Shield for Murder

4

They drove for a few blocks in silence. Then Nolan said, “Linda, I’m sorry. I acted like a fool.”

“Don’t worry about it, Barny. It’s late, and we’re probably both tired.”

He sought for words to tell her how much she meant to him, how much he wanted to please her; but as always he found none.

“How about something to eat? Or a drink?” he said.

“Not tonight, Barny, thanks. I’m really tired.”

“Well, how about a drive. We’ll go out along the river a way. Okay?”

She knew he was unhappy, and so she smiled at him and said, “All right, Barny. That sounds pleasant. But don’t be annoyed if I fall asleep.”

“Don’t worry about that. Go to sleep if you want to.”

Nolan drove out the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, past the Art Museum, and turned onto the West River Drive where it flowed along the darkly shining Schuylkill River. There was very little traffic. They had the trees and the river and the darkness to themselves. Linda fit a cigarette and hummed softly under her breath. Finally she said, “Who was that fellow at the Simba?”

“Mark Brewster, a reporter. He’s a nosy punk.”

“Mark Brewster? That name seems familiar. I wonder if I’ve met him somewhere.”

Nolan glanced at her quickly, then turned back to the road. “Well, did you?”

“No, I hardly think so. Anyway, what did he want with you?”

“Something about a case of mine.” He stared ahead, his eyes fixed on the flashing white fine in the middle of the drive. “I had to shoot a man tonight. A guy named Dave Fiest. Brewster’s acting like it’s the biggest story he’s ever had.”

“Did... did you kill the man, Barny?”

“Yes, I had to.” He cursed himself for bringing up the subject. “I arrested him, see, and he made a break. I fired at his legs, but the shot went a little too high.”

“It’s horrible,” she said. She rolled down the window and threw her cigarette out; and the cool night wind rushing in made her shiver. After a moment, she said: “Was he married, do you know?”

“Who?”

“The man you had to kill.”

“Fiest? I don’t think so.”

“Did he have any family?”

“I don’t know.”

“How old was he?”

“About forty.” He glanced at her oddly. “You ought to team up with Brewster, kid.”

“I know it’s none of my business, Barny,” she said, quietly.

“Now don’t be like that. I didn’t mean that it’s none of your business.”

They were silent for a mile or two, and Nolan was overcome with confusion and anger. He had wanted to talk to her tonight, to tell her how he felt about her, but instead he’d got involved with the story of Dave Fiest. Finally he could stand her silence no longer, and he said, almost harshly: “Why do you like me, Linda?”

The question obviously startled her. “How do you know I do?” she said, an undercurrent of laughter in her voice.

“Don’t kid about it,” he said. “You must like me or you wouldn’t see me.”

She glanced at him and saw the strong sullen lines of his face in the light from the dashboard. “We’ve been friends, Barny,” she said, choosing words carefully. “There’s no reason why we shouldn’t, is there?”

“There’s fifty reasons. I’m too old for you, you said that yourself tonight.” This wasn’t what he’d planned, he realized, with a feeling close to panic. But he couldn’t stop himself. “You’re educated, you come from a good family, you’re making big money, and I’m a cop, a meat-ball cop from South Philly. There’s a couple of reasons, I guess.”

They were both silent again; and then she patted his hand and said with an attempt at lightness: “Don’t worry about it, Barny. We’ve been friends so far, in spite of all those silly reasons.” She glanced at his brutally strong profile, moody and bitter now, and realized that for all his toughness he could be as easily hurt as a child.

The touch of her fingers on his hand made Nolan feel better. “I’ve been acting like a damnfool tonight,” he said, with a slow smile. “Forget it all, will you?”

“Of course.”

“You know, Linda, things are getting a little better for me financially, and I thought—” He stopped, fumbling around for words. He wanted to tell her he had money, that he could take her anywhere, buy her anything she wanted; but his cop-bred instincts told him nothing could be more foolish.

Linda was looking at him with interest. “Don’t tell me a long-lost uncle has died and left you his fortune.”

“No, nothing like that,” he said. “But things have kind of eased up for me! Maybe we could drive over to the shore Sunday for dinner. Have you been over there since you came East?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Well, it’s great. The hotels on the Boardwalk are better than anything in New York. I’d like to take you over there some time. You see—” He stopped, suddenly infuriated at his awkwardness. Everything he said led him to a maddening dead-end.

