The Last Cop Out

15

His careful reconnaissance located only the single stakeout that had been there all day, replaced on schedule every four hours, so Mark Shelby decided that his physical needs justified the risk, and without bothering to call first, he took his usual circuitous route out of the building, picked up a cab two blocks away and gave the driver Helga’s address.

Mark needed the diversion badly. He had to get his thinking straight, his efforts organized so that there would be no chance of anything going wrong.

Tangling with the old man always left him edgy, even when he had everything going for him. The trouble was, there wasn’t any Big Board any longer and nobody to back him up in a power play. Papa Menes didn’t give a shit if they had handed him the operation. Right now Papa was the Big Board, the Little Board and everything else. At least he thought he was. Mark glanced at his watch. By this time he ought to be having a few doubts himself. Mark had gotten the best bid in on a dozen of the top guns in the business and Papa could settle for second best. He knew Papa was making his own contacts, and given time, could come up with a bigger and better army, but Mark didn’t plan to give him any extra time at all. Papa Menes could fall gracefully, his pockets well lined, or he could fall hard and empty.

On the West Coast most of the shattered families had tossed their lot in with Shelby. Instinctively, they knew that Papa Menes had ordered the nearly total destruction of the organization heads, and although they knew he was justified, their resentment was too great to accept the old man as their head.

Besides, Mark Shelby had intimated that he had everything wrapped up and the way he wanted, and knowing Mark for the shrewd manipulator he was, they saw him with a handful of aces. Not wanting to be cut out of the pot, they readily threw in behind him.

The old Midwest bunch still had the mustaches and wouldn’t even spit on somebody who couldn’t converse in the old tongue. Even though they had all been hurt in the upheaval, they threw their weight behind Papa, expecting the conflict to push and shove a little bit, then resolve itself the same way it always had when the big dons were up there where they belonged until the time came for them to personally hand over the reins of control to someone of their choice.

Shelby had sat in on too many intraorganizational squabbles not to know how it would go and who would throw in with whom. It was a new era this time and the name of the game was money. Hired guns didn’t give a shit one way or another who ran the factory as long as they got their pay. The more you paid them, the greater their allegiance and they could smell where the money was. Mark had it all wrapped up and when the sides were chosen and he knew exactly who to cut off, he’d select what he needed out of his vast horde of details, see that it reached the right police agency and the opposition would fall completely and permanently without his hand having been seen by anyone.

Undoubtedly, the old man would have an ace or two up his sleeve, but it couldn’t beat a royal flush. He smiled silently to himself, remembering the way Papa Menes had sounded on the phone earlier. He sure was one pissed-off old fart, but he was a smart old fart too. How the hell he managed to find out he had sent that extra load of artillery down to Herman the German, Mark couldn’t figure. He thought he had covered the deal pretty carefully, but it was a hurried play and the exposure really didn’t matter at this point anyway. Not that he admitted it outright. He had simply laughed and reminded the old man of a few things he could document that would turn a couple of those old-line loyal families against him completely. He finished by saying, “Stalemate, Papa.”

“You think so?” Menes asked.

“All the way, Papa.”

“Mark, you keep forgetting something.”

“And what would that be?”

There was a chuckle first and Mark felt himself frown. It wasn’t the time or place for anything to be funny at all. The old man said, “It’s all there waiting for whoever’s big enough to take it, right?”

“Correct, Papa.”

“And plenty big enough for you to try to get and me to try to hold onto, right?”

“Absolutely, Papa.”

There was another chuckle and the old man said very slowly, “You fuckin’ shithead, you think you know everything and maybe you do, except for the one biggest thing of all.”

Shelby felt a shudder run across his shoulders, then relaxed and smiled. Papa Menes always had that effect on people and now he was trying to psych him out too. With the old man, it was an instinctive thing, with Shelby, it was deliberate, so he made his pitch. “What’s that, Papa?”

But the old man won. He chuckled again and said, “If you can’t figure it out by ten o’clock, give me a call, shithead, and I’ll tell you something that’ll tie a square knot in your cock.”

