Killer Mine

Chapter Five

“You’re Scanlon... Lieutenant Scanlon, right?” It was a statement rather than a question.

“Read off your dog tags, mister,” I told him.

Nervously, he poked his head out and peered down each direction before huddling back in the shadows, “Harry Wope. I got a flop upstairs over Moe Clausist’s hock shop. Work around some, but mostly it’s Social Security.”

“Done time?”

“Six weeks on a vag charge ten years ago.” He shrugged and added, “It was a bad year. Look, you won’t say nothin’ about...”

“Don’t sweat it, Harry. What do you want?”

“That fat slob Reese is after your can, Mr. Scanlon. He got the word in and...”

“I’ve heard it”

“Hell, I don’t mean downtown only like city hall. He’s lookin’ for somebody to hand you lumps. Trouble is, he can’t find nobody, but if he keeps lookin’ he sure will. He’ll blow five hundred to see you dragged out of an alley.”

“Where did you pick this one up?”

“Big ears. I was dumpin’ garbage for Hilo when he was on the phone inside. One of the windows is broke and I heard him.”

I said, “I’m not handing out favors, Harry. Why put me wise?”

Harry Wope leaned toward me, his wrinkled face turned up toward mine, his eyes squinting at me. “You don’t remember me, do you? Nope, guess you wouldn’t at that No reason to after all. Me and your father was in France together during the First World War. He saved my ass once. I used to come around when you was a kid. He only had four then when I seen you last. Knew your ma too.”

Then I remembered him. A funny guy who wore his uniform until there was nothing left of it, having Saturday breakfasts in our kitchen and eating like a wolf to make up for a week of missed meals. “Thanks, Harry. I’ll remember it”

“If I hear anything more, I’ll let you know.”

“Don’t stick your neck out,” I said.

I toured the area slowly, letting the familiar things reestablish themselves. On the side of Carmine’s grocery I ran my hand over the deeply carved initials Larry and I had put there with Doug Kitchen’s and René Mills’ underneath. A dozen layers of paint had not been enough to fill them in. At the school yard where Noisy Stuccio and Hymie Shapiro had sat in the cab of the rubbish truck and accidentally knocked it into gear the long gash still showed in the brick wall.

All dead now, I thought. We had all scrambled over rooftops together, saved empty deposit bottles for Saturday movies, reenacted those same pictures in the park, turning from cowboys and Indians into soldiers or cops and robbers, depending on what had played. Maybe the pattern had started then. Larry ate up the Indian roles. He even had a headdress and a tomahawk. At nine I was the cop. Noisy, Hymie and René went the George Raft route and fancied themselves hotshot mobsters. Doug Kitchen wanted to be a sailor, only they hardly ever had Navy movies unless they were musical comedies, and Doug felt like he had two left feet all the time.

And Marta... little Giggie... trailed us around throwing rocks at us because she was a girl and didn’t belong in the game. I grinned and felt the tiny scar at my hairline where she connected one time. She got a boot in the tail for that one and ran home bawling.

It was one-thirty when I turned the corner and walked toward the spot where Doug Kitchen had died. Down farther, across the street, a pair of drunks argued noisily about nothing; on the stoops here and there couples huddled in the darkness, taking advantage of the only time there was any privacy at all. A few loud voices bellowed from behind closed windows in the upper apartments, sounds that never seemed to change in volume or subject matter. On my side, coming toward me, a late-shift worker ambled along watching his feet until another person stepped out of the shadows, said something that made him hesitate a few seconds before he kept walking, while the other one went back into the shadows.

He passed me without anything more than a glance while I kept walking to where he had the contact, and when I reached there the girl stepped out of her spot beside the balustrade, handbag swinging, voice deliberately provocative, and said, “In a hurry, mister?”

“Nope.”

“I could be company if you want to go somewhere.”

“Sounds good,” I said. “How much?”

I sensed her smile, and saw the way she thrust her body out to accentuate her breasts and hips. “Ten’ll get you more than you have a right to expect.”

“Deal, kid,” I said. Then I took a cigarette out, stuck it between my lips and fired it up. When she saw my face her breath was sucked in so hard she nearly choked. “Hello, Paula,” I said.

Paula Lees’ face was a pale oval in the yellow light of the match. Her mouth started to quiver, and for a second I thought she was going to make a break for it so I reached out and took her arm. She shook her head and almost whispered, “Please...”

“You could take a fall, Paula. Soliciting... a vag rap. Maybe eighteen months in detention.”

She caught the implication of that one word... could. “What... do you want, Mr. Scanlon?”

“Where’s your place?”

Paula looked back over her shoulder. “Right here.”

“Let’s go inside then.”

