Death of a Pusher

Chapter 23

Harry Grimaldi lay flat on his back, his hands gripping the edges of the bunk on either side. His eyes were squeezed tightly shut, and his chest was heaving. Every muscle in his body seemed to be twitching, and he was drenched with sweat.

“Hello, Harry,” I said.

His eyes popped open. He had difficulty focusing them because they were swimming with water.

“Get me out of here,” he gasped. “You got to get me to the prison ward.”

“Sure,” I said soothingly. “Ready to talk now?”

He went into a fit of sneezing which broke off abruptly as his whole body tensed. His hands gripped the edges of the bunk until the knuckles showed white, and his face contorted with agony.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God!” he moaned.

Because we were watching, he managed by a superhuman effort to hold back the scream. Finally the spasm passed.

“What do you want to know?” he whispered.

“You’ve been pushing horse, haven’t you, Harry?”

“Sure, I’ve been pushing!” he almost yelled. “How the hell else can you feed a habit this big? The sonovabitch got me hooked.”

“Who’s that, Harry?”

“Benny Polacek!” he yelled. “What a smooth talker that guy was. Just for kicks, he said. It can’t hurt you if you keep it under control. But you notice the sonovabitch never touched it himself. I’m glad the bastard’s dead.”

“Who made him that way, Harry?”

“How do I know? I wasn’t there.” He started to sob. “Oh God, oh God, oh God! Please get me out of here.”

“In a minute,” I said. “Where’d you get your supply, Harry? From Benny himself?”

His head moved back and forth jerkily. “He introduced me to his supplier. He got a bonus for that.”

“Who’s the supplier?”

He looked up at me beseechingly. “You want me killed?”

“I guess he’s not ready yet, Lieutenant,” I said to Wynn. “We’ll give him another hour.” I started to walk away.

“Wait!” Grimaldi yelled.

I turned back to look at him. His body was shaking again.

“Will you transfer me to the prison ward right away if I tell you?” he asked in a strained voice.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s a promise.”

Taking a deep breath, he whispered, “Carr.”

“Carr?” I repeated in surprise.

“Jack Carr, out at the White Bowl. He’s got a corner on the wholesale end. He deals direct with the syndicate.”

Wynn and I looked at each other. The lieutenant looked puzzled. “He trying to cover for Goodie White?” he asked me.

I gave my head a slow shake. “In his condition, he’s interested in only one thing: getting transferred to the prison ward at City Hospital. He’s telling the truth.”

Wynn stared through the bars at the man, then back at me. He was puzzled enough to ask my opinion. “How do you figure it, Sergeant?”

I was thinking back to the day the district attorney made his deal with Benny Polacek. I said, “Something just fell into place.”

“What?”

“Before Benny Polacek would agree to his deal with Dollinger, he insisted on getting a legal opinion from some reputable lawyer. He picked Martin Bonner, which surprised us all, because he’s about as reputable as they come. I can see now that he just picked a lawyer’s name out of the air.”

Wynn merely gave me an inquiring look.

I said, “Dollinger let him to talk to Bonner from a pay phone. As a matter of fact, the D.A. dialed the number and introduced Benny to Bonner over the phone. Then we all backed off so that Benny could converse with his lawyer privately. In the middle of the conversation they were cut off. Or at least Benny pretended they were cut off. Actually he’d finished his conversation with Bonner. Like gullible little marks, we gave him another dime to call Bonner back. Only he called Jack Carr instead, and got instructions on what to say.”

It took a moment for it to sink in. Then Wynn said slowly, “I’ll be damned. Carr sure must be able to think fast on his feet. I guess Goodie White was telling the truth after all. His loyal assistant tried to frame him.”

I looked back at the prisoner. “Where do you pick the stuff up, Harry? Right at the bowling alley?”

His head gave a jerky nod. “He keeps it somewhere under the showcase where the bowling balls are. Nobody notices. They just think we’re buying some kind of bowling equipment.”

His body tensed again, and suddenly he started to scream.

Turning away from the cell, we walked over to where the guard stood.

“You can call an ambulance now and get him over to City Hospital,” I said.

The guard shuddered a little. “I’ve seen the third degree before,” he said. “But this is rougher than a rubber hose ever was. How do you sleep nights, Sarge?”

The guard was only a patrolman, and it was indicative of the way Harry Grimaldi had affected Wynn that the lieutenant didn’t blast him for speaking like that to a sergeant. Wynn wanted nothing but to get out of there. He walked on without a word, and I followed.

Upstairs we checked out an F car and headed for the White Bowl. En route Wynn said, “I don’t think Captain Spangler’s instructions about letting you do the talking to Goodie White apply any more, Sergeant. The time for tact is over. I’ll handle things when we get there.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

When we parked on the lot at the bowling alley, we spotted Lincoln and Carter seated in another F car a few slots away. We walked over to them.