Before Mark could answer him, the old man hung up. Mark grinned at the dead phone, stuck it back in its cradle and felt good because the days of the whip the old man held were past and dead and the whip would be in his hands now. The only annoying part was that he couldn’t figure what the old slob had been talking about. Hell, it was pretty damn plain now who was the instigator of those initial raids on the organization. Only one hand was behind it... an experienced old pro who knew everybody’s move and could hire and train outside guns to carry out every damn detail with only one man to each kill. No wonder they could never put it together. But the original premise that came up at the meeting was correct. Only one hand that trained many. Only one motive... complete takeover of the organization. Government, even the underground one, was being confiscated by a dictator.

And Papa Menes was the only one who could have accomplished it so beautifully. For a second Mark felt the irritation come back again. The dirty old son of a bitch probably even figured his, Mark’s, own reaction and tried to use it against him. Only something went wrong. He was still alive and kicking back from topside.

That was always the trouble with revolutions, Mark thought, some lousy little thing didn’t stay in place, or somebody was late, or somebody decided to take a crap before going to the office and the big scheme never quite came off.

What was the most beautiful of all though, Mark told himself, was that his own plans had gone into operation years and years before Papa Menes had felt his own position jeopardized and decided to do something about it.

The pleasure of the thoughts he had just reviewed was making Mark Shelby horny and he felt himself starting to bulge against his pants. He squirmed so he wouldn’t be so uncomfortable, took a five dollar bill from his roll and when they reached the building he handed it to the driver and told him to keep the change.

He hoped Helga had some crazy innovation ready for him. This had to be a very special night.

A very special night.

When he turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open he knew it was going to be the wildest night of all, because Helga came off the couch in all her nakedly amazing glory, ran at him and jumped in his arms so hard he almost tumbled backward and while he was still struggling to regain his balance her mouth was all over him, her fingers tearing at his clothes and he was fighting to hold her back before she ripped him apart. It was as if she were trying to rape him and the thought shocked his loins into an immediate erection too sensitive to tolerate and he locked his arms around her and carried her into the other room and tossed her into the middle of the king-sized bed.

She bounced back before he could get a single button undone, her fingers clawing, little mewing sounds coming from wet lips that kissed every inch of flesh that became visible as she undressed him.

Finally he stopped resisting the aggressive demands she made and let himself go into a completely passive state, being the recipient of all the things she gorged herself on, lolling in the total splendor of absolute sexual fulfillment. He was asked to give nothing. All she wanted was for him to enjoy, to take, to spend, to rise to the heights of screaming physical pleasure where everything becomes blanked out in those nerve-shattering waves of orgiastic abandonment that left the body spasm-wracked and helpless.

He knew then, why it was called the little death.

His mind was too satiated to wonder what had encouraged the superb performance on her part. He lay spread-eagled on the bed, his formerly stiff member a humorless blob, his eyes slowly closing until he was asleep.

From the doorway, Helga watched him until she was sure he was in the exhausted embrace of sexual fatigue and let herself shiver finally, her body tight with fear and anxiety.

She had thought it was Nils coming in and she had prepared herself for her lover with all the ardor she could muster. Her bath had been scented, her hair had been carefully arranged and the handsome young man with the fluttery hands and falsetto voice had been skillful enough to electrify her mind and body with all the erotic technique he had accumulated over the past four years so that when he had left she was at an emotional peak that only a woman sensitized in the arts of sex could understand or a man so practiced and appreciative in its application could enjoy.

It had all been arranged for Nils and then that stupid lout who paid the bill walked in and she had to waste it all on him.

Draining the bastard wasn’t the hard part. Any five dollar whore could have done that. It was hiding her own fear that tore her insides out and depleted any emotion she thought she owned. Oh, it wasn’t the little gun he always carried. He had money enough on his person to warrant the protection it offered... no different from the jewelry salesman she used to know or that real estate broker from Phoenix she once serviced who only dealt in cash deals.

