Night Extra

4

Manor Lane was one of the select addresses in the city; the homes were small, old and expensive, three-storied for the most part with splendid doorways decorated with antique brass knockers and numerals. The street ran for two blocks behind the Gothic solemnity of St. Chrysostom’s, and terminated in a mews at the south side of Regent Square.

Terrell’s driver whistled as they swung into the block. Two black and white squad cars and an ambulance were parked in the middle of the street and groups of people stood on the sidewalks watching the windows of Caldwell’s house. The flashing red lights on the police cars transformed the faces of the spectators into vivid masks of tension and excitement.

Terrell paid off his cab and walked over to a patrolman standing beside the ambulance. He recognized him and said, “Hello, Jimmy. They take her out yet?”

“Hi, Sam. No, not yet. Captain Stanko just got here. With one of your boys. The lab men are still working. It’s brutal, I guess.”

Terrell walked up the stone steps of Caldwell’s home, nodded to the patrolman on duty and went inside. He turned from the foyer into the living room, where he saw shirt-sleeved lab technicians taking photographs and measurements.

The Call-Bulletin’s district reporter, a balding man named Nelson, was on the phone talking in a low urgent voice. Terrell nodded to him, then drifted into a quiet corner and stuck a cigarette in his mouth.

Eden Myles lay sprawled in the middle of the room, and Richard Caldwell sat slumped in a deep chair with his head bent forward at an awkward angle; he was breathing noisily and raggedly, and every now and then an inarticulate little moan sounded deep in his throat. Captain Stanko, in command of the Sixteenth, was shaking his shoulder with a big red hand, and a police surgeon was peering into his eyes. The room was a shambles. Lab men moved around upended chairs with efficient speed and a homicide detective named Evans was studying a tipped-over lamp with a vacant expression on his face. Caldwell’s chauffeur stood at the far end of the room, a bulky man in pajamas and brown woolen robe. He seemed completely stunned; his eyes were fixed on Caldwell’s limp figure and his expression was almost a parody of bewilderment. Standing a few feet from him was Paddy Coglan, the uniformed cop whom Terrell had spoken to from the Call-Bulletin. Coglan was a small man, stockily built, with kinky gray hair and a round, red face. His eyes were switching around the room, flicking from spot to spot as if seeking a place to rest.

“We can take her now,” one of the lab men said to Captain Stanko, and Evans, the homicide detective, turned and looked thoughtfully at the body of the dead girl.

She hadn’t died prettily, Terrell thought. The model, the singer, proud of her lean, elegant body and dramatic good looks — that was all over. He had seen this kind of violence for years; on the police beats he had covered cuttings and brawls, autopsies on bodies pulled from flaming automobiles, murders in good neighborhoods and bad, crimes of passion that ignored income groupings, color lines and actuarial tables. But he had never gotten used to it. He had never developed a tolerance for violence. It sickened him, and in some way made him ashamed of himself. Now he felt that shame and guilt as he stared at Eden Myles’ dark, swollen face and pitifully distended eyes. She had fought hard; her dress was torn across the front revealing her starkly white shoulders and the swell of her small breasts. One of her slippers was off and a stocking had been pulled loose from its garter clip; it hung now like a nylon fetter about her slim, hard ankle.

“Take her out,” Captain Stanko said.

The Call-Bulletin’s reporter was winding up his story in a discreetly lowered voice. Talking to Ollie Wheeler, Terrell thought. Mooney wouldn’t have had time to get anyone else. He glanced at his watch. Eleven-thirty. Karsh would be on his way by now, and a dozen rewritemen, reporters and photographers. He turned a bit to listen to Nelson. “Yes, that’s all I’ve got,” Nelson was saying. “I can’t talk to anybody yet. Caldwell looks drunk, and the girl is dead, that’s for sure. She’s messed up some. Lip cut, clothes torn, like she’d been worked over. What? Yes, Caldwell’s got some scratches on his face. Look. I’ll talk to Stanko when I can — yes, sure.”

“Just a second,” Terrell said sharply. “What about the man who ran out of here? Did you give him that?”

Nelson looked at him blankly. “First I heard about it. What do you mean? A prowler?”

“Prowler?” It was Captain Stanko speaking. He turned toward them, repeating the word in a cold, belligerent voice. He was a big man with a face like a block of dark wood, and his eyes were angry and suspicious as he stared from Nelson to Terrell. “Let me give you hot shots some advice. Don’t start dreaming up angles. You’ll get the story from my report. That will be the official version — the only version. You start inventing things and you’ll get your cans in a sling.”

Nelson put the phone he was holding back into its cradle. The gesture was expressive. “I’m not inventing anything, Captain. I’m waiting for your report.”