The tiny flat was typical of all the others around it, existing within a myriad of smells both human and vegetable. The walls were scratched and dirty, the paper peeling, the plaster cracked, and no attempt at rejuvenation could dent the squalor of the place.

Her apartment consisted of two rooms and a bathroom someone had made out of a closet, a combination living room and kitchen with an adjoining bedroom. Paula didn’t get the picture straight. She headed for the bedroom immediately and started to undress. She had her blouse and bra off and the zipper down on her skirt when I said, “Put them back on, kid.”

She jerked her head around. “But...”

I didn’t let her finish. “I’m not taking a pay-off in trade.”

Fractured modesty suddenly overcame her then. She edged behind the door and when she came out again she was dressed, spots of red showing high on her cheekbones and her mouth drawn into a tight, angry line. “I’m not doing any special tricks, Mr. Scanlon. None of that fancy stuff...”

“Sit down and shut up.”

Paula spun around at my tone, licked her lips nervously and did as she was told. After a minute of staring at her shoes she looked up and said, “Well?”

“How many kids working this street, Paula?”

She thought about it, shrugged and said, “Just me. It ain’t too good here.”

“Why stay?”

Her eyes seemed to crawl to mine. “Because they won’t let me go nowhere else.” I didn’t say anything. I just sat there. She added, “When Bummy Lentz and Loefert came down I scratched Bummy up and told Loefert off. Now they don’t let me off this block, the bastards.”

“Still the same old routine, isn’t it? Hoods still pushing the hustler trade. Where does Loefert come in?”

Paula shook her head. “He didn’t do nothing but make a call to the right guy.”

“Al Reese?”

She didn’t answer. She didn’t have to.

I grinned. “Bummy won’t bother you any more. He got tanked on some bad booze with a wood alcohol base two weeks ago and died in Bellevue.”

“So the call still goes.”

“Maybe,” I said. “I’ll get the heat off you, but you get the hell off this street and find a job. There’s enough work in this town without wearing your tail out.”

“And for this you want what?” she challenged.

I said, “You’ve been out there every night, haven’t you?”

Paula nodded.

“Your name didn’t show as a witness to Doug Kitchen’s death.” When she looked down at her feet again I knew I had her. Like everybody else, she had been interviewed by the Homicide team but gave a negative answer. “You saw it, didn’t you?”

She knew what would happen if she tried to lie out of it. She’d sweat it out downtown with a soliciting charge over her head. Silently, she nodded again.

“Let’s hear it, kid.”

For a few seconds she sat there, then glanced up resignedly and said, “I saw him coming down the block, all right. Hell, I didn’t know it was him. He stopped and waved to somebody across the street who was going by under the light, but it was too far for me to see who it was. I saw him start to cross over and so did the other guy, then Doug sort of stopped, talked a little bit and began to back up. All of a sudden he started to run and this other guy, he just shot him right in the back. When Doug didn’t fall he shot twice again, and he fell right on the sidewalk. That other guy... he just walked away up the street.”

“What did you do?”

“Do? I went back inside, that’s what I did. I didn’t come out until the next morning. And I told a John I was going see him that night too.”

“Anything recognizable about the other guy?”

Paula shook her head. “It was too far away.”

“Think some more, Paula. A kill always has something special about it. Once you see it happen you don’t forget it very easily.”

Tight lines appeared at the corners of her eyes and she suddenly looked older than she was. “Honest, Mr. Scanlon...” She paused, bit her lip, then said, “It ain’t nothing, but that other guy... he let out a yell like.”

“What kind of yell?”

“Just a funny yell, then he shot him and walked away. It wasn’t loud, but I heard him. There wasn’t traffic or nothing right then. I heard him yell, that’s all. It didn’t sound right. I was scared. Honest, Mr. Scanlon...”

“Forget it, Paula.” I got up from the chair and slapped on my hat.

“What are you going to... do with me?”

“Not a thing, kid. Vice isn’t my specialty. I’m not here on a case. It’s just that I knew Doug Kitchen when we were all living around here. As far as you’re concerned, I’ll do what I said I’d do. If you’re smart you’ll get your tail off this street too.”

She believed me then and something changed in her eyes. “Gee,” she told me, “it’s hard to believe a cop would... well...” Paula lowered her eyes demurely, then caught mine again. Briefly, she glanced toward the bedroom. “If you’d like... I could show you... like real special things and...”

“Uh-uh,” I said. “I got all I can handle right now,” I lied.

But she didn’t know it and smiled as if she did.

