The Last Cop Out

2

Until the present meeting, no one except Mark Shelby had met the Frenchman. Francois Verdun was the special envoy from the head office of the organization, a troubleshooter answerable to nobody save the top three men who controlled the vast machinery of the third government and whose very presence left a pall of fear that was almost a tangible thing. In every respect, he was seemingly medium, a nonentity in a crowd, a pleasant sort of person who enjoyed being called Frank by everyone.

Frank Verdun’s kill record made that of Mark Shelby insignificant by comparison. Administering death was a pleasure he had long ago learned to appreciate, whether done with his own hand during those periods when he decided to polish his expertise, or upon his command when the results were relished through reading the newspapers or watching the report on television. When he was fifteen he had killed his own brother; at twenty his best friend went down under his blade when the organization demanded it, at twenty-five he had personally arranged for a West Coast family of sixteen persons, who had grown too demanding, to be extinguished in a single bomb blast. At thirty he had reassembled a broken European narcotics ring, delivered it intact to his bosses, who, out of sheer admiration for his work and devotion to their cause, had installed him in an eviable position of supreme importance where death became a matter of simple routine to be accomplished quickly and untraceably... with great material recompense to the Frenchman whose tastes were extraordinarily bizarre and extremely expensive.

And now the organization, at a hurried summit meeting, decided to take matters out of the hands of the New York chapter and expedite the solution. Frank Verdun was assigned to locate and kill any and all persons connected with the disruption of the organization’s business. Everyone was instructed to cooperate. They were ordered to obey any order Frank Verdun decided to issue.

In Chicago, alone in his penthouse office, Teddy Shu, second underboss of the Great Lakes sector, made a final call to the red phone on the desk of Papa Menes who was vacationing in his place in Miami, told him that Frank Verdun had arrived in New York, set the wheels in motion and they should be seeing some action within a few days. Papa Menes was pleased, but more than a few days would make him very displeased and Teddy Shu would be the first to feel his displeasure.

Teddy hung up, wiped the sweat from his upper lip and told the delivery boy he had called for coffee to come on in. When he looked up the delivery boy had an all too familiar face and before Teddy could get the name on his lips he had no mouth at all because the .45 had taken away most of his face.

Papa Menes was seventy-two years old, a short, chunky man with a ring of gray hair that circled his head like a wreath. Both his oversize hands seemed warped by age and arthritis, but actually they were twisted because they had been broken that way, one in a street fight and the other by Charlie Argropolis who was trying to make him talk. He would have talked, too, but Charlie made a mistake by always carrying that ice pick in a sheath on his belt and before he could finish the torture treatment, Little Menes had snatched it out and drove it up to the hilt in Charlie’s eyeball. Little Menes had been twelve years old then. Now, at seventy-two, he was the presiding dictator of that gigantic clan whose empire of fear extracted taxes from people of every nation of the world.

On the street he could pass for the friendly neighborhood grocer. Behind a pushcart he’d seem perfectly normal. In his suite overlooking the whole of Miami Beach and the Atlantic Ocean he was out of time and place. But he was comfortable and one of the preogatives of his age and position was to set his own schedule and one of the items on that agenda was that nobody could disturb him before ten o’clock in the morning.

Outside in the hall George Spacer squirmed in the divan next to the elevator, worried because his partner, Carl Ames, didn’t want to wait another half hour.

“Will you sit down and relax,” he snapped.

Carl Ames fiddled with the zipper on his golfing jacket and stabbed his cigarette into the sand-filled ash tray by the wall. “Damn it, George, the old man’s going to eat us out for not letting him know. You know what he did to Morrie last month.”

“He was only taking a nap then. You know his orders.”

“Look...”

“Teddy Shu is dead.” He glanced at his watch. “He’ll still be dead in another twenty minutes.”

“Chicago’s been trying to get the old man since they found out!”

“Chicago should have its head examined. At least the switchboard’s smarter.”

“Okay, watch, we’ll be back hustling broads in Jersey.” George Spacer gave his partner a dirty smile. Two weeks before an Air Force private had kicked one of his balls loose from its moorings and Carl had been hurting ever since. “At least you’ll be able to get more ass than you getting here,” he said.

“Fuck you,” Carl told him.

At five minutes after ten they followed the waiter into the suite of their boss, allowing him time to be far enough into his breakfast to take the edge off his usual restless night, and stood at attention beside the glass-topped table by the window.

Papa Menes dunked his toast, popped it into his mouth and said, “So?”

“Teddy Shu got bumped last night.”

“I heard,” the boss told him. He turned his paper over and tapped the headline of the article that carried the story. “A real fancy job. Who called you?”

“Bennie.”

“Any details?”