Stanko glanced at Terrell. “That suit you? Or do you want us to rush things up for your special benefit?”

The room had become very quiet. Evans, the homicide detective, was studying Terrell appraisingly, and the lab men had turned from their work to the sound of anger in Stanko’s voice. McIntyre, the Call-Bulletin photographer, casually shifted his camera into position to cover Terrell and the captain.

“I’m not inventing things,” Terrell said. “A man was seen out of this house tonight. After the girl was heard screaming. That’s part of the story, Captain.”

Stanko studied him for a few seconds with no expression at all on his face. Then he said, “Who saw him?”

“Your beat cop.” Terrell glanced toward the patrolman. “Paddy, didn’t you tell the captain what you told me on the phone?”

Coglan’s face was brick red. One of his hands moved in a pointless little gesture. “What do you mean, Sam?”

The silence in the room suddenly became oppressive and ominous; Terrell felt a little chill go through his body. Would they really try to get away with this? he wondered. Would they try anything so raw? “You know what l mean, Paddy,” he said, watching the little man’s shifting eyes. “You told me fifteen minutes ago that you saw a man run out of this house — after Eden Myles screamed. You chased him and lost him. But you got a good look at him. Are you changing your story now?”

Coglan’s eyes slid past Terrell and focused on a spot just beside his shoulder. “I told you you’d better talk to the detectives. It’s their job to pass on stories to you guys. I remember telling you that, Sam. I was pretty jolted, finding her dead. Maybe you misunderstood me or got it mixed up.”

“Sure, you got it mixed up,” Stanko said, in a hard, derisive voice. “You were trying to work ahead of us. That’s how rumors get started and stories get twisted out of shape.”

Terrell didn’t take his eyes from Coglan’s flushed and unhappy face. “Once more, Paddy; you didn’t see a man run out of here?”

Stanko said, “He told you ‘no’ once.”

Terrell hesitated, not sure of his next move. He knew Stanko by reputation, a cold, unemotional man with a blind and compulsive loyalty to the administration. What were his orders? To make certain that Caldwell was tagged with the girl’s murder? To eliminate other suspects?

Terrell made up his mind. He said, “Captain, I’m using what Coglan told me. I don’t know what he saw; but I know damn well what he told me he saw. And that’s going into the paper.”

“And your paper is heading for trouble,” Stanko said. “Paddy’s tried to set you straight. He may have been confused, or you may have misunderstood him.”

“We’ll print all of that, too,” Terrell said, in a tone heavy with sarcasm. “He’s been a cop for twenty years but the sight of a body sends him into a state of incoherent shock. Readers will find that intriguing.”

“Sam,” Coglan said plaintively, “there’s no reason—”

“Shut up!” Stanko yelled at him. “Print what you want, snoop. Now get out of here.”

“We’ll print all the versions,” Terrell said. “Coglan’s first account and Coglan’s second account. Something for every edition. And when do we get the definitive official report? When the Mayor and Ike Cellars decide just how it should be shaded and tinted for public consumption?”

“Get out of here. Get out of here before I throw you out. You’re a troublemaker, that’s all. And, by God, I’d like to beat some manners and sense into you.”

Terrell said, “I don’t want trouble, Captain, I just want the truth. But those words mean the same thing tonight.” He tossed him a little salute and walked out of the room.

From Caldwell’s house Terrell went looking for a telephone. He found an all-night drugstore six blocks away, and called the paper. Wheeler was writing the first running story, and Terrell gave him everything he had learned from Coglan.

When he finished Wheeler said cheerfully, “Well, Caldwell’s got a loophole now. It’s not open-and-shut until they chase down the prowler. Meanwhile chaos reigns supreme here, Karsh is tearing into this big. Everybody but the janitor and the publisher’s wife is out working on it. Where are you going now?”

“To the Sixteenth. I’ll call you after he’s slated.”

“That’s the stuff, son. Atmosphere, color. We relish all tawdry details.”

There was an air of pressure and excitement in the old mid-town station house. The shift reporting for the midnight-to-eight trick was buzzing with the story. In a few hours the whole city would be buzzing, Terrell knew. He walked down the dusty, brightly lighted hallway to the House Sergeant’s office. The new shift was on duty; Sergeant McManus, who had taken Coglan’s first call, wasn’t around. Probably in the locker room, the clerk said. Terrell found him there sitting in front of his locker.

Two young patrolmen stood near him changing out of their uniforms. “My wife doesn’t want me to come home in the monkey suit,” one of them said. “Even when it’s after midnight. Sheer snobbery, I tell her. But it cuts no ice.”

Terrell sat down on the wooden bench beside Sergeant McManus, an erect, gray-haired man with surprisingly gentle blue eyes. “Big night, eh?” he said.

