The Last Cop Out

4

Stanley Holland was feeling very pleased with himself. It was raining and even though he hated rain because it made his sinuses drain and his temples pound, he still felt pleased. Even the smog and the smell that hung over Cleveland, Ohio, couldn’t make him feel otherwise. A year ago, when Papa Menes transferred him here from Los Angeles to put back together the narcotics operation the Cleveland police had broken, he was unhappy, but no longer. The new setup was structured so carefully and organized so efficiently that the roots of it would be imbedded too deeply into Ohio soil for anybody to dig out again.

And it had been all his doing. He had given his life to his work, he thought. It should have been good. Papa Menes would be grateful. The entire board would be grateful. There would be a better town now, a bigger town where his rewards could be well spent in the pleasures he enjoyed.

The organization was solidly entrenched, the new source of narcotics his own discovery and he was totally, absolutely unknown. He was a respected businessman who operated two hardtop movie houses and a drive-in, made a substantial profit with all and had a foolproof drop for his supplies.

One week ago today he had finally learned the identity of the informer instrumental in destroying the old layout and had personally taken care of him with a massive overdose of heroin on his own rooftop. Since he was a known addict, nothing was made of it. But the others in the trade got the message.

Two days later the pair of crooked cops from the neighboring city Holland had used to retrieve nine key code words from the book impounded in the police files had tried to shake down his contact man for a full grand a week apiece. The initial meet was arranged and both cops showed up in time to be dispatched quietly by his own hand via the drugged drink and garrote route, encased in a steamer trunk of cement and dropped in Lake Erie. It had been difficult, but it was done. Papa Menes and the board would have the details by now, the machinery of supply and demand could begin operating in the absolute security of secrecy he, Stanley Holland, had instituted and his star would rise another degree on the organization’s horizon.

He pulled into the parking lot behind the middle-class office building he occupied, cut the ignition and reached for his briefcase. He was about to open the door when the jungle instinct beat through his self-satisfaction and he remembered that the car in the slot beside his was not the white Caddie that was supposed to be there, but an undistinguished black Chevy. He couldn’t see the face of the person behind the wheel because a hand with a heavy caliber gun in it blocked the way.

All Stanley Holland could reflect on in that last tiny moment was that he had given his life to his work. Everything should have been perfect. But it just wasn’t good enough.

When Bill Long met Gill for lunch he was still carrying the anger he should have left in his office. “What’s with you?” Gill asked him.

“They found Stanley Holland’s body in a parking lot in Cleveland.”

“Who’s he?”

“His right name was Enrico Scala.” Long waved the waiter over and told him to bring a pastrami on rye and coffee. “Remember him now?”

Gill doubled the order and nodded. “I thought he died in a car smashup in L.A.”

“Apparently that’s what he wanted us to think. Identification was made from his personal effects. He had plastic surgery done on his face after he beat that narco rap out there and changed his base.”

“You sure?”

“Well, most of his face was gone, but the tissue scars were there and his fingerprints matched. It was him, all right.”

“When did it happen?”

“About nine-thirty this morning. The Cleveland police got an anonymous phone tip from somebody about a dead guy in a car behind an office building and checked it out.”

“Who goes around looking into parked cars?”

“Somebody did. A couple of the guys who parked there said their cars had been rifled on occasion. Cigarettes gone, some change laid on the dashboard... things a kid might do.”

“Then why are you sweating it? Cleveland’s five hundred miles away. We don’t have jurisdiction there.”

“No, but we’re on an interdepartmental cooperation basis and the commissioners are raising hell. It’s all part of the same damn war and if it keeps up it’s going to explode all over New York.” He stopped, tossed a sharp glance at Burke and said, “I don’t suppose you have anything to say?”

“Did I ever?”

“Not unless it was pertinent and provable.”

“Let’s keep it that way.”

“That attitude might have gone in the old days, but you’re working under a different department now. The district attorney isn’t me.”

“Fuck the district attorney.”

“He can put you back on the street again.”

“But he won’t, old buddy. He just can’t afford to. Now eat your lunch.”

Halfway through the sandwich Bill Long said, “Papa Menes seems to have dropped out of sight.”

“Oh?”

“Got any ideas?”

“Sure. He’s got some sense.”