What scared the hell out of her was that magazine she had picked up with the paper... the special edition rushed out to capitalize on the monstrous things that had happened in Miami and Chicago... the one that carried the candid shot some itinerant photographer, dead now, had taken of the syndicate leaders coming out of a conference in the midtown hotel, and there in the nearby obscure background was the man she had thought to be an innocuous wholesale grocer from Trenton, New Jersey, when, in reality, he was Mark Shelby, suspected head man of the mob.

And Nils’ plane was late. He had been due in an hour ago. The apartment belonged to the naked man on the bed. He could have bought off the doorman so she couldn’t try to alert him. All she could do was play it by ear and hope to hell she wasn’t caught in the middle.

Helga was far from dumb. She had so much time on her hands she had to read everything to occupy the idle hours. She could think and she could speculate. Her past had incorporated enough diverse activities in the area outside the legal concept of normal living so that she could put fact and fiction together and glean a strip of truth that was enough to make brave men quake, and being only a woman, she not only quaked, she went to the bathroom when she didn’t even have to, like a kid watching a horror movie, and evacuated her emotions into a toilet bowl. While she wiped, she considered getting Shelby’s gun and killing him.

That was too risky. Helga wasn’t all that brave, either.

She could wait for Nils and let him kill Shelby.

But Nils wasn’t that brave, either. A great lay, a big talker, a fabulous body, but guts for a shootout he didn’t have.

All she could do was wait and hope some hidden gene inherited from their forebears, a gene with spunk and determination, would show up and between the two of them they could get away from the terror who lay limply on the bed for the moment, and trust that their mutual anxieties and knowledge of cowardice wouldn’t interfere with all those lovely sex games they had planned on playing.

Helga looked at the clock again.

Where the hell was that fucking airplane?

What would she do when it got here?

She could feel it all around her, an invisible force as though someone were stretching the air too tight. There was a tension in the city, in the way people moved, unconsciously nervous. Unreleased energy was back in the night sky again, rumbling with displeasure and spitting intermittent belches of heat light night, waiting and daring anything to trigger it into celestial madness.

Helen Scanlon looked at the two of them, Burke and Captain Long, sensing that something had happened to their friendship, challenging it so that whatever had matured in all the years was balanced on a knife’s edge, and no matter which way it fell, both of them would lose.

She knew she shouldn’t have been there. It was a time for men alone, yet in a way she was like a catalyst whose action could temper or instigate a cataclysm. Inside each of them was a locked secret and they probed each other to bring it out... not overtly, but just a single word or expression that would satisfy their own conclusions.

For a second she felt a flash of hatred for the whole world, the entire stinking system that could turn men into animals and the earth into a laboratory of destruction to benefit a few warped minds.

She looked at her watch. It was a quarter to nine.

Bill Long put down his coffee cup and took the cigarette Gill offered him. “If you’re right it makes the entire department look like it’s pretty damn stupid or on the take.”

“Not necessarily.”

“No?” Long leaned into the match and blew a thin stream of smoke across the table. “You realize how many men we had working that deal?”

“Sure.”

“Top guys, not rookies. Guys all pulling for you, yet the kind of guys who would lay the evidence on the line no matter what they found.”

“They found plenty of it, didn’t they?”

“Nothing you could refute.”

“Oh, I refuted it,” Burke told him. “I just couldn’t prove it.”

“Why didn’t you stick around and sweat it out?”

“Who needed the aggravation. Things kept piling up against me and there was no way out. There was enough basis of truth so that the whole package looked good. All I could do was make matters worse and you damn well knew it. There wasn’t a chance in the world when it became a public issue the politicals could capitalize on and I’ll be damned if I was going to take any more of a beating from those pricks. The committee at Compat knew the score better than you did and offered me the job. I didn’t have to think twice then. I made more in a month than I did in a year on the force without having to face a rule book that worked against me or a crowd of cop haters and superior officers running scared to protect their pensions.”

“Don’t hand me that, Gill.”

“What could you have done, buddy?”

“Kept your case open until we got the break, that’s what.”

