Shield for Murder

5

Mark Brewster woke the next morning about eleven. Sun slanted through the Venetian blinds of his apartment and broke on the green rugs and flat gray walls. He drifted for a moment in a hiatus between sleep and consciousness, aware only of a disquieting sense of oppression.

Then he remembered. A cop named Nolan had shot and killed a gambler named Dave Fiest. Mark swung his legs off the studio couch and picked up a cigarette from a box on the coffee table. Why should that bother him? Why did he care what Nolan did?

Standing, he scratched his head and realized he couldn’t answer those questions. He was depressed, and that was that. He walked barefooted into his tiny kitchenette, put the coffee on and opened a can of orange juice; then he slipped into slacks and a sports shirt and went down to the corner for the papers. Murchison had said he would try to do a run-down on Nolan’s line-of-duty killings; but it turned out that he hadn’t.

The story was on page three, with a one-column cut of Nolan, and had nothing in it but the bare facts. “An escaping prisoner was shot fatally early this morning by Detective Bernard Nolan of the Thirteenth Division...”

Mark read the story and walked back to his apartment. He drank his coffee and orange juice and thought about Nolan and the girl who’d been with him last night. He hadn’t noticed her particularly, but his impression had been that she wasn’t Nolan’s sort. What would be Nolan’s sort, he wondered. What was Nolan? That seemed to be the important question in Mark’s mind. He was curious about Nolan, but he didn’t know why. There was a terrible fascination in any man who could coolly and deliberately shoot another person in the back, he decided, finishing his second cup of coffee. He gave up Nolan and shaved and showered with the idea of getting down to work. But, once at his desk, he found his thoughts straying back to the detective. Frowning, he dug a wedge of typewritten manuscript from the drawer and began rereading the last few pages he’d done. It was all going to add up to a novel, one of those days, he hoped. Mark knew only too well that it was traditional for newspapermen to have a novel or a play tucked away in a trunk somewhere and serving as a rather wobbly prop to their conviction that they could clear out of the news racket any time they wanted to and become serious writers.

He hoped he’d be different; he hoped to finish the book.

However, it seemed pretty flat this morning. Even the captain, the character he liked best, failed to hold his interest. He made an effort to get started by slipping a clean sheet of bond paper into his typewriter; but after staring at its discouragingly blank expanse for several minutes, he lit a fresh cigarette and walked out to get another cup of coffee.

That didn’t help much and he finally realized that he wasn’t going to get any work done until he settled some of the questions about Nolan that were picking at his mind. Once he came to that conclusion he immediately felt better. There was that much of the born reporter in him that he couldn’t ignore a potential story — even though the only curiosity to be satisfied was his own.

He dressed quickly and walked outside to his car. It was a bright sunny day, and the air was cool and fresh. A fine day for a ball game, he thought.

Mark drove over to the East River Drive and headed out to Germantown, simply because he had to start digging into Nolan at some point. And his old division was probably as good a place to start as any other.

The Forty-first District was located in the middle of a pleasant residential street and was sparkling with fresh paint. Window boxes of flowers jutted out from the first floor windows. Downtown a cop lived and worked in another world, but here, there was very little activity besides school-crossing duty, dog-bite cases, and in general, the sort of constabulary functions that would be required in a peaceful village.

Mark went upstairs to the clean spacious Detective Headquarters where half a dozen men were sitting about talking and reading the papers. He’d met most of them around the city on various jobs, and they gave him a general welcome.

“Come in and sit down,” Sergeant Ellerton said, beaming at him from behind horn-rimmed spectacles. “Long time no see, Mark. What brings you out this way?”

Mark sat on the edge of a desk and lit a cigarette. “I had to see a dentist on Greene Street, so I thought I’d stop in and say hello. How’re things?”

“So-so, just so-so,” Sergeant Ellerton said. “You look thinner, boy. They must be working you downtown.”

“It’s not too bad.” Mark glanced at the detectives, who were watching him with good-humored interest. “We had a little excitement last night, though.”

“Yeah, we were reading about that,” Sergeant Ellerton said. “What was the story?”

“Fiest made a break and Nolan tried to bring him down, and the shot went a little high. That’s all there was to it,” Mark said.

“You know, I always said Nolan had too hot a temper,” a detective named Grunhov said.

“He don’t take nothing from anybody,” another said.

The other men began discussing Nolan and the shooting, repeating in essence what had already been said but making their points as if they were pioneer contributions to the conversation. Mark smoked his cigarette and listened with what appeared to be casual interest.