“Big is right. I can’t figure it, Sam.”

“I don’t blame her,” the second patrolman said, knotting his tie. “Who wants to be taken for a doorman or a zoo attendant?”

Sergeant McManus looked up at them and said irritably, “If you think the uniform is such a lousy thing, why did you bother taking the police exams? Did you think they’d deck you out in top hats and canes?”

“Good working conditions got me,” the first patrolman said, winking at his companion. “That and the stimulating friendships I’ve formed among my buddy cops.”

McManus said, “Spend as much time on the manual as you do dressing and undressing every day and you’ll be Inspectors in ten years.”

When the two men had gone, Terrell said, “How do you mean you can’t figure it out, Mac?”

“I never figured Caldwell that way.”

“How did you figure him?”

“To tell the truth, I was for the guy. I heard him talk and he made sense.”

“What time did Coglan call in?”

“It’s in the log, if you want the exact minute. About ten twenty-five, I think.”

“Where was he then? At a box, or inside Caldwell’s?”

“He was inside Caldwell’s, I guess.”

“Mac, did he say anything about seeing a man leaving Caldwell’s?”

Sergeant McManus didn’t answer for a moment. He sat staring down at the backs of his big, blue-veined hands. “You’ll have to ask Captain Stanko,” he said.

“Why, Mac?”

The sergeant turned then and looked at him steadily. “Because Stanko took the call. He was in my office from around ten o’clock on, fussing over some reports. When the outside phone rang he was sitting right beside it. He picked it up, talked to Coglan. When he finished he told me to flash radio and have them send an ambulance and a couple of our cars over to Caldwell’s. He said Coglan had a dead one.”

“Just that, eh? That there was somebody dead at Caldwell’s?”

“That’s all.”

“Does Stanko hang around your office as a rule, Mac?”

McManus looked at Terrell for a few seconds in silence. Then he shook his head slowly. “He’s got an office of his own, Sam.”

“Thanks.” Terrell got to his feet. “Say hello to Mrs. McManus for me. She feeling better these days?”

“Much better, thanks.”

The station house filled slowly as the news spread by telephone and word of mouth through the city. Reporters and photographers, tipsters and hangers-on from the Hall, deputies and bailiffs from the Mayor’s and Sheriff’s offices — they crowded the hall and offices of the station, chattering tensely over the news. Speculation was the conversational legal tender; it would buy more speculation, and there was nothing else for sale.

Terrell spent an hour or so absorbing gossip and impressions, and then drifted into the roll call room which was dominated by a high wooden bench. This was where the preliminary hearing would be held; a magistrate was on his way to the Sixteenth now, and Caldwell had already been slated for murder and taken upstairs to the detectives’ bureau for additional questioning. He was being treated with scrupulous care; one of his law partners was with him, and he had been allowed to talk to Sarnac.

Terrell sat down on a wooden seat that ran along the wall. The man beside him grinned and said, “You think he strangled her before or after?”

Terrell glanced at him, then lit a cigarette.

“The smart money is betting after,” the man said. He was small and excited, hugging himself with thin arms.

“Whose smart money?” Terrell said. “Ike Cellars’?”

The little man shrugged and rubbed his arms. “Well, it’s just a gag, friend.”

The atmosphere was carnival, Terrell realized, glancing around the smoky room. He noted the wise little grins, the rib-nudgings, the expressions of relief and excitement. There would be no more talk of waste and corruption. No more threats of exposure. The reform candidate was in jail for attacking and murdering a girl. Well, it figured; what could you expect from these holy joes, these virtuous bastards? It was a good joke. Hypocrisy had been exposed; that was always funny.

Terrell saw Sarnac come in a few minutes later, moving like a man in a waking nightmare; his face was dazed, his eyes were red with tears. Terrell joined him, and Sarnac said desperately, “I can’t think straight. Do you believe he did this? I... I can’t think at all.”

“Let’s go outside.”

“But do you believe it?”

“Let’s get some air. We can talk then.”

The night was cold, and wind buffeted the windows of dark, silent buildings. Terrell took Sarnac’s arm and led him down the block, away from the noisy crowd gathered around the brightly-lit entrance of the station. He felt illogically angered by Sarnac’s impotence; what good were tears? This was a time for guts. No wonder reformers usually looked silly, he thought. Pious fools. Expecting the flock to turn over new leaves and join them in song. The flock understood nothing but a knee in the groin.

“Everything we’ve worked for is smashed,” Sarnac said. “You’ve talked to Caldwell? What did he say?”

“Just to keep his wife away from him.”

“Great. Anything else?”

“No — he doesn’t seem to know what’s happening.”