“That sounds good, but I don’t like starving or having to eat the shit I was having thrown at me.” He stopped, took a drag on the butt and shook his head. “The other side was just a little too good for your boys. They didn’t have any rule book to fight against. They could pull out all the stops. They yanked my teeth very effectively and saw to it that when I was gone, everything settled back to normal.”

“But it didn’t, did it?”

The smile Burke gave him was almost frightening to Helen. There was something about his eyes over the hard slash of his mouth that sent a shudder down her spine.

“No,” Burke said, “it didn’t.”

“In fact, it got worse.”

“For some people, perhaps.” Burke had stopped smiling and was watching Long.

The cop nodded. “When you look back at it, the whole thing seems to have been a well-engineered deal.”

Burke’s shrug was enigmatic. “Who knows? In this business, anything can set off a chain reaction.”

This time it was Bill Long’s face that had a peculiarly strained expression. “True. If... and only if... you know where, when and how to touch off the original action.”

“It could be accidental.”

“Accidents,” Long said, “are like coincidences. In this business they don’t happen. They’re planned.”

“A lot of things are planned, kid. Then suddenly they get unplanned and the shit hits the fan.” He looked at his watch and tossed a bill on the table to cover the coffees. “And right now we’re about to plug in the fan.”

The captain’s face got tight again, his words sounding clipped. “Suppose you brief me on this bit, Gill.”

“Suppose I just let you see it happen and explain as I go along. You haven’t got much choice anyway.”

Helen saw the tendons in Long’s hand stand out against the flesh. Finally he said, “Okay, it’s your show, Burke.”

She reached out and laid her hand on top of Gill’s. “If you’d rather...”

He didn’t let her finish. “You’ve been there before, doll. We’re simply going to make an inquiry, that’s all. Maybe an intimidating-type inquiry, but no rough stuff. You see... it’s partially because of you that I began to understand how it was done.”

Whenever Mark Shelby recovered from the effects of an orgasm he was a hollow shell forced to look inward upon himself and disgusted at what he saw. What he thought was manhood expended itself in a fiery gush leaving nothing at all to disguise the self-contempt, the loathing and the bitterness of having been a gutless, wanton puppet whose prowess lay, not in his own ability, but in the hands of those who owned him and twitched the leash to make him respond to their demands. There was nothing brave or daring about the way he had killed. Anyone could shoot or knife from ambush, or in the back, or under the guise of being a friend. He always knew what he would do if faced with an adversary who didn’t fear him at all and came at him with a death weapon in his hand. He’d run. He’d hide. He’d wait until somebody else destroyed the enemy before he would reappear with a logical explanation and claim credit for the victory.

Alone, Mark Shelby was a weak thing who could hate himself to death.

Fortunately, he was never alone. The power was still with him, outside there in the other room, a cylindrical waxen tower of power.

He wiped the bitter taste from his mouth, got out of bed, showered and dressed. Outside in the living room she’d be waiting for him, all vibrant, active sex ready to relieve herself in a dozen more climaxes, ready to bring him into the heady rapture of a gut-wrenching spasm... and again, like almost all the other times, he was going to have to make some excuse so he would not have to participate in an act that would expose his incapabilities. Maybe he never did fool her, but he couldn’t be sure. At least she understood and gave him the benefit of the doubt.

That was why he was so damn crazy about her. She was all his, from the top to the bottom with all those good parts in between. He was strictly one hell of a big man to her and nobody could come near him for sheer physical magnetism. She let him know it, too. He grinned and sucked in his stomach a little. When he had the operation in the palm of his hand, he’d let her know just who he was, take her right in with him and tell the old lady to fuck off. Then he and Helga would really swing.

But it wasn’t at all like it should have been. She wasn’t bare-assed naked at all. She was sitting cross-legged on the couch with her dress hiked up around her thighs and she was smiling, but there was something forced in the way she did it and the drink in her hand was heavy with scotch and half empty. There was enough animal in him to smell the nervousness in her.

