The Big Heat

Chapter 8

The woman was middle-aged, with graying hair, wide, cautious eves, and skin the color of milk chocolate. Bannion stood on the stone stoop of her house, the collar of his trench coat turned up about his throat against the rain.

“I’d like to talk to your son, Ashton,” he said for the second time.

“He ain’t home, he don’t get home till seven most nights. What you want with him? He in trouble?”

“No, he’s not in trouble. I just want to talk to him.”

“You a policeman, ain’t you?”

“No, I’m not.”

The woman hesitated, looking up and down the dark rainy street anxiously, holding a sweater close about her neck with one strong hand. She glanced at Bannion. the caution and fear that was as much a part of her as her skin showing in her wide, brown eyes. “No use you drowning out there. Come on inside and wait for him.”

“Thanks.”

The house, an ace-deuce-trey type on Pine Street, with three rooms stacked one on top of the other, was shabbily furnished but clean. Bannion stood in the living room and the woman excused herself and went downstairs to the kitchen. There was a warm, pleasant smell of stewing meat and rice in the house. He didn’t have long to wait. The front door opened, letting in a gust of damp, cold air, and a man who wore overalls and a leather jacket. This was Ashton Williams, the young Negro, Burke had had in two weeks before as a murder suspect.

He stopped and stared at Bannion, and then looked around quickly, confused, like a man coming into the wrong house by mistake. His big-knuckled hands played with the seams of his pants. “What you want?” he said in a low voice.

“I want you to do me a favor,” Bannion said.

Ashton scratched his head. “What you want?”

“My wife was killed last week. Maybe you read about it. Somebody put a bomb in my car, but she got it instead of me. I’m after the men who did it.”

Ashton shifted his weight uneasily. “Why you come to me?”

“You’ve worked around garages as a body-and-fender-man. You know that car bombs aren’t on sale in the five-and-ten. They’ve got to be put together, to order, with a detonator to attach to the ignition and a stick of dynamite. Honest mechanics don’t make them. But someone did, someone who wasn’t an honest mechanic. That’s the man I’m looking for, Ashton.”

“You come with trouble,” Ashton said. “Squealing to the cops in trouble.”

“I’m not a cop anymore,” Bannion said. “I quit. You can tell me to go to hell if you like.”

“Well, I’d sure like to,” Ashton said, with an uneasy smile.

Bannion stared at him. “Is that your answer?”

“You treated me decent,” Ashton said. “I don’t know why, but you did. What you want me to do?”

“Do you know any mechanics in town who have police records?”

Ashton frowned and rubbed the side of his face. “Right off, I can’t say. I heard once there’s a fellow in Germantown who did eight years in Holmesburg, but I don’t rightly know if that’s true.” He continued to rub his face. “There’s a boy now, works in West Philadelphia, in a place on Woodland Avenue. I know him my own self, and he said, he was ‘rammy’ once. That’s prison talk, ain’t it?”

Bannion nodded. “Means the D. T.’s. Tell you what, Ashton: Think it over tonight, try to remember anyone you’ve ever met who talked or acted as if he might have done time, and I’ll check with you tomorrow. Is that okay?”

“Yeah, that’s okay,” Ashton said. “I’ll do some askin’, too.”

“Well, be careful about that,” Bannion said.

“Sure, I’ll be careful.” He came with Bannion to the door. “I hope you catch that man who put the bomb in your car.”

“Thanks,” Bannion said. He shook hands with Ashton and walked down the wet block to Fifteenth Street where he could catch a trolley to his hotel. It was too late now to go out to Al and Marg’s; Brigid would be in bed. He didn’t really want to see her; she’d ask about Mommy and he’d lie to her, knowing it was stupid, but lacking the guts to tell her Mommy wasn’t ever coming back, ever.

There was an envelope from Burke waiting for him at the hotel desk, and it contained a list of eight names and addresses, mechanics with police records, now working around town. The man heading the list worked in a garage in the Northeast on Ruan Street. His name was Mike Greslac...

