Anything But Saintly

Chapter 14

It was after midnight when I got to headquarters. I found Carl Lincoln in the squadroom taking a coffee break. He eyed me glumly.

“You coming back to work?” he asked. “I just booked my third. All from the same room, using different bellboys. The girls are going to love the bellhops at the Grove Hotel.”

“We’re through for the night,” I said. “Let’s knock off, check out of the Grove and go home.”

“Suits me. What have you been doing?”

I gave him a brief rundown on my night’s activities. When I got to the part where Jake Stark had admitted finding Kitty dead, his eyebrows shot up.

“You turn him over to Homicide?” he asked.

I explained that I had given him a twenty-four-hour grace period, and why. Carl gave his head an unbelieving shake.

“You’ll get yourself boarded and kicked off the force, Matt. Holding back evidence that important almost makes you an accessory.”

“Calculated risk,” I said. “If I do have to pull him in tomorrow night, I wasn’t planning to mention to anyone I gave him twenty-four hours. Let’s get out of here.”

We drove back to the Grove Hotel in our separate cars, checked out and called it a night. I was in bed by one A.M.

Ten minutes later I was drifting off to sleep when my bedside phone rang. The peal jolted me fully awake. Sitting up, I switched on the bedlamp and picked up the phone.

“Hello,” I said.

“Rudd?” a low voice whispered in my ear.

“Uh-huh.”

“This is Jake Stark. I can’t talk too loud, because I’m phoning from a filling station and the guy is listening.”

“All right,” I said. “What’s on your mind?”

“I think I’ve got the answer, but I can’t give it over the phone. Can you meet me somewhere?”

“Tonight?” I asked.

“It can’t wait until morning. By then it will be too late.”

“Okay,” I said. “Where do you want to meet?”

“I’m phoning from a station at Kosciuszko and Talcott. There’s a bar right across the street called Cybulski’s Tavern.”

I knew the place because the flat where I was born and where my parents still lived was on Kosciuszko Street. I suppose every city with a large Polish segment has a Kosciuszko Street, named for the Revolutionary War general who is the favorite hero of Polish-Americans.

“Be there in twenty minutes,” I said.

It took me five minutes to dress and strap on my gun. It was only a little after one fifteen when I climbed in my car.

I don’t have a garage, but the apartment building where I live has a paved parking lot behind it, with a space reserved for each tenant. Backing out of my slot, I pulled into the alley.

In the rear-view mirror I saw a figure rise from the floor of the back seat. Cold metal touched the back of my neck.

A gruff, unfamiliar voice said, “Just keep going east down this alley, mister. As far as it goes.”

I started to slow down. “Who are you and what’s the pitch?”

“I’m the guy who’s going to blow your head off if you don’t do like I say,” he snapped. “Keep both hands on the wheel and keep driving.”

I decided not to argue. I kept driving straight ahead along the alley until I reached the first cross street. I slowed there, crossed the street and entered the alley.

“Bring out your gun with your left hand,” he ordered. “Hold it by the barrel and pass it over your shoulder.”

I don’t claim to be a deductive genius, but it didn’t take genius to deduce there must be some connection between Jake Stark’s phone call and the man in the back seat. Pretty obviously Jake never had any intention of meeting me at Cybulski’s Tavern. The call had been designed merely to get me into my car so that my back-seat companion could take over.

It followed that Jake, either on his own or in conjunction with Little Artie Nowak, had decided there was a simpler way to avoid newspaper publicity than solving the murder of Kitty Desmond. You don’t have cops kidnapped and expect to get away with it if the cop is later around to testify. So there was little doubt in my mind that it wasn’t planned for me to be around later. This had to be a one-way ride.

I had an aversion to co-operating in my own murder. I decided to make things as difficult as possible.

“I’m not carrying a gun,” I said.

“Don’t try to give me that,” he snarled. “Who ever heard of a cop without a gun?”

“I never carry one off duty,” I said.

“The hell you don’t. Cops carry a gun all the time.”

“Not this one,” I said. “Want me to stop so you can shake me down?”

“Cross this next intersection,” he ordered. “Stop halfway between it and the next street. Then keep your hands on the wheel and don’t move a muscle. Understand?”

“I understand,” I said.

Crossing the intersection, I drove another half block along the alley and braked the car. I sat perfectly still with my hands on the wheel.

