The Fugitive Pigeon

Chapter 22

“Boo, chum,” said Trask or Slade.

“Nephew, you sure give us a merry chase,” said Slade or Trask.

The uniformed policeman had shut the door behind me. Trask and Slade were in front of me, standing on the gray carpet, smiling at me. Behind them was a desk, and behind the desk a man who had to be Mahoney. The office, medium-sized and somewhat dark, was what you’d expect to contain a deputy chief inspector of something or other.

I said, “I want to talk to Mahoney.”

“You never give up, nephew, do you,” said Trask or Slade.

“That’s one of the qualities about him I like best,” said Slade or Trask.

The man at the desk said, “You keep him quiet, you two. This is dangerous.” He sounded nervous; as though he had anything to be nervous about!

Trask or Slade said, “Don’t worry, there. We know our business.”

“Take him out the back way,” said the man at the desk. “I’ll let you know when it’s clear.”

I said, “Inspector Mahoney, I want to talk to you.”

Slade or Trask said, “Last time we heard from you, nephew, you were heeled. You heeled now?”

“No,” I said, while the pistol began to gain weight in my raincoat pocket.

“Let’s just see. Put your hands up on top of your head.”

Neither of them had a gun in sight. All I had to do was reach into my pocket, pull the pistol out, and start blasting away. So what I did was put my hands up on top of my head.

Slade or Trask came over and patted me here and there and took the pistol away. He looked at me and grinned and shook his head, hefting the little pistol on his palm. “You could hurt yourself with this, nephew,” he said.

The man at the desk said, “Why don’t he call?”

Trask or Slade told him, “Relax. Everything’ll be hunky-dory.”

I took a deep breath. “No, it won’t,” I said.

They all looked at me. Trask or Slade said, “You ain’t thinking of doing nothing stupid, are you, nephew?”

“Inspector Mahoney,” I said, “you better listen to me. You’re in worse trouble than you know.”

Well, he wasn’t. I was the one in trouble, and I was well aware how much. But Mahoney was acting nervous, and I leaped on it, ready to try anything that might help me get what I wanted.

Trask or Slade said to me, “Shut your face, nephew.”

But it was too late. Mahoney had reacted big to what I’d said; he was sitting at the desk looking like a man thirty seconds this side of a heart attack. He was a man of about fifty, with sandy graying hair and soft pale Irish flesh well distributed with freckles. Freckles on his cheeks, freckles on the backs of his hands. It was a foregone conclusion he’d have freckles on his meaty shoulders. His face was somewhat jowly from overweight and bore the expression of anxious friendly mendacity of a wardheeler at a clambake, the expression Ed Begley does so well.

He stood up now, behind his desk, and said, “What do you mean by that? What sort of trouble?”

Trask or Slade told him, “It’s bushwah. He’s got a whole song and dance if you’ll let him.”

Slade or Trask tossed my little pistol into the air and caught it again. “This is the whole story,” he said. “This toy cannon here. He come to kill you, like he killed the Farmer and tried to kill Mr. Gross.”

Mahoney was weakening. He didn’t know what to think. I said, “What if they’re wrong, Inspector? I know where you live, One sixty-nine dash eighty-eight Eighty-third Avenue. If I wanted to kill you I wouldn’t come here to the police station to do it, I’d go wait near your house.”

Trask or Slade came over close to me and poked a stiff finger into my chest. “I thought I told you shut your face.”

Mahoney said, “Wait. Hold it, Trask. Let him talk.”

Trask. The relief of finally knowing which one was Trask and which one Slade was almost too much for me. I practically forgot what I was here for and what I was trying to do.

But Trask reminded me. He rapped me on the shoulder, a good one, and said, “Okay, nephew, you got your wish. The floor’s yours.”

Slade — definitely Slade — added, “Give us your song and dance, nephew. You want we should hum along?”

Mahoney said, “Be quiet. Let him talk.”

“Thank you,” I said.

Mahoney pointed a freckled finger at me. “It better be good.”

I said, “Somebody’s been passing information to the authorities, and these people think it’s me. Somebody killed Mr. Agricola, and they think that was me, too. But what if it wasn’t? If it wasn’t me, getting rid of me won’t do any good. Whoever’s squealing will go right on squealing, and sooner or later he’ll squeal on you, Inspector Mahoney.”

Mahoney scrunched his face up. He was watching me like a hawk, and thinking hard.

I said, “If I didn’t kill Mr. Agricola, then whoever did kill him is still wandering around loose, nobody looking for him or even thinking about him, and maybe he does want to kill you, too.”

Slade tossed the pistol in the air. “How about this, nephew? What’s the rod for, ballast?”

“Self-defense. All you people keep trying to kill me.”

