Masters of Noir: Volume 3

Graveyard Shift by Steve Frazee

Dozing in front of the microphone in the radio dispatcher’s office, Joe Crestone blinked groggily when one of the heavy side doors downstairs whushed open and then started rocking back to center. Since midnight the building had been dead still.

The footsteps swung out briskly on the tiles of the lobby. They made quick taps on the steel steps leading up towards the dispatcher’s room. Crestone was wide awake. The clock on the radio reeled up another minute. It was 2:17. He swung his chair to face the counter.

She was close to six feet. Her hair was dark, her eyes soft brown: She wore a fur jacket and under that a green woolen dress caught high at her neck with a silver clasp. Her smile was timid. “I–I thought Mr. Walters would be here again.” She studied the work schedule of the Midway police department on the board.

“He’s got the flu. It was my day off so I’m sitting in for him.”

“I see.” She stared at the maps on the wall. “I–I just don’t know exactly how to start it.”

She was white and scared. Crestone let her make up her mind. On the model side, he thought, the kind who pose in two thousand dollar dresses. Plenty of neck above the silver clasp, more gauntness in her face than he had observed at first.

“Hit and run deal?” he asked, eyeing her sharply.

Before she could answer, state patrol car 55 checked in from Middleton, eighteen miles north on Highway 315. A woman dispatcher in Steel City read a CAA flight plan to Bristol for relay to Cosslett. Webster came in with a pickup-and-hold on a 1949 blue Chev with three men. Crestone sent out the information on the pickup-and-hold.

When he swung to the log sheet in the typewriter at his left, she asked, “Do the state cars patrol the old highway from the boarded-up brick works east toward Steel City?”

“State 7? No, not unless there’s a crash out there.” He wrote a line on the log. “Did you have a wreck?”

She hesitated. “In a way.”

He turned back to the desk and pulled a pad to him. “Name?”

“Judith Barrows.”

“Address?”

When she did not answer he twisted his head to look at her. He looked into a snub-nosed .38. For one fractured moment the bore was big enough to shoot a golf ball. Crestone sucked in his breath.

“Give me the log sheet,” she said. “Don’t even brush your arm near the mike or you’ll get it in the liver.”

He stripped the log sheet from the machine and put it up on the counter. She drew it to her with long, thin fingers that bent into carmine-tipped hooks. “Now, a copy of the code sheet, and not the old one with blanks behind some of the numbers.”

Crestone took a code sheet from a folder. When he put it on the counter he saw that she had shrugged out of her fur jacket. He heard the power hum and then Bud Moore said in his bored after-midnight voice, “Seven fifty.” Crestone started to reach toward the microphone and then he stopped.

“Acknowledge it,” she said softly.

He stared at the .38. She was resting her hand on the counter. The gun looked down at his midsection. He gripped the long bar of the mike switch on the stem of the instrument. Under Transmit on the face of the radio a purple button lit up like an evil eye glaring at him. “Seven fifty,” he said, then automatically released his grip on the switch.

“Going 10–10 at Circle 7365,” Moore said, which meant that he and Jerry Windoff were going out of service temporarily to get a cup of coffee at the Mowhawk Diner out on Sterling Pike.

Crestone’s mind froze on 10–10: report back to this office. But then she would read it on the code sheet and— His head rocked sidewise. His left elbow jammed against the typewriter. There was a thin crack of tension in her voice when she said, “Answer the car, Buster.”

He was still half stunned from the crack on his head when he said, “Seven fifty, 10-4.” Okay, 750.

“Give me the local code sheet now, Crestone.”

He gave that to her. It held sixteen messages for local use, and then there were four blanks. She said, “Don’t get any ideas about using Code 17 or any other blank.”

Code 17 was unlisted, strictly a private deal between Bill Walters and all cruiser cops: bring me a hamburger and a jug of coffee. She had found out plenty from old Bill, a friendly, trusting guy who liked to talk about his work.

“Face the radio, Crestone. Don’t worry about me.”

He turned around, staring at a transmitter which controlled all law enforcement in the area. It was worthless unless he had the brains and guts to figure out something.

“Where’s state patrol 54?” she asked.