The reports had listed only one other witness who wasn’t sure of what he had seen at all, a drunk coming out of a stupor he had laid on all day, who had seen the kill from the stairway going into the cellar at number 1209. The first shot made him look up and on the next he had seen Doug fall. Then he ducked down below the cement wall and stayed there. He thought he remembered a guy standing in the street but couldn’t be sure and he wasn’t the kind of witness you bothered pressing. If anybody else saw the incident he wasn’t talking. Right now the department had their own stoolies asking around, but in that neighborhood there was a natural, inborn reluctance to even mention anything that would make any more trouble than was already there, so it was doubtful if anything would turn up.

Walking back I reviewed what the sheets had stated. René Mills was found dead behind a building and only one person had mentioned hearing what could have been a gunshot and wasn’t sure of the time. Hymie Shapiro was killed inside his car where it was parked outside his apartment. Noisy Stuccio was shot in the tenement where he lived with the TV turned on full and if the sound hadn’t been up so high that the guy downstairs came up to complain, the body wouldn’t have been found for days.

Somebody was doing it nice and neatly. Very pro.

And there was one thing I was sure of. It wasn’t over yet. Interwoven in the wild hodgepodge of murders there was a peculiar pattern. So far the theme of it hadn’t emerged yet, but it would. It would. It was just too bad that somebody else would have to die before it showed all the way.

When it did I’d be there and a killer would be under the end of my gun with the big choice of dying on the spot or sweating it out in a mahogany and metal chair with electrodes on his legs and one on his head that was the big, permanent nightcap.

There was one more stop I wanted to make before the night was over. I walked one block, turned the corner and went in the vestibule beside Trent’s candy store and struck a match to look at the nameplate over the bells on the wall. A tarnished copper strip read R. CALLAHAN and I nudged the button. A minute later the automatic trip clicked on the door and I pushed it open, went up the stairs to the landing and waited outside the door.

Fifteen years ago Ralph Callahan had been retired from the force, but he had spent his life on the beat in his own neighborhood and you could never take the department out of the man. His eyes would still see, his mind classify events with practiced skill, even though he wasn’t active, but like every other retired police officer, he still had certain privileges extended him by the city including carrying a badge and a gun if he chose to.

When he opened the door he made me with a glance, nodded curtly and said, “Come on in, son.”

“Hello, Ralph.” He was a big guy even yet, filling out his pajamas in a stance that marked thousands of days in a uniform.

He waved me to a kitchen chair after closing the bedroom door softly. “The missus is a light sleeper,” he told me and sat down on the other side of the table. “Now... don’t remember you, but you look familiar.” I started to reach for my badge, but he waved me off. “I know what you are all right, son.”

I grinned at him. “Joe Scanlon. You laid a couple across my behind with that stick of yours when I was a kid.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “Now where are you?”

“Homicide. Special detail right now. Marta Borlig’s working it with me.”

“Damn, ain’t the department getting tricky?” He studied me a few seconds, then leaned forward on the table, his hands folded together. “Those four kills?”

“Uh-huh. Smell anything?”

“If I did I would have reported it. Nobody knows a thing.”

His eyes watched me shrewdly, and I said, “There’s another interesting angle.”

“That’s what I was waiting for you to say. Loefert and the others showing up?”

“That’s right,” I agreed. “What does it look like to you?”

“They’re out of place around here, that’s what it looks like. The only rackets going on are small stuff. Numbers, a few books, that sort of thing. A few hustlers work around, but it’s all normal procedure, and not big enough to crack down on. Hell, nobody’s got enough money in this neighborhood to lay on hard.”

“But they’re here, so it must mean something else.”

The elderly cop leaned back and frowned at the ceiling. “I got an idea that could connect”

“Oh?”

He lowered his eyes and steadied them on mine. “Remember that guy... Gus Wilder, the one who jumped bail in Toledo when he was going to testify against the Gordon-Carbito mob?”

“I saw the flyers and read the news accounts.”

Ralph bobbed his head. “He lived two blocks over for five years. Still got a brother there. The brother’s straight... runs a dry cleaning shop, but I’m thinking they’re watching him to see if Wilder makes a contact”

“Why?”

Callahan grinned at me. “Things you brass cops seem to forget. The Gordon-Carbito mob upstate did the local boys a favor once... a big one. Could be now the locals are returning it by keeping an eye out for Wilder. If he talks the upstate combo will fall.”

“A possibility,” I agreed. I stood up and pushed the chair back. “Keep your ears open... I’ll appreciate it. If you need a contact, try Marta Borlig, only keep it on the q.t that she’s on the force.”

“Will do, Joe.”

“Thanks for your time.”

“Don’t mention it.” I said good night and went downstairs to look for a cruising cab.

My morning reports were finished at nine and I handed them to Mack Brissom. “Want some coffee? I’m meeting Marty at the diner.”