“The old man could hole up in any one of a dozen of his places and it would take an army to get him out. He isn’t in any of those places. He left Miami and simply disappeared.”

“Permanently?”

“He isn’t dead. Orders are still coming through. We’d know it in a hurry if anything had happened to him.”

Gill grinned and bit into his sandwich. “You know, it’s interesting to speculate on what would happen inside the syndicate if somebody nailed Papa. They’d cut each other to bits in the rush for the top.”

“Like hell. They got everything worked out in advance.”

“You used the wrong tense, pal.”

“What do you mean?”

“They used to have it worked out. This year isn’t last year or the year before and there’s a new breed of cat running around. Things are changing just as fast inside their own world as it is everyplace else. Governments and businesses, legal or illegal, are like buildings. You can only make them so big or they’ll crumble or be too unwieldly to be useful.”

“Don’t you believe it.”

“No?” Gill said. “Look at them now, scared shitless because for a change they’re the target and they got nobody to shoot back at. Guys who thought their power or protection made them invulnerable suddenly get dead and it’s panic time. Papa Menes quietly detaches himself from the scene and will sit it out until it’s over. A real dependable bunch of people to work for.”

“Menes will show. A guy like that can’t stay hidden.”

“Balls. He’s always had a few alternate caves to crawl into. He’ll be packing a bundle in hard cash and won’t have any crowd around him. He’ll just disappear into the scenery somewhere with his own special means of communication to the organization and sit tight.”

“Where, for instance?”

Gill blew on his coffee and grunted. “He had one place in New Paltz, New York. Don’t bother checking it because I did and it’s empty. The power’s on and the phone is live. A maid cleans the place once a week, runs the pickup truck in the garage to keep the battery charged and gets paid by money order once a month. She’s never seen the owner, although he’s occupied the place several times. Anybody with the time to be an amateur pirate could hit that place when she wasn’t there and with enough house wrecking or garden digging, pull up a small fortune in cash.”

“How did you get that tidbit of information?”

“Using my spare time checking on visitors going into a certain spaghetti joint at a certain time on a certain day.”

“When Papa Menes was there?”

“Very astute, pal. One of those visitors was an upstate real estate broker. The rest was sneaky, but easy.”

“That doesn’t give us Menes now.”

“You couldn’t charge him with anything anyway. Besides, there’s better game to hunt.”

“The game preserve is going to be pretty crowded,” the captain said sarcastically. “The families got the orders out and all the shooters are going onto the streets. They’re shifting all the soldiers around to the hot spots and most of them are coming here. Last night there was a job pulled at National Guard Armory in Jersey and twenty-two tommy guns with sixty thousand rounds of ammo were lifted. The same thing happened in a naval depot in Charleston, only there it was grenades. Gill... we’re sitting right on the shady side of hell.”

Burke finished his coffee and nodded.

“You could say something about it,” Long prodded him.

“Sure,” Gill said. “Want some dessert?”

The supper he had at Cissie’s wasn’t sitting too well with Mark Shelby. Ordinarily he would have enjoyed the specialty dishes she served the patrons who had originally financed her East Fifty-fifth Street retreat. The gourmet magazines played her up regularly and she had been on the local TV channel twice with her own brand of Mediterranean cooking.

He tried the wine again, an imported rose that cost twenty-five bucks a bottle, but it went down like water without improving his digestion a bit. It had always been like that when he had to look at the Frenchman. He had made his bones and kept his hand in whenever it was necessary to prove a point, but essentially he was an organizer, a compiler of facts, a recorder and adviser.

Essentially the Frenchman was a killer.

Nothing else mattered.

The Frenchman was a homosexual killer and nobody could ever prove it because whoever he went down on suffered the same fate as a male black widow spider, except that there was never any drained corpse to identify. It was only rumored, of course, but nobody had the temerity to challenge the accusation because the Frenchman had an unusual penchant for killing people in lieu of sex, without regard for position or reputation, and as long as it didn’t interfere with the machinations of the organization, his private life was his own.

Murder, to the Frenchman, was the same as an orgasm. He enjoyed it best when one followed the other, but he could take each separately if the need arose, but inevitably one would follow the other anyway.

If he had to take his choice, Frank Verdun would rather murder. The orgasm was much more intense then.

And at that moment, Mark Shelby didn’t like the way the Frenchman was looking at him.

