Death of the Too-Cute Prostitute [= Man Alone]

Chapter Two

George Lucas grew up on the same street I did and was all set to break into the mob when he took time out to count the cost and figured it too high. Instead, he worked his way through school and became a criminal-law lawyer. But he still looked like a crook and half the time he acted like one. His record in court was imposing. He could out-shyster the shysters anytime and if he could stick a needle up the DA.’s tail he’d take the case free.

When I walked into his office he grinned crookedly and said, “I had an idea you’d be around.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, Regan. It was just a feeling. You did okay in court. How could you afford Selkirk and Selkirk? That’s big time.”

I sat down and tossed my hat on his desk. “They came free, Georgie. Monty Selkirk figured he owed me a favor. I let him pay it back.”

“You got his kid off the hook one time, didn’t you?”

I shrugged. “He wasn’t involved. It was a phoney blackmail attempt.”

“Good to have buddies like that. Always have something working for you that way.” He flipped open a box of cigars, offered me one and when I said no, lit up himself. “So what’s with you today, Patrick?”

“Something up your alley.”

“Let’s have it.”

“You familiar with my case?”

“Everything, boy. It’s home town news, you know.”

“Yeah.” I leaned back and stuck out my feet. “Well, just to review you, I was assigned to the Leo Marcus thing. We’d picked up a rumble that he was back in the extortion racket among other things.”

George nodded and sucked on the cigar. “I heard about it He was getting up there.”

“He was there, friend. He ran the organizational operation along the Atlantic coast from New York to the toe of Florida. He set up a string of motels with organization money for one thing, used each unit as a local headquarters and clearing house and did it so nice and legally he couldn’t be touched.”

“Smart,” George said. “The new method. Keep it legal.”

“He didn’t quite make it. I had a tipoff that would have wrapped up the entire deal. It took eight weeks, but I had a dossier on Leo Marcus complete with incriminating evidence that would have blown the operation sky high. Just before the end of the investigation I met with two of the commissioners at a midtown hotel so they could pave the way for us to hit the operation without tipping off the papers. That night they saw what I had and knew what it meant.”

“That was your mistake, hey, kiddo?”

I nodded. “That was it. They knew I had it and when I couldn’t produce it again I was cooked. That made the money plant look real.”

George pointed with the cigar. “About the loot...”

I laughed at him. He still sounded Brooklyn. “The loot, friend, was five lousy G’s. An anonymous call to HQ said I sold out and Argenio hit my flat where he found a package of fifty one-hundred-dollar bills supposedly hidden in my closet. I was held, I couldn’t come up with my file and couldn’t account for the cash. Open and shut”

“Just like that?”

“That’s the size of it.”

“They didn’t take your departmental record into consideration?”

“Give them a break. They tried. I have a lot of friends around, George.”

“You’re not lacking in enemies, either. So go.”

I went. “I probably could have stood off the charges. The second mistake was in getting mad.”

“You always were like that, Patrick. Even when you were a little kid I used to tell you to take it easy. Think you’d listen? Hell, no.”

“So I wanted to know who put the finger on me. It came down through Marcus, but I wanted to know who passed the word. I was working the stoolies when I got tagged.”

“Like how?”

“Like I was slipped a mickey and steered out to Marcus’ place.”

“And there it ends,” he said around his cigar.

I nodded.

“You were lucky,” he told me. “One thing, you just can’t always figure a jury. You talked it up enough before Marcus got killed. You know how many guys... cops yet, heard you say you’d put so many holes in him he’d look like a screen door?”

“That was talk. You know damn well how it goes.”

“Sure, but it got done. Man, six shots in the kisser that knocked him kicking into a fireplace so that he’s half cremated before they find you both.” He leaned back in his chair, blowing smoke up toward the ceiling. “Until they found the finger that was shot off him they weren’t even sure it was Marcus. Of course, the dentist they ran down made it positive, but for a while they were shook. Hell, you... if it was you... did everybody a big favor. The cops should be happy.”

“It wasn’t me.”

“Your gun. Your prints. Paraffin test. You’re there out drunk. You made threats. You had a great motive. It’s pretty strong, Patrick.”

“Was pretty strong, remember?”

He grinned and nodded. “Selkirk’s a good lawyer. So what do you want from me?”

“My five grand. It was impounded. There might be a technicality or two involved, but since I have the name, I want the game. That five G’s Argenio found is mine, right?”

George’s face got real bright. “An interesting thought, Patrick. You played the ponies, hit a goodie, now spill out the tax and it’s yours. I think it can be arranged.”