“Can’t do, friend. I’m tied up with that Montreal thing. A cross check on the ballistics came in and the gun used in Montreal was the same used in an attempted bank heist in Windsor a week earlier and to kill a gas station attendant in Utica four days after the Montreal bit”

“That’s not our jurisdiction,” I said.

“Yeah, I know. But the gun was found in a B.M.T. subway train by a passenger and turned in. No prints, unregistered and probably deliberately left there. It could be a red herring dodge to keep the action here while the killer is miles away, but we have to push it all the way.”

“Any of the money showing up yet?”

“Nothing. Lousy thing is, who could tell? Only part of the loot was in bills big enough to have the serial numbers recorded. It’s like the Brinks job... they’ll hold off until things quiet down before dumping the stuff.”

“Well, have fun.”

Mack didn’t seem to hear me. He shook his head, looking out the window. “Screwy deal, that one. The bank heist was a bust because four detectives were on the premises cashing their checks and stopped it. The Montreal job took a lot of planning... more than one single week. That was a top operation.”

“Maybe the guy who used the gun was brought in just to give them cover,” I suggested.

“Ah, I don’t know. It smells. It’s real sour. We got a tipoff from Canada that something had been in the wind a long time. Two mobsters from the States had been spotted up there a couple months earlier and sent back across the line, persona non grata. The day after the job an abandoned American automobile was found three miles from the scene that had been stolen in Detroit a week before, so there’s a general tie-in.

“Take the guy with the gun... he grabbed a car in Detroit, ran over to Windsor to pull the bank job, muffed it, then pulled the Montreal deal, dumped the car and took off. A report from a motel in the area where the car was left, that catered to tourists from the States, called in a stolen car with Jersey plates the same day.”

I said, “It looks nice except for that one thing, Mack. You don’t plan that kind of holdup in a week... not on the run, anyway.”

Mack collected his papers from the desk and folded them under his arm as one of the duty officers came in and handed him a sheet. He looked at it, scowled, then glanced at me. “That stolen car from Jersey was found in the Bronx.”

“The boy’s coming home,” I grinned.

“So he takes the subway, leaves the gun there so he can’t get picked up with it and finds a hideout. But where?”

“Why don’t you try the Ritz,” I suggested. “He’d have enough cash along to afford the rates.”

“Drop dead.”

We left together and I went down to meet Marty at the diner. She was already there, tall, fresh and cool looking in a trim suit that couldn’t hide her loveliness no matter how businesslike it was cut. She had coffee and pie ready for me and a notepad open on the table in front of her. I said, “Hi, little Giggie,” and sat down.

“If you weren’t my superior you’d hear something,” she told me.

“Superior in all things, sugar.”

“All?”

“Like I said... all.”

“Maybe you need a lesson, big boy.”

“In what?” I grinned.

“Oh, shut up.” She sipped at her coffee, then pulled the pad toward her. “I had a talk with a few people on the block.”

“And...?”

“Remember what Fat Mary said about René Mills hinting about coming into some money?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Confirmed. He was seen with a roll, paid off two big bar bills, cleaned up an account overdue by three months at the grocer’s and made a pitch at Helen Gentry who has pretty expensive tastes and only goes with the boys who are loaded. On top, he laid in a case of expensive Scotch whiskey and paid for it in cash.”

“So?”

Marty closed the pad and said, “He’d been pimping for those two girls who live over Papa Jones’ store for three years now. Cheap trade, and the take couldn’t have been big, but it was all he had, then suddenly he tells them both to take off... that he’s going out of business.”

“Not much cash was found on the body,” I said. “None of that Scotch was found in the apartment, either.”

“Screwy,” she mused.

I told her about my conversation with Ralph Callahan the night before and she nodded, thinking the same thing I was. I said, “He could have been hiding out Gus Wilder for a price.”

“We could check and see if they ever had a previous contact.”

“Not now we can’t, kid. You’re supposed to be a working girl. Until tonight we’ll go at it from a different angle. If the local mob is looking for Wilder they’ll have their own sources. Let’s see if they really are. Think you can run a check?”

“Sure. Regulation procedure accelerated by native ingenuity. I’ll see those who are assigned to that detail.”

I finished my coffee and dropped a bill on the table. “Good enough. I’ll pick you up at the apartment tonight.” I started to leave, then stopped and turned around. “Don’t get involved personally. Let somebody else do the legwork.”

“I can handle it myself, Joe.”

“Perhaps, but I don’t want you to lose your cover. Probe too far and some newshawk will get curious and your picture will be in the paper. That would wipe out your effectiveness in the neighborhood.”

“All right, Joe,” she smiled, “I’ll be careful.” But all that time she knew what I really meant I was getting a damn funny feeling about that woman, one I had never experienced before. Something that was like a fist tightening in my belly and sending a warm, crawly sensation across my back.