The detectives at the Forty-first were chiefly middle-aged men on the downgrade. They had been passed over many times for jobs that required better-than-average alertness and ability. Some, of course, had been shanghaied here by politicians or superiors who were afraid of them; and men to whom that happened usually went down hill very rapidly. However, an occasional detective in that spot would go on stubbornly doing his best work and hoping against slim hope to get back to where there was something to do besides listen to a housewife’s complaints about the theft of a shirt from her clothesline.

Jerry Spiegel was that sort. He was a thickly built man of about forty with coarse black hair and strangely gentle eyes. He had made the mistake of knocking off too many protected handbooks in the downtown area, and had been sent to Germantown to reflect on his sins. Now he was seated in a tilted chair, listening to the talk about Nolan with a faint smile on his lips.

Finally he stood up and said in a flat voice, “Nolan’s a bum. I worked with him here and in the Northeast, and I never saw him do anything that took any brains. Sure he’s fine at gunning some colored kids or a gambler, like he did last night, but he never made a smart pinch in his life.”

Spiegel spat expressively. “I got no use for a cop that can’t use anything but a gun. Hell, if that’s police work, we should bring in the National Guard and have ’em machine-gun the hell out of anything they see moving after ten o’clock at night.”

“That Guard would do it, too,” a white-haired man named Senesky said, ruminatively, convinced obviously that this was Spiegel’s chief point.

“There isn’t another cop in Philly would have shot Dave Fiest last night,” Spiegel said, with a disgusted glance at Senesky.

“Hell, you weren’t there,” Sergeant Ellerton said. “You don’t know, Spiegel.”

“You can say what you want but the guy’s got guts,” Grunhov said. He was a middle-aged man with washed-out, blue eyes, and a habit of wetting his lips between sentences. “Remember that time in forty-two when he got those guys who stuck up that Super Market at Tenth and Spring Garden? You remember, don’t you, Sarge?” he said, turning to Ellerton. “It was raining like the devil, and Nolan and me and old Jerry Thomphson were coming down Spring Garden when we got the call. Nolan was driving and we took off like a big fat goose, and don’t ever think that guy can’t wheel a car. We got to the Market in time to see the thieves running down the street and waving guns like they was in a cowboy picture. They ducked into that warehouse at the corner of Tenth and Greene and started potting at us from the second floor. We were in a mess then, because we couldn’t get across the street without getting our heads blown off. So we stayed out of sight in a doorway, wondering what the hell to do. About then one of them guys leans out of the window and yells, ‘Come and get us, you bastards!’ ”

Grunhov wet his lips, obviously excited by his reconstruction of the scene.

“Well, Nolan let out a shout like a wild man,” he continued, grinning around at his audience. “He tore across the street paying about as much attention to the bullets as he did to the rain drops. Thomphson and I took out after him, but he beat us up the stairs, and when we got there he’d already shot and killed one of them punks, and was beating the devil out of the other with his fists. He was like a madman. If we hadn’t pulled him off that fellow, he’d have killed him, too.” Grunhov shook his head emphatically. “Yes sir, he’s got guts. If I had a real tough job, he’d be the boy I’d want alongside me.”

Spiegel sat on the edge of a desk, his arms folded, and his eyes were tired and thoughtful. “Yes, I suppose he’s got guts all right,” he said, in a bitter voice. “He came from a neighborhood where guts were essential to staying alive. I should know, I guess. I grew up two blocks from where he lived. But Nolan never learned anything else, don’t you see?” He stared about the room, his face anxious and troubled. “You can’t go along slamming hell out of everything in your way just because you had a rough time as a kid. You got to help people out a little bit. Don’t you see that? How the hell else will things ever get any better?”

Several men looked away uncomfortably. They weren’t disturbed by what Spiegel was saying, Mark judged; but they were embarrassed by the nakedness of his feelings.

“Well, that’s just the way he is,” Ellerton said, with a portentous shake of his head. “People don’t change, you know.”

“Did you ever hear how he came to be made a detective?” Spiegel asked the room in general. His mood had changed, and he spat out the words derisively.

There was a negative murmur.

“Well, it’s a hot one. Nolan’s working the last-out shift, twelve-to-eight, and about seven-thirty he’s drifting along toward the District so he can get out fast when the eight-to-four shift reports. Well, at Allegheny and Thirteenth, I think it was, a car rips through a red light and comes to a stop on the sidewalk. The driver is drunker than hell, but Nolan knows if he makes a pinch he’ll be tied up all morning making out reports, and the next morning at the hearing. So Nolan gives the guy a brush, and sends him on his way.”