It took Bannion five days to run down the list, and he didn’t get a lead. Six of the men had air-tight alibis, the kind they couldn’t have bought or arranged. The seventh man was an alcoholic who couldn’t remember where he’d been the night Kate was murdered, but Bannion didn’t think it was likely that anyone would have hired him for a tricky, shady job. The man drank, and drunks talked. The last of the lot, a youngster with a pleasant wife, told him to go to hell. Bannion had expected more of that; working without a badge was tough. However, the youngster seemed straight, and Bannion put a question mark after his name. If nothing else turned up he’d see him again; and then he’d slap the truth out of him if necessary.

Burke gave him three more names, and in a note said that these completed the run-down on mechanics with records. Ashton turned in four names to him but two of them had been on Burke’s first list. Bannion checked the new names he’d got from Burke with no success. He was back where he’d started. In a week he’d been in almost every garage in the city, had talked to every mechanic with police trouble in his past, and had learned nothing. He wasn’t discouraged. The break would come. Something was always left lying around loose. You had to keep looking, keep checking, to find it. It took time, and he had time.

He decided to start working on the other end of the job, Mrs. Deer)’.

The weather had been cold and wet. Bannion’s clothes needed attention so he sent three of his suits out to be cleaned and pressed, and gave the bellboy his laundry. He spent a couple of evenings at Al and Marg’s, playing with Brigid before she went to bed. They had two kids a few years older than Brigid and she was excited and happy about staying with them. But she woke at night crying for her mother and had to be rocked back to sleep, Marg said.

She said they’d keep Brigid until Bannion decided what he wanted to do, regardless of how long that took, and Al, her husband, an earnest balding man who worked as an inspector for the Gas Company, was prepared to lend him a thousand dollars if he needed it. They were excellent people, Bannion realized, but he couldn’t saddle them indefinitely with his troubles. He would have to make plans for Brigid — only after he had settled this job.

Inspector Cranston had sent him the gun-permit as he had promised he would, and Burke had insisted he use his car. Bannion didn’t hesitate; he took the car immediately, instinctively, as he would take anything now that might help him find Kate’s murderers.

He was ready to leave for Mrs. Deery’s one morning when the phone in his room rang. It was Ashton.

“I heard about another fellow, Mr. Bannion,” Ashton said. “Fellow name of Slim. That’s all the name he got, I guess. He work out around the graveyard for the last couple months, but he’s gone now.”

“He had a record?”

“Yeah, he blew up some safes, I been told.”

“Thanks, Ashton. I’ll try to find him.”

“I hope he’s the one you want, Mr. Bannion.”

“I do, too. Thanks again, Ashton.”

The “graveyard” was a mile-long stretch of automobile junkyards in West Philadelphia that crawled like a rusty ugly growth along the border of the city. Dozens of offices, most of them unpainted shacks, dotted the area. The dealers here bought wrecks, cut them apart and re-sold the parts to small garages, and to individuals who repaired their own cars. Every yard had small mountains of bodies, democratic heaps of smashed-up Cadillacs, and broken rusty Fords, and rows of tires curling like thick gray snakes around the orderly stacks of fenders and wheels. There were bins of headlights, pistons, sparkplugs, and rows of drive shafts, rear ends, and brake drums, all price-marked and ready to be hauled off. ‘

Bannion drove out to the graveyard in the morning, and spent the day tramping over the frozen, cinder-covered ground, and asking about a mechanic named Slim. He talked to laborers cutting up wrecks with torches, and to yard owners, who were usually in their shacks beside a coal stove, but none of them had any specific information. Some of them had heard about a man named Slim. “Maybe at some other yard,” they said.

It was at practically the last yard that he got a lead. The shack had a sign above it, reading, “Smitty’s. Best Prices!”, and inside was a young man poring over a list of pencilled figures. He was big and solidly built, a blond with thick hair, a square, unshaved face, and very light, sharp eyes.

“Yeah, I knew a guy named Slim,” he said, glancing up at Bannion. “What about him?”