“After a 10–47 on State 219.” It was on the log; there was no use to lie. He heard papers rustle.

“That’s right,” she said. “Chasing a possible drunk. Keep everything you say right, Crestone, especially when you talk into that microphone.”

The right-hand reel of the clock put up three more minutes. Now it was 2:25. She made no sound behind him. After another minute he could not stand it any longer. He had to look around. She was still there. The gun was still there too, slanted over the edge of the counter.

“Face the radio.”

He hesitated, and then while he was turning, the gun bounced off his head again. He sucked air between his teeth and cursed. For a tick of time his anger was almost enough to make him try to lunge up and reach her; but his sanity was greater. She struck him again, sweeping the barrel of the gun on the slope of his skull.

“Don’t curse me!” she said.

After a foggy interval Crestone was aware of the messages coming from both channels. Two stolen cars from Bristol. He added them to a list of twenty others stolen that day. Steel City sent a car to investigate a prowler complaint. Seventy miles away state patrol car 86 stopped to pull a dead pig off the highway. The dispatcher in Shannon sent a car to a disturbance at Puddler’s Casino. York asked Webster for a weather report on Highway 27.

Then there was just the hum of the radio and the silence at his back. Where was it, one of the banks? No, blowing vaults was a worn-out racket. A payroll at one of the mills or at the automobile assembling plant? Wrong time of week. Besides, that stuff went from the banks by armored cars in daytime.

At the other end of the narrow slot where he was trapped there was a desk, a big steel filing cabinet, and a rack with four sawed-off shotguns. The shells were in a drawer in the bottom of the rack. In another steel cabinet that he could almost reach with his right hand were five pistols and enough ammunition to last a year.

The whole works was as useless now as the radio.

Car 54 asked Shannon for an ambulance at the cloverleaf on State 219. “Two dead, two injured. Didn’t catch up with the dk soon enough.”

“What’s dk?” Judith Barrows asked quickly.

“Drunk.” Crestone’s head was aching. “Car 54 will be back here in about an hour. He’ll come in to write a report.” That was not so, but Crestone wanted to judge her reaction to the time. He leaned toward the radio and twisted his neck to look at her. The one-hour statement had not bothered her.

When he straightened up, he ducked quickly. She laughed. When he raised his head again the gun banged against it. He rolled his head, grinding curses under his breath.

Car 751 came in. Sam Kurowski said, “Any traffic? We’ve been out of the car a few minutes.”

“Where are they?” the woman asked.

Crestone pressed the mike switch.

“10–20, 751?”

“Alley between Franklin and Madison on Tenth Avenue.”

When the transmitting light was off she said, “Code 6 them to the corner — the southeast corner — of River and Pitt.”

Code 6 was boy trouble, kids yelling, throwing rocks — any of a hundred things. They could spot a cruiser a mile away. When Kurowski and Corky Gunselman got way out north on River and Pitt and found nothing, they would think nothing of it. Crestone followed the woman’s orders.

Car 752 came alive. Dewey Purcell said, “Going east on Washington at Sixth Street after dk. Give me a 10–28 on K6532.”

That does it, Crestone thought. Purcell was hell on drunken drivers. He and Old McGlone would be coming in with a prisoner in about five minutes.

“Give him the registration he asked for, Crestone.”

He pulled the vehicle registration book to him. K6532, 1953 Cadillac cpe., maroon, J. J. Britton, 60 Parkway. Jimmy Britton, the Hill itself. Damnation! You didn’t dump guys like him in the tank overnight; but he took hope from knowing that Purcell was in 752 tonight.

“Give him the 10–28, Buster.”

“When they stop. Old McGlone can hardly write, let alone in a car doing eighty after a stinking dk.”

Purcell called again from Washington and Trinity. “We got him.” A woman’s shrill voice came from the background before the car mike was closed. Crestone gave Purcell the registration information.

Crestone stared at the radio. Jimmy Britton would be drunk, affable, mildly surprised at being picked up. Among other things, when he fumbled out his driver’s license, he would show his honorary membership in the Midway Police Department. Old McGlone would say, “Ah now, Dewey, let’s take the lad home, shall we? No harm’s been done, has it?”