“Hell, that’s no way to make detective,” Senesky said.

“Well, wait a minute. The drunk got a look at Nolan’s shield and remembered the number. And you know who he was? Well, he was Tim O’Neill, brother of old Mike O’Neill, the ward leader. Mike hears about the thing from his brother, and so he calls Nolan in and tells him he’s a fine police officer, a credit to the force, a man who can temper justice with mercy and common sense with the letter of the law. You know how old Mike could spin it out. Well, the pay-off is that Mike put the word in and about eight months later Nolan is made detective.”

“Well, that doesn’t prove much,” Sergeant Ellerton said, after a slight pause. “Everybody needs a little boost now and then.”

“It proves he couldn’t make detective except by turning his back on a job that any cop should be glad to do,” Spiegel said sharply. “I wouldn’t let my own mother off a drunken-driving rap.”

Mark lit another cigarette, realizing that he wasn’t learning anything very important. It was obvious Nolan hadn’t been liked out here; but it was equally obvious that he had been grudgingly respected by everyone but Spiegel.

“Well, I’ve got to be running along,” he said, standing.

“Don’t be such a stranger,” Sergeant Ellerton said.

“Yeah, stop in and see us,” someone added.

Mark waved to them and walked downstairs slowly. He stopped on the steps of the station house and flipped his cigarette away; and then the door behind him opened and Spiegel came out.

“Can I drop you somewhere?” Mark said, but then he saw that Spiegel wasn’t wearing a hat.

“No. Look, Mark, you sure this is just a friendly visit?”

“Why, sure.”

“You aren’t working on anything?”

“Well, theoretically I’m always working,” Mark said, and smiled. “Why?”

“Let’s walk over to your car.”

They went down the steps together and strolled along the sidewalk in the warm sunshine. “I don’t like Nolan,” Spiegel said. “I was working with him the night he killed those two colored boys. We came in from different ends of the alley, see, and I got to ’em first. They were scared silly. I calmed ’em down and then along comes that Nolan with his gun out and swearing like a wild man. The kids were edgy anyway and they bolted. Nolan dropped ’em both with shots in the back. It stank, Mark.”

“Well, so you don’t like him. What about it?”

They had reached Mark’s car and were facing each other. Spiegel brought out a cigarette and took his time lighting it. “Dave Fiest got stuck with a bet of Mike Espizito’s, I’m told. You’d hear this pretty soon, anyway, so it doesn’t matter that I’m telling you. The talk goes that he had the pay-off money with him when Nolan shot him. Mike is awfully hot about it. The pay-off was twenty-five thousand, I’m told.”

“A nice round sum,” Mark said. His thoughts went on to the inescapable conclusion. Nolan now must have Espizito’s money; and that put some sense into Dave Fiest’s murder.

“It may be just talk, of course,” Spiegel said.

“Yeah, probably nothing to it,” Mark said, and Spiegel suddenly grinned and punched him lightly in the stomach. “See you, kid,” he said, and walked back to the station house.

Mark drove slowly to a nearby drug store and ordered a cup of coffee at the counter. He sat there a few minutes, thinking of what Spiegel had told him, and realizing with some concern that he was committed to finding out all he could about Nolan. He didn’t quite know why, but he did know that probing into the activities of a man like Barny Nolan was neither very smart nor very safe. For, if the talk was right, Nolan was a murderer and a thief; and digging into him could only lead to trouble.

When he finished his coffee he smoked a cigarette and thought about a few other leads. Finally he went to the phone and called the Simba. He got Jim Evans, who had happened to come in early, and from him got the singer’s address and phone number. He told Jim he wanted to do a story on her for the paper.

He pushed his hat back on his forehead and hesitated a few moments. This was going to be a final step, he knew. Then he shrugged and began dialing her number.

“Yes?” Her voice was clear and fresh.

“Is this Linda Wade?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“My name is Brewster, Mark Brewster, Miss Wade. I’m with the Call-Bulletin.” He mentioned doing a feature on her, and said, “May I see you some time this afternoon, perhaps?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, but I’ll be busy. How about a little later. About six?”

“That would be fine. Where shall I meet you?”

“Well, you could stop by here if that’s convenient.”

“Fine. I’ll see you at six. And thanks very much.”

He replaced the receiver slowly. Linda Wade. A nice name. And her voice was nice, too. Warm and pleasant. He wondered somewhat irritably how she had got mixed up with Nolan. And what the nature and extent of their relationship was.

Well, those were things he had to find out.

He lit another cigarette and realized he had been chain-smoking all morning.