“Whoever hit Holland was on the inside,” Mark said flatly. “Only two people could recognize his new face and they’re both dead — the doctor and the nurse.”

“The hit man knew,” Verdun reminded him with a tight smile.

Shelby’s irritation got the better of him and he leaned forward on the table. “Listen, Frank, there were no photos and no files. It was cash in advance and a guarantee of safety. The only ones on the outside who knew about his operation were Papa Menes, you, me and six members of the big board.”

“We know Papa wouldn’t talk, and the board wouldn’t talk, so that just leaves you and me, doesn’t it, Mark?”

The little .25 Mark Shelby always carried was aimed at Frank Verdun’s gut under the table and his finger was almost ready to squeeze the trigger.

“Put it away,” the Frenchman said through his curious smile. He lifted his glass in a silent toast and drained it, then refilled it from the bottle in the ice bucket.

“You think Papa hasn’t figured that out already?” he told Shelby.

Mark’s finger came off the trigger and he looked at his supper partner. Verdun’s hand was under the table too and he wondered what he held in it. He was being stupid and knew it, said “shit” softly and stuck the little automatic back in its holster. “Somebody’s getting to us, Frank,” he said.

Both of the Frenchman’s hands showed on the table and peace was declared. “Sure it’s inside,” he said. “It has to be inside. The only thing is, how far inside can you get? Who knew everything about Vic Petrocinni and Taggart and Holland... you know how many people we lost so far?”

“I’m the one who keeps the records, remember?”

“Yeah, so you know, but who’s that far inside?”

“What are you getting at, Frank?”

“The Big Board’s getting shook, Mark. They don’t like what’s happening. The first time out they figured they were fooling with some wise ass son of a bitch, then they saw a raid coming on and got all set for it, now they can’t put it together at all unless some outfit is just lining us up for an all-out war and trying to take out the generals before they commit the soldiers.”

“Don’t be silly. That’s impossible.”

“There’s another bit that they’re considering.”

Shelby studied his glass, tasted the wine and put it down again. “What’s that?”

“The United States Government might have decided to take on an internal diversion for publicity purposes to cover up all the other crap that’s going on.”

“Frank, you’re nuts. Who the hell they going to use... the CIA?”

“Consider it a possibility.”

“They got the FBI. They’re bad enough. Right now they use any excuse to go across state lines and their damn director doesn’t even give a shit for constitutional rights. Only we have our people there too and there haven’t been any directives out to nail us.”

Frank Verdun swirled the wine in his glass and sniffed the edge. If Shelby didn’t know better he would have thought he was a constant habitué of the more gracious Paris bistros.

Mark said, “Why should they? It’s even better this way. Let somebody else pick us apart and go in after the pieces. No, Frank, it isn’t the FBI and it isn’t the CIA. I wish it were, because we’d know who we were dealing with and how to take care of it, but what’s happening is pure insanity. Nobody’s made a fucking move yet.”

Verdun nodded, conceded the point. “They will, you know. They have to. You don’t go through all the trouble they went through without finally making a move. Nobody does anything for nothing and so far it’s been their game.” He stopped twirling the wine around in his glass, finished it and slid the ornate crystal to one side. “It’s really simple, you know.”

“I don’t know,” Shelby said.

“What’s the most important thing in the world?” the Frenchman asked. He was hunched over his arms and his eyes were a bright electric blue as they stared at Mark.

Shelby would have said something else, but he knew what the Frenchman wanted to hear and said, “Money.”

The curl in his lip the Frenchman didn’t ordinarily show appeared now. He had inherited his mouth from his mother, had a plastic surgeon take out the birth scar, but there were times when the defect was evident despite the operation. His mind was like a tumescent sore about to burst.

“Somebody is after our treasury,” he said.

Mark Shelby wasn’t about to lance his throbbing boil. “Reasonable,” he agreed. “There’s nothing as important as money.” For a moment he thought he saw a flicker in the Frenchman’s eyes about to dispute the point, but didn’t press it.

Abruptly, Frank Verdun said, “What about this shithead Burke?”

“I heard he was back.”

“You know he’s working for the D.A.’s office?”

“I heard.”

“So what about it?”

“You saw Papa’s orders,” Shelby told him. “Lay off the cops. What the hell could he do anyway? They got twenty-five thousand cops in this city. One more’s going to matter?”