But Purcell was tough and he did not give a damn for the social register and he hated drunken drivers. Crestone had been the same way too, and now he was working for a year as a dispatcher.

It was Old McGlone who spoke the next time. “We’ll be going up the hill now to 60 Parkway.”

No lucky breaks tonight, Crestone thought. Tomorrow he would think of a dozen things he could have done, and every man out there in the cars would do the same. That was tomorrow. The gun was behind him now. She could reach him when he swung, and she could not miss if she shot.

There was a drawer in the desk full of stories of tough private-eyes who took bushels of guns away from dames clad in almost nothing, and then slapped them all over the joint or made love to them. Joe Crestone sighed. His head was aching brutally. He did not feel like taking any guns away from any dames.

Car 750 came back into service. Moore and Windoff had drunk their coffee. Then 752 went out of service temporarily at the Sunset Drive Inn. Crestone knew how Purcell was feeling now, the to-hell-with-it attitude. Old McGlone would be telling him, “There’s some things, Dewey boy, that you’ve got to learn about being a cop.” Old McGlone knew them all.

Car 751 signalled arrival at River and Pitt. A few minutes later Kurowski said, “10–98.” Assignment completed. There was no use to elaborate on nothing.

Judith Barrows said, “Send 751 to the Silver Moon on Oldtown Pike to look for a ‘49 green Ford sedan with front-end damage.”

Crestone obeyed. He studied the map. She wanted 751 north and east all the time. Then where in the southern or southeastern part of Midway was any heavy money? There was a brawl at the Riverview country club tonight, maybe a few thousand loose in pockets and a handful of jewelry, but—

The phone at Crestone’s elbow and the extension on the desk near the big filing cabinet spilled sound all over the room.

“Don’t touch it until I say so!” the woman said.

She went around the counter and backed into the chair at the other desk. She crossed her legs and steadied the .38 on her knee. She raised the phone and nodded.

“Police station, radio dispatcher,” Crestone said.

“Ten cents, please,” the operator said.

Crestone heard the pay phone clear. A man asked, “You got a report on State 312?”

“Just a minute.” Crestone had never heard of 312.

“Just tell him it’s all clear, Buster.” Judith Barrows was holding the mouthpiece against her thigh.

“All clear.” Crestone held on to hear a jukebox, the clatter of a cafe — anything to help position the call. The man hung up. A booth, Crestone thought. He put his phone down, staring at the woman’s legs. They were beautiful. He did not give a damn. She got up carefully, standing for a moment in a hip-out-of-joint posture. A model, he thought. It was in her walk too when she went around the counter again.

So they knew this end of it was set now. Where was the other end? Somewhere in the southern part of the district covered in normal patrol by Car 751. Anybody could read the red outlines on the map. It struck him then: the Wampum Club. Big business, cold and sure, with a fine patina of politeness, free drinks, free buffet and other incidentals for the regular suckers. The green-and-crackly on the line at Sonny Belmont’s Wampum Club. Let the cops take Jimmy Britton home and tuck him in, but Belmont never took his check, drunk or otherwise.

The job would take at least four fast, tough men. Making Sonny’s boys hold still for a deal like that was not for amateurs. There was a lot of dough around the Wampum; the income tax lads had been wondering how much for a long time.

So I think I’ve got it doped, and what good does it do? Belmont could stand the jolt. Why should men like Corky Gunselman and Sam Kurowski risk catching lead to protect money in a joint like the Wampum?

That was not the answer and Crestone knew it.

He looked at the last two stolen cars on the list. A ‘52 blue Mercury and a ‘53 green Hornet. That Hudson would go like hell and the Mercury was not so slow either. Both cars stolen around midnight in Bristol. He wondered which one was outside right now. He could be way off, but he had to figure he was right.

Since the Hornet and the Merc were already aired as hot, they would probably be used only to make the run to another car stashed close. East was the natural route. Old State 7 was narrow and twisting, but the farmers who used it would all be sleeping now. Say a half hour to reach the web of highways around Steel City, and then road blocks would be no more than something to annoy whiz kids on their way home with the old man’s crate. She had asked about State 7.

Car 751 came in. Kurowski said, “Nothing at the Silver Moon with front-end damage. What’s the dope on it?”