“Then arrange it. Whoever planted that loot is financing his own funeral.”

He leaned forward, the concern on his face showing in the tight lines around his mouth. “This might louse you up in the department.”

“The hell with ’em. They can’t do anything but clear me. But I want that cash.”

“Sure, Patrick, I’ll get it for you. Anything else?”

“Yeah, one thing. Represent me at the departmental trial.”

“Sure, but what about meanwhile?”

“You know me, Georgie boy. I’m nobody’s slob.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of. You packing a rod?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Later?”

“If I have to.”

“Like I said,” he repeated. “What about meanwhile?”

“I want my badge back. They’ll probably try to shuffle me off to some obscure division, so make a deal. I’ll keep nice and clean and out of everybody’s way. Otherwise I’ll really raise a stink. They’ll know what I’m talking about.”

“So do I, kid. The picture’s clear. You’re just asking for a bucketful of trouble and an early death.”

“Didn’t I always?”

“You did. That you did. You’re such a damn big target it’s a wonder you ever stayed alive this long.”

I picked my hat off his desk and slid it on. “Take care of me, Georgie boy.”

“Just like the old days,” he said.

I nodded. “So now I got a mouthpiece. Fine comedown for a cop.” I grinned at him. “Just like the old days.”

Jerry Nolan always ate Saturday lunches at Vinnie’s. The menu was wop clam chowder with all the breadsticks you could eat stacked up like cordwood in the middle of the table. Vinnie automatically dished up a plate for me and had it at the table as soon as I sat down. When I said hello he nodded, the reserve plain on his face. I was something he wasn’t used to. Ordinarily everything would be black or white, but now something was grey and he wasn’t used to it.

“You’re taking a long time,” I finally said to him.

He paused, a half a breadstick heavy with butter halfway to his mouth. “What are you getting at?”

“You. Your damn insistence upon the letter of the law all the way. By now you should figure yourself for a sanctimonious bastard in a departmental sense.”

His face tightened and he bit into the breadstick, waiting.

“The law, buddy,” I said. “It proved me innocent. Remember? You’re the one always sounding off about the sanctity of the law. Now the law has acted. I’m clean. Come off it. Like you tell everybody else, don’t figure yourself bigger than the law so that when the law acts you refuse to accept the verdict.”

His neck reddened and he bent his face toward his plate. His eyes flicked up momentarily and he nodded, trying to conceal a self-conscious smile.

“Okay.”

That’s all he said, and I knew everything was all right again. Nolan was a funny one, a hell of a tough cop, but square all the way. His hatred for hoods was a terrible passion but nothing compared to the way he felt about crooked cops. He had had a hard time swallowing the thing that had happened to me, but now it was dead and buried.

I said, “I picked up something.”

“New?”

“To me, anyway. A redhead helped me into a cab that night.”

“She wasn’t there when you got out. You took that ride alone,” he reminded me. He spooned his chowder up again, then: “You weren’t followed, either. I questioned Rivera about that myself. He was positive.”

“The redhead set up the address. Damn it, I had been mouthing off about Marcus and she had me driven there.”

With a patient gesture he put his spoon down and wiped his mouth. “I know, Regan. I heard it all. I’m not stupid. I checked out everything that night personally. I didn’t pass any of it on because there was nothing conclusive. It’s pretty typical of people who have been drinking to help another drunk into a cab. Nobody makes sense. Everybody’s at the ha ha stage. The driver gets paid and goes along with things. Any cabbie will drop a drunk off at an address. He won’t get wrapped up over it.”

“This didn’t come out at the trial.”

“I said it was inconclusive. You had enough against you. I didn’t have to make it any worse.”

“Thanks.”

“My pleasure.”

“You overlooked one thing.”

“Now I know.”

“All right, tell it to me,” I said.

“You were slipped a mickey sometime that night.”

“Thanks for realizing it. You know why?”

“Sure. So you could kill off Marcus.”

I shook my head. “You know damn well that would be a stupid trick. I was too far gone to do anything. I was set up for a conviction and you know it. Anybody that drunk would have the cops asking questions long before a jury would.”

Nolan leaned back in his seat and reached for his cigarettes. When he had one lit he said, “You know the ingredients in a mickey?”

I nodded. “Sure. Generally chloral hydrate. For the knockout kind, anyway.”