“He’s a specialist.”

“Screw him.”

“He was after you, Mark.”

Shelby let a smile touch his mouth that turned into a laugh. “So he got screwed and we can screw him again. Come on, Frank, you terrified of one stinking ex-blue-coat just because the D.A.’s office is grabbing at straws?”

“No,” the Frenchman said, “I’m not.” He sat back in his booth and waved the waitress in the black miniskirt over. “Are you?” he asked.

Papa Menes had sent his driver into Miami to get a big Rand-McNally map of the United States. Artie Meeker had thumbtacked it on the wall as the old man directed and circled the areas he indicated. He leaned back against the wall thinking of the beautiful whore he had met and didn’t have time to service and waited for Papa Menes to finish thinking.

The old man said, “Draw a dotted line toward Phoenix, Artie.”

He had no idea where Phoenix was, but remembered Nicole telling him about the fly-in whorehouse she worked in and how she used to shop in Phoenix, and after locating the state, he stuck the pencil tip on the city of Phoenix and sketched a line between it and New York.

“What’s in Phoenix, boss?” Artie asked.

“An idea,” Papa Menes told him.” Now draw to Cleveland.”

Artie Meeker knew where Cleveland was and drew a line up to it. “Okay?”

“Fine,” Papa said. “Go to Seattle this time.”

Artie did as he was told and found Seattle by accident.

“San Diego is in lower California. Draw a line to there.”

Artie nodded and followed Route Five all the way down because it was the sure way not to make a mistake. He stepped back and looked at his handiwork. It was like when he was in his geography class at P.S. 19. He wished Miss Fischer were watching right now. He was always the dumbhead, but right now she’d be proud of him. Hell, once he couldn’t even find Philadelphia, and just now he had drawn a line down to San Diego.”

“Go to Dallas,” Papa said.

Artie was like a little kid enjoying the game. He had seen enough weather men on TV and knew right where Dallas was because that was where they made those big circles with the L or the H in the middle and where Kennedy got killed and they just had a crazy cold front last week with a tornado in the north end. He always wanted to hear a tornado go past because everybody said it sounded like a train going by. He drew the line to Dallas.

“Very good,” Papa said. He leaned back in his chair and studied the map. He could have had Artie draw in some more lines, but they weren’t really necessary. He could have put in numbers to indicate the continuity of killings, but they weren’t really necessary. He knew their sequences and nothing made sense at all. “They’re very mobile,” he said.

Artie Meeker didn’t know the meaning of the word so simply bobbed his head as though he did.

Papa Menes said, “Is that little whore you met in Miami coming down here tonight?”

A long time ago Artie had stopped questioning the old man’s intuition or sources of information. He knew better than to lie and said, “Yeah, boss.”

“How much?”

“A yard. Hundred bucks and she’s happy.”

“Anything?”

“Sure, boss.”

“Tell her to bring a friend. Call the West Wind and we’ll see them there. You sure she’s three way?”

“Come on, boss, you know me.”

“That’s for sure,” Papa Menes said.

The two cottages on the Gulf were separated from the others by fifty yards. Ordinarily they were used for the benefit of Harvey Bartel, the bartender who had learned how to bypass the locks, but when the man came down from the big city, the broker with enough money to buy or sell you, or get you booted out of your lovely suntanned job where the pussy was easy and the money substantial, or get you beaten up by those frigging Miami toughs who didn’t understand you just wanted some fun, you just closed your eyes and took your date to a movie twenty miles away and were glad nobody caught you with the skeleton key or screwing a local blonde whose husband was six inches taller and forty pounds heavier.

Sometimes Harvey Bartel wished he could see just who owned those cottages, but being a coward he was too scared to inquire and satisfied himself with a hand on the bare thigh of the fat girl from Summerland Key who had driven all the way up to see him. She wasn’t much. She was all lard and excitement, but she had a nice, wet mouth and liked to use it. Her father owned a machine shop in Miami and four sport fishing cruisers too.

The girl screamed because she thought the old man liked it that way. She got a belt across the head and Papa Menes said, “Shut it. I don’t pay for noise.”

Louise Belhander stopped screaming and twisted her head back so she could see the old man propped in position astride her legs. She laughed, made herself comfortable on her stomach and spread her legs as far apart as she could get them.

“Okay, have fun, daddy,” she said.