“Just that nobody can figure it.” The old man didn’t seem too upset and Carl’s stomach started to quiet down. “Teddy was alone, but there were a dozen people in the outside offices. Nobody came in or went out that they didn’t know.”

“Somebody figured it,” Papa Menes said softly. His eyes were like little black buttons roaming over the pair in front of him.

George Spacer looked puzzled. “Who?”

“The one who did it.” The old man took a sip of his coffee and pointed to the phone. “Call Bennie back. Maybe by now he’ll know.”

Spacer picked up the phone, got the outside line and dialed the number in Chicago. He got Bennie at the rewrite desk of the newspaper, listened for a full three minutes and then hung up.

“Well?”

“The last one they remember going in was the delivery guy from the delicatessen. He brought some stuff for a couple of the others besides. Teddy didn’t want to be disturbed and he was on the phone when everybody left, so they just locked up and went home.”

“Now maybe you can figure it too,” Papa Menes told them. When neither of them answered those black eyes told them how stupid they were. “That delivery guy worked for the deli like a week or two, enough so everybody got to know him. He waits until the time is right and makes the hit. On the way out he lifts the phone off the hook so it’ll sound busy in the outside office. Everybody thinks Teddy is still there, everybody goes home. Very simple, very neat. Call that deli. See if the guy still works there.”

It took Carl fifteen minutes to locate the deli and ask his question.

Their delivery man hadn’t shown up for work that morning. The owner gave him the address of the place where he lived.

“You want me to send somebody over to the place?” Carl asked.

“Don’t be an idiot,” the old man said. “He won’t be there either. Start packing my stuff and get the sedan ready. Not the limo... the sedan.”

“You want us to...”

“All I want is for you to keep your fucking heads closed. Nobody knows nothing. I’m going on a trip and nobody knows where or why or how or when. You two are going to stay in this room and answer that phone and say what you’re supposed to say and nothing else. Understand?”

“Sure, Papa,” Carl said.

When it was done an hour later George Spacer sat drinking a scotch and water, looking down at the people on the sundeck beside the pool. Until they were told otherwise, they had all the privileges of a king with the inconvenience of a prisoner. “I wonder where the old man took off to?”

Carl built his own drink and sat down gingerly, favoring his sore ball. “Who knows, but at least this beats hustling broads in Jersey.”

Neither one fully realized just how smart the old man really was.

Ordinarily, Bill Long wasn’t given to frustrated anger. He had lived with rules, regulations, politicians, public indignation and apathy, citizen’s committees and crime commissions so long he had learned how to accept and deal with them without having the hairs on the back of his neck stand up out of sheer rage.

Now, when the assistant district attorney finished his little bit of business and sat back with his fingers pressed together waiting for an answer, Long felt his chest straining against his coat and the muscles in his legs knotting up. “Mind telling me whose idea this is?”

“Let’s say it comes from higher up,” Lederer said.

“Then higher up is a nest of nitheads. What makes them think Gill will come crawling back here after all the shit they dropped on him? Hell, he’s got a good job, makes a bundle and would like nothing better than to splash every one of those fat-assed creeps who booted him out.”

“You’re his friend, aren’t you?”

“And a good enough one not to throw that kind of garbage at him. How the hell do they get the nerve to ask something like that?”

Lederer stretched his tall frame in the chair and scowled.

“His dismissal wasn’t entirely unjustified, even by you, Captain.”

“You’re no cop. How the hell would you know?”

“Because you’re cop enough to know that rules are rules. The police department is a public service governed by specific regulations.”

“Sometimes those regulations aren’t enough to serve the public, either.”

“Nevertheless. Gillian Burke was a specialist and he kept files in his head he should have committed to the department. Somehow he made contacts and had sources of information the entire department can’t duplicate.”

“Now you’re admitting he was a good cop.”

“In that area... yes. Nobody ever denied it. His attitude and actions about other things was far from being above reproach. In fact, they were almost criminal.”

“He wasn’t dealing with solid citizens, Mr. Lederer. Whether you like it or not, he got results.”

“And the department got the blame, don’t forget that.”

“No, I don’t forget it. I know how money can buy enough heat to get anybody bounced out and nobody asks where that money comes from. It takes money to buy picket crowds in front of the mayor’s office and get people to write letters and the TV bunch to slant the newscasts.

“Do you really know how close he was to busting up the whole fucking syndicate? Did you know that he had gotten on to something so damn big it would have blown the top right off their operation and guaranteed you guys a hundred lifetimes in jail?” Long paused, turned his lip up disgustedly and continued. “No, you didn’t know... but they sure as hell knew something was going to pop and beat Gill to the punch by delivering the heat in your direction. They made you guys pull the cork and take the teeth out of the tiger and even when it was over he would have given me what he knew, except I didn’t have the guts to ask him to. A week later when he had time to think it over he wouldn’t have given anybody the sweat off his balls. You made him look like a slob, but when you take a close look at the picture, you sure as hell can see who the real slobs are.”