Except for the brief glimpse when he rose from the floor, I hadn’t been able to see my assailant in the rear-view mirror because he was seated directly behind me. Even that single glimpse had been merely of a shadowy figure. I had no idea of the man’s size or what he looked like.

The gun muzzle pressed tighter against my neck and his left hand patted beneath both arms and at my waist on the left side. Then he transferred the gun to his left hand and patted my right side.

Like all plain-clothes men on the force, I was armed with a snub-nosed thirty-eight caliber detective special. And like most detectives, I carried the holster on my belt. Usually detectives carry their guns either on the left side, butt facing forward for a cross draw, or centered on the right side. I happen to like mine farther back, directly over my right hip pocket. With my back pressed against the seat, it was in a position he couldn’t reach unless I leaned forward.

I hoped he was stupid enough not to order me to lean forward. It wasn’t an exaggerated hope because in my experience most hired guns are incredibly stupid. They have to be close to animal level in order to kill for hire.

This one wasn’t any brighter than I had expected him to be. Shifting his gun back to his right hand again, he growled, “Okay, copper. Start driving again.”

I pulled ahead. After several blocks, still in the alley, I ventured to ask, “Do we have any particular destination?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Straight ahead.”

Finally, as might be expected, we came to a cross street where the alley failed to continue on the other side. Not wanting to disobey orders, I was contemplating driving straight on across the street, over the curb and through the plate-glass window of the furniture store directly in front of us, when he decided to amend the order.

“Right turn here,” he instructed. “Then left at the next corner.”

By now we were well into the third district, which covers three wards on the east side of town along the river front area. The same river runs past the Riverside Country Club west of town, skirts St. Cecilia’s north edge and curves south to form its eastern boundary. There is a vast difference between the west-side water front and the east side, though. Out near the country club there are sand beaches, big estates and summer cottages. On the east side there are docks, warehouses, crummy taverns and cat houses. The population is predominantly Italian, Greek and Puerto Rican, with a smattering of Poles who have infiltrated from the south-side Polish section, which abuts the third district.

I didn’t understand why we were heading this way instead of south. It’s not easy to get away with murder in St. Cecilia, because no amount of political influence will get you official protection. So it behooves the potential murderer to plan very carefully to avoid exposure. If Little Artie Nowak had issued the order for my execution, his own bailiwick seemed the safest place to carry it out. For while officialdom wouldn’t stand for murder in St. Cecilia, the average man in the street down in Artie’s ward wouldn’t dream of reporting anything Artie did. In that section he probably could have gunned down the mayor on the street without a single witness coming forward to report having seen it.

But on the east side Little Artie Nowak didn’t carry any more weight than I did. It seemed an odd area for him to have a murder performed.

We were now traveling on Sible Street, which runs clear down to the docks. We passed Fourth, which is the beginning of the warehouse area. From here on there were only dark warehouses and no residences or taverns; the streets were absolutely deserted. We crossed Third Street and I began to wonder if the plan was simply to drive onto the dock, where the man in the back seat would shoot me and dump me in the river.

I might have known the plan wouldn’t be that simple, however. If murder is dangerous in St. Cecilia, the murder of a cop is doubly dangerous. Whoever had planned this wouldn’t want any corpus delicti.

The man in the back seat said, “Turn right at Front Street.”

Front Street edges the dock area. There are no buildings beyond it, only the expanse of the dock and the river. I turned as directed.

A half block later he said, “The second building after this one. Head in to face that truck entrance and peep your horn once.”

The designated building was a two-story warehouse and the truck entrance was in its center. I swung right and braked the car to a halt facing the corrugated iron door.

“Peep your horn,” the man repeated.

No other cars were in sight, but there was always the chance that a cruising squad car might be within hearing distance and would come to investigate a prolonged horn blast. I bore down on the horn button and kept my palm there.

This was a mistake. The gun barrel bounced off the top of my head, making me see constellations. I took my hand off the horn button and let my head reel. After a few seconds the dizziness subsided to a dull throb.

The man in the back seat didn’t say anything. His action had been sufficient to make his point.

The corrugated iron door slid upward and light poured through it into the street. I drove inside and the door immediately came down behind us. We were in a big, barn-like room with a concrete floor. Wooden crates were piled along the walls, but the center area was bare. A single overhead bulb with a green shade lighted the room.

The man in the back seat left the car. “All right,” he said. “You can get out now.”