Fuck him, she thought, she liked it this way anyway. He wasn’t all that big and she had plenty of baby oil going in the way of lubricant and if he wanted to lay out all that green for a real piece of ass, he was the customer and the customer was always right. She felt his fingers separating her buttocks and nestled her head in her arms. Have fun, baby, she whispered to herself. That slob who got himself drowned last week was even better. He was too long and too big, but he was too strong and too heavy to fight. He had damned near wrecked her little goodie hole and sent her to the clinic with an anus rapist story that made those damn fucking interns pass snide remarks until they saw the actual injury.

Papa Menes even felt good. Louise raised her behind so he could get a better advantage and smiled. Like brushing your teeth, she thought, or shining your shoes. Most women didn’t know why guys had their shoes shined. They sat in a chair while somebody made their feet come with a brush and a rag and it was just like they had been laid. The cheapest screw in the world. You got your feet tingled, had a toe orgasm and went home never knowing where you had been.

Right now Louise Belhander was having her ass tickled and having all the experience of relaxation, all she was doing was enjoying it, thinking of where she was going to spend the money. If tiny cock up there was going to be a steady, she might even be able to afford the payments on that new convertible she wanted. Louise knew he was about to reach his climax and brought her expertise into being. For her, a professional since high school, it was simple.

One half hour later Papa Menes was completely drained, his mind refreshed since his monthly requirements had been satiated and he could think again. He picked up the phone and dialed the next cottage.

Artie Meeker had had too much to drink and that wild orgasmic feeling escaped him completely. When the phone rang and the girl looked up from what she was doing to listen to him say, “Rightaway, boss,” all she could think of was that she might have been better off getting married to that Tennessee catfish farmer who only took two years to accumulate a half a million bucks. Weird, but rich, but he sure could come a mouthful and that was her pleasure in life. This was a puff of dust and she bet Louise, in the next cottage, didn’t do any better. Those Wall Street boys were all alike. All money. No cock. It was hell to be a whore when you really liked it, she thought. Someday she’d go back to Lessiland.

Papa Menes looked at the map again until he found that little town in Pennsylvania and remembered when he had met Sylvia whom he had married. She was a virgin, her father was a rabbi and he was a crazy wop who made the hospital workers strike as a cover for killing Rierdon after they put him in jail. He was young then and the ones on the board had approved. They let him marry the virgin, have his stupid kids who grew up threatened between two religions, and after he had wiped out everybody who stood in his way, they were very happy to let him control the uncontrollable. Papa Menes was the boss. His stupid Jewish wife was a slob he endured. His idiotic kids had long ago gone into Star-of-David graves because he couldn’t tolerate them. The opposition thought they were his weak spot.

They were wrong, they died, he was justified in the records of the programmers and was counted as a man who could be expected to fulfill his obligations. When he was thirty-eight years old those obligations were filled and they began calling him Papa.

His wife still had a foible about letting him screw her up the ass because she had an enema complex, but by then it didn’t matter because Papa Menes had too many women around who didn’t care about foibles when it clashed with a small sheaf of bills on a dresser top.

All Papa could think of was the chubby little broad he had married protecting her puckered little anus the second week after the ceremony. She had scratched his face, gotten one hell of a broken nose out of the process, and aside from the few times he had come in loaded and screwed her whether she liked it or not, that was the end of their physical relationship. The rabbi father-in-law was dead, her mother was beside him, and she was playing canasta down in Miami, making sure her diamonds flashed and her furs were the best.

Too bad she didn’t like to get screwed up the ass, Papa thought. They might have had a damn good marriage, rabbi father or not. He even would have let her play around with that little schmuck Aaron whose father ran the dry cleaner’s place on the comer. Aaron was all cock and no sense. Not at all like a wop or an Irisher. At least you knew what to expect from the Irisher or wop. The crazy kikes had their own ideas.

Papa Menes was scared of Jews. That’s why he killed them every chance he got.

Maybe he shouldn’t have listened to his cousin when they put Mark Shelby in. His grandfather on his Mother’s side was a Jew and that wasn’t what they had in mind. The old man fell asleep remembering his cock up a young broad’s ass and the way she squirmed and groaned. The only trouble was the dark shadow that kept hanging around the edge of his dream with a bony hand waiting to touch him with the mark of the dead. But the specter was blindfolded and couldn’t find him and he was able to enjoy himself to the fullest.