“That’s right. But the restriction on its use is that it knocks you out or doesn’t knock you out. If you went under you wouldn’t be able to act of your own volition. However, during the war the Germans came up with a new one. A simple formula change brought the desired results, but when certain initial effects had worn off, the subject had physical action without mental control and no later recollection.”

A small fire started deep in my belly. “Go on.”

“It was called Sentol. It allowed a person to come out of a stupor, perform an act, then go back into a stupor again.”

“This didn’t come out at the trial,” I said coldly.

“I realize that. Again, it was inconclusive. When you were found you were given the usual balloon test for drunks. The percentage was against you. The kind of a dosage you could possibly... and I said possibly... have been given, would have allowed you to drink enough to genuinely get drunk, at least enough to go past the critical percentage point in your blood. By all known tests, you were chemically drunk.”

“So why this sudden slant?”

“Ted Marker, up in the lab, is probably only one of the few familiar with Sentol. Occasionally he tests for it. Unfortunately, too much time had passed for a positive result, but what he found was curious.”

“Being curious and uncovering facts are pretty far apart.”

“Sure, but that’s as far as he got. The analysis showed a couple of indications of the presence of Sentol. It was a bare possibility.”

Then I realized just how far out on a limb they had gone for me. In one way I could have been victimized by that damn drug, but just as surely I could have killed Marcus.

He let it sink in, then went on. “Sentol, from what Ted knows about it, was originally called a ‘conscience remover.’ Properly administered, it allowed you to fulfill the desires of the primary passions like love or hate or fear. In your case it would be hatred. You wanted to kill Marcus so the drug removed any restrictions on you for doing so.”

“That is,” I said, “if it was administered.”

“Of course.”

“Now things are getting a little too obvious, aren’t they?”

Nolan shrugged, dragged in deeply on his cigarette, letting out the smoke in a controlled grey stream. “There are only two possibilities. One... you killed him. Two... somebody else did and arranged very elaborately for you to be the patsy.”

“That makes me pretty important.”

For a few moments Jerry sat there studying the ash on his cigarette, then he turned those cold eyes on me and said, “Just what did you have on Marcus?”

His tone was a patient one. Waiting was nothing new to him at all. I said, “You remember when I was assigned to Marcus?”

He nodded and pulled on the smoke again. “I knew that you had been assigned, but not the nature of the deal.”

“Orders came from the top. Only six people knew that I was to concentrate on Marcus. I could work in my own way and nobody was over me directing the operation. There was a limited fund made available so I could buy information if necessary and if I had to work outside normal jurisdiction I was guaranteed quick cooperation with other departments. It was set up pretty much like with the Parker kidnapper and the Small-Greenblatt spy thing.”

“I remember them both.”

“In brief, Leo Marcus’ operation was the result of the heat put on the Syndicate ever since the Apalachin raid. The Syndicate couldn’t function as a unit and rather than have it fall apart into fragments that would be difficult to reassemble later, they set it up into sections that would operate individually until they were ready to bring them back under one head again.

“Marcus had the choicest bit. He had the money spots from New York to Miami and you know how he ran them. He was a strong-arm character right out of the Capone books but shrewd enough not to get caught. My opinion is that he was the most vicious hood the Syndicate ever had and he didn’t get knocked off any too soon.

“Anyway, I waited him out. I had the law of averages working for me. Along the line he made a couple of mistakes and before he found out about them and covered up, I found out about them and had him cold.”

“For instance,” Jerry prompted.

“He killed a kid in a drive-in down in Georgia. He was drunk and there was a girl involved. He fractured the guy’s skull with a billy and the girl ran off in a panic. Leo’s companion in the car, a small-time local hood working for him, did Leo a favor and found the broad and scared her off. I found the hood. It didn’t take much to persuade him that Leo didn’t like live witnesses to a murder and he talked up nicely. He even went further... he gave me the sap Leo had used on the kid complete with prints, the kid’s blood and hair particles, signed a statement and promised to testify at the trial, although with the evidence at hand it wasn’t necessary. He was held in the local jail, word spread fast, and the next day he was dead of food poisoning with nobody able to explain how. But like I said, his death wasn’t quite necessary.”

“So you had to go,” Nolan said.

“Something like that. Or else they had to get the information I had.”

“Why didn’t you turn it in while you had it?”

“Because the deal wasn’t set up that way. The commissioners knew it and didn’t ask for it. The procedure had already been established. They just saw what I had, that’s all. That was enough.”

“What did you have on the operation?”