Mahoney said, “Only one thing so far makes sense. Why come here to bump me off if you know where I live?”

So I’d made an opening. I nodded enthusiastically, saying, “Sure. You can see the whole idea falls apart right there.”

“Does it? In that case, what I—”

He was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone. He glanced at Trask and Slade, and then picked up the phone and spoke into it. “Hello?... Hold on.” He cupped his hand over the mouthpiece and said to Trask and Slade, “It’s all clear now.”

Trask said, “Fine. So we take the nephew.”

“I’m not done listening to him,” Mahoney said. But he looked doubtful.

I said, to keep him convinced, “You’ve got more at stake than these two. You can give me five minutes.”

He nodded. “Five minutes.” He said the same thing into the telephone: “Give us five minutes, then let us know the next time it’s clear.” He hung up and looked at me, long and thoughtful. Then he sat down behind his desk and said, “Okay. You got one point on your side. Now I got a question. If you didn’t come here to bump me off, how come you’re here?”

“For information,” I said.

“You want information? You’re supposed to be the one gives information.”

“But that’s just it, I’ve never given anybody any information about anything. The reason I went to Mr. Agricola and Mr. Gross was to find out why the syndicate was down on me, because I hadn’t done anything. Mr. Gross told me it was because you said I was being an informer. But I wasn’t, so I came here to ask you who told you I was.”

“That’s easy,” he said. “Tough Tony Touhy.”

“Who?”

“Lieutenant Anthony Touhy, Mob & Rackets Squad, known as Tough Tony. He’s the one been getting the information on that bar you run, and when I asked him where the dope was coming from he said straight from the bartender, from the guy that runs the place for the syndicate.”

“He said—” But I couldn’t go on. I was dumbfounded. I had never in my life heard of Tough Tony Touhy. Why should he say such a thing?

Mahoney said, “Tough Tony is an honest cop, a nonbought cop. I’m his superior officer. When I ask him where he gets his information from, he tells me. He’s got no reason to lie.”

I said, “But he did lie.”

Mahoney held up two soft palms, making believe they were scales. “On the one side,” he said, “we got the fact it don’t make any sense you should come to the station to try to kill me. On the other side we got the fact it don’t make any sense Tough Tony should lie to me.”

Trask said, “The nephew killed Farmer Agricola. We know that for sure.”

Slade said, “And I was there not half an hour before that. It makes me feel bad to think of it.”

Mahoney still mused over his upturned palms. “Over here,” he said, “we got to add the fact Tough Tony has never lied to me before, and we got to add the fact everybody agrees it was you bumped off Farmer Agricola, and we got to add the fact you come here toting a gun, and we got to add the fact you was in the best position of anybody to give us the information that was passed over.” The hand he was considering was sinking lower and lower under the weight of all the things he felt he had to add to it. Now, after a quick glance at me, he turned his attention to his other hand, which was way up in the air all by itself. “On this side,” he said, “we got nothing to add, nothing at all. So maybe you did come here to kill me instead of waiting outside my house, and maybe you tried it this way because you’re a dumbbell or you figured on the element of surprise or something.”

Trask and Slade both nodded. Slade said, “That’s it, nephew. That’s the way it adds up, all right.”

“Somebody,” I said, rather shakily, “somebody is using me for a fall guy. I never said a word to Tough Tony Touhy in my life, I never even heard of him until just now. Either he lied to you or you’re lying to Mr. Gross, and I wish I knew which.”

Mahoney actually looked insulted. “Me lying? What the hell for?”

“Maybe it was your fault that information got into the wrong hands,” I told him. “And you’ve been trying to cover up by putting the blame on me.”

“That’s about all I want to hear,” Mahoney said.

I appealed all at once to Trask. “It’s possible,” I said. “You must have talked with Mr. Gross by now, you must have compared descriptions and you know that wasn’t Miss Althea with me last night.”

Trask frowned. “So what?”

“So Mr. Gross figured I was in cahoots with Miss Althea and that’s why I was squealing to the police and killing people. But if I’m not in cahoots with Miss Althea, what’s my motive?”

Slade said, “Maybe it’s just plain orneriness.”

Trask said, “It ain’t our business to worry about your motive.”

I told him, “It’s your business to worry about whether the syndicate is running right or not. What if it is Mahoney behind this whole thing, covering up like mad for something he did wrong? So you take me out and kill me and it doesn’t change a thing, everything’s still all loused up. And Mahoney picks somebody else to be his fall guy next time, maybe even one of you two, and it just goes on and on and on.”

Mahoney got to his feet, rather hurriedly, crying, “Now, wait just a damn minute there!”

Trask, without looking away from me, waved a hand at Mahoney to shut up and sit down. Trask was looking both amused and interested, and he said, “All right, nephew, keep it up. What else you got to say?”