He was about to yank the glass out of her hand when the phone rang and she almost dropped it. Then his fingers beat hers to the receiver and he said in a soft, deadly voice, “I’ll get it,” and watched her eyes go wide and scared for a brief instant. Shelby said, “Yes?” then grunted and handed the phone to Helga. “Some broad for you.”

There was no doubting the relief in her eyes at all. Her voice had the quick, staccato tone of relief as she went into a vivid description of the dress she wanted altered and she didn’t look at him at all while she was talking. She hung up almost reluctantly and was staring at him when he came back from the bar with a drink in his hand.

He was just about to accost her when he saw the hands of the wall clock standing at ten and without taking his eyes from hers at all, he dialed Papa Menes’ private number, waited until he heard the old man’s voice and said, “It’s ten o’clock, Papa.”

The old man let a laugh ripple out of his mouth. “Figure it out yet, shithead?”

“You’re acting senile, Papa. This call is only a courtesy now.”

“Is it, Marcus?”

“Not as long as you believe I was behind all the trouble, punk.”

A cold chill ran down Shelby’s neck. “Why would I believe that?”

“Because,” Papa told him, “I was almost stupid enough to think you were. Then I sat down and ran it all through my mind until I was sure you never did have the guts or the brains to pull it off. You just waited behind the scenery and let it all happen. It wasn’t what you planned, but as long as it happened you let it alone, then even helped it a little bit. Only like I said, you forgot something.”

“Papa, listen...”

“Lay off the shit, punk. I know it wasn’t me and I know it wasn’t you. What you forgot was that someplace the one who started it all is still out there waiting and we both got to be on his list... and you’re in a tight spot.”

“I’m...”

“Don’t shit me, Marcus. You’re not at home, you’re not in the office, so you’re someplace where you can be tagged real easy. You see, I’m smarter than you, shithead. I’m holed up tight in a safe place with twenty guns all around me and I can wait it out for a year if I have to. By then you’ll be dead anyway.” He chuckled again and added, “Besides, if you ain’t dead, you’ll be doing one hell of a lot of hard time. That cop Burke was back around the pawnshop again. He was looking for some blond tramp. He won’t have much luck because she’s long dead, but he sure as hell might figure something else out.”

The phone was dead in his hand with the old man’s laugh still ringing in his ears. When Helga smiled with phony sweetness and asked him if everything was all right his stomach churned up into his throat and stifled the scream he let out as he threw his fist into her unprotected face and knocked her sprawling back against the couch. There was no stopping the madness that made him tear into her, his knuckles grinding into her ribs and head, his feet kicking huge welts into her skin until she was a bloody, discolored mess on the floor.

When he finished he was a breathless, disheveled figure with wild eyes and skinned fingers and all he could say came out in a panting hiss. “Lousy, stinking bitch. You’re waiting for a guy. You fuckin’ two-timing whore, you won’t be any good to any man again. You’re going to be dead, you and him both. I’m coming back and you’re going to be dead.”

Shelby would have waited, but there was something more important he had to do, then he’d kill them both. The insane fear that one single guy could blow up his entire scheme was so staggering that he even forgot what Papa Menes had told him.

He was back on the street when he remembered, but by then it was too late to change his mind. He flagged down a cab, told the driver where he wanted to go and sat back.

Maybe luck was on his side again. To help it along he changed cabs three times until he reached his destination, certain now that he wasn’t being followed.

The fear had ebbed out of him, and now he was at his deadly best, ready to kill again from ambush.

Gill Burke parked the car a block away and sat there with Helen and Bill Long. The rain had turned into a fine mist, greasing the streets and throwing halos around the street lights. They looked up the empty block where only a few stores still waited for late business.

Burke said, “I’m going to lay out the background for you, Bill. It isn’t a big story and after we check it out you’ll find nothing but circumstantial evidence... except for one critical piece.”

“I’m waiting.”

“We go back to Mark Shelby again.”

“You’re kidding yourself, Gill.”

“Am I? Let’s see if you think so.”