“In general, a breakdown of Atlantic system. Leo’s unit owned and operated a string of motels, all nice and legally complicated. Each place was a drop where the mob did business. What facts I had on individuals weren’t worth pressing. That would come later. The primary job was to outline the operation so a team could move in for the big kill later.”

“And now it’s gone,” Nolan said dryly.

I shrugged. “I could duplicate it from memory, but what good would it do. By now the system has changed completely. The only real bit then was the murder evidence that would have sent Marcus to the hot squat.”

He snubbed the cigarette out and waved to Vinnie for more coffee. “The Brotherhood is getting pretty nervous. Their big wheels aren’t supposed to be getting messed up in two-bit kills.”

“It happens,” I said.

“But only once, Regan. They get touchy about those things. Nobody is indispensable. If a wheel is likely to make trouble for the mob, then out he goes. Look what happened to Dutch Schultz when they thought he was going to knock off Dewey.”

I sipped at the coffee, staring at him across the cup. “I know. I was thinking about that. And like the man said, therein lines the puzzle.”

Nolan frowned and didn’t answer me.

“Never before did they bother to get so damn elaborate about it. Always it was just a few rounds from a chopper.”

He put his cup down and wiped at his mouth. “Sometimes it’s worth while, especially if they got a tailor-made patsy like you seemed to be.” He grinned when he saw my mouth go tight and added, “Now what do you want from me? You didn’t come here to rehash most of what I already knew.”

“Who tipped Argenio?” I said.

He seemed to stiffen under his coat and finely drawn lines showed at the corners of his eyes. When he looked at me it was with annoyance. “You know anonymous tips, Regan.”

“Sure, but not on a cop with a good record.” I waited a second then said, “Why the sudden push?”

He nodded soberly and sat back, still not liking the talk. “This is under the hat, kid. The tip was made to our office. Argenio took it, called the commissioner because the tipster said to do it, and the commish in person directed Argenio to get to your place.”

“The call go through the switchboard?”

“That’s right, but it wasn’t monitored. It came in at eleven-ten p.m., and Jackson, who was on the PBX, had too many calls going to monitor any single one.”

“Neat, wasn’t it?” I asked him.

“Let’s say effective.”

I sprung it on him quickly. “What do you think of Argenio?”

He didn’t like it. His face showed as much. “Fourteen years on the force, he did all right. He has three commendations.”

“I have twelve. That wasn’t the question.”

Nolan leaned forward, his hands gripping the edge of the table. His voice was quiet, but had a hard edge. “Look... he’s my partner and has been for two years. He’s covered me in a lot of tight places plenty of times. What do you expect me to say?”

“That’s what any partner is supposed to do. For all those heroics he draws a regular wage. Now answer the question.”

I saw his fingers relax and the indecision come into his eyes. “I don’t know. He’s a hard apple. He’s hard on everybody and he’s harder on himself. You tangled with him once.”

“I knocked his damn ass off,” I said

“Okay. He’s strange, let’s say.”

“Susceptible to a bribe?”

“Plainly, no. I know that he was offered some big loot, but he wouldn’t touch it.”

“You don’t like him, though, do you?”

“No,” Jerry said, “I don’t like him. Nevertheless, that doesn’t change matters. He’s a damn good cop with nothing against him and there are others that I feel the same about so an opinion like mine isn’t worth anything. What are you getting at, anyway?”

“He seemed to move pretty fast, busting into my apartment to follow up an anonymous tip.”

“He was ordered to.”

“I could have been contacted. I wasn’t that hard to find.”

“The stuff was gone and he found five grand in unexplained dough.”

“He didn’t figure a plant?”

“Damn it, Regan, we all figured a plant. It was too pat. Maybe we could have done something if you didn’t go off on a bat and...” He paused, shook his head and nipped another butt out of his pack.

I said softly, “You’ll keep looking around?”

He nodded, lighting the cigarette. “I’ll look around.”

I finished my coffee and climbed out of the booth. When I reached for the check Nolan waved me off, his face still impassive. I said, “If you want me, leave a call at Donninger’s.”

His mind closed on the name, remembering the phone number from other contacts we had made there. “What will you be doing?” His voice was the wrong tone. It wasn’t cop to cop any more.

I said, “Something new has been added, remember?”

“Oh?”

“Somebody had to take Marcus’ place.”

I wasted the day doing legwork around some of the old places, but things weren’t the same any more. In a way I was still a cop, but a cop under suspension isn’t quite a cop and there was more lip than talk. I let it go for a while and the wise guys knew what it meant. If the suspension didn’t stick I’d be back to talk to them again and there were going to be some sore faces around. To people like that you talk better with your hands than your mouth. A few still had impressions of the last time we had to talk and rattled off some, but not enough to steer me onto a direct line.