“I’m being used for a fall guy,” I told him, “that’s all I know for sure. Maybe it’s Mahoney, maybe it isn’t.”

Trask said, “What if it isn’t?” Like he was just killing time, just humoring me until the phone should ring again.

All right, I had the time, no matter what his reason for giving it to me, so it was up to me to use it. I said, “Did it ever occur to you, maybe the police force has caught on to Mahoney. Maybe they’re not sure, but they suspect he’s sold out to the syndicate, so just to be on the safe side they don’t give him any information that could make trouble. Like not telling him who the real informer is in a case like this, when the informer might still have more things to tell.”

Mahoney was gaping at me open-mouthed. Trask, still looking amused, now turned his head and said, “Well, Mahoney? What do you think of that?”

“I think,” said Mahoney, somewhat strangled, “I think that’s a lot of crap, that’s what I think.”

Slade said, “There’s one quick way to check.”

“Good,” I said, turning to him. “Fine. Let’s do it.” Mahoney looked at him somewhat warily. “What’s that?”

Slade said, “Is Touhy around?”

“I think so,” said Mahoney. “He should be in his office, yes.”

“Trask and I’ll get out of sight. You call Touhy in here. The kid says he’s never seen Touhy, never heard of him before this. Let’s see if Touhy recognizes him, see what Touhy says to him.”

“All right,” I said quickly. “That’s good.” And it was, it seemed to me, very good. Step by step I was coming around the circle to find the charges against me and the name of my accuser. From Uncle Al to Agricola to Gross to Mahoney, and now to Touhy. If only this could be at last the end of the line.

Mahoney seemed less pleased by the idea. “What if he spills the beans? What if he starts talking to Touhy?”

Trask smiled and shook his head. “He won’t. He’d only be killing Touhy, because we’d have to shut him up. You wouldn’t want to do that to poor Touhy, would you, nephew?”

I shook my head. “No. I won’t say anything.”

Mahoney said, “Shoot Tough Tony? Right here in my office?”

Slade told him, “I got a silencer. And we can carry the body out when we get the all-clear on the nephew.”

“Besides,” Trask added, “there won’t be any need for any shooting. Will there, nephew?”

“No,” I promised.

Mahoney, doubtful, said, “Well...”

“Come on,” Trask told him. “We don’t have much time.”

Mahoney shook his head; he still didn’t like it. But he said, “Let me see if Touhy’s in his office.”

We waited and watched as Mahoney used his phone. From his talk, Touhy was in. Mahoney wanted to know could he stop by the office for a minute. Then he hung up and said, “He’ll be right in.”

Trask and Slade receded toward a door on the far side of the office. “Remember, nephew,” Slade said, and Trask grinned at me, and they both slid out of sight.

Mahoney and I stood facing one another, both of us nervous, both of us silent. Time hung in midair, like a pendulum stuck at one end of its swing.

There was a single sharp rap at the door, and then it opened, and a tall black-haired tough-looking lantern-jawed big-knuckled guy came in, the sort that’s called the Black Irish. A cross between John Wayne and Robert Ryan.

Mahoney started talking before this big fellow was halfway in the door. “Something’s come up, Tony, I’ll have to talk to you later, an unexpected visitor, I’ll get back to you in about half an hour, sorry to call you away like this for no reason at all.”

“Oh, that’s all right.” He waved a big hand, then looked at me for the first time. “Well, Charlie!” he said, and grinned wide in surprise and pleasure. “Fancy seeing you here! You giving the dope straight to the boss these days, us hired hands ain’t good enough for you any more?”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out but air.

This big bastard poked me playfully on the upper arm. “That’s okay, Charlie,” he said. “I understand. You don’t have to say nothing. I’ll see you around, okay?”

And he was gone.

I stood there and stared at the door through which he had entered and exited. Behind me I heard Trask and Slade coming back into the room, but I didn’t turn to look at them. I stared at the door and tried to understand what had just happened to me.

In the silent room, the phone rang. Mahoney’s voice said, “Hello?” And then silence again, and then, “Okay, good.” And the sound of the receiver clicking into its cradle, and Mahoney saying to Trask and Slade, “Okay, it’s clear now.”

Their hands were on my upper arms. One of them murmured, “Don’t make no fuss now, nephew.”

Fuss? I couldn’t make a fuss. I was just trying to figure out what had happened.

We were moving, the three of us, along a corridor and down some stairs and out to a blacktop driveway. The black car was there, the famous black car. They had me lie down on the floor in back and they threw a knitted afghan over me that smelled for some strange reason of horse. In multicolored darkness under the afghan, bewitched, bothered and bewildered, I rolled away on the last ride.