“He’s inside, Lieutenant,” Carl said. “There’s no point going in there, because he knows both of us by sight.”

“Stand by,” Wynn ordered.

The lieutenant and I walked on to the main entrance and inside. Jack Carr was again behind the lane-reservation desk.

“Back again, gentlemen?” he said with a grin.

Wynn asked coldly, “Where’s Mr. White?”

“In the bar, Lieutenant.”

“Go get him,” Wynn said to me.

Walking over to the entrance to the cocktail lounge, I glanced in and saw Goodman White seated at the bar. When he looked my way, I crooked a finger at him. Coming over, he gave me an inquiring look.

“Lieutenant Wynn wants to see you,” I said.

Shrugging, White accompanied me over to the desk. “Afternoon, Lieutenant,” he said pleasantly.

Wynn merely nodded. Turning to Carr, he said, “We’ve had Harry Grimaldi, alias Harry Gamble, in a cell in the felony section since yesterday morning, Carr. He went thirty hours without a pop before he finally broke. In your business you must have seen lots of guys carrying monkeys. They’ll do anything for a pop. They’ll confess their most intimate secrets.”

A wary expression grew in Jack Carr’s eyes. Goodie White asked, “Who’s Harry Grimaldi?”

“One of your trusted employee’s pushers,” Wynn said frigidly, without taking his eyes from Carr’s face. “Your assistant is the wholesale distributor of heroin in this town, Mr. White. He operates right from behind this desk. He’s been passing the stuff to pushers right under your nose.”

Carr said in a high voice, “You must be nuts, Lieutenant.”

Wynn said, “You were pretty cute. When the district attorney started to squeeze Benny Polacek, Benny figured a way to phone you for instructions without Dollinger knowing who he was talking to. And you threw a real curve. You told him to confess that his supplier was Goodman White and agree to set him up. Then, after Polacek was released from jail, you had him phone White and give him that nonsense about needing five left-handed bowling gloves. Probably White would have told him to dunk his head if you hadn’t advised him that Benny was a good customer and suggested White should do him the favor. The gloves were never ordered, of course. When your boss told you to put in the order, you merely waited a few days, then told him they had come in. He phoned Polacek, and Polacek told him he’d be in for them at seven o’clock in the evening two days later. If he had showed, White would have handed over the package you furnished him, thinking it contained the gloves. After the pictures were taken and the cops closed in, it would have turned out to be horse instead of bowling gloves.”

Goodie White said in a voice as high as Carr’s, “Jack tried to frame me? Why?”

Wynn shrugged. “Probably for a mixture of reasons. Benny had been offered immunity for turning in his supplier. Carr was probably afraid that if he didn’t throw the cops somebody, Benny would turn him in. Then, too, he’s the second most powerful political figure in the ward. With you out of business, I suppose he figured he could step in as councilman. You would fire him from the bowling alley as soon as you realized what he had done to you, of course, but with the money he must have salted away from wholesaling dope, he could probably buy the place.”

White was staring at Carr, who merely stared back at him belligerently.

Wynn said, “You wouldn’t have had a chance of beating the rap, Mr. White. All your story about the left-handed bowling gloves would have gotten you would be a horse laugh. Carr and Benny would of course deny knowing anything about such an order, and there wouldn’t be any record of the order in your files. You could scream frame until you were blue, but you would have taken the rap.”

Jack Carr said tightly, “You’ve got a lot of proving to do, Lieutenant. So far I haven’t heard a thing but guesswork based on some junkie’s delirious babblings.”

I put in my bit. “Maybe a search beneath the display counter will turn up the evidence we need.”

“Got a search warrant?” Carr flared at me.

“I don’t think we need one.” I glanced at White. “This is your place, Goodie. You have any objection to us searching it?”

“I’ll even help you,” the plump councilman said.

Jack Carr attempted to bar our way when we started behind the counter. When Wynn irritably shoved him aside, he swung a haymaker which would have floored the lieutenant if it had connected. Fortunately Wynn jerked his head back so that it only grazed his jaw.

I was past the lieutenant then. Carr tried for me, too, but I caught the blow on my left palm and laid a hook on his chops that didn’t travel more than a foot. It set him on the seat of his pants clear beyond the other end of the counter.

His eyes were still crossed when I jerked him to his feet and snapped on the cuffs behind his back.

Beneath the showcase was a shelved cabinet in which score sheets were kept. We might have missed the hiding place if Harry Grimaldi hadn’t told us where to look. But when we found nothing but blank score sheets, we examined the cabinet carefully, finally measuring the depth of the shelves. They were six inches narrower than the top of the showcase.

It still required some probing before we discovered the sliding panel at the rear of the bottom shelf. The stuff was neatly packaged in small envelopes of about fifty grains of pure heroin each. There were twelve dozen envelopes, with a total retail value, after the stuff had been cut, of over twenty-five thousand dollars.