She must like him though, he thought with a swift change of mood.

And that was enough for now. When he put the money to work, slowly, carefully, over the next few months, she’d like him even more. What had she said? We’ve been friends so far, haven’t we? That meant a lot from Linda, as much as going to bed with a man might mean from another sort of girl.

“What are you smiling about?” Linda said, in an amused voice. “One minute you’re frowning like thunder, and now you’re grinning like a boy with a new red wagon.”

Nolan glanced at her and laughed. “I’m just feeling good, that’s all.” He realized that he would eventually need an explanation for his new affluence, and it was easy to devise one that would also account for his high spirits. “I’m through paying alimony,” he said. “My ex-wife is getting married again, so I bow out as Uncle Sucker. That’s good news, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I suppose so,” Linda said. Then: “What sort of woman was she, Barny?”

“My wife? She was a—” He checked the word on his lips. “She was a bum,” he said.

“How did you happen to marry her?”

He shrugged. “Who knows?” he said, honestly bewildered. A scowl came to his face as he watched the shining road racing beneath the car. He had met his wife a few months after he was appointed to the Police Department, while he was working at the old Fourteenth at Twentieth and Wolf. She was a waitress at a neighborhood diner, a buxom chattery blonde, who knew all the patrolmen at the station, and, as Barny learned eventually, knew a number of them in the Biblical sense of the word.

They had remained together four years, and then she had gone off to California with their car and three hundred and seventy dollars from a joint savings account. Nolan heard from her later through a lawyer; and eventually she had divorced him and he was ordered to pay her fifteen dollars a week alimony. Nolan knew that she was living with a musician of sorts on the coast, but he actually wasn’t interested enough to do anything about it. He paid the fifteen dollars a week, and felt happy to be rid of her.

“I don’t know why I married her,” he said to Linda. “I was twenty-three and healthy and had a job. I guess I figured I should get married.”

“You’re thirty-nine now, aren’t you?”

“That’s right. A real old man.” He smiled at her tentatively.

“That’s an interesting age. Look at Pinza.”

“Pinza?”

“He’s a very great singer, and he’s at least in his middle fifties. My father took me to hear him in Chicago years ago. He sang Mephistopheles, the devil, you know, and darned near scared me out of my seat.” Linda sat up straighter and glanced at her watch. “I think we’d better start back now, Barny. I’m really very tired.”

“Okay, kid, anything you say.” He slowed the car and began watching for a place to turn around...

Half an hour later he stopped before her apartment house on Walnut Street. She was curled up beside him sound asleep, her head resting against his arm. He looked at her a moment, studying the fineness of her skin and the faint blue shadows under her eyes; and then he put a hand on her shoulder and shook her gently.

“We’re home,” he said. His voice was husky; and he cleared his throat and said, “Wake up, kid. End of the line.”

She woke, drowsy and apologetic. “I’m not very good company, I’m afraid. Thanks so much, Barny.”

“I’ll drop by tomorrow night, okay? At the Simba?” He had never been in her apartment. She had never asked him in, and it hadn’t occurred to him to suggest it.

“All right, Barny. Don’t bother getting out, please.”

She slipped out of the car, waved to him and ran lightly up the steps to her doorway. Barny waited until she turned and waved to him again, and then let out the clutch and drove off down the street.

Linda stood with her hand on the doorknob and watched the red taillight of his car disappear in the night. She sighed then, and wondered as she had so many times recently, why she was allowing this essentially false situation to continue. And then she thought: Was it really a false situation? There was something about Barny Nolan that appealed to her strongly. He was a rough-neck, of course, and sullen at times, and uncultivated, and crude. Yes, that was all true, she thought, but there was a sense of power and strength in him that was fascinating. Also, he needed her desperately and that was flattering. He didn’t need her in a conventional physical way, obviously, but he desperately needed her company, her friendship, and most of all, her approval.

Linda sighed again, annoyed with herself. She was usually forthright and honest in her relationships and this present indecision struck her as unwise and foolish.

She entered the foyer of her building and walked down the short corridor to her apartment, her high heels tapping irritably on the hardwood floor...