“Do you know where I might get in touch with him?”

“You a cop?”

“No.”

“Private cop? Insurance investigator?”

“No, just a citizen,” Bannion said. “But I want to find this fellow Slim.”

“Well, I got no reason to cover for him, but I ain’t got time to answer a lot of questions,” the blond said. “Don’t get me wrong. You a cop, or something like that, it’s one thing. But just private business I got no time for, understand.”

“I’ll try to make it short,” Bannion said.

“I told you how I stand,” the man said, getting up and facing Bannion. “I’m no information clerk, or something.”

Bannion didn’t want trouble; he couldn’t afford it. But he wanted answers. “You don’t seem very friendly,” he said, putting his hands casually into his pockets. The lapels of his coat spread and the butt of his gun protruded a half inch or so, catching a gleam of light from the glow of the stove. The blonde’s eyes flicked to it and away quickly.

“Funny, you look friendly,” Bannion said.

“Well, I’m not trying to be a hard guy,” the blond said.

“No, of course not. You were just busy when I came in, a little short on time.”

“Yeah,” the blond said, and wet his lips.

“Well, you aren’t so busy now,” Bannion said. “Things have slacked off, it seems. When did Slim leave here?”

“About a week ago. Eight days it was, I think.”

“What did he do here?”

“Worked around. You know. Tore the wrecks down, things like that.”

“Was that all?”

“That’s all he did for me. He did a job for some other guy though just before he left.”

“What kind of a job was it?”

The blond young man looked into Bannion’s eyes and something there brought a funny dryness to his throat. “I don’t know. Mister,” he said. “Honest. He took a day off to do it, that’s all I know.”

“Then he left here, eh?”

“That’s right, he left.”

“Where did he go?”

“I don’t know. He told me once his home town was Chester, but I don’t know if he went there or not.”

“He left eight days ago,” Bannion said, in a low voice. The time checked, he thought, feeling the anger beating in his temples with a sense of bitter pleasure.

“Who was the man he got this job from?” he said.

“I can’t help you much there.”

“Try,” Bannion said.

The blond wet his lips. He was having a little trouble talking. “Well, you see, he parked out on the avenue and honked. Slim went out and talked to him. I guess they knew each other. The man in the car was well-dressed, I could see that much, and he looked, well, kind of tough.”

“What kind of a car was it?”

“A Buick. A new one. A blue convertible.”

“Thanks very much,” Bannion said.

“Don’t mention it. Glad to help.”

Bannion walked out to Burke’s car, and the big blond young man sat down and spent three matches lighting a cigarette. He got up and put a shovelful of coal on the glowing, pot-bellied stove. The place was cold all of a sudden, he was thinking, cold as a damn grave.

Bannion headed for Chester. He drove past the airport and out the Industrial Highway, past the mammoth Baldwin locomotive works, and the sprawling properties of Sun Oil and Shipping, keeping the speedometer needle brushing seventy. This might be the lead he was thinking, the loose end that was left around after even the neatest jobs. Once he got his hands on it and began pulling, the rest of it would come out into the light.

It was dark when he pulled up before police headquarters in Chester. The building was two-storied, of red brick blackened by generations of industrial smoke and soot. Bannion had been here before on cases, so he took the side entrance that led directly to the detective bureau on the second floor. There were three men in the single, high-ceilinged room, big, red-faced men who looked the part of police officers in a tough, dirty town, built on oil, shipping and steel. Bannion knew one of the men, a detective named Sulkowski. They shook hands while the other two men looked at Bannion with interest. Sulkowski said awkwardly that it was tough, damn tough about his wife. They’d read about it, and knew he had resigned from the department.

“I don’t blame you,” Sulkowski said. “I’d go after the sonofabitch on my own, too. I wouldn’t let nobody rob me of the fun of getting the guy.”

“Well, that’s why I’m here,” Bannion said. “Do you know a man from this area who’s called Slim? He’s an automobile mechanic when he’s going straight, and a safe man when he’s not.”