Time. It all took time. You don’t go after the big ones overnight. I let it be known around that I was still looking and those who saw my face knew just how badly I wanted somebody. They knew what would happen when I found that somebody and they knew that I wasn’t going to stop looking for anything or anybody.

The word would go around and nobody would like it a bit, but there wasn’t a thing they could do about it at all. Except one thing.

Somebody could make sure I got killed.

When I got home I was tired and dirty and needed a shave. I climbed under the shower and soaked the dirt and sweat off, shaved without drying down, then wrapped a towel around me and went outside to the kitchen for a cold beer and a sandwich.

For a while I stood there eating, watching the traffic go by on the street below. For a change it was a quiet evening. Before the night was over the chart said there would be from nine to fifteen unexplained deaths, three murders of passion, several hundred cuttings and probably a dozen nice clean shootings with the persons involved apprehended before morning. Rapes, muggings, burglaries numerous, but unnumbered on the chart.

What the chart didn’t show was the subtle creeping thing that was the soft kill. Voters who supported corruption and taxpayers who paid for it. Out there in the evening the big ones who constituted the royalty of vice were getting dressed to preside over their dominions. The serfs would pay hidden tribute by name dropping. Their direct overlords would pay direct tribute in different ways. In a way, everybody paid a tribute and if you didn’t like it there was a place to put it. You know.

Whoredom was dead in the city, the papers said. The administration had announced very solemnly that aside from those pursuing the world’s oldest profession along the street and an occasional call girl working limited operations, generally apprehended, that organized whoredom was dead, dead, dead.

Why didn’t someone tell them about Madison Avenue’s Miss Mad? She published a brochure of her wares and for a thousand bucks you got pictures and backgrounds of three hundred and seven of her “models.” Her name was Madaline Stumper... Miss Mad to the trade... and she lived in the good seventies with a million a year coming in. She paid off half that million to the Brotherhood and another quarter of it to certain ones in the city. But what the hell, anybody can live on a quarter million a year, can’t they?

For five years the bright boys have been trying to track down the marijuana traffic and make feeble excuses when they can’t ring the bell. Hell, everybody close enough to the business knows about Hymie Reeves seeding out abandoned farms in Orange County with the stuff and going in at the right time to harvest it. If a cow gets drunk on the loco weed the farmers generally attribute it to “fallen apples” and let the cow sober up. If somebody spots it growing it gets chopped down in a burst of civic pride and glory with pictures in the local papers. If nobody sees it grow, Hymie comes in at the right time with a pickup and harvests it out on a dark night and makes a bundle. It’s only a weed. No cultivating. No care. It mixes with the sumac, grows like crazy and is an invitation to ride the horse that comes later. Great. Just great.

And on the waterfront the big H comes in like on a pneumatic tube in a department store and so long as the right people get paid hardly anything gets tipped. The fraction of all the stuff that gets stopped by the cops is really only a diversionary tactic to satisfy, an understaffed agency and satiate the press. But the tips are for real and the boys go in. They pick up the stuff and it’s worth the raid, but meanwhile a hundred times as much goes though and what’s lost gets written off just like in business.

The soft kill. Like a gorgeous, wonderful, but syphilitic whore.

Behind me the phone rang and I snapped out of all the things I had been thinking. I put the beer down and picked it up. The voice on the other end said, “Mr. Regan? This Mr. Regan?”

I couldn’t place it at first. “This is Regan.”

“I told you I’d call, Mr. Regan. This is Spud, from the Climax, remember?”

“Oh, sure, Spud, what’s up?”

“I found the redhead, Mr. Regan. Rivera backs me up on it.”

Across the room from me there was a mirror and when I looked into it I was grinning. There was no reason to grin at all and looking at the reflection was a peculiar thing. I was grinning, but I couldn’t feel it on my face at all.

I said, “Where, Spud,” and tried to keep the excitement out of my voice.

“Tonight’s paper,” he said easily. “Two pictures in the News. Front and page three. She was found dead in the river. The cops say an apparent suicide.”

Suddenly the hot feeling in my gut went away and left a tightness and when I looked back in the mirror I wasn’t smiling any more at all.

I said, “Thanks, Spud.”

And he told me, “My pleasure, Mr. Regan. I hope you can still do what you have to do.”

“I will,” I said, and hung up.