Nolan drove back to West Philadelphia slowly, enjoying his fresh cigar and the empty silent streets. It was about five, and light would be breaking in another hour. He wasn’t due in at the Division until four in the afternoon, unless Ramussen wanted to see him earlier about his report. But that wasn’t likely. Dave Fiest’s death would be wrapped up in official records and forgotten by tomorrow, he thought with satisfaction.

Suddenly, acting on an impulse he didn’t understand, he pulled his car to the curb and cut the motor. He sat for a moment in the dark silence, frowning at the red tip of his cigar where it glowed between his fingers on the steering wheel. Glancing out he saw that he had stopped opposite the black sprawling mass of a high school where he had spent a semester in his sophomore year. He rubbed his forehead slowly and wondered if it were simply a coincidence that he had parked here.

His thoughts were back-tracking on him again. Everything inside him was stirred up tonight.

There had been a chemistry teacher at this school named Simon. Nolan couldn’t remember his first name. Simon was one of Nolan’s few heroes because he taught a subject that was almost as fascinating as Motor Shop.

There had been a girl in that chemistry class, a slender little girl with brown hair, who wore soft wool sweaters, tweed skirts, and even a thin string of pearls about her throat. She came from a family with money, obviously, because she lived in Haddington, and just as obviously she was a high-class sort of girl. She represented a type Nolan had never known at all, but one which he instinctively resented; and it had amused him, for reasons he didn’t understand, to ridicule and embarrass her in any way he could. That hadn’t been hard because she was naturally shy and timid. However, the ambivalence of his relationship to her was such that while resenting her and hating her he also wanted her to be his girl. One day when there was a dance scheduled in the gymnasium Nolan bought a gardenia with thirty cents he had made setting pins in his neighborhood bowling alley. He hated setting pins because most of the regular pin boys were colored, and Nolan’s father had always warned him against working with colored people. It gave them ideas, his father said, with mysterious emphasis on the word ideas.

Nolan hid the gardenia in his locker and then, casually and scornfully, had asked the girl from Haddington to go to the dance with him. She had refused and Nolan, in a sudden frightening rage, grabbed her shoulders and shook her until the books she was carrying tumbled to the floor. Then he strode off, confused and scared. She complained about him to Mr. Simon, the one person he was afraid of displeasing, and Simon had told him to wait after class.

Nolan remembered the scene vividly. He could recall the intermingled smell of dust and chalk, the acid stink of the chemicals they had been working with, and Simon’s white face and the pinched look about his nose.

“Nolan, you’re a dirty lout who should be horsewhipped,” he had said in a cold intense voice. “You don’t belong in a school like this. You belong in South Philly with the Ginzos.”

Nolan had begun to explain about being transferred here after his father died. He hadn’t got far.

“Shut up! I warn you, Nolan, if you pull another stunt like this, I’ll have you thrown out of school the same day, but first I’ll break a ruler over your head. Do you understand that?”

“Sure, sure,” Nolan said quickly. He was still scared and confused. The hot uncontrollable anger he had felt toward the girl had frightened him by its intensity. What had made him behave like such a fool?

“Now I’ve got a job that’s just suited for you,” Simon said.

He had made him clean up the classroom that afternoon, although there was a regular janitor to do the work. Nolan had worked three hours, doing nothing but digging the puttylike accumulation of dirt and grease from between the grooves of the floor with a penknife.

He hadn’t minded the work, or Simon’s loud-mouthed yapping; but what hurt was being treated like a criminal because he’d presumed to date a little bitch from the fancy section of Haddington.

That had been his last year in school anyway. When he cleaned out his locker at the end of the term he found the gardenia, brown and withered, on the top shelf. That had made him feel very sad.

Nolan threw his cigar out the window and grinned at the dark school buildings, tinted now with the first light of dawn. Kids took things hard, of course. Thinking back now, he couldn’t even remember that girl’s name. Odd, he’d never been able to remember it; within a week after he’d left the chemistry class it was gone from his mind forever.

He put the car in gear and drove slowly down the street, thinking of Linda and the bulge of money in his left trouser pocket. He laughed and thought: I’d like to meet that fancy-pants little bitch from Haddington now and tell her about Linda and Dave Fiest’s money. There were a lot of people he’d like to tell about those two things, he thought, smiling now, confident and good-humored.