“You’re getting out of line, Captain.”

“Let’s say I almost did. I was about to tell you more.”

“Don’t jeopardize yourself on his account, Captain. You know he deliberately withheld evidence on the Berkowitz and Manute murders.”

“Why would he cover for two dead guys who made dirty movies? You could see better stuff in any Times Square sex joint than those stags they were turning out. We confiscated the whole lot and identified every last man and woman who did the bits and there wasn’t a one worth messing with. We couldn’t even stick a charge on them.”

“Sergeant Burke could have spoken in his own defense.”

“Certainly, and have you guys blow everything he was working on.”

“Police work isn’t a solo operation, Captain, or have you forgotten?”

“Like hell it’s not, and I don’t forget that either. There are some cops who can get things done their own way and you leave them alone to do it. They never hear of time off or vacations because they’re damn well dedicated to the job and when you take that type out of play you leave one hell of a hole in the line you couldn’t fill with a hundred pencil pushers.”

“Perhaps we’d better get back to the proposal.”

“Gill is going to tell you to piss up a stick.” Before Lederer could answer Long held up his hand. “No, it’s not a metaphor. He’ll just look at you and say to go piss up a stick. In fact, he might even get a little more diagramatic. Remember what he said at the hearing? Remember what he told all those slobs face to face afterwards? Now he’s had more time to think of better things to say.”

“Still...”

The big cop stopped him with a twist of his mouth. It was an odd smile that worked its way up to his eyes and he sat back in his chair and let all the tension ease out of his body. “You know, Mr. Lederer, I think I will put your proposal to him. I’ll tell him every damn detail of it... how the D.A.’s office wants him to cooperate as an agent of their department, giving of all his time, energy and experience... and knowledge... out of the goodness of his heart and love of police work and abject desire to be taken back in the good graces of a batch of ingrates, without salary or recognition. Then I want to put down his verbatim answer and deliver it on an inter-office memo where everybody from the desk clerk to the mayor’s office can see it.” He paused and grinned at the uncomfortable expression on Lederer’s face. “All I can say is whoever runs your think tank must do it in a pointed cap.”

When he got done, Bill Long sat back and waited. He watched Gill finish the sandwich, then down half his beer and finally blurted out, “Well, say it.”

“Say what?”

“For them to piss up a stick.”

“For a police officer, your language is atrocious, Captain.”

“Oh, shit. Say anything then.”

“What took them so long to ask?”

The cigarette almost fell out of the captain’s mouth. His eyebrows arched up into his hairline and a look of bewilderment made Gill’s lips crack in a smile. “What the hell’s going through your head, Gill?”

“Just remembering.”

“You like the idea?”

Burke shrugged and finished the rest of his beer. “Part of it.”

“Why?”

“Let’s call it a sense of ego.”

“You’re not going to do it, are you?”

“Tell them I’ll think about it.”

“Look, stupid, you can fall right into a trap again. They’re caught right in the middle of some kind of crazy mob war they can’t do a thing about and wouldn’t they just love to have a fall guy handy. No matter which way it goes you’ll get screwed. Come up with an answer and they take the credit... mess things up and you’re the patsy. You’re no cop any more and if you stir up those stinking hardcases you’re dead. There’s no way of winning and every way of losing.”

“Maybe”

“Screw maybe. You know the score as well as I do. Besides, there’s something more.”

“You mean about the Frenchman being in town?”

Long looked at him a few seconds before he asked, “How the hell would you know that?”

“Some people I know don’t care if I’m a cop or not any more. They still pay back favors.”

“Frank Verdun would like nothing better than to see you hit.”

“Wrong, buddy. So I shot him. He lived and beat the rap. It was all part of the game and in the past now. The Frenchman is too much of a pro to bother tapping out an old adversary.”

“You know why he’s here?”

“Certainly.”

“I suppose you got an idea of what’s going on.”

Burke’s shoulders made a gentle shrug. “There are several possibilities.”

“Name one.”

“Somebody doesn’t like somebody else,” Gill said.

Frank Verdun listened to the reports impassively. He didn’t appear to be deep in thought, but every fact was registering in his mind, falling into categories and probabilities. There were new faces in the conference room of Boyer-Reston, Inc, this time that Mark Shelby didn’t like but didn’t dare disapprove of because they were faces that belonged to the Frenchman’s private squad, the kind of faces that might have followed Attila the Hun. Six of them had investigated every detail of the killings, buying, forcing and smelling out every bit of information that was available. Bits and pieces had cropped up that not even the police were aware of and now it was all laid out to be studied.

