Killing Time

Twenty-Seven

Bill and Cathy and I made a glum, silent trio for dinner. Bill was glum and silent because that was his natural state, Cathy was glum and silent because she was still somewhat mad at me on general principles, and I was glum and silent because I had a hell of a lot to think about and very little of it was cheery.

Item: Jordan Reed wasn’t worried about me going to the CCG. Item: Ron Lascow was in jail on a trumped-up charge that just might get a conviction if the political climate was right. Item: Jack Wycza had canceled his deal with me and called in his whole family. And a lot of them, being duly sworn-in cops, possessed guns. Item: Paul Masetti who seemed to be as honest as he was unpleasant, had been pulled out of town by the CCG. Item: The guy who’d been shooting at me was still running around loose.

A dandy series of items. Dinner lay like wet cotton in my stomach, and cigarettes tasted like cardboard.

Hal Ganz called during dessert, saying he’d been looking all over town for me and asking if he could come over. He sounded about as excited and worried as phlegmatic Hal possibly could, so I told him sure, come on over. He arrived at six-thirty, and breathlessly delivered his news. “All the North Side people on the Force have left. All the Wyczas.” Trust Hal to be second to bring the news.

“I know,” I said.

“They’re police,” he said. He couldn’t understand it.

“They’re Wyczas,” I answered.

We were all together in the living room, Bill Casale quiet in his corner, Cathy and I on the sofa, Hal sitting tense on the edge of an armchair. Cathy now reached over and touched my arm, saying, “How much can you rely on the CCG, Tim?”

“I’m not sure any more,” I admitted. “At first, I thought they were honest. That’s the way Masetti looked, anyway.”

“But he’s gone,” said Hal, discovering another piece of news to deliver second. “He left this afternoon.”

“There’s a new man coming in this evening,” I said.

“Why?” he asked, baffled again. “Why should they switch their men around like that?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But I’d sure like to find out.”

“How can you?” Cathy asked me.

“This is something,” I said, reaching for the phone, “that I should have done long ago.” And I placed a long-distance call to New York, person to-person, to Terry Samuelson, the guy who had written the letter of introduction Masetti had given me.

When he came on the line at last, I identified myself and answered two or three questions about how things were going in little old Winston, and then I said, “This guy Paul Masetti got in touch with me yesterday, Terry.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “The letter of recommendation.”

“I was wondering just how much of a guarantee that letter was,” I said. “You weren’t pressured into writing it or anything, were you?”

“Hell, no,” he said. “I’ve known Paul for seven, eight years. He’s as honest as they come. I’d recommend him to anybody for anything.”

“What about the organization he’s with? What do you know about them?”

“The Citizens for Clean Government? Only what Paul told me.”

“And what did he tell you?”

“He said they weren’t perfect, but they gave him pretty much of a free rein, and it was possible to get a lot of good work done with them.”

“But they weren’t perfect,” I said.

“I got the impression,” he said carefully, “that he didn’t care for the way the outfit had handled things once or twice, didn’t care for a couple of the people connected with it. But it didn’t matter to him what the rest of them were like, so long as they let him do things the way he wanted.”

“So you don’t know that the whole organization is honest.”

There was silence on the line for a long second, and then he said, in a small voice, “Have I goofed, Tim?”

“I’m not sure,” I told him. “Maybe we all have. I’ll call you in a day or two.”

“Tim, if I’ve thrown you a curve, I’m sorry, boy, you know I—”

“Sure, Terry, I know. I’ll call you in a day or two.”

I hung up and looked at the three faces watching me. “Masetti he’ll vouch for,” I said. “The CCG he can’t vouch for.”

“And Masetti,” said Cathy softly, “is gone.”

“In maybe ten minutes,” I said, getting to my feet, “I’ll find out where the CCG stands in all this.”

“Should I come along?” said Bill.

“No. You wait here. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”