“Okay, go ahead.” There was no confidence in his voice at all.

Burke said, “Think of it this way... Shelby was in a position to know everything about everybody, the workings of the business, personal details... everything. He always had been an ambitious guy, but he kept it hidden pretty damn well because the syndicate didn’t like ambitious people in sensitive places.

“Shelby didn’t want to be a target, either. He was planning the ultimate takeover and wanted to make sure he stayed covered, so besides gathering all the data on the organization, he had evidence on everybody inside it that could keep them out of circulation permanently.

“Hell, it’s not an old scheme, Bill, but he was able to make his work. He couldn’t keep reams of paper around, so he found a couple of unknown and unscrupulous photographers to microfilm his collection. Unfortunately, one or both were a little too unscrupulous and realized what he had. They tried to hold him up for a little blackmail and Shelby killed them on the spot. He had probably stayed on the spot while they did the filming, but one of those guys could do a duplicate of something to hold over his head. The poor slob didn’t realize who he was playing around with and that was it. Shelby picked up the dupes and walked the hell out.

“It was a sleazy neighborhood and he probably never expected to be recognized, but one guy spotted him... even spoke to him. He was a lucky kid. When they put the heat to him he wasn’t about to talk... and he still won’t... but it put Shelby in a position of not being able to take any chances. He could have ditched the gun, but he wanted those two kills solved fast and to everybody’s satisfaction. After that, whatever the kid said wouldn’t matter anyway.

“He found a perfect patsy, an alcoholic named Ted Proctor. He made up a story the guy believed, probably about finding a gun and how Proctor could pawn it for twenty bucks and they’d split the loot for some booze. So Proctor walked into the trap, all juiced up with happiness.”

Long felt it coming and his voice was like ice. “Don’t give me any crap about Jimmy Corrigan being part of the scheme, buddy.”

“He didn’t know he was,” Burke said quietly. “He was suckered too.” He took a breath, lit up a cigarette and stared down the street again. “Just before that Shelby got some of his supposedly clean front men to hand over their wallets. He had them planted in Proctor’s room to make Proctor look like a regular heist artist. Then he roped in some hooker to do a stalling act in case the timing wasn’t just right.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Something Corrigan remembered that wasn’t in his report because it didn’t seem to be part of it.”

“He’ll confirm it?”

“Sure, but you won’t find the dame, that’s for sure.”

“Go ahead.”

“Shelby knew Corrigan’s routine and about what time he’d go by Turley’s pawnshop. Corrigan was a little late, but the hooker stalled him nicely while Proctor went ahead into the pawnshop. Finally Corrigan got away from the broad and walked toward the shop where Turley was discussing buying the gun from Proctor and just as the cop came by, Turley threw up his hands like he was being robbed. Corrigan spotted him, came in with his hands up and when Proctor turned around with the gun in his mitt Corrigan thought the guy was going to let him have it and he fired first.”

Bill Long stared at him in disgust. “There’s one hell of a hole in the story, Gill.”

“There is?” Gill was smiling now because he knew what Long was going to say.”

“Yeah, a big one. It was night out. There was no way for Turley to spot the cop coming up through the window. It’s completely covered with all those pawned items.”

Burke nodded. “It sure is.”

“Well?”

“Remember me telling you it was Helen here who put me on to it.”

She looked at him strangely.

“You were waiting in the car for me outside. The windows that flank his doorway reflected you and the car perfectly when you stand in the right position, and that’s exactly where Turley was... not behind the counter where he usually transacted business. He was able to spot Corrigan and go into his act with no trouble at all.”

“Damn,” Bill Long said. There was no ice in his voice this time. He could sense the logic behind, the clever reasoning, but what dug into him most of all was the way they had used the beat cop for a gun hand.

“The gun Shelby used was a hot one and it worked out beautifully for him. We traced it to a couple of other ills and there it was, laid out perfectly and everybody fell for it.” He stopped for a minute, then looked at Long again. “Not everybody, though. Corrigan never did like the picture, but he couldn’t deny it. Something had been bothering him all this time and he could never figure out what it was.”