Artie Meeker wasn’t very bright, but he had a memory remarkable for it’s ability to take down a fifteen-minute conversation, repeat it verbatim and forget it before the sun rose the next day. He had paid off the two girls with tips to equal their fees, dropped them at a taxi stand in Homestead with an extra fifty to get them back to Miami, then took his bag of change and went into the pay phone booth on the corner while the car was being serviced and got the number in New York. He finished two cigarettes while he listened, dropping in quarters whenever the speaker went overtime, said a simple “Right,” when it was done, paid for his gas and oil and got back on the highway.

Papa Menes was already up having coffee when he got to the house, standing on the porch watching the sun dance on the incoming tide. He asked “Well?” and began his briefing.

The Cleveland police had gotten a break. A girl who worked in the building opposite had noticed the car driven by Holland’s killer because it was in a slot normally occupied by the manager in the neighboring office and the plates contained three consecutive zeroes. When they checked out every available combination, the only car whose make and color coincided was a rental job.

Crime paid off because the agency had been held up four times the past year and had installed a hidden camera that photographed everyone at the counter and the person who had rented the car was now on film. He was tall, wore a blue raincoat over a dark suit, a gray hat, carried a small suitcase still tagged with an airline baggage check, had glasses, a thin mustache and cut marks on his chin from a hurried shave. The name on his driver’s license was Charles Hall from Elizabeth, New Jersey. He had paid by credit card. The Cleveland police were interrogating all the airline personnel looking for an identification. Copies of the photo were being sent to departments in all the other cities but not being released to the news media. Papa Menes would have his own copy in the mail tomorrow. The old man nodded and finished his coffee.

Gill Burke handed the photo back to Captain Long and said, “Mister Anybody. The glasses and mustache could be phony and who doesn’t cut themselves shaving? The marks would be gone by now.”

“Encouragement is great,” Bill Long said, “Just what I need.”

“How about the credit card and address?”

“Phony, what else? The address was a garage that never heard of the guy and the card was only used once. We’re checking up on the reference he used when he applied for credit but not hoping for much luck.”

“That took a lot of preparation, buddy.”

“Nothing more than you’d expect from a pro, Gill.”

“A little more,” Burke said. “The usual contract boys don’t like any kind of paperwork, you know that.”

“Yeah, so this smells a little more businesslike. Either a high-price deal or an organizational endeavor. At least we got a toehold now. Somebody’s going to recognize that photo sooner or later and we’ll get our first break. The lab’s got their specialists working on that negative and if there’s anything that can be brought out, they’ll do it.”

“Anything from the air terminal?”

“One big blank, that’s what.” He looked at Gill’s face and scowled. “What’s so damn funny?”

“The whole bit could be a decoy. He could have even known about that camera. If he was a good pro he could have switched clothes and slapped on a disguise in the men’s room and taken it from there.”

“Maybe, but that camera had only been there a week.”

“Then you got your toehold.”

“We have a better angle, or haven’t you talked to the D.A. yet?”

“He doesn’t offer me anything at all.”

“Stanley Holland,” Bill Long told him, “was a very well-kept secret. Now that we know who he was we’re putting the picture together. His activities were known only to a few of the higher-ups in the syndicate and whatever bunch got inside their little plan had to be an extremely well-financed, well-informed group. The L.A. police are really hammering at it and we ought to be getting a break any time.”

“Good luck,” Gill said.

“Yeah,” Long muttered. He put the picture back in his pocket and held a match to his cigarette. “Now what have you got?”

“Nothing concrete yet. Maybe by Wednesday I’ll toss something out at the meeting.”

“You’d better. There’s a little shit-assed columnist who’s got a mad-on at everybody in uniform who smelled out your participation in this thing?”

“Meyer Davis?”

“The same.”

Gill chuckled in his throat. “He didn’t like that boot in the tail I gave him for the job he did on Joyce Carroll. He nearly loused up my whole case.”

“Well, he’s sniffing around and he’s got that whole pinko paper behind him.”

“Another kick in the behind can straighten him out.”

“You lay off that shit.”

“Sure, boss.”

“Quit that shit too.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Come on, Gill.”

Burke laughed at him. “Okay. See you Wednesday.”