“Code 4,” Judith Barrows said. “The Ford was last seen going north on Pennsylvania at Third Avenue.”

Code 4, hit and run. Crestone obeyed the .38.

Kurowski said, “10-4. We’ll swing up that way.”

She was keeping 751 north, sure enough. The phone exploded. Judith Barrows went around the counter again to the extension. She nodded.

From the background of a noisy party a man said, “Somebody swiped my car.” A woman shouted. “Tell ’em it’s even paid for!”

Crestone wrote down the information. A ‘52 cream Cadillac sedan, R607, taken sometime between 12:30 A.M. and 1:30 A.M. “It was right in the damned driveway,” the owner complained. “We’re having a little party here and—”

“Keys in it?” Crestone asked.

“Sure! It was in my own driveway.”

“We’ll get on it right away.” Crestone hung up.

The woman said, “You won’t put that one out, Buster.”

So he was guessing right. They had a cream Cad waiting. If they planned to use State 7, the quick run for the crew at the Wampum was up the county road past the country club and then on out Canal to where it intersected across the river with State 7 near the old brick plant. Barrows could shoot straight north on Meredith to Glencoe, turn east— Why hell, she would strike State 7 just a hundred yards from the old brick works. The Cad was waiting out there now!

She was behind him once more. As if she had read his thoughts she asked, “What’s in your little round head now, Buster?”

“I’m wishing you’d beat it.”

She laughed but there were little knots of tension in the sound. The deal must be on at the Wampum now. Before she left she would have to level him. She would swing lower and harder then. The thought made Crestone’s headache worse. He hoped she knew the bones on the side of a man’s skull couldn’t take it like the thick sloping top. She might stretch him so he never got up. He could smell his own sweat.

Before the clincher came he would have to run a test on her. The next time she was in the chair.

One of the side doors made a whushing sound and then a voice boomed across the lobby. “Hey there, Bill, how’s the peace and dignity of the community?” It was old Fritz Hood on his way home from the power company’s sub station. He always stopped to bellow at Bill Walters.

“Hello, Fritz!”

“You, Joey! Where’s Bill tonight?”

“Sick.”

“The old bastard! I’ll go see him before he dies.” The door rocked back to center. Hood was gone.

Judith Barrows was in the chair, with her jacket across her lap and the code sheets on the desk. Crestone rose slowly. The fur jacket slid away and showed the .38. Something dropped out of one of the jacket sleeves. He made another step. She tilted the muzzle, resting the edge of her hand on her knee. She cocked the gun then. Her face was white.

Crestone tried to talk himself into it; but he knew she was too scared. An excited or scared dame with a gun. Murder. He backed up and sat down. His head was pounding. On the floor at her feet lay a piece of doubled wire, the raw ends covered with white tape.

The phone sang like a rattlesnake. The woman made a nervous stab at it before she gained control and nodded at Crestone. Mrs. John Slenko, 3648 Locust, had just seen a man in her back yard. She wanted the police.

Judith Barrows’ vigilance wavered while she was fumbling her phone back into the cradle. Crestone used his phone to push the Gain dial of the radio down to One while he was putting the instrument away. He dispatched 750 to Mrs. Slenko’s home.

The big dame was in a knot now and Crestone was coming out of it. She had grabbed at the phone because she was expecting a call to tell her that the job at the Wampum was done. She was staying in the chair to be near the phone.

When York and Shannon began to talk about a revoked driver’s license, the sounds came faintly.

“What did you do to the radio!”

“Nothing.”

The .38 was on his stomach. “What did you do?”

“Nothing, damn it! We get a split-phase power lag on the standby tower every night.” He hoped she knew as little of radio as he did. “The reception fades, that’s all.”

“You’re lying! You did something, didn’t you?”

“No! You’ve been watching me every second.”

“You’re going to get it, Crestone, if anything goes wrong.” She was wound-up but the gun was easy.

Car 752 came in, so faint that only “seven-fift’ “ was audible, but Crestone knew Purcell’s voice and he could guess the message. Purcell had sulked in the Sunset Drive Inn, dwelling on the inequalities of traffic code enforcement, but now he and Old McGlone were on their way again.

The woman’s voice was a whip crack. “What was it?”