“He’ll find out,” Terrell said. “I’ve talked to the lab men. Skin from Caldwell’s face has been found under the girl’s nails. Caldwell had been drinking. The girl is dead. That’s the DA’s case.”

“Something must have snapped. It could happen to anyone, particularly to someone with his spirit and energy — but I can’t believe it. I won’t believe it.”

“That’s better,” Terrell said. “Keep talking that way.”

A hope began to burn in Sarnac’s eyes. “Do you know anything that will help him?”

Terrell hesitated a second or so. Then he said, “The whole story may help. And I’m after the whole story. Now let’s go back and watch poor blind-folded justice at work. Hampered only slightly by the gun in her back.”

Richard Caldwell was held for the Grand Jury without bail by a magistrate named Seaworth, who listened to Patrolman Coglan’s testimony without taking his eyes from the prisoner’s face. The magistrate was conscious of his moment in history, Terrell realized; he suffered the press photographers gladly, raising his head slightly to firm up his double chin, and freezing thoughtfully to indicate that he understood the solemnity of his decision. Actually he had no alternative; the bare facts made it mandatory for him to hold Caldwell for the Grand Jury.

The little patrolman, Coglan, stared at the floor as he gave his testimony, and the bright lights above the bar of justice gleamed on the bald spot at the back of his gray head. Everyone strained forward to listen. Coglan told of hearing a scream and going directly into Caldwell’s home. The front door was ajar and he found Caldwell in a dazed condition with the dead girl lying on the floor. He did not mention seeing anyone else in or near the house.

It went faster then. The police surgeon testified that Caldwell had been drinking. A lab technician gave the findings of his section. Caldwell made no statement and his attorney waived cross-examination.

Magistrate Seaworth banged his gavel for silence and gave his verdict.

And that was the end of act one, Terrell thought, as he watched Caldwell being led by police toward the cell block. There was no expression on Caldwell’s face; he stared straight ahead, seemingly oblivious to the murmuring crowd, but his eyes were like those of a man on a rack.

Someone shouted, “Get out of my way!” in a high, raging voice and began to fight through the crowd toward Caldwell. Magistrate Seaworth banged his gavel as a man shoved forward and swung a looping blow at Caldwell’s face. The blow landed, cutting Caldwell’s lip and then a patrolman caught the man from behind and locked his arms to his sides.

Terrell recognized him as flash bulbs began exploding on all sides of the room. Frankie Chance. Eden Myles’ friend.

Chance was tall and slim with wavy black hair and deep, brown eyes that were soft as a child’s. He was handsome enough, but there was a sulky pampered look about his mouth, as if he expected lavish payment for his smiles and good humor. He was a fiery hothead, Terrell knew, an emotional savage. And now there was nothing calculating or devious in his frenzy; he was struggling like a maniac against the big cop who was holding him and lashing futilely at Caldwell with his sharply pointed shoes.

“You killed her!” he screamed, and his soft, petulant mouth twisted as if he were under torture. “Because she wouldn’t let you touch her, because you’re not even half a man.”

Magistrate Seaworth raised his gavel, but Captain Stanko caught his eye, and Seaworth cleared his throat and put the gavel gently down on the bench. Public relations, Terrell thought, as the flash bulbs continued to pop. Don’t cut yet! It’s good copy.

“You killed her,” Chance was screaming. “You wanted her, you wanted to get your hands on her, to hurt her, to kill her — that’s all you want from a woman. That’s how you get your kicks.” Chance was crying now, the tears flowing from his deep brown eyes and glistening on his smooth, youthful cheeks. “Well, you’ll get your kicks when they strap you in the charr...”

“Take that man out of here!” Seaworth shouted, bringing the gavel down with a crash. “This is a courtroom, not a—” He sputtered as he groped for words. “Not a place for demonstration. Take him out, officer...”

Terrell eased himself through the crowd and reached the public phone in the hallway. He called Wheeler and gave him a few paragraphs of atmosphere, including Frankie Chance’s attack on Caldwell. When he finished Wheeler said, “That’s very juicy. Now here’s a message for you. Karsh wants you to come in. There’s been some confusion about that prowler Paddy Coglan did or did not see. The Superintendent called Karsh about it, and so did Stanko — they both said you’d gone off half-cocked. Also there’ve been certain implications that Coglan might have been a bit loaded tonight. Williams says he has a reputation as a rummy.”

“So what happened?” Terrell said.

“Karsh killed the prowler angle just before we locked up,” Wheeler said. “He wants to talk to you.”

Terrell sighed and rubbed his forehead. “Well, there goes Caldwell’s loophole,” he said. “They’ve turned it into a noose.” The disgust he felt was evident in his voice. “Tell Karsh I’m on my way,” he said, and dropped the phone back into its hook.