannion. She looked up at him, moving her body slowly from side to side, and wetting her pale lips with her tongue. Her mouth opened and closed, her hands made fluttering gestures to accompany the words; but no words sounded.

She knelt before him, grotesquely, ludicrously, her expression changing, twisting, registering all the variations of appeal, fear, terror, pity, in an attempt to match those silent words that were sounding only in her mind. It was a pantomime of terror, cajolery, a deaf-mute’s frantic plea of pity.

This was the end of it, Bannion thought, seeing her as only the last obstacle between him and vengeance. When the shot sounded, when this mute, foolishly gesticulating creature was dead, he could put his gun away and call the police. The job would be done.

“No!” Mrs. Deery managed the one hoarse word.

Why did he wait? He had only to pull the trigger, let the firing pin snap forward, and the steel-jacketed bullet would take care of the rest, take care of this soft, perfumed, sadistic bitch, and with her Stone, Lagana, the hoodlums who had murdered his wife and held this town in their big, bitter grip.

“I can pay you,” Mrs. Deery cried.

Why did he wait? They had killed, why shouldn’t he? They had murdered Lucy Carroway, Kate, his life and love, as they’d destroy bothersome insects. Why should he bind himself with morals which they had mocked?

Mrs. Deery stared at him, whimpering now, her mouth working loosely.

Bannion’s arm came down slowly until the muzzle of the gun pointed at the floor. “I don’t have the right to kill you,” he said, in a low, raging voice.

She put her hands to her face, sobbing, and leaned forward until her forehead rested on Bannion’s shoe. He jerked his foot away savagely, and she slumped to the floor, laughing and crying at the same time, her hand stroking the rug in a slow, loving caress.

Bannion looked down at her without expression and put his gun away. He shrugged then, a gesture of immense and bitter weariness, and walked out of her apartment. The sound of her low, wild, grateful weeping followed him to his car.