When the discussion was over the Frenchman said, “No two descriptions match. No guns match. The methods all taste the same and the target is just us. You’re split down the middle about it being one man or different men. That’s no answer.”

For two weeks Mark Shelby had been thinking the same thing. He tapped his pencil against the table top until he had their attention. “It could be a team trained by one man.”

“Sounds reasonable,” the Frenchman agreed, “but that makes it an organized operation with a higher chain of command. If that were so, by now there would have been a secondary stage going. So far nobody’s moving in at all. You don’t pull off all those hits and let it go at that. Somebody wants something big and something bad.”

“What does Papa Menes say about it?”

Verdun’s voice was quietly deadly. “You like it where you are, Mark?”

Shelby took the push, but not all the way. “I’m fine,” he said.

“Good. Then stay fine. I’m speaking for Papa Menes. Remember it.” He paused and looked the room over again.

“We’re up against an organization. That’s one. They’re damn smart and damn good. That’s two. There’s one hell of a showdown coming up. That’s three.”

When he stopped, Arthur Kevin said, “Who do we look for, Frank?”

“The hit men. They won’t be contract boys, you can bet on that. They’re right inside the organization itself. That’s their weakness. All we need to do is get on top of one of them and he’ll scream his head off. We can backtrack him to the day he was born and no matter who’s pulling this crap, we’ll find them and it’ll be the last time it ever gets tried again.”

Nobody spoke at all.

Frank’s eyes had a reptilian glitter and he smiled. “Everybody scared to ask how?”

There was a general scuffling in the seats and a subdued murmur of disavowal.

“Maybe you don’t get the picture all the way,” the Frenchman said. “They’re picking us off from the top down until they can get to where they can handle us. Believe me, it’ll never happen. So like Papa Menes wants, you stay on the streets and in the open and take your chances on getting hit. You don’t have to make it easy, but you don’t run either. We got the soldiers out covering everybody and even if we lose a few more, we’re going to get somebody sooner or later. That’s it. Meeting’s over.”

That night they lost two more. They weren’t gunned down. They simply took advantage of an option they had prepared for long ago, an unobtrusive exit with a suitcase full of money to a strange little country where the food was lousy, the water worse, but where there was safety in a new identity and total disassociation from a world that meant sudden death if they dared return. In view of the circumstances, it was assumed that they had fallen to the enemy who had added another dimension to its method of operation.

The other meeting three miles farther downtown was reminiscent of kids who were kept after school waiting to be lectured by the principal. There was a sense of uneasiness you could almost feel and the seven persons waiting for Gillian Burke and Bill Long to arrive were still trying to develop statements that wouldn’t make them look like complete fools.

When they finally walked in everybody nodded politely, took their seats at the table with Gill at the far end opposite the district attorney. Gill gave Bill Long a wry smile and took them off the hook. “Let’s start off without any bullshit,” he said.

That got their attention right away. Lederer stifled a cough and the man from the mayor’s office dropped his pen.

“You got yourselves a hot chestnut and nobody knows how to handle it. The computers all came out zero and now you need all that beautiful inside stuff that used to be available for the asking. You guys’ll sure do anything when it gets warm, but I don’t blame you a bit. I’d do the same thing myself.”

“Mr. Burke...” the district attorney started to say.

“Can it, I’m talking,” Gill told him.

The D.A. said nothing.

“Don’t tell me you give a damn about the people who got bumped off. Each one down is one more you can close the files on, but when a bite come out of their organization and they close ranks enough to lean on the right people, you start sweating. So now you want me back in again. Okay, that’s what you want and I’ll come back.”

All the eyes were on him now.

“Conditionally, that is,” Gill continued. “I haven’t told you what I want yet.”

“There weren’t any conditions stipulated, Mr. Burke,” Lederer said.

“Naturally. You’re trying to get everything for nothing. Just don’t forget... you’re the ones doing the asking, so I lay down the ground rules or go home. Take it or leave it.”

“State your conditions,” the district attorney said.

Gill nodded, looked at each one in turn, his face an angular mask of hard competence. “An official position, access to all police files and materials, guaranteed cooperation of any department I choose and no interference from any political faction.”

“Are you sure you don’t want a salary,” Lederer asked insolently.

“Being public-spirited, a dollar a year will do.”

“You expect to take a year to find out who’s behind these murders?”

“Mr. Lederer,” Burke said, “those weren’t murders.”

“Oh?”

“They were killings.”

“What’s the difference?”

Burke’s lips pulled tight across his teeth. “If you don’t know, telling you won’t make you understand at all. Now, you got one minute to give me a yes or no.”

Actually, they had no choice.

Over coffee at the diner in the next block Bill Long threw Gill a begrudging laugh and shook his head. “Pal, you didn’t say it, but you sure made them do it.”

“Do what?”

“Piss up a stick,” he said.