“Slim Lowry,” Sulkowski said. There was an odd silence in the room. Bannion caught the look that passed between the other two detectives.

“What’s the matter?” he said.

“Slim was a pet of ours,” Sulkowski said. “Spent more time in jail than out.” He looked unhappily at Bannion. “The thing is, Slim was a lunger, and he died day before yesterday. Damn, I’m sorry. Was it a good lead?”

“It could have been pretty good,” Bannion said. “Was there anything funny about his death?”

“No, he died natural. Only funny thing was that he had damn near five hundred bucks on him, and was living with some shines over on Second Street. How would you figure that?”

“Did he die there?”

“No, in the hospital. The folks he was living with gave the boys downstairs a ring night before last, and they sent over the wagon. He died a couple of hours after they checked him into Chester General.”

“What was the address of the people he was living with?”

“You want to see ’em, eh? I’ll get it for you, don’t worry.” He turned to one of the detectives. “Call downstairs and get that address, Mike. Bannion, you want one of us to go along with you?”

“No, thanks. I can find the way.”

“Damn, I hope you get what you want.”

When the address came up, Bannion made a note of it, shook hands all around and went down to his car. He drove through the business section of the city to the slums, into streets of two-storied, yellow-brick tenements without central heating or interior plumbing. Colored children ran along the sidewalks, shouting shrilly at each other through the darkness. Bannion found the address he wanted, and knocked on the door. He heard footsteps, and then a latch clicked and a tall, strongly-built woman with a shawl over her shoulders was staring at him with narrow, unfriendly eyes.

“I’d like to talk to you a moment,” Bannion said, removing his hat.

“What about?”

“A man named Slim Lowry. I understand he lived here with you.”

“That’s right. He’s dead though, you know.”

“Yes, I know. May I come in a minute?”

The woman looked undecided. “Come ahead,” she said, at last, and walked back through an unlit hall to a living room in which a pot-bellied coal stove was burning. A man lay on a sofa in the shadows, an old man with white hair and blank, sightless eyes. He had a blanket over his legs and lay on his back staring at the ceiling. Occasionally he made a small coughing noise in his throat.

The woman sat on a straight chair near the stove and looked up at Bannion. “You a policeman?”

“No, a private citizen. Why did Slim Lowry come here?”

“He was a high-flyer, I guess. Liked the atmosphere of the place.”

“You can help me if you will,” Bannion said.

“I said he liked high living. Why go to a hotel when there’s places like this around. Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“You’ve got no monopoly on trouble,” Bannion said. “My wife was murdered last week. Blown to hell by a bomb someone put in our car. I’m trying to find out who did it. You could help if you will.”

The woman was silent a moment, her eyes grudgingly going to the hat Bannion still held in his hand. “Well, that’s too bad, Mister,” she said in a changed voice. “Slim came here to find the place he used to live. This was a white neighborhood once, and he came back to his old house. He was sick, and in some kind of trouble, so I let him stay. He went off his rocker pretty regularly. Tried to chase us all out once. Said Papa there stole the place from his old man. Stuff like that. He was in real trouble, Mister.”

“Did he have any visitors?”

The woman shook her head. “He talked about somebody who was coming. He kept saying he’d explain it wasn’t his fault.”

“Did he ever use the phone?”

“No.”

“Get any calls?”

“Yeah, he got one. But that was the night he died. I’d already called the police, when this party called to speak to Slim. I told him Slim was sick, that he was going to the hospital.”

“Do you know who it was who called?”

“Yeah, he gave a name. First I told him Slim couldn’t come to the phone, see. He started cussing me then. Said, ‘You tell him it’s Larry Smith.’ Then I told him Slim was damn near dead and was going to the hospital. So he hung up. Say, what’s the matter with you? All you white people are nuts, I think.”

“Larry Smith...”

Bannion stared at the woman, not seeing her, rubbing his big hands together slowly.

There was always a loose end in even the neatest jobs.

Here it was...