Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 150, Nos. 5 & 6. Whole Nos. 914 & 915, November/December 2017

Betrayal by Bill Pronzini

“Can doing first-rate work as consistently as Pronzini really be as effortless as he makes it seem?” Kirkus Reviews asked in its starred review of Endgame, the final book in the author’s Nameless Detective series (Forge, June 2017). Also out this year is The Dangerous Ladies Affair, his fifth novel-length Carpenter and Quincannon series collaboration with Marcia Muller.

Nick sits on the bench watching the old man feed breadcrumbs to a gaggle of pigeons. The day is warm, the trees and shrubbery starting to bud, the lawns turning a bright green. The kind of day, after a long winter, that makes the world seem like a more peaceful place than it is.

“How come you sat down here with me?” the old man asks him. “Most younger guys, strangers, they don’t want nothing to do with somebody my age.”

“You looked like you could use some company. Other than those birds, I mean.”

“They ain’t company. Feeding ’em helps pass the time, that’s all. Fattening ’em up for a good stew.” He chuckles at his joke, then sobers. “Good to have somebody to talk to for a change,” he says. “Got no friends around here, no friends at all anymore.”

“What about family?”

“Gone. All gone. What’d you say your name was again?”

“Nick.”

“Mine’s Charlie. Don’t think I’ve seen you here before.”

“Well, I don’t come as often as I’d like. I work long hours, don’t get much time off.”

“I know how that is. I used to put in long hours too. What kind of work you do?”

“I’m a cop,” Nick says.

Charlie’s rheumy eyes brighten. “No kidding? Now ain’t that a hell of a coincidence. I used to be on the job myself.”

“Is that right?”

“Worked out of the Forty-eighth. Which precinct you in?”

“The Seventy-ninth.”

“Uptown.”

“No, it’s downtown.”

“Right. Downtown. Uniform or plainclothes?”

“Plainclothes the past four years.”

“What rank?”

“Detective Third Grade.”

“I was a sergeant. Took me twenty years, but I finally made it. Figured I had it made too.” The brightness fades in the rheumy eyes. “I sure as hell was wrong about that.”

“Were you?”

“The bastards threw me off the force, right before I was due for my pension. You want to know why?”

“Why?”

At the old man’s feet the pigeons coo and burble. One of them tries to peck at his blue-veined hand; he swats it away, then throws crumbs at it. “Claimed I was dirty, that’s why. On the take, and worse — a thief. You remember the Hollis Transport holdup?”

Nick shakes his head.

“Happened back in... I don’t remember exactly,” Charlie says. “Awhile back. Two armed robbers shot a guard, made off with seventy-five large in cash. Me and my partner, Pete Decker, got a tip on where the perps were holed up, this abandoned warehouse on the east side. We went in after ’em, just the two of us. Brass said we should’ve waited for backup, but we had other ideas. There was a lot of shooting, bullets flying all over the goddamn place, only time I ever fired my service weapon except on the pistol range. When it was all over the two perps were dead and Pete had a slug in his arm. Department reprimanded us for not following procedure. That’s all Pete got, the reprimand. I got the shaft.”

Charlie gazes off into the distance for a time, a light breeze ruffling his wispy white hair. Two people walk slowly along the cinder path, but he isn’t watching them. Focused on the distant past.

Pretty soon he says, “No sign of the seventy-five thousand in the warehouse. No sign of it anywhere. Department figured maybe I snagged it, or Pete did, or both of us. Big investigation. Never found out what happened to the money, no proof of wrongdoing on our part. Case closed. Except that it wasn’t. You want to know what happened?”

“If you want to tell me.”

“They had to have a scapegoat, so they phonied up a bunch of graft charges against me. Claimed I was taking payoffs from bookies, the racket boys that controlled numbers and prostitution in the precinct. Pete, he got off clean, no charges against him.” Charlie scratches at a stubble of gray whiskers on his chin. “You know Pete Decker?”

“Heard of him.”

“He still on the job?”

“Still at the Forty-eighth,” Nick says. “He’s a captain now.”

“Sure, that figures. He gets promoted up the line, I get thrown out on my ass. It ain’t right. It’s damn unfair.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Damn unfair. He should’ve got the same treatment.”

“Why, if he was innocent too?”

“Who says he was innocent?”

“You mean he wasn’t?”

“Dirty as hell. Guilty as sin.”

“Pete Decker was on the take?”

“Now and then, before that day. Big-time dirty then.”

“... Are you saying he stole the seventy-five thousand?”

Charlie winks at him. “Hell of a big pile of cash.”

“Did you see him take it?”

“I was there, wasn’t I? I just told you.”

“Why didn’t you turn him in, Charlie?”

“Couldn’t. Had to keep my mouth shut, didn’t have no other choice. They’d have prosecuted me right along with him.”

“No, they wouldn’t. You didn’t take the money.”

The old man is silent for a time, looking off into the distance again. Then he jerks as if coming out of a doze, spits again, sighs heavily. “Like hell I didn’t,” he says.

“What?”

“Like hell I didn’t take that money. It was right there in the warehouse in a suitcase. Me and Pete grabbed it, hid it, split it up later.”

Nick sits staring at him. “Jesus, Charlie, you’re not serious—”

“I’m serious, all right. Better believe it.”

“You betrayed your badge, you and Pete Decker?”

“Wasn’t the first time. Those graft charges I told you about, they wasn’t phonied up. I was on the take, all right, and IAD found out about it.”

“But for God’s sake... why admit it now, to me?”

“I’m sick of telling the same lies over and over. Got to stop sometime, might as well be now. Don’t make no difference you’re a detective. I ain’t gonna be around much longer anyway.”

“Dirty. A dirty cop.”

“Hell, I’m not proud of it.”

“Then why—?”

“Why do you think? Long hours, lousy pay, bills piling up. You’re on the job, you understand how it is. You keep getting tempted, and finally one day you say the hell with it and start taking a little here and there—”

“I don’t,” Nick says. “Not once, ever.”

“How long you been on the force?”

“Fifteen years.”

“Married?”

“Once. Not anymore.”

“Kids?”

“No.”

“Be different if you had the obligations I did.”

“No, it wouldn’t. No.”

“Never even been tempted, eh?”

“Never.”

“Bet you would’ve been if you’d stumbled on more green than you ever saw before or will ever see again. Bet you’d’ve grabbed it, just like Pete and me did.”

Nick says thinly, “He talked you into it?”

“Other way around.” Charlie makes a humorless cackling sound. “Didn’t take much talking either.”

“What happened to your share?”

“I spent it, same as I spent the rest of the graft. Some before I got thrown off the force, some after. Bills, clothes, second car, new TV, house repairs. Department couldn’t prosecute me because they couldn’t prove none of it, the payoffs were all under the table and I was real careful about where I hid the Hollis money and how I spent it. Real careful. All they could do was kick me out, screw me out of my pension.”

The old man’s bitter, self-serving confession makes Nick feel sick. He gets to his feet. “I’ve heard enough. I’m leaving now.”

Another cackle, this one ending in a phlegmy cough. “Guess you won’t be coming back, eh?”

Nick doesn’t answer, just walks away.

The old man’s story weighs on Nick all the way back to his apartment. Is it true? It must be, even though he doesn’t want to believe it. Charlie’s account of those past events was sharp, too sharp to be delusional; his crimes, his betrayal must have been festering in him for a long time. And the look on his face...

Inside the small, cramped apartment, Nick pours himself a large whiskey. There’s nothing he can do about Charlie or Pete Decker now — and the old man knew it. The Hollis money is long gone, there’s no evidence to back up the confession, and the statute of limitations on the theft has run out besides. He’ll only stir up a hornet’s nest if he goes to the brass with it, and he’ll be the one to get stung.

He takes a long pull of whiskey, but it does nothing to relieve the cold emptiness inside him. The old man’s image is vivid in his mind.

Why did it have to be me you unburdened yourself to after all these years? he thinks. Why did you have to be so lost in the past, today of all days, you didn’t know me up there on the care-facility grounds?

Ah, Pop, why couldn’t you let me go on believing I’m not the only honest cop in the family?

© 2017 by Bill Pronzini