“Oh?”

“I found out what it was,” Gill said.

Long waited. “The fingerprints.”

A frown creased the cop’s forehead. “They were all Proctor’s on that gun.”

“Yeah, too many of them. There was no print at all on the trigger where his forefinger should have been. That print was on the plastic butt grip. Proctor didn’t even know how to handle a gun. He had his entire hand wrapped around the butt.”

“How the hell did we miss...”

“Easy, pal. It was all too easy to look for any roadblocks.”

Long shifted in his seat, his mind working. “If you’re right, we still have Turley.”

“They might have so much heat on him he’d never talk.”

“They can’t even begin to lay heat on him like we can though.”

“Then let’s try it.”

“Okay, you smart son of a bitch. I just hope you’re right.”

“I am. But do me one favor.”

“Name it.”

“I make the initial approach on the guy. He knows me now and I want him to know me better. I want to be the one who loosens him up for the big shove.”

“Listen, Gill, your department...”

Burke was flat and hard when he said it. “I’m the one they did it to, pal. It’s still my department.”

“Your department,” Long finally agreed.

Burke turned the key on and pulled away from the curb. Up ahead another car turned the comer, disgorged a passenger and drove on. Burke parked and cut his lights.

There was no spit left in Mark Shelby’s mouth. The heat of violent rage and fear had dried it up and his lips were like parchment. The broken knuckles in his hand ached as he clamped them around the gun and he could feel something knotting his intestines like a tangled line.

He saw the lone figure get out of the car opposite him and go in the pawnshop and the impatience grew in him like a cancer. For a few minutes he stayed in the shadow of the old panel truck, waiting, but the guy didn’t come out and he looked across the street again. He couldn’t see too clearly through the rain-frosted glass door, but there was something familiar about the way the man stood, the way his shoulders were set and the motion of his hand when he pushed his hat back.

Then he knew who he was and the vomit hit his throat so fast he almost gagged and his eyes began to water as he made his last, mad dash across the empty street with the little gun ready to take out the two monstrous obstacles to all his years of planning and working and when he rammed the door open a hoarse shout grated from his mouth and he saw Turley’s eyes widen with horror and he triggered the automatic into a wicked blast aimed for Burke’s back.

But Burke had seen Turley’s eyes too and dropped with the instinctive agility of a cat and the shot caught Turley flush in the chest and left him dead before he could hit the floor.

He almost had Burke, who was still clawing for the gun at his belt but before he could pull the trigger again he heard the roaring thunder behind him and felt the mighty hammer of a slug drive into his spine and on through his heart and a huge gout of blood spewed through his lips drenching the very spot he fell in.

Outside Helen was screaming her head off and Burke looked up into a pair of eyes so filled with hate he thought Long was going to pick him off right there.

He almost did, but the years of training took hold and he holstered the .38 and waited until Burke got to his feet. “You dirty bastard,” Bill Long said. “You miserable, dirty bastard.”

Burke looked at him, saying nothing.

“You made a patsy out of me. You did the same thing to me that they did to Corrigan. You set it all up and let me play gun for you.”

Burke’s eyes didn’t falter. They were as flat and cold as the cop’s were and his voice was there to match. “You said there weren’t coincidence in this business, Bill. Now you just saw one.”

“No old buddy.” Long’s voice had a tired quality to it now. He sounded old and disappointed. “You’re a bastard, Gill, a rotten, dirty bastard and I had it figured right all along and didn’t know it.”

“Suppose I prove it to you.”

“You can make the try, Gill, but you won’t prove anything to me.” He glanced at him with begrudging admiration. “You’re clever, man. Damn clever.”

“Do I try?”

“Sure. What difference does it make now?”

“Probably none.”

“Then call Lederer and the crew. Get this mess cleaned up and we’ll move.”

Long made a wry face. “Yeah, let’s do that.”

In the doorway, Helen was watching them both with unbelieving eyes, her hand clamped over her mouth to keep from getting sick.