Killer Mine

Chapter Four

After breakfast in the cafeteria near headquarters, I went up to my desk and started clearing out details that had been laying over. In a way it was good to be on a single assignment. You had a chance to shove unfinished business on somebody else for a change, and for once you could devote yourself to thinking along a straight line.

Close to noon Mack Brissom gave his usual rap and opened the door. He had two containers of coffee, put them on the desk and settled down with a tired sigh.

I said, “What’re you doing in on Sunday?”

“That Canadian business. It’s in Homicide now.”

I frowned, shook my head, but couldn’t remember it.

“That armored car stickup in Montreal. One and half million.”

“Why have we got it?”

Mack grunted and reached for his coffee. “Not we. Me. You’re the fair-haired boy who don’t have to work. The two guards are dead. Both the hoods who hit the truck were tracked to the Falls, crossed over into Buffalo and are supposedly heading toward New York.”

“So catch ’em. You know who they are?”

“We know one. Charlie Darpsey. Used to be with the Brooklyn crowd. One of the guards was an ex-cop with a retirement job and recognized him from police fliers some years back. He lived long enough to pass out the name.”

“Work, slob,” I grinned.

He tipped the container up, swallowed noisily, then put it back. “Like you?” He was holding a smile back.

“What?”

“I happened to be in the Inspector’s office earlier. Seems like you touched the wrong funny bone somewhere. The squawk was loud.”

“It didn’t reach me.”

“For a while, I don’t think it will. They’re waiting to see if that kind of action gets any results.” He leaned back and felt for a smoke in his pocket. He was out and looked at me disgustedly a second because I couldn’t help him any. Then: “How’s it going?”

“Nothing yet, you know how it goes. I saw Benny Loefert around there.”

Mack nodded. “That’s what I came in to tell you about, couple of pigeons reported in that Loefert, Beamish, Will Pater and Steve Lutz have been moving around.”

“High-priced guns?”

“Yeah. All but Lutz took rooms in the area. They’re giving the place real class.”

“I shook Loefert down last night. Gave him a little bang to set him straight.”

“We heard about that too. Beat cop picked it up. You meet him yet?”

“No.”

“Nice kid. Just off probationary duty. Turns in reports like they’ll be kept for posterity. Detailed? Hell, he’d even turn in the number of spit marks on the sidewalk if he thought it necessary.”

“He’ll make out. We were all like that,” I said.

“Sure.” He got up and picked his container off the desk. “We’re going to keep track of the uptown lads. If anything comes through we’ll pass it along.”

“Right. And thanks for the coffee.”

He winked and left. I finished filing the papers, marked them for proper distribution and called for Cassidy to take care of them. Then I phoned Marta and told her I’d be over about two and to have lunch ready. She called me a housemaid-hugging flatfoot and hung up.

Sunday on the street was a day of truce. The week had been fought to a smashing climax on Saturday night and now the troops had withdrawn and cleared the field for a little while. But the signs of battle were still there, the bright flakes of broken bottles, the vomit splashes by the walls, a garbage can on its side in the curb.

Traffic was negligible, but the kids had that uneasy Sunday feeling that couldn’t make up into a stickball game. The young girls were out, purses swinging, jaws chewing, taking this one day to prove their respectability while their opposites tried hard for masculine worldliness with smelly vestibules and dirty stoops for a background. None of it came off. It was still a battlefield.

The bars had opened at one and so far were almost empty. The three I stopped in had just been mopped down and smelled of furniture polish. The hell with the house, but take care of that bar! In each place I asked if Al Reese had been in, and when they said no I told them to pass the word I was looking for him and was going to beat the crap out of him when I found him. I did him a little dirty by hinting that he was a stoolie of sorts, and in that neighborhood even a rumor like that can get a guy in pretty deep water. But at least they were taking it right. I was the tough cop came back to the street where he used to live to see a broad he grew up with. So long as everybody stayed in line, what they did was no business of mine. None at all. Anybody plays it wise, they get rapped and I could make it stick. They were getting to know that part in a hurry. That’s the way they had it figured, and that’s just what we wanted them to think.

At five minutes of two Marta opened the door for me and I could smell lunch on the table. This time she had on a dress with a billowy skirt and regular whore shoes. Only on her the combination looked great.

We ate without saying much, went out to a crummy movie house and saw a picture we had both seen a year ago. At seven we had supper at Smith’s Bar and Grill, then went back to the neighborhood for a few beers before calling it a night

Two days and the pattern was working out The word ran like a swift river in those parts and wherever we stopped conversation stopped too. Words were guarded and eyes could evade mine for no reason except I was cop. On the street the lushes and the panhandlers would throw a halfhearted ingratiating smile, then scurry away quickly.

On the way back to the apartment I saw the beat cop and crossed over to his side, holding Marta’s arm. I had never seen him, but he knew who I was and touched his cap. “Evening, Lieutenant”

“Hi.” I stuck out my hand and he took it. “Mack Brissom told me to look you up.”

He flushed and grinned. “Didn’t think he’d remember me. He was one of the instructors at the academy. By the way, I’m Hal McNeil.”

“This is Marta Borlig.”

He nodded. “I’ve seen you often, Miss Borlig.”

I nudged her in the ribs, “See, like a sore thumb.”

“Oh, pipe down,” she said pleasantly.

“Quiet around the beat?” I asked him.

“Usual stuff. Last few days a mysterious prowler scared a couple of old ladies. Guy with a face full of whiskers. Big fight two blocks over a week ago and a running feud with three families involved ever since.”

“Hard to handle?”

He shrugged and said seriously, “Nothing the rule book can’t cope with.”

“Well, good to see you, McNeil. Keep an eye on my gal here, okay?”

“That’s an easy job, sir,” he chuckled back. He walked off trying store fronts and nodding to upstairs residents. Good boy, that.

On the way to the apartment Marta stopped at the place I had avoided so long. She looked across the street to the blank face of the brick walls, then at me. “Does it hurt that much to look at it, Joe?”

The house I lived in, I thought, where hunger was a constant hazard that separated living into feasts and famines. Downstairs a guy had murdered his wife and kids while they slept and blew his own brains out afterwards. One floor up Bloody Mary started in business, first with abortions that got her the name, then to a three-bed shag joint until she made enough loot to move to the corner.

“It doesn’t really hurt at all,” I said.

“They’ll be ripping them down in a few months. All three of those buildings were condemned.”

“Twenty years too late,” I said, still picturing half-forgotten faces that seemed to be perpetually leaning out of windows staring vacuously into the street, their arms propped on faded old pillows.

“You still hate it, don’t you?”

I nodded. “I’ve always hated it. Not only the houses. This whole place. This dirty end of the city, the poverty, the squalor. Hardly a chance to get out.”

“You got out”

I said, “Hardly. Besides, I hated it enough.” I looked at the indifference on her face. “I can’t see how you stood it.”

“Maybe I couldn’t hate anything that much. Come on, take me home. Tomorrow’s another day.”

“Sure. Let’s go.”

I said so long in the vestibule, quick, because I didn’t feel like talking to anyone nice. The old house had turned me inside out again, and right now all I wanted was something to wash the taste out. I walked back to Donavan’s Dive, went in and got a beer. In the back something big and fat made a hurried exit through the family exit, and I felt a little better.

When I finished the second the little guy who had been watching me so intently finally caught my eye and I knew what he meant. When I left I headed west, halted in the shadow of a doorway and waited. Five minutes later the little guy came by and when I said, “Here,” he ducked in beside me.