“I’ll have to get it on the other mike.”

“What other mike?”

Crestone kept his finger close to his chest when he pointed. “On a hook around at the side of the radio.”

The faint call came again.

“All right,” Judith Barrows said.

There was dust on the curled lead of the hand mike. Crestone said, “Car 750, I read you 10-1. The standby trouble again, as usual.” 10-1 meant: receiving poorly. From the corner of his eye he saw the woman grab the code sheet to check on him.

Car 750, which had not called, now tried to answer at the same time 752 came in. Crestone said, “Standby, 751. 10-6.” Busy. Now he had them all confused. He called for a repeat from Car 750 to make it more confused. During the instant Judith Barrows was checking the code number he had used, he turned transmitting power to almost nothing.

Faint murmurs came from the radio as the three local cars asked questions Crestone could not hear. The woman did not like her loss of contact. She got out of her chair. “Where’s 751?” she demanded.

Into a dead mike Crestone asked the location of the car. He pretended to hear the answer from the receiver against his ear. “He’s trailing a green Ford toward the Wampum Club.”

“Get him away from there!” She was panicked for a moment and then she got hold of herself. She grabbed the local code sheet. “Code 9 him to the Silver Moon.”

Code 9 was a disturbance. Crestone went through the pretense of calling 751. There was still enough flow of power to light the purple eye.

“Tell him to disregard the Ford,” she ordered.

“10–22 previous assignment, 751. Code 9 at the Silver Moon.”

When the next small scratch of sound came from the speaker, he said, “Midway, Car 55. Go ahead.” He began to write as if he were taking a message: ’52 cream Cadillac sedan, R607, State 7 near old brick plant. Driver resisted arrest.

She came out of her chair. “What’s that message?”

“Car 55 just picked up a guy in a stolen car near the brick works.”

It struck her like death. “Give me that paper!”

He tossed it toward her. She raked it in with her heel, and picked it up without taking her eyes off him. She read it at a glance and cursed.

The phone rang. She had it with out making her signal to Crestone. He lifted his receiver. A tense voice said, “All set here.”

“No!” she cried. “The state patrol just got Brownie and the car!”

“You sure?”

“It just came in on the radio.”

“The other way then. You’re on your own, kid, till you know where.” The man hung up.

Crestone said into the hand mike, “10-4, Car 750.” He swung to face the woman when she went around the counter. “Car 750 is four blocks away, coming in.”

She raised the gun. “They’re coming in,” he said. A man might have done it. She broke. It was her own safety now. Her heels made quick taps on the steel steps, a hard scurrying on the lobby tiles.

Crestone loaded the shotgun as he ran. The blue Mercury was at the first meter south of the police parking zone. She spun her wheels on the gutter ice and then the sedan lurched into the street. He put the muzzle on the right front window. Her face was a white blur turned toward him. He could not do it. He shot, instead, at the right rear tire and heard the shot rattle on the bumper.

He raced back to the radio and put the dials where they belonged. He poured it out then in crisp code. All cars, all stations. First, a ‘53 green Hudson sedan, K2066, possibly four men in car. Left Wampum Club, Midway, two minutes ago. Armed robbery. Dangerous. Second, a ‘52 blue Mercury sedan, K3109, last seen going north on Meredith one minute ago, possibly shotgun marks on right rear fender.

The phone blasted. “This is Sonny Belmont, Bill. We’ve had some trouble down here. Four men in a late Hudson tudor, a light color. They cut toward town on Market. The license was a K2 — something.”

“K2066, a green ‘53 Hornet, Belmont.”

“Who is this?”

“Crestone. What’d they look like?”

Belmont’s descriptions were sharp. “I slipped, Joey. They nailed me opening the safe.”

“How much?”

“About eighty grand.” Belmont said the amount reluctantly. It would be in the papers and he knew it. “How’d you boys get hot so quick, Joey?”

“Luck.” Crestone hung up. Car 750 reported that a speeding Hornet sedan had outrun the cruiser and was headed north on 315. Crestone sent that information to all cars north of Midway.

Car 752 came in. “We’re on the blue Mercury with the woman,” Purcell said. “She’s got a flat rear tire.”

“She’s got a .38 too,” Crestone said.

Three minutes later Purcell called from Glencoe and Pitt. “We got her. Car 751 is here with us.”

Crestone dispatched Car 751 to the old brick works with the dope on a cream Cadillac sedan. Car 55 came in from Highway 315. “The green Hudson got past me, Midway. I’m turning now to go north. Tell Shannon.”

The Shannon dispatcher said, “10-4 on that message, Midway.” A moment later he was talking to a sheriff, and then state patrol 54 came in.

When the channels were clear again Crestone called Steel City to cover State 7 from the east, just in case. He called the police chief and the sheriff by telephone. The chief said he would be down at once. Crestone was still talking to the sheriff when Car 751 reported. “We got the cream Cadillac sedan at the brick plant,” Kurowski said. “The guy scrammed into the weeds and took the keys with him.”

The message went into the mouthpiece of the telephone. The sheriff said, “I’ll be down there with a couple of boys in ten minutes.” Crestone hung the phone up. He told Car 751 to stand by at the brick works.

Everything was set now. There would be a tough road block at the Y on State 20 and Highway 315. If the Hudson got around that, there would be trouble on ahead, piling up higher as more cars converged.

Crestone lit a cigarette. The phone rang. A man asked, “You got my car yet?”

“What car?”

“My Cadillac! My God, man! I just called you.”

“The only stolen car in the world,” Crestone said. “Yeah, we got it. You can pick it up at the police garage in the morning. Bring your registration and title and five bucks for towing charges.”

“Towing! Is it hurt?”

“No keys.”

“Oh,” the man said. The party was still going on around him. “Look, officer, I’ve got an extra set of keys. If you’ll send a car around—”

“Get it here in the morning.”

“Okay then.” The man hung up.

Crestone decided that his skull was breaking. He punched his cigarette out and tried to swallow the bad taste it had left in his mouth.

They brought her in, Purcell and Old McGlone. The tension was gone from her now; she looked beaten down and helpless.

“Cute kid.” Purcell held up the .38. “She put a couple of spots on 752 by way of greeting us. Is the chief on his way?”

Crestone nodded. The woman looked at him and said, “I’m sorry I kept hitting you.”

“Yeah.”

“She was here?” Purcell asked. “She slugged you?”

“She did.”

Old McGlone needed a shave as usual. He was staring at Judith Barrows. All at once he asked, “When did you leave Pulaski Avenue, Zelda Tuwin?”

Her eyes jerked up to Old McGlone’s face. “Five years ago. It was raining.”

“I remember you. You were a chubby kid, Zelda. You—”

“I was a big fat slob!”

“You been a dress model?” Crestone asked.

“Yeah! Big stuff! I got tired of parading in front of bitches and their men. I couldn’t eat what I wanted to. I had to walk like I was made of glass. I got tired of it.”

Old McGlone nodded. “Sure, sure. So you wanted to have the money like them you pranced in front of. You were doubtless making plenty yourself — for a kid from the Polish section of Midway. You’d have been better off staying on Pulaski and marrying a good boy from the mill, Zelda Tuwin.”

Old McGlone looked sad and wistful. He never did want to believe the things he had been seeing for twenty-five years. He was tough but not hard. He understood and he deplored but he never could condemn. Zelda Tuwin watched him for several moments and seemed to recognize those things about him.

And then she stared at the floor.

The chief tramped in. Crestone gave him the story. The chief nodded, watching Zelda Tuwin. He tilted his head toward his office and clumped down the steps. Old McGlone and Purcell took her out, Purcell walking ahead. Old McGlone said, “Watch them steel steps there, Zelda.”

After a while the sheriff’s car came in. He had Brownie, who had tried to jump a canal and nearly drowned. Car 54 was on the air a moment later.

“We got the Hornet, Midway. Four men. What’s the authority?”

“Midway PD. Bring ’em back, and everything they have with them.”

“They got it too. Cars 55 and 86 are coming in with me.”

Crestone sent out a cancellation on the two stolen cars. He could hear the chief talking to Zelda Tuwin downstairs. He knew how Old McGlone felt about some things there seemed to be no help for. It was 3:41 A.M.

Joe